Before You Learn to Solo, You Learn to Listen
One of my favorite things about playing music on Friday nights at Moody Brews is watching parents follow their kids around, hoping to keep them out of trouble but giving them just enough freedom to explore and be curious without causing a scene. I specifically remember that part of my own life with both of my kids.
I was once told that if I ever wanted to know if my music was any good, I should watch how the children react to it. They have no filter. I see this everywhere now. Many adults are hyperaware of how they react to something, often controlling it based on how they think they should react. Kids don't have that "learned" skill yet. They either feel it or they don't.
When a child approaches the bandstand out of curiosity, I'll often see a parent pull them back, worried their kid might disrupt what's happening. I like to meet them halfway and finish the connection the kid already started. I keep some light plastic shakers close by, ones that aren't too loud or too heavy, for a young, curious mind.
The other night, I watched several little ones making their way around the square as we started playing our first set at Moody Brews, never really settling in to one place long enough for their parents to disengage. One young boy zigzagged the perimeter of the courtyard with his toy excavator in hand, looking for the right place to dig, and made his way directly in front of the drum set. I could tell he was interested in the sound because the toy hit the ground and immediately ceased to exist in his mind.
His dad started pointing out the different instruments to him, whispering their names in his ear. I saw my opportunity and grabbed a shaker to offer him. The smile of realization that crossed his dad's face as I walked over hit home. I could hear him say, "Harper, look!" The little guy cautiously accepted the sand shaker from me and shook it a couple of times. That's all it took. He instinctively began bouncing his entire body to the beat, waving the shaker around. He was now a part of the band, creating music with us.
Once the soloists finished and we played the last part of the tune, I grabbed the microphone and introduced the band while the audience was still clapping. "Chris Parker playing the piano, Ian on bass, Addison on drums." I then added without pausing, "And for the first time, y'all heard Harper on the shaker!" The crowd went wild. The smile that appeared on Harper's face when he heard his name and realized that everyone was cheering for him was incredible.
That's part of what a jam teaches you. Before you learn to solo, you learn to listen. You can't sit in with a band you're not hearing. Harper knew that before he could tie his shoes. He just felt the beat and moved with it. Most of what I try to pass on to musicians is some version of that same lesson. They just forgot they used to know it.
This is a large part of why I do what I do.
For anyone who hasn't been, a jam isn't the same as a concert. Nobody's rehearsed anything necessarily. A band starts a tune, and other musicians who showed up hoping to play get waved up to sit in, either one at a time or a few at once. You call a tune, count it off, and find out together what happens. It's all about listening.
This gig didn't start as a jam session.
On May 19, 2025, at 3:12 in the afternoon, I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. "Hey Dave, this is Josiah Moody. We are looking at 5-7 for jazz. We could move that forward or back a little bit. Let me know how that works for y'all."
We landed on 6-8 that Friday. Just a duo. Chris Parker on keys, me on sax.
A week later, another text. "Hey man...feel like running it back this Friday in the Square? So far, the weather is looking beautiful."
That was it. We were in.
By June, we'd added an hour to leave space for a friend to sit in with us at the end of the night. Nobody called it anything yet. It was just Friday, but you could feel something starting to shift. Word started to spread. Former students started finding their way out.
We didn't set out to start a jam session. It built itself, one Friday at a time, out of a text message and then another one, out of people who wanted somewhere to listen and somewhere to sit in. That part isn't new to Little Rock. It's old. It goes back further than Moody Brews, further than Pettaway Square, back to rooms that don't exist anymore. This city has always had music like this happening somewhere, mostly undersung, mostly word of mouth. Moody Brews happens to be one place where it's living right now.
Chris and I still start every Friday close to how we started that first one. Two friends, a keyboard, a saxophone, and no plan beyond playing what feels right. Everything that happens after that, who sits in, who shows up early, who brings a kid who grows up into the music instead of just watching it, is up to the night. That's what the jam at Moody Brews has become.
Every week, we check the weather and make a game-day decision. If it’s too hot, we might push the start time back an hour to wait for the sun to go down. If it’s looking like rain, we might reschedule. Let’s be honest, Arkansas weather is unpredictable at best. So, we always say, “Every Friday that the weather is nice, we’ll be there.”
— Dave Williams II