It was so good...

 
I wrote the list below on my iPad before going to sleep, late at night, after our most recent house concert with Dr. Harlan's Amazing Bluegrass Tonic.  I was SO invigorated and inspired by the night that I wanted to document my feelings before a night of sleep took away some of the magic....Can't really say much more than this...

My favorite things about tonight:

1. Family in the house: mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, and a cousin from each side of my family.  Friends of these family members have become family to us as well...
2. Hugs. Really LONG hugs from lots of people.
3. Emotional and physical reactions to the music and the event:  Chills. Tears. Smiles.

4. Dancing hard.  Dancing with my brother.  Adam and I being the only two people in the house who were dancing at times. 
5. Feeling like our house concerts can provide a brief moment of respite, peace, and escape for ourselves and our guests.
6. THE MUSIC!!!

7. Silence like nothing I've felt before at a house concert at a certain quiet point in this song (like 3m45s).  Every person in the room was mesmerized and transfixed by the beauty of the lyrics, the voices, and the instruments.  You could just feel the soul of the music filling up the room.  Brian and I looked at each other in that moment with the biggest smiles on our faces.  It was a knowing look we gave each other.  Like, F*!& Yeah!  THIS right here is why we do this.
8.  Hearing from several of our most loyal house concert attendees that this was by far their VERY favorite house concert yet!
9.  Big, sincere, genuine, heartfelt thank yous throughout the night swirling throughout the house.  A feeling of gratitude permeated the whole evening.  Nights like these can really remind us of how much we have to be thankful for.

None of the beauty of these nights is possible without the talented and gracious musicians who perform for us every month.  We are so thankful to our friends in Dr. Harlan's for sharing their music with us. 



See more video of the night on our youtube channel.

Mountain Bliss

A few weekends ago we had the pleasure of taking friends of ours to the Peterson cabin with us for a couple days. Sadie and their daughter are getting to be good buddies, and we thought it would be a great chance for them to play together for a more extended period of time.

We watched movies, we cooked and ate great food, we walked in the woods, gathered treasures, and built a fairy house.  After the kiddos were sleeping we played games and drank wine.

It was the most perfectly lovely weekend...and then became perfectly HEAVENLY when we decided to have a girls-only trip to Cottonwood Hotsprings.  

It felt so good to be in the mountains for the weekend, and it was so much fun to share the beauty of this place with good friends.

(thanks to Nikki for the pictures!)

Passover In Pictures

My Family

Oh how I love these people....

 Mom, me, brother Adam, Dad

Family and spouses = more family!

Atomic Duo House Concert

Well, here it is time for another house concert (tomorrow), and I'm just now getting around to writing about our last one...which happened nearly 5 weeks ago!  bad blogger!

 

Of course, house concert nights are some of very favorite nights of all in life right now, and of course this was no exception.  House concerts are special for so many reasons.  For the community that has built up around us through these events, for the sharing of delicious food, for the inspiration that inevitably results from watching talented musicians perform in such close quarters, and for the sheer magic of filling my home with friends, family, and fellow music-lovers to celebrate and support independent artists and the value they bring to our lives!

 

But the house concert we hosted with The Atomic Duo was special for some of its very own unique reasons.  First, there's the fact that Mr. Mark Rubin (one half of this fine duo) is a founding member of The Bad Livers.  And although I didn't even mention this in my introduction to the show (this fine duo can certainly stand on its own...), I have to admit, that to Brian and me, this was a PRETTY BIG DEAL!  We LOVE the Bad Livers.  We were excited and a bit nervous to meet Mark in all his tuba-playing bad ass-ness.  We were looking forward to meeting Silas, who from our phone conversations, seemed like one of the nicest people we would ever be hosting.  But, we were also a bit nervous about putting Silas up in Sadie's room and did our best to "de-princessify" the space before their arrival.  Do you like the new words I'm using in this post?  Ass-ness and de-princessify?  Yeah!

 

Anyway, needless to say, this may have been the most fun I've had with any of our house concert performers ever.  Silas and Mark came by the house mid-afternoon and I relished spending a couple hours getting to know both of them.  We talked politics, Judaism, food, music, energy policies, you name it.  Brian and Mark picked banjo upstairs.  Silas gave me some GREAT leads for future potential house concert performers.  It was great fun.  They are both so interesting and smart, and very easy to talk to. 

There's always a bit of the unknown when you invite musicians into your home.  It's my most intimate, personal space, and what I want most of all is to make it comfortable for them.  I like to offer to get out of their way, and give them the upper floor of the house to make themselves at home and relax before the show.  Often, these musicians are on the road touring, and an afternoon in a comfortable space where they can nap, catch up on phone calls home, and the business of being a musician might be just what they need.  So, I like to make sure that's an option.  But I also LOVE when I get to spend the afternoon making new friends and talking music and other interests with these new friends.  It makes the house concert so much more meaningful for me personally when I feel like I've had a chance to get to know the musicians.  

The fact that it almost always works out this way, is a testament to this particular brand of musicians as a group.  Everyone we've ever welcomed into our home has been overly friendly, generous, and respectful.  I feel so fortunate to be a part of this community of folk and bluegrass musicians. 

 

Silas and Mark's music is unique and thought-provoking.  I so admire their honesty and willingness to push the envelope with their opinions.  And although I was worried that some in the audience might be offended by their message(s), the feeling in the house was respect and consideration for everyone.  What a novel idea in the year 2012!  Wait, you mean people can freely express their opinions, however radical they might be, and we can still all listen respectfully and raise a glass to each other at the end of the night?  Yes, please.  We need more of that.   

 

Here are a couple videos from the night.  More available at our youtube channel.