Music, Music, Music - Jake, Jake, Jake And Taylor
I had a great time last night. It was a wonderful show. More about that in a moment, first some administrative details about the 'longings' sidebar. Last month I sent off a check for the Kajun Kelley CD over there on the right. Now, I've got a few days worth of mail sitting in the box (fargin' cluster boxes hatehatehate 'em) so it's possible that I might have the disc already but I'm rather disappointed that it hasn't arrived already. I will chalk it up to the nature of snail mail and the necessity of sending a check so I will keep "Moods" in the sidebar until I get it.
I've already blown my month's music budget at the show last night - two more copies of Jake Armerding's CDs. (I don't really need to make links of his name again, do I?) And yes - I got the autographs. In fact I went nuts nuts nuts with the signing. I got Jake to sign the CD inserts I brought from home and then got him and his father to sign the CDs themselves. And I'm keeping them. I'll probably give the new copies to Lycurgus at some point but for the nonce, Jake would be the only artist of whose work I own multiple original copies. Then again - he is that good.
If I haven't already told you: buy the CDs dammit! And another one is in the works. Good. PoW approves of new product. And the new songs that were played last night are good. Darn good. I expected no different. If you have the chance to see Jake, get him to play "Honda Civic EX." Very short and if you have a shred of humor in you, you will enjoy it. I promise. But don't ask for the Star Wars joke.

If I have one problem with the web info on the show, it's that neither Jake's page, nor The Falls Church's website nor the website of Kairos (sponsor of the show) had any information about the start time. Still, I figure 7:30 is a pretty resasonable start time so I set out under that assumption. Traffic was a bit sticky (one light seemed seriously screwed up delaying the flow on only the eastbound side of a divided road) and I wasn't sure precisely where the Historic Chapel was but I got there at 7:45 just as the introduction was ending. Didn't miss a song. I had no experience with Jake's father Taylor Armerding and was I ever in luck. He is a superb mandolin player and a veteran in the music biz, being a founding member of the bluegrass band Northern Lights. He is no longer with said group and if that means he has more chance to play with Jake (also an alum of Northern Lights) then so much the better.
But it's not just the musicianship. These guys can harmonize like madness. They did a couple of fantastic gospel songs wherein their voices soared and interwove like the necks of mating phoenixes. Ecstatic and wonderful. I'm sorry that I didn't make a record of which songs they played. (The readers are happy to hear that! Ed.) In any event, they played a number of Jake's songs already out, some non, what do I say, protprietary songs and a few songs that will be on the new CD which will be coming out in the near future (before the end of '05 I think). Jake switched off between guitar and fiddle while Taylor stuck with the mandolin save for one of his own songs near the end of the show where he took over the guitar.
Jake played a fiddle tune which he said he didn't have a title for though he solicited titles from the audience. The song put me in mind of such traditional fiddle tunes as "Drowsy Maggie" and "Cooley's Reel" which I know from Mike Cross's work. I thought "Fiddler's Choice" might be a nice title, keeping that two-word rhythm, but I see upon Googling it that it's the name of a music store and the title of an album. So ... no. But it's a terrific song. I look forward to having on the new disc.
The show was sponsored by Kairos which had a presentation during intermission about its recent missionary work in India. I wish them luck and blessings as there's no nation on Earth that needs saving more. I took adavantage of the intermission to buy the additional CDs. (Hey Jake, any discount for all this shameless fawning online? ;-) Not that I missed any of the presentation.
Finally, after playing for somewhere around an hour and a half (excluding intermission), it was over. And I got my autographs. What a great way to spend a cool, slightly humid early summer evening.

UPDATE: How did I discover Jake? It all began with hearing "Ithaca" on a RadioIO stream. Then I found that Amazon had an MP3 of the song available for download. So I did. And the madness began.