Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Bluegrass Music and WoodSongs



Last night, we had a celebration of Bluegrass music on WoodSongs.

And today, I am very, VERY tired :)

Bluegrass of course, is a passion of mine. Although I make no claims to be a "bluegrass" musician, but I've enjoyed playing with and recording with many bluegrass artists. And I love the gentle, family, and community nature of the music. Folk music used to be that way. Good, down home music brings the very best out in people. Like Bill Monroe said, it draws folks together and makes them friendly.

I often thought that if Sadam played the banjo he would have been a much nicer man ... might even still be alive today.

But last night was pretty amazing. First of all, the WoodSongs crew, all volunteers, did an AMAZING job of putting that show together. They come in at 1 in the afternoon, assembled the stage, set up cameras, ran cables, set mics, did sound check, brought in dinner, took care of the artists, sold their CDs ... let me go on stage and stumble around for an hour ... then rip it all down and packed it away in about 40 minutes.

It is like watching a ballet without the tutus.

JD Crowe, Ronnie Reno, Cherryholmes, Scott Napier and a band of teenagers called Kentucky Sassafrass were all on the stage. It was a monumental exercise in mental organization to get that show done in 59 minutes and 30 seconds with no editing ... but we did it. Very few mistakes, other than the fact that most of the notes I had on stage were wrong. But I have that same problem in life no less WoodSongs.

Governor Fletcher was on the show and signed a declaration making bluegrass the official music of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. What a very nice guy. And he stayed for the entire show. At the end, he even came back on stage while I did the TV commercial, holding my banjo in his three piece suite.

Now, I'm not a political person ... I could care less whether you are Democratic, Republicratic, or Automatic ... but when a guy has a freaking ROOT CANAL in the afternoon and comes on an international broadcast in front almost 2 million people plus a theater audience of 400 without even mentioning it, well ... 'nuff said on that.

Of course, everything was going great until I met this heart-stoppingly beautiful woman in the lobby. Brunette hair, soft smiling eyes, an hour-glass figure to die for ... she looked like my Martin guitar - only it jiggled. She even came up and talked to me. And I'll be darned I couldn't stop thinking about that and it kept me up half the night.

That's why I'm so tired today.

Folk on, my friends.

2 comments:

Jim Monaghan said...

Michael -

Did you at least get a phone number? ;)

Anonymous said...

And does she have a sister (preferably one who plays banjo!)