Good morning from Whiskey Creek, where I drove up the dusty gravel driveway last afternoon and was greeted by my five best pals. I could tell they were happy to see me after a week’s absence because nearly all of them were wagging their tails in a circle.
As I carried my sorry, ancient butt off the United Air Bus and into the behemoth Denver Internal Airport I had only one thing on my mind…FOOD. Didn’t really have a proper dinner Saturday night, no time for even a scone at the airport before departure so I was famished. I had 52 minutes before the second and final leg of my long journey home (hey, that could be a cool name for a bluegrass song), and so I wasted no time beginning the foraging. Didn’t know what exactly I was hungry for so I just walked till the spirit struck me, and it did about a quarter mile from my departure gate…it was a Wolfgang Puck and I will swear on a stack of Bibles that the short, bearded man in the tall chef’s cap and starched white coat was actually the Wolf Man himself.
“I’ll have a roasted mushroom and arugula pizza, please…the one with goat cheese.”
“Five minutes,” he promised. When the pie came out of the inferno he used a small painters brush to apply a little olive oil to the beautifully toasted crust, sprinkled on some fresh arugula, and finished with a large pinch of asiago cheese. In retrospect, I think the only reason for rating that pizza among the ten best of my life instead of, I don’t know, maybe the three best, is that I didn’t have the time to properly savor it. But the point is, that roasted mushroom pizza in the Mile High City, gobbled down with a diet Pepsi while peacefully sitting there in the midst of the hub-bubb of what seemed like a million people in one of the nation’s busiest airport, will, I’m guessing, come to symbolize my 2015 IBMA World of Bluegrass experience. Which is to say, the pizza and the week-long trade show and fan fest in Raleigh were perfect. Just perfect.
Of course, what makes a perfect IBMA is different for everyone. Having suffered from a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder from infancy to present (seriously, I take meds for this condition) perfection for me is not the wonderful, non-stop, multitudinal shows featuring the greatest bluegrass on the planet. I do appreciate all of these performances, but from afar. Nope, my favorite part of the Raleigh experience is the picking and the connecting with folks who share my love of the music from all over the world. And boy oh boy oh boy did I do a lot of both.
This year the job given to me by our IBMA Czarina, the lovely and dynamic boss-woman Lucy Smith, was running the daily two-to-five jam in the CBA suite. Tuesday through Saturday we had pickers of every age, every stripe, every proficiency level and from every state in the Union. Of course suite jamming went on all hours of the day and night, but my job was hosting in the afternoon and I relished every moment of it. Those with whom I’ve jammed know that I’m not a great fiddle player…I’d call myself APPROACHING an okay fiddler…so if I say I had a SPECTACULAR time playing music at the IBMA you should have a pretty solid understanding that virtually every player at every level can find the right group of pickers with whom to have a ball.
Highlights of the CONNECTING WITH PEOPLE part of my 2015 trip included: sharing a suite with my pal Marty Varner, a life-long (his life, not mine) friend with whom I can talk on pretty much any subject until we both start getting itchy to find a jam; meeting and spending quite a bit of time with a guy from up in the DC area who makes guitars and runs Pete Wernick jam camps. (This fellow, his name is Dee, recently retired from the Army where one of his last tours of duty was in North Korea where he served as a member of a U.S. negotiations delegation…with almost ZERO information about anything at all in NK, can you even imagine what it was like to get to spend quality conversation time with a very, very knowledgeable and well-spoken guy who actually stayed in North Korea for three months? Talk about eye opening. What’s happening, has and will happen, in that cursed piece of real estate on the Korean Peninsula has long been an interest of mine and I have a feeling that my exploration of it has only just begun with my new friend); and hooking up with literally dozens of old friends and new ones from all over the country and the world. In the coming months it’s my hope and plan that the fruits of my networking will manifest here on the CBA web site in the form of guest columns, news stories and profiles.
So I’ve got to get back into the swing of things here at Whiskey Creek, where a week’s absence can add up to a pretty damned serious back-up in my Supervisor’s priorities. Yes, came home to a derned long list. So just a few things more…
Don’t know how overall attendance was this year, but it looked quite good to me. The historic rain that hit the Carolinas must have had some negative impact and I’m sure we’ll hear about that in the coming month but, that said, there was universal agreement that moving a ton of stuff from outdoors to indoors went off without a hitch. Great job IBMA.
And great job to Lucy Smith and Geoff Sargent and their CBA Suite Team. We’ll say much more about the team and its work in the coming days but, for now, suffice it to say that those ten or twelve men and women made quite an impression on the literally thousands of visitors to Room 327. Superb job!
The California Bluegrass Association has been a part of the IBMA annual gathering from the very beginning, and that’s thanks to Carl Pagter, whose vision, hard work and considerable financial contributions gave structure and eventually a sense of tradition to our annual presence there. Then came Larry Kuhn who succeeded Carl and during his leadership was able to routinize and proceduralize each and every detail of the weeklong, labor-intensive operation. Larry’s contributions were heroic and have ensured a long future for the program. And finally, I must thank once again the leadership shown by Lucy Smith. Lucy was ABSOLUTELY NUTS to agree to take over from Larry (who was, of course, nuts to take over from Carl;) let’s just hope she stays nuts and keeps loving what she does. Thank God she’ll have twelve months to forget how hard the work is and how long the hours are.