Great job, Mike S

EJG

Central NJ
My wife and I happen to be in McKinney, TX visiting her 93 YO uncle for a few days and we caught Mike’s gig last night. It was great!

Unfortunately we couldn’t stay for the whole show (wife’s uncle was tired), but I was really happy that we got to see Mike play after hearing and reading about his gigs for years.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
Ed, it was really great to see you after all these years and it was really nice meeting your family. I hope we get to play together again soon!
 
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EJG

Central NJ
Ed, it was really great to see you after all these years and it was really nice meeting your family. I hope we get to play together again soon!
It’s really remarkable how many connections we have.

I hope we get to play together soon too!
 

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
Mike is definitely a pro!
I had the pleasure to meet and play with Mike at the BGU jam in Glens Falls in 2019.
What I knew about guitar then was slightly more than I could fit in a thimble. But Mike showed me a few workarounds for some of the chords needed for some of the tunes we played and he convinced me that I could play better than I thought.

We ended up playing in front of a large audience (which was not planned) and naturally my nerves were more than a bit..."active", shall we say?
But I got through that in part because of Mike's encouragement and knowing that if anything went sideways, he would be there to take up the slack.
He demonstrated what it takes to be a pro player and that there's more to it than simply knowing a few notes or chords.

It was a great experience and Mike had a lot to do with that!
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
Mike is definitely a pro!
I had the pleasure to meet and play with Mike at the BGU jam in Glens Falls in 2019.
What I knew about guitar then was slightly more than I could fit in a thimble. But Mike showed me a few workarounds for some of the chords needed for some of the tunes we played and he convinced me that I could play better than I thought.

We ended up playing in front of a large audience (which was not planned) and naturally my nerves were more than a bit..."active", shall we say?
But I got through that in part because of Mike's encouragement and knowing that if anything went sideways, he would be there to take up the slack.
He demonstrated what it takes to be a pro player and that there's more to it than simply knowing a few notes or chords.

It was a great experience and Mike had a lot to do with that!

You definitely give me more credit than I deserve. I could tell that you were going to be just fine.
I'm pretty sure that I only regurgitated 2 things Griff had drilled into me: 1) play little (3 note) chords and 2) If you lose your place, just swing your arm up and down with the beat, but don't hit the strings until you hear the chords come around again.
One things people don't realize is that even with an audience full of musicians, when the band is cooking, it's REALLY hard to hear one clunker.
(After years of experience, ask me how I know that to be true...) and when the audience is full of BGUers, you have NOTHING to worry about.
 

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
You definitely give me more credit than I deserve. I could tell that you were going to be just fine.
I'm pretty sure that I only regurgitated 2 things Griff had drilled into me: 1) play little (3 note) chords and 2) If you lose your place, just swing your arm up and down with the beat, but don't hit the strings until you hear the chords come around again.
One things people don't realize is that even with an audience full of musicians, when the band is cooking, it's REALLY hard to hear one clunker.
(After years of experience, ask me how I know that to be true...) and when the audience is full of BGUers, you have NOTHING to worry about.

Funny you should mention that because that's exactly what happened!
During my solo, I worked my way up to box 2 and I thought I was in the right place but I was actually off by a half step.
I heard it and thought, "Oops, what now Batman?" But I just paused for a beat or two, went back to box 1and to a familiar place and went on from there.
After that, everything else was perfect.
The trick is not to panic and also having a few other guys on stage who know what they're doing doesn't hurt either!
 
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