I just got back today from a 28 hour vigil for clean air that was held in Raleigh, the state capitol of North Carolina, in front of the legislature steps. I think I got almost 6 hours of sleep last night but that was after playing music almost nonstop for several hours, even getting sun sickness cause the sun seemed to shine right through the white tent I was under. Needless to say, I am exhausted still and in need of a complete overhaul(my voice feels trashed and I have a cold on top of that.) But in spite of all that, I had a great time and I think it was definately worth doing. I think I played almost every Grateful Dead song I song, plus every other song I could think of, occasionally having people to jam with. The very last song, I did was "If I Needed You". An NPR guy was there for almost 15 minutes , taping on his minidisc player so there may end up being a segment on it, at least regionally. There was a little girl there as well who sang "This Air is Your Air" a remake of the Woodie Guthrie song. A guy from a CBS affiliate in Charlotte taped me playing "Big Yellow Taxi" so who knows, I may end up on television.
Anyway, here's where the Christine Lavin part comes in. It was about 7 last night and there weren't a whole lot of people milling about but this guy came up to our tent to find out about why we were there and he had a case of harmonicas with him. He said he had just started playing and wanted to jam a little bit. Later he told me he was with a group, The North Carolina Poetry Society" who was attending a conference there with arts people from all over Carolina, learning how to lobby the government for arts funding. He invited me and anyone else to come to the museum(next to the tent) to see Christine Lavin, who was doing a free show that night for the conference attendees. I didn't know anything about her except that she is a success singer who does some humorous material. I went home, took a quick shower, and went back to the museum with a friend and got there about a minute before the show started. I don't think I stopped laughing the whole time, she was so entertaining. She is indeed a great performer and I highly recommend her to anyone to go see...you won't regret it. What's more is I ended up getting on stage and singing with her. She said something about how the people from the Miss America pageant had told her, since people love beauty pageants so much, at all of her shows to pick the best looking gentleman in the audience, and crown him so she put on a pin on mic, and walked out in the audience with a miner flashlight on her head, singing this song to every guy in the room. At the end of the song, she picked this one guy and crowned him Mr. Raleigh, and put a paper crown on his head, and then took him up to the stage. Then she called for four more volunteers so feeling serendipitous, I hopped up and ran on stage. We formed a "u" around the microphone and were the backup singers for her next song "Sensitive New Age Guys" which was completely hilarious. We even got a little harmony action going near the end. She thanked everyone of us for singing. I thought it was pretty cool, considering I wasn't really even supposed to be there. And then I won a cd from her, a four disc set of a radio show in New York that she did when she sat in for a dj in 2000. There's one joni track on it but I don't know what song it is yet since I was getting an error message from disc one. Also, she played a really well done song inspired by the events of September 11 (she lives in New York) and recommended an off broadway play called "the Guys" or "Guys" at the Flee(sp?) theatre with Amy Irving and Tom Womack that will probably be running through September. She said it was highly cathartic and very powerful. So I got a lot more than I bargained for when I decided to go on this vigil but then it seems that life is just that way sometimes. Victor, glad to be home... --- 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
