To you the faithful reader of this seldom written blog, I have personal progress to report: Big Smith has been seen, heard, experienced. After careful consideration of the available venues in which to fulfill destiny, The Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kansas was selected. My good friend Amy did her master’s program at the University in Lawrence and I had visited her once and liked the town. It’s always fun to hang out in a college town for a few days now-and-again. It reminds me both of my quickly passing/passed youth and also about how different life and everything has become in the last 18 years (hard to believe) since the epic college road first began.

So, on to the journey. My co-pilot Jamie and I piled into the big, blue station wagon on Friday afternoon after lunching with Mazie. She was left in the ever-loving arms of Grandma Rosalin where much fun and laughter has ensued since our leaving (we’ve kept in touch via mobile phone technology). We drove the 7 hours west and south, glimpsed the ever-greening grass and buds breaking way into leaves as we rolled ever further away from that big, cold Minneapolis place. We arrived at The Springhill Suites in Lawrence shortly before 9pm and after checking out our somewhat strange hotel (it’s built in the space between the railroad tracks and the river, which is just wide enough to house such a hotel and makes for an odd experience) we walked our butts down to the Bottleneck to check out the action.

Blue Mountain, a band Jamie feels affinity for, opened up the night. They were fun and joyous and generally a good time, but made the Big Smith wait longer. Finally at 11:30pm, a mere 1 1/2 hours after my usual bedtime, Big Smith took stage. They opened with a song I knew well and all was good. They ended up playing for 2 1/4 hours, straight, no break. The members were all in top-notch form and the dancing commenced, continued, slowed and finally stomped it’s way into exhausted on-looking. The dancing at a Big Smith show is really amazing. It seems that a certain sameness overtakes the crowd and everyone begins stomping, twirling, jumping and generally behaving hoe-downish. The moves are infectious and I’ve never had as much fun dancing anywhere as I have every time I see Big Smith play.

Conclusion: Things in real-life are rarely as great as memory recalls them to be. I think Big Smith lived up to my memories as well as could be expected. The only let down of the evening was me. I don’t have the same stamina to keep at the dancing and enjoying myself in the wee-hours of the morning that I once possessed. But, despite my general lack of late-night fitness, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was only at 1:30am, 2 hours after Big Smith began plucking and 3 1/2 hours after my normal bedtime, that I wished the evening would just end already. Today I’m tired, but I feel whole and complete, as if the missing Big Smith part of me has finally been returned.