In July, Meri and I went out to Oregon for her 45th High School class reunion in Lake Oswego. She's been looking forward to this for over a year and neither of us was disappointed. We stayed in the only lake-side hotel and had a nice room over-looking the lake. We came in a day early and took advantage of the extra time to drive around Meri's childhood haunts. We visited her home where she grew up and I got a tour of all the places where she used to ride her horse and neck with old boy-friends.
The reunion activities were well-planned with a nice dinner at the country club on Friday, boat tours of the lake on Saturday morning and then a great party at the river-side home of one of her classmates that evening. I was invited to play a few Kingston Trio songs and everybody sang along.
We skipped the Sunday golf tournament to spend time with my brother, Gary, and his wife, Penny. They brought along the newest addition to the family, their grand-daughter, Lita. She's a bundle of personality and she took to Meri immediately. All in all, this trip was one of the highlights of our summer.
The next big event was the Mountain Music Festival in Manitou Springs. We look forward to this every year, and this festival was one of the best. Josh Fuller made the trek down from Beloit, Kansas, to perform with me, but he also ended up sitting in for Jim Moran in the group, "Chilly Winds". Jim left the Trio Fantasy Camp in Scottsdale with back and hip problems and wasn't able to make the Manitou Fest. Josh jumped in with little rehearsal and filled the spot without a hitch.
I was also honored to have John Birchler from "Chilly Winds" join us on a few tunes. John is a fabulous musician and he joined us on several songs to play banjo, guitar and sing.
Also on my stage was John Stewart's long-time bass player, Dave Batti. Dave's been a friend for years and it's been great to have a chance to play with him over the past three years, both at this festival and at our Concert For A Cure in 2005.
One of my favorite moments with Dave this year was the jam session on Saturday night at the Ancient Mariner bar. The jam started with about 5 banjo players (isn't that illegal?) and some other folks doing some Kingston Trio tunes. But after about an hour of that the folkies left (wimps!) and the dulcimer crowd took the stage. This turned into a true jam session with about 4 guys on dulcimers, Judy Piazza and others on various odd percussion instruments, a clarinet player, Dave Batti on bass and myself on 12-string. Dave and I glued ourselves to the back wall and just sort of provided a musical back-drop for some amazing stuff. But standing there next to Dave in that context I got to see him play in a whole different way than he normally does. He was weaving bass melodies around the dulcimers that just made the whole thing magical. He's a real gem!
I should explain a phenomena of the Mountain Music Festival that is a bit odd, but it's a reality and sort of a running joke in a way. There are two groups of musicians at this festival: the folkies and the dulcimer gang. It's hard to explain why this is, but the folkies tend to be a little more structured and, uh, perhaps more conservative. The dulcimer crowd is, for lack of a better description, a little more "hippy". They tend to approach their stage sets with less structure and their musical interaction is spontaneous and exciting. You can always predict how a Kingston Trio arrangement is going to go, but with the dulcimer players, it's like you're wondering what's coming around the next corner.
Strangely this division even extends to socializing to a degree. At the post-festival gathering at a local restaurant, without any conscious effort or organization, we ended up with a folkie table and a dulcimer table. We addressed this issue at one point because one of the acts, "Jubilant Bridge" sat at our table. It's a dulcimer/guitar duo from Golden - Willy plays dulcimer and Carol plays guitar. As I looked around the room and saw the way people had gravitated to each other I told Willy that he'd have to go sit at the dulcimer table but Carol could stay with the folkies. We all had a good laugh over it.
The summer ended last weekend with our trip to Wichita for Ben and Ragene Moore's birthday luau party. (See below.) With no rain in the forecast they had planned a beautiful out-door party in their lovely back yard. Ben's group, "The Ramblers" was scheduled to play a short set after dinner, followed by a 45-minute set by Josh and myself, with the addition of Larry Waggoner from "The Ramblers" on bass.
We arrived about 3:00 and got all set up, did our sound checks and then the guests started arriving. All went well as they carved up a roasted pig and served mai tais to over 100 guests. Around 5:00, we noticed that the sky was really getting dark. About a half hour later it started to sprinkle. Ok, fine - it'll pass. Uh-uh - it just got worse. As the rain intensified we all crowded together on the Moore's two covered decks. Then it really cut loose, with the wind blowing a blistering rain sideways into our protected areas, soaking the PA, all our instruments and the people.
We all scrambled to move everything into the house, hoping that the weather would improve momentarily. Well, the rain went on and on and gradually the guests started to lose patience and say their farewells. About 50 hard-cores stuck it out for another hour and finally about 7:30 the rain stopped and we decided to go ahead with the entertainment sans PA. We did an abbreviated set for the die-hards and then dried off our instruments and ate birthday cake.
We really felt badly for Ben and Ragene, who had been planning this party for months. They really worked hard (especially Ragene) to decorate the yard in Hawaiian style and provide for over 100 guests. It was almost perfect! I think those who stayed did enjoy the music, but we were all bummed out that Mother Nature chose that particular day to unleash her fury.
So now fall has arrived, the swimming pool isn't quite as inviting (especially with the cold I caught from being soaked to the bone last Saturday) and here we go into the next season. I have some interesting things on the horizon: I've been cast in a local production of "Pump Boys and Dinettes", a little musical about a group of guys who run a gas station (pump boys) and the girls across the street at the diner (dinettes). I'm one of the pump boys (duh!) and I'll be playing electric guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica and pedal steel. That's an instrument I haven't touched in over 30 years - we'll see if I remember anything.
In October, I've been asked to sing at a farewell party for our U.S. Representative, Tom Tancredo, who's leaving office at the end of the year. He was running for president up until the primaries, pushing his anti-illegal-immigration agenda, a subject that is very important to us. I'll be singing some of my "politically incorrect" songs, one of which caught Mr. Tancredo's ear early in his campaign. Several Colorado dignitaries will be in attendance to give our hero a special thank-you for his service to our state.
Then, in December I've been invited to do a Christmas show in Manitou Springs. More to come about both of these events. In the meantime, I'm back to writing my book, "Tales From The Roadside". I've been working on the outline all summer and jotting down ideas for various chapters. It's starting to come together and I hope I can finish writing it this winter.
I must admit, I get a little sad this time of year. I'm a summer boy and it just doesn't last long enough for me. "As the days dwindle down to a precious few, September - November..." Maybe somebody will offer us a vacation to the tropics this year!
Aloha...
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