Some jams, we play what we know with our best friends, and it’s like picking up a great comfortable conversation that may have began years – decades! – ago. How cool it that? It’s a magical thing, really!
But some jams aren’t so comfortable – you don’t know the other players so well, and maybe you don’t know the songs, either. So what happens there?
Sometimes, it’s not so good. You can’t get going – you feel like there are oven mitts on your hands, gravel in your throat and cotton in your ears. It can be humiliating! But other times, that jam full of unknowns unlocks things in your brain – you can surprise yourself.
I’m not suggesting you necessarily unlock some hidden Mozart (or Bill Monroe). Sometimes the positive results of venturing outside your comfort level are just glimpses into music played without conscious thought. But those glimpses have a long lasting effect – they nudge you forward.
Remember the scene in the Star Wars movie when Luke Skywalker was training to be a Jedi Knight, by fighting a little drone with a mask over his eyes? “Use the force, Luke!”, exhorted Obi Wan Kenobi (who sounded just like Alec Guinness in “Bridge Over the River Kwai”). It’s a little like that.
For most of us, these things happen fairly rarely, because it’s human nature to avoid situations where the opportunities for confusion and humiliation might occur. You certainly don’t want to drive somewhere for that sole purpose! But any time you jam, there’s a chance to make some productive journeys beyond the boundaries of your musical comfort level.
Festivals, of course, provide the opportunity to pick and choose the jam to fit your mood. There’s the jams with your old friends, probably playing many of the same songs you’ve played with them for years. Doesn’t get any more relaxing than that!
But when you’re feeling restless, and adventurous, you can find jams with songs you don’t know, people you don’t know and music you don’t know. You’re taking a chance – your very presence could kill the jam, if you’re loud and awful enough – believe me it happens to everyone sometimes! Ideally, though. You find a jam just challenging enough to expand your musical experience – new songs, new riffs, new rhythms, and this new knowledge and experience will color everything that comes afterwards.
And, you can inflict your new chops and songs on your friends and challenge them, too!
