Mix in 1 Audience

Now we get to the essential trinity: Musician-Musician-Host, where "Host" can be a person, a small gathering, or a huge festival. When there are listeners to the interactive process described below, a dynamic connection is created that is much stronger and more lasting than that among just the musicians. I have both been and seen the adulating fan whose joy cannot be measured when this connection is made and sustained for however-short a time. Those otherwise fleeting moments garner permanent homes in the psyche.

That is more amazing when one considers that it all stems from a series of vibrations that are generated by one human and received/interpreted by another. Do you hear the same thing that I hear? How would we ever tell? I taught Music Theory for 2 years as a grad assistant, and the Ear Training segments of this subject are among the most fascinating -- especially from the perspective of the instructor. I know, then, that when I would give dictation (wherein the students would be given a starting pitch and then were expected to write out a short passage using only their interval-recognition skills), the intent was for each person to be hearing the same thing, or close enough to it. This scenario is quite different from that of a concertgoer's unique relationship with a performer-group. The fellow audience member may hear such a personalized version, depending on many factors, that it may be impossible to compare my listening experience to hers.

But then again, we all know when to chime in with the phrases that the crowd sings, so on some level, we are all in the same musical place. This is the simple equation; and there are those of us who believe that this connection, among a group of performers and their listeners and the music itself, is capable of reaching such intensity and density that cosmic forces are affected.

Music tonight

Why is there a band? What prehistoric forces congealed to drive us into forming musical ensembles? Even though there are many variations on musical groups (think clarinet choir), a general framework that has become patterned in instrumental formats is the idea of some people strumming, some people tooting, and still others banging on stuff (all of whom may at times be accompanying the hollering done by themselves or others). In this framework, there is also someone responsible for the "train engineer" role, which in Western harmony usually belongs to the bass instrument. The traditional rock band lineup is simply a variation on this pattern.

I've enjoyed plucking guitar strings and listening to the outcome since I was just a few months old (you can ask my Mom). I still haven't heard all of the tones that can be generated by one open guitar string. But the act of playing by oneself and listening to that output as input is really circular, like, and can create some unwanted feedback. People like me often say that one of the best experiences a person like me can have is to interact musically with at least one other person.

The truth is that just about everyone does this at some level. The intervals (distance between 2 notes) found in universal sing-song phrases (calling someone's name from afar, saying "NAh na nah BOoo boo") and the rhythmic elements to speech as affected by different emotions are evidence to support the theory that we connect to each other in a musical sphere (in addition to the cognitive and many other paradigms) while engaging in spoken language.

Is that how the band got started, or was it the other way around? What kind of music did people listen to in the Stone Age?

Set Opener

"Time changes everything," sang Bill Monroe. As if to prove him right, here I am, a married (twice now) father of a three-month-old, a homeowner, a Fortune 500 corporation employee, a "well-trained amateur who gets some gigs" trying desperately to evolve into a "semi-pro musician."

Ten years ago I was undergoing high anticipation of a 4-night run at the Omni in March, that for three nights of which I had mail-order tickets. It turns out that last Atlanta show was the last one I saw.

I'm still driving the same car, but that's about the only constant. The radio and tape player have long since given up, so it's a "quiet ride." It gives me time to think.

I was a joe-come-lately, to be sure, as I waited to see the Grateful Dead until after they had taken the previous 27 years to "get it ready for me." While growing up, I never liked what I knew of the band, even through the MTV era when "Touch of Grey" found them a great many new "friends." I started listening -- really listening -- as a senior in college, to a dorm buddy's own, acoustic renditions of "Jack Straw" and "Wharf Rat." Then he loaned me some bootlegs, of course, and I'm sure you can guess the rest, but it was literally a matter of months before I was miles away in Charlotte, NC for one of the single greatest experiences of Life as I've known it to date.

This didn't start out to be about me, it's about you out there -- you who also may have shorn some locks and "grown up" and are busy being fine average citizens -- but when you drive by me, I can hear your CD/MP3 player just fine, and you're playing "Tennessee Jed," circa 1982 at 7 AM in a plain burgundy car that has no stickers and no personalized "R U KIND" license plates. I want to tell you, all of you, that I love you and miss you.

I also want to find out where you are, what you're doing, how the (perhaps) only common thread among our lives is (or isn't) helping to shape the communities we inhabit, the choices we make, the dreams to which we awaken -- in short, the Future.

And lastly for today, as wrong as I know it to be in many ways, I want to play their songs. I want to play their songs, not by myself sometimes, but with a whole band of plugged-in, tuned-up aficionados. But more on that later....