The music started early yesterday with the Community Christmas Celebration at the Party Barn.
The primary school students started us off with “The 12 Days of Christmas Terlingua Style,” which was announced in English and Spanish. “And a rattlesnake under a rock…”
Then, older students performed on recorder and sang and danced to a carol.
Of course, Santa Claus showed up and was a huge hit with the shorter attendees.
Then, the community choir performed carols.
Through it all, the talented Ted Arbogast made it all come together: accompanying the recorder choir, leading the community orchestra, helping the youngsters who lost the melody find their way back.
Later, Dana Idlet (who calls herself Dana Louise) was booked at the Starlight. She brought along some friends and they took over the big stage for a song-swap. They had never played together before but obviously knew some of each other’s songs because occasionally five voices would join in on the chorus. They’ll be at the Boathouse Friday and Saturday nights.
When Dana came through on vacation last summer she and I jammed at the Boathouse open mic. She’s delightful to accompany, and talking later I discovered she’s Ezra Idlet’s daughter. I helped record a live album for Ezra’s band, Trout Fishing in America, at Rice University in the early/mid 90’s. Small world.
Then, on to the Boathouse to catch Melissa Greener. She mentioned that, “I don’t play many bars any more,” and proceeded to put on a show that explained why she doesn’t play bars very clearly. Click through to her website and you’ll note that she normally plays showcases and theaters and is one of Guy Clark’s writing partners.
Her voice is versatile- tough enough when it needs to be, sliding smoothly into falsetto when that’s the right thing to do. She had a couple of very nice guitars and is a much better guitar player than she needs to be.
Here’s what it looked like to me-
