It was about 4:30 am on Thursday night after the awards show. I was getting tired and about to pack it in for the night but decided with a few friends to go cruising the hotel one last time for the night. I knew that Noam Pikelny, Danny Barnes, and Casey Driessen had been jamming on the 20th floor at the end of the hallway with some guys because I saw part of that jam. Since I was with Tony Watt (who shares a house with Noam in Nashville), we decided to go back to the 20th floor to search out Noam. Well, that session was done and there was nobody around. So we started down the floors searching.
We came upon the Grey Fox suite and heard some music. Clearly, adult beverages had been consumed and these few folks were having a good time. I saw Jimmy Rollins from South Carolina (a long time friend of mine since he grew up in Maryland) playing banjo with Danny Paisley playing guitar. Joe Zauner, a banjo player from Maryland, was also playing guitar and Mary Burdette was playing bass.
Jimmy was kind of sitting on the opposite side of the room from Danny. Jimmy got up and said "I want to come over here and sing some tenor." If I can’t play banjo in a jam session, I sure like to sing baritone. So I got to sing baritone in the trios on some bluegrass chestnuts like "I Hope You’ve Learned," "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again," and some other classics. On the second song (Blue Moon Turns to Gold) when it came to the end of the second line and the baritone hits the sweet note on the third, Danny looked up at me and smiled and nodded. What a great moment. It was after 5:00 when Danny decided to take a smoke break, so I headed off to bed. Another moment for the highlights of the 2006 IBMA week.
