Music Brings Us Together

One more gig left on summer tour (the Gateway Dulcimer Festival in Fairview Heights, Illinois) and I’ll be heading home after six weeks of travel through Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan and surrounding connected states. It’s been a fabulous time all around; lots of music, beautiful locales, great food and moments of sweet calm in the center of an ever-growing socio-political storm.

You know, there’s a lot to be concerned about going on out there, but I also think that there’s a lot of evidence that life will go on, and that those that seek the joy in life will continue to find it. I’m also fairly convinced that it’s music that brings much of that joy.

In the folk scene, I meet a lot of people from a diverse spectrum of lifestyles and upbringings, the kind of variety that you might not find at a local watering hole or cool hang-out. Yet, here we all are, together, making music and not letting the news and social media get us down. It’s why diving into the midst of a week-long music festival is sort of like going off the grid. People come to these events to escape that spiraling madness.

So, that’s why I remain hopeful going forward. As long as folks keep coming together to share, teach and play music, then the world’s got a fighting chance. And if the world is totally hosed, then at least we’ll have a nice soundtrack for The Great Hosing.

Keep being kind to each other out there and, if you don’t play an instrument, think about taking one up. There’s a very good reason that so many of us are nuts about music!