This weekend was really powerful. Two separate gigs that hit me in two separate ways. Two separate communities. I’m slightly worried about trees and grass taking root in my lungs. Slightly worried about how many cicadas are STILL in my gear. But I’m grateful for an incredible weekend.
Saturday we performed for what is due to be the very last time at Debby St. Charles’ farm in Woodbine, MD. We’ve been playing Debby’s farm every summer in a loose celebration of her birthday every year for a while now (this annual celebration extends back into the digital deadzone betwixt the Journal transfer of old and new, back beyond my google calendar and into the mists of time that are Difficult to Search), probably about the last five years, and this summer WAS slated to be a celebration of a hot and sweaty 69. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond Debby’s control she had to move on from the farm this year and so what WAS going to be a birthday party in August became a bitter-sweet farewell in May. The weather endeavoured to make us feel as if it was still the height of summer though.
Tents and ice cold drinks, a temperature sweltering at 90 degrees made all the hotter by the fact that we haven’t done this in a while, the gear was saved and everything was made more Livable by an overhanging cloudy haze that saved us somewhat from the sun, and I was setting up gear, dragging Thumps from the car, running lines and checking sightlines and remembering my song’s lines, I became aware of just how amazing today was.
I got choked up a couple of times as the full magnitude of what I was doing hit me. Surrounded (mostly) by people I knew well enough to know that COVID vaccinations had taken place, knowing (mostly) that I was the last one to the party with full-enPfizerment coming into play the following Wednesday so (mostly) being very sure that I was surrounded by barriers to the pandemic and that my own body was almost 100% protected as well, we (mostly) spent the whole day sans masks, gauging one another’s comfort levels, hugging where appropriate, air hugging where it was not. Reflexively shaking hands without freaking out about it (though still giving a little squirt squirt of hand sanitizer in post) and generally realizing that even out near Frederick, MD all of us seemed to be on the same level of comfort.
The crowd was small, but we all seemed to communicate well, all parties seemed to be on the same page of acknowledging consent from the parties around them, moving slowly and watching for social signals of oncoming elbows or outstretched arms, turning it into a joke and… this is key… NOT BEING OFFENDED if the other party offered something DIFFERENT!
Our old friend Michelle Swan ran an open mic and it was good to see Dave Benham playing his flutes (old and the newer overtone flute he built during COVID) and Jimmy Stewart (though of course we’d just played with him at the Refuge) and …. there was this incredible symmetry hugging and being CLOSE to the people that I’ve kept so digitally close to. And hugging Jimmy, who was the last out-of-pod person I’d hugged back in early 2020 standing in El Golfo’s parking lot sort of thinking “I don’t know man, this looks like it could be serious… might be the last open mic for a couple of weeks”…
I ain’t crying. It’s allergies, man. It’s just allergies.
