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All ages welcome – Merlefest 25

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Merlefest has a multi-generational flavor built into its DNA that was on full display Saturday.

The festival’s patriarch, Doc Watson (top of post), took his turn at age 89 on the main stage that bears his name and that of his late son Merle for an hour-long love-fest by musical friends who have played with him since the 1970s.  As soon as the last chorus of Will the Circle Be Unbroken rang out, the Snyder Family Band – featuring 16-year-old Zeb Snyder playing some amazing flatpicked guitar along with his 13-year-old fiddle playing sister Samantha – took over on the cabin stage to showcase that roots music is in good hands with the new generation.  It was like that all day.

I was dragging when I arrived on Saturday morning, but found a pick-me-up that’s better than coffee:  Jeffrey Broussard & The Creole Cowboys.

Playing the pumping accordion that’s the heart and soul of Creole music, Broussard and the Cowboys rocked out on traditional Zydeco tunes such as Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You (described by the bassist as, “Don’t take no wooden nickles”) and Baby Please Don’t Go Down to New Orleans (Cause I Love You So).

19-year-old Sierra Hull (above) with her band Highway 111 was next up at the Creekside Stage, which was Mandolin Central on Saturday afternoon.  Hull is a prodigious talent who is growing into maturity as an artist and a band leader.  They featured songs from her most recent release Daybreak and demonstrated why she was the first bluegrass musician to get Boston’s Berklee College of Music’s prestigious Presidential Scholarship.  Hull also made everyone in the audience feel old when she introduced the bass player as “The only member of the band old enough to rent a car.”  Ouch!  What the hell was I doing at age 19!

Bluegrass veteran Claire Lynch (above and below with The Claire Lynch Band) took the main stage mid-afternoon and demonstrated right off the bat why she’s such a festival favorite.  Playing with her band – which includes two previous winners of Merlefest instrumental contests plus premier bassist Mark Schatz – she showed what a mixture of prodigious young talent and exceptional experience can produce.  May Be a Little Bit Tight Tonight was the perfect kick-off number for a sharp 45-minute set.  Of course it helps when you have one of the best voices in bluegrass, country, and roots music at your core.

Fans and performers are in close proximity at Merlefest. You can be walking through the instrument tent and see banjo phenom Noam Pikelny (below) signing an instrument, or be face-to-face with two of the most influential mandolin players – and musicians – of their generation, Sam Bush (middle below) and Chris Thile (third photo below), as they prepare to take the stage.  There’s great accessibility to these talented musicians, even in the middle of 80,000 people.

Following Lynch’s set, I had to make some choices, thanks to the amazing amount of talent at Merlefest and the limited number of hours in the day.  I caught the opening song of Tony Rice’s set on the Watson Stage, but quickly left to return to the Creekside for one of my favorite events of Merlefest:  Mando Mania (photos below).  For those who can’t get enough mandolin, this is your afternoon!

Hosted by North Carolina mandolin player Tony Williamson, this year’s Mando Mania featured Joe Walsh of the Gibson Brothers, Chris Thile (above) of the Punch Brothers (and Nickel Creek fame), Sam Bush, and Sierra Hull.  The set basically consists of one of the players suggesting a tune, and then everyone swapping solos for a couple of times through the lineup.  All are monster mandolin players. Chris Thile, however, is from another planet.

This year, the end of Mando Mania was scheduled against the beginning of my other “can’t miss” event: the Hillside Album Hour hosted by The Waybacks.  And they are on opposite sides of the college where the festival is held.  Up a BIG hill.  Yikes!  I had to run.

Begun a few years ago when James Nash of The Waybacks wanted to play an hour of Led Zeppelin tunes “just to annoy some folks,” the Hillside Album Hour (named after the stage where it is held – see crowd at this year’s event above) has become its own phenomenon.  Nash selects a classic rock album to cover and asks a variety of guests to join the band.  The name of the album isn’t released prior to the opening chords, but clues are released on Facebook and everyone tries to guess the identity of this year’s featured album.  My last visit to Merlefest was for Sticky Fingers.  It is imperative that you be there for the opening chords, or you’ll miss half the fun.

I made it (and have the t-shirt to prove it), although my knees will never be the same after an hour clinging to the top of the hill trying desperately not to slide down into the patrons below me.  When Nash hit the opening chords of Purple Haze from the Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced album (#15 on Rolling Stone’s Best 500 rock albums), the crowd exploded.  At the end of the first tune, Nash said, “Bet you didn’t see that coming.  Your reaction to those opening chords was worth it!”  John Cowan singing Hey Joe was a highlight for me, but the entire show was terrific.

