The steel guitar player made me cry.
There we were at the Adobe Bar to listen to Kim and the Caballeros. The place was packed. Somehow an empty table materialized and we were sitting with our friends. The first few songs were great, good twangy country stuff, and I was bouncing up and down in my chair. Then the band played a cover song, “No One to Find” — at least I think it was a cover — a slower number about personal independence. I’d already been digging the steel guitar work, and when Leonard took his solo on “No One to Find,” it simply transported me: the totality of the experience, the emotional coloration of the harmonies, the constellation of submerged memories and life experiences lit up by the sounds. He wasn’t even halfway through before I got all choked up.
I’ve been to operas and rock concerts, symphonies and folkfests, jam sessions and virtuoso recitals, but this was the first time in my life I’ve ever honestly been moved to tears by music. Not by lyrics, the sentiment of the song, or the context, but by the unbearable beauty of the sound itself, and it happened during the first set at the Adobe Bar in Taos, New Mexico on a cold rainy night in April in the second half of my life, while Leonard played his steel …
Leonard’s not exactly a young guy. Maybe I oughta tell him.
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