The New Hampshire Bluegrass Scene

I checked off a 2024 goal: I played bluegrass bass with strangers!

This past weekend, I attended a bluegrass jam workshop in New Market, NH. This was a big step on this path to playing a new instrument and a new style of music. Let me tell ya all about it.

Learning How to Play Bluegrass Bass

I should first say that I’ve been playing music most of my life. Guitar and bass are familiar to me but the idiosyncrasies of bluegrass mean that I was starting fresh in a bunch of ways.

First, I bought an electric upright bass. It’s a strange instrument with just a neck and a small body, sitting on a tripod. This style is smaller than wooden double bass, so it worked perfectly for our apartment life in Colorado. I was glad to have it when we moved here to New Hampshire.

With this instrument, I started to learn classic tunes and the patterns of root-and-fifth bass playing that define the style. I found StrumMachine.com which has tons of classic bluegrass songs to play along with. Mercifully, I could play with headphones while I figured it out.

I struggled with the huge scale size and the lack of frets, which makes pinpointing the right note much more difficult than a guitar or standard fretted bass. I learned a few songs, starting with some of the standards on Billy Strings' album Me / And / Dad.

Last month, I realized I can’t exactly walk into an acoustic jam with this freaky little bass and ask where I can plug my amp in. It doesn’t fit the vibe. So I started renting this beauty from a local shop.

This thing is the real deal. It’s made of maple and plywood. It sounds acoustically amazing. I’m renting it for a few months and then have the option to buy it.

The Simple Theory of Bluegrass Bass

The role of bass in a bluegrass jam is deceptively simple. The progressions are mostly standardized around the I-IV-V pattern in the keys of A, C, D, E and G. Out of the 15 combinations of notes, 10 of these notes are open strings, meaning I don’t even have to fret a note. That doesn’t mean it’s easy though.

Standard Progressions in Standard Bluegrass Keys

In a jam, timing is everything. There is no drummer, so my role on the bass is to keep the time and anchor the jam. The bass player has to know all the changes and move through the loops of songs smoothly. When I goof up, everyone can feel it.

So it may seem boring, but holding down the rhythm requires memorizing these keys, learning any song on the fly and staying focused on where we are in the song, even if others get lost.

I love that this music is inherently collaborative. We’ve all got to play together, quite literally. See, most tunes are in 4/4 time. For a guitar player that would sound like

(1 2 3 4)
boom chick boom chick

In bluegrass, the bass plays on notes 1 and 3. A mandolin or fiddle player would play on 2 and 4. Together, we share one groove.

boom (bass root) - chick (mandolin)
boom (bass fifth) - chick (mandolin)

Pardon my onomatopoeias. Hopefully you get the idea.

The Magic of Traditional Songs

The songs we play at a jam are mostly simple and often they are old. That’s for good reason. These songs stand the test of time and plug into a cultural taproot. That’s why The Grateful Dead played a lot of traditional songs. Pickin’ and singin’ these tunes around a circle is a special experience, keeping these songs alive.

At a jam, there’s room for folks to just strum along and there’s room for folks to showcase their skills in a solo (called a “break”). A great example of this is Momma Don’t Allow, which follows simple chords but, in this arrangement, gives every musician a chance to showcase their skills.

The Bluegrass Scene

The class I attended went through some of the rules, both spoken and unspoken, of bluegrass jams. It was meant as a safe spot for beginners to show up, take a risk and sing a song. It’s an entry point into a wider culture of bluegrass music.

A few lessons I learned:

• Be in tune and in time (duh)

• Show up at a jam with a traditional song to sing

• Communicate with your eyes for taking solos

• Raise a foot for the ending of a song

• When everyone is lost, just hang out on the root note

Over the course of a day, I was able to sing and lead one song and to jam along with the rest of them! I was put on the spot a few times to demonstrate how to fill in space around the bass for other musicians too. I think my practice paid off.

What’s Next?

Up next is more practice, learning more songs and joining in on other bluegrass events in New England.

There’s a lifetime of songs left to learn!

Here’s my running list of bluegrass events in New England I’ve found:

• A weekly Thursday Night Bluegrass jam at Harlow’s in Peterborough, NH

• Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in New York on July 16-20

• Jamvember in July is a non-festival jam and camp in Greenfield, MA July 19-21st

• The Bluegrass Association of Maine has jams in Yarmouth, ME

After I’m more comfortable, perhaps I’ll start my own jam here in town. If you know of any other events around New Hampshire, please let me know!