Guitar circle founder to return to St. Louis in February

Save the date type dealybob: founder of the St. Louis guitar circle, Michael Shannon Friedman, has agreed to take his next break from teaching in North Carolina and spend it in the confluence city making music with his friends, because he just can't wait to be on the road again.

Dates: Monday, Feb. 16, for more of a happy hours guitar circle, 6 pm to 10 pm or so, at the house/garage/back yard/ firepit animal flesh roast of John Eiler.

: Wednesday, Feb. 18 for more of a venue experience (somewhere or the other where they'll have us), a Michael Friedman and friends kind of thing, with anticipated performing artists Michael Friedman, Michael Friedman with his Rough Shop friends, Roy Francis Kasten, maybe Sunyatta Marshall, and the Three Fried Men poetry score orchestra (if we can pull together a short set by then). Who knows who else.

If you have ever been to a guitar circle before or think you should have been, then you're probably invited to this one as well, just check in with me, John, Roy, or one of those type people.
If you are just now encountering the concept of a guitar circle, first of all you don't have to play guitar, you can contribute anything (it doesn't even have to be music, per se; we have had poets and concertina players; a clogger; a koto player; a spoonsman; a Kelsey Lapoint, whatever on earth it is she does).

It's a jam session without, for the most part, the jamming; an open mic without the mic; a salon without the bitter Gallic superiority complex; a Quaker meeting where you get to talk and drink and don't have to pray (though people have prayed); a strictly circular focussed listening session where, once each time around the circle, you get to do your thing. Other than that, why don't you pay attention, unless you have to pee or get a drink or something.

It will be great to have Michael back in town for a few days and maybe even record it for posterity. I'll be talking about him and these events more and more as the dates draws nigh. Michael is one of those rare people of whom I can actually say, the more I got to know him, the more I liked and admired him, more or less on a consistent gently upward curve, after the abrupt and shocking initial jerk straight up.

The surprises that are pleasant are the ones you least expect.

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The illustration by me is not of the oft-depicted Michael Friedman but guitar circle host and animal flesh roaster John Eiler; looking forward to seeing an old friend being a definite improvement upon dread.