Last weekend I attended the 14th annual Georgia Reunion and Goodtime Boogie which I had not been to in two years. All in all, it was a very intense and powerful weekend and while not the same as jonifest(what is...)it was highly emotional and spiritual, a gathering of like minded people creating a bohemian village on some beautiful private land in the Georgia mountains. I don't know exactly how many people came but I know there were several hundred.
I stayed at the Dew Drop Inn, a site some of my friends have had for several years. People create fairly elaborate camp sites with candles, christmas lights, tye dyes everywhere. At night everything seems incredibly beautiful like some kind of fairytale village in the middle of the woods. There were even a few women with fairy wings flittering down the trails into the night. I had been a little unsure about going as I had missed two years but as soon as I was there for a little while, it seemed as if no time had gone by. Whatever negative elements I had experienced before seemed to be virtually nonexistant. I felt right at home. On Saturday, I had planned to play up on the stage though there was no exact schedule. I sort of milled about and wandered around, hung at the campsite. Eventually, I went down to the stage where there was a girl named Jaime playing, who oddly enough, was from Asheville. I just sort of hung around the stage listening to her sing. Basically, if you want to play you just sort of have to hang around the stage and take it over, just go up and start singing. After she was done someone played a couple of songs on the piano and then I mentioned that I would like to play. I had planned on playing "Terrapin Station" and asked my friend Brian Hillman(formerly of Deep Blue Sun) to sit in with me on guitar. I could have played later in the day but I felt an urgent need to go up and play now. It just seemed like it was the right time. Brian wanted to warm up on a couple of things so I played "Bertha" and "Queen Jane Approximately". Somewhere in between, someone came up to the stage and said there was an emergency and they needed so and so immediately. I called her name over the mike and didn't think a whole lot of it. We then played Terrapin with just piano and guitar. Of course, we had not practiced before hand but I thought it went pretty well. I then switched over to guitar which I found to be alot easier to gell with the other guitar. We proceeded to play JAckaroe, Boomerang Love, Cassidy, and Birdsong. I felt an unusual surge of energy this whole set, as if I was being carried along by something other than myself. At that point, someone came up and said that a friend, Steve, who had just arrived there shortly before, had just had a heart attack and was on the way to the hospital. I stopped playing for several minutes, unsure whether to go on but then played "Box of Rain" sending it out to Steve, followed by "Real World" and finishing with "Eyes of the World." At that point Danny(one of the founders of the boogie) came up to the stage and began talking at which point I left the area and went back to the campsite. I later heard wafts of an Irish melody on the piano, coming through the woods. I found out later that someone was playing it for Steve and that he had passed away almost immediately after his heart attack. So somewhere in the first several minutes of my set, he passed away, only a few hundred yards away. I don't know how it happened that we were up on the stage playing through all if this, with no knowledge of what was going on but reflecting upon it, I am glad that we were. I will never look at any of these songs the same way ever again, their meaning so intensified, the close connection of life to death so clear and vivid...Cassidy was written upon the death of Jack Cassady and the birth of Cassidy Law and Birdsong was written as a memorial to Janis Joplin. It is something I will wonder about the rest of my life. Though his death did bring everyone down somewhat, in another way it really brought everyone even closer together and the weekend became a giant memorial to Steve, a celebration of his life. Somehow, it seemed so natural to pass into the other world. Though very, very tragic... Victor, glad to be home for awhile... --- Victor Johnson --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Roses wait for the springtime, They sleep beneath the ground. They hear March winds a callin' For the sun to come around."vlj Visit http://www.cdbaby.com/victorjohnson