The evening sets began with Doc and friends – with the friends carrying the musical load.  Cowan again hit a musical highlight – one that was very emotional for Doc and everyone else – by singing Don’t That Road Look Rough and Rocky for Doc and his wife Rosa Lee.  There were more than a few people dabbing at their eyes when Cowan’s beautiful tenor voice sang, “Don’t my baby look the sweetest, when she’s in my arms asleep.”

The Punch Brothers (above) – an amazing group of talented musicians fronted by the other-worldly Chris Thile (below) – were the first of the evening’s two headliners.  Noam Pikelny dead-panned, when introducing the wonderful Jimmie Rodgers tune Brakeman’s Blues, that the job of “Singing Brakeman” was coming back in vogue, with the new economy and all.  At times I’d wonder when these guys were going to find the melody, but just then they would morph into Back in Time and show the rest of us why we should definitely keep our day jobs.

From phenom to phenom…Thile turned the stage over to Derek Trucks and the fabulous Tedeschi Trucks Band.  As was fitting for Merlefest, Susan Tedeschi introduced the blues tune Do As You Please, Get What You Deserve by saying perhaps Merle Watson – who loved the blues – would enjoy this tune.  I know that everyone at Merlefest certainly did.

More to come…

DJB

Back to the Future(man): How are we going to top day two of Merlefest?

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At 12:30 on Friday afternoon, I thought I had seen the best show I was likely to catch on Day Two of Merlefest.

Well, when I’m wrong, I’m really wrong!

And I’m here to be the first to admit it.

The day started strong.  As I expected, The Steel Wheels had a huge crowd on hand at the Americana stage for their morning set, and they didn’t disappoint.  The Shenandoah Valley band – at both this set and a later gig at the Creekside Stage – played to large and enthusiastic crowds.  I heard more than one person turn to their friend/partner/spouse and say, “These guys were incredible last night.”

Spider Wings (“When you got too much, you don’t got anything”…or something like that) was my favorite, but they had so many good tunes coming out of them all day long it was hard to pick out just one.  Lead singer Trent Wagler’s piece about his grandfather’s response to Alzheimer’s – entitled Can’t Take That Music From Me – was lovely.

The juggling of schedules began almost immediately, as I had to leave The Steel Wheels set before it was over in order to catch the James Nash Making the Acoustic Guitar Rock workshop.  But am I glad I did.

Nash (above) is the front man for one of my favorite groups, The Waybacks, and he’s a monster guitar player.  On my Facebook page today I posted the status that “When I grow up, I want to be James Nash…He’s incredibly talented, creative, funny – and looks like a rock star to boot!”  He put on a 45-minute clinic on how to bring a rock attitude to acoustic guitar playing.  Rule #1 for learning to play fast:  don’t practice while watching the ball game.  Guilty!  Nash, playing a beautiful Santa Cruz 1990 OM guitar, worked through a lovely arrangement of the Beatles tune In My Life, showed how to cheat to get a string bend when you don’t want to rip your fingers like Stevie Ray Vaughan, and had the entire auditorium in the palm of his hand.  He even ended with some Grateful Dead, and told the crowd that they probably wouldn’t be hearing much Dead tomorrow afternoon at the Hillside Album Hour.

Nash – and just about everyone else in the auditorium – left immediately and headed to the Hillside Stage for a “virtually unrehearsed” show that Nash says you can only do, “When you  have no shame (if you fail).”  Playing with The Greencards’ Kym Warner and Jens Kruger of The Kruger Brothers, this was the “international” show – from Australia and Switzerland respectively  – and the entire band came out rocking on Calling Elvis and their Earl Scruggs tribute Too Late Now.  

Kruger (above) is an amazing banjo player who kept with Nash and Warner lick for lick (even when he mouthed, “I don’t know this tune” to Warner’s lightening fast Talking With Zeus instrumental.  When the Hillside crowd finished singing the old Ray Charles song Hallelujah, I Love Her So with the band, I thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Did I mention that I was wrong?

I drifted in and out of sets during the afternoon, catching bits of Peter Rowan and The Free Mexican Airforce, the Steep Canyon Rangers (above – loved their Tennessee Blues), The Greencards, and a few others. But I went outside the festival grounds late in the afternoon in search of something green to eat!  (Don’t get me started on limitations of the Merlefest food tent.)

