This week on Alley Chats we’re changing things up a little bit. Sam Bruce wrote about a show at One World Cafe instead of a show at John’s Alley Tavern.
Community members around the Palouse brought their banjos, guitars, mandolins and fiddles to One World Café Tuesday night to jam together bluegrass style.
The event is called “Bluegrass Sessions – Moscow’s Community Jam”, and it happens the first Tuesday of every month. Over 15 people came to play on Tuesday and even more came to watch and enjoy the wholesome bump of the string instruments playing smoothly together.
A
few of the musicians who played were KRFP radio chair Al Chidester (Fiddlin’
Big Al) on the fiddle, University of Idaho alumnus Austin Sass on mandolin, UI
student Tyler Sass on guitar, Lawrence Huntley on the hammer dulcimer and Pick
Axe Bluegrass’ Sam Schumacher on banjo.
Sam Bruce | Argonaut
Schumacher has held the event at One World for seven months. The event used to be hosted twice a month, but bluegrass players from around the Palouse had a hard time making it to both.
Sometimes 20 people would come out, and sometimes no one would. So, Schumacher decided to host it once a month to get a more consistent turnout.
Schumacher likes bluegrass as a genre because acoustic instruments are more portable than their electric counterparts, it provides a warm sound and feeling to the audience and players and it lacks a stringent production quality.
There is no limit to how many people can jump in and play a song. Bluegrass is also about going out, playing with other people and sharing songs with one another, wherever that may be.
“Why I specifically like bluegrass, is because you can sit around in a living room, you can sit around in the woods – all that stuff – and have a live music dynamic,” Schumacher said. “People know production music a mile away and they know like – you know – ripping, good, aggressive, fun timey music.”
Schumacher said bluegrass is inherently live music and is more forgiven in a studio production sense. It’s meant to be played live, from people’s hearts and hits audiences more sincerely. Also sincere are the people who play it.
“There is a definitive quality of people. The people who do it are seemingly, in my 30 almost 40 years on this planet, they’re more sincere, they’re kind, they’re also good timey,” Schumacher said. “They’re the people who will drink a beer and stomp and pick music shamelessly, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
Sam Bruce can be reached at [email protected].