If you are like me, you spend a lot of time looking/hoping/praying for the perfect jam, or at least the pretty-near-perfect jam. And when they happen, they stick in your memory. Sometimes it’s not an entire jam, just a moment. It comes, it goes, and it forms a warm memory in your heart for decades.
I remember walking up on a small jam at Grass Valley maybe 20 years ago and hearing two people singing a beautiful duet. It was a song I knew, and I just stood close by and added a baritone part, and it the trio blend sounded so beautiful I never forgot it.
“Thanks for the harmony,” said the man when the song was done, and that’s how I met Jeannie and Chuck Poling.
One night, also long ago, at Plymouth (or maybe Mariposa) I was playing with some people and a young woman with strawberry blonde hair joined the jam. She really sang well — I mean <i> really </i> well. When the jam eventually broke up I asked someone if he knew who the lady was. “Oh, that’s Jenny Williams, Vern’s granddaughter.” Well, <i> Duh! </i>
This past weekend my wife Barbara and I celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary. For most of our life together we’ve gone out to a nice restaurant, just the two of us, for a romantic dinner. But when we hit 50 years, somehow it seemed like a big deal, so we had a party — two, actually — one for family and one for old friends.
Last year our big day came just four days after a sad death in the family, and we had a quiet, somber dinner by ourselves. But this year we were in a better mood and through a stroke of luck we were able to rent the West Point Inn, high on Mt. Tamalpais, for the occasion.
The West Point Inn was built in 1904 as a way station on the scenic railroad that went up the mountain. The Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway operated from about 1896 until it closed in 1930. West Point was literally the westernmost part of the track and there was a stagecoach road that connected with Willow Camp, present day Stinson Beach.
All the man-made parts of that railroad are gone now, except some cement foundations near the mountain summit, a landing platform lower on the mountain, a reconstructed gravity car barn near the top, and the West Point Inn. The railroad bed is now something resembling a road, but very rutted and bumpy. You don’t want to drive your BMW sporty car on it. The inn has been lovingly cared for by the West Point Inn Association since it began around 1943.
It has seven tiny rooms upstairs and five rustic cabins that were added in the early 1900s. You can stay there during the week (google it) but Saturday nights are always taken by association members (like me) who invite their friends and enjoy the amazing view, and the quiet. We ended up with 25 guests, of whom 13 were musicians. We had two banjos, six guitars, a mandola, a mandolin, a bass, a fiddle, a tenor uke, a harmonica and even an accordion.
And we played for hours. We started about 1:30 p.m. on Saturday and played until dinner, then after dinner until the innkeeper came by to turn off the gas lights at 11:30. Next morning we had breakfast until about 9:30 and then had an hour or so of gospel songs, then played until 1 p.m. when most of us had to leave.
The innkeeper was so taken with all the music that he said that even though the inn was supposed to be closed (except to members) on Sunday night, he was inviting us to stay. Most of us had commitments but three did hang out and play some more Sunday night.
Anyone who knows me knows I don’t like jams of more than about six people, seven at the most. This evening worked so well because people came and went, and for a long time we had two separate jams going. Six were good harmony singers, three knew a lot of non-bluegrass tunes that fit in just as well as the Bill Monroe songs. Two of us were Flatt & Scruggs freaks, and we did a lot of that.
It was a huge effort to assemble two meals worth of food for 25 people (seven chickens, marinated in garlic and fresh rosemary!) load three vehicles with instruments, food and bedding and get it to the top of Tamalpais while the able-bodied hiked in. I was pretty whipped on Monday, but it was absolutely worth it. My ears still ring with the music.