I returned in time to catch most of the wonderful set (above) by John (The Cow) Cowan, song-writer extraordinaire Darrell Scott, and Doobie Brothers founder Pat Simmons.  They shared songs they had each written, sang covers (including the second Beatles sighting of the day), and ended with a spirited version of the Doobie classic Without Love.  (It was great to hear Simmons play those opening riffs on an acoustic guitar…and they sounded so perfect!)

Then the night really got interesting.

Bela Fleck and the Original Flecktones lineup took the stage to great anticipation. Roy “Futureman” Wooten (at the top of the post) with his drumitar, brother Victor Wooten on bass, and Howard Levy – one of the world’s great harmonica players – make up that original lineup, and they took the crowd on an hour-long journey through time and space (as Futureman would probably describe it).  I was always sorry to see Levy leave the band in the 1990s, and his return gave the creative spark to a group of musicians that didn’t need that much encouragement to try new works.  It was an amazing evening, made all the more memorable when Fleck sat down with just his acoustic banjo and played a medley of tunes “For Earl” that began with a simply beautiful You Are My Flower (which Earl always played on the guitar) and ended with The Ballad of Jed Clampett (and I believe some Dear Old Dixie thrown in the middle).  Heartfelt and lovely.

Sam Bush has played at each of the 24 previous Merlefests, and you figured he had something up his sleeve for the 25th anniversary.  The Sam Bush Band opened with John Hartford’s Vamp in the Middle (a terrific tune) and went off on an exploration for the old NGR instrumental Crooked Smile.  After a few songs, Sam said, “I want to be the first person to welcome these two folks to the Merlefest stage,” and proceeded to welcome Derek Trucks and his wife Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band – Saturday evening’s headliner.  The band kicked off Bell Bottom Blues – a song played by Derek’s namesake Eric Clapton – and the night, which was already special, turned magical.  Bush played a perfectly serviceable electric lead break, but Trucks stepped forward and showed what the #16  and youngest member of the Rolling Stone list of the Top 100 Guitarists of All Time sounds like.  God, how does he get that sound out of his guitar?!

Next came Gimme Shelter, a “song by a band that has never played Merlefest.”  Susan Tedeschi’s vocals were incredible and the mountains behind the Watson Stage were beginning to rock.

As if that wasn’t enough, Bush then called out former New Grass Revival band mates Bela Fleck and John Cowan for an impromptu reunion and — as has been happening throughout the weekend — led off a tribute to the late Levon Helm. Bush, Cowan, and Tedeschi traded verses on Up on Cripple Creek, but the entire crowd was singing along.  When the tune morphed into the old fiddle/banjo standard Cripple Creek, banjo wizards Fleck and Scott Vestal (below) traded licks and choruses.

Incredible musicians playing incredible music together…often in new juxtapositions that take them out of their normal zone. When that set was over, I had to leave.  I stopped by a packed Dance Tent to catch just a bit of Donna the Buffalo but what I really wanted was to get in the car, drive those North Carolina country roads back to my hotel, and savor an amazing day.

More to come…

DJB

Merlefest at 25: Gifts in small packages

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Sometimes the best gifts come in small packages.  That’s how it felt for me on the opening evening of the 25th anniversary of Merlefest – the Americana music festival tucked away in the hills of North Carolina.

Opening day at Merlefest is the easiest to navigate, because virtually all the music is centered around the main “Watson Stage” – named for the blind guitarist Doc Watson from nearby Deep Gap and his late son and musical partner Merle.  (It was Merle’s tragic passing on October 23, 1985 that led to the first festival twenty-five years ago in 1988.)  Juggling between the 14 venues and making tough decisions about which acts to see and which acts to miss only happens later in the weekend.

So I arrived after my drive from Silver Spring in time to catch the first of the main acts on the Watson Stage – The Boxcars. Coming together after stints with Alison Krauss + Union Station, J.D. Crowe, and Blue Moon, this is a “new” band with a lot of experience.  Even with mandolinist Adam Steffey under the weather, they produced a terrific kick-off set of good contemporary bluegrass.

