internal and otherwise, I decided to do two shows in Indiana last weekend. One was in Bloomington, the main campus town of Indiana University, where 36,000 students learn stuff and the other was the quintessential Midwestern city, Indianapolis.
Did you know that Cole Porter, Leroy Carr, Yank Rachel, James Dean, The Ink Spots,Wes Montgomery and Hoagy Carmichael among others are from Indiana?

Other than one desolate time of 15 minutes outside the venue in Indianapolis waiting to go on stage, it was perfectly perfect, though a tad terrifying for me.

Professionally  I am still, really, mostly but not completely unknown.

   

One of the remarkable things was getting to see my old utopian-type hippie friends from the late 60's who came to the Bloomington concert.  What an overwhelming experience for me to be able to play my songs for  old friends the way I did 40 years ago!  There they were, sitting, looking and listening to me.   Try this....  Imagine you are a stand-up comedian and you go back to your college and tell jokes to your old friends and they laugh like crazy?  It was a precious rare gift for me to see their faces. I just cannot explain the feeling. ... a garden of living joys for me.  To me they were as young as when  I probably was to them.

One of the best parts  of the two days was staying at the home of my  generous host, Stan.  What a great character he turned out to be!   Stan has 250,000 songs in his computer.   He got me to laugh when he told me the titles to two  country  songs:  "Hold My Beer While I Kiss your Girl" and, "You Ain't Much Fun Since I Quit Drinking."  Those two songs alone were enough to once again  vindicate my position of not taking mainstream country music too seriously.  I am, however, strangely comforted that that kind of music is out there.

Watching Stan watch and react to his family and the world around him was  as fortifying an experience for me as the concerts themselves.

The Indianapolis concert was attended by mostly legal eagles: lawyers, judges and Democratic party faithful. I have to tell you that the decentness of Midwesterners is alive and well.  There is goodness between the fields and lanes of millions of ears of corn.

 I was solo  in a concert atmosphere.  I usually play with the band. Public perception and mind set is powerful.  Did you see the video of  the world class violinist who performed in the subway for an afternoon and no one listened?  It is on the Net.

Anyway, this morning I feel lucky once again to have been with those Indiana folks.  I am  grateful. I must certainly be appreciative for Carl and Polly who drove a third of the way across the US to hear me sing, from Connecticut to Indiana for an hour and 40 minutes of  songs! It astounds me and I still barely believe they did it, but they proclaimed their mission after several repeated stubborn inquiries from me. Yes, they did do that.  I am honored.  They must sure love music, tales, stories and  performance.

I have devoted a chunk of my life for it, I suppose they could too, why not.
Thanks for listening. They got a lot of corn in the midwest, well, they got more than a lot of corn in the midwest.

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