To the Farm...

We took a road-trip yesterday to play at a music fest on a farm, a secret place tucked into the verdant, green, rolling hills of Illinois. We trekked away from the lakefront, and headed West & North for about an hour and half. You have to drive miles & miles to get past the long, never-ending string of strip-malls dotted all along the way. It's not pretty, all the concrete, and pre-fab construction, the beckoning signs, the over-stuffed shopping centers & and mega-stores. You wonder who owns these places? Who are the folks who live out here? Do they really spend their hard-earned cash on all this fluff & stuff? How do they make it? Seems there is money. America is commerce, commerce on steroids. No doubt. It was all kind of interesting and baffling. So different from where we live tucked up against Lake Michigan. Finally, we left all that behind and the road got a little less busy, smaller, more curvy, and we were surrounded by lots of greenery, trees, grasses, fields & farms. We noticed corn fields, and soybeans, and lots of seemingly unoccupied land. We arrived at the farm. It was a home for a little ramshackle festival. Two days of music, camping, and hanging out. We were there to play a set of our homemade music, just two of us. We set up and played to the trees, the grasses, the hills, the water, the goats, the chickens, the ducks, the pigs and the kind and gentle folk who welcomed us with open hearts and heads. It was exhilarating. We created a bit of a storm and my partner and I "got there," the place where you lose yourself in the moment of creation. It took a couple songs into our set, but finally there was ignition and lift-off. Afterwards we were spent. Folks were complimentary, it was quite satisfying. Then it was the long ride back. Everything in reverse. It felt good to get back to the coast, back home, fronting Lake Michigan. We unloaded our gear, and hit the pillows. It was a nice little adventure.