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Well, I've been away on my hols, this year the favoured location being Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Really? Yes, well no travelling to speak of and every time I go over there to teach (for the other life) I think 'Wow, this place is so beautiful' so I decided to check it out. Had the most fantastic time and am now officially in mourning about having to leave the island so fair. Enough about my woes. whilst there I caught up with an old friend who is a keyboard player and met some new friends who were getting ready for Bestival next weekend. There was much blues making in the room that evening, funky and unusual at times, a really great sound they are called Laurie McVey and the High Rollers currently made up of very extraordinary musicians, no website or anything to point you toward if you want to see them you'll have to go to Bestival on Friday!

The next evening found me in a pub in Newport whence is held a monthly jam, this month orchestrated by the very marvelous Damien Paul https://soundcloud.com/damienpaul he kicked off proceedings with his own brilliant blend of Country Folk Blues, as can be heard on aforementioned link. His finger picking style is really impressive, I'm constantly amazed how guitarists fingers don't bleed continuously when they play. He cleverly herded the musical cats to make sure everyone got their fair share of time. There appeared to be rather a lot of drummers, most unusual state of affairs!

Anyway, I thought I may try my hand at a couple of straight blues songs seeing as they are usually quite straightforward to jam. I had not met the guys I was to croon with before except Dave (keyboard player already mentioned). I attempted to explain what was required for the Joan Armatrading song 'Can't push me down', clearly failed dismally and the resulting noise was quite traumatising. It was incredibly fast and i really could have done with a lie down after it! So try again, this time with Bessie Smiths 'Empty Bed Blues', this one is more simple than the last one even because it can be pretty much played any way and a good singer should be able to pick it up I think. So this one was about half the speed I asked for but apart from that was reasonably good, the solos all happened as allocated and although the song took about half and hour to sing it wasn't to shameful. It really made me think about jamming as a pastime, I know several singers who won't jam and I think I understand why now. It is one occasion where if the people playing together don't click, even if individually very competent, they can sound like complete beginners. It was still a good experience because, despite the resultant cacophony everyone was very friendly and appeared to understand that that is the nature of jamming, sometimes it works, sometimes it would have been better if everyone had stayed in bed