♫In this beautiful life, there’s always some sorrow…♫

Maybe sorrow’s not the right  word, but the past two workdays had way more annoyance than I’m used to. After being away on business all of Monday, I just felt behind the 8-ball both of the next two days, catching up on what I needed to get out. Tuesday required drafting a document for a hearing yesterday, trying to prepare a couple other filings, and doing my first estate planning documents in quite awhile for a friend. One of those documents has to be both witnessed and notarized, and this was my first actual “notarial act“ since the new requirements of the Notar Republic took effect last month. So there was the added stress from those factors, plus everybody else in the office being very busy when I had the client in.

The one document I’d needed to prepare for the hearing yesterday had to be emailed to the client because he couldn’t get in, and it didn’t show up in my actual hands until two hours before the scheduled appearance yesterday. The client got to the office when nobody was there; our office unfortunately does not have a dropbox or mail slot for after-hours documents, so I spent close to an hour running around outside trying to find where he put the damn thing. It got very warm here overnight, but it was very windy, and I was afraid it had blown into a different zip code. It wound up that he'd stuck it behind a sign right next to our office door, so my sorting through outside trash cans and climbing around patios was all for nothing.

Then it turned out to have a mistake in it, which won’t hurt anything but was still embarrassing. As was something else for another client I found out about after I left the office last night, but that may wind up being a very good mistake- because it may uncover an active attempt at fraud on an opponent’s part.

And, all in all, work today has been about the same, but making up for it all once again was a night in between of music, with two singers I've known and loved for years coming together after almost a four-year postponement of their US tour.

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I discovered the band from Newfoundland through a radio station in Toronto.  CFNY, better than anything on Buffalo airwaves in the 90s, and in those pre-internet radio days there wasn't any choice beyond what your radio could pull in. One day, I heard a cover of REM's "End of the World" by a group called Great Big Sea.  It was infectious. Next to come to me was one of their own songs, "Ordinary Day." Even more infectious. Hopeful. Something beautiful (though a song of that exact name wouldn't come until later.)  I discovered they had a Buffalo following, and they were regulars at downtown's Thursday at the Square concert series. By August of 2005, I had found them in person there. And even blogged about it.

A year later, they were at UB, with me, and a post.

Another in 2009 I don't even remember going to but I did post aboot.

Next in 2013, outdoors in Rochester, after Carbon Leaf, with me, friends and the kids. Yet another post I can't find at the moment.

That was Great Big Sea's 20th anniversary tour, and it would be their last. The boys went separate ways: Bob into consulting on the music for the Broadway show Come from Away, Sean into rehab and eventually a solo tour, but Alan Doyle was the face, and rock'n'roll hair, of the franchise- and I picked up a few of his own solo efforts in the intervening years as well as seeing him on several episodes of Republic of Doyle No Relation.   Months ago, he got the word out that he was finally getting to the US tour that had been delayed by COVID, and it would kick off in our own downtown's Town Ballroom last night.  I've had a ticket for it for ages and it was just what I needed to get the bad workday angst behind me.



Opening for him and his band was another name I knew. I don't think I'd ever seen Chris Trapper before, but I remember Alan telling us at that 2009 show that Chris had written the title track to their album Sea of No Cares, namechecking him as "that suave and sexy man" born in Buffalo.  I'd picked up one of his CDs along the way before last night, and he did a short but inspiring set to start off the show.

Included were this song, which expresses my own attitude about life the past few days (he left out the two word title at our show, too, but we were more than happy to sing it in his place multiple times), and this one, perhaps his most famous of his own singing, from his own band Push Stars and the soundtrack of Something About Mary.  I grabbed his most recent CD at the merch table between sets, where he dropped a spoiler about him going back onstage for Alan's encore.  I could only guess which song that would be for....

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Alan also had his own merch table; I already had the music, the shirts weren't my thing, and this was the oddest and cheapest thing on offer:



On the way out, I noticed it was gone; so either it sold for the ten bucks or the merch guy ate it;)

Alan was looking more Puck-ish than I remember seeing him last-



- but his voice was in as fine a form as ever, and his backing band this time was just as Great and even a little Bigger (Sea what I did there?). Two additional guitarists, a drummer, a keyboard/accordion player, and a woman on violin who fiddled her way through all the old riffs and reels with absolute abandon.

The mix was about 50/50 of Alan's solo material and old favourites from Great Big Sea days. I didn't track the setlist and haven't seen it at the site for such things yet, but full versions of "Captain Kidd," "When I'm Up," "Lukey," "Old Black Rum" and "Patty Murphy" all came shining through.  Then a medley including bits of "Consequence Free" and the first time I think I ever heard Alan do any of the "End of the World" cover in concert.  His own songs included "Laying Down to Perish," a touching tale of four men who died on an ice hunting trip and left those words etched on a "gaff" that washed ashore months later.

When the band headed off, I knew from the merch table gossip that they'd be back, and sure enough, Alan and Chris came out to join in the acoustic rendering of the song they both hold dear:
 

Watch on YouTube

Chris headed off and the siren song began as Alan and the band headed into "Ordinary Day" with hundreds of audience voices joining in. That left the spotlight on the solo singer for his own Gnight, Yes'By and Thank You to us: his song "I Gotta Go"-

Now I gotta go, go, go
Another airplane, another show
20 songs if they love me
Only 18 if they don't
I'm gonna fly
Many miles until you're mine
How many nights and highway lines?
I don't know
But I gotta go, go, go

We definitely got 20 or more, and we just as definitely did, and do, love him:)

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After all that, including three hours on my feet there without even a wall to lean against this time, I walked the block back to my car and found a dollar bill next to it.  I was so sore I couldn't bend down to pick it up without loading my merch and hoodie into the passenger seat first. But it was a real greenback, not a fake Jesus tract.

Next ticketed show for me is one in Rochester in three weekends. Just Ordinary Days until then, but that's okay:)

ETA.  Welp, THAT was fast. Looks like we didn't even get 18 songs- or 19, if you count the three components of the GBS medley as one each- but the opening act made up for it.