From: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org (jangle-poets-digest) To: jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Subject: jangle-poets-digest V10 #30 Reply-To: jangle-poets@smoe.org Sender: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jangle-poets-digest Tuesday, May 26 2009 Volume 10 : Number 030 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [JP] Connecting the Dots in the Sky - Lancaster Fireworks Show 2004 - 2005 [MercyHouse1@aol.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 11:33:32 EDT From: MercyHouse1@aol.com Subject: [JP] Connecting the Dots in the Sky - Lancaster Fireworks Show 2004 - 2005 The Kennedys played the Lancaster Fireworks Show in both 2004 and 2005. I don't know why they have fireworks in Lancaster in the last week in June, the week before the 4th of July. This is a Memorial Day piece. For me, the 2004 Lancaster Fireworks Show was overshadowed by the death of my father, and the 2005 was colored by the death of my nephew Jacob in Iraq. My dad died suddenly on Mother's Day 2004, shortly after I had returned from a Gandalf Murphy - Nields road trip to the Night Eagle Cafe in Oxford NY and the Birchmere in Alexandria VA. The memorial service was 20 days later, the most agonizing 20-day stretch ever. Arrangements had to be made for family members, and so although my dad had passed on May 9, we couldn't all get together until the weekend after Memorial Day. The Lancaster Fireworks Show was the first show I'd gone to since the memorial service for my dad, after I'd cancelled several other appearances. I really wanted to see the Kennedys. It was maybe my most awkward show ever, although Pete and Maura could not have known why at the time, adding to the awkwardness. It was just the Kennedys at the 2004 Lancaster Fireworks Show, with no opener. That was the last time Karen, Stephen, and Peter had been with me at any show as a family unit, prior to last Thursday's Hungrytown appearance at the Quincy Library -- the rolling pebble that precipitated this avalanche of thought. The 2004 show was the first time I'd heard the new songs "Midnight Ghost" and "Namaste." As usual, I had to pick the minds of the Kennedys after the show to get the titles of the songs I hadn't heard before. Stephen, Peter, and I played a lot of frisbee on the lawn during this outdoor show! Since I knew the Kennedys repertoire well, I could easily jot down their set and play frisbee with my 2 sons at the same time. My nephew Jacob was killed in Iraq in February 2005. My notebook of shows has its biggest gap, timewise, in this very period of time. I went all of March, April, and May, three straight months, without seeing anyone, not the Nields, not the Kennedys. It's only now that I appreciate the reason -- it was because of Jacob. To put this in perspective, I saw more Women in Docs shows in just July and August of 2008 than I did of all shows by everyone in the period June 2004 - - June 2005, which is the period bookmarked by these 2 Lancaster Fireworks Shows. And March Madness 2009 was comprised of 18 shows in just 23 days - -- also more than the number of shows in that same period of one calendar year. When the Lancaster Fireworks Show 2005 came rolling around, I was very eager to see the Kennedys again. The last time I'd seen them, incredibly, had been the Cadence and the Kennedys show at PACE in Easthampton 7/31/04, almost a whole year earlier, 11 months before the Lancaster show. 11 months of No Kennedys! :-( Stephen, Peter, and I were playing frisbee again, out on the lawn. I paid no mind to the opening set by Chris & Meredith Thompson, even though I'd seen them open for the Kennedys before, at Avon Baptist Church, and at the Acoustic Cafe in Bridgeport. I'd had no inkling whatsoever that Chris & Meredith Thompson were to be on the bill that day, opening for the Kennedys. I wasn't even writing down C&M's set list while we played frisbee, and to this day I don't know what they played before Pete & Maura came out to join the Thompson twins onstage. "Hey, it's the Kennedys!" I yelled to Stephen and Peter. I ran as fast as I could to the very front row where people were sitting on the lawn. I wanted to see what C&M and the Kennedys were about to do. What they were about to do was the song "A Bend in the River." This was one of those moments that changed my life, along with "I Would Have Done the Same For You" by the Nields in Glastonbury 4/22/95, and "Across the Great Divide" by the Kennedys at the Sounding Board 4/14/01. In my opinion, that was the birth of the Strangelings. The Strangelings, Pete, Maura, Chris, and Meredith, did the song "A Bend in the River" at the very first Strangelings show 7 months later too, 1/12/07 at PACE in Easthampton. It seems that Pete & Maura were aware at the 2005 Fireworks Show that my nephew Jacob had been killed in Iraq, because they dedicated a song in his honor, Jimmy Webb's "Galveston." That was also the first time I'd heard TK do "Live," "Everything's on Fire," "Gypsy Rose," and the brand-new "I Found a Road." The Kennedys had passed through their own trial by fire, since the accident on the New Jersey Turnpike that had so dramatically changed their own lives. And I'd passed through my own lonesome valley in the slough of despond. Seeing the Kennedys and discovering anew Chris & Meredith Thompson was the beginning of whole new lease on life for me. A "New Way to Live." "You've only got one chance to walk this line And if you should get lost or stuck in time Just believe this road does not end here How do you want to be remembered A raging fire or a dying ember -- Life Is Large." This Memorial Day doing of the tell is concluded, but what it stands for, the hopes, the dreams, and the feelings wrapped up in the songs, the words and the music, stands imposingly tall and looms much larger than life for me. Bruce Check out the Kennedys' Official Home Page: http://www.KennedysMusic.com/ Fab photos, the Official tour diary, dashboard Buddha haiku, groovy merchandise...what more could you ask for? ------------------------------ End of jangle-poets-digest V10 #30 **********************************