Don’t Pass Up Day One, Day Two, Day Three and Day Four!
Friday, August 1: The Handover
The four-day journey with John Storyk through the Mid-Hudson Valley, along with my official Mix duties, came to a close with the handover to my dear friend Geoff Brackett at the Gateway Diner in Highland, New York. But my musical adventures were far from over.
The following night, we would head to Marist University for a sneak peak of a potential Broadway play in its early workshop phase as part of the summer program at New York Stage and Film. Then on Saturday night, we headed north to Saratoga Springs for the 10th anniversary tour of Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival at the SPAC, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, which my dear friend Joanne Zola has declared her “favorite venue,” and not just for the Phish shows she’s seen over the years. It truly is a magnificent venue.
Geoffrey is officially known as “Doctor Brackett,” following 20 years as an English professor and then Provost at Pace University, with the past 15 years as Executive Vice President at Marist. But he’s a friend going back to freshman year at DePauw University in 1981, and he’s godfather to my daughter Molly, so he’s just Geoff to me.
On Thursday night, after the diner, I found out he had been slowly building a studio in his garage. We stayed up late playing tunes and talked about audio interfaces and headphones and potential acoustic treatments, while listening to his band’s songs from the 1990s New York shows at The Bitter End… a glorious reunion.
The next day, after an afternoon walking around Newburgh and downtown Beacon, we headed to Marist for a performance of a play still in workshop, None, by the rising star Heather Christian. It was part of the summer-long series put on by the acclaimed New York Stage and Film, now in its 40th year. The organization is something of an incubator, with hundreds of submissions and just a few selected for 10-day retreats to whip a play into shape before possibly heading to the Public Theater, a regional theater, or straight to Broadway.
This is the organization’s third year at Marist, after three decades at nearby Vassar College. During the pandemic, Geoff was largely responsible for the transfer to Marist. The performance, billed as “an immersive yet intimate audience experience” in an introduction by Christian, featured 16 Marist students in the role of the choir, emerging from the audience in mid-song. An incredibly powerful evening!
After a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast, we were back in the car for the two-hour drive north to Saratoga Springs for the 10th anniversary of Outlaw Music Festival. Typically, for a show like this, I would either make pre-arrangements or at least stop by Front of House to introduce myself and swap information, but today I just wanted to rent a couple of chairs and sit back on the lawn and enjoy the night with my buddy.
I know that they are all getting on in years, but these are my musical heroes, and they were all in excellent form. Lucinda Williams, only 18 months in recovery from a stroke, couldn’t play guitar but her voice was sweet as ever, and her band kicked. Wilco was happy! Full of energy. Jeff Tweedy was bouncing and smiling! They closed with “California Stars,” followed by the Grateful Dead’s “U.S. Blues.” Magical!
Then Dylan came out and opened with “Positively 4th Street” and “Blind Willie McTell.” His voice remained strong until the final two songs, but the closing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” still rocked. And then Willie… Damn! He’s 92 and he slayed it on guitar! Still banging away on Trigger. Still has the fingers of a young picker. A wonderful evening all around.
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Then it was an early wake-up at the Homewood Suites, followed by a quick drive down 87 to the Beacon station. Metro North line back to Grand Central Station. Then the LIRR to Jamaica Station, AirTrain to Terminal 8, and a short flight to Indianapolis, followed by a drive down to Bloomington for a week of dog-sitting at my sister’s place outside of town.
Thank you, John Storyk, and all your associates and friends throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley. Thank you, Geoffrey, my lifelong friend. And thank you for reading this far. It was a memorable week for a simple guy who likes music.
