Thanksgiving 2021
Something vitally cool happened this weekend.
But I have to dive back into my history to set up a proper appreciation of it.
In 1976, I joined a band. That's a gross oversimplification, but I've told that story elsewhere. In 1980, one of the guitarists left our little college ghetto for graduate studies in Oregon. The erratic mandolin player, fresh in the throes of sobriety, for inexplicable reasons moved to the same Oregon town. The remaining guitarist and I dove into the country music we loved, and played less of the reggae and rock'n'roll we were famous for torturing in an acoustic hypergrass fashion. But the two of us, and a carload of our closest friends, drove to Oregon to visit, and play again. We did a few shows, met a few folks, joined a few jams, and went up to Portland to see the Grateful Dead. During that show, Mt. St. Helens blew her top. Monumental trip. I had wanted out of Southern California, specifically Orange County, all my life, and the Santa Barbara area was a sinkhole for folks who didn't already have money, and I decided this was the time, and chance, to move to Oregon myself. So I did. The only regret I've ever had was that the remaining guitarist wasn't inclined to leave the Southland, and we had so few chances to continue to play together. As time went on, the mandolin player went off to the big city to study helicopter repair, eventually leading to an international career, and the lead guitarist graduated and found work in Palo Alto. Leaving me in Oregon. But by then I knew lots of musicians, had fallen in with old-time fiddle players, and ran into, against all odds, another mandolin thrasher who could sing, one who had a background in theater, a wicked sense of humor, and could play straight man to my wackiest story-telling without ever breaking character. We put together a wickedly funny vaudeville act and played the Northwest for eight years, beloved of our fans, but without anything resembling getting rich. Time, careers, marriages, and divorces, eventually split up the act, but we never lost contact. His path didn't allow him the time to keep up with the music, but he did become decently wealthy. I have no claim to wealth, but a week never went by that I didn't play music. Time passed.
Fast forward thirty years. The people who never left the Isla Vista and Santa Barbara area got it into their heads to stage a reunion of sorts. It was a very volatile, political time, and there were more people our age then than at any time in human history, and the ties bertween us all were very close. Maybe every generation feels that way, but I do believe that these were special times and made special connections. The word went out. Friends invited friends invited friends. The advances in internet connectivity made easily what would have been impossible connections even five years earlier. Plans were made. Hundreds responded.
The guitarist in Palo Alto had retired from a successful career and bought a home in both Santa Barbara and in Oregon. He and I, his wife, and a keyboard player I knew from local theater, had a band together. We came. The mandolin player lived in Germany. He came. The rhythm guitarist had never left that area. He was there. We played the same music that we had played thirty years earlier, standing on the same stage, in the same places, in front of the same crowd, after a thirty year gap in time. And, we didn't suck, and the crowd couldn't get enough of it. It was glorious.
The thing is, for me, this was the first music I had ever played, and I owed my very existence as a musician to being accepted by these three, and to those volatile and intense performances we did. And, after thirty years, I never expected to hear that music again. I never expected to play that music again. There was no possibility of duplicating that music with any other group of musicians. And there we were, playing exactly that music again, with all the verve and abandon of our youth, with the enthusiastic acceptance of the audience of our youth. I cannot find the words to express this. I can only hint at the joy.
This weekend, I went to Tacoma to spend Thanksgiving with Michael and his family, something I sometimes do. Covid and their internship in Minnesota really screwed up last year, but it also has given him time to dabble with the mandolin and guitar again, something he left behind along the career path. We picked up the instruments and played about half an hour for the small family crowd. To an enthusiastic response. We were sloppy, carelessly remembering the old arrangements, introductions, comedy, and banter, laughing at ourselves as we went, enthusiastic and exuberant, and clearly demonstrated why our old audiences laughed and applauded.
We haven't played those songs together in thirty years. I never thought I'd hear us play those songs again.
I can only hint at the joy.
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