Fun and Games

22 October 2013

Another Veterans Day approaches. Another Marine Corps Birthday. The war in Afghanistan continues to drain our resources and more important, continues to injure and kill our young men and women. They keep going because they're trained to do so and you won't hear any complaints from them. They do it for very little pay and always with the thought that they might not make it home. The families struggle right along side them and God knows how many Afghani's are dying. The approach of Veterans Day always makes me pause to think about how I spent my own youth. It gives me time to also think about that great bunch of guys I shipped out with and the ones I'm still in touch with. We had a lot of Fun and Games - but we didn't use the same meaning for the phrase that you civilians use. In a Marine Rifle Company irony was applied to every minute of your waking day. The irony often turned dark, morose, bleak. Sometimes you just felt lucky to wake up. More than anything else, you were glad to get home. Nothing effects us Veterans more than to see a nation uninformed and seemingly uncaring about what are country's Armed Services does for the rest of us here at home. As a VA patient my bi-annual check-ups usually coincide with Veterans Day and the Marine Corps Birthday. I walk the hallways of the VA Hospital and make my appointments. I feel like I'm back in the military. I do a lot of "Hurry up and waiting." It's Fun and Games again, just like the old days. And then I run into the younger guys. They're back from the middle east and Afghanistan. Some are injured very badly and will remain that way for a good many years. I count my blessings and say a silent prayer for them. I try and converse with them as much as I can. It's the least I can do as a fellow-vet. The age difference doesn't really matter. We joke a lot about Fun and Games.

South of the Mason-Dixon and North of The Potomac

 The stage back-drop at Rob's Barn after the lighting of the bonfire in the meadow behind the barn. An incredible season of some of the finest traditional bluegrass music comes to an end with the chill of late Autumn.

19 October 2013

Or give or take a few miles either way . . .

It's fun to be on a quest. It gives life a purpose. We suddenly look at our situations one day, out of the blue and for no particular reason, and wonder where our lives went. I always wanted to write the world's next great novel. I never did. I had a dream to stage an Opera. I never did. Real life took over instead. We are all slaves to the Great Toad - work, careers, family, just surviving enough to get along. Now I'm at that point where I'm looking back and trying to compartmentalize the higher points in my life. Those points that really mattered to me. We have a tendency to think of them in economic terms because we're all Capitalists at the core of our being. Other grandfathers will probably agree with me that one's thinking immediately changes once the first grandchild arrives. There is the physical feeling that the clock is ticking. There's a secondary realization that maybe life really was worth living after all. I call it "The Second Set of Dreams" and hope to put it all down in writing some day. So there. You've read the title. Now nobody can steal it from me.

The question comes up too, about Life Ever After. Does heaven really exist? Or is it here, in the here and now? Or is it really like that Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is?" I'm just crazy enough to think about all this stuff while I'm 'questing' around Maryland trying to search out traditional bluegrass music. One small story or one more chance-meeting leads to another discovery about the history of bluegrass music and the families producing it in the Bay State. I'm not so much amazed at Maryland's rich history of bluegrass music, as being constantly amazed that the history is flourishing, continuing, and still a vibrant part of Maryland's Art Scene. Not so in many other regions of the United States. I think there is an interesting reason for it. There seems to be a pride factor involved. A pride in the traditional aspects of the music and a family pride in the production of it. What I've often noticed too, is a mutual respect among the players and cooperation among them when it was necessary to keep the musical form alive and vibrant within the State. My 'quest' took me once again, last Saturday night, back to Rob's Barn in Westminster, Maryland. Rob Miller and Company (a dedicated group of people who are Die-Hard fans of all the magnificent Maryland talent that used to show up at the now defunct Friendly Inn,) were staging their last concert performance for the season at Rob's Barn - a beautiful parcel of private property a few miles outside of Westminster. There is a pre-civil war era farm house and a magnificent hand-crafted Amish barn that serves as a playing space for invited bluegrass musicians. With the season getting colder the fun has to end some time. On this evening, Blue Train was closing down the season. David Propst, a regular member of  Blue Train and a few other well-established groups in Maryland and Virginia, was heartily recognized by Rob Miller and his steering committee for all the hard work Dave had contributed to a successful concert season. As an added surprise a plaque showed up on stage that was to eventually go to Mike Munford for his IBMA Award of Banjo Player of the Year.  Marylanders appreciate their local talent and just wanted to say thank you for a lot of good music.

