By CAROLYN BROWN
Staff Writer
Bluegrass music (like this reporter) is native to the American South, but starting next week, it’ll have a new home here in the Valley.
CitySpace in Easthampton will host CitySpace Bluegrass, a new monthly bluegrass jam session for musicians of all ages, in The Blue Room at Old Town Hall on Saturday, Feb. 1, from 4 to 7 p.m., then on the first Saturday of every month after that, as part of Art Walk Easthampton.
Led by David Clark Carroll, founder of the progressive bluegrass band Daring Coyotes and former regional director of the California Bluegrass Association, the series aims to give the local bluegrass community a place to share their skills and make music together.
CitySpace Bluegrass actually kicked off on Saturday, Jan. 4, with a “preseason jam session” to “test the waters and warm up for the new year,” according to the event description. That turnout — somewhere between 50 and 80 people — was an “overwhelming success” that “massively exceeded my wildest expectations,” Carroll said.
Only about 20 of those in attendance were musicians, though; the rest were people who stayed to watch the session and listen to the music, “just taking it all in.” CitySpace Venue and Program Manager Zoe Fieldman said in an email, “Not only was the circle of musicians a beautiful thing to watch (and hear!) but the number of folks who came to bask in the bluegrass sound was lovely! We had to keep adding chairs to keep up with the flow of audience members.”
Carroll started this series to meet the need for the local bluegrass community to gather, but also because he missed hosting jam sessions himself after he left California. The O’s, a music bar in Sunderland, holds a weekly jam, but Carroll said the college crowd at the bar created a noise problem for the musicians: “I’m six feet away from a banjo player, and we can’t hear the banjo.” That crowd also meant the jam itself would often start later, to his frustration: “I’m like, ‘People, this is Thursday night. We can’t all stay out until 1 a.m.!’”
With that in mind — after the idea had been “bubbling away in my mental cauldron for at least two years” — he approached Burns Maxey, president of CitySpace, to set up a recurring bluegrass jam series. His would be free and all-ages, with a fixed and early enough start time (on a weekend) that working people could take part.
A jam session is a “unique beast,” said Carroll, who has floated the idea of doing an info session about bluegrass jams for newcomers in the future. Unlike, for example, a singer-songwriter open mic, where one person plays at a time, a bluegrass jam is more collaborative. A group leader will choose a song and a key; if necessary, that person will also help the group figure out some of the musical logistics — deciding who takes a high or low part, for example.
“Regardless of the skill level of the jam, that’s really going to be always the connective tissue,” he said. “You can wind up with five professional superstars on the Grand Ole Opry stage; half the time, they’re doing exactly that.”
The group will then play together as the leader sings. Still, Carroll said, that role can rotate: “Everyone gets a chance to call a song; everyone gets a chance to take a solo if they want.”
“To me,” he said, “what really makes it a bluegrass jam is: are the people really listening to each other? Are they giving people a chance to really nail a harmony with them?”
Participants need to have a certain amount of comfort with playing “off-page” — that is, without sheet music — and there are rules of etiquette. No matter what, though, a jam is built around the spirit of bluegrass music-making.
That spirit hit Carroll almost two decades ago. He grew up outside of Boston, but he lived in California for 16 years before moving back to Massachusetts. He discovered bluegrass music as a college student, but his interest solidified when a friend convinced him to go to the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 2007, where performances by guitarist Doc Watson and mandolinist Sam Bush made strong impressions on him. By the time Bush took the stage, heavy rain had decimated the turnout.
“All of the people besides the volunteers and the young hippies had given up, they’ve gone home, and then Sam Bush comes out and puts on a concert for no one but maybe 50 of us,” he said. Bush’s performance wowed and inspired Carroll, who realized a new career goal: “I wanna do that. That’s so cool.”
As CitySpace Bluegrass expands, Carroll hopes to draw more young people, many of whom may have had classical training in music but have no prior experience playing bluegrass with a group. (At his California jam, those kids “needed a little nudge to start improvising, but they shred.”) Beyond that, he wants the series to become “a part of the community fabric.”
Ryan Seiler, the bassist for Daring Coyotes, also said that bluegrass is great for building community: “One of my favorite things about bluegrass music is that it is a long and varied tradition that has connected generations of people, the whole world over. Through bluegrass, I have hung out with folks of all ages and walks of life.”
The only caveat, as much as Carroll hates to be “the bluegrass jam police,” is that he envisions the CitySpace Bluegrass jams as a strings-only session. “You have to be able to hear the strings,” he said.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.