My At-Home Music Performance --

This concept flew into my head about five or six weeks ago. Precipitated by the emotional and practical adjustments one needs to make when a working musical relationship ends, combined with a rather long-standing question in my mind as to how long is long enough for me to be soliciting gigs via the rounds of venues (which, in Knoxville, can be a tough row to hoe due to cliques and gatekeepers). Well, I had/have so many conflicting thoughts and feelings about it all. I love to play and sing music; I particularly love to do my own songs; additionally, I have been unable to turn off the creative processes that cause me to write new songs. I’ve tried. When is a person too "old" to remain an "active" songwriter and musical performer? Maybe more to the point, when is a woman too far past the blossom of youth to sing about romance, passion, love, and all the mundane and ethereal offshoots of those things? Well, since I still feel those things, I still write and sing about them!

The at-home performance idea evolved through several spasms as it morphed, finally, into a simple invitation to a few friends and students to come over to my home studio to catch my performance with my own beloved grand piano, Buddy, here in my own "digs" ! Also on the scene, of course, would be my fine keyboard friend, Yamaha, and my old, dependable Shure mic and Roland amps. The mic and amps have made a gazillion trips along bumpy roads and in and out of venues and have never once complained. But that is an aside ... and I’m often guilty of asides.

The days went on and I had a few flashbacks to my childhood and our household that was as busy as a train station, full of visitors – visitors who would always ask or insist that I play the piano and sing for them (and I would always be required to comply); I remember it was partly annoying and partly titillating and sometimes I would hide in my closet. No matter, though – someone would march into my room, retrieve me and escort me to the piano in the living room.

Well, fast-forward to June 2008. As the performance date grew nearer, I began to wonder if the whole idea was hokey and if people could enjoy it. With the price of gasoline over the $4 mark, we need to get choosy about what event is worth the drive. So was it fair to expect people to come? I couldn’t decide. Then the date rolled around. When several of my friends and students showed up, I was very happy and got the performance into gear. They enjoyed it, as did I! In addition to many of the blues songs people are accustomed to hearing me do, I took the opportunity to play and sing some of my most intricate torch ballads and jazz renderings, and ended the evening with one of my very seldom performed classical originals.

Now the question is sort of whether I will perform anywhere again. Yes, if I’m asked to (but no more calls to venues). But there is probably no question that I will continue to color outside the lines (I think that’s more extreme than thinking outside the box). And next, who knows?