bluegrass

so last night we had some free time. all 24 of us loaded up into the vans and took off for the local community center for this massive bluegrass event they hold every friday night. wow. it was like stepping back into a time warp or something... a good time warp. we got there around 8:30 after getting a little mixed up on these back mountain winding roads. we stopped at a double wide and asked for directions.
once we were there we walked into the building, which was pretty much this old gym that had a huge stage on one end and chairs and tables filling the rest of the floor. i had brought my guitar and accordion because i was told that it was the kind of thing that people just pick up instruments and walk up on stage. its bluegrass... 1,4,5 kind of stuff. its the original hillbilly jam fun time. so me, my roommate (one sick harmonica playa), and the assistant director stepped up and played some tunes with the old timers.
the old timers- these guys had been playing these same old songs on this same stage for the last 30, 40, 50 years. they new their stuff. it was really cool, actually. its a little piece of old appalachian culture thats slowly dissapearing. [i know im misspelling words, but i dont have the time to relearn the english language.] so this one feller, whose name was clarance (no kidding), was most excellent. he stood about 5.2 because he was so far hunched over. he had a huge 5 gallon black cowboy hat. they called him over to the mike to play a tune and he just went at it. the thing is, you couldnt understand a lick of anything that came from his mouth. it was all vowels. any consinent [again with the spelling] you could hear were the whistley "s"es. honestly, imagine that character from napoleon dynamite who shot the cow and talked about the arrow heads. thats what he looked and sounded like. it was so great. man, i want to go back. some of these guys, despite the fact that they were playing very simple music, were fantastic musicians. some of them were passing around instruments all casual like, just transitioning between them in the middle of songs. it was great. no pictures. maybe. ill write more later. take care, all. i miss you all. oh- thanks for calls and notes on my birthday. it was a good one.