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Jul. 14th, 2008 11:28 pmThe concert was good. Nobody took me up on my extra ticket, so I had a spare seat next to me. I was surprised to find that my "cheap" seats were 4 rows from the stage. They were all the way over on the right side though, which doesn't get the best acoustics... but still, not bad at all.
I was at a point earlier in the day where it seemed like so much trouble to drive up to Seattle, brave traffic, and find a place to park somewhere downtown (and then be up so late) that I was wishing I could just blow the whole thing off and not go. I'm glad I didn't do that. I so rarely go to concerts, but this one in particular was fantastic. Abigail and her three cohorts were all outstanding. Bela... well, he is the greatest banjo player in the world, for all that he would tell you that honor belongs to Earl Scruggs. Abigail is just fantastic, and the other two members are phenomenally talented as well.
Earl Scruggs had a large band (eight people) that included two of his sons. Let's just say that his son looks old... Earl is 84 and he looked it, but his fingers are still quite fast. All of the members of his band were talented too, but frankly, although I like bluegrass music, completely traditional bluegrass music is something I can't take in large doses. There were points in the concert where they seriously could have said, "Our next song is exactly like the last song, only with different words and a slightly different chorus!" Every song you got the banjo solo, the fiddle solo, the mandolin solo, the steel guitar solo, the acoustic guitar solo, the other acoustic guitar solo, and sometimes instead of mandolin you had the electric guitar solo... and once it was... a flute? Piccollo? Eh, I can't think of the name. Oh wait, a clarinet! That's what it was I think. But that was different, at least.
At one point when his son was introducing a song by saying, "I think this goes back to the mid 1800's" Earl quipped, "I wrote it!" They mentioned that Doc Watson is now 85 (they played at least two Doc Watson tunes), and even their fiddle player last night was 75. I got the impression that this could be one of the last times they play on stage -- but of course, you don't know that, as frail as Earl Scruggs seemed, there's nothing to say he won't be doing the same thing until he's 104.
I ran into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kehf before the concert. At the break I met up with her again and julesong too. Julie suggested we go somewhere after the concert, and that sounded like a good idea to me. We convinced Kristin that one of us could give her a ride home (she'd taken the bus). But the problem was, the parking garage where I'd left my car closed at 10:30 PM. I'd warned Kristin earlier that I might have to leave early because of that, but she didn't think the concert would go that late. But the band kept playing and playing and playing... I checked my watch (well, my iPod anyway) and it was 10:00 PM. They played another song. Then another. By then it was 10:10 PM, and while they were leaving the stage to a standing ovation, I knew they were going to come back for an encore. If I'd stayed I would have had to fight my way through the crowd of people leaving, meet up with Kristin and Julie, and then walk a block North to get my car out of the garage -- all in about 15 minutes or less. It just didn't seem feasible, so I left before the encore.
That meant I had no way to meet up with Julie and Kristin, and it was pretty late already so I just headed home. I hope they didn't wait around too long for me.
On the plus side, I got home by 11:00 PM, which is late for me to get to bed but not too late. I probably stay up this late at least one night during the work week anyway!
One thing I paid attention to during the concert was how Bela and Abigail played banjo. Bela plays in a bluegrass style, and Abigail plays a more folky or old-timey "clawhammer" style. I did some internet research a year or two ago to find out what the difference was, and then got into a pointless semi-argument withbluesmancd about it -- which was dumb because I only know what I've read and, while CD is a musician, he's not necessarily a banjo expert.. so you know, two people semi-arguing about something that neither of them know a great deal about. But the main thing is that a bluegrass player picks the banjo strings in an upwards motion with his fingers, while a clawhammer player kind of holds their hand like a claw and hits or "hammers" the strings with their nails. They both pick with their thumbs, but the clawhammer player doesn't pick with the fingers. That's what I read, and that's what I saw Abigail doing. Except that she also would play the other way, but she would first swap out her banjo for a different model -- so I guess what kind of banjo you have is a part of the difference too.
