Rats, my browser ate my homework.
This was one of those times I had written a lot and not saved it, and my browser hung up, so I lost that part of the post. I kind of think I typed faster than the browser wanted to input.
The interesting part (to me) is that there was live music in the little pub downstairs in the Inn at Kelly’s Ford, one guy with an ampified semiacoustic guitar doing sort of folk-rock songs, “requests from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s?” he said. He was encouraging people to sing along, which I am always delighted to do. I started up on a bar stool, but when other people moved out of the room (and it took a long time to get our supper! The barkeeper was overwhelmed with the crowd, 18 in our party alone, but that was over half the capacity of the place) Arlene and I moved to a table.
I have to say, it feels different singing “Country roads, take me home, West Virginia…”, when you’re in Virginia, and “The night they drove old Dixie down (… I took the train to Richmond, it fell…)” when you’re within 100 miles of Richmond. We were belting ’em out. A pint of the house red ale didn’t hurt.
The guitarist said he used to perform on Skyline Drive in the Shennandoah National Park, and people would request “Rocky Top” every time. That, he said, was one of two Tennessee state songs, and the other was Tennessee Waltz. He called a woman who was sitting at the back of the room up to the mike to sing that. Wow! She was terriffic, with a beautiful soprano voice, perfectly on key, with some accidentals in that song that I didn’t know belonged but were perfect. It turned out that she, Donna Lynn Rector, had cut a CD with the guitarist as part of the backup group. When we were about to leave (after last call; our group pretty much closed the pub) I asked how I could get a copy of the CD. She said maybe there were some in the car, got the keys from the guitarist, and returned with my CD. It’s good. My favorite track on it is still Tennessee Waltz.