When we play together on stage in front of an audience, we enter into a sacred series of agreements with one another: to take care of each other, to take care of the audience, to take care of the groove, and to take care of the piece we're playing.
Put another way, my goals are, roughly in order of ascending importance:
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- To sound good, and to help you sound good
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- To create an emotional and sometimes even spiritual platform for the audience
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- To find the groove, listen to it carefully, and contribute what it needs and wants
...and most importantly:
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- To honor the pieces we have selected for the set, whether they are original or covers, and especially when they are fragile traditionals that have gravity of spirit to people who need them.
So, to that end, here are the principles I want you to keep in mind when you're on stage with me, and also to which to keep me accountable.
It is tempting to play what you want to play, or what you're good at. But that doesn't always make good music. It is tempting to play what you think the audience wants you to play, but that doesn't always make good music.
The groove is a shared landscape between musicians and audience. It is a living landscape, which is inspired by the previous bar, constructs the current bar, and invites the next bar. In a nutshell, the groove is the shared sense of patterned tension and resolution between us and our audience.
Its components include the musicians' capabilities, the musical piece being played, the attention level of the audience, the sound system, the energy left over from the previous piece, the anticipation we may be feeling knowing the next piece, and the degree of communication - especially in-band (ie, in the music itself) between the musicians.
Our mission is to add our own color to the groove, without overwriting the colors that are already there.
Most the time, the groove asks us to contribute less - to stay in our lane and play a proportional role to adding and especially subtracting tension from the pattern of the piece. If you inject something that the groove doesn't want, it drives the piece off of its rails and creates anxiety for both musicians and the audience. This often causes the audience (without realizing it) to relexively step backward and stop dancing - to withdraw energy in order to fix the imbalance. Recovering from this state can be difficult - it takes awareness and effort from all of us.
Once in a while, the groove will ask you to contribute more - to do something unusual and break gridlock that has built up. Of these occasions, most can be solved with an extremely brief lick or slap. Other times, a fundamental change in your contribution is requested - listen carefully and be sure. If you fail to give the groove something that it is asking for, we run the risk of falling into "noodling", which creates a sense of emptiness and often makes the audience want to start nervously chatting (even in the front row) in order to add energy to fix the imbalance. This is usually easier to fix - whoever is next to solo needs to take command and address the groove squarely (see "Play the fucking song").
Always treat the audience like they are capable of understanding our message, and are welcome to add to it
We address intense, thoughtful topics to our audience. It's important that we never inadvertantly make our show "for dummies". Don't let your own insecurity cause you to do something more rudimentary when the groove is calling for something more sophisticated.
It's OK to inspire the audience to reach outside their comfort zone - but only a very little bit. If my words (or our songs) go way over their head, they will start to withdraw and the groove will suffer (this is an issue where I'm actively working on improving my contribution).
It's better to aim for slightly bigger-brain and bigger-heart energy than we think our audience can withstand (and help them reach for it) than to underwhelm them with oversimplification (and create boredom). I know I can be guilty of flying too high, and I need to be checked on this front from time to time.
People come to see us because we mix highly unorthodox visions of the future with highly traditional sounds of the past. If we lose the former, the latter is not enough to differentiate us and give the audience a feeling of being treated as special and deserving of their own response. Keep the mix!
The exciting part about any musical show is when the energy builds, grips the audience and musicians, and resolves back into a stable default.
For that to happen, there needs to be a stable default!
Here's what a stable default looks like, 90% of the time:
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Bass plays the boom
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Mandolin plays the chuck
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Guitar plays both, usually with an alternating fifth
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Violin cycles between: chuck, fills, chords
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Banjo drones and pinches
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Flute plays the melody first, then a brief solo, then sometimes the melody again, and quickly gets out of the way.
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Melodica sometimes plays the chart, sometimes a brief solo, then sometimes the chart again. Less is more.
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Step forward
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Make eye contact with someone if you can
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Smile if appropriate (depends on the song obviously, maybe not in Last Train From Poor Valley or Ashokan Farewell :-))
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Don't be shy - get in there and shred.
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If the event is livestreamed, consider playing partly to the stream (know where the cameras are in advance!)
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But also, leave yourself room to build - don't burn all your solo energy in the first line
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It's better to end your solo a line early than a line late. Put another way: it's better to leave the audience wanting more than to make them wish things were moving along faster.
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Stay not only in your lane, but in the center of your lane. Don't noodle.
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Be especially aware of ringing sounds which conflict with the solo (for example, if the fiddle is soloing, the mandolin needs to take care to mute the highest strings; if the guitar is soloing, the bass needs to produce clear, long lowend, rather than pops and slaps)
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Bass solos are rare - around once per show, and need to be super special. When the bass is soloing, the other instruments need to be nearly silent. The mandolin can still provide a purely rhythmic chuck (half time at most - consider quarter time or even only hitting the beginning of the line), and the guitar might help by giving a small boom so the bass solo can climb the neck, but that's really about it. It can also be helpful (both to the soloing player and to the audience) to give a hard "kick" at the beginning of a new line and then return to silence to give the bassist a ton of space. At the end of the bass solo, we all need to come back in hard to give the sense of the song picking back up.
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In some songs, it might make sense to actually move behind the soloing player to give the audience the sense of that player having a very acute center stage. For example, I like to do this during the second fiddle solo of Nanny State Fiddler.
It can be tempting, especially for a song that we personally like and enjoy, to wander around at the beginning, noodling excessively without kicking it.
Establishing and maintaining the groove requires us to all be on the same page as to when to kick it.
Usually, that's at the very beginning of the song - from measure 0, we enter and stay in our lanes.
Sometimes, songs build slowly by design, and on these, we need to be extra careful not to noodle, and to find the stability of groove and play through the song (mando, banjo, and fiddle can be very helpful here).
For most song structures, it's particularly important to get through the first verse (or A part) and chorus (or B part) before making any adjustments, taking any breaks, or adding any frills or slaps.
During a long solo break, it's ok to bring the energy way down in order to build it back up. However, like an aircraft stalling at low altitude, it's important recognize when this risks going too far, and to immediately apply PtFS.
This also includes aspects of the set outside the songs. Don't tune in public (at least not excessively - I may sometimes go into drop D without muting if I think it will contribute to the groove). I know I need to refrain from excessively introducing a song and losing the groove.
Some songs - especially but not only complex cherished traditionals, are just fragile. Even a small blunder produces an outsized cringe. On these pieces, it's extremely important to follow "contribute only what the groove wants" and "stay in your lane" principles.
If we mess up Song of Storms or Nanny State Fiddler, everybody goes home alive. It's a non-issue.
If we mess up Manzanita, Loser, or Ashokan Farewell, we will never forget it and it may come to define the set. These are pieces that people have heard at funerals, moments of intimate love, in documentaries about grave subjects, and when pondering the passage of time as the authors and stewards of these pieces have moved on from this life. We damage the groove by being reckless with fragile songs.
If you don't feel capable of playing a highly fragile song without mishandling it, just say so and I'll give you special attention or pull the song from the set or both. If I'm not 100% sure that everybody has it, I may play fragile songs with a subset of the ensemble.