Re: [Harp-L] RE: How do you break through a wall?

["steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <swebb@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

While I admire anyone who sets such lofty goals, I have more modest intentions. I'm blatantly happy to just be playing regularly in a band. That said, realize that I'm not a great player. I'm just good enough to remain hired. The trio I'm in is a husband-wife and me. The husband plays guitar and sings and was a road musician in his younger days. His wife had never played an instrument until last spring, when he began teaching her bass. She can sing pretty well, too. I hooked up with them sort of gradually, sitting in for a set here and there and discovering that we had similar ideas about how much we wanted to play.
We rehearse at least once a week and are playing out about 4 nights a month. 
I have a modest amount of musical talent and I'm too old to get too excited about getting too technical about it all. We figure out things as we go and I keep it pretty simple.
New Year's Eve, we played a garage party for some friends. A 1500-square-foot building with terrible acoustics, but it was fun. Just to be different, I hooked up my harp commander thru the PA and played some songs that way. What a difference.  
Travis Tritt's "Trouble." and Hank Jr.'s "Rowdy Friends" are much better served that way than thru the vocal mic. These are all baby steps for me, and a lot of fun.
Also, for the first night, I made it all the way through my lead without major problems, on Folsom Prisom, where I worked out a harp part to approximate the guitar parts on the original. And we kicked butt on James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend."
So, to sum up this long post, we all have our goals and walls to break through. Just playing in front of people knocks down a big wall for me.
Steve Webb in Minnesota, where the temp right now is minus-5 and falling.