Are all jams good? Are there levels of goodness? What are the goodness qualifiers; talent, experience, good-looking jammers, welcoming environment, tequila, dark whiskey, wine, craft beer? I’m not sure I know the answer. I’m pondering this question because of a recent “jam” experience I’ve had and being an inquisitive sort of bass player, experiences such as these get me wondering if I’m having a good time or not. Some times it is hard to tell.
Anyway, upon returning from our annual Spring Equinox trip to the tropics (I do love to party as the sun crosses the equator), I asked my research assistant oogle (with a G) to delve into the question of what makes a good jam. After an extensive 15 second search, oogy came up with “jams are best made with fruits high in pectin”. Obviously, that didn’t help me much so I gave my assistant the rest of the day off and decided to tackle the question myself.
In analyzing this question, I found myself relying on the some logic from a SCOTUS decision most to you are familiar with (I gave my research assistant the day off so I don’t know exactly which one); paraphrasing “I can’t define a good jam but I know one when I see / hear one.
Here’s where the analysis gets cloudy. In the context of where this piece is appearing, let’s assume I’m talking about a good bluegrass jam. Again in context, it could be an old time or even a gospel jam but for the sake of this discussion lets keep it about bluegrass. That leads to the trick question in this whole exercise “what is bluegrass”. For sure, I’m not looking to get into a big tent / small tent discussion on this but rather just some subtle nuanced differentiation.
Alright, I’ll quit beating around the bush and get to it. On Sunday, I attended a well-known public jam (no names to protect the innocents). This jam is advertised to be an eclectic jam where all acoustic music is welcome and is so. However, with some exceptions, it typically breaks down into some old time jams and some bluegrass jams. In last couple of these jams, what some of the old timey folks call the bluegrass jam got to be very different if you will.
The so-called bluegrass jam had a clarinet, a cello, a harp and a baritone guitar (eight strings and a huge body). I’m cutting the harmonica and uke some slack by not mentioning them. Fortunately no spoons were detected in the immediate vicinity. Maybe, getting back to the big tent discussion, perhaps if some Crooked Still, Joy Kills Sorrow or Infamous Stringduster tunes were called we could get to bluegrass in a big tent kind of way but that wasn’t the case. So I’m going with not bluegrass.
I’ve never been known as or claimed to be the bluegrass police but an eight-string guitar that wasn’t a Mike Auldridge dobro, what would Bill say….. heck even if it was a dobro what would Bill say?
Did you catch my misdirection play here, I teased you with how do you tell if a jam is good and deflected you to was it bluegrass. “Good” is another level of discussion. I hit on a few factors in the opening paragraph and I’ll run through them to see if they apply to the above jam.
First, the jam was at a school so the tequila, whiskey, wine and beer threshold was not met but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good because, as in tequila, that is just a personal preference.
As for the rest of my qualifiers, the jam was certainly very welcoming and had a good mix of experience, and again, while not necessarily my area of expertise most were fairly good looking. Who cares about talent anyway? So using my own criteria and judging by the level of participation and how long they kept it up, it was a pretty good jam for a Sunday afternoon. I’m glad I was there.
So the moral of the story is….. ah there is no moral. I’m just writing what’s on my mind and thinking about having some fun jamming today with the group the skips the back step in Clinch Mountain Backstep.
Catch you next month.
