CARDRUNNERS

What's Your Edge

Lee Jones's Poker Blog

January 07, 2009

So, needless to say, yesterday was not my best day. It's still hard looking around the house - just "silly" things like, "How cool that Eric built that wine bottle lattice into the end of the kitchen counter". But I'm thinking that maybe somewhere in the house I'll put up a picture of Eric and the epitaph that was originally written for Christopher Wren:

LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE

Anyway, it was good for me to get out of the house last night and go to the jam that one of the local fiddle players hosts at his office. His name is Adam, and while he makes his money from real estate, he's (IMHO) a professional quality fiddle player.

So we're picking away and Adam has stepped out for a few minutes. There's a bar directly under his office and some of the musicians will go into the bar and pick down there for a while; I'm pretty sure that's where he was. So now Adam comes in and he's got a man with him. "Hi everybody - this is Dave. Dave, this is everybody."

"Hi Dave!"

Dave is a bit older than I am, and he looks like life hasn't always been gentle to him. He moves a little slow, he's got a stoop that you see sometimes - you know, that seems to be as much in the soul as it is in the body.

Now, Adam, he's the epitome of a polite gentleman (and crazy smart, too). He turns to Dave and says "Dave, you wanna sing one?"

Dave smiles a little, and in a subdued voice, says yeah, he'd like to sing one - names a bluegrass standard (though I don't remember what it was). "Can y'all play that one?" he asks the assembled multitude. "Absolutely - what key?" is the reply.

"Well, I'm not sure about the key - kinda like this..." and he commences to singing. It's not a super powerful strong voice, it's nothing you'd rush out and buy the CD. But he sings it with feeling, and the phrasing is real good. Real quickly, we find the key that he's singing in and everybody jumps right in. And old Dave sings it good - pauses to let people take their breaks (solos) as a good bluegrass singer would. I'm sitting right next to him and he's got a smile on his face and his foot's tapping.

We finish, and everybody agrees that was fine singing. A couple of more tunes get played and Dave just sits and listens. "You wanna sing another Dave?" "Well, yeah. How about 'Two dollar bill?'" Again, he's not much on keys, but he starts and one of the mandolin players plunks on it for a second and says "G". So we do "Two Dollar Bill" in G, and two or three people sing harmony with Dave on the choruses.

So we had a fine time and Dave clearly enjoyed himself. After that song, I wasn't really paying attention, but Dave just sorta slipped out the door at some point and out into the wet Asheville night. Maybe he'd been at the bar downstairs - I don't know.

Here's what I do know: playing with those folks last night helped make a pretty bad day tolerable. And Adam did a beautiful thing by inviting Dave up to sing a couple tunes. Of course, it's possible Dave's a multi-millionaire living on 30 acres on the side of some mountain outside of Asheville, and he comes into town just to slum with the bluegrass musicians. But that, as we poker players say, is not how the smart money bets. More likely, that was the high point of Dave's day, or maybe his week.

So thank you, Adam, for giving me a place to go and pick and feel better yesterday, and for letting me be part of that gift to Dave.

Regards, Lee

Entry Tags:

Jan 12, 09 13:44:43

great

thx for the story, there is much more than poker

Horizontalrain

Jan 20, 09 15:11:37

or maybe he was a member of the Time Jumpers who got lost on his way to Nashville

jtphila