Anyway, it was fun. ^_^ But I bailed on my friends, boo!
I was at a point earlier in the day where it seemed like so much trouble to drive up to Seattle, brave traffic, and find a place to park somewhere downtown (and then be up so late) that I was wishing I could just blow the whole thing off and not go. I'm glad I didn't do that. I so rarely go to concerts, but this one in particular was fantastic. Abigail and her three cohorts were all outstanding. Bela... well, he is the greatest banjo player in the world, for all that he would tell you that honor belongs to Earl Scruggs. Abigail is just fantastic, and the other two members are phenomenally talented as well.
Earl Scruggs had a large band (eight people) that included two of his sons. Let's just say that his son looks old... Earl is 84 and he looked it, but his fingers are still quite fast. All of the members of his band were talented too, but frankly, although I like bluegrass music, completely traditional bluegrass music is something I can't take in large doses. There were points in the concert where they seriously could have said, "Our next song is exactly like the last song, only with different words and a slightly different chorus!" Every song you got the banjo solo, the fiddle solo, the mandolin solo, the steel guitar solo, the acoustic guitar solo, the other acoustic guitar solo, and sometimes instead of mandolin you had the electric guitar solo... and once it was... a flute? Piccollo? Eh, I can't think of the name. Oh wait, a clarinet! That's what it was I think. But that was different, at least.
At one point when his son was introducing a song by saying, "I think this goes back to the mid 1800's" Earl quipped, "I wrote it!" They mentioned that Doc Watson is now 85 (they played at least two Doc Watson tunes), and even their fiddle player last night was 75. I got the impression that this could be one of the last times they play on stage -- but of course, you don't know that, as frail as Earl Scruggs seemed, there's nothing to say he won't be doing the same thing until he's 104.
I ran into
kehf before the concert. At the break I met up with her again and julesong too. Julie suggested we go somewhere after the concert, and that sounded like a good idea to me. We convinced Kristin that one of us could give her a ride home (she'd taken the bus). But the problem was, the parking garage where I'd left my car closed at 10:30 PM. I'd warned Kristin earlier that I might have to leave early because of that, but she didn't think the concert would go that late. But the band kept playing and playing and playing... I checked my watch (well, my iPod anyway) and it was 10:00 PM. They played another song. Then another. By then it was 10:10 PM, and while they were leaving the stage to a standing ovation, I knew they were going to come back for an encore. If I'd stayed I would have had to fight my way through the crowd of people leaving, meet up with Kristin and Julie, and then walk a block North to get my car out of the garage -- all in about 15 minutes or less. It just didn't seem feasible, so I left before the encore.That meant I had no way to meet up with Julie and Kristin, and it was pretty late already so I just headed home. I hope they didn't wait around too long for me.
On the plus side, I got home by 11:00 PM, which is late for me to get to bed but not too late. I probably stay up this late at least one night during the work week anyway!
One thing I paid attention to during the concert was how Bela and Abigail played banjo. Bela plays in a bluegrass style, and Abigail plays a more folky or old-timey "clawhammer" style. I did some internet research a year or two ago to find out what the difference was, and then got into a pointless semi-argument with
bluesmancd about it -- which was dumb because I only know what I've read and, while CD is a musician, he's not necessarily a banjo expert.. so you know, two people semi-arguing about something that neither of them know a great deal about. But the main thing is that a bluegrass player picks the banjo strings in an upwards motion with his fingers, while a clawhammer player kind of holds their hand like a claw and hits or "hammers" the strings with their nails. They both pick with their thumbs, but the clawhammer player doesn't pick with the fingers. That's what I read, and that's what I saw Abigail doing. Except that she also would play the other way, but she would first swap out her banjo for a different model -- so I guess what kind of banjo you have is a part of the difference too.Anyway, it was fun. ^_^ But I bailed on my friends, boo!
