Other Players, Other Sounds

It's amazing to me how different people can take the same set of notes and the same instruments and make a tune sound so different. I was reminded of this the last few days while playing with different sets of musicians.

The first was last Saturday evening. I got hired to play fiddle for a barn dance in The Middle Of Nowhere, Illinois with a band I've never played with before. Their regular fiddler couldn't make it and their mandolin player is a friend of mine. It was a fun time! The band is a little more bluegrass-y than I usually play with and their approach to the tunes is different. I think we sounded fine, and the people at the dance (both those who danced and those who sat by the bonfire outside) seemed to like the music just fine. But some tunes I've played for years came out sounding pretty interesting with this combination of players. One of the things that struck me was the guitar playing. This guitarist wasn't really familiar with most of the tunes and is much more used to playing flatpick leads and solos based on scales and chord patterns than he is with just chunking the rhythm behind a fiddle for square and contra dancers. Still, his playing was rhytmically solid though pretty much unornamented.

Then last night, Dan and I played with our friend Brandt; running through some of the more oddball tunes that we play together. The Hot Baloney Boys have been asked to be the opening act for a band playing at Pop's Blue Moon next Saturday evening (Nov. 10) and Colleen, our regular guitar player can't make it for the gig. So, Brandt has volunteered to sit in with us.

When playing with Brandt, he changes the whole tone of the Baloney Boys. Good rhythm, of course, because he understands the function of the guitar in old-time music. But with Brandt, there's a whole different chordal sensibility than what Colleen brings or what I would play in his place. Definitely not bad, but different. He'll hang on a chord a half a beat or a beat longer than I would expect or he'll try a G-chord where I'd use an E or an E-minor. And his bass runs often go to unexpected places. What's really surprising is how much Dan and my playing changed adapting to the different sounds we were hearing.

Two different guitarists (three if you count Colleen) and each brings a different sort of underpinning to the tunes. How cool is that?