The Mile High Blues Society Jam at Ziggies last night was excellent: the joint was packed and the jammers were very good.
Well, most of them were very good. There was this one harp player who had a tough set. He had not played out in a long time and things did not go well.
First, he wrote on the sign-up list that he played "Jews Harp." So I asked him, "You play Jews harp, eh?"
"Yep."
I wanted to make sure, so I mimicked a Jews harp and said, "The thing that makes the boing-boing sound, right?"
He said, "No, I play Jews Harp."
I said, "Show me." He brought over a Lee Oskar harmonica. Maybe he was goofing with me... Maybe he is a Jewish guy who plays harp, I don't know, but it was the beginning of a lot of weirdness.
He tells me right away that he wants to play on stage with me. Not gonna happen.
So, my band plays the opening set and this guy starts Gussing -- playing along from his seat in the audience, right in front. I stop the band and immediately ask him to knock it off. I gently explain that it is a big no-no to do that. He doesn't get it. (He is the first Gusser I have had in a LONG time.)
So, I get him up with the first set of jammers. He has this music stand he uses for a place to put his harps. He has about 40 Lee Oscar harps piled up on this music stand, the kind you used in Jr High School band class. He has it on the floor right in front of the stage and raised way up high. The stage at Ziggies is a good three feet off the floor, so this music stand is really extended. I knew what would happen next: Somebody bumped into it and his harps scattered all across the dance floor. He gets pissed.
His amp is a stock Fender Vibrolux reissue, and he had a 520DX green bullet mic. As he is wrestling with his amp I suggest that he might want to try the Mission amp, since it a custom harp amp with nice tone, and already set up. He says no, he likes his Vibrolux.
While the other players are getting ready for the set he starts WAILING on his harp -- long bends on 4 draw through his shrill Vibrolux cranked up, complete with screaming feedback. I tell him to knock it off.
So, he plays like the guy who gives harp players a bad name. He plays too loud and too much with thin tone and no idea where he is going, stepping all over the vocals. But Fate miraculously came to the rescue of everybody in the crowded club and his amp stopped working. Except he didn't know it. He kept playing the next two songs with nothing coming out of his amp. After the set I said, "Hey, I couldn't hear you on the last two songs" and he said "Really?"
He said he'd be back next week. I'll have a chat with him when he comes in. This guy might be a good candidate for the Blues Jam 101 program the blues society is planning.
You have more patience than me. After the ignoring the first polite request to stop gussing, he would NOT be given a chance to play. Bad manners really turns me off.
At our jam - as long as the "house" already has an amp set up for harp (or guitar for that matter) - people don't get to set their own amps up. Takes too much time and leads to loss of control. We have great gear so nobody complains. (If a guy wants to use his own mic instead of mine I let him. His loss.......) ---------- /Greg
Just one thing please for the sake of us Brits. What is "Gussing"? I've read that a couple of times on here and couldn't understand what it meant. I did google it but, nada. Is it showing off, showboating or grandstanding? Anyone please?
@tookatooka: "Gussing" means playing harmonica in the audience during a performance. It (the term) came from a discussion on Harp-L about the practice. "Gus" was kind of a generic name for people who play along in the audience.
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They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. Charlie Parker
From: "Barry B. Bean" Date: Mon, 18 Mar 96 09:16:19 EST Subject: Gig notes
I broke a cardinal rule this weekend. I let a harp player I'd never heard walk up in mid-set and gave him a mic.
Now you'd assume that someone walking up and asking to sit in wants to play the same sort of music the band is already playing, right? You'd assume that you could just launch into the next song on the set list and simply hand the solos over to the guy sitting in, right?
Whoah, nellie!
My man Gus (a mountain of a man, complete with with crewcut and gravelly voice) walks onto the stage, whips out some sort of a chord harp and says "Oh Suzanna, boys!" After 3 or 4 verses of oh Suzanna, we thank him profusely and start to vamp on the next song (Further on up the road). Before we can get into it, Gus announces that his next number will be You are My Sunshine. Again, we thank him and try to start our next song, but Gus isn't leaving. He says "one more boys!" and launches into Blue Eyes Cryin' In the Rain. Finally he leaves the stage and we gat back on with the show.
