A few weeks ago, my husband answered the door to our neighbors, Bill Edwards and Vicki Botek. Would he be willing to sign a form agreeing to a concert on the island in our court? Of course. And so were all the other neighbors.
Fliers went out in the intervening weeks to remind everyone of the concert. A couple days beforehand, Noah, a 2021 high school grad on the court, zoomed around the island on a mower from the busy lawn-service company he founded some years back. The day before the concert, some pretty professional equipment started showing up, along with a portable toilet. By the next day, that last item was set off with several large chrysanthemum plants.
Neighborhood kids were lending close scrutiny to the court goings-on, the day of the concert, when our nephew Jack called us from Wyandotte. His grandmother, a wonderful woman closing in on 99 years old, was in the hospital, and he had driven in from New York to visit her. Could he come see us, too? Of course, Jack, of course. Did B.J. come with you? No? Too bad. See you in about an hour.
Having traversed staffed barricades to enter the court and noted the preparations on the island, Jack asked what was up. We filled him in and, after dinner, we carried lawn chairs to the island, doping up with mosquito repellent on the way and bringing the can with us. Turnout was good, and many folks had thought to bring coolers and libations along with their bug spray.
This was an album-release concert—for two artists, as it turned out. Lauren Crane was the special guest. Her album is Makin’ Honey, and her all-ages crowd pleaser was “Ode to Your Beauteous Gluteus.” Our neighbor Vicki emceed, and soon she announced Bill. Bill’s album, his seventh, is Whole Cloth.
Now, all family members and friends of performers know that what you want most for performers you hold dear is for them to do their best when they showcase their skills. Until you know that that’s happening, you’re anxious on their behalf and can’t really enjoy the performance. Fortunately for Friday’s audience, Bill put us at ease from the beginning, freeing us to enjoy the music, the setting, and the end-of-summer night.
Bill writes and performs his own music and describes it as Americana–which seems to subsume country, folk, rockabilly, and anything else he chooses to write. He’s versatile. So versatile, in fact, that he performed, engineered, and produced this most recent album—his seventh–himself, in his own studio, as the pandemic made collaboration pretty much impossible. And when, during lockdown, he suffered a paralyzed vocal cord, he wrote and recorded instrumentals. Bill is creative with resolve and determination.
Adult concertgoers listened attentively Friday evening, sipping, dancing, and applauding. Children flitted about as dusk fell, and when Vicki passed out glow sticks, the kids were first in line. The glow sticks were amazing, nearly two feet long. We grown-ups were fairly staid in our use of the props, holding them in our laps or moving them over a modest area in rhythm with the music.
Not so the kids. They started where the adults left off, and rapidly progressed to running around the court like torchbearers. Then they moved a ways off from the island and began tossing the glow sticks into the air. In short order, they refined their technique. Darkness prevented us from seeing how they did it, but the kids figured out how to throw those sticks so fast and high that all we saw was arcs of brightness on the way back down, a meteor shower of the children’s making.
The lights and sound equipment and stage have disappeared from the court now. The tent over the merch table is gone, along with the table itself. The chrysanthemums have been carted off although, oddly, the portable toilet remains. If anyone left glow sticks behind, the kids must have pounced on them.
Children started school this week. Students returned to campus. Michigan weather did its sharp pivot from August to September. CoVid remains with us so this year, like last, there will be no Labor Day picnic for the court neighbors. How exceedingly nice for all of us that Bill and Vicki gave us a concert to mark the turning of the year.
3 September 2021