Varities of Musical Experience (live performance, more cont'd)

So in 2001, the 'dot-com' company I worked started shedding workers as the investor money ran out - by August I was laid off. Fortunately, the non dot-com branch that was spun off a couple of years before needed someone to manage the product that I had been working on since 1991, so I was only out of work for a few weeks. From the mid '90s until the layoff, I spent a lot of my off hours learning new technologies and working on software projects; this paid off in the sense that my skills were 'current', but I was not doing much music playing or listening.

However, my work-life upheavals led to a new focus on music: my "career' became more and more a "day job". Initially, I just spent off hours practicing more, especially mandolin. However, when MBOTMA announced the first annual Guitar Flat Picking and Duet Contest in late 2002, I started working on guitar more. (I had been flat-picking a few tunes for a number of years; however, playing the mandolin helped me get up to speed). Lynn and I also dusted off a couple of duets we knew and we entered both contests. Although we had done one or two performances a year for church and family, the contest was one of our first "performances" outside of friends and family. Working up a couple of duets for the contest led to more purposeful learning and we did one set of 'opening' for the Brown Shoe Boys (consisting of church friends of ours) in a coffee house. (The Brown Shoe Boys have since morphed into the folk-rock group "Rhinestone Diplomats")

I also started going to more live performances - Norman Blake & Peter Ostroushko at the Fitzgerald Theater, many concerts at the Cedar Cultural Center and gigs our friends did at coffee shops. Some highlights include Foghorn String Band, Uncle Earl, Frigg, Bruce Molsky, Tannehill Weavers and the Battlefield Band.

Lynn and I performed at the MBOTMA Winter Bluegrass Weekend as well as MBOTMA fund raisers at Dulono's pizza. We've had fun performing at Bill Cagley's Roots Showcase at the Coffee Grounds and even hosted it one Thursday evening. We've gotten to know more and more local musicians and have gone to see folk like the Mill City Grinders, the Ditch Lilies, Ivory Bridge, Switched at Birth, the Recliners, and Blue Wolf.

Another aspect of live performance has been for dances at the Tapestry Folk Dance Center as members of Danebodium. (This is where I keep my mandolin chops up and Lynn gets to play rhythm piano). I'm not really much of a dancer, put its fun to play music folk dance to.

For the last year or so, Lynn and I have scheduled regular bob-i-lynn rehearsals (on Monday nights, if you must know). This has really sharpened our sound and helped make us much better prepared as performers. We are also performing at bigger or at least more 'prestigious' events. This past year we performed at our first MBOTMA festival: the home grown kickoff. We also performed at the Stone Arch Festival and our best paying gig so far at the LCO Casino. This coming January marks our first 'solo' appearance at Dulono's, which makes us feel like a 'real' MBOTMA band.