The other Watson Stage acts were equally strong.  Donna the Buffalo with guest Jim Lauderdale (above) had the joint jumping, with tunes such as Except For That One Time and the accordion/washboard-fueled Hot Tamale Baby. Both Donna the Buffalo and Lauderdale are long-time Merlefest favorites, and it was clear that many had come to the Watson Stage area to hear their set, and then had plans to skip out to the food or merchandise tents.

But Merlefest is full of surprises.  There is this small “cabin” stage that sits to the side of the Watson stage, and while the main acts set up, small half-hour sets are performed, sometimes by up-and-coming artists and sometimes by big names playing solo.  The music never stops in this area, and you can hear some real gems.

That was the case tonight.  When the last notes of the Buffalo/Lauderdale set were ringing out, festival goers were heading up the aisle.  But many were stopped dead in their tracks…and then returned to their seats…by the opening number from a Shenandoah Valley band that hails from Harrisonburg, Virginia, near my old stomping grounds of Staunton.

The Steel Wheels kicked off their Cabin Stage set (above and at the top of the post) with an incredibly powerful a cappella number, Rain in the Valley, and then held the crowd in their hands until they wrapped up with The Shape I’m In as a tribute to the recently-departed Levon Helm.  While short in time, the band’s set won many new fans last night as evidenced by the standing ovation they received.

The other gift in a small package came later on the Cabin Stage, when Jim Lauderdale, Claire Lynch, and western singer Wylie Gustafson shared solo tunes on a songwriter showcase.  Special treats included Gustafson’s Buck Up and Huck It — three little vingettes of modern western life woven into one song — Lynch’s Wednesday Child tune for all the “bad boys” — and then a beautiful bit of high plains yodeling as the festival grounds grew quiet to let the clear notes from Gustafson sail off into the clear spring evening.

The final two Watson Stage acts for the evening certainly satisfied those who came for the headliners.  I’m not a huge fan of Dailey & Vincent, but I was more impressed with this set than with my first encounter at Merlefest three years ago.  They’ve dropped some of the canned stage patter, added B.J. Cherryholmes to the band to play some hot fiddle (on Black Eyed Susie and the show-closing Lee Highway Blues) and sing some beautiful harmony.  While I know I’m not suppose to say this, having lived in Staunton for 15 years, but a little bit of the old Statler Brothers style goes a long way with me…and Dailey & Vincent have adopted it as a big part of their show (including the incredibly low bass notes in the harmony).

Vince Gill (above and left) came on stage with a bit of an Eric Clapton look…scruffy beard, black glasses…and on at least a couple of tunes could have given the old guitar master a run for his money.  Oklahoma Borderline is his show-off guitar number, and he didn’t disappoint.

But Gill also knows “I live in a big house because I sing high like a woman” and so the majority of his show featured his vocals on love songs.  Gill was having fun, however, and before singing a cheating song (“country music today doesn’t have enough cheating songs” he opined), he asked for a show of hands of people who “were here this weekend with someone they shouldn’t be…just to see who was going to like this song the best.”  He also credited his bluegrass roots with teaching him the harmonic structure for vocals that shaped his country music career.

The evening’s final gift came in the dance tent on the way out to the car.  Blind Boy Chocolate & The Milk Sheiks – who will NEVER be confused as a mainline country music act – were raising the roof with their unique takes on Frankie and Johnny and a bunch of other “old songs.”  That’s the Merlefest I wanted to remember as I headed out into the night.

More to come…

DJB

Adding Another Calatrava to the Collection

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I was heading out of Dallas to Ft. Worth this morning, when I caught a glimpse of a signature white bridge crossing the Trinity River.  Could it be a Calatrava?

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, when a friend across the aisle said, “That’s the new Calatrava bridge which just opened here.  Yes!

I knew then what my late afternoon schedule would include: a trip to photograph yet another Santiago Calatrava creation for my small but growing collection.

I began photographing Calatrava bridges while on a 2009 trip to Dublin, Ireland, where two of his signature bridges cross the River Liffey.  My son Andrew is a big Calatrava fan and had alerted me to the existence of the bridges in Dublin.

A couple of weeks later I was in Milwaukee, and was fortunate to be able to photograph the “flapping” of the wings of the Calatrava-designed Milwaukee Museum of Art.  That blog  has been one of the most popular I’ve ever posted, as web surfers have found the images online.

So on a beautiful spring day in Dallas, I visited the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge over the Trinity River – the first of three planned Calatrava designs for the city’s Trinity River Project.  The central span – a graceful curve – adds a beautiful sculptural element to the city’s skyline.

