The Generation Gap...

Last night was the Sadieville MusicFest for July. We cooked up 5 pounds of sloppy joes and brought burger buns for part of the meal. We planted our directional signs made in June in the ground about 4:30pm and headed to Sadieville to help with the final preps for the evening.

Merle was setting up his karaoke machine in the Warring Pavilion. We headed into City Hall to set up the food concession. It was very hot and humid last night. Lots of bottles of water were sold.

As the food concession slowed down a bit, Katelyn and I decided to go and check out the karaoke notebook. Merle has 2 binders (each binder had the same list of songs in it) with all the songs he has on his karaoke machine. You just pick the song you know and give him the name and file number to him on little pieces of paper. He puts you in the queue and you wait your turn to sing.

Katelyn and I literally went through the entire binder and came up with two, count 'em, t-w-o songs that we both felt confident enough to sing together. We settled on 'The Sunny Side of Life'. Katelyn filled out our piece of paper and took it to the sweet-young-girl-that-looks-like-Shannon and asked her to play the one of the two arrangements they had that was the lowest. I sing a low alto or tenor. Katelyn sings soprano most of the time. We had our place in the queue. Then we waited.

When it was our turn, we had fun and the audience sang along with us. We felt good about our turn and then headed back to City Hall to help with the food service.

Later Katelyn came running in and said they had us up to sing again!!!  We headed back up to Warring Pavilion. Katelyn wrote down the only other song we both knew, 'I'll Fly Away', and hand it to the sweet-young-girl-that-looks-like-Shannon.  Claude followed us up this time and we invited him to sing with us. Both of these songs are sung in the movie 'O Brother Where Art Thou'. Claude said he would sing with us.

When it came our turn we headed to the microphones. Merle offered us a third microphone and we decline. Claude and Katelyn used one and I used the other. We sang a rousing rendition of 'I'll Fly Away'. Claude boomed out on the bass. Katelyn sang lead. I sang alto on one verse and then lead on all the others. It was great fun. The audience really liked it.

I did learn from this experience.

First)  This was our first time to actually sing karaoke at the MusicFest. We thought about it and never acted on the thought. My biggest concern is always the key. My voice just doesn't do the high notes and sometimes singing an octive lower is okay and sometimes...not so much. This is a very forgiving audience. Everyone is there to have fun and no one is very judgmental about ability.

Second)  There is a HUGE generation gap between what Katelyn and I know when it comes to music. This is evidenced by the fact she just turned 18 and I'm about to turn 60. The other is the musical home environment in which we both grew up. My father limited our music to country western, Mormon Tabernacle Choir and classical music. As a teen I was able to sneak in some of the rock music of the day but was never able to immerse myself in it as other teens did. Katelyn grew up in a home with all Christian music. So it falls that most of our lapover in vocal music falls in the sacred music vein. Now we have shared enjoyment of some of the music from plays (Phantom of the Opera and Les Miz). We also share are love of the music of ABBA and the Eagles. So there are a few other things but mostly there is a huge gap in what we are comfortable singing together in public.

Katelyn and I went in one day this week after her work (I think it was Thursday - they all run together) and, after cutting Mimi's hair, took Papa to Dairy Queen for lunch. Then we went to Papa's apartment and picked out songs to sing at the nursing home this coming Wednesday. As we flipped through the various notebooks Papa has of words to the music he knows, we again had a hard time finding a few songs all three of us already knew and could perform together. That generation spread went another 20 years. But we found enough and had a good time practicing. Katelyn's voice was going after singing that long.

Music is a wonderful thing. I got Katelyn the big note book of the music to the play 'Wicked' for her birthday. It came this week. She had not seen the play but loves the song 'Defying Gravity' from this play. At the same time, I purchased for myself two pieces of sheet music. I haven't done that just for the enjoyment of a piece of music in a long time. No sheet music stores to go and browse in Georgetown. But I found the music to 'Hallelujah' by Leonard Cohen and the music to 'You Raise Me Up' as sung by Josh Groban. I'll end up singing them an octave lower. But they are beautiful pieces of music.

Papa is planning on coming out today for a bit to go through the music for Wednesday again. He also will have to tighten the strings and tune the violin that Katelyn may play on Wednesday. Katelyn put the strings on but needs Papa's help with tightening and tuning.

So music has been a theme for our week. There may be a generation gap but there is no gap in our shared love of music in this family. Even at our presidency meeting this last Wednesday evening, Jessie Carter sat with her headphones in her ears listening to an MP3 recording of Papa singing and playing the guitar. Amazing...it just touches our lives in a very positive way.

I think I'll turn on that Pandora website Andie clued me into and enjoy some music while I work in my sewing room today. Not a bad idea!! Thanks Andie!