There’s a whistle-player I’ve known since I started playing Trad (way back last year) who’s been playing for thirty years, a crusty old curmudgeon from Bolinas who’s so full of bombast and banter I’d always figured he was mostly bullshit. But while some of us were standing around jawing after last Tuesday’s session at the Mayflower in San Rafael, and he was holding forth on session etiquette, the local history of Irish music, and the various personalities he’d played with over the years, and there was awakening in me the realization that there was more to this guy than I’d thought, he suddenly produced the advice, obviously directed obliquely at me, that “The important thing about playing the bodhrán is knowing when not to play.” His point: drumming was not appropriate behavior for waltzes or other slow tunes.

I started to object that my special barbeque-skewer tipper, which, like all my sticks I’d crafted myself, and with which I produce such a snazzy snare drum effect, was just the thing for playing with slow tunes, but stifled it—this guy had probably forgotten more about Irish music than I was ever likely to know, and maybe I should ponder his words. After a restless night of percussively-frustrated dreams I had to admit that I had indeed been obsessively trying to work up a rhythm for every tune I encountered, and when one didn’t sound right I assumed I was just coming up short in my efforts: there had to be a right beat for this tune, and if I worked hard enough I’d find it. Maybe there wasn’t, and I shouldn’t.

The very next evening there was another session in someone’s back yard, next to San Pablo Bay, and I had an opportunity to “sit out” a waltz—“Dance of the Little Girls,” I believe it was—and I seized it. It actually felt good to listen carefully to, actually enjoy, the tune, with no pressure to do something with it myself. And when a slow tune I knew, “Fanny Po’er,” came up, I just pulled out my jaw harp and accompanied with that. It felt like freedom, being out from under the compulsion to constantly beat the goat.

So thanks, Ted, for the advice. Maybe, if I’m fortunate (and respectful) you’ll give me more of it.