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

[Grant Dermody <gdermody@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again all,

Yes, perhaps a nerve was hit for me to post. 

Many years ago in Seattle, there was a band with which I used to sit in regularly. They were fronted by one of the best singers I've ever heard. Nobody can lean into a ballad like this woman. The guitarist in the band was equally stunning.

The gig on this night was at a small club in the University district. The place was jammed and the band was smoking. They called me up and we played a couple of up-tempo tunes and then leaned into a gorgeous, yet nasty, slow blues. 

It built up to a fever and then, right before the end, the singer brought it way down, singing soft and strong, the audience in the palm of her hand. We finished with a stop and then a slow, beautiful outro retard, and then an equally gorgeous arpeggiated final chord.

 Deciding to add to this gorgeous chord was a harmonica player, hanging in the back, but still very audible in this small club. In the middle of this perfect ending and culminating one of the best vocal performances I have heard before or since, this gusser adds his 2 cents, loud,clear, and in the wrong key. He had played along with the whole tune and hadn't figured out the key. Either that or he couldn't hear that he was using the wrong harp.

It was so wrong and so messed up in so many ways. I went and had a word with him, telling him, as kindly as I could, that he had messed up a beautiful performance and that this is part of what gives harp players a bad name.

He was outraged. He felt he had a constitutional right to blow his out of key harp whenever he liked and if we didn't like it it was our problem.
I disagreed, and we went our separate ways. 

So yes, I think gussing is incredibly bad form.

all the best

Grant





________________________________
 From: "mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Michelle LeFree <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Cc: "harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent: Sunday, November 4, 2012 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Inappropriate harmonica [long]
 
That was good Michelle but ,a very unique opportunity for you to sit  " out back " and very generous of Harry to let you do that.
As you said I believe a nerve was hit for Grant to pop in.....

PS Grant ...hope to see you at Elkins-Davis next summer...M


Mike Wilbur


On Nov 4, 2012, at 6:23 PM, Michelle LeFree <mlefree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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 "le!
arn 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." ;-)
> 
>