Varities of Musical Experience live performance, cont'd)

On the last post for 'musical experience', I got to the 'classical period' of listening to and performing 'live'. Although I never got to the point of giving 'recitals', I played for some art openings and I remember playing for a opening by Bruce Nygren at the the Stevens Gallery in the mid '70s. I was playing some suites by Villa Lobos and managed to hit them really well. I got positive comments then (especially from Bruce's mother), and I know when I ran into him years later he still talked about it. I remember seeing John Williams and Julian Bream in concert but missed Segovia when he was probably last in town. I went to faculty and student recitals and one of the best students now teaches in Wisconsin and has produced duet guitar recordings (sadly, I don't recall his name). My brother-in-law Marly was also taking guitar lessons and we worked on a few duets and may have played them at church. Another student at the U at the time was college classmate John Ellinger, who is on the Carleton Music Faculty and who was my son Alex's guitar teacher at Carleton.

In the late 70's I realized I wasn't going to gain a living from classical guitar and started working full time. Turned thirty, bought a house, had kids : I was still playing guitar but wasn't performing. With young children you don't get out much - I'm not sure of the timing but I do remember going to see Elton John at the St. Paul Civic Center (precursor to the Xcel Center) and also a concert by Claudia Schmidt with Greg Brown opening (before he gained fame as a singer-song writer).

In 1984 I started my computer studies at the U of M and in 1985 our second son Tommy was born. In 1986 or so, the church Lynn and the kids had started going to (Lynnhurst Congregational) started up a variety show called the Lynnhurst Home Companion. Lynn and I joined some other folk musicians to become the Lynnhurst Hot Dish String Band. This was basically a once-a-year band, but we were the house band for the show and often did 3 or 4 numbers. Lynn and I also started to do a duet song at most of these shows. This got me looking out for songs to perform and listening to bluegrass albums. In the early 90's Lynn and I joined the MN Bluegrass & Oldtime Association and we started going to some of the MBOTMA festivals. We made most of the August festivals (dragging the kids until they we're old enough to stay home) and heard lot's of local and national bands.

For a couple years we attended a bluegrass jam class put on by Brian Wicklund and Kevin Barnes who were in the Stoney Lonesome Band (at the time, the best know MN bluegrass band). The attendees were organized as 'bands' and at the conclusion of the class, the bands performed on stage at Dulono's pizza.

In 1987 I moved from the restaurant industry into software development and during the 90s I spent a lot of time doing 'career' development as well as scouting, soccer etc with the boys. I continued to perform at the church shows and the Hot Dish String Band performed at a few art shows and other events. I continued to hear live groups at bluegrass festivals and concerts. I remember seeing Alison Krauss at the Guthrie (before O' Brother made her too big for a 1500 seat venue) with Stoney Lonesome opening.

I don't remember all the bands we saw at the MBOTMA festivals: I remember hearing Nickel Creek when they were still teenagers and their Dad was the bass player. Jim and Jesse, Laurie Lewis, Loose Ties, Tim O'Brien were some of the other bluegrass groups we heard. Since MBOTMA also includes 'old time', Lynn and I started to hear and appreciate old time music from groups like Big Hoedown, the Renegades and the Konnarock Critters.

For Lynn and me, the 'high point' for performing in the '90s was in 1997 where we did enough shows with the Hot Dish String Band that one member of the group made a Tee Shirt for the 'Hot Dish Tour of 1997 with all the dates and places we performed'.

By the end of the 90's our computer careers were caught up in the dot-com boom with some increases in salary that help us finance Alex's college education. However, the dot-com crash affected our day-jobs and also help launched a focus on music as a more serious enterprise: topics for the next post.