I see "song ownership" not as a limitation on what I can do-- I see it as a higher form of cooperation between peers, where everyone wins. In the end, it means more songs are sung. Whahoo!

Around here, anyone who is jamming with anyone else can be assumed to be working up the piece in question for an upcoming gig, and it's a small community. There is no need to pre-empt what someone else hopes to use as a major piece in coming weeks. For example, Pete Peterson's new band "Well Tempered String Band" is coming here for a CD release party I'm organizing, and they sent me the new CD to start the promo process. Well I'm madly in love with at least one of their pieces, but I sure won't be using it till they've been here and premiered it. Maybe in a year I will be comfortable using it myself. Then, it will be my turn, my privilege, to say how and from whom I learned it. Tho I am dying to sing it tonight, it will be even sweeter to me to sing it once I've heard it from them, live, on a lovely evening with rapt-faced friends sighing along with me.

My priority, when I sing, is transmitting a wonderful song. If people have already heard it, of course it's nice to evoke whatever memory of it they may have... but I'd rather present them with something new and wonderful, that they can make their own as they drive home, or sing along with a recording of it like we all have done.

I think one of the great things friends can do for one another is pass along a song we spot, if we think it would be a great song for them.... I've swapped a few that way, and always been glad to have been thought of in that way.

I draw a distinction though between songs for perfomance sets and songs for singalongs, because we are doing both now. From this same CD, I will use the gospel pieces in area church services I play for, as soon as I think I have them learned well enough to do in our own style, tho perhaps not right away with the group that will hear the band.

~Susan