Stet Lab

I was on my way, one Monday evening in January, to a trad session with my melodica, when a different music drew me into Stet Lab at The Roundy.

Han-earl Park was making good interesting sounds on guitar and pedals and stuff; Kevin Terry played the cello, what a lovely sound, and later Jesse Ronneau found some fun wacky stuff to do with it; Anthony O’Connor did some cool bendy things to his bass guitar; and vocalist Veronica Tadman made some sweet vocal shreeps that I thought people only did in the privacy of their own home.

And then the friendly, encouraging folk there drew me into the session. You can listen to that if you want.

I played with Korhan Erel and Kevin Terry. Korhan seemed to be playing something like a mobile phone and a Wii handset with the computer. I don’t know what he was doing, but he did it well! Kevin was playing something I could recognise as an instrument, namely a guitar. A lovely encouraging steady stream of things I could recognise as notes. I played some stuff that I couldn’t recognise as a tune, but the audience seemed to recognise it as valid, cos they clapped, and even laughed once or twice at the funny bits!

It was my first time (can’t ya tell?!).

It was fun at the time, but was it music? I’m going along again this Monday to listen, enjoy and learn. And I’ll leave the melodica at home.

In the words of my 16 yr old Liam, when he had a listen to the Stet Lab recording: “It’s like a club where you and your cronies can get together and make weird noises.”