Re: [Harp-L] Inappropriate harmonica [long]

[Michelle LeFree <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For my usually circumspect (on Harp-L at least) friend and teacher Grant 
Dermody to post here, this must be a sensitive subject. :-)

For a world-class musician like Grant it would be obvious effrontery to 
have someone interrupt his performance so rudely as to play a harmonica 
from the audience. That is certainly true of the many international and 
up-scale venues at which he performs. When people pay to see music 
performed, they clearly deserve to enjoy it unaccented by someone else's 
impromptu (and likely poor) interpretation. I know from my lifelong 
habit of whistling along with music I enjoy that even /fine /uninvited 
interpretations can be annoying. ;-)

Ordinarily it wouldn't cross my mind to pull out a harp at a "paying" 
venue. But, some years back I was given permission by my then teacher, 
Harry Harpoon, to play discretely from the back of the audience while he 
performed his one-man band act in small bars and restaurants. I 
described my positive experience back then in an Harp-L post titled, 
"Confessions of a Gusser," spawning a similar cascade of strong 
opinions, as this subject always does.

Here was my situation. Like many Harp-L players did as students of blues 
harmonica, I had been voraciously studying every source of material on 
learning to play the harmonica I could get my hands on (pre-Youtube, 
learning resources were vastly more limited even a decade or so ago than 
now). I approached Harry about lessons at one of his local gigs (at the 
time he was performing at nearly every honkytonk up and down the western 
slope of Colorado where I live). The opportunity to watch, listen to and 
study with a real live high-caliber harmonica player and expert blues 
musician was a rare (read, non-existent) one in my locale so I jumped on 
it. After studying with Harry for several months and tagging along to 
all his gigs, I was getting to where I was fairly comfortable playing 
along with my favorite tunes on the stereo (his and the usual classics) 
and was feeling severely hampered by my complete lack of playing in a 
live situation. The opportunities to learn comping to live chord 
changes, picking the right harps in a real-time setting, learning a 
variety of new songs, playing without stepping on other musician's toes 
and all the other benefits of playing "out" were elusive to me. I felt 
that, lacking this kind of real-world live experience I'd never fit into 
a band of reasonably competent musicians without embarrassing myself.

So, one day I gently asked Harpoon how he'd feel if I sat at the back of 
the room and played very softly along with him while he performed a song 
or two up front (I was at all his performances anyway, helping to carry, 
set up and take down his equipment, etc.). His immediate response was, 
"You wanna play harp? Come on down!" So, I did. Very self-conscious 
having never played in front of anyone but Harry, I made sure my playing 
was very soft and understated. At first I played along with only a 
couple of songs and put the harps away. As I gathered more confidence I 
added a few tunes. After a few nights of this an amazing thing happened. 
You need to understand that most of the bars Harpoon played at were 
filled with his admirers, friends and fans. He is very well-liked and 
has a significant following having played around here for years and 
years. It didn't take long for these folks to pick up on the fact that I 
was Harry's student and protege and that he was helping me to "learn the 
trade" by letting me tag along and softly toot a few tunes while he 
played. To my amazement, people were uniformly supportive and actually 
began to come sit down nearby so they could hear me play and follow 
along with my progress, which was significantly accelerated by this very 
process. (It's important to note that by this time I was a reasonably 
competent intermediate player, but very timid due to lack of experience 
playing in front of people.)

Long story short, this whole "Gussing" experience turned out to be a 
very generous gift to me on Harpoon's part. I learned so many things, 
met so many new folks (many still remain lasting friends), and learned 
to play in a live band. Point being, Grant, that Gussing may not /always 
/be a bad thing, even from a harmonica teacher's perspective. Harry is 
quite proud that I am his only student who actually followed through and 
stuck with the instrument.

And these days, when he comes through, I no longer play in the back of 
Harry's gigs. I sit beside him up front as a "special guest."

Michelle

PS: I do solemnly promise to never Gus at a Grant Dermody performance. 
In fact, my Gussing days are over, period.

PPS: I admit that I do still have a very hard time /not /whistling along 
to most any music anywhere and continue to have difficulty imagining why 
everyone within earshot wouldn't enjoy my virtuosic "performances." ;-)