Mother Nature makes her own music.
This little brook gently runs through the Alvarado Campground, following a path of least resistance on it’s way to join a larger river, and then, with that river, rambling all the way to the closest ocean.
Nature’s music refreshes, doesn’t ask for applause, or notoriety, recording contracts, or interviews.
Nature’s songbook is this little brook, wind moving through pine needles in tall trees on a cool clear night, a woodpecker carving his home inside a tree trunk, the rustling of brush as a brown bear scurries off the highway and back into the woods, waves coming into shore as the tide rises, hail hitting the roof of your car in a freak summer storm,deer antlers striking one another as bucks fight for dominance.
In a couple of days, I’ll hear fish songs at Hermit Lakes, breaking the lake’s surface as they greedily gobble dragonflies.
Back in Albuquerque, city melodies will be much more staccato and complex. There will be car horns, sirens,bacon sizzling in a frying pan, heavy equipment taking down condemned buildings, nail guns installing shingles, gunshots, light classic jazz in Starbucks, the sound of a well struck golf ball on it’s way towards the pin.
This brook is a comforting, simple, legato melody.
Mother Nature, as I hear her this morning, is a very good composer.
Her melodies remind me that there is no need to hurry.
I don’t think I need to change anything here.
It is good, at this moment, to just be still and listen.
In 1936, television wasn’t even someone’s dream.
In 1936, families and kids brought their dimes to this theater, looked at the marquee, found seats in what now are uncomfortable chairs, and watched westerns and newsreels from around a world just coming out of a Great Depression. The concession inside the theater would have had sweet treats for the kids, high school ushers who showed people to their seats with little flashlights, and a grizzled World War 1 vet still seeing his war on the screen.
The theater changed management in 1963 ,and, again, thirty years later.
Now, the Jones Theater shows movies on weekend nights and has one Sunday matinee.
Theater’s these days can’t compete with Netflix or Amazon Prime, cable TV, an internet streaming world news, 24/7, as it happens.
Now, people go to the theater to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, eat popcorn, and remember what it was like when they were little kids visiting Grandma.
In 1936, you never would have seen a movie about Elton John, or anyone like him.
Our tolerance for difference has been irretrievably expanded.
One of the more entertaining bands at the festival, playing numerous sets over the four days, is the Kody Norris Show.
The Kody Norris band features traditional bluegrass along with dancing, clowning around, comedy, and audience participation tossed in for dessert.
Wearing bright blue and red suits on stage,their group musicianship is high and all our crowd spirits under the big tent this afternoon are in fine shape.
Kody, who is soon to marry the group’s fiddle player, Mary Rachel, asks the audience for tips on making his imminent marriage successful.
One of the best audience suggestions is , ” She is always right. ”
Everyone laughs, when they hear this wisdom,except for the ladies. They all nod their heads in total agreement and give their husbands, boy friends and significant others stern “You should be doing this ” looks.
We catch the band several times between Thursday and Sunday, and each performance is just a little bit different but not too different.
Another good tip for Kody, as a soon to be husband ,would be – don’t sing the same song too many times.
Variety is always needed in performing, regardless of what kind it is.
The High Mountain Hay Fever Bluegrass Festival runs July 10-13 at the Bluff and Summit Park in Westcliff, Colorado.
A huge circus tent is set up in the town park with spectacular views of the mountains and valley nearby. In the 2010 census, the population of Westcliff was 568, up from 417 in 2000. 15 bands played this year and festival attendance was close to 4000. The Festival is a fundraiser for children of the area and helps with medical services for the town. In the last fifteen years, the event has raised almost $600,000 towards its charitable goals.
In a town of 568, you know everyone, and everyone is involved in their town. There are volunteers running shuttles that pick us up in the festival parking lot and run us up the hill to the music tent. Volunteers haul trash away, direct traffic, provide first aid services, sell tickets ,and one of them wraps the four day green wristband around my wrist and fastens it.securely. If I remove the band I will have to buy another to get back inside the grounds. For four days, we listen to and enjoy all the banjo, guitar, mandolin, upright bass and vocal music we can handle.
When, as one of the musicians says on stage, talking about a song he wrote, you move from a country where seventy percent of people lived in the country and farmed, to a country where seven percent of the population feeds the other 93%, you are seeing real change.
When people don’t know where their food comes from, they tend to lose their humility.
When the country disappears from America, we have lost ourselves.
Bluegrass should be in every music collection, even if you don’t know where the country is and would never go there of your own free will.
” All of Me ” is a jazz standard, a song called often at jam sessions and performances, a standard that has been going strong since the 40’s.
Tonight’s performance brings back the Big Band era after World War 2 when ballrooms,in big as well as small towns, turned lights down and let dancers cuddle through the melody with their feet making tiny squares on the dance floors as emotions arced back and forth between husbands and wives, lovers, friends in the process of becoming more than friends.
The featured vocalist this evening is a transfer to the band from Virginia and is introduced by Chris, happy to have her singing with the band.
Lillian caresses the song and it holds up well, even if it is played by musicians wearing camouflage pants and black T shirts.
In the old days,these musicians would have worn suits and ties and the vocalist would have packed herself into a Las Vegas torch singer dress.
Music, as does art,literature, and drama, captures the mood. time, and place it was composed and reveals how we were, how we are, and how we believe we should be.
” All of me”, tonight, wraps a generation in it’s arms and gives them all a big gentle honest kiss.
Dancing with your honey in a big ballroom ,with lots of other couples, made the evils of the war front drift away till reveille sounded the next morning and sent you back into battle..
