The other night, I received a rather serendipitous email from a close friend of Jim's. It tells the story behind a Gold Coast Bluenote post that dates back to 2005. I thought it would nice to share the story as a post on it's own, complete with links to the original post, as well as to the music of Alison Krauss, who's beautiful voice inspired it.
It's funny how our lives weave together disparate elements, and make them inseparable. I was listening to some tunes last night. The music got me thinking about Jim, and GCB, and that in turn made me think of you.
Here's the back story behind an old post on GCB:(http://goldcoastbluenote.blogspot.com/2006/12/all-my-answers-turned-out-to-be.html). Alison Krauss and Union Station were scheduled to play Lakeland in Dec 2005. I wanted Jim to go see them, and to cover the concert for GCB.
Why? Union Station is the tightest band I have ever seen. Every member is a master musician. Some bands sound great on an album, but just so-so live. Union Station delivers the goods live, every time. Alison Krauss was then (is still) one of the best singers in the world. And she also has the instrumental chops to play with Union Station. Jim had never seen them; I wanted to fix that.
I knew Jim was a bit tight on funds, so I bought him a ticket. As we exchanged emails, it dawned on me that he had no way to get from Tampa to Lakeland and back. In for a dime, in for a dollar. I bought another concert ticket, and a plane ticket, and arranged to fly in from NC so that Jim and I could see the show together. One of the best nights of my life, by the way.
As Jim put it
First timers think they are just going to a concert; but after they listen to these musician’s musicians, they leave the show, just having found that Yahweh cuts us sinners a break now and again.
Digging around on youtube I found a great concert recording of AK/US. It's about three years before the show we went to, but has a quite a bit of overlap with the show we attended. I saw this 2002 tour in Durham NC, and it made me a fan for life. Sometime when you have an hour or so, read Jim's post, open a cold one, and give this a spin: http://youtu.be/HKgTra0QldE
Just one thing though. The concert Jim and I went to had a different encore, as mentioned on GCB. It gave me chills. Here it is, as performed on the Leno Show:
later bro,
drc
