How do you bring a song into the band?

As I noted elsewhere, Critical Grass has yet to write its first original. But every one of us is constantly searching for the next song to play. In fact, one of my greatest joys of being in this band is hearing a song – either an old favorite or a new one – and thinking, “Oh man, we could play that.”

Anybody can bring pretty much any song to the band. Usually, we’re at a rehearsal and somebody says, “Let’s try this song…”  Pretty quickly, we know if it’s going to work or not. Two or three people say, “Whoa, this is cool!” Then it’s just a matter of getting the words and chords down, and working out an arrangement. Two examples that leap to mind are Jeremy bringing Walking Boss, and Chris bringing Dreamer. The moment we heard them, we were all in. Both have become staples of our setlists. The one that I’m most proud of, so far, is when John and I said, “We should play Find My Way to You by I’m With Her.”  This tune is sophisticated and virtuostic. For instance, there are some random measures of 3/4 in a fundamentally square 4/4 song, because those women can. But everybody dug in and made it work. I’m pretty sure we’re the first band to cover that song, which I consider a huge achievement.

On the flip side, sometimes a song just doesn’t work. Maybe there’s something in the lyrics that makes somebody uncomfortable. But more often, the song and the band don’t align for whatever reason. That’s not to say it’s a bad song. I suggested we try Here Comes the Sun as an opener for morning sets. Even my wife, sitting upstairs, came down later and said, “Yeah, that doesn’t work.” Nobody disputes that George Harrison wrote a masterpiece – we’re just not meant to cover it. John brought the Joni Mitchell classic Coyote – it may be that we just weren’t ready for it. Personally speaking, I won’t be fully satisfied until we cover something by Joni, so hold that thought.

The mechanics

If there’s one requirement for bringing in a song, it’s that you have to give us StrumMachine chords. StrumMachine is an incredible app written by Luke Abbott, who’s a professional musician and software developer. StrumMachine’s primary intent is to give musicians backing tracks to play along with.¹ It’s invaluable for that purpose, and speaking as a bass player, there’s nothing quite as deadly as practicing a bluegrass bass part by yourself without anything to accompany you.

StrumMachine also allows seamless sharing of chords to other people. So the first time we’re playing through a song, 2-3 of us are looking at our phones with StrumMachine loaded up, showing us the chords. It massively reduces the learning curve and, crucially, gives every tune a fighting chance. When we can all at least agree about the chord changes, we can see deeply enough into the song to know if we should all go on a second date.

One of the best parts of the Critical Grass experience for me is that moment when we’ve picked up a new tune. The second or third run-through comes around, and suddenly there are little sparks in the air.

I live for those moments.

—Lee

 ^1. Very old people will remember “Music Minus One” vinyl albums which were, for instance, the Brahams violin concerto without the violin solo. Karaoke for the classical nerds, as it were. 

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