Murphy Henry

Well, we really missed Bobby Vee tonight. No bass. We were baseless. Nevertheless, we—Mark, Ellen, Susan, Logan, and I--tried to carry on as best we could. (Am I laying it on too thick, Bobby?)

Since Bobby wasn’t here, however, Logan felt free to entertain us by sharing the disparaging thoughts he (Logan) used to have about the bass. You see, when Logan was younger, he had some timing problems on the banjo. So, we'd make him sit beside Bobby and the bass, hoping the steady thunk-thunk would help keep him on track. It did not. We know now, from what he said tonight, that he totally didn’t get it, that he thought the bass was a useless instrument since it didn’t play any leads!

Thank goodness Logan grew out of that! He now has excellent taste in bluegrass and tonight made me very happy when, at his lesson, he asked if I’d ever heard of the Vern Williams Band. Yes, indeedy. Logan had heard them on some computer music program (Pandora?) and liked them. I was able to go to my CD shelf and pull out a Vern Williams CD for him to listen to. I was also boastful of the fact that I knew Keith Little, who played banjo on the disc. This did not seem to impress Logan as it should have. Perhaps after he listens to the music....

The program tonight was as follows:

Cripple Creek (unison, then with breaks)

Boil Them Cabbage (unison)

Bury Me Beneath the Willow (Logan playing solo lead)

Bury Me Beneath the Willow (the group playing)

Old Joe Clark

John Hardy

Wagon Wheel

We did “Willow” twice to give Logan a chance to show off his fancy (and fast) version, learned from the Stelling Anthology CD. Logan volunteered that this number was a “break through” for him, because it was the first song he tried to learn—mostly on his own--from a CD. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, when he initially told me he wanted to learn “Willow” off the CD I told him no. I thought it was way too complicated. But when he came into the next lesson with part of it learnt, I had to relent. And he was off and running.

We finished with our theme song, “Wagon Wheel,” singing it with much gusto, and I declared that Old Crow Medicine Show would have certainly gotten Ellen and me up to sing with them if we’d been able to stay till the end of the concert. But, alas, we were too worried about staying awake on the two-hour ride home so we left early to avoid the traffic. Mark said that they were waiting for us to leave so they could safely do the song without us singing! (Ha, ha Mark!) And then we said that one day maybe Logan would be performing on that very stage, and that we would go see him, and that Ellen and I would be down front dancing. And then somebody said that that would embarrass Logan, and I said, yes, that would be the point.

And then we digressed into talking about a recent study that shows that drinking beer (in moderation, of course) helps to prevent osteoporosis. And then we segued into a discussion about whether it was ethical to put a sticker from a security company on your house if you didn’t actually pay for their services. But we decided we needed to save that talk for a time when we were building strong bones. See what all you missed, Bobby? And Bob. That’ll teach you to go on vacation!