The concert was a good one, with a pleasant smattering of
older songs—including lovely ones from The Trumpet
Child, Ohio, and Good Dog Bad Dog—as well as some new
pieces slated for their new album to be recorded this summer. Karin was
sporting a new tattoo on her left shoulder, a hummingbird with the words,
“comparison is the thief of joy.” There was a nice pace to the evening, periods
of reflection and songs, never hurried but not dragging, allowing the luxury of
the beauty of music, poetry, and instrumentation to be embraced without the
normal struggle we feel as creatures of time.
Classic OtR phrases still echo in my memory from the
evening:
“…need a love like Johnny and June’s…”
“…if you’re looking for trouble…”
“…slow down…”
“…all I need is everything…”
Kenny has texted us that sound check was running long, then
in a while said we shouldn’t wait for him since there was no knowing when all
the pre-concert preparations would be completed. We found a little Brazilian
restaurant, Samba, a block away from the Hopkins Center for the Arts and
ordered dinner. Turns out the band ordered in food because sound check was
taking so long—food from Sambas.
One time a few months ago my cell phone rang, and it was
Kenny. He was in a van, traveling to some gig where he was to play that
evening. I had asked him to help me learn to listen with discerning ears to
country music, a genre I have not been naturally drawn to. Over the road noise
he told me to go onto iTunes and download a song. “Perfect country lyrics,” he
told me. “The chorus sums up all of life perfectly like only a country song
can.”
There is something about live performance that makes the
experience of the music different, somehow, and even albums recorded live can’t
match it. The band was in synch this night, the musicians seemed to touch the
music, and there was a quiet electricity in the air, a quality that makes you
feel a bit more alive.
Kenny had several long solos, where his ease as an
instrumentalist soared, carving his own mark on the song while never seeming to
call attention to himself. Not being a musician, I’ve longed to know what an
artist feels in moments like that, getting lost in the beauty but not losing
control. In the creation work is part of our being made in God’s image, and so
is part of who we are and is essential to our identity and our purpose. At the
fall work has been perverted into toil, and so we struggle with failure, the
perverse seduction of finding our ultimate significance in it, and the
difficulties that often keep it boring and unsatisfying. Still, in moments at
least, we catch brief glimpses of what work was originally intended to be. When
we lose track of time, and even forget to eat, so swept up in the delight of
doing some task, some work of creativity with hands, and heart, and
imagination, and mind, and hard-won skill. Those moments are glimpses of grace,
a foretaste of what work will be like in the new earth, world without end. I
hope Kenny had one of those moments, one of those brief glimpses of glory as we
listened to him play that night.
The song Kenny had me download, by the way, is “People are
Crazy,” from Billy Currington’s CD, Little
Bit of Everything (2008):
This old man and me,
were at the bar and we
Were having us some
beers and swappin' I dont cares
Talking politics,
blonde and redhead chicks
Old dogs and new
tricks, and habits we aint kicked
We talked about Gods
grace, and all the hell we raised
Then I heard the ol'
man say
God is great, beer is
good, and people are crazy
He said I fought two
wars, been married and divorced
What brings you to
Ohio, he said damned if I know
We talked an hour or
two, bout every girl we knew
What all we put them
through, like two old boys will do
We pondered life and
death, he lit a cigarette
Said these damn things
will kill me yet
But God is great, beer
is good, and people are crazy
Last call is two am, I
said goodbye to him
I never talked to him
again
Then one sunny day, I
saw the old mans face
Front page obituary,
he was a millionaree
He left his fortune
to, some guy he barely knew
His kids were mad as
hell, but me, Im doing well
And I dropped by
today, to just say thanks and pray
And I left a six-pack
right there on his grave
And i said, God is
great, beer is good, and people are crazy
God is great, beer is
good, and people are crazy
This entry was posted
at Monday, May 17, 2010
and is filed under
Kenny Hutson,
Music,
Over the Rhine
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