My Evening Out

Several months ago, I ran across a trio of brothers from Canada who sing Christian music with a country sound, which is right up my alley. I finally found their CD for a good price and have enjoyed it many times since. They are now working on a new CD and have been posting a new song from it weekly on their website. They have been in the northeastern part of Ohio a few times, but I always found out after the fact. I was looking at their schedule recently and saw they were coming to the area this week-end, so I map quested the locations and found that one of them, Mt Eaton, was 56 miles away, an hour and fifteen minutes. I debated about going, as I had no one to go with, and don't like doing stuff like that alone, but decided to go.

The location is called The Pier Lighthouse - not sure if it is a church, or what it is. Chairs were set up in the gym around a stage in rows of 8. I nailed a back seat in the middle section on the end and tried not to stick out. I ended up with 2 Mennonite women sitting next to me with an empty chair between us. The one, in her 50's, was somewhat friendly. The other in at least her late 60's was not. They spend most of the concert staring to my right, which made me want to look, but I never did see what was of interest - the tables of music product and a table of baked goods and other food was over there.....maybe they were hungry! Anyway, it was a bit unnerving to have them staring past me. :-)

I shouldn't be surprised that I would up sitting by Mennonites -most of the crowd consisted of Mennonites and even Amish. There was quite a variety. Men with no zippers, boys with bowl haircuts, women with black doily coverings, white doily coverings, coverings that were large enough to house missionaries on furlough.......

First up was a man named David Miller who with another guy sang several bluegrass style songs, most familiar such as Life's Railway To Heaven. They both played guitars of some sort and were accompanies by an older gentlemen on a guitar, and 2 teenage brothers on banjo and mandolin. The mandolin player was really good, and I wouldn't guess him to be over 14 or 15. In spite of the fact that I wanted to hear the other group, I did enjoy them.

After about 30-35 minutes, they put the guys up I went to hear: High Valley, consisting of the 3 Rempel Brothers: Brad - 24, Bryan - 21, and Curtis - 18. Brad played a guitar- the big kind - whatever they are called - Bryan played a bass guitar, and Curtis played a mandolin. They used no sound tracks or any other instrumentation, and though they do on their CDs, they still sounded great.

They are a Mennonite family, though not the dress-wearing, covering-wearing kind. Their grandpa was born into a horse and buggie family.

They mostly sang Christian songs, but also did a few I would classify as country - such as "On The Combine", a song talking about a boy growing up on the combine and what life is like on the farm - songs that don't mention God, but are cool songs about every day life. I was bummed out that they couldn't sing my favorite song - one that is on their new CD - they don't know it well enough to sing it in public yet. I may blog about the song one of these days - "Somebody Like Me".

In spite of the fact that I was solo in the midst of families and couples, I had fun and felt ministered to also, and am glad I went. The concert ended around 9, and after a brief restroom stop and to pick up a snack, I headed home and got here at 10:30.