What a great weekend! Great hospitality (thanks again, JenEllen -- you're surely the hostess with the mostest!), great folks, GREAT music.

JenEllen's place is on the side of a hill overlooking the beautiful Cle Elum River Valley (or is it the Yakima? I forget). The wind howling through perpetually, sagebrush and desert just outside the door, hot and dry during the day and cool and dry at night (my favourite weather!). Although Jen didn't play guitar for us, she did sing along while others did, and quite beautifully I thought. She allowed Amos and myself to butcher a couple of song lyrics she wrote, and we had a great time doing it. The food was plentiful and delicious, and the little ranch home was a delightful setting for a weekend getaway.

Both JenEllen and Amos recorded a good deal of the proceedings with their minidisc recorders. I managed to get 2 hours of cassette tapes recorded, but I can't be sure of the quality -- my microphone is one of those lips-on-the-wind-screen types, and wasn't picking up people across the room enough to make the LED's on the recorder blink very often. I haven't listened to the tapes -- we'll see exactly what I got. If it's at all salvageable, I will make it available to all and sundry.

And the sunset, by the way, knocked Maxfield Parrish into a cocked hat. To say it was glorious is to say nothing at all. Words fail. What a sunset!

And now to catalog my wonderful companions for this delightful (I'm over-using that word, but I refuse to apologize. It is warranted) weekend:

Amos has a lovely Gordon-Bok-quality singing voice and an amazing command of the fretboard! I really enjoyed singing silly doo-wop duets with him (once on Saturday and once on Sunday!). I wish you lived closer.

MudJack and RangeRoger were no slouches either, charming us all with good singing, great playing, and a wonderful selection of songs. But of course once they got started on their mutual acquaintances, the rest of us were kind of lost! :)

Amergin's poetry just keeps getting better, as has already been pointed out. He even sang the choruses to some of his new pieces! Great, great stuff.

Mag's voice and playing were as good as ever, and that's saying quite a bit. And I always enjoy singing "Acres of Clams."

But the person who blew me away was Genie, who was a veritable walking encyclopaedia of folk music, a git-picker worthy of the Carters, and a voice non pareil. Not to mention a songwriter of unmistakable genius! What a treat to get to meet you! Please, please let me know when you're playing Seattle in future and I'll try to make the gigs if at all possible!

And I, who was clearly waaaaaay out of my league, was made to feel welcomed and appreciated by all there, which in itself is no mean feat.

Sooooo -- Thanks, everyone, for the best weekend I've spent in a month of Sundays!

Alex