The Slow Jam
The Slow Jam starts at 1:00 PM and provides an opportunity to play your instrument at a slower-than-usual pace, under the guidance of experienced pickers. It is designed for beginning to low-intermediate players who do not yet feel ready to participate in our open jam sessions, as well as for experienced pickers who may be taking up a new instrument. At each meeting of the Slow Jam, we work on specific pieces of bluegrass music that have been selected in advance, so that each participant has an opportunity to practice the piece ahead of time.
Each piece is played just as in an open jam, with breaks passing from picker to picker, but at a much slower tempo. Those who wish only to play back-up are also welcome. Guidance on jam procedures and etiquette will be provided as necessary. After an hour of slow jamming, we suggest that participants disperse to observe the open jams (and participate in them to the extent they feel ready to do so).
From 2:00 PM until 2:30 PM we work on songs that people are working on at home and want to try out in a group setting. At 3:00 PM we are working on Blackberry Blossom for those that are interested. After you leave the Slow Jam feel free to go downstairs and join the music making until 5:00 PM.
Slow Jammer Helpful Hints
Getting There. Make a commitment to come to each monthly jam session. Put the dates on your calendar. Come to the jam session, even if you haven’t been practicing as much as you think you should have. You’ll have fun. Really! Bring your instrument INSIDE THE BUILDING when you come to the BOTMA jam. You can’t play your instrument if you have left it in the car, telling yourself that you will go inside for just a minute to “check things out.” Pull your instrument out of the case, and tune up. Use an electronic tuner, it takes the guesswork out. Listen to your instrument during the jam. Check your tuning once it has come to room temperature. It is probably a little out of tune again. Now you’re jamming! Know the chord progression. Ask your neighbor if you are unsure. If you don’t know the chord progression, watch the left hand of somebody else who knows the chord progression. Remember the chord progression. Help your neighbor who doesn't know the chord progression. If you are stumped, just sit this one out. Another song will start, and you’ll probably be able to join in. Playing “just” the chords is really playing music! You’re still jamming! Listen to what you are playing and how it fits in with the rest of the group. Don’t be too loud or too quiet. Listen. You have to be able to hear the singer singing. If you can’t hear him, play more softly until you can.
Listen. Lay back when someone takes a break. They are the focus. Pay attention to the soloist. Listen. Tear into it when you are the soloist, either singing or instrumental. You want everyone to hear you! Listen. If you make a mistake, just keep going. Find your place in the music and continue on. Listen.
Slow Jam Photos
Congratulations to everyone who appeared on stage for the culminating event of the BOTMA 2007-2008 season of the Slow Jammers! Check out how we looked up on stage. Then click on the link to listen to our rendition of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." My thanks to our seasoned musicians who got us through, in alphabetical order: Ken Jewell, John McCarthy and Bob Nowicki. Without their help, support and guidance our performance would not have been possible. In case you missed them, because it was a VERY crowded stage, here's a list of everyone who was up there: Frank, Pat, Bob M., Ray, Bob N., John, Heidi, Julie, Maddy and Steve. That's 10 people on a tiny stage. We packed 'em up there, and played our hearts out! Enjoy the pictures and the audio link. I hope that you can join us when we start up again in September.
Slow Jam MP3 Files
Ken Jewell has provided these mp3 files of Slow Jam tunes. For each song there is one recording that is fast and one recording that is slow. Please keep in mind that there is a bit of silence at the start of each recording so give it time to start. You should be able to double click on the link to play it in the MP3 player that is native to your computer.
Click here to play Blackberry Blossom Fast
Click here to play Blackberry Blossom Slow
Click here to play Lonesome Road Blues Fast
Click here to play Lonesome Road Blues Slow
Click here to play Bury Me Beneath The Willows Fast
Click here to play Bury Me Beneath The Willows Slow
Click here to play I Saw The Light Fast
Click here to play I Saw The Light Slow
Click here to play Fireball Mail Fast
Click here to play Fireball Mail Slow
The Slow Jam Instructors
Bob Nowicki
In 1975 Bob's wife wife dragged him, kicking and screaming, against his will to the Bean Blossom (Indiana) Bluegrass Festival. The next day he bought his first banjo, a $150 Kay (Japanese) that didn't even have a tone ring.
Two years later he formed his first band, Valley Grass, in central Pennsylvania. His bluegrass performing career was temporarily interrupted when he foolishly decided to go to law school, although the career switch did make it possible for him to upgrade to a 1926 Gibson RB3 conversion that still serves as his main instrument (he also owns a Stelling Bellflower that he plays occasionally).
Over the intervening years Bob has played guitar, mandolin and banjo--with varying degrees of incompetence--for several bands. He is presently the banjo player and tenor vocalist for Piney Blues, a bluegrass band that appears regularly at the Albert Music Hall in Waretown, New Jersey.
