Sometimes you're just stumped as what to write. I was outside at the break talking with one of the other patrons. We both agreed that when we hear the word "improv" there's an uncertain twinge we suffer that cries, "I don't want to work that hard!" As Shakespeare once said it's like "the whining school-boy with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school." I think for most people improvised music must be this way. With theater or comedy; a completely different story. We willingly subject ourselves to the spontaneity. We revel in the uncertainty! Not necessarily with music. We like drive time, our playlists. Well ... bullshit. We didn't work hard at all!
Sean, our captain for the last several weeks, assembled a group of four musicians (including himself) that pulled together a violin, an upright bass, an acoustic guitar and a percussionist equipped with a door from an old refrigerator that once protected the freezer inside, an assortment of striking instruments a washboard and a skin drum. Like all improv nobody knows how it's going to start until one of the gents dips a toe into the protracted silence and just lets instinct prevail. Then, it starts. Bluegrass? Country? Folk? ... yeah sure, maybe, it really didn't need a label. It was familiar. It was down home. It was a little spliff and a bottle of daddy's moonshine in the back of the car.
Tom would delicately layout a melody on the guitar picked up by Mikkel's washboard and danced on by Ryan's fiddle with Sean slipping in a fretless bass thing that kept everything elevated just above earth. Very comfy.
Interestingly enough, Mikkel told us about an incident that occurred in Crush, Texas in 1886. You can read more about it here where some railroad exec staged a train wreck for an audience of about 40,000 spectators. Both engines exploding killing 3 people and injuring countless others. Anyway, Scott Joplin (of Ragtime fame) was probably a witness to the event and wrote a song called Great Crush Collision March. Joplin included in the score instructions on how to replicate the sounds of the trains' collision through playing techniques, specific notes, and the use of dynamics. Mikkel's point illustrated the injection of different ... almost manufactured (instrumentally nontraditional) sounds into the American music lexicon.
With the exception of Sean and Tom, the four had never played together. What they knew of each other was more than enough to collaborate on a great evening of surprise and folk-spun jazz. Nicely done, gentlemen.
Correction from the Department of Somebody-Don't-Know-Shit: Since this writing, I have been informed that Mr Roderick and Mr Young have indeed performed together in the past. In fact, there are recordings to prove it ... referred to as The Bedtime Album circa 2003. Thanks for clearing that up, Sean! Have fun!
