hours playing

[keymandoguy]

What is the longest time you have picked ? I am talking straight through picking non stop. About 2 or 3 times a month I wind up playing about 3 hours I dont think my fingertips can go very much over that without a break. Just curious if that is about average ? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[Don Christy]

Sometimes on Sat morning, I'll play for about 3-4 hours. Also, some jams go for about 3-4 hours. My fingers are prtty tired after that amount. Of course, it's not really straight through, as I usually take a few breaks for a beer.
Don

[legendarytones]

I use to play in underground Atlanta in a night club back in '72. We have started our first set at 8:00 pm finished our last one at 1:00 am, then picked on after the club closed till sunrise. I have played non-stop for 6 straight hours. One song and tune after the other. When that happens you are in the zone and picking some good music. I usually practice for at lest 3 hours per day.

[Dale Ludewig]

The guys I play with- we normally play 3-4 hours nonstop..Then when I get home, I'm so wound up I play another hour or so. At a thing like IBMA or some other major bluegrass festival, jamming excuse, 6-8 hours is about normal, ending about 4 in the morning. There's nothing like it if you get with the right players to improve your skills remarkably in one night.

[knockwood]

A friend of mine once played for 16 years straight. He was playing in a subway station one day when a well-meaning passerby accidentally whanged him in the forehead with a JFK half dollar. From that point on he just went kind of batty and refused to put down his mandolin. It wasn't long before he lost his job as a professional juggler, and most of his friends skipped out around the second day when he began soiling himself. I tried to talk to him a couple times during this period just to see what was what, but he'd only "speak" in a kind of scat that didn't make much sense. Thankfully, passing pedestrians continued to drop coins at his feet during the entire period, and now and then I'd collect the change and pay a local deli to stop by and feed him sandwiches and beer. It probably would have gone on forever if he hadn't tripped over a pigeon one day and taken a fatal landing on his head, being unable to break the fall with his hands as he was right in the middle of a wicked rendition of "Staten Island Hornpipe." I never did find out what kind of strings he had on that mandolin.

[J. Mark Lane]

He's the man who never returned! (I always wondered what happened to him.)

[Dale Ludewig]

"lost his job as a professional jugler"............
"soiled himself"................

Mark- not only is this guy the one that never returned, god bless Hootenany, but Knockwood has done a good one. I believe he has the fish hook out.

You know, I was born the son of poor black parents and still managed to be raised by white folk on a farm near a tiny town in norther Illinois. Walked to school every day for 2 1/2 mile with a bucket of **** in each hand.

And I still managed, after all my challenges and shortcomings, which are many and some public, to practice everyday at least an hour or so, except for the manic periods of 4-5 hours when my wife's gone on business.

Which reminds me, where's that mando?.............