Being with family is my favorite part about the Holidays. I got to pull my sister-in-law’s family out of the snow on Christmas Eve with my father-in-law after a great evening with my wife’s family. Pulling them out of the ditch during blizzard conditions was actually kind of cool since I’m generally not the guy on those types of journeys. Plus, my father-in-law, Roy, is an amazing person to be around – he’s super tough and could kick my butt…just kidding…but not really.
After our time in north east Oklahoma and delaying our return trip due to snowy/icy conditions we headed back to OKC to have Christmas with my family. What made this so special was getting to share the stage with my brother, Joe, at the Bell Isle. We opened up for Modern Rock Diaries and it had been the first time we played a show together since high school. I mean, we’d played shows in the past few years where I’d play a set and then he’d play a set, but this time we played each other’s songs, a few covers and brought in our pals, Colby and Jeremiah, to play percussion. Those dudes are super talented and made the songs really vibe. It was a chilled out show with acoustics and it was just refreshing to be sitting next to my brother and playing music together again. It was a very organic and candid performance that I’m really proud of and I’m hoping we won’t wait another ten years to do this again. Modern Rock Diaries also put on one of the best shows I’ve seen by these guys. They are really hitting their groove and produced some really intricate and layered arrangements for a three piece. I was blown away, so I’m anxious to hear their new EP next summer.
The next day we reconvened for a late lunch and we had our annual family jam, which consists of my dad, brother, brother-in-law and myself pulling together all of our stringed instruments (my bro-in-law, Josh, has quite the arsenal of banjos, mandolins, acoustics) and playing each other’s songs and old classic bluegrass and folk songs. I will say that we threw in some modern covers this go around. We all write music so it’s nice to jump in on tunes we don’t play as much and add our flavor to them. We can all hold our own on banjo, mandolin and guitar so we literally just trade off instruments and songs and just go for it. It’s one of my absolute favorite things to do with my family and it’s a huge part of who we are. I can’t remember a time with my family where music didn’t play a large role in the conversation or in the background. It’s sort of like we all live to create the soundtrack to our own lives (I don’t mean that to sound cheesy either). What makes these get togethers so dear to me is that there are no agendas or egos. We don’t invite anyone over to hear us, we don’t record the sessions, there’s no awkwardness of what to play next or what to say…we just have a good old family jam.
Much love,
M
Filed under: Uncategorized, acoustic guitars, family jam, joe stansberry, josh kingcade, mark stansberry, matt stansberry
