Still More Music

I didn't get any pictures of the kids at church, so I'm recycling a picture from the Triskelion gig last month

Sunday was the annual youth service at church. It was all positive, focusing on service at all levels but starting with random acts of kindness. There were fewer partially thought-through ideas than last year, but the best part was the music. A cover of imagine made Suna get all weepy. There were a few other really good songs, too.

So this week am again grateful for music and for the passing of the torch. I find that music is in good hands with this next generation. I just wish I knew how to mentor them better. But to do that, I would have had to have accomplished something with my music. Maybe it’s not too late for that. Probably, but maybe not.

A Day for Music…

What I really wanted to do at this point was stop singing and listen to Bowman play, but I soldiered on with a smile. Photo by Jon Montgomery

Here we are at the Artz benefit enjoying some music we could hardly hear. Photo by Jon Montgomery (He was here, too.)

… and music of all kinds. We started this Sunday morning in church singing “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine” to balance a rash of more traditional hymns. The choir director’s ubermusical son joined us on stage.

It was strange having someone else play bass, especially since he played so much better than I do. (But then I think he is majoring in performance—maybe composition—and will probably go on to grad school.) There were times I just wanted to listen to him play rather than concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.

He played a Peavy bass that came with the frets filed down so that it occasionally gives that fretless moan but has the pitch stability of a fretted bass. I’d like to look into that for some of my own tunes.

The choir director played a really nice piece by Sate, which apparently sounds a lot like sauté, for the postlude. The piece was very lovely in its misleading simplicity. That is, it sounded simple but wasn’t.

Afterward we practiced with a Dixieland-ish—I can’t call it a Dixieland band because we have sheet music and we all mostly play what is written—band. We will perform in church and at a religious education dinner over the next couple of weeks—but I’m not sure in which order.

Later we went to a benefit to save Artz Rib House, a South Austin landmark that has fallen on hard times recently. We took Beccano’s band, Triskelion. We arrived in time to stand in a really long line and listen to Art’s band while we waited.

After Art, we listened to a local jazz duet featuring trumpet and piano. Suna got to hear her heartthrob Slaid Cleaves do a set that ended with a yodel. We left during a set by a really hot, young local fiddler. I had had about as much fun as I could handle in a day, and the kids were looking bored.