There are at least twelve of them in the small back room at the Ormidale, getting ready to play.  I came with different city notions in mind.  More audience, fewer musicians.  I like it better this way round.  There’s no room to wander off in your mind, to get bored, to feel your eyes getting heavy, to write lists or poems or novels or blog posts, only this group of people, this small back room at the Ormidale.

They take it in turns to lead, and I love the way the music works like this.  Shifting and turning from rampaging fiddles to a mournful harmonica, from drinking songs to harp music, from foot stomping to country lyrics that would make you want to cry (and I do).

It’s odd, intimate somehow to feel your eyes filling up when you’re 10 feet in front of the singer, when you know he can see his words in your heart, and you’re glad that he knows: can see the connection he makes, the power of the song that he’s singing.  Funny too when he sings a slow sad song that makes you want to shut your eyes and drift off dreaming… and he’s watching you, smiling, teasing both you and himself.

I love listening to the music this band of players makes.  It’s not perfect, and that’s why I like listening to it.  It’s human, it’s real, it sings to me of learning and playing and learning to play together.  Of experiment and rememberance and the desire to pass on, to transmit, to take the songs and the music, the ideas and emotion and pass them on, before they are gone.

They make me think of writers.  One hesitant, one bold, one strumming quietly, one apologising before every song and every time he finishes, undoing the confident boldness of his sweet sounding soul songs.  One tuning, retuning, trying to find the just right note, the just right word, the just right key… and losing the moment in the search for the rightness.

They make me think of a group of learners, sharing and guiding, teaching and supporting, laughing and crying.  Learning how to make music together.

And I like the fact there are  more of them than there are of us.  That they invite us in to hear them play.  Let me smile, and remember.  Give me the chance to wake up old feelings, to sing and to hum songs, to shed some soft tears. 

All on a Sunday night, in a small back room at the Ormidale.