Enjoy the photographs.

More to come…

DJB

History says, “This is what happened.” Preservation adds, “Right here.”

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Spot Where Lee Harvey Oswald Was Shot at Old City Hall

On the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald was Shot in 1963

I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a meeting with preservation supporters.  On our tour, the preservation architect stands outside a building and says, “We’ll restore this building to its 1914 AND 1963 levels of significance.”

Guess the building.

It could only be the Beaux Arts style Old City Hall, where Lee Harvey Oswald was held and interrogated by Dallas police and then – while being transferred to the County jail – was shot and killed by Jack Ruby on a November weekend in 1963.

Everyone of a certain age remembers where they were on November 22, 1963 when they heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated while riding in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas.  The various members of our tour group heard at their offices (one was actually working in Dallas at that time), from their children who had been watching cartoons, and from their parents.  As for me, I remember the principal at Cookeville’s Capshaw Elementary School coming over the intercom to tell us first that the president had been shot, and then a little later that he had died.

It is history that one never forgets.

So touring the Old City Hall in Dallas today – even amidst the buckets catching water dripping through the ceilings and while stepping over piles of trash that have accumulated since the police department left the building to move to a shiny, new LEED-certified headquarters – gave a fresh focus, understanding, and relevancy to those long-ago events.

We saw the elevator where Oswald was transported between floors, and where he took his final, fateful ride on Sunday morning.

The cell, in the “maximum security” wing of the jail where Oswald was held for two nights, was as foreboding as any I’ve seen.

The office of the chief of homicide, where Oswald was interrogated on more than one occasion, remains much as it was in 1963 – minus the furniture.  Pictures from the period show the window to the larger office where the homicide team did its work, and the crowds of reporters crammed into the hallway outside this office waiting to catch a glimpse of Oswald on his way to-and-from the interrogation.

Finally, we descended to the basement where we walked down the hall and stood on the drive-through where the car waited for Oswald on that fateful Sunday morning.  A colleague – holding a historic structures report with photographs of the shooting – provided the perfect foreground for a picture of the place where the events of that November weekend spun out-of-control once more.

When I speak around the country, I often use the borrowed line, “History says, ‘This is what happened.’ Preservation adds, ‘Right here.'”  That never felt more real to me than today, walking through the corridors and jail cells where the history of the world was changed.  And I’m glad that when this remarkable old building — probably the best Beaux Arts structure in Texas — is rehabilitated into a law school, those areas that witnessed the seismic shifts that took place on a November in Dallas will be restored, interpreted, and open to the public to help us better understand how these events that so affected us all unfolded in time and space.

Yes, restoring this building to its 1914 AND 1963 areas of significance is absolutely the right thing to do.

More to come…

DJB

Earl Scruggs, R.I.P.

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Earl.

That’s the only name you had to say in bluegrass circles and everyone immediately knew the subject.  Jimmy Martin could open the seminal Will the Circle Be Unbroken album by saying “Earl never did do that,” and you knew exactly what he meant.

Few people define an instrument and a musical style so completely as Earl Scruggs, who passed away today at age 88, did for bluegrass banjo.  Bill Monroe will forever be known as the Father of Bluegrass, but it wasn’t until he brought a young Earl Scruggs on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium for a Grand Ole Opry show in 1945 that the full sound of bluegrass was realized.  I’ll let Richard Smith, author of Can’t You Hear Me Calling:  The Life of Bill Monroe, pick up the story from here.

“For Earl’s first night on the Opry, Monroe picked out a fast number that would show off the newcomer’s dazzling style — “White House Blues,” an old song recounting the 1901 William McKinley assassination.  It was a perfect selection.  Scruggs stepped up to the microphone with apprehension, knowing that nothing like this had been heard on the Opry or even over WSM radio.

Used to the banjo as a country comedian’s prop, or hearing it picked or strummed in one of the quaint old styles, the audience was totally unprepared for the speedy, leaping avalanche of notes that issued from the five-string in the hands of this twenty-one-year-old from North Carolina.

They went wild.”

John Hartford once stated that “bluegrass was invented on the stage of the Ryman,” where Scruggs made his debut with Monroe.  And from that electrifying beginning in 1945 until today, musicians from every genre and corner of the planet recognized the unique musician that was Earl Scruggs.