So its back to the old "audition during break" rule for us. Sheesh.
BBB - B.B. Bean - Have horn. Will travel.
Here's the actual coinage form May of 1996
From: "Barry B. Bean" Date: Thu, 16 May 96 18:29:32 -0500
I think maybe we should coin an expression here. Gus, like Bogart could serve as both a noun and a verb:
Gus: (gus) N. 1) An amateur harmonica player who forces professional musicians to accompany him in inappropriate situations. 2) A visiting musician (see: sit-in) who does not leave the bandstand at the appropriate time. 3) A musician whose skills are substantially below those of the other musicians onstage with him. Ex.: Don't look now, but there's a Gus at 3 o'clock. V. 1) To force one's way into a musical performance against the wishes of the scehduled performers. 2) To remain onstage for longer than appropriate when asked to accompany previously scheduled musicians. Ex.: Primich was great last night but some old codger Gussed his way onstage and played Oh Suzannah. - B.B. Bean - Have horn. Will travel.
Well, it is a jam. Strange stuff is to be expected.
Personally, I kind of dig it when the host band supplies the gear and doesn't allow others to bring their amps in. I don't care if it is good or crappy gear.
1. It keeps the sound level very manageable and constant.
2. It minimizes the downtime between the music.
If a person needs specific equipment to get "their tone", they typically have no tone to speak about. I don't care what their instrument is.
A modern day custom Vibrolux or a '63 Vibroverb reissue amp is actually not a bad harp amp.
My guess - he was suffering from at least one of the BIG D's (Drugs, Drunk or Delusional) - Was he a nice gus, I mean guy other then his etiquette? The big D's rearing their ugly face are usually the culprit when a jam session goes south...There are a few more D's you can add to list if you care to? lemme start, Desperate, Do Do bird...
Rick, this guy may have been helpful...
Last Edited by on Dec 31, 2012 2:42 PM
Part of the charm of blues jams is the unpredictability and the occasional odd characters. I don't mind dealing with them.
When I say he didn't get it when I asked him to stop Gussing I don't mean he kept playing. He stopped immediately but grumbled about it. He didn't seem to understand that it was just rude. Maybe he goes to one of those free-form jams where everybody joins in whenever they like.
But overall the guy was freaking hilarious. When I told him I couldn't hear his amp and he said "Really?" I 'bout herniated myself to keep from laughing.
My concern is putting on a good show and making money for the venue. If a jammer starts doing things that annoy the patrons or other jammers I'll step in. It's part of the job. People usually see my point of view pretty quickly. I'm not sure this guy did, but he was manageable.
Even a Fender Frontman 15 can be "not a bad harp amp" in the right hands. That is what one good jammer brings in. It sounds surprisingly good. But this guy with the Vibrolux was just loud and trebly. That is, until the amp blew up.
There was a guy who used to attend the same open mic my friends and I did. He sang corny love songs slightly out of key, but he was just starting out, so when he started asking musical questions we answered politely. He was kind of odd, but most of my friends are odd. It caused me a lot of stress. It turns out he had pretty severe Asperger's and he had a problem with physical and social boundaries. I've got pretty bad OCD myself, and the constant standing 6 inches away from me and patting me on the back was stressing me out. I'm pretty open about my OCD, so I explained the situation. I've had that problem before, and everyone else gave me a little space. He didn't. What's worse, he had the same issues with the female in our group. We tried to explain that not respecting people's personal space was problematic enough to start off with, but that he was going to get in real trouble if he didn't respect women's boundaries. He'd catcall women late at night when they were walking alone. He wouldn't let arguments drop, and he did things like kicking footstools out from under people's feet. We tried to help him socially adjust for several months, but finally we'd had enough and we told him to get lost. Unfortunately, he didn't take the hint and insisted on still trying to push his way into our group. It finally ended up with me calling the police because he was harassing us so badly. It wasn't that I wanted them to arrest him or anything, but his social cues were so badly miscalibrated that only when the police officer explained the situation to him did it sink in that 'you need to stop bothering us' wasn't just us trying to be funny.
