I’m listening back to the recording from Sunday night and I wish I could relive the night from the audience. Dan Blakeslee was (contrary to the way I usually tell the tale) my GIRLFRIEND’S RA in our freshman year of college and I was confused and smitten and crushed and reincarnated on a regular basis that year. I was just discovering that acoustic music could happen in front of me, strummed from the fingers of the people I Loved, and I would discover acoustic guitar perhaps the following year. I was still “just” a bass player, learning a couple of chords here and there – watching Dan Blakeslee stand at the top of the stairwell at the Commons crooning out across the courtyard, swooning to an entirely different artform than I thought I was there to discover. Absolutely, positively in Love with the world.
Dan texted me about a week before the show to see if there was still space left to attend the night, and I quickly consulted the band and our host to see if I could invite him to play the show. Four enthusiastic “yesses” later I was happily announcing that Dan Blakeslee would be joining us for the night and Sunday night was MAGNIFIED because of it.
Transported to a world 32 years ago listening to Dan’s wavering voice, part Elvis part yodel part Stray Cat part absolutely young Dan Blakeslee and dreaming very different dreams than I’d ever dreamed before.
Here he is again, three decades later, breaking my heart.
Dissolving Castine was the album he recorded in college. Why does that guitar tone STILL sound better than anything I can create 30 years later? (but he clearly didn’t mix it with a subwoofer!) https://danblakeslee.bandcamp.com/album/dissolving-castine-2
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