The Gathering/Some Days Off

A sunny chilly morning here in Stokes County, NC. After an extra cup of coffee I started a load of clothes to see if I can get the last few days grime off, muddy shoes and all. Last night I headed down the hill to my host Laurelyn Dossett’s house after getting situated in the guest house. Being in the dark in a new place with nothing but a head lamp in my hand wasn’t the ideal situation. Everything went fine until I got about 10 feet from Laurelyn’s porch and I realized my speed had picked up sharply and I was skating on one foot down the hill. I knew I was going to wind up on my ass in the mud, but hoping that I wouldn’t slam into anything in the dark on the way down. Hey, I’ve never been here before. I had no idea what was in front of me. In another 5 seconds I was squarely sitting on the ground in the mud in the dark checking my wrists and fingers to see if everything was still pointing in the right direction. Okay, the gig is still on.

We had a nice visit for a couple hours and talked about friends and family, the Gathering shows we did the past two days on Saturday & Sunday. It was agreed that the show was coming together and that we could do more, should do more with it. I came back up to the guest house with a big bag of leftover Thanksgiving goodies. A movie, a shot of bourbon (W.L. Weller, of course) and to bed. Laurelyn came by a few minutes this morning and said she’s headed out and will be back on Thursday afternoon, so here I sit with the sun coming in the windows, a frig full of ‘tried and qualified’ Thanksgiving leftovers and 40 acres of woods to stomp around on if it dries up enough. Not a bad start.

On this past Friday I came rolling into Winston-Salem, NC from Mount Juliet, TN after driving 6 1/2 hours. The gps took me to what looked like a dime store down by the city bus terminal instead of the Brookstown Inn. So it took an extra 30 minutes to get the right address and then checked into the 1837 vintage mill-turned-hotel/event space. I had an hour before going over to the R.J. Reynolds Auditorium to do sound check and rehearse with the orchestra. Yeah, R.J. Reynolds. After a few hours of being in Winston-Salem it started to dawn on me just how big tobacco was here. It is after all where they made Winston cigarettes and Salem cigarettes. At one point in history this town made more cigarettes than any other place on earth. I passed a small establishment on the way to rehearsal that said Camel City. Okay, duh. Camel cigarettes too. It’s taken me 6 decades to put this together.

The R.J. Reynolds Auditorium was built between 1919-1924 and is adjacent to the…wait for it… R.J. Reynolds High School. It’s a beautiful entertainment space as are so many of the venues from this era. There is a main floor and balcony seating and the height of the stage made it easy to look reasonably straight towards each level without craning your neck too much. The Winston-Salem Symphony has a full compliment of everything so between them and the choir they pretty much filled out the main space. Laurelyn, April, Joe and me were placed to the left front of the stage on the outside edge in front of the bass players which proved to be really helpful with lag time on the beat when we all got going. I had forgotten what a thrill it is to hear all those instruments swelling up when the music starts. It feels like being picked up and floated out into the room when the orchestra comes in. I can see how this could easily become very addicting.

The Gathering shows went quite well I thought considering we had not done the show for a few years. Plus we worked with a new conductor, and orchestra and this time April Verch took over all the vocal/dancing/fiddling duties left vacant by Rhiannon Giddens. April is very thorough and studious, organized and a professional. She took up the slack and then some. The acting conductor for this series is Tim Redmond, a multi-instrumentalist in his own right and citizen of London who seemed to be comfortable in his shoes and a fellow with a good sense of humor. He was also very good with his communication to the orchestra as well as the audience. And of course there was a large choir who laid down some impressive highs and lows. I’m not sure how many men and women were in the choir but when the door opened they kept coming and kept coming.

At one point in the second afternoon I was practicing a bit of Monroe’s tune “Ebenezer Scrooge” under the stairs out of the way and was suddenly joined by one of the younger violinists, a fellow who looked to be in his 20’s. He just walked straight up and started improvising lines with a smile on his face, eyes wide open. We jammed for about 5 minutes and it got more together as the minutes ticked by. When we got done he said a hearty, “Thanks! That’s such a beautiful melody. What is it?” I laughed and told him that it was actually a bluegrass instrumental written by Bill Monroe that is supposed to represent the ghosts of Christmas. He said again that it was a beautiful work and that he would check it out, that he really enjoyed the improvisation and said that he was very happy they got to work with us and went on to warm up with the orchestra. As a matter of fact, there were quite a few members of both the orchestra and choir who said they enjoyed working with us, all unsolicited comments. I felt happy that we were making connections across the genres and receiving smiles from so many. I can absolutely say I was enjoying myself as well.

After the concerts were done on Sunday afternoon we had a couple photos taken and talked a bit with the conductor. He asked Laurelyn at one point if the show had ever been recorded with an orchestra. It seems that maybe that will be something that will possibly be talked about in the future. I spoke briefly to Mr. Redmond. I figured he was a piano player which he confirmed but he said that he was also an oboe player and seems like something else. I asked him was that the reason all I heard in my monitors was the oboe player and he laughed, said he had nothing to do with that. I assured him that though I thought it peculiar that all I heard in my monitor was the oboe player that it was interesting to hear his parts and enjoyable. Mr. Redmond said that his brothers were all great stringed instrument players but he never felt he had the knack for it himself.

On Monday morning Laurelyn, April, Joe and I rehearsed for the upcoming ‘non-orchestra’ version of the Gathering this coming weekend. I was out of the hotel by 1p and headed out of town to this here 40 acres. I’ve been giving mandolin lessons all day and trying to catch up on email. I need to do a couple record releases and blog post/blurb to get the Narmour & Smith project a bit more visibility but first I have to shut this computer down and recharge the batteries before I lose all this text. Maybe a cup of tea and one of Ms. Herzog’s shortbread cookies to wake up while I’m sitting here in the sun. A short breather and a silent prayer of thanks for being busy and still being able to play music for a living. I am a fortunate man.

Life is good. MC