Burlap and Blues, The Blues Blog

Busking, or playing for tips, is a new thing for me. I gave it a shot this weekend at a local breakfast place called Brother Junipers with mostly good results.
I got in around 8:45 in the morning, got set up and started playing. Traffic was pretty slow at first – it was a Sunday morning after all – so no tips for awhile. But as traffic picked up I started to get a few bucks here and there. I stopped to eat breakfast, which by the way if you are ever in the Memphis area you HAVE to eat at Brother Junipers at least once – absolutely delicious breakfasts; then went back to playing for about an hour. All in all I ended up with about 17 bucks, which I suppose isn’t too bad for about 2 full hours of playing.
It was an interesting experience and I learned some things. One, I shouldn’t expect too much – after all I’m really there to provide ambiance, not to put on a full concert. Two, location is important. I was kind of back in a corner at the end of a short hallway - good for acoustics - but people actually had to go back to my corner if they wanted to listen – or give tips. Three, I think I’m better playing with a band than by myself. While I love playing that fingerstyle Andy McKee type stuff what I really thrive on is playing with other people and the interaction you get as you trade licks back and forth and explore grooves and riffs. Also I’m more of an introverted person so it would be nice to have someone to work the crowd. Four, I learned to just relax and have some fun with it – after all people aren’t paying really close attention, not like they would at a concert.
Overall it was fun. My wife was there taking video and clapping for me so it felt like I had an audience. Next time I may try a different location – maybe outside. Also I’m gonna try to rope some friends into helping me out so we can jam on a few tunes.

Playing guitar is awesome. It's more than just fun, for me it's an outlet, an
expression of myself. There are few things more fun than learning new licks
or working out chord progressions or learning a new song. But it's even more fun to get together and jam with friends. One of the most relaxing things for me is to jam for hours on end with friends and just make stuff up along the way. This is what Dan and Jeremy and I did over Easter weekend.

Saturday afternoon my friend Gabe and I headed over to Dan's house on the river. It's a bit out there in the boondocks but I think that might be part of what makes it relaxing for me - the house is out of the city and overlooks a real pretty stretch of the Tennessee river with the Appalachian foothills in the background. We got there early afternoon and thankfully we had a dedicated drummer and bassist this time so Gabe and I didn't have to put our very rudimentary drum/bass skills to use. We got set up and just jammed for about 4 or 5 hours with a few breaks here and there. The drummer and bassist had to take breaks but I didn't and Dan jokingly said that "as long as there's a beat Brian'll keep playin!" I suppose he's right, but I was just happy to be there! Everybody was in top form that day - Jeremy, as always, bringing the killer riffs, Dan playing some great blues harp fills, the bassist and drummer laying down a solid rhythm section, even Gabe, who insisted he was rusty, brought some great licks. Someone would come up with a riff and everyone else would fall in, adding some chords here, some
fills there, then the drums and bass would fill it out and we'd have a great jam goin. At one point Jeremy even had some nasty sounding slide work over a driving blues rhythm (and by nasty I mean awesome). The only downer was that we weren't able to get any pictures or video this time, but that's okay. There will be other times I'm sure.

As I said, jam sessions are great. There are few things more fun than jamming with a bunch of friends. Some guys bond over fishing, some over bowling, for others it's football - for me it's a good jam session with my buddies. But what I'd really like to do is resurrect Max's old plan. Before it fell apart, Max had a plan for a meeting at Dan's house for any and all who would like to come, a weekend long jam session for any who wanted to participate. I still think it's feasible sometime in the future and if there's serious interest in it I say we work it out.

This past Sunday evening I learned an important lesson - I am not a college student anymore and can no longer pull all nighters and function somewhat normally the next day.

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