Allison Hadley Photo
Chris Wuerth — bluegrass musician and purveyor of fine acoustic music at Best Video Film & Cultural Center in the Before Times under the guise of GuitarTown productions — strummed his guitar as a half-dozen or so musicians assembled around him. Plucking chords that felt as golden as the setting sun’s light on Monday, he grinned lightly as each musician showed up, also smiling. Though this particular session was the seventh time a select few musicians had gotten together to play as safely as they could, the first word to describe the atmosphere was ‘“reunion.”
The gathering, which ended up being six strong — James Kerr on dobro, Ron Guerrette on guitar, Larry Bartlett on guitar, Ian MacMillen on bass, and Peter Menta on harmonica, in addition to Wuerth, also on guitar — assembled slowly but gleefully. Each cracked jokes about how far apart to station themselves, from the standard 6 feet to a rueful 12 for others, citing concern over increased germ spread from singing (for further safety, Wuerth suggested BYO chair, mask, and instrument). Any distance above a few feet felt strange, though, to the bluegrass musicians, who were more accustomed to the traditionally close harmonies and intervals — spatial or otherwise — of bluegrass jamming. Hearing the instrumental dialogue proves more difficult with distance. Guerrette joked as the breeze picked up that “breeze is great. All the notes are just going to fly away!”
Despite the difficult logistics of playing acoustic instruments outside and far away, Wuerth was happy to resume playing with people.
“It’s not always about great music — it’s also about great fun,” he said. The isolation and loneliness of March and April extended to his musical life. There will be no 2020 GuitarTown shows, and for Wuerth, “music doesn’t really work remotely. I don’t enjoy Zoom concerts. At least I can do jams like this.”
While many of the musicians were cautious and very attentive to good social distancing, it was clear they all wanted to be closer and feel the music again. After trying to find an inside venue that worked both acoustically and epidemiologically, Wuerth decided the safest bet was still Best Video’s parking lot, so there he sat.
This jam was the first live music — intended performance, jam, or otherwise — I had seen since everything shut down. Four and a half months of, at most, jamming solo or with one other friend at 6 – 12 feet, but never being solely a spectator. Hearing the chords and impromptu harmonies rise into the breezy parking lot of Best Video, it hit hard what had been missing. Being an arts reporter used to mean concerts at least every week, across town, being part of the music community. Now it means Facebook Live and Zoom. Hearing instruments playing together, however informally, was a breath of fresh air after months of recordings and the missing electricity of live music. The guitar notes seemed to sparkle extra, and the harmonies resonated all the better, breeze or not. When Wuerth led “Tell Me Baby, Why You Been Gone So Long,” I couldn’t help but think about the powerful feelings of return I was experiencing watching live music. It had been gone so long, but it was finding a way to come back, like a determined dandelion in the cracks of a sidewalk, pushing through to still bloom.
Where and how do we go from here? How do acoustic music genres, those accustomed to a communal jam culture, like Appalachian or Irish, survive in a pandemic? How do delightful small venues, hailed for their intimacy, find a way to stay afloat in a world where everyone must be six feet apart? This jam was the first step in the right direction: small, intimate, and friendly at six feet. There was no stage, just the periodic passerby smiling, or a few spectators perched at the cafe tables back slightly from the musicians, swirling home-brought glasses and squinting through the late afternoon sun.
As the group played more songs together, they grew tighter musically, but one could sense that even if all were six feet apart, in everyone’s mind it was the close spacing of the jam, and the spectators were carried back to that time with them. Why you been gone, so long, indeed.