Hot Times at Old Town

Appearing below are selections from the hard copy Hot Times. The objective is to highlight activities at the School and in the larger community, especially those featuring or of special interest to teachers and staff. Your suggestions are welcome. Enter a comment (under any item); it will come to me rather than automatically appearing.

Jam with us or create one!

Everyone knows that the best way to keep improving is to keep playing — one great way to do that is to join one of the School’s jams: the Wednesday Mid-Day Jam, 12-2 pm or Thursdays, 7-10 pm.

For the past year, we’ve missed only one Wednesday of jamming; we even continue during periods between class sessions. Each Wednesday we meet in the lobby, then set up chairs on the main stage of the School (at Lincoln) and put up our Open Jam sign. We start about noon and end about 2 pm. The group is wonderfully varied in instrumentation: pretty much always guitar, banjo, harmonica, fiddle, and mandolin; sometimes bass and a wonderful tapdancer! People suggest songs in turn, often but not always from the songbook; we also do some fiddle tunes (calling out the chords when needed). If you’re free during the day, come on by! (No need to be an Old Town School student; everyone is welcome). A similar jam is held on Thursday evenings: same place, on the main stage of the school.

Classes and the Thursday jam ended in mid-August but the Wednesday jam continued. Guests included both new Wednesday jammers (students from the School) and some outside visitors — Jonas Friddle’s dad from North Carolina, and Chris, a musician/writer from Tarrytown, New York. They were fun jams, including one in which we were joined by Executive Director, Bau Graves playing uke. Other Wednesday visitors during the year have included a father from Japan, a fellow headed from the West Coast to North Carolina (and from there to Asia), and another coming from Delaware on his way to Alaska.

But you can also create your own jam, and that’s during school terms too. If you’re a student at the School, chances are very good that other folks in your class will also want to play outside class. Why not suggest it and get together?

As for future periods between sessions, you can make a good guess that other class memberes will continue to be free at the time your class met! If others are interested, you can meet at your house or apartment OR…check to see if the school is open at that time during the break — if so, ask at the desk about using your old classroom! Then it’s just a matter of having songs ready: songs from the class, other songs you and your friends enjoy, or songs from the songbook.

Classes are where learning begins — jams are where what you learn is consolidated and developed. Come by on a Wednesday mid-day or Thursday evening and find out for yourself!

Filed under: Interesting at Old Town by Skip | August 30, 2009 | Comments (0)


Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Share your thoughts