In which Kelsey gets to join us since she’s on Christmas break from school; in which we have a special evening Jam just because it’s Longest Night; and in which we finish up with tasty homemade pita bread pizzas! Songs: “The Only Son”, “Goin’ Up”, “Old Black Rum”, “Pirate Bill and Squidly”, “Ferryland Sealer”, “Shout at the Desert”, “Elf Glade”, “Lukey”, “The Night Pat Murphy Died”.

Since and I were going to stay up all night for Longest Night on Sunday the 20th, we decided we wanted to have an evening Jam to help encourage us to stay awake. So we called Jam and had folks over for however long they felt like hanging out. That got us and Trey and and most notably Kelsey, who’s not able to join us much due to having started college this past fall.

Molly introduced us to a musical adaptation of “The Only Son”, a Kipling poem I hadn’t been familiar with. She’s good at finding really unusual things for us to try to play!

Because of Kelsey’s presence (and hell, just because of my own) it’s no surprise that the GBS quotient in this jam was very, very high. We did “Goin’ Up” mostly because it was easy, but we also did “Old Black Rum” and “Ferryland Sealer” by Kelsey’s request, which for me meant “dead easy just twist my arm” for the former and “I still can’t quite properly perform the bridge” for the latter. It was easier trying to do it with a group, though! And I think partway through that bridge I started getting an idea about how to hit cursory guitar strums while I was focusing on the lyrics. That might work well later. Practice will be required.

We also touched on “Pirate Bill and Squidly” since it’s one we have music for and it engages for singing, which is fun. Likewise, tackling “Shout at the Desert”, one of her newest works, although her ditties are still rather challenging for our group at large.

Kelsey hadn’t ever tried “Elf Glade”, so we had to take a bit of time to walk her through that, and as I recall she mostly sat it out once she saw what I was trying to play. Props must go to for taking on singing the callback lines, though!

It was back to GBS for the last couple things we did–“Lukey” because it was easy and a specific contrast to “Elf Glade”, and I walked Kelsey through the chords before we took it on. From there it was extremely easy to segue into “Paddy Murphy”, since the chords are dead similar. It was a total mess as we did it, in no small part because I really can’t sing it properly in A, but we at least took it out with suitable vigor as we bellowed “And every drink in the place was full the night Pat Murphy DIED! DIED! DIED!” at the end.

Because this was an evening Jam we didn’t actually have true pie–but we stayed in the area of round things to consume post-Jam, for we made pita bread pizza on our pizza stones in the oven, and it was all very tasty indeed. Evening Jams are definitely a win, especially when pizza is involved.

More jams to come in 2010!