First Public Performance in Nashville

This weekend was our ward's Men's Conference. In the morning we had breakfast, two sessions, and a plenary session. I decided to attend a session on public speaking and then another on cooking - the cooking session included tastes of a gaucho steak and key lime pie. Yum! The plenary speaker was Kathleen Flake, a professor at Vanderbilt's Divinity School (and Daniel's primary teacher). She spoke about the history of the church in Tennessee. It was thought-provoking and stirring. I had never heard about the massacre at Kane Creek as related by B.H. Roberts in his autobiography. You can read the chapter that deals with this episode here.

That afternoon I caught a session at the temple with Jonathan Wade. He and I have been taking classes together since our BYU undergrad days. In fact, it will be eight years ago in January when we met each other in a Portuguese class. It is quite strange that we ended up at the same doctoral program, especially since we are in different fields of specialization. It was a great session and then we went over to Wolfgang Puck's for a cup of butternut squash soup. Yum! I hurried home, changed strings on my Breedlove, bought a new 'E' harmonica, and then went over to the church.

Later that evening the Men's Conference reconvened for a desert competition. These were deserts made by the men with no outside help. There were some delicious entries. After the desert competition, we had a small acoustic show.I home teach Shane Adams, one of the musicians in the ward, and he brought his gear for this intimate show. He had invited a friend, Josh Preston, who was quite good. His songwriting reminds me a lot of Glen Phillips, the lead singer of Toad the Wet Sprocket. Drew Pope and I were kind of the opening acts. Drew is our choir director, he studied basoon, I believe, at the U of U and he writes country songs in his spare time. He has a tremendous voice.

Any way, I played three songs: "Song of Susannah," "Light in the Grey," and "Norwegian Wood" with Drew singing the harmony line on that last one. I was a bit nervous since I had not performed in public in a long time. I think the last time I played live was with Secily at some acoustic show at Muse Music. I'm sure that was over two and a half years ago. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous but I got a great reception. In fact, several people came up afterwards and said they had no idea I was so good. That felt good. I should see about playing some shows. I would really like to get a solo album done. Maybe I should focus on getting some recording done while Aimee and the kids are out of town.