Chris Kasper and Kiley Ryan arrived from Philadelphia on Friday night. It was a long drive– and full of traffic’. I made them dinner and we drank wine around the table as they got introduced to Antonia’s new dog, Dolly.
We started off the next day at the cabin, playing with Dolly, and listening to Emmylou Harris’s ‘Roses in The Snow’ and the new Gillian Welch record.
When David Shultz arrived, we all got into to cars and headed out on 64 to Charlottesville.
Once on the mall we grabbed some dumplings, walked around the muggy afternoon, and kept one eye on the sky–which looked like rain.
We ended up at The Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar. We all got iced tea–either Peppermint/ Sage, or Flying Monkey (I had Flying Monkey), and sat at one of the ‘shoes off’ tables by the window.
Antonia, David and I started to busk with songs from the following day’s St. Thomas Bluegrass Mass. It began to rain, and we moved ourselves under the porch protection of The Magruder House where Kiley and Chris joined us.
Luckily the rain stopped and the evening was perfect for a Garage show. I started things off with a handful of songs–some from Ophelia, some from years and years ago. Antonia watched the Chimney Swifts.
David played next with a couple new songs, and some Shultz classics, ending with ‘Nowhere, No Way,’ from Ophelia.
Chris took the final slot and played a beautiful set of songs for a nice gathering on the grassy knoll. The lovely Kiley Ryan joined him on fiddle and backing vocals on some of my favorite tunes: ‘Treehouse,’ ‘Older,’ and ‘Old Piano.’ We were treated to a handful of new songs that are going to be on Chris’s new record due out this fall. At one point David turned to me and said: “Chris is reeeaaaally good.” I was like, “Yeah man.”
After the show Antonia got gelato.
We’re all going to play the St. Thomas Bluegrass Mass this week, followed by an intimate show at Hope Ginsburg’s Sponge HQ at The Anderson Gallery.
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