Saturday night, I called the 5th Saturday dance here in Bloomington.

Tuesday night, I called the dance in Indianapolis.

Wednesday night, I thought I’d get to actually dance. And, technically, I did, but only one dance.

The first Wednesday of the month is always open mic night at the [Bloomington contradance](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~botmdg/), and we frequently don’t have very many callers. But we usually have plenty of musicians. As I exited my car (being unusually punctual for the dance) I thought “maybe I should have brought my banjo… Oh, there’ve been plenty of musicians at open mic nights lately, and besides, you want to dance.”

Foreshadowing…

I saw a caller signup sheet when I showed up, and it said that Patsy was going to call (which, I correctly guessed, was her first time calling at open mic. Great!). Bill and Bob were both signed up too, leaving only one open slot. “Cool! I might be able to dance the whole time”..

Yeah….

I did dance the first dance with Cisa. Patsy did a great job calling. The music was great… But it was pretty much only John playing his fiddle. I felt for him. Plus there were too many male dancers. Plus there was a beautiful guitar (a Silvertone f-hole, kind of like [this](http://www.ratemyaxe.com/details.php?image_id=136)), sitting on the stage. Instead of dancing the second dance, I went up on stage and asked John if he knew whose guitar that was. “Yours!” he said. It was his actually, but he brought it in case he found himself playing fiddle alone and there just happened to be someone who knew how to play the guitar but who didn’t bring one to the dance.

Oh, I guess that would be me!

So, for the 2nd-8th dances of the evening, I played guitar. Wow. So, I used to play the guitar a lot in high school, and I still “get it”. But, I’m out of shape and tend to find my hands getting tired when I play the guitar vs. the banjo these days… plus, I never have really played old-time guitar. I’ve often marvelled at how those old time guitarists can keep up that “boom-chang” so steadily and for so long.

I’m still marvelling…

Yeah, wow, I felt very exposed, and very underprepared for playing the guitar for a contra dance. A thought I had was “[compared with other instruments] it’s easy to know what to do, but it’s very difficult to do it… or at least to do it well”. I’m hoping that I helped to round out the sound of the band, but from where I sat, I was not at all certain that I was.

I actually felt like I got better at it as the evening wore on. I joked to John afterwards that it was a bit like an intensive work session on old time guitar. I just had to **keep playing**. After a while I noticed that the middle finger of my left hand was tingling. I said “I think I’m doing nerve damage to my finger…. Oh wait, it’s just a blister.” It was just a blister. Then a song or two later, the blister popped, which I realized because there was only one possible source for the droplets of clear liquid that had suddenly appeared on my fingers. It’s remarkable how much more pressure is applied to ones fingers on the guitar vs. the banjo.

But, actually, it didn’t hurt much. And, really, it was my right (strumming) hand where I felt like I was really getting the lesson. The chords I was playing were all simple standard stuff, and although I made plenty of mistakes, fingering the chords for old time music is not that hard. But, keeping your right hand going with the “boom-changs”, being creative with the “Booms” and still getting a clear ring on the “changs”… it ain’t easy. My hat’s off to all of you old time guitarists that make us melody instruments sound so good.

In any event, no one asked me to leave, so I at least played that well. And had a good time at Max’s place afterwards. So, good…

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