Fifty Years On

Fifty Years On (mp3) (pdf)

I am a proud graduate of Our Lady of Providence High School, Clarksville, Indiana. This weekend many of the members of my class of 1969 are gathering to celebrate our 50th anniversary. I would love to be there and reminisce with some of my old friends about our glory days, but life here in Iowa is claiming precedence.

Tonight I will be playing for a contra dance with my Contratopia friends on a farm in northwestern Iowa, helping a fine family of musicians, dancers and music lovers celebrate the wedding of one of our good friends, and occasional Contratopian, Ehler Orngard.

Tomorrow night I get to play for a short wedding dance near Decorah with my friends in the Foot-Notes band and, possibly, for a local contra dance after that. Sunday evening Erik Sessions and I are playing tunes for dancing and listening for yet another wedding, this time in the legendary barn at the Seed Savers Exchange just outside of town.

While I will miss the chance to see and learn from the friends of my youth (how young we all were!) back in Indiana, I am always honored when I have the chance to help with the music at weddings and other meaningful occasions. I feel like this kind of music-making is true to the values I learned from the dedicated faculty and staff at Providence back in the late 1960s.

So while Erik and I are driving on the back roads tonight I'm sure that my thoughts will drift back to those days so long ago and reflect on how my days at OLPH have helped me so much over the years.

I hope you enjoy the tune. There's a good chance it will receive a "world premiere" performance tonight in a field near Pilot Mound, Iowa but we'll be playing it for the class of '69 as well.