our band

my boyfriend and i have decided to form a bluegrass band. he is a kickass classical guitar player and can, i recently discovered, sight-read bluegrass music. that means, for the musically untrained, that he can play elaborate finger pickin' represented by notes on a page. my contribution will be that i have a "period voice". i was in a bluegrass band before and they told me that that was why they had wanted me. my voice is weak and untrained and unreliable, just like someone on a national geographic recording. plus i know all the songs already because my parents were in a bluegrass band when i was a kid. we didn't have a tv, so one of the things we used to do for fun was sit around and sing songs while my dad banged out chords on the guitar. i never thought of music as something that had to be done well. it was just something you did with the people you loved. it was a part of life, something you used, like a hand thrown mug or bowl.