Ken Jewell
Ken has many loves. There is Wood Carving and Wooden Boat Building, and then there is Ken's love for the 5 String Banjo, Bluegrass, Celtic and other genres of music. The heart of this love stems from when his Dad played Kingston Trio Albums and he heard Dave Guard's banjo solo on the MTA. The first time Ken saw anybody play the banjo was when he watched Larry McNeely on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour one Sunday night back in 1970.
Ken was hooked and ditched the electric guitar for any information on the Banjo, especially Scruggs and Bluegrass music. He learned a couple of fiddle tunes (Keith Style) from Tony Trischka's Melodic Book and some tunes from the Scruggs book but then sought help from banjo great, Marty Cutler. Marty set him on the straight and narrow. After a couple of years with Marty he then took lessons from Tony Trischka in the late 70’s.
Since then he was one of the founders of the short lived magazine (3 issues), Banjo Soundsheet, which Ken did all of the tabulature for and did several banjo tab books for Tony Trischka (A Robot Plane Flies Over Arkansas and Hill Country) Alan Munde and Larry McNeely. He’s also been in several bands including the "Pep Boys", and "Out of the Blue" on LI, NY and played for awhile in the Boston area as well.
He's currently a charter member of the "Barnburners" playing backup Celtic Guitar, Mandolin and Banjo in the NJ area for the past 15 years and co-hosts 90.5 FM The Night's Bluegrass Jam on Sundays 9am - 11pm along with Randy Bailey and Heidi Olsen.
His big love is also giving back to his banjo students. "Teaching is a two way street and an activity which I get just as much of enjoyment out of as my students hopefully do!" Ken’s web site is www.jewellsnwood.com
Heidi Olsen
Heidi Olsen started the slow jam to have a place to play bluegrass music. She worked in a music store after high school, and one of the instruments in the store was a banjo. One day a customer named Rusty picked it up and played it. Once she heard him play that banjo, she was hooked and couldn’t get the sound out of her mind. She finally decided to buy it because it was such a terrific sound. She still has that first Aida banjo.
That banjo sat around for 10 years in the closet. She finally took it out and started taking lessons from Tony Trischka about 10 years ago. During that time she also bought her Stelling Bellflower. She hasn’t been the most dedicated student of the banjo, but plays it as time permits. The slow jam has been her way to play bluegrass on a regular basis. She wants to provide a forum where people can come to play, enjoy and learn. It’s through through her efforts and the efforts of Bob Nowicki, Ken Jewell and John McCarthy that the slow jam is a success.
Heidi’s goal is to help keep bluegrass music alive. She does that by hosting Bluegrass Jam on Brookdale Public Radio, 90.5 every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. along with Randy Bailey and Ken Jewell. She is active with BOTMA, attends live concerts and hosts the Bluegrass Festivals at Albert Music Hall twice a year in Waretown, NJ. She has a second goal to one day play well enough to perform on stage as a regular member of a local band.
To E-mail Heidi please go to our Contact Us page. Scroll down and you'll see a link with her name on it.
John McCarthy
John is a transplanted New Englander who started playing in the late '60s when he first heard the finger picking guitar styles on a friend's Peter Paul and Mary album. He quickly went out and bought an inexpensive nylon string guitar (the beginning of a lifelong obsession with acquiring stringed instruments) and with the help of a book of PP&M tablatures he progressed rather rapidly for a while as he watched his grade point average slip in his senior year at college.
During that time he found a series on the Boston PBS TV station called "Rainbow Quest" hosted by Pete Seeger. It was here that he heard the 5-string banjo for the first time and knew he had to have one of those too. This remarkable program was a real inspiration and featured the likes of Elizabeth Cotton, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbrier Boys, The Stanley Brothers and many others. It was on this show that he first heard a then relatively young Doc Watson and his eyes were opened by what could really be done with a flat pick and a steel string guitar.
The pursuit of graduate degree in Chemistry led him to New Jersey in the mid '70s where in addition to meeting his future wife, he was lucky to hook up with some accomplished bluegrass players one of whom introduced him to the melodic banjo styles of Bill Keith which set off another period of obsessive playing to compete with his academic career. He was among the early BOTMA members in 1978. Somehow during that time, he added mandolin and fiddle to his addictions. With the completion of his degree, he headed back to New England for a number of years until the pull of long distance romance lured him back to New Jersey in the late '90s where he and his soul mate finally tied the knot a few years ago after an 18 year whirlwind courtship.
Back here in NJ, he rejoined BOTMA at the first opportunity and also got involved with the Barnburners, the same group Ken Jewell is involved with, and added Celtic music, which he had only dabbled in earlier, to his compulsions. During the last 8 years or so he has been taking a much more serious approach to his playing and has been struggling to come to some sort of uneasy truce with his fiddle. He has also been working out some traditional Irish fiddle tunes on flat pick guitar.
He says that playing with the slow jammers has caused him to think a lot more about the subtleties and mechanics of guitar playing and stringed instrument music in general and that he has benefited a lot himself in the process.