Teen angst

Poor Snoot. She's 16 and is a stellar candidate in the best teen to live with catagory. We attended an open house at some friends new home tonight and Snoot didn't want to attend. The friends have a daughter of similar age, but shares few interests with Snoot, so we didn't balk.

We arrived home late and found that all the grass had been cut and the dog had been bathed. Are we walking on the sunny side of the street here? I believe so.

The bad news is that included in the wide mix of people at this open house was a new German immigrant that was crazy for music and Snoot missed it.

Over the course of the evening I eventually found myself drawn to a guitar and banjo I found upstairs in the new recreational space. This crazy German came bounding up the stairs when he heard me playing and jumped right in with a big grin on his face. I hassled him, he hassled me and then he said I had to come to his place where we would get some more instruments.

Twenty minutes later and after some crazy driving, we were back at the party unloading two sizes of djimbe drums, a sixty some year old tiny acoustic guitar with outstanding resonance. and a newer hollow body electric guitar and amplifier. I'm a stickler for setup so I would have been just as happy spending the time setting up the guitars for intonation and tuning, but for a change of pace I just enjoyed what they had to offer. I got to play with a drummer for the first time. How sweet was that? Very sweet I can tell you. I'm so easy.

This fellow was very supportive and forgiving musically. I've been playing with click tracks and metronomes, but live is better. Enough said.

He appeared to be beside himself with glee that this was all happening and frankly I'm having a tough time getting too much of it myself. I've played for many years, but not with others very often or, until recently, with any significant amount of fun factor.

Playing with people schooled in some of the fundamentals can be very rewarding. Last weekend yielded similar results. I'm happy to find that some of my efforts while playing alone have some relevancy to a broader context in music. It didn't matter what style either of us played, we could both have fun at the same time. He knew a lot of old funky melodies. I feel like aging isn't all bad tonight.

Five gets you ten, Snoot joins us next time. :D