Catching Up and Moving Forward/I'm a'Goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City Here I Come...

Seems like it’s been forever since I got online and typed a few words into this here blog. Well, it has I guess. At least since February. I got busy getting an album out that has thankfully/gratefully done well and has alerted some folks to some of the finer sounds in Monroe’s language. It has done exactly what I’d hoped along that line and I feel proud that at least this is out there now. After that flurry of activity I got busy back at school at ETSU endeavoring to pay attention to what the student body was doing and made efforts to make a useful and meaningful contribution. I know that I have to some extent but I want to do more all the way around.

The musical year started off with a bang, yes, and it will be hard to duplicate the energy and the feeling that something good has been done well, a positive contribution has been made to the country styles musical library. A real bluegrass instrumentals recording is at last out of my head, off my list and in the fray with everything else. But I have not been idle since February.

Work in the month of April came with a vengeance and a flurry in the presence of several weeks back to back, from April 8-25th, the first solid week through April 16th at Sore Fingers Summer School (SFSS) in the Cotswolds just about 90 minutes drive west of London hosted by the lovely Moira and ever-muddy John Wirtz. My flights over and back could not have gone smoother and I was stunned that it all went so well after this long out of the swing of things. Even customs on both ends going and coming was short and sweet which is usually a trial of nerves and patience made doubly challenging on short sleep. But not this time. And, I got a few hours sleep after I got to Kingham School so all was well by evening mealtime.

The rest of the week went well with my 20 students, all of whom came in on Sunday. They were all pretty well together and progressing the whole time with a few folks that I knew from previous years at SFSS. It was really good to see some old friends. The time we all spent away from each other since 2020 seemed to make it all worth a lot more than before and I felt grateful that we had the time to hang out and learn some music together. The course description I had was given to me as “intermediate” which was a skill level more than a topic of discussion so I went for a variety assortment of country styles like I usually do in this type situation. Nothing overly difficult, just varied flavors and influences including Mississippi fiddle tunes, black string band, Monroe, etc. All good stuff.

The weather wasn’t ideal, drizzly and chilly but I’ve come to expect England in April to be like this and at least I got to use the clothes I took with me. And, I had a private “suite” such as it was which took me most of the rest of Saturday to get warm with 2 built-in wall heaters and a portable radiator. Finally by Sunday I could turn the radiator off and everything else down. The only inconvenience really was that the bed was built on top of a set of drawers and about waste high so I had to climb up and down every time which isn’t always the safest thing for a half-asleep middle-aged man trying to get to the loo in the middle of the night (and of course it’s downstairs; never, ever, ever is it on the same damned floor as the bedroom just to ensure that you’re good and awake by the time you get back upstairs and in bed again).

The complimentary bag of chocolate, chips, cookies, snack mix, coffee, and tea lasted most of the week thankfully. Very much appreciated by a man with the late-night munching habit.

Everybody spent the later part of Friday afternoon and evening getting COVID tests done and paperwork sorted due to US regulations stating that a valid ‘negative’ COVID test had to be shown at the airport to allow entrance back into the US and that ended up taking the Wirtz’ until something like 4am to get all that sorted. A valiant effort to say the least. The ride to the airport on Saturday and check in for flights was without incident and I even had about half a dozen empty rows of seats to choose from so needless to say I had a row to myself all the way back. The only real hassle was that once I got to Atlanta I had a layover that lasted 7 hours. I could have driven home from there in about half that. Oh well.

I spent all day Sunday putting things away and sorting out this and that and getting ready to go to Lexington on Monday to do Michael Jonathan’s Woodsongs Radio Hour. More on that in Part Two…