Thank you, Theo and Nick, for your tireless work organizing and
managing Porch Stomp. Our community had a very special experience at
the festival and are all deeply grateful to you for the vision and
energy enabling such joyfully transcendent adventures. We've made
some Venmo contributions to Porch Stomp and hope to contribute more,
including participating in any Porch Stomp fundraising events,
especially musically.
And we have a tale until now untold of how our Porch Stomp
experience, as shaped by you, opened exciting new vistas in our
musical escapades.
In late May 2021 we thought of applying to host a jam at Porch
Stomp's June 26 festival. The shoe really seemed to fit - members of
our group host multiple weekly outdoor jams in various locales and
were enthusiastic about the idea. But as I read carefully between
the lines of the Porch Stomp website's FAQ, I grew concerned [my
interpretations in brackets]:
What if my band uses an electric keyboard, electric bass or another instrument that must be be amplified?I am an electric bassist - don't play standup, never have. Playing all-acoustic string band jams, I prefer to keep the volume very low, often rebuffing jammers' requests to turn up - I like to hear the other musicians and don't like drowning them out let alone deafening myself. Since before the pandemic I've traveled round with a DIY portable power pack (gifted from my mom and sis!) that lets me play outdoors and anywhere power's not available.
Come up with an alternative version of your instrument for the festival. [We know this is not reasonable. And?] Keyboards can be exchanged for melodicas, electric basses can be exchanged for upright bass. [And your protests that this is outlandish can be exchanged for unquestioning submission.] Because of the proximity of the performances, amplification can be incredibly disruptive [we do not like you] to nearby performers [they do not like you], and can negatively affect the overall vibe [you need to be Porch Stomped out] of the festival. We occasionally work with artists for whom amplification is critical [grandfathered in] to the nature of their performance — feel free to address mmnyporchstomp@gmail.com [notreally@don'tbotherus.com] with questions or concerns regarding a request to utilize amplification [do not do this, did you not read above?].
But my interpretation of the amplified instruments provisions suggested the organizers viewed them as an additional headache, which might significantly decrease our chances of being invited, even if I declaimed the low volume I play at. So I fibbed. I said I played washtub bass. I figured I'd cross that bridge when I came to it - strange animal that we are, I wasn't at all sure we'd be accepted anyway. Maybe if I couldn't manage to concoct a washtub bass, once we were accepted I could throw myself upon the mercies of the organizers.
While I awaited Porch Stomp's response, I rang up Uncle John, a possible resource on washtub basses since his mad engineer buddy Peter built one he occasionally brings around to parties.
Uncle John said, "I have a trash can for you."
Uncle John plays banjo, not bass, and is not my uncle either though as avuncular as they get. But through some beyond convenient coincidence, on a Hawaii vacation a few years earlier, John had been so inspired by a local band featuring a fixed-neck trash can bass that he took some notes on its design and - unbeknownst to me - upon his return auditioned an extensive lineup of hardware store trash cans to find and acquire the acoustically perfect one (he succeeded), accompanied by a bag of clothesline and hardware. But he'd never actually constructed or even mentioned it. The trash can had lain silently hidden away at John's, patiently awaiting its moment. Kismet?
A couple weeks after we applied and about a month before the festival, Theo and Porch Stomp graciously invited us to host a jam. Now I actually had to build this thing. John generously handed off the can, clothesline, and hardware; I bought a 5 foot broomstick and more hardware and made off to my lab.
After a few days experimenting with various designs, I came up with what seemed to work best, the trash can mounted on a wooden "shoe" and the broomstick hoisted above the can's rim supported by a PVC "T" fitting, with a leg strap attached to the can so that, stabilized in my intimate embrace, the instrument could ring with actual pitch. I showed up with it at our Sunday Riverside jams in June, crashing it down the pathways (early transport designs were not so stable) and then imposing my efforts to practice with it upon all of my hapless fellow jammers. I even mic'd and played it at our June Thursday remote Jamulus online jams. Gradually I learned... the ropes. Haha. I slay me. We called the instrument many names - trashophone, Gutzilla, megabass - but my favorite is a Spanish-English pun, bassuron, and this is the one that stuck.
By June 26 we were ready to play our hearts out at Porch Stomp, featuring the bassuron and a community of dozens of wonderful musicians and music-lovers. What an epic time we had. We were joined by many stalwarts of our own community plus myriad new (to us) musicians and an energetic, appreciative crowd all around. At one point during a brief but powerful downpour I found myself outside our small tent beneath the thunderous sky whaling away at the bassuron, head thrown back, rain pouring down and sloshing in the trash can's top, in sheer ecstasy. It was really good.
Since then, the bassuron has continued to make rounds at outdoor jams, woodsheds, and lakeside family & friends musical retreats - it has even inspired some folks to construct and begin learning to play their own versions of washtub/trashcan basses!
Thank you so much for a magnificent Porch Stomp experience and for precipitating, though perhaps inadvertently, a whole new chapter in our musicmaking and community. Hope to see you again in numerous musical contexts, and of course, hopefully at next year's Porch Stomp festival.
Very sincerely,
and with utmost gratitude,
Trevor and the Hudson Family Jam
