Something interesting happened last night. We were auditioning a drummer, and I had misplaced my notebook with the charts for the songs we’d be playing. I’m pretty terrible at memorizing things, for various reasons touched on some time ago, so I was rather distressed. And, for the most part, my playing and singing was lousy, with a couple of exceptions. We played one song that we had only briefly worked on some time ago (Stevie Wonder‘s I Wish), and an improv jazz jam. On those two songs, I played quite naturally and pretty well.

As I was walking out with Steve (our guitar player) we were talking, and I apologized (again) for such a bad night. Steve’s comment was interesting — that I should play more by feel, and less from my charts. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but in thinking it over, I got to thinking that maybe I ought to change my approach to music. While I’m not exactly sure what that means just yet — it may be some time before I really figure it out. But, I do know that it’s going to be on my mind now, every time I play.