Peter Cooper, writing in today’s Nashville Tennessean, had this to say about Earl’s ability to work across musical genres and to bring together disparate points of view:

“Rather than speak out about the connections between folk and country in the war-torn, politically contentious ‘60s, he simply showed up at folk festivals and played, at least when he and Flatt weren’t at the Grand Ole Opry.  During the long-hair/ short-hair skirmishes of the ‘60s and ‘70s, he simply showed up and played, with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and The Byrds. And when staunch fans of bluegrass – a genre that would not exist in a recognizable form without Mr. Scruggs’ banjo – railed against stylistic experimentation, Mr. Scruggs happily jammed away with sax player King Curtis, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, piano man Elton John and anyone else whose music he fancied.

“He was the man who melted walls, and he did it without saying three words,” said his friend and acolyte, Marty Stuart in 2000.

In truth, Mr. Scruggs could sometimes be quite loquacious, but he rarely made an utterance that wasn’t considered. He said what he thought, but never before he thought.

Asked about recording with Baez during a time period when Baez was viewed by many in Nashville as hyper-liberal and undesirable, Mr. Scruggs said, ‘Well, I didn’t look at it from a political view. And I thought Joan Baez had one of the best voices of anybody I’d ever heard sing.’”

I was fortunate to hear Earl often at virtually every stage of his musical career.  In the 1960s, my father rose early to get to his job, and WSM radio was always on when I – also an early riser – came into the kitchen.  Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs had a long-running show, sponsored by Martha White Flour, on WSM.

As I began learning more about the roots of American music in the early 1970s, I remember watching a wonderful documentary on Earl Scruggs on the Nashville public television station.  The film featured Earl and his sons playing with a variety of musicians, from old-time mountain men to Bob Dylan and The Byrds.  This wonderful clip shows Earl and Doc Watson playing John Hardy at Doc’s home in North Carolina.

Later in the 1970s I went to see The Earl Scruggs Revue countless times.  Earl and his sons had morphed into a country-rock band, but Earl’s musicianship still shown through the sometimes bad covers.  In recent years, Earl seemed to become more comfortable going back to his bluegrass roots in his elder statesman role.

Many people don’t realize that Earl was also a stellar finger-style guitarist.  Especially on gospel numbers, where the banjo wasn’t always used, Earl would pick the lead on a beautiful Martin guitar.

So on the day he passed away, it seemed appropriate to have Earl take us out with Uncle Josh Graves’ dobro and Lester’s voice on the classic, Turn Your Radio On.*  Without Earl around, it will be a little harder to turn your radio on and “heaven’s glory share.”

Rest in Peace, Earl Scruggs.

More to come…

DJB

*UPDATE:  Since this was posted, YouTube took down the original video.  But you can hear John Hartford and friends play Turn Your Radio On, a tune he no-doubt heard from Flatt and Scruggs before including it on his Steam Powered Aereo-Plain album.

Changing Seasons

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I love March Madness.  After a boring set of games on Thursday (although I’m glad Vanderbilt’s game was somewhat pedestrian), Friday finally got us in to the “madness” part of the event.  Two 15s beating number 2 seeds on the same day – that’s as good as it gets!

But as much as I enjoy these weeks of one-and-done basketball, I had an experience this afternoon that really gets me excited – sitting down with a friend over a glass of wine and choosing games out of the Washington Nationals season ticket package we’d purchased together.  Now I’m pumped!

Basketball is fun, but baseball is on another plane.  So in honor of the distribution of the season tickets, I give you a smattering of baseball quotations to bring a smile to your face and anticipation to your heart:

There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball.  Unfortunately, neither of them works.  (Legendary hitting coach Charlie Lau)

It doesn’t take much to get me up for baseball.  Once the National Anthem plays, I get chills.  I even know the words to it now.  (Pete Rose)

Just when my fellows learn to hit in this ball park, they’re gonna tear it down.  (Casey Stengel, as the Mets manager, on the Polo Grounds in 1965)

What do you want, a bonus or a limp?  (Fresco Thompson, on trying to persuade a prospect to choose baseball over football)

It is just about time to “Play Ball!”

More to come…

DJB

DJB is listening to…

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Many of my younger (read “hipper”) Facebook friends have regular status updates that read, “Joe Cool is listening to Still Sound by Toro Y Moi  on Spotify.”  Or something similar.

I’m behind the times (what else is new), so somehow I haven’t gotten around to letting everyone know what I’m listening to at any time.  Plus, my children would be mortified.  They run from the room when my iPod is in the dock.

