Finely Tuned Hearing: I had two really strange experiences last night that need sharing.

Scene One: I was hanging around backstage at a great concert set last night. My brother-in-law gave me a pass and asked for me to shoot some stuff of the concert. Filled two 512K cards, two batteries. It was great! Anyway, the first band was The Secret, a new and coming rock band. They reminded me a lot of a lot of the bands that came to our high when I was a kid. The second band was Rufus Huff featuring Grammy nominated Greg Martin, Dean Smith, Chris Hardesty, and Jarrod England. What a great sound, kind of a bluesy, funky, soulful rock. Amazing! The final band was what I came to hear, Phil Keaggy and Glassharp. I heard Phil many years ago, but more on that in a bit.

I was drinking a bottle of water talking with Greg and Dean and Barry, my brother-in-law, in the break area in the basement while different folks were doing sound checks. All of the sudden Greg head whips around and says "Is Phil here?" He had just heard a couple of licks of a guitar playing from upstairs. It really wasn't more than just a couple of riffs, but that was all it took for Greg to recognize the sound of a master. I was dumbfounded.

Then a little later I was standing on the side of the stage and faintly heard the sound of a couple of Harley's outside in the back of the Capital Arts building. One of the guys standing next to me (turned out to be Jarrod England of Rufus Huff) darted toward the door shouting "That's my wife!" I followed him out and he tried in vain to chase down a woman on a Harley. He later explained that he knew the sound because he had built the bike. Who said that they all sound alike?

So I was talking with Phil Keaggy and told him that I had seen him perform once many, many years ago and I thought that it was in San Jose, CA. In the concert he started by playing for about 25 minutes without a break. Then he explained that he had laryngitis. He perked up said, "That's right, I then invited a girl up to sing one of the songs, she was actually pretty good." He then named the song she sang. Amazing! I was just standing there with my mouth open because of his memory. Then he added, "You are right, it was San Jose. It was 1980."