Big Wall of Time

Tonight's the big night when we get an extra hour back. Unfortunately I'm a bit under the weather so I'll probably spend my extra hour sleeping, but how often to we get an extra hour to do that, let alone anything else? It's also coming on a number of anniversaries. My mother June Anne will have been dead six years ago tomorrow. She would have been 80 years old at the end of the month. My dad will have been dead 31 years at the end of the month. I'll ring in my 43rd birthday in a couple weeks. November is a busy month in our family.

It's amazing how we view time. If anything should teach us impermanence, it's time. Yet we hold onto things and make plans as though we have some control over what happens next. Of course we have to have some kind of framework to hang our lives on, and in the day to day and moment to moment of living we want to engage and feel like we're alive and doing some good. We have friends and families and partners whom we love and big milestones in our lives and work that we do and big changes along the way. But at any time it could all change and we'd be in completely unknown territory.

One thing I do plan to do with my time this coming week is to get out and enjoy the offerings at the 2008 Kent State Folk Festival. On Thursday Darrell Scott and Richard Shindell will be gracing the Kent Stage, and on Friday, a duo I try very hard never to miss, Tony Rice and Pete Rowan. The week is full of goodies, culminating with a performance of another favorite of mine, Ms. Nanci Griffith on November 15.

I always look forward to Rice and Rowan. They are a magical pair, I don't know how else to describe it. When they are performing and the audience is quite honestly rather transfixed, it's a completely different kind of concert experience. These are two guys who bring decades of performing experience and such a spectrum of experience -- Rowan played with Monroe as a Bluegrass Boy, and Tony Rice created a unique smooth sound with his brothers Wyatt and the late Larry. He's also widely regarded as sort of a dean of 'grass guitar, although his playing is much more mellifluous a lot of the time (case in point is his famous rendition of Shenandoah, which you can view here) and he's just one of the all-time best guitarists of popular music, period. Pete's voice is just as smooth and soothing and almost purifying. It's really an incredible time and if you're around I hope you can come, 8 p.m. next Friday night (Nov. 7) at the Stage.

Walls of Time is one of my very favorite tunes. It's built on a sweet lonesome mournful mando part. I'll send it out tonight to anyone who's lost a loved one, who's missing someone gone away or a relationship that has gone wrong, to readers who have children or partners in Iraq or Afghanistan, to readers who have lost furry four-legged members of their family, to anyone who is missing a past or present piece of themselves tonight. This is a nice clip that includes Pete's story of how he and Bill Monroe wrote this tune. This particular rendition is a little "flip" for my tastes, but I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless. I'm ready anytime to do this number and sing the harmony when any of y'all are up for it.

Have a good night and make every one of those extra 60 minutes count for somethin'.

Walls of Time
Pete Rowan, Tony Rice; that's Mike Bub on the bass. The guy in the pink shirt was another Bluegrass Boy brother but I'm faint on the other mando player.