Saturday was an interesting day. Around noon, my new band made its public debut at a local festival, playing about a 65 minute set. The crowd was small, but enthusiastic, and we were well received. The cool thing was that several people came up to us while we were breaking down and loading out and asked about booking us for local gigs.
Saturday night was the "Willisville Woodstock", an annual private party over in the next county that has come to be well known locally for music, fun, food and drink. My band played there last year, so one of the organizers asked me to bring my bass with me.
Towards the end of the second set, the bass player called me up to sit in for a couple of numbers (ones they were pretty sure I knew), so that was great fun. Then there was a scheduled break, but instead of just playing recorded music for the break, they had the guitarist from the band stay up there and brought up an old fellow named "Red", who had been playing and singing blues, R&B and rockabilly for the last 50 years. They wanted my to join them as a 'trio'.
I knew none of the five songs they were planning on playing, but it was late in the evening and everybody was pretty laid back, so I just went with it, making it up as I went. Normally I like everything to be well rehearsed and organized, but it was great fun and very liberating to just roll with it and lay down the best lines I could. We wound up playing about 30 minutes, and everybody seemed to have a great time.
Not that anyone would care that much that I had fun Saturday night, but the point to be made is that it can be a blast sometimes to just step out of your comfort zone and jump into something totally new and spontaneous.
Plus, the evening expanded my list of music contacts substantially. Several people I knew of (but didn't know in person) and others I didn't know at all have asked about getting together sometime to jam. All for having my Jazz with me and being willing to get up there and play it.
