On coping with Scarlet Begonias/Fire on the Mountain [Howard’s Birthday Jam 2025]

Several weeks ago I got an email from my friend, Howard, whom I’ve known since the beginning of this millennium, when we were both employees of a now-defunct software company started by a friend of mine. It was time for his annual birthday jam (session), a fine event I’ve attended let’s say a half-dozen times before. The idea is simple: 1) You tell your neighbors that this one time you’re going to be making music until the wee hours of the morning. 2) You set up a sound-system in the front parlor, along with a drum kit (while fitting out the rest of the first floor for a party). 3) Invite everyone you know to come to the party. Many of those people are musicians, and many are not. The musicians will generally bring their instruments. The others are welcome to listen (or not) and to pick up a cowbell, tambourine, or a shaker if they want to get in on the musical action, which some of them do.

Then you party.

How do you pick what music to play? While no one knows everyone else, not even Howard, as some people bring strangers to the event, we’ve played with one another at one time or other in one configuration or another. So there are a bunch of songs we more or less know and even if you don’t know a tune, you can often pick it up on the fly. People take turns playing guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, or singing. I’m the only trumpet player I’ve seen at these jams, but a saxophonist sometimes shows up, last night we had a fiddler and a flutist.

One song that has been a constant at these jams is in fact two songs, both by the Grateful Dead and often performed by them back-to-back: “Scarlet Begonias” followed by “Fire on the Mountain.” Those tunes are in the key of B. If you don’t know just what that means, don’t sweat it. Think of a key as a selection of notes and associated structures you can draw on in playing. The thing about the key of B is that it is convenient for guitar players, but hellish for trumpet players. We’re talking about how you manipulate your fingers to play the instrument. For guitar players it’s the fingers on the left hand that are used to depress strings against the fret board. For trumpeters it’s the right hand fingers used to depress the valves. For both instruments, some finger patterns are easier than others. Tunes that are easy for guitar are difficult for trumpet, and vice versa.

Thus, when I undertake to perform “Scarlet Begonias/Fire on the Mountain” I have to give up half my technique. Riffs that are easy in the key of B-flat are difficult in the key of B. I’ve got semi-virtuoso technique; I can play lots of fast, intricate, and even flashy patterns. But not in the key of B.

So what? Does that matter? Well, it depends. If you value flash, which I do occasionally, then that’s gone. Can you play without it? Yes. But still there are problems. Even when I slow down, I can’t be sure just what notes are going to come out when I manipulate my fingers. More often than not, they come out OK. But when they don’t, that doesn’t sound so good. All of a sudden I have to start actually thinking about what I’m doing. Thought may be fine enough in practice, but it’s not so good for performance. When performing you want to be able to do everything on autopilot. No thought. You’re sailing on pure intuition. That’s what you want. You don’t want to think.

Anyhow, I’ve played these tunes before, many times. I’ve always managed, somehow. I decided that this time I was going to do more than manage. I decided that I wanted to make some actual music. That meant that I had to practice.

So I started two weeks ahead of time. I’d get cue up one of the many versions of “Scarlet Begonias/Fire on the Mountain” that are on YouTube and start playing along. The minimum goal is to not play any wrong notes. At first even that was tricky. Beyond that you want to play notes that form meaningful musical patterns. More difficult.

When I’d hit a wrong note sometimes I’d just play through it and keep on moving ahead. Other times, though I’d start repeating the botched pattern, but with corrections. I’d repeat it until I got it right. Sometimes I’d do this while the music continued while other times I’d stop the music and turn the pattern into a technical exercise, an exercise that I’d repeat over and over until I felt smooth and comfortable under my fingers. I did a lot of that, make up little technical exercises. Gradually the glitches began disappearing and musical statements would replace them, meaningful statements.

After about a week of this I was getting more comfortable, more comfortable than I’d ever been with these tuns. Of course, I also picked up patterns from the performances, guitar riffs, fragments of the melody. I’d double the vocal, then play a harmony line, sometimes standard harmony (below the melody), and sometimes I’d go for high harmony. I worked on that long riff The Dead often used to connect the two tunes. Things were looking up.

Yet, something was missing. I needed something more. Just what, I didn’t know. Then it hit me on Thursday before the jam, Elmer Bernstein's soaring main theme from The Magnificent Seven.

