Jam Report #18: 7/29/01

[annathepiper]

As originally posted to the OKP. Transcribed to Livejournal 10/4/05.

No Mimi again and she is sorely missed; no Fred either; we do quick takes of "Jolly Butcher" and "Mari-Mac"; Monica contributes "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" and we break it in fairly well; I play the mandolin, Dara writes herself a flute part, and Kathryn happily futzes with my mandolin as well.

Okay, so I'm behind again on the jam report -- sue me. ;) This is what happens when the Jam Reporter is up until 6am the day before Noise is due to occur, dealing with an emergency backup of her house Internet site on account of said site is suffering wonky hardware behavior! Only in the last day or three have I managed to get my brain back in gear, so let's see if I can still properly chronicle the events of our last jam.

First and foremost, we were once again down the lovely and talented mamishka (Mimi), as she had opted to spend the weekend at the WOMAD music festival in Seattle. She has since told us that this was an absolutely religious experience, and that she had a most incredible time, so we certainly don't begrudge her going even if it did mean our tempo suffered for her absence! But specifically because she was gone, we didn't try to do any serious share-with-you-fine-people takes of either of our two big songs right now, "Mari Mac" and "Jolly Butcher". The general observation was made that our ability to hold a tempo without percussion is better than it used to be, but having Mimi around to keep the time does make a spectacular difference!

We did, however, knock off a couple quick takes of both of these songs, just to keep them in our heads. The most interesting things about this session, though, came after we did those two songs.

Our third ditty of the day was a new one, "You Woke Up My Neighborhood" by Billy Bragg, brought in by Monica. Most of us hadn't ever heard this one before, so Dara played an MP3 of it for us, and then we started playing around with it. This had several happy results:

• I actually broke out my MANDOLIN! Now, granted, I didn't do too terribly much with it... mostly very quietly tried to pick out some twiddles on my upper octave strings. But my nascent sense for "what instrument belongs with what song" didn't quite like the piccolo on this one, so out came the mandolin. And I actually hit D chords on it. In the right places! Looking at Monica's chord progression for the song, I also realized that I knew most of those chords, but I haven't yet figured out where the rest of them belong.
  
  
• The previous meant that solarbird (Dara) was therefore the only flute, and she wrote herself a flute part for the very first time! She ranks this up there with having discovered she can see through time, and is quite deservedly pleased with herself. She got to break out one of her seldom-played instruments as well, her one Romy Benton flute -- currently dubbed Pain. But if Dara keeps this up, maybe it'll get to have a new name. :)
  
  
• Monica is not allowed to tell anyone she can't sing. She is currently best amongst us at carrying a tune while also playing an instrument, and furthermore, having spent a good chunk of the last three days song-virused by this ditty as specifically sung by her, I can personally attest to the catchiness of her voice.
  
  
• ssha (Cyn) had some successful fiddle experimentation going on as well, though she will have to attest to the details of those since there was a daspatrick (Patrick) between me and her while she was fiddle-twiddling, and I was mostly paying attention to the mandolin in my lap and going "Whoa, I hit a CHORD on this thing!" ;)
  
  
• This is not the first time in general that we heard a new song and managed to pull together a decent beginning take of it in the very same session -- we've done that before with Heather Alexander's "Cat in the Fiddle". However, our ramp-up time from 'hear the song' to 'play through it without too many train wrecks' has gotten noticeably shorter, about which we are all quite thrilled. Especially since we transposed this thing from its starting key of G into D, to better accommodate Kathryn's voice. We'll have to see if D is a happy Mimi key as well, when she rejoins us and can experiment with this song too.

And speaking of my mandolin -- kathrynt (Kathryn) picked it up and played around with it, and her face turned positively incandescant when she figured out all by herself how to play a few chords on it. This is the same Kathryn who has sworn up and down for months that she doesn't have enough hand-eye coordination to play an instrument, but apparently her harp practice is paying off. :)

Pie, at last -- and this week, dutch apple, a classic. But this session had another first which must be noted, and that is:

We jammed some more after pie!

Everybody but me, that is. By then I was rather mentally wiped and in need of a nap, but everybody else went back over and picked up their instruments again to play some more with the new song! And it was, I might add, a joy to listen to even if I wasn't actually up for continuing myself. We all appear to be developing more musical stamina -- and Kathryn has started high-fiving me and proclaiming, "Look what madness we have wrought!"

If this is madness, I dig being insane.