Seasons end. Seasons return. While the festivals fade into summer memory for most bluegrassers, winter is just cranking up for Maryland Bluegrass and the regular stock of working bands line up gigs at any number of venues in Maryland still serving the public's demand for traditional bluegrass - year round. This is another interesting facet of the Maryland bluegrass scene. It doesn't fade away with the lack of warm sunshine - it just seems to retreat indoors. It's kept alive by a hard-core network of fans trading information on who's playing where or who's coming out with a new CD or who's made band- member changes. If you're seriously into bluegrass in Maryland, you're part of an extended family of sorts that closely guards the welfare of the musician and fan community. This helps to insure the vibrancy of the community, and gives it further reason for most bluegrass events to become celebratory happenings. Trite to say this, but it is American music - down-home music. It's a reflection and chronicled history of the players and the people who enjoy gathering to listen to it. And when it's done well, it's just about the most honest music form there is.


Blue Train appears next at Jumbo Jimmy's Crab Shack on November 3rd, 2013. Another hot-spot of Traditional Maryland Bluegrass, Jumbo Jimmy's (Bainbridge Road, Port Deposit, Md.) provides bluegrass music every Sunday at 4:00. 

Conversations With Shepp . . .

Some Weeks Ago . . .

"Did ya hear the news? Mike Munford won! Yeah. He won tonight!"
I adjusted my cell phone position. Hard to believe a 'Local Boy' would be so honored by the International Bluegrass Music Association. Shepp and I had predicted it, and every local bluegrass musician and fan in the Baltimore area wanted it to happen. Best Banjo-picker in the U.S. And Mike is such a seriously nice-guy to get such a prestigious award. Everyone around here knows he's the best there is. Shepp would call me for hours and go on about Mike's banjo style.
"Mike told me once you have to go for the tone. Bluegrass depends on the tone in everything in bluegrass."
Shepp usually calls me after a gig. I think he does it to wind down from the adrenalin high. We all know that traditional, hillbilly, honky tonk bluegrass music is a drug, especially when it's played in the Maryland/Baltimore style. The lyrics are enough to get you an early grave after you've shot your wife and killed her no-good boyfriend, or else sung about it on every night of the weekend since you were in high school.
"Now Alison Krauss has a different approach about the music. Maybe that's the difference. I don't know. But after every show I try and figure out why our Maryland Bluegrass is different."
Shepp was rambling. It was good for his brain to come down off the drug he was feeding on. Part of it was his old D-28 and the magic he made on it this particular evening. The band's vocals were spot on. No mistakes. No wavering. The more energy on the dance floor showed up as more energy on stage. The audience refused to hear that it was quitting time.
"Maybe it's about sticking to the rules," I tried to interject.
"Yeah, I think we've talked about rules before. Maybe it's the rules that makes our music different."
"Rules are nice," I responded. "But performance is everything. Are you entertaining the people?"
"Yeah. I see your point. Just seeing that audience pumped up put us over the top."
We had talked a lot about a lot of things. I looked at my watch and knew he had about another hour before the bluegrass high wore down. He's easy to side-track because he's got an artistic mind trapped in a troubadour's  costume. You can hear the wheels spinning even over the microwave towers between here and the Eastern Shore. A long time ago he would have been the guy you see going from village to village playing a lute for a few pence. Little known  to these guys they were helping to spread popular culture all over the old continent until they eventually evolved into court performers and dancing schools for young ladies and gentlemen. The whole process was just one step away from the La Scala in Italy or the Ballets Russes in Paris. More than anything, Shepp here is part of that old entertainment package continuum.
" Jeez, Am I keeping you up? We haven't even discussed Molly Hatchet yet!" There's a loud laugh on the other end of the line. That's a musical joke between us.
"Why don't you go to bed and get some rest," I said, knowing he was still working his way down.
"Got to do the play lists for tomorrow night's show. Got to do it while it's fresh in my head!"
Like saying, got to put some new gut-strings on my lute, pack my bag, put out the fire, and move off to the next town. Every troubadour when he's good, gets to live out his second set of dreams.

Rolling On With Blue Train

 Blue Train: Tom Lyons (filling in for Mike Hartnett) Dave Propst, Tom Reeves, 

Rick Miller, and George Osing.

