Stage Dives

The local blues magazines really need to get their shit together. I spend a great deal of time, it seems, going to jam sessions that no longer exist. Like tonight, for instance. It wouldn't be that hard for someone at the WBS and/or Blues To Do's to take an hour and just phone up every listed jam session and find out if it's still going on. I've shown up to jam sessions in Tacoma to find the club boarded up and the parking lot overgrown with weeds. Twice.

"No, no jam here," I was told tonight, at the North Point, which was at least still open. "Not for three months. We have karaoke, though. Do you sing?"

I ended up rolling past Dawson's. Stuck my head in the door. Different doorman. So far, so good.

Ah. Different jam host. Even better. Tim Hall, who lives in my neighborhood.

I played a set, and at the end I got to sing one tune. I kept it more or less clean; figuring it was a blues jam, I called the saddest blues song I've ever heard: Bo Carter's "My Pencil Won't Write No More." The crowd response was terrific. I'm still not going to push my luck at Dawson's, though.

The trick, at this point, will be finding venues where the material not only works, but where the owners have the requisite sense of humor.