I don't know what caused it, but something magic happened at the Jack of the Wood Thursday night. I mean, there's a bluegrass jam there almost every Thursday night. Most nights it's pretty good. Some nights, it's kinda mediocre.

Day before yesterday, magic happened. All the first team musicians were there and in a mood to play. And as if that weren't enough, a bunch of people I didn't know (but were obviously known to the other musicians) showed up. And every one 'em was a first-rate picker.

For about three hours, I listened to, watched, and picked with some of the best bluegrass musicians on the local scene. And that, my friends, is saying something. At one point, I counted 12 of us on the stage. I count myself a pretty fine musician, but I'll tell you what: I was the 11th or 12th best player up there.

Two examples:

I worked up the nerve to sing Love of the Mountain, which is one of my favorite bluegrass songs. I stepped toward the center near the mic, the song kicked off and I was in the center of an acoustic wave that I'd have ridden to Hawaii given the chance. I could hear guitar and mandolin fills, fiddle pads, counterpoints to solos. Stig the bass player was locked in like a low frequency metronome. It was all I could do to remember to sing. When I sang the chorus the first time, I was surprised (and a little disappointed) that nobody stepped in to sing harmony. As somebody was taking a solo, I turned to a guitar player next to me. He'd nailed a few songs earlier. "Why didn't you sing harmony?" "I cain't sing that high." "When the chorus comes back around, you sing the lead - I'll grab tenor." [1] Well, when the chorus hit, he sang the living bejesus out of the lead part, I sang tenor, and one of the banjo players who I didn't know stepped up and added a perfect baritone [2]. We had us a fine three-part chorus and sitting on top of that acoustic wave, I'd pretty much died and gone to heaven.

The very next tune was Hangman's Reel, which is a great fiddle tune with parts A, B, C, and D (most fiddle tunes are just A, B). What I particularly recall from that is Adam and Tim, two of the hottest fiddle players in Western North Carolina (imo) doing a raging duet. Either of them can play a harmony part to essentially any fiddle tune you can name. I don't know who was playing melody and who had the harmony, but man, when those two stepped into the center, and cranked it up, heads turned. The banjo player to my right, Jim, just grinned ear to ear. "That," he said, "is what I'm talking about."

You know, I've often told people that Mick Jagger is still touring not because he needs the money but because he's addicted to the applause. It's a potent drug indeed. But as I study on it, I suspect Mick's got multiple habits he's feeding. The other addiction doesn't need 30,000 fans screaming. It just needs Charlie Watts playing the back-beat and Keith Richards on the Telecaster. It's the irreproduceable high of being in the center of a musical storm.

It's only bluegrass music, but I like it.

Regards, Lee

[1] In the bluegrass world, the harmony parts are known as "tenor" (the harmony above the lead), and "baritone" (the harmony below the lead).

[2] The baritone part of three-part bluegrass singing is toughest to hear, and generally the toughest to sing.