5 October 2013

      Why can't northern Virginia or the D.C. metro area get its bluegrass act together? I'm mystified to say the least. We're blessed with lots of money, a huge audience base, and literally thousands of potential playing spaces, and yet, I find myself continually going over the border to Maryland and across the Mason-Dixon Line to hear the kind of bluegrass I want to listen to. Thank God for WAMU/Bluegrasscountry for feeding my addiction for traditional bluegrass. Last night was no different. I took a chance and drove out beyond Baltimore to the White Marsh Mall area. Remember this place? It's not called White Marsh for nothing. That's what it used to be. Now Mother Progress has turned it into New Jersey South. It seems to be continually under construction and expansion. I remember it as a flat swamp 'back when' on long hauls northward to Maine. I hate malls - emphasis on the word hate. But that's progress, and if it means jobs for the locals then so much for some sort of positive spin on progress. I had to get off the exit at White Marsh to find my destination. It's a nightmare of road construction and tricky temporary exits that I imagine, change every day, as the road improvement continues. Exits navigated, I easily found Pulaski Highway (Route 40) and my final stop: The Williamsburg Inn at White Marsh.

     We got there early enough to get something to eat and I already recognized some friendly faces from other bluegrass venues. The Williamsburg Inn is what it says. A beautiful old house that looks more like a B & B with an attached restaurant and bar. Behind the house is a small motel, beautifully manicured landscaping, and recently added within the last year, a huge 60 by 30 ft. tent/pavilion for functions and events. The restaurant and bar were doing a brisk business. Connie and I ordered the She-Crab soup and Reubens. We finished half of the sandwiches because it was just too much. The prices were good, too. Because I'm the type of guy who notices these things, the customers seemed to be dressed above average for that part of Maryland. Not overly dressed, but obviously dressed for a special night out that meant something to them. It gave me the feeling that I would probably want to return to this place to try more menu items. I ask a lot of questions when I come into a place I've never been before. It seems that everyone I talked to had never been there, never played there as a musician, or had never been there before to listen to bluegrass.  So in essence they were all in the same boat as Connie and I. The draw that night was Blue Train and the audience consisted of a lot of the same people I see at Jumbo Jimmy's, Goofy's, Rob's Barn, and a few other places around Pa. and Maryland. This was Blue Train's sixth official paid performance. They've been on a stage only six times since last Fathers' Day. They've actually had fewer rehearsals. They have no CD's, no googahs to sell, no videos up on YouTube. They don't even have a website yet. What they have is talent in abundance, and the musical strength of their membership - and bookings. Lots of bookings up to the end of the year, while most bands are fretting over where the next performance will be. To launch a new band and then be busy every weekend is a working musician's dream-situation. Blue Train is obviously doing something right.

     What they are doing right is staying strictly traditional and yet expanding their repertoire of songs to broaden the entertainment value of each performance. Word gets around in Maryland in a way that it doesn't get around over here in northern Virginia. There is a tradition to uphold. I used to think it was indefinable. I kept hearing the phrase, "Baltimore Bluegrass Style" or "Maryland/Baltimore Bluegrass." I've tried to pin-point what local musicians were talking about and it may be an eternal search for the Holy Grail. Maybe it doesn't exist at all. If you hang around these guys long enough you begin recognizing the differences, even if they're hard to define. For me, it mainly rests in the musician's respect for the basic material of bluegrass up to and including the 1950's and early 60's. God help me, but every 'younger' group of players I see over in my neck of  D.C. suburbia think they can change the rules, call themselves "Americana" and throw in some amateurish banjo-frailing. They badly miss the point. Very badly. And wonder why they can't get paying gigs, let alone any gig other than playing for some friend's birthday party.

     What's also very different about Maryland/Baltimore bluegrass actually has nothing to do with the people who play it and perform it. You have to consider that plenty of good performance venues still see a dollar-value in the product, and that people are willing to pay to hear it; either through ticket sales or by consuming lots of food and drinks. Enter the Williamsburg Inn and it's risky step forward to at least give some of the people what they want. My discussions last night with Inn owner Rob Parker and entertainment manager Nikki Kimmel were interesting. Why bluegrass? Why offer such an esoteric form of music, and one that is viewed skeptically as having a limited audience? Ron's answer was, "We're having a huge success with all of our entertainment. We might have to get a bigger tent. We've had a very successful first-year of business." Nikki Kimmel mirrored Ron Parker's optimism about the future. She's obviously a hard-worker and has a huge task before her. Blue Train was the acting vanguard, and Nikki hired them on hearsay alone, which says a lot for the entertainment potential of such a new entity in bluegrass. She not only signed them up once, but once again for a repeat performance on November 23rd. It's a sign. A sign of things to come for the continued existence of a style of music which some call Maryland/Baltimore Bluegrass. It doesn't survive without the support of promoters and restaurant/bar owners who are willing to take a risk and hire good, local talent to entertain the patrons.

