Linda and I dropped by the Bullfrog Brewery in Williamsport for a Sunday concert and found the whole experience fun in a bunch of different ways.
Linda had checked online and saw that the Greg Burgess Trio, a group we knew nothing about, would be playing there two days after our 47th Unofficial Anniversary. We had not settled on anything specific for the day itself, so we chose that as our mildly delayed celebration.
You could order free tickets online. Linda did this, printed them out, and we hauled ourselves the 50 miles to Williamsport along Rt. 87, a lovely creekside road to travel with an almost total lack of cars on Sunday morning.
“They’re all in church,” Linda hazarded. As most of you would guess, that’s the last place I’d want to be, any day of the week.
The concert was on for noon, and we arrived about 20 minutes early to avoid any crunch. Lots of people there already, but most just seemed to be there to have a late breakfast out.
We showed our badly printed tickets to the young receptionist, who seemed mighty puzzled. “Tickets? I’m not sure what to do with them. I’ll check.” She scooted back somewhere and returned to say that, basically, nobody bothered with the tickets. She’d just seat us.
Maybe because the faux tickets somehow reflected our stalwart musical interest, she steered us to a for-some-reason vacant high-seat table… right next to the performers.
We ordered our own late breakfast from an explosively cheerful waitress (I won’t call anybody a “server,” that’s the electronic device where your email messages squat while somebody you will never see reads them and laughs at the idea of “privacy”).
The trio was busy setting up, but at least I wasn’t in their way. I love music of all sorts, but I can’t play any instrument, so I always feel a little intrusive around true musicians… an interloper-doofus.
Here’s what got me first: This was a geezer trio; by that I mean they were almost as old as me. As soon as they started playing, all other considerations went away. Through two sets of reinvented jazz standards, they were spot-on musicians who perfectly melded style and personality.
Burgess, on keyboard, has long, investigative fingers that each find their way across the keys with a sensuous certainty. He’s been there, he’s done that, and he’ll always do it the way it should be done, with, exquisite taste.
Bill Stetz plays standup bass like the instrument has been out surveying the world and come back bearing the truth. God, it’s good to see a real bass in action, huge, assertive, defining.
Drummer Jim Ruhf – I tend to focus on the dummer most times, because the best can carry any outfit from underneath – is a master. His riffs are excellent, his flourishes inspired, but what got me was the way he places individual slaps and quiet ticks like he’d found them hanging in the air and pulled them down into their homes.
Along the way, especially during the second set, they were joined by friends who had been sitting nearby, nodding and tossing the occasional comment. Bill Kane took over the keyboard for a bit with a more pointed style that openly asked for the keyboard’s complete cooperation. Tony Konan joined to sing a few songs, and Paul Jozwiak’s delicious sax ignited the buzz.
I’m not a jazz fan as such, leaning more to folk, blues and whatnot (especially whatnot), but within jazz I’ve leaned toward piano masters, particularly Mose Allison and Ramsay Lewis.
That’s to say that I don’t feel competent to talk about how the Burgess Trio fits within the realm of jazz. I feel music as sound and sight without much nod to categorization. So if I kept on talking here about the music itself,, I’d slip further into bland muling and sputtering platitudes.
Anyway, the whole afternoon at the Bullfrog was a wide, delightful experience, besides just the concert.
Between the sets, Stetz, the bassist, stopped over to chat with us. I was amazed, but shouldn’t have been. In group settings I blend into the woodwork – more as stained, aged oak than sunny poplar. But people gravitate to Linda, to her obvious openness and “thereness.” They trust her and want to know more.
Burgess soon joined Stetz and somehow I got into my lament that I’ve never been able to play an instrument (I stumble somewhat at kazoo). The intent to take any physical act forms in the brain and and has to flown through our neuron to prod our extremities to perform the action. With music, for me, somewhere along the run to the wrist or lips, it trips over the curb.
Altogether, what a fine time we had, with Linda especially delighted to hear a live concert for the first time in years. Same with me. During the ’60s folk revival (or whatever you call it), I saw almost ever coffeehouse performer or act in existence, but that was long ago.
One final note: the Hat.
Linda made me a a winter hat that I’ve worn every frosty day for the last 15 years. It’s high, round, made of thick grey fleece – no, not fleas, they’d jump off – with a rolled rim and a muted blue ribbon circling about a third of the way up. It’s warm and feels right in my hand and on my head.
In all the previous years, I can’t remember anyone commenting on this hat. Then, in the last couple weeks, three people spontaneously declaimed they liked my hat, each in the same simple words: “I like your hat.”
Bill Stetz made it four, as we got up to leave – “I like your hat.”
The hat’s the same. Have I changed? Has my head flattened?
It was the kind of day when everything I could think of went the way it should go, along with a whole rittle and rattle of happenings that I had no reason to expect, but that incidentally blessed me and Linda.
OK. Linda is the blessing of blessings. The next 47 years should be a gas.
lickhaven 