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captainsblog(Title courtesy of Joe Jackson. The musical one....)
After 30 years together, adding to that age and physical limitations, slightly-off-kilter sets of working hours and our mutual abandonment of Sunday morning church activities together? We weren't getting out much. This year largely changed that. Weekends and even weeknights found one or (more often) both of us out and about more often than in years.
We got to a number of art openings/events, from close to home to as far flung as Clifton Springs, New York. We signed up for a series of readings by thoughtful and delightful writers, whose books we've come to know through it. We became regulars at a biweekly poetry reading series on Elmwood, where we've met new friends and become closer friends to each other. A friend has rekindled her love of community theater, and we saw two well-done productions she was featured in at a fab old restored downtown venue in Lockport.
Hell, we even ziplined.
But it's the musical moments that largely defined this year for me. Our outings for this have slowed in recent weeks, between fewer winter events and the holidays and work picking up all the way into last week, but from February to October, I or we experienced a year's worth of artists ranging from jazz to folk to classic rock.
Month by month:
January: Nobody. See above about holidays and fewer winter events.
February: Just me. Down in East Aurora with two friends: one a co-worker joining me at a craft brewery for the show by the other, an amazingly versatile member of numerous bands named Tyler Westcott. He'd opened a year or two before for the artist we saw this March in Williamsville- Antje Duvekot- and it was just announced that he, and various of his projects, will be spending numerous January 2019 nights in residence at the Little Theatre's cafe venue in Rochester.
March. Two events. First, with Eleanor again seeing the aforementioned Antje, who sang songs from her previous albums and many covers she worked onto a still-waiting release of songs she literally recorded in her closet while fearing she was going to lose her voice permanently (spoiler alert: she didn't). Then me, again seeing jazz pianist-vocalist Deanna Witkowski and her two trio members in the faraway corner of Houghton, New York- only to meet her and her bass player the next day when they got stuck in Buffalo and I got to take them out for wings.
April: None to speak of, although I did attend a trivia night at a famed local music venue with no music that day.
May: Again eased up. Did work my way into the Hamilton ticket machine to score two Broadway tickees for this coming January 20th- selected as being the halfway point of the Voldemort Administration.
June: Made up for the lapses. First was a fortunately won and amazingly intimate night with Chris Barron, the guitarist from the Spin Doctors. Eight of us shared an evening at Abeline, a beloved Rochester bar, that will never be duplicated unless I again somehow stumble upon something that sparsely attended and yet magical. The other, planned months before with thousands more in attendance, was seeing Lake Street Dive at the Rochester Jazz Festival. Their first appearance at this event, they played to a small crowd at that same Abeline; now they were headlining, and doing so beautifully.
July: Nuthin magical-musical- but we did make our first poetry reading appearance and saw our friend Kelly headlining in Singin in the Rain, so it wasn't a dull month.
August: Old and new. Old was me at Darien Lake for REO and, more significantly, Chicago. I'd never seen them live before, and despite compications and missing keys, it was a great night. New was both of us at Silo City, a newish waterfront venue in an ancient waterfront grain elevator, where we enjoyed an electronica performance by UVB76.
September: began my run of three straight Saturday Nights Out to see performers of the amazing persuasion. This night back in our local folk venue featured a duo we've loved for decades, Claudia Schmidt and Sally Rogers.
October: Solo for the next two. The first Saturday in October reunited me with friend Lucy Kaplansky en route to the Mets season finale, at an awesome Hudson Valley venue where one of its denizens opened. That was followed closer to home, a weekend later, by finally seeing 10,000 Maniacs for the first time in over 30 years of trying.
And that mostly wraps the musical gigs. We got to more readings, and another musical up in Lockport, but none of that is anything to sneeze at. Throw in any dozens of artists we discovered through friends, or Open Tunings or World Cafe, or just randomness, and our hearts and soundbar are full.