Well, these things come in threes, right?

A few days ago I responded to a musicians wanted ad.

Accordion, Banjo, Mandolin, fiddle for punk rock sea shanties & Appalachian death polka. Pogues, Tom Waits, Hank Sr., Bad Livers, Clash, (123) 555-1212 or thewages@placeholder.com

Well, that more or less describes my musical amibtions and tastes, so, I kinda had to. That Bad Livers is key, too, and anyone who understands why the Clash and Hank Sr. need to be mentioned in the same paragraph has my vote.

As it happens, Jesse and Austin and I have plenty of shared acquaintances, and I think, closer musical tastes than we can really finger in detail yet. They have played the punk circuit for years, most recently as Thee Spectres.

Anyway, it went promisingly Friday night. They were sweethearts, Austin is into oddball instruments, there was no smoking in sight (!) and they have pro gear and tons of experience. So we’ll see where we go with it.

The material they were bringing was very rocky, and my mando lead style is pretty well suited to rock structure songs. But I’m painfully undedeveloed as a lead player still. Additionally, there’s a strong use of cartoon, high-color imagery – genre tropes, if you will – in the material that seems odd to me after years of straight trad material.

It’s funny, innit? I want to write about genre stuff – SF, comics, noir, what-all – but I’ve grown stick-in-the mud folkie boundaries. Gotta think a bit about this. Some of the stuff was pretty promising, though.

At any rate it was great fun, they have another mando guy on the line, which I encouraged them to check out, and I feel like I at the least have the chance to make new friends.