30 years of thanksgiving eve gigs continues tonight...

Tonight we open our 30th Thanksgiving Eve gig - and the fifth at First Church - with this poem on our way to Tom Waits' classic:  Come On Up to the House.

Three angels up above the street
Each one playing a horn
Dressed in green robes with wings that stick out
They’ve been there since Christmas morn
The wildest cat from Montana passes by in a flash
Then a lady in a bright orange dress
One U-Haul trailer, a truck with no wheels
The Tenth Avenue bus going west
The dogs and pigeons fly up and they flutter around
A man with a badge skips by
Three fellas crawlin’ on their way back to work
Nobody stops to ask why
The bakery truck stops outside of that fence
Where the angels stand high on their poles
The driver peeks out, trying to find one face
In this concrete world full of souls
The angels play on their horns all day
The whole earth in progression seems to pass by
But does anyone hear the music they play
Does anyone even try?

I think we'll have a good house - good local publicity and a note from a regional arts reporter - and there's been excellent networking among the artists.  It is always more fun to play for a full house - and we want to raise serious money for emergency fuel assistance.  So, let me put it like this: 

+ If you care for the wider community, come on up to the house.

+ If you support local, live music, come on up to the house.

+ If you want to nourish your soul with some honest and tender blue-eyed soul, come on up to the house.

+ And if you dig the ministry and mission of First Church to the arts community, you'd better come on up to the house.

There's no cover but a free will offering will be taken to support the Pittsfield Area Council of Congregation's winter fuel assistance fund.  "Our hope is that tonight you might sense a connection to all that is creative, wild and imaginative."  Like Mary Oliver says:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
   for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
   love what it loves...
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
  the world offers itself to your imagination,
  calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

So, please, come on up to the house...