Blue Train will be appearing at Rob's Barn Concert Series (Westminster, Md.) on October 19th and will return to the Williamsburg Inn on November 23rd.
Blue Train is:  Rick Miller, guitar. Dave Propst, mandolin. Tom Reeves, bass. George Osing, banjo. and Mike Hartnett, fiddle.  
  

      

Twenty-Five Years Later: Viet Nam

 The Mekong Prestige II  successfully slides into the Saigon River - 25 September 2013

30 September 2013

     This is a watershed year in a career dedicated to travel professionalism. I've been involved in five separate projects in Viet Nam in 2013 and new opportunities remain to stay involved as long as I can stay healthy as I very quickly reach age 70. A young lady I shared an office with in Saigon this past January posted a picture of Quy Nhon. I had no idea it was her home-town. She was educated in Ha Noi and was hired through the Ha Noi headquarters of my representative company, Focus Travel. Long before she was born I landed in Quy Nhon in June, 1965 with the U.S. Marine Corps. RLT-7 for those of you who might be reading this and who are trying to keep track of my Marine-related movements during the war. I thought of the irony of the thing. And knowing Ms. Quynh, my age was suddenly a wake-up call that my days are getting shorter. Not a frightening wake-up call. Far from it. The richest part of my life is in the review of  it. I was in the war in 1965 and 1966 and I swore I would never go back. I returned to Viet Nam in 1988 and after that trip swore I would never go back. Life had other plans for me. On each trip to Viet Nam an old core-group of us would gather and exchange important information, either on-the-ground or back here in Washington and we would make our predictions as to when things would change for the better for the people of Viet Nam. Most important to us was the empirical information we were gleaning on each foray, as opposed to any news information, either ours or theirs. The best that I can offer out of the generalized knowledge 'the Old Core-Group' has acquired over the past twenty-five years is, our predictions have held steady, some advancements were more rapid than others, and Viet Nam now very much looks like Bangkok did in 1993 - 1994. The advent of the digital age has to be taken into account in the process toward technical advancement. I was telling a young student in Ha Noi that I had my boots on the ground when Fax Machines arrived in 1992. Already that was old technology in the west. He kind of stared at me in disbelief and then proceeded to text his girl friend on his Samsung smart-phone. He's too young to understand a lot of things. It's the folly of youth - a world-wide phenomenon, and no culture is immune to it.

     The review of the past twenty-five years proceeds before me like an old Henry Ford assembly line. Every day there are significant, subtle changes in the Viet Nam land scape, and one old Vietnamese saying epitomizes the total picture: "Viet Nam is changing, and some things never change." You hear this so much you get sick and tired of hearing it. Ho Chi Minh never envisioned these kinds of changes. His cadre never envisioned the internet and its effect on progress. After seeing the onslaught pf millions of motorbikes we would sit around and wonder what it was going to be like when the populace replaces them with cars. That's already happening in the four major cities and it's a mess. The super highways to accommodate them are marching everywhere across land-filled expanses of former rice paddies. Up until 1990 there was still only one major highway going north to south and every former G.I. remembers it. At most places it was only 12 to 15 feet wide. It was called Route One - because it was the only one. A few years ago Ho Chi Minh City completed its first sky-scraper. I didn't have the opportunity to go up to the building's observation deck until this month. The building is ugly. It's supposed to resemble an opening lotus stem or blossom. You make up the rest. Most everybody in Saigon hates it; makes fun of it. But it is a kick to go up and take a broad look at how much Saigon has expanded since 1988. The limits used to reach to the edge of the old Tan Son Nhat Airbase. Now it spreads in every direction for 20 or 25 miles and beyond. The view is another wake-up call for me that a lot of years have passed since the war, and when I made my first visit in 1988. I really don't mind the view. I'm glad Viet Nam has progressed this far. Memories of the war are still within me, and the fewer and fewer American and Australian veterans who are making the return-journey. What was once a 'market' demographic, and one that I participated in very intensely, the 'returning veteran' share of tourists is practically nil. The veterans are either too old, too debilitated, or, are just not interested in seeing their old bases or battle grounds. All of it is gone, any way. There's nothing left to see. Chalk it up to progress and the passing of time. I saw the signs 10 years ago. The tour groups I was leading couldn't hack it any more. Even the long flights were becoming a problem for the majority of my customers. Infrastructure was having a hard time catching up with demand as a younger, more monied, and very international crowd of vacationers swamped Viet Nam. Noi Bai International Airport in Ha Noi is going through its fourth expansion. DaNang declared itself an international airport last December and is now receiving air traffic from Hong Kong and Korea. I was there to see it re-open. I remember flying out of there and on my way home in 1966. I'm amazed.