I immediately tried it out. It worked. I could lay it in there nice and sweet and have an actual melody to work with. I was all set.

And it worked. Best I’d ever done on those tunes. I was happy.

I’d have been happier, though, if my chops had been stronger. I’d been off the horn for a long time. I just didn’t have the power and endurance I needed to really make that melody sing. But next year, though...Just you wait.

Howard’s Jam II: Go with the flow nation

I’m bumping this to the top of the queue on general principle and because the next edition of Howard’s jam is coming up this May 17th. You might want to check out this earlier post: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (at Howard’s Party).

Jamming has come up over at Morton’s joint, so I thought I’d say a little more about how things work at Howard’s Annual Birthday Bash and All-Hoboken Jam Session.

First let me reiterate that Howard’s been living in Hoboken for some time, 25 or more years I believe. He’s been active in the Hoboken music scene for at least that long. He knows a lot of people and, wouldn’t you know, many of them are musicians. Thus the people who attend this bash know one another, some better than others, naturally.

For the past three or four years Howard and a few others have had a jam session that would met every two or three weeks, usually at Howard’s place. That group has been fairly stable. Howard plays guitar and sings. So does Pete. Doug – who’s played with Howard longer than anyone else in the current group – plays bass; he sings as well. Pavel plays drums and is a Russian working in the USA and living here with his family. Vinnie plays harp (that is, harmonica), though he wasn’t able to make it to the party. I play trumpet and bells (cowbell, agogo).

We perform every once in awhile, but mostly we just jam. Over the years we’ve developed a repertoire of most rock and folk tunes, including a few turns written by members of the jam (Howard, Pete, me). While we do have routines on tunes we play regularly, they aren’t particularly rigid. And there are tunes were the idea is take the jam wherever the moment leads us. These tend to be Grateful Dead tunes; Fire on the Mountain is a favorite. And sometimes stuff just happens.

That’s how things began last Saturday, the night of the party. The front room on the first floor had been designated and set up as the music room. There was a drum set, microphones and speakers, amplifiers, and a keyboard. Sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 PM us core jammers were all there, as were other people, milling about. Howard started playing a simple two-chord riff on his guitar. Pete and Doug joined in – I forget in which order. Nor do I remember when Pavel started in on drums.

 

But there they were, noodling away. People were entering through the front door, walking through the room to the kitchen (& the food and the liquor). Talking, munching, milling. And I was sitting on the couch in the front room, oiling the valves on my trumpet, setting out my bells.

Are they just messing around? Is that a tune they’re playing? Sounds like SOMETHING but I don’t recognize it. What should I do?

I joined in. Just made up something that seemed to fit. And we played whatever it was for awhile and then stopped. Then, I believe, we played one of the tunes we’d been working on. But I forget which one.

And then another. More people came in. Some of them had their instruments. Which they got out, one by one. Got ‘em out, set ‘em up. Joined in. Pretty soon we were playing this or that song that wasn’t part of the regular repertoire. But someone knew it, otherwise we wouldn’t have been playing it, right?

The crucial thing is that WE was no longer the core jam group, the five guys I mentioned up there in the third paragraph. Other people were playing – guitar, keyboard, electric fiddle, and various shakers and rattlers – and singing. Oh yes, the singing.

Somewhere in there three women sitting on a wide bench started doing routines – synchronized hand gestures, leaning this way and that, just like Motown groups did. Who planned that? No one.

That’s how these things go. Here and there around the room other people were playing bells and rattles. Lots of things happen. No one plans anything. Well, not much.

Pretty soon the women started doing simple kicks, while remaining seated. Of course. Before you knew it, Guitar Dave (that’s how I think of him) was wailing away on his acoustic and joined them in their kicks. About this time I was into some kind of trumpet solo, and I – from my seat on the couch – also join up with the kick brigade. Which was ‘kinda awkward, and must have looked ridiculous. But who cares?

It was fun.

Somewhere each and everyone of us from the core group put down our instruments, went into the kitchen, and got some food, and some liquor. And other people filled in on the music. We weren’t actually necessary since there were many musicians in the crowd. They really didn’t need us. The real point, I suppose, is that there is no firm distinction between “they” and “us.”

