Homegrown Music... and Musical Instruments

Image Gallery Marc Bristol and other Washington State grassroots musicians wail away on a gutbucket, washboard, and jug (the axe is a gag). For Marces original homegrown music column?which featured gutbucket, washboard, jug, kazoo, musical saw, and spoons ""makin' and playin' ''instructions?.see MOTHER NO. 50. Inset shows gut bucket ""notch and bevel""details

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Jam Sessions and Song Swaps

And that's what this column is all about. Down-home music that you can make . . . and the instruments (which, in some cases, you can also make!) to play that music on.

We may also publish some songs, discuss music as a potential home business, run discographies, bibliographies, and/or include whatever other do-it-yourself music topics you'd tike to see.

The important thing is that this is a new column. If you like it, write to me and let me know. If you have some ideas for this feature, let me know that. I'm open to any suggestions or information you care to contribute. I'll even try to answer your questions about downhome music . . . but—both for the benefit of all MOTHER'S readers and to ease my correspondence load—I'll deal with those questions, whenever possible, here in this column . . . rather than in personal letters.

Address your correspondence—for this column and this column only—to Marc Bristol, 3172 N.E. 180th, Place, Duvall, Wash. 98019.

Have you ever gone to a musical concert and noticed how much fun the performers seemed to be having? Well, you could be having that fun yourself . . . in your own living room . . . for free! Just start makin' your own music—preferably with friends—instead of shellin' out good money so that someone else (professional musicians) can have all the fun.

Do-it-yourself entertainment is much the same as do-it-yourself building a house, do-it-yourself growing a garden, do-it-yourself raising of livestock, or do-it-yourself anything else: It's simply more satisfying when you do it with your own two hands than when you pay someone else to do it for you.

There are other benefits to holding a down-home jam session in your front room or out on the porch too: [1] As I've already mentioned, you'll be saving money, [2] you'll be staying off the highway and the streets, [3] you'll be building up priceless relationships with interesting folks right there in your own neighborhood, and [4] you'll never need to hire a babysitter or otherwise worry about what to do with the children ( sing the youngsters to sleep and then knock yourself out with a few of your favorite tunes).

HOOTS CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE, ANY TIME, WITH ANYBODY

Of course, there's no law which specifically states that you have to wait for your regular evening social get-togethers if you want to have a session of music-makin'. Not if you have a family. Remember: A jam is nothin' but two people (any two people) or more gettin' together for the purpose of committin' music. Any kind of music.

My son and I started singing together when he was only 1-1/2 years old. (He was riding on the back of my bicycle as I pedaled up the mountain road we lived on and he joined in on A Bicycle Built for Two that I was singing as I watched the daisies and other wildflowers we passed wave musically in the breeze.)

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