     September 24th, 2013:  Dang Bao Hieu gave me a call and asked me to drop by his office in Da Kao district. There was somebody he wanted me to meet. Hieu is an old friend and almost 20 years younger than me. He's the founding 'father' and the brains behind Focus Travel Group, which very early on in the 90's became one of the first privately licensed travel agencies to break away from the state-run Vietnamtourism. Dang Bao Hieu saw the opportunity coming to use his own ideas and own initiative to push the envelope in Viet Nam tourism. Already in 1990 the piddling touring opportunities had become stale. And again, always the problem of infrastructure not keeping up with growing demand. Now there are many privately-run companies, but most still rely on the cookie-cutter formulae set in stone by the state-run companies. The internet is full of these mom-and- pop operations advertising Viet Nam packages, but sadly, offer a lot of disappointment, also. How do I know? I spend a lot of time in all price ranges of hotels in Viet Nam and I spend a lot of time sitting around Viet Nam's airports. I introduce myself. I talk to people. I ask a lot of questions of locals and foreigners. I learn a lot about good and bad service companies operating in, and outside of Viet Nam. Some are very good, with solid reputations, most are in it for the fast tourist dollar.  Once again I am very much reminded of what I saw in the late 80's and early 90's in Thailand.

     Hieu ushered me into his beautiful office space and his son Minh was there and a Brit named Barry Atkinson. Hieu is a busy man. He flies the world promoting Viet Nam. We're friends who hardly ever see each other due our crazy schedules. He spends a lot of time in Europe and Russia. Minh is often away also, taking care of expanding sailing businesses in Nha Trang or connecting with many of the Focus Travel 'Rep' offices around the major cities in Viet Nam. The day before, Minh had given me a head's up that Barry Atkinson was developing another project for Focus Travel. That morning we all discussed it at length. What was being proposed seemed pretty astounding - the kind of thing that even at my age,  I would want to be part of the vanguard team to attempt it. My final word to Barry and Hieu was, that creative ideas in this business are power, and are best kept under lock and key before they're stolen by another travel company.

     You put everything in place and then launch it. Failure is not an option when you've made promises to a paying customer. And most of all (and this was my two-cents,) you don't want to kill anybody in the process. Again, Hieu was on to something and it was obvious he had been thinking about it for a long time. The meeting over, Hieu turned to me and asked me if I wanted to attend a ship-launching tomorrow morning at dawn (and high-tide) on the Saigon River. Absolutely, I replied. Wouldn't miss it for the world. Luxury touring River-Vessel Number Five was joining a fleet of five-star floating "hotels" that have established regular routes up to Cambodia. It's a joint venture of Focus Travel, Ama Waterways, and the Mekong Waterways Company. It's happened because younger and more creative minds came together and dreamed about the future potential of what Viet Nam could become. Every 'boat' is booked solid for the next year and beyond even in a down-turned world economy. Ship Number Six is on the drawing board. All of this plus a fleet of over-night luxury touring boats working to capacity every day in Ha Long Bay up north.

     The following morning I groggily dragged myself out of bed at 0400 and roused my traveling partner Jason Sigler out of bed, too. We had been traveling up north on other business, other projects. We had been propelling ourselves on copious amounts of  high-octane Vietnamese coffee and sandwiches we were buying on the street. Amazing. If a person had to, he could live quite comfortably and nutritiously on two-dollars a day in Viet Nam. I'm glad Jason was along as one more witness to this morning's event. Not every day do you get to be part of a ship-launch, and besides, Jason had a better camera than me. We went down to the hotel lobby and waited for our ride. Hieu and his family gathered at the prow of the ship along with three monks and other dignitaries and a prayer ceremony commenced that went on for more than hour. Workers nervously stood about and waited for the final task: cut the cable and see if six months of work would properly slide down the ways and actually float once it hit the river. A young lady from Mekong Waterways Company smashed the Champagne bottle on the forecastle. There was a huge snapping sound and the ship flawlessly began moving down the heavily greased skids. Slowly at first, and then gaining momentum. The roar of thousands of gallons of river water being pushed away from the shore. Success. I couldn't help but think I was witnessing 25 years of my own connection to Viet Nam's travel industry sliding down those same skids and into the waters of Viet Nam's growing place in the world. It's the changing of the Guard. Even though I'm part of Viet Nam's war-time past, all I really ever was to the process is a witness to the evolution of what Viet Nam is today. How fortunate. It was a beautiful morning for a successful ship-launch.