“I can’t believe you never made it.”
It’s the statement that stops you in your tracks. At least, that’s what it does to me. We’ve been playing a lot of years, Maggie and I, from the main stage of the Florida Folk Festival to the Forge in Bandera, Texas. We’ve played Newcastle, England, watched the lights of France from the island of Sark, last in the English Channel. We sold out a concert at the legendary Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar, Ireland, and we have seven (so far) Cds on CD Baby.
And it’s been our original music that did it all. We play regularly around Florida, just finished hosting a 25 concert series of Americana music at the Martin Theatre, an art-deco masterpiece in Panama City, Florida, where we’ve had the good fortune to bring in, and play with, some of the most amazing singer/songwriters in the country, including Kamm and MacDonald, Sally Spring and Beaucoup Blue. We’ve introduced over a dozen top Florida songwriters to the Florida Panhandle in less than a year and a half as well.
Yet, every time we play a show, somebody in the audience says, without fail, “I can’t believe you never made it.”
How do you explain to very nice, sincere people that you have made it? That, in the scheme of things, you feel very successful? Maggie and I have been together for almost 40 years, still look forward to every gig as much as we did in the 70s when we shared the stage with Gamble Rogers and Will McLean, and we wonder sometimes if we’ll become famous merely by attrition. Just out-live all the others.
Blogs are something new to me, so I’m not sure if this could be called one. A blog, that is. I just thought I’d open with the most beguiling question we’ve ever been asked. Over and over again. In this time of overpriced conferences held in overblown cities, where it seems that money is the only thing you need to bring with you to be part of the inner-circle….. what exactly does it mean to you to ‘make it?’
Just asking.
