We all took naps around 3 o’clock on Saturday while one of the kids from the neighborhood cut my lawn. (thanks Kelly!)

Then we got up around 5 and gathered up the troops. We took a blanket and a picnic dinner to the NC Art Museum’s amphitheater to hear the best guitar player on the planet lay down a wall of sound for two solid hours.

He was everything I hoped and expected, starting off with jazzy sounds, mixing in 15-year-old classics from my first exposures, rocking 12-string slides, and a beautiful darker tune in some minor key called “Industrial Park” (but he said the name in German hehe). All mixed with his droll disjointed ramblings that kept a permanent smile tatooed on everyone’s face – whenever we weren’t laughing out loud. We heard about everything from reincarnation to watermelon liberation to martian hibernation – something about a guy named Frizz Fuller and his crazy lyrics… “Martians at the window… And you in my arms… take down your antennae, don’t broadcast your charms…” And the whole time he’s just dinkin’ away on the guitar…

We brought the binoculars, and for the second half we were just a few dozen feet from him. I zoomed in on his hands and tried to figure out his playing technique. I couldn’t see a pick or a slide, but his dual melody-rhythms and walls of full twelve-string chords kept flowing out like he was using four guitars. So I guess his hands are just melded with his guitar, as I always expected.

Dang, that was fun!