But every now and then I listen to something and want to tell someone.  I have to do it the old-fashioned way:  through my blog.

I don’t usually drive in to work, but today was different.  And so instead of the iPod, I picked up a couple of CDs (you remember them) – Norman Blake’s Live at McCabe’s (which I’ve written about before) and the Tony Rice/Norman Blake duet album.  These are two beautifully simple albums that are anything but simple musically.

Blake and Rice are in the upper pantheon of acoustic country/bluegrass/newgrass guitarists.  They’ve both played on seminal albums that set the direction for acoustic music for a generation:  Blake on Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Rice on the inaugural offering of The David Grisman Quintet.  But on the two CDs in my car’s player today you get to hear them at their most basic.  Most tracks just feature a vocal and one or two guitars (or the occasional mandolin and guitar).  With the sun roof open and the windows down on a glorious early spring day, I could have been on a country road instead of 16th Street.

More to come…

DJB

A Note of Thanksgiving As I Enter My 58th Year

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I had difficulty getting out of bed today…the last morning wake up of my 57th year.

For some inexplicable reason my life is full – on the verge of overflowing – on the eve of my 57th birthday.  (I had to ask Candice, and she confirmed – when you turn 57 you are beginning your 58th year.  I never was great at math.)  First and foremost, Candice is wrapping up her stay in the hospital after successful hip replacement surgery on Wednesday.  We head home today to continue the recovery.  Both children are getting ready to go overseas (Claire by herself to Sweden; Andrew to Costa Rica) over spring break. Yikes!  How did that happen? My sister texted me last night to say my father went to the emergency room with a lung infection, high enzymes, and low sodium…and the news got worse when she called to say he had a mild heart attack this morning. I just spoke with my brother and Dad just came out of surgery where they found 95% blockage in one of his arteries. We think all will turn out well, but this is not what you want to hear for your 86-year-old father.  In addition, one of my brother-in-law’s closest friends was in a devastating car accident earlier this week, where her mother was killed and she’s facing a long recovery period after a seven-hour surgery.  On top of it all, work remains full of challenges and opportunities.

Lying in bed, I was letting all of this get me down.  Showering and breakfast helped, but it wasn’t until I was on my way to the hospital this morning that I fully realized how sorry I was feeling – for Candice, for Dad, for Janice…and, yes, for me.

Then I thought of the wonderful bumper sticker we saw in Northampton, Massachusetts, during our college visits a couple of years ago:  the one that says “Just Say NO to Negativity.”

That woke me up!

So I did a mind game to turn things around:  with all that is weighing on me, what was I thankful for entering my 58th year?

Family and Friends:  I have a wonderful family – both our core family and the extended one.  I’ve been blessed with a wife and children who love me unconditionally – which is a hard thing to do at times. Their talent and capacity for goodness amaze me. My father was one-half of an amazing set of parents who believed in grounding us in values but allowing us to find our own way and our own values as we grew into adulthood. Our extended family is always there for each other.  Today I’m especially thankful for my two sisters and brother who live near my father and are watching over him. We have friends all over the country who stay in touch, look out for us, and enrich my life every day.

Health:  First of I’ll, I’m thankful that I’m relatively healthy.  Yeah, I need to lose 20 pounds or so, and I really do need to get that toe on my left foot checked out, but day-in and day-out I have no complaints. Our children are in great health – and Claire is especially rock solid after a strong year of college-level swimming and the workouts that go with it.  Mostly this year, I’m very thankful for the health care that we’ve received.  Candice had wonderful doctors and nurses at the neurological unit at Rhode Island Hospital following her fall last August.  Back home, Dr. O’Connor, Dr. Herzfeld, and now Dr. Durbhakula have been a terrific team in leading Candice back to full recovery.  Down in Tennessee, I’m thankful for the cardiologist at Vanderbilt who is checking out Dad’s heart at the moment.

Work:  I have a job that I enjoy and that brings meaning to my life.  My colleagues at the senior management level are all terrific professionals who know their work.  I’m learning from them every day.  The staff throughout the National Trust combine passion and skill in ways that are inspiring.  We get to help save some of the most important places in America – what could be cooler than that!  I have former colleagues and friends from the Trust and from all my previous jobs who continue to enrich my life and work.