Feeling love in a hate filled world was what all G.I.’s dreamed about in their foxholes, in the middle of the Pacific on a ship, or hidden in the clouds on a bombing run over enemy territory.
In the American Civil War, drummer boys led troops into battle and were one of the first to be shot by opposing forces. Paintings in the White House show George Washington surrounded by a drummer and fife player when he was surviving Valley Forge and winning our disagreement with Britain. GI’s in World War 2 were entertained by singing show biz legends at the front when they had a rare break from spilling blood in someone else’s fight. Music and fighting men/women have always had things in common.
Tonight, the 44th Army New Mexico National Guard Band is doing a free concert at the Albuquerque Museum of Art. Food and drink is available, crowds are good for a Thursday night, and the band performs jazz standards, big band charts with solos and lots of rhythm. During the show, a female soldier joins the band on stage and belts out songs for an appreciative crowd.
Everyone has to play their part well tonight to make the whole group sound good. Like the military unit, that they are, the soldiers must play in time, play in tune, play their written and improvised parts in the style and spirit required. Their marching orders are to follow the conductor when he moves his hands in front of them, left and right, up and down.
After the big band plays, a smaller ensemble of brass players march onto the stage, literally, and play rousing New Orleans brass band music.
After the concert, the audience and some of the soldiers, hang out on a nice summer evening, not in a hurry to leave.
Music brings people together,in spite of wars ,and keeps them together, whether they are military, or not.
Greg has been playing since he was a kid, a professional since his teens. He has toured the world, made recordings, teaches , creates instructional aids for aspiring musicians, promotes his music, travels extensively and is among the best at what he does.
His wife, Judy, is on piano and plays professionally in the Chicago area. Tom, on bass, tours with Lee Konitz but is a guest sitting in tonight, much to our surprise and joy.
Listening to Greg is analogous to standing next to a pro golfer on the practice tee after a tournament,watching him hit three hundred yard drives followed by wedge shots to within a few feet of the driving range pin.
Fluency, flexibility, precision, attitude, creativity, are required to make this jazz music sound good, all in the right combinations, like a spectacular gourmet meal served at Chef Ramsey’s finest world restaurant, without Chef Ramsey.
What’s possible to do on the saxophone gets a whole lot bigger this evening.
Seeing how far you can go with gifts you have been given is always praiseworthy..
I didn’t get a builder’s tour but this birdhouse comes with a sturdy shingle roof, spacious front porch, and a back door that can be opened to clean inside. The home’s front door is a round hole, big enough for a small sparrow to enter but small enough to keep out a coyote, hawk, or house cat.
This is one of Charlie’s birdhouse masterpieces..
The last one he made was more complex, a bird mansion looking like a traditional New Mexico Pueblo, complete with ladders to the roof and a ceremonial Kiva. We all agreed it should be hanging in an art gallery but it is destined for Tennessee for grand kid’s and a lucky bluebird family, winner of the Greater South Birdhouse Raffle.
Us Charlie supporters haven’t been on line yet to see what the going price is for “custom” birdhouses . Charlie makes his for free for family and friends so he has the best price in the world. Even a dirt poor rice farmer in Vietnam can’t sell his birdhouse for nothing.
If I were a bird, I would park my feathers inside this roomy mansion, turn on my Netflix and watch Hitchcock’s ” The Birds” ,or a documentary on Charlie “Bird” Parker with my favorite beverage by my recliner.
I would move into this birdhouse now, in a second, if i could just squeeze through the small round front door.
Living without a mortgage would be liberating.
In the lobby of the Albuquerque County Line Barbecue, there is a special love machine for testing your love potential.
This ” Love Machine ” costs a quarter for its diagnosis, and, for your quarter, you can see how you measure up on the love chart by putting your hand firmly around a special handle, squeezing firmly, and waiting for your diagnosis to shoot off like firecrackers, Roman candles, or duds.
We humans like to measure. We hook up our cars to diagnostic apparatus, we use dip sticks to check oil and transmission fluids, we use IQ tests to measure intellectual ability, we use polls to decide who to elect to be our next President.
Whether this ‘Love” test is really accurate, scientific, or needed, is something academics can argue over beers around the barby at University picnics.
For those, in love, they don’t really need a machine to tell them how they feel.
A better sign of whether you are in love, or not, is to look at your credit card statement.
Be Happy – Stay Happy.
Under the ” Home of the Big Rib ” rib, as you walk towards one of several back dining rooms at the County Line Barbecue, is a lucky chair.
We all have our favorite chairs. Yours might be an old recliner that you found on the sidewalk with a ‘ Take Me ” sign pinned to it like a donkey’s tail. It might be an ancient folding chair you drag out of your garage and open up on your front porch like folks did in the old days. Your favorite chair might have a hard back, torn cushions, scratched legs where your dog or cat wanted to get your attention.
My favorite “LUCKY’ chair, this evening, is made from horseshoes. I sit down in it to improve my luck as I listen to the ” Radiators ” slip into a blues tune in the bar, filled tonight with patrons getting tipsy.
Some artisan has collected these worn horseshoes and has welded them into a quirky,quite comfortable chair, and, as I sit and tap my right toe to the music, I feel my luck coming back in spades.
Barbecue, horseshoes, cattle, branding irons and the Old West go hand in hand and those old time cowboys sure didn’t live on just jerky, pitching horseshoes and playing poker. They knew a few things about the value of luck when they crossed hostile Indian country.
If sitting in a chair made from horseshoes can bring me observable positive consequences, you can be damn sure I’ll be back here soon for another therapy session.
Superstitions, I have heard from the superstitious, are not always false.
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