Gindick Jam Camp - Terror In The O.C.

Just did Jon Gindick's Harmonica Jam Camp in Irvine, Ca. last weekend. A very memorable,  frightening and ultimately enlightening experience.

I've only been playing for 6 months and to be honest I kind of hit a wall several weeks ago and haven't done much harping. I knew in advance that the culmination of Jam Camp is the Sunday, "get up on stage with a real blues band in the bar and wail away in front of about a hundred people". I wanted to spend the weekend in an intensive, hands on, harp in mouth seminar with some of the best players in the world, but "the jam" was the main reason that I signed up in the first place. I've always had a paralyzing strain of stage fright and I decided that, at 47, it was either now or be a slave to my fears forever. I figured that by the time Sunday rolled around I would be somewhat prepared, after about 25 hours of instruction, to honk out something that might resemble music.

What I was not prepared for was an impromptu solo the first thing Saturday morning. The only thing in my head was the riff sequence that I was saving for Sunday and that's what came out. It actually didn't sound too bad but, um, now what? I'd just shot my bolt waaay before the gig. The rest of the day I wandered around in a semi-fugue state covered in a light patina of sweat with at least a 500 yard stare. By the next morning I'd calmed down quite a bit because I'd remembered that my only goal was to get up on stage and, even if the only sound that I could coax out of that harp was a series of squeaks, well I was going to squeak until the band stopped.

THE FATEFUL DAY

I'd planned, to the best of my ability, for success. I would play through the vocal mic and if I got lost I'd run like a scalded dog back to the old 2 draw. I made that walk to the stage thinking about Monster's Ball and Puffy Combs making his "last walk" with Billy Bob Thornton and Heath Ledger at his elbows. Except it was me (Puffy) that was going to chuck his lunch instead of HL.

I asked bandleader Bernie Pearl for a slow blues in G. I leaned into the vocal mic and hit a 2 draw double bend with some righteous vibrato and.......nothing. The mic was dead. It had worked for the previous song but, alas, it worked no more. Two things then happened in rapid succession. I found out that real bands don't stop just because there's a glitch, and one of the guys handed me Superlux bullet mic. I'd never held one before and I stared at like it was a steaming turd. I glanced over at the guy who had handed it to me with a bewildered "what did I ever do to you" look.

What I thought happened next and what actually happened are about as far apart as reality and a disassociative fugue state can be. I thought that I stood stonelike and stared at the mic until the song ended. My wife, who was in the audience, says that I seemlessly melded mic to harp and started what was a really, really long 4 draw wail. In a place deep, deep inside my brain I heard through a wall of cotton that a 4 draw was being played ad naseum but it didn't occur to me that I was doing it. Regardless, I made it to the end of the song. I knew it was the end of the song not because the music stopped, I hadn't heard any music anyway, but because people were clapping and Bernie Pearl was telling me "good job". Bernie Pearl! Bernie learned guitar from Brownie McGhee who played with Sonny Terry! I was 2 degrees from Sonny Terry, I hadn't vomited in public and I was free to find a comfortable chair and oh so casually witness the psycho-emotional disintegration of a dozen other poor bastards as they struggled with an inner dialogue that goes something like, "I'm walking but I can't feel my legs. Nah, I'm not walking, the room is moving. Is that normal? What is that giant dry thing in my mouth that's blocking my airway? Didn't I have lips just a moment ago?" But hey, when it's your time, it's your time. Oh, the humanity!