Friday, January 2, 2009

Chat to Pick Ratio


New Year's Eve brought us a gathering of many of our best friends in the world who are also some of the best musicians we know. It used to be that we would get together with other musicians frequently and play until our fingers fell off and our heads were nodding. We would visit in between songs and when we took a break to eat, but then back to the reason we came together-great pickin'. The raw enthusiasm and intensity of those times were wonderful, but have now given way to a greater interest in the purely social aspect, to the point where our chat-to-pick ratio is sometimes 100-0%.

That's a little embarrassing, somehow. But I don't think it's really from a lack of energy, but rather a shift of focus. We know more of each other now--the selves outside the music. The selves that drove us to play and to write and to travel and share that and other parts of ourselves with other people around the world and at home. And the more we know, the more we want to know of these amazing people we call our friends. And the opportunity for them to get to know one another was too great to spend on making music.

I'm grateful to have them for any day, doing anything, but next time, we really should pick!