In his eighties, he isn’t too steady on his feet. His eyes seem more vacant than even the last time I saw him. But he is there, standing at the back of the auditorium. “Come on up here, Lawrence,” the announcer calls from the stage. “Play the ‘Orange Blossom Special’.” It is fortunate that the call is so loud and clear, since he can no longer hear very well. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first man to ever record that famous song. Let’s give him a hand as he makes his way to the front.” The old man stiffly shuffles to the stage and removes an apparently ancient fiddle from its simple, black case. The others on stage do what they can to help him position himself in front of an open microphone. He scrunches up his face as [...]

Patty and I have a number of musical stories from times before we were together as members of Sound Traveler. Here’s a story about a time when I played in a small restaurant in Newland, NC. In Raven Flight… The restaurant was called “The Filling Station”– a very small restaurant, doing a small business. The establishment had once been a corner gas station in a Southern Appalachian town known for little more than hardy people and cold winters. The food was good enough, very good actually, but the clientele was composed mostly of locals for whom anything more than ham hocks, beans, and bread was deemed completely unnecessary. For them, food needed only to be served fast, hot, and filling. My partner Ellie, and myself, performed at the restaurant on Fridays and Saturdays, for little more than pocket change and [...]

You love it. You hate it. It’s exciting. It’s exhausting. Anything’s possible. Nothing is possible. It gives you life. It eats you alive. The Road! As the name Sound Traveler implies, we like to take opportunities to get out and play in different places. This week we head again to Florida’s west coast. We will play a couple of engagements at the Sarasota Folk Festival, hit some smaller venues in the Tampa/St Pete area, and finally do a concert for the Vernals Dance Weekend in High Springs, Florida. On the road you see different things, you meet different people, and you get to share your music in many unique environments. Being from somewhere else makes you a little bit exotic, mysterious, and worthy of interest. But being on the road has its other side as well. For us, we have [...]

We’ve all been confused at some point, disoriented, when the numbers won’t add up and the once familiar seems foreign and out of place. It generally passes in a moment when something anchors our perception once again. And life resumes its normal course. But for some folks, life has no normal course anymore. Disorientation is a chronic condition. We saw this again on Saturday as we played music for the wonderful people at the Clare Bridge Memory Center in West Melbourne. The staff was incredibly attentive and nurturing. The patients, many as fragile as butterflies, fluttered into the gathering room where we met them. Some stared vacantly throughout, some sang and clapped along with familiar songs, and some danced and danced. “They like peppy music!” the feisty nurse in charge called out. And so peppy music they got. It was [...]

“Oh, My name is Macnamara, I’m the leader of the Band And though we’re few in number, we’re the finest in the land.” What a ham! There I stood in front of a packed house, dressed entirely in green, singing to lift the rafters. Behind me toiled a chorus line of second graders worrying through a couple of dance steps that they repeated over and over. A seven-year-old basking in the limelight, soaking in the pure sensation. I may not have been born for the stage, but this St. Patrick’s Day performance proved beyond doubt that the attraction was certainly there. As a kid, I liked to sing. I didn’t pay too much attention to words; I even felt pretty free with melody. I think I learned this from my Mother. I remember my Mom singing to me when I [...]

For years to come, many sad songs will be written about the earthquake and tsunami recently experienced by the people of Japan. In time, those who remain will gather the strength to live again. They will, undoubtedly, designate a consecrated place for their memories. But today we grieve with them and know, deep within, that we are all members of one family.

When she was little, very little, she would sing along to the commercials on TV. She wasn’t merely making sounds in response to what was on TV. She was singing it, feeling it, presenting it. In her house she listened to music a lot. There was really no way to escape it. Her father always had some music-generating device going at full blast. It might have been a reel-to-reel tape recorder. It might have been a scratchy vinyl disk producing echoes from the deep past. It might have been a radio coaxing a signal out of the airwaves in a remote hollow of the Appalachian Mountains. It might have been a guitar, straining to find a melody. Her father remembers traveling to church with her one morning when she was quite small. They’d listen to the radio as they drove. [...]

Now let’s get this straight. One is 72 years old and looks like Santa Claus lost in a John Wayne western. Three wear clothes that allow their belly bulges to be somewhat concealed, and one has a voice that produces a low note just a little deeper than the bottom note on a tuba. But from my personal experience at the King Center on Wednesday night, I must say that indeed the Boys are Back! The King Center is a fabulous performance venue. The sound is great, the size is perfect, and there isn’t a bad seat in the house. It is a very comfortable experience. I must admit I like to go to concerts of some old-time legends, hoping that a little magic remains. Often the star performer surrounds him or herself with a youngish, hot-shot band. Periods of [...]

OK, OK, maybe it’s not what you see on American Idol. Maybe it’s not what you hear on radio. Maybe the rappers and the hip-hoppers would roll over laughing when these guys walk in the door, especially since they will be dressed like Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase in The Three Amigos. But it is fun! A lot of fun. If you are not smiling when a good mariachi band finishes a set, you may as well go home because you’re not going to provide much amusement for anyone anyway. Last night we saw the La Fiesta mariachi band in Cape Canaveral, and they were amazing. It’s not the first time we’ve heard them, and we will make it a point to hear them again. Songs like “La Bamba,” “Tijuana Taxi,” “Cuando Caliente el Sol,” “Besame Mucho,” “Tequilla,” [...]