I decided to drive to Missoula last Saturday to visit my daughter and her two little girls as well as go to the February version of the MRBA winter jam series. The roads were pretty bad. The Friday road report had been quite good with bare highway over most of the route although they always caution that conditions can quickly turn in Montana. And they did! The weather forecast seemed to suggest flurries, but that may have been my optimistic reading of them. It was great driving on bare pavement upon leaving Billings early in the AM. Around Greycliff, though, it began snowing heavily. The roads were still quite bare, but visibility was becoming a problem, especially when coming up behind a truck. Passing became rather risky. Returning on Sunday was much worse. The roads became covered in snow and the plows could not keep up. Even big rigs were seen that had slid into the barrow pit. At my age I should have known better and in the future I will not be quite so adventurous.
As far as the jam it was a lot of fun although attendance was somewhat down compared with other winter jams. Most blamed it on the weather although pickers were there from places like Ovando and Kalispell. This jam featured a planned "Slow Jam" at 3:00 PM. This was a teaching session for newer pickers. The leaders were teaching the 1 2 3 4 5 chord progressions from the music theory "Circle of Fifths" concept. Instead of learning that a tune in G, for instance, has the chords G, C, and D in a certain pattern it is more useful to think of them as 1, 4, 5. Then if a singer or picker wants to play that tune in another key like A or C you already know what chords to play. The Slow Jam group then went on to play a tune slowly until every picker could play it before speeding up. It was a good learning session for all the participants.
The MRBA jams have some very friendly pickers to jam with. The stress is definitely on bluegrass not country music in other forms. Those who only want to play classic or modern country songs do not last very long in this group. I like that approach which is gentle, but still firm. There were also some really good pickers including the Franks of "Two Bit Franks," and Chad Fadely plus others. Two Bit Franks performed at the Big Sky Big Grass Festival earlier this month with some of best bluegrass bands in America. Emily Frank was especially helpful in assisting other pickers with their technique and singing. Around 6 PM a very good potluck was served including roast chicken, beef enchilada casserole, fresh fruit and many different salads. A separate dessert table had sweets from homemade brownies and cookies to carrot cake.
The final MRBA Winter Jam will be held on March 8, 2014. (BTW, daylight savings begins the next day. That should be figured into any travel plans. My personal feeling is that the daylight savings concept has outlived it's usefulness and should be eliminated in this more modern era. Now it is just a pain to have to change the times on most watches and clocks twice per year. Not to mention our personal biological clocks.)
Some photos from the February winter jam follow:
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