Last night was just… unimaginably wonderful. Dan Blakeslee was Audrey’s RA in our freshman year of college, and I spent so much time over there, he might as well have been my RA too. He was a beautiful, crooning voice ricocheting off the Commons walls, a spectacular fixture of the stairwells, inspiring us to open our windows and open our ears. I was still fresh to acoustic music – Whitney had stopped off after the Indigo Girls and Simon and Garfunkle. Audrey was working me over with folk recordings, but Dan was on the landing outside sparkling and generating light.
Maybe two weeks ago, Dan called me out of the blue to tell me that he was dropping in for a bit – so we set him up a show at the only place I know that will give me the time I want at the last minute – the Folk Art Cafe.
Great show. Dan was exhausted from working on bike ramps all day, and spent the whole set-up hour + passed out on the couch. It was cute. Having got fed up with the sound system, we ended up just playing acoustic, which worked out pretty well, +/- the whole piano volume issue.
Jason wearing one of Heather’s keys, and enjoying it profusely, apparently.
I don’t know that I can really effectively describe what it was like. Dan was my idol in college, one of my original inspirations. I know I have a bad habit of getting mushy on stage, so I avoided talking too much about it. But knowing that Ali sort of views us that way, I had to talk to her about it – I wanted to pass some of that feeling along. Let her know that I was burning right then.
