I Wish I Could Have Seen This Concert

Dear Lord, I wish I could have paid some cash to go see Bela Fleck & the Flecktones in Springfield last night.

I remember as a young teenager in Rainier, Oregon, laying in bed at night and turning on my portable radio and, one night hearing “Big Country” on what was then KKJZ 106.7, the Portland smooth jazz station. I was absolutely blown away.

Fortunately, I have found one of those links to a good memory of mine on YouTube…a live performance of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones playing “Big Country.” Hope you have some good speakers, because Bela on the banjo, Victor Wooten on bass and the horn section together is absolutely amazing.

Watching that again makes me miss Oregon. I miss it badly.

In that same vein, I discovered some music from the Voetberg family in Centralia, Washington — where my grandparents lived and owned a business on South Gold Street for years. They sound amazing and their family is loaded with talent from the sound of it. Check out their MySpace and listen to “Kung Fu Homeschooler” — it’s also on YouTube — a neat Celtic tune that conjures up images of an era gone by too quickly.

Did I mention I miss the Northwest?

This has nothing to do with my post, but I was searching the Internet tonight and found something incredibly sad. The mill my father worked at for twenty-four years in St. Helens, Oregon, shut down in September. The Boise Cascade veneer mill — our family’s sustenance for the entire duration of my life in the Northwest — is no longer.

Shoot, not only do I miss home now, but I miss simpler times when we knew everything was going okay.