A mess o' strings

My dear friend and musical soul mate Gwenlyn has been making music with me since 1995. We used to gig a lot but the last few years our lives have been complicated with other things so we haven't kept up with our duo - and my music has taken a bit of a surprising turn this year, away from folk/singer-songwriter and toward solo classical repertoire.

But every once in a while an opportunity comes up for us to sing together that we can't resist - this time it's a benefit concert March 2nd for women living with stage 4 cancers. So we dust off our instruments (we both play guitar; she plays mandolin and I play that purple electric bass) and dig out some old songs and arrange a couple of new ones. We start out tentatively but then it starts to click and we're back in the groove, in the magic. And I wonder why we stopped doing this.

And then I remember the energy and time it takes to produce, publicize and rehearse for a full length concert.