Somewhere during the evening, this happened (I’m copying a note that Doug had posted to Facebook):

Group mind can be used for good. For ex: late Sat. @ Howard’s. The trumpet player (you) were playing repeating sixteenths on A. I picked it up on bass. Then - then we got on the same page and walked it up the progression, driving the previously listless vamp up a notch. The jam took off. All of us listening and hearing and doing: group mind - used for good. Another reason to adore making music.

You listen, you follow along, you play, someone follows you, and so it went. All night long. It worked because we were comfortable with one another. And because we shared a wide repertoire of songs and riffs. Whatever happened, you could somehow fit in and go with that particular flow.

As for that opening piece that we did, it turns out it wasn’t a tune that anyone knew. When Howard started playing that riff, he was just playing that riff. Getting the fingers loosened up. Checking the feel of the guitar, the sound of the room. We jammed it into, well, a tune.

Now, can we reconstruct what we did, and do it again? Who knows? Maybe, yes. Maybe, no. Something from nothing.

* * * * *

That guy in that picture up there. That’s Howard, though not on this occasion. That was last summer and an outdoor concert by a group he plays in, The Gordy’s. This guy here, that’s Guitar Dave:

And the people in the next photo, they’re members of The Gordys too. And they’re doing something silly. I bet they didn’t plan that routine:

As the concert moved along, people got up and started dancing. Like this:

The blonde in front is Howard’s mother. The woman behind her is Howard’s wife. Howard’s somewhere off to the left, playing his guitar.

For the next photo I think I was standing more or less behind the band and looking into the audience. But how do you draw a line between the band and the audience?

See that red-haired woman to the left of center? She was at the party Saturday night. She was one of the women doing the Motown routines.

These guys are Howard’s sons:

And that’s the moon over Manhattan:

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (at Howard’s Party)

Bumped to the top of the queue in honor of Dylan's 80th birthday.

 

* * * * *

 

I'd originally posted this on April 3, 2011. Last night, April 14, 2018, I attended Howard's jam, again. And we played “Knocking on Heaven's Door", just like we had that time almost 20 years ago that I wrote up in my book. Another good version. Some of the same people were there, I'm sure. And some new ones. A good time was had by all. [Just so we're clear on this, the following video is not from Howard's birthday jam.]

Last night was Howard’s Annual Jam and Birthday Bash. He’s been doing this for twenty-five years, though I’ve only been going for about ten or so. As always, a good time was had by all.

And this year was especially good, perhaps the best I remember – though I don’t remember everything that happened this time, so it may have been even better than I think it was. Here’s a passage from Beethoven’s Anvil, my book about music, that recounts an incident from ten about years ago (pp. 69-70):

A couple I know threw a big party to celebrate their new house and her pregnancy. As he is deep into the Hoboken folk-music scene, about a dozen guitars were there, and some other instruments as well: a flautist, a few pianists, a woman who brought a dozen or so shakers that folks could play, a soprano saxophonist, and me, on flugelhorn and clavé. We played one or two songs as old as dirt, but also lots of Beatles, van Morrison, Bob Dylan—very Sixties.

The front room on the ground floor served as the music room. The music would start and stop, musicians of all levels of ability came and went, and the boundary between players and others was wonderfully fluid. The music was ragged and rambling and occasionally confused and the rhythm would get lost every now and then and all that. From an evolutionary point of view it was just a bunch of apes hanging out and grooming one another while munching on some choice leaves and termites.

But there was at least one moment quite unlike anything exhibited by bands of apes. It was 1:30 or 2 in the morning and we were jamming on Bob Dylan's “Knocking on Heaven's Door.” I took a flugelhorn solo early in this long jam and then, when I was done, went to the bottom register of the horn and started a simple repetitive swelling figure which I played more or less continuously to the end. The soprano sax played harmony to my line, and I to his, and sometimes did a little obbligato, and a guitar solo floated up here, a piano solo there, vocal choruses and refrains happened as needed. At some point I decided to see how much I could drive this train by leaning on my simple line and bearing down. A half minute or so later, four or five or six voices chimed in on the refrain at the same time. A lump came to my throat. There we were, knocking on heaven's door.