There is a very important, simple, but hard-to-grasp concept that your folks will need to absorb as quick as they can-- and that is that leading a tune is not about how well they can play it-- once the tune begins, the other players are NOT listening to the leader and the leader's skills! They're listening to themselves and working on their own skills! So taking turns leading the tune is really about giving everyone the excuse and opportunity to play along and work on their skills. Unless you can help your participants learn this, they will lean on your leadership forever and you will be, in fact, providing a group lesson or a workshop; and you know what, that gets old pretty quick unless you have a faster jam YOU get to participate in, separately, where you get to be the learner and follower sometimes too.

As to how to get it promoted, see "Growing a Folk Community From Seed" threads 1 & 2. As for songlists, see the old threads on 2 and 3-chord songs, or just pick easy ones from the Fiddler's Fakebook if you are doing that type of music. Ed Hetzler's site has MIDIs of many of these to play and play along with, plus simple free sofftware that lets people slow the tune down. We have even gone so far as to MIDI-play these AT the jam so people can hear them before we launch in.

For a more vocal-music plan, as a beginner's songbook, the Mel Bay Jerry Silveman books are great-- chords in each verse, usually, so people can work on them at home and get more confidence. Tapes are also available to go with them. A good one is KIDSONGS.

You will need to take the lead in the importance of blending the note-reading skill with the ear-learning skill. You will get both types of players and they will insist they can only learn in that one way. But time will prove them wrong, if you point out the value of having both skills.

New players can make a lot of progress by droning the chord root note till they catch how the melody goes, and also by playing just the accent-beat notes of each measure to learn the tune's skeleton, then they can start to fill in the teeny-tiny notes between them as they learn how the tune sounds and how the timing is interpreted. You'll need to let the note-readers know that that as tunes are transcribed, the rhythmic interpretations are not always accurate to how it would actually be played-- that a lot of notes are played dotted/halved to swing the tune and bounce it into a lively groove. If their background is classical/violin, they will tend to insist on using the Fakebook as a score instead of as a starting point.

For your strummers, you will need to teach them about watching the other players' hand positions to catch the chords.

~Susan