Art:  We’ve indulged Candice’s love for theatre and film this year – and to my amazement I’ve loved it!  Among other things we’ve seen War Horse in New York City, Oklahoma! at the Arena Stage, and eight of the nine Best Picture nominees. I think back on some of the great music I’ve heard over my 57th year: Andrew’s senior voice recital, his debut in opera at college, and his role in Hairspray – as his yearbook says, Andrew will be Corny Collins when he grows up!  Wonderful IMT performances  throughout the year have fed my love for acoustic music. And in looking ahead, I have tickets to Merlefest for next month, and that’s always a treat!

Enough Stuff…but Not Too Much: I just noticed that none of the things listed above has anything to do with stuff.  I’ve learned from family that stuff doesn’t matter.  We have a home that could fit in the Not So Big House series.  It is just right for us.  The 11-year-old car just passed 170,000 miles, but still seems to get us around.  Someone recently told me I HAD to get a high-definition television because of my love of sports, but the television we have works and now when I go to a hotel I get a treat with the HDTV.  I have two guitars and a mandolin and they seem to keep me busy.  We’ve been paring down, not adding stuff…and I’m thankful that we’ve kept the clutter at bay.

Hope Springs Eternal:  And on the day before I turn 57, my Washington Nationals have their first spring training game of the season – where everybody’s a champion. But the Nats have the look of a good – if not great – team this year. For the first time in my life I went in with friends as part of a season ticket packet – so I’m guaranteed to see 8-10 games.  I’m with Annie Savoy: I believe in the Church of Baseball.

With March 4th on the horizon, I’m not feeling old.  But as a wise person points out, not too many people live to be 114 – so 57 is a little high in the “middle age” bracket. Birthdays put you in the frame of mind to think a bit about age, I suppose.  As Daddy likes to say, “Getting old isn’t for wimps,” and all the things swirling around in my life today seem designed to reinforce that fact. But whatever comes, I’m thankful for what I have and – most importantly – for the people who have made, and continue to make, my 57 years so rich in love.

More to come…

DJB

If I Had a Vote (Or “Quest for the Best, The Final Chapter”)

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Tonight is when the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announce their awards, and for once I’m ready!

Friends who have known me for a long time will find it impossible to believe that I’ve seen eight of the nine Best Picture nominees BEFORE the Oscars are awarded…much less that I have an opinion on them.  I’m just not a film junkie.

But empty nestdom brought a change in habits, and Candice and I made a pledge to see all the nominees.  We made it through eight before life, health and work kept us from closing out our pledge…but since Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is NEVER mentioned in all the pre-Oscar write-ups as having a chance of winning, I think we’re on safe ground here.

Number eight in our marathon was The Tree of Life – which we watched today thanks to iTunes.  Easily the most complex of the nominees, Terrence Malick’s film was not among my favorites even though it attempted to explore greater depths on issues of life and loss than some of the other, more celebrated, nominees (read The Descendents). 

But let’s cut to the chase:  which picture deserves to win the Best Picture award?

The buzz says that The Artist has a lock, due to a strong publicity campaign by the distributor and that cute little dog.  I’m okay with that, but I feel that Hugo is the better picture.  Too bad it has been publicized as a children’s film, because it is wonderful.  The story is lovingly told and the 3-D production is terrific.  I’m not among those who thinks The Descendents is a strong second choice.  It was nice, but not really Best Picture quality.  My rankings of the eight I saw came in as follows:

  1. Hugo
  2. The Artist
  3. The Help
  4. The Descendents
  5. Midnight in Paris
  6. The Tree of Life
  7. War Horse
  8. Moneyball

I had dinner Friday night with someone who is intimately connected with the film business, and her assessment that there is no truly worthy Best Picture this year rang true to me.  I’d probably watch my top three, Midnight in Paris, and Moneyball again (hey, I am a baseball fan), but I don’t think that I’ll be seeking them out two or there years from now.

So, a few other observations:  Brad Pitt won’t win Best Actor for Moneyball, but he should.  If Viola Davis wins Best Actress for The Help, she’s a deserving winner.  That was a terrific performance.  And in another pitch for Moneyball (which was a good film – just not the Best Picture), Jonah Hill should absolutely win Best Supporting Actor.  And finally, I hope that Midnight in Paris wins at least one award for Woody Allen.  I thought it was a fine picture and is probably the first one I’d pick to see a second time.

There you have it…a true layman’s (if not idiot’s) guide to the Academy Awards.  Bring on the popcorn!

More to come…

DJB