Beginners Jam

I had been talking to John Werner about music in general while I had been working out at Loy Yang and he mentioned a Bluegrass function that is held the last Sunday of the month at Warragul. Sounded like a good idea so I contacted Greg McGrath by email (from his Gippsland Bluegrass web page) and asked for details. Greg quickly responded and gave me the address to go to. This should be fun. I wasn't completely sure of the start time and guessed at 2:00 pm.

Set off on the motorcycle with the Dobro on my back and travelled to his house. What a wonderful day for a bike ride. His directions were clear and accurate except for one intersection that caught me a little off guard. I had checked out the location using Google Maps and the turn into his street didn't match what was shown on the map. Oh well, I'll know next time.

As it turned out, I was first and others arrived later. All up there was nine of us, with a mixture of guitar, mandolin, banjo and dobro. Unfortunately John Werner couldn't attend which was a shame as his double bass playing was missed. Maybe next month?

We formed a circle and Greg kicked off the music for the afternoon and the rest of us followed. Even with nine players there was only two of us handling all the singing: Greg and I. Two young ladies performed a song that they had composed about the recent bushfires and the harmonies sounded sweet.

Being a civilised function, we stopped halfway through and had a cup off tea/coffee and then played on until 5:00.

One of the players had brought along a mandolin and guitar. I decided to give my fingers a rest from the fingerpicks and asked him if I could use his guitar as he was playing mandolin. "Sure" he says "If I can play your Dobro." Done.

Had a most pleasant afternoon that I will come back to.