Glad we had a beautiful day here at the old farm house yesterday for the band reunion. It was perfect back deck and front porch weather. We talked ourselves back and forth between the two sites all day, that is when we didn't have our mouths full of food.
The same theme kept running through our conversations, as the day ran on. When one or the other of us would say, "Hey, you remember so and so?" And a funny story would follow, and then at the conclusion, "Uh, you know he passed away awhile back?" Musician friends, stars we loved, people we had met on the road that fitted in to a story, buddies, boys and girls of a bygone day, people that mattered to all of us....gone, all gone.
Finally, as evening started to ease in and our talk got quiet, I turned to Bruce, the best dang guitar picker that ever carried me through a show, and said, "Dang, Bruce, are we the only ones left?" He just shook his head, as Vic said, "Man, sure does feel like it , don't it?"
We did our remembrance of all the lost and fallen friends of music that we love, yesterday. We grieved, in our own private ways, we laughed at the good times, we expressed our love and admiration for our heroes, telling once again, the stories that we all had enjoyed a hundred times, but were again brand new.
Old men, sitting together at last, being with someone that understood how we felt, who was there when it was all happening...and suddenly, we didn't feel, or look, like old men...I could see the young Bruce on guitar...the prankster, Vic, great on the drums...in their prime, roaring, laughing, in love with the music and the life that goes with it....and I could feel the youth, deep inside me, still there, buried by years of challenges met, but still throbbing and living to sing, as these great musicians built the sound behind me, swelling to the climax as the applause swept over us...and it was as if it had never gone away.
As the day came to an end, and the boys got in their cars to leave, I almost felt like, hey, I need to get in the cars and we need to go play another gig, where's my guitar....then, old Buck The Collie, pressed against my leg, running his long collie nose into my hand, wanting his ears scratched. Hey, old son, just cool it, you don't do that anymore, remember? That was then...this is now, those picking days are long past for you. As I turned to go back to my front porch, the melancholy feeling increased, until, seated in my favorite front porch chair...the evening breeze gently blew the melancholy away, and replaced it with the sense of peace and contentment. The evening birds hard started their chorus, competing with the little tree frog peepers...I could faintly hear the sound of the creek, still chuckling on down to the Cumberland, life goes on at the old farm house. And I sit, a survivor, of the music road, still strong in my memory, secure in my Faith, and with the sound of the old music we made, still ringing in my head. Stan
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