It can happen at campfire jams too. I remember some years back, I was at an annual pig roast a farmer friend puts on. The whole county shows up, along with a good number of musicians, mostly experienced bluegrassers. Things were going well, we'd been playing for about 3 hours when some unknown dude with a guitar starts playing and singing his own tunes. DEPRESSING stuff, and really slow and long. Finally one of the fiddlers went over to the host and begged him to make the guy stop! The crowd had wandered off in a bad mood! Fortunately we had a good banjo player who knew how to play really loudly. The bluegrass boys saved the jam.
One of the things that i like about Greg's jam and a couple of others i visit is that i don't have to bring an amp, which lets me slide in and slide out. Carrying equipment is unnecessary and frowned on. Storage in some places can be rather limited.
You don't have to bring an amp to my jam, most players don't. But some players want to so they can try out new gear or pedals, or they just like their rigs. We provide a backline with a nice SWR 410 bass rig, good drum kit, at least one good harp amp, and a couple of good guitar amps. Last night the backline guitar amps were Cat 5 and Richter. Nobody complained about the amps.
You guys who understand, play, and support harp players are Godsends and saints.
Generally when I do go to a jam I'd rather leave my stuff home, maybe bring a mic just in case. I like a jam with a harp player in the house band so I know there's a rig there.
I will tell a cool jam story instead of a weird situation:
For several years I went to the same jam at the same restaurant in Texas. I was very green starting out and learned a lot with those cats. They were firm sometimes but I knew I needed their guidance. After a couple of years I was halfway decent at playing harp. The kitchen guy would step out the back door of the kitchen for a smoke when he got all the night's meals out. The door opened at the edge of the outdoor stage. If I was not on stage I'd go yack woth him for a few minutes, he was quite complimentary about getting to hear some good music at least once a week at the jam. a couple years after that I was fronting my own band and he moved up to manager for the place and nearly demanded that I bring the band out to a jam. So I did and we got several gigs there. Even after that band went away, I landed a jam night after the restaurant moved up the road. This guy paid decent, talked up the music, both jam and band dates there, and fed us musicians very well. Ok, a little weird: the actual owner of that place was a pretty crazy rich guy who would come out late sometimes and get the band doing some funky groove thing and he'd spout the absolute nastiest crap from the mic. And how do you say no to the owner? I mean this was like audio xxx porn. Like filthy white guy rap. Usually most of the crowd was gone home at least.
I did used to see a guy come to a jam here around Little Rock who appeared to be either homeless or a hillbilly sort. Good harp player, better than me in some ways, but antisocial. As in did not bathe and never had anything halfway civil to say to about anyone except the host of the jam. He got mad one night and slammed a house mic on the floor in the middle of a song and that was all for him. Barred for good. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
I can't really think of any other weird harp jammer stories at Ziggies jam. Over the years there have been some harp jammers who where woefully unprepared, but I admire their courage in getting up there. A few harp players are all attitude like it is some kind of contest, and they can be annoying. They always leave a lot more humble than they came in.
Oh, I just thought of one bit of mild weirdness: A harp player came in I did not know who was really good, with a fat, fat blues tone and Big Walterish tongue slaps. Dude was majorly good. He gave me some generic name like John Smith and turned away every time I tried to take his photo. (I always take pix at the jams.) It turned out he was a pretty well known harp player with a record contract who was sensitive about all this and made me swear I wouldn't ID him. Dude could play, but he was extremely publicity shy.
I won't name the worst harp players ever at the jam, but I'll list some of the best:
-Ronnie Shellist -Steve Marriner -Nic Clark -Al Chesis -Dan Treanor -The anonymous guy in the post above this one. -Dan Solem -Mojo Red -Teresa Lynn -AC Blue
