Milbank Concert

This weekend we had fun visiting long lost cousins and playing a gig (which was an actual 'concert') last Sunday night in Milbank, SD. A huge part of the weekend was absorbing stories and reconnecting with cousins (most of whom I haven't seen for many years). The cousins range in age from 55 to 75 and they have many kids and grandkids. It was interesting to see how many of the extended family were musicians and/or computer people. I found that my cousin Tom and I still had much in common - Tom's the same age as I am and the cousin with whom I spent the most time with as a kid. He's an engineer who's worked with computers but is really a 'rocket scientist' (working for Raytheon as a system architect designing missiles etc) - he also plays guitar and sings a true high tenor. At the Sunday concert he joined Lynn, Marly and me in my computer geek gospel tune 'God 2.0'.

At the concert we did 4 numbers with the Dixon Family Singers -- Marly, Jody and Erin did a number -- Erin, Joceclyn & Jenny sang a hymn with Lynn on piano -- and Lynn & I did about a dozen from our old time repertoire. (Marly is my brother-in-law, the others are nieces).

We saw some flyers that were produced using the Bob&Lynn myspace picture - we were billed as the award winning "Dixon Family" Bluegrass Band from Shakopee, Minnesota. I tried to set a few things straight on our introduction. After the concert we found out that this was set up by my cousins' church's Worship committee. Lynn was worried that it wasn't religious enough, but I thought we did just fine - we had a number of straight gospel numbers and closed with 'Give me Jesus' and Amazing Grace.

During the performance, I thought it was a little hard to read the audience (not that I'm necessarily a good audience reader), but we got plenty of kind words from our very musical cousins plus I got good comments from non-relatives after the concert. There were maybe 150 or more people (they had to bring extra chairs) and we sold the most demo CDs we ever have (13) - of course half of those sold were probably to relatives.

One women told me she really enjoyed hearing 'When the Work's All done this Fall' - her father was from Tennessee and used to sing this when she was a child. I also had a man come up to me to make sure he had the title right for the guitar tune I did (Bonaparte crossing the Rhine).

This was a good performing experience for Lynn and me and we had lots of fun doing the family group numbers. As a final note, it was gratifying that a mostly traditional 'old-time' concert can resonate with a 'general' audience.