Guitar and Drums Jam Session: Amazing Grace

• “Alright let’s go”
• “Let’s play some cornet”
• “Yeah, we’ll play cornet”
• …”I don’t have that on my pedal board, but yeah”
• Starting off with a warped guitar sound
• 0:42 – the drums are off to the races
• Starting off very mellow and unrushed
• BW Derge on the drums
• Nick Ring on the guitar
• Members of the defunct band Shaman Funk
• 1:55 – now getting into Amazing Grace
• 2:43 – drums start to pick up the rhythm
• Beautiful guitar work
• This goes out to all our loved ones we’ve lost in the past few years
• Aunts, Uncles, and In-laws… this one’s for you guys.
• 4:19 – getting the jam going
• 4:48 – nice landing
• 6:50 – more lively and triumphant vibe
• 7:13 – and the jam is over
• “How about now we just play it straight?”
• “Amazing Grace?”
• “Yeah, yeah.”
• “Aww, just a second.”
• {bad pun edited out}
• 7:28 – playing amazing grace “straight”
• 10:59 – entering the finale
• Kind of a clunky ending…
• “Dare I say, that was a beautiful jam”
• “It was beautiful!”

A raw, improvised take on Amazing Grace. The drums move with a slow, human pulse, heavy in places, more whispered in others, while the guitar bends the melody into something fragile and searching. The jam is polished, it feels lived‑in, shaped by the weight of the last few years and the people who aren’t here to hear it. What emerges is a spacious, emotional performance that honors loss without sinking into it, letting rhythm and tone carry the names we still hold onto.

The session carries a kind of quiet defiance: two musicians refusing to let grief flatten into silence. BW’s drumming feels like it’s searching for time, circling the melody with brushes, rim clicks, and low‑tuned resonance that lands like a heartbeat remembering itself. Nick’s guitar threads through that pulse with bends that waver on the edge of breaking, as if the melody is being rediscovered note by note.

As the piece opens up, the familiar hymn becomes a framework rather than a script. BW leans into dynamics: soft enough to feel like breath, loud enough to feel like release, while Nick stretches the harmonic edges, letting chords ring long enough for the room to answer back. The improvisation becomes a conversation about absence: the pauses matter as much as the notes. There’s a sense that both players are listening for something beyond each other, something that used to be here.

By the end, the melody returns with more weight, not as a climax but as a recognition. The jam doesn’t resolve grief; it acknowledges it. The final measures feel like a benediction offered without ceremony, just two musicians using the tools they have to honor the people they’ve lost. It’s intimate, imperfect, and deeply human, the kind of performance that lingers long after the last note fades.