Peerless Music on a Pier

Time to blog about ancient history, the day before yesterday. For some bizarre reason time keeps moving even when I haven’t written about the previous day. Whoever set the rules for how time works did a shoddy job. When are the hearings for how to redesign it? I want to give my input. Let’s make it part of the infrastructure package.

On Sunday I went to the acoustic stage at the Brooklyn Americana Music Festival. The two acts that I knew and loved were the first and last, Emerald Rae and Nora Brown, that meant staying for the entire session. I managed to get myself out of the house in time to get to Pier 6 of Brooklyn Bridge Park early. That was with not knowing how to walk there from the substation and giving myself time to properly apply sunblock to prepare for hours in the sun. I’ve been to the North end of the park often, this was my first time at the South end, Pier 6. I love the design, it’s not that wide but the way it’s laid out makes it seem larger. You can’t see from the entrance to the water. If you could, you’d realize it was close.

I thought I might not arrive until Emerald’s set had started and was delighted to find I had time to go backstage before her set to say hi. Jan, who runs the festival was there too. Not only did I get hugs, but Jan also asked me to introduce Emerald. This is where my simultaneous extravert/introvert attitude proves useful. I love being asked. I love going on stage to introduce an act I believe in, but I’m also anxious enough about it that make my comments short and to the point, unlike when I write or talk casually. As my friends can attest, I like to talk.

I initially sat at one of the picnic tables up front or stood off to the side to take pictures. Then Dan showed up, so we moved over to the lawn to make it easier to sit together. The lawn was at the perfect pitch to make sitting comfortable. I didn’t have my stadium chair; when I sit on the ground without it, I’m usually squirming and changing my position constantly to stay comfortable. I didn’t have to do that. That made it easy to both watch Emerald and talk to Dan. I could even take a few pictures thought my positioning was far from ideal for that. We were directly behind the soundperson, so we had the best listening experience. I wrote about Emerald on Saturday, she’s still great, still a favorite performer and person. If you are a presenter, book her. If you are a DJ play her. If you are a music lover, listen to her.

I realized that this was my first time in two years sitting on the ground listening to live music. It was hot and sunny, and I had my floppy hat, so it was a decent simulation of the Falcon Ridge experience. What was lacking was friends walking by every few minutes. The only other one I knew there was Jefferson. As it was like Falcon Ridge, I did what I always do at Falcon Ridge, I laid back, used my bag as a pillow, and covered my face with the hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. That is being at peace. There might have been times during the acts that I didn’t love that I fell asleep.

There were some problems with transportation, multiple musicians had trouble arriving at time. I’m not the only one that hadn’t been to that end of the park. At least one went to the wrong place. Jan handled it like a pro, and had artists jump in and sub. Some of them were excellent. I wish I got all their names. The penultimate performer was Joanna Sternberg. Dan couldn’t stay to see her, but he said good things about her. That got me nervous as when it comes to music Dan is always wrong. He loves Dawes and hates Dylan, need I say more? I’m an extra good person, and modest, so I didn’t stopper my ears during Joanna’s set. I was rewarded. They’re fantastic. I love both them, and their music. By the end of the set, I decided that we were going to be best friends. Their breathless, funny, parenthetical speaking style reminded me so much of Leah. There were songs of being a square peg in a round hole which fits right into my amorphic sweet spot. After their set I went over to them to ask for music to play on Gord’s Gold and tell them that we are now best friends. They agreed, we did a pinky swear so it’s legally binding. Their reaction proved that I was right about them. Like Susan Werner they got my insanity even without known me.

This was my first time seeing Nora in almost two years, that’s a lot of time considering she was 14 the first time. She’s gotten even better. She had just dropped the little from her moniker “Little Nora Brown” the first time I saw her. That’s a good omen, my first concert was the Supremes, the opener was Stevie Wonder who was 16 or 17 and had just dropped the little from his name. I went to talk to her after the show as she has a new album coming out tomorrow that I have not been able to get a hold of. We talked and she sent it to me yesterday so I’m playing a song from it on Gord’s Gold on Thursday. I’m seeing her on Saturday for the album release party at Jalopy. You should join me. She’s a musicologist musician that goes into the history of the songs she plays that are not only older than her, but older than me; that means they are older than dirt. She is one of those annoying people that was an instrumental virtuoso at the age of 12 and just got better. Her instrument is the banjo, though she also plays guitar and sings without accompaniment. You just have to appreciate her talent and ignore your jealousy.

As I return to my real life I followed the festival with a trip to Trader Joes in Brooklyn Heights. When I lived in Brooklyn that was my store. I love being able to shop at Trader Joe’s again. Now that I am traveling more frequently I can stop at one whenever I’m nearby. I was rewarded with their famous spiced apple cider. You can keep your pumpkin spice, that’s my autumn treat.

Yesterday I had my first in person session with my psychiatrist. That involves lots of walking to and from the train though I cheated and took a bus from the train station to the hospital. Either they have changed the bus schedule since COVID-19, or the bus was late and arrived just as I was walking past a bus stop. I figured I was going to get enough exercise and it would give me enough time at the hospital to use their Wi-Fi to upload the videos I took at the festival. We cut the cord so uploads from home are now slow, too slow for the automatic syncing of large files like videos. The hospital’s wasn’t that much better but after multiple attempts I got them to upload. My phone was out of storage space and gave me warnings to free some up. I ordered a microSD card that will arrive Thursday to help remedy the situation. I’m uploading the still pictures now. When we had cable, it would have taken seconds to upload 17 images, now it’s going to take minutes.

I usually finish programming Gord’s Gold by Saturday. I couldn’t this week as I was waiting for music to arrive including Nora’s new album and Covers from Away, songs from Come From Away performed by artists from Newfoundland. They both arrived yesterday, and I included them in Thursday’s show. I stayed up late last night recording the show and sending it into Ron. I knew that I went over an hour and Ron said it was OK. When I finished recording and organizing everything last night it came in at 61 minutes. I’m always amazed at how accurately I can gauge that. There is 56 minutes of music and 5 minutes of me talking. I like to talk but I force myself to be concise. When in doubt I cut it out.

Now it’s almost 5 PM and I haven’t taken my walk. I better get moving.