Of late, I've found myself in any number of musical situations but I am beginning to suspect that I have no real musical niche. Most recently I was invited to attend a friend's birthday party. It was largely populated by older musical cohorts that were, as far as I could tell, all of the same sort of musical inclination, rock and roll dance band types. They all seemed to have electric guitars and/or basses or played drums and sang past versions of old R&B, Blues or R&R hits but all within that narrow electric dance/bar band kind of formula. Some of these guys were even the founding fathers of certain genres of early rock. I seemed to be the odd guy. I can do very little of that stuff and don't really consider myself as having fallen into that form in any hard-core fashion. Similarly, I was asked to join in at a more strictly categorized "blues" gathering and again I found that my non-electric leanings left me on the fringe. Most of what was being represented was electric blues with loud screaming guitar solos, harmonica solos, drum solos, sax solos, you know the type. I don't exactly fit into all that either but have explored and enjoy acoustic blues. My attempts to fit within the bluegrass/fiddle tune realm have left me just as isolated. It seems that if you can't wail some kind of gut-wrenching solo at blazing break-neck speed on your instrument of choice or pierce the heavens with your vocals you might just as well pack your bags and go because that seems to be all that they really crave. Their motto seems to be: If you play too slow, you got to go.

So to summarize, I don't have lightning speed or mind bending technical skill vocally or instrumentally. I tend to shy away from gigs with excessive volume. I prefer the acoustic realm and concert situations to performing in bars or restaurants where the focus of attention can easily be divided by other forms of entertainment offered by such establishments like muzak, juke boxes, televisions, dart boards, pool tables, pin ball and gambling machines or clinking dishes, screeching espresso machines, annoying under paid wait persons, micromanaging managerial staff. To top it off, I have a song bag that is not dominated by any particular genre and both my instrumentation and stylistic approach to playing limits me from most standard categories. Rockers think I'm too folky. Folkies think I'm too rockish. Bluesers think I'm too acoustic. Bluegrassers are certain I ain't one of them with. I play too slow for fiddlers, most bluegrassers and swing players and possess no great solo chops to be desired by any of the above. I'm too new for the old timey folks and too old timey for the pop scene. I'm not traditional enough for the preservationists. I don't sing enough of my own stuff for the songwritter gigs and sing too much of my own stuff to get other gigs. Jug banders say my instrumentation is wrong. (Go figure, this from guys who fancy huffing and sputtering into crockery.) I'm not political enough for the politically bent and not funny enough for the comically twisted.

I know you can't please everyone, but I wonder, just where my niche is, if there even is such a place. To date I have not found a place among others of like mind. Have I inadvertently painted myself into a musical corner via my eclectic musical pursuits? So many of those here seem to have a much clearer understanding of where your place is. You can easily state just what kind of music you play and name the type of musical category it falls under. Okay, maybe I'm not actually looking for a category to fit into. I'm happy enough being the square peg that won't fit into the round hole. I guess I'm just wondering if there are others out there who have come to the same conclusion and what you do you call the kind of music you play?