It’s been a few weeks since I returned from Illinois and am remiss in not writing about a fabulous experience I had while I was there.  It was actually a two-fold, double-whammy, one-two-punch fabulous experience.

It really started when I entered the DPT program last year.  A fellow classmate and I really hit it off online.  Judy and I shared lots of laughs in emails that were separate from the discussion boards.  Some of our classmates were – ahem – a little uptight.  I miss that interaction with Judy now that I’ve withdrawn to explore other pastures and promised her that if she sends me some copies of the – ahem – uptight discussion comments made by my former classmates I will make her laugh like I always did when I was still in the program.

Even though I left the program Judy and I wanted to meet each other so this time we made a point of it.  She and her husband Marc invited me to their home in Evanston and I was treated to a delightful meal of grilled salmon and pea pods with bok choy and rice and apple pie from Indiana.  Simple but elegant.  We are both a little surprised by what we have experienced as a “known you all my life” feeling.  When I arrived at the door we hugged like long lost sisters and the conversation “picked up” as if from another lifetime.  It could have something to do with our mutual love of boxers (dogs, not fighters)  and Enzo was typical that evening as he walked around with a toy in his mouth hoping someone would notice that he wanted, in true boxer fashion, to play play play play play.

We parted that night but not without an invitation to join them again the next evening at the Old Town School of Folk Music for a reunion concert of The Special Consensus, a bluegrass band.  Special doesn’t begin to describe it.  This was a 35th reunion and there is only one member of the band – Greg Cahill, the banjo player – who has been the common denominator for the past 35 years.  Judy’s husband, Marc, was in the first incarnation of the band and still plays stand up bass in bluegrass bands – quite frankly I have to nail him down to exactly how many bands he has played in.  An internet search has him playing here and there and everywhere. 

Off we went Saturday night and the lobby was electric in a bluegrassy kind of way.  It was obvious old friends were greeting each other and I had been invited to an intimate gathering of people who had a long history.  The music started at 8 p.m. and except for a short intermission, we didn’t leave the facility until 12:30 a.m. on Sunday.   Thirty five years of people who had played together came up on stage one after another.  There were only a few people missing from this reunion and people had travelled from far away to attend. Greg Cahill (no spring chicken at this point, but still just as cute as can be) was up on stage the whole time, accepting roast-like comments from the pickers who had wandered through his life and this band.  The stories of the tours were hilarious and heart warming.  We’re not talking limousines here, we’re talking apparently beat up wagons and busses packed to the gills with stuff and instruments.  I wish I could have heard some of the stories that were not fit for public consumption.  The only lady in the group was responsible for getting air conditioning in the bus she rode on tour.  As one audience member piped up: “It takes a woman…!”

The music was surreal.  The chemistry between each incarnation of pickers as they played – mandolin, guitar, banjo, bass – was just great fun to watch.  Slowly it became apparent as the musicians came and went,  that each incarnation was a little younger, until the last three, when it appeared we were watching middle schoolers make the music.  It was one of those experiences that had me hopeful for the future – for young people to be carrying on this very American music with such talent and passion cancels out some of the more newsworthy but less palatable youth we might see on the front page of the newspaper.  It’s like seeing high schoolers put on a production of “Guys and Dolls” – it’s good stuff.  It shouldn’t be forgotten.

The final number of the evening brought everyone on stage, everyone taking a turn at a quick solo, probably thirty people on stage all workin’ the same song, overwhelming joy bursting through the walls of the Old Town School.   There is an elation about bluegrass, a simple acknowledgement of human emotion – especially disappointment that is rarely allowed to tumble down into depression, but mostly end with hope for the future, a future with a new love, a future with no regrets, a future of more good times ahead, more music, more life to live.  That type of music, that way of seeing the world, should live on as we strive to carry on our humanity in a technological world.

Long ago I let bluegrass slip out of my life.   When I was in Pittsburgh ten years ago I let it in for a little while, but it seemed an incongruous soundtrack for California livin’ and it slipped away yet again.   I’m letting it back in for good, now.   Pittsburgh’s WYEP is on my computer home tabs so I can go to Appalachia whenever I please.  There are festivals out here, one in particular based in a campground up north a bit, and from what I hear it is difficult to get any sleep – a picker has to pick when a picker has to pick, you know. I think I’m ready for that.  When I left the concert, I left only wanting more, and Judy was astonished that I listened to the CD I purchased on my way home that night (well, it was after 1 a.m.and I had 45 minutes ahead of me – it seemed like a good way to stay awake.) 

Maybe next time in Chicago a re-visit to the blues clubs where Al and I courted before we were married would be nice, but this time it was all about the Chicago bluegrass and The Special Consensus is: bluegrass rocks!