Direct off the train back from Boston last night, I headed to the single worst rehearsal of my entire life. I had been hired into a small jazz combo (trumpet, two saxes, singer and rhythm section), meant to play for several local ballroom dance schools’ upcoming dances and competitions. The group was led by a ballroom dancer-turned-guitarist, and by the end of the first tune, I was mainly thinking, “this guy should have just stuck to dancing.”

Beyond starting the song several times in completely wrong keys, the guitarist continued to misplay chords, fall out of time, and lose his place in the simple twelve-bar form. As he was the only instrument laying down the chord changes, his poor playing dragged us all down, making playing the melody coherently (much less soloing in any approximation of jazz style) virtually impossible. Things went from bad to worse when, after butchering our way through a couple of standards copied out of a fake book, he whipped out a set of arrangements he wanted us to work on. Unfortunately, the arrangements weren’t for jazz combo, but for string quartet.

Still, the situation wasn’t completely unredeemable. At one point, the guitarist stepped out to find another power plug for his failing amplifier, giving the rest of us a chance to talk amongst ourselves.

“Look,” one of the saxes pointed out, “if we can convince him to bring in a piano player and a bassist, we can definitely make this work.”

“That might work,” responded the singer, “as long as we also turn the volume on his amp all the way down.”

So, when the guitarist returned, we all chimed in (as respectfully as possible), pointing out that perhaps a pianist and bass might help us achieve a more dance-appropriate traditional big-band sound, as well as free up the guitar to play soloistically rather than simply strum out chords for us to follow. Apparently, we were rather convincing, as we left at the end of the rehearsal deputized to call pianists and bass players we knew who might be able to help us redeem the situation.

Still, there was at least one upside to the evening (two, if you count that I got paid): as poor as our playing was as a group with the deadweight of the guitarist dragging behind, it was still remarkably clear that the rest of the players were really, really good. I got home and started woodshedding, practicing hard the jazz skills I’d let slack off slightly over a stretch of months predominated by orchestral and classical chamber playing. With a solution to the guitar problem in sight, I certainly didn’t want my bandmates leaving next week’s rehearsal thinking, “sure, that was better, but now how are we going to cover up that trumpet player as well?”