Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 10:12:06 -0600 From: "Webmaster" Subject: Re: Playing for you heroes
I had a "hero" experience just last Friday at the Yellow Pine Harmonica Contest and Festival.
The organizers had some empty stage time so they asked me to do my little one-man show for an hour or so. I set up my keyboards and gear, loaded my "standards" midi disk, since it was mostly older folks in the audience and proceeded to play.
Right in the middle of "Steel Guitar Rag" I noticed Norton Buffalo standing there, stage-left and grinning. I thought I might die or worse yet, stop playing and not die, but I made it through the song and went ahead and finished my set of Patsy Cline tunes, "Honky-Tonk", and "Georgia On My Mind". I closed with "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and tried to sneak off the other side of the stage but he found me and introduced himself (as if I didn't know who he was, already!) and actually complimented my little oldies show.
He gave a great workshop later in the evening for interested harmonica players and on Saturday Night put on an awesome free show with just himself, a fiddle player, and a banjo player. I think the most amazing thing that he did was play my keyboard with his right hand, hold a chromatic and a microphone with his left hand and trigger the chromatic's button with his right shoulder, never missing a beat.
Norton has always been my hero because he is so very versitile and he works constantly. I mean how many of us can say that we played on a Viagra commercial?
