Sometimes the real show is not the one we showed up for. I’m always delighted when the hidden and serendipitous performance unfolds and I am there—the accidental audience looking on at the unscheduled dance.
It was an evening some 20 years ago at the Coconino Center for the Arts. The Bluegrass Cardinals were playing! It was one of the first shows Dick Wodrich and I ever promoted. I was proud to introduce them to my town. The Cardinals represented to me what I valued most about traditional bluegrass—sweet family harmonies learned around a kitchen table and clean, straight-ahead instrumentation that kept the melodies out front and center. The band was working its magic on a responsive audience that night in Flag’s most intimate venue. Don Parmley’s banjo was ringing true as a blacksmith’s tattoo on an anvil. Randy Graham was wooing sweet on the mandolin and with tight harmonies. David Parmley’s guitar was rock solid and you could follow the swell of his strong voice showing the band the way home.
David sang of the old family cabin:
“What have they done to the old home place?/Why did they tear it down?/Why did I leave my plow in the field/And look for a job in the town?”
David launched into fast break on his scarred Martin guitar. There was a loud PING! and his G-string broke with a slap like a rifle shot.
Although there was no interruption in the song’s progress, time seemed to shift into a Disney-esque slow motion. David grabbed the broken string with his right hand and gave it a sharp jerk that sent the bridge pin cart wheeling high into the air above toward the stage lights. His left hand pulled a string from his coat pocket and shook it free of its coils. He threaded the string through the tuner post and took a couple of quick turns around the post like a champion roper tying off a Hereford calf’s legs. He stuck the ball end of the string through the hole in the bridge. He extended the fingers of his right hand in a modest “ta da” gesture just in time for the bridge pin to fall in his outstretched palm. He pinned the string. All the while he had been singing the next verse of the song. He began vigorously cranking the G-string tuning peg and as he sang the last phrase of the verse he lit the fuse on a hot guitar solo that brought the entire house to its feet. A standing ovation for changing a string.
On another occasion I had just watched “The House of Flying Daggers,” a Chinese martial arts film that was saturated with color and texture. There was a gorgeous dance scene where a blind courtesan reproduced a sequence of movements dictated by beans thrown against drums encircling the walls of the Peony Palace. Sorry, but words can’t do justice to the lush color and setting. My favorite scene in the film was a running battle through the tops of a glowing emerald bamboo forest with the pursuers slashing their very perches into spears at lightning speed as they raced along. It was a breathtaking ballet and a visual feast suffused in tinted light. I was left alone in the theater as the credits rolled and a lovely soundscape played.
A stocky young Down’s syndrome man in an usher’s uniform entered with his tiny broom and dustpan. He patiently waited for me to leave so he could clean up the soda cups and popcorn bags. He stood at attention for a moment—realized that I wasn’t leaving just yet and suddenly stepped to the center of the floor and saluted me with his mini broom. He began to execute a graceful and well-rehearsed martial arts routine with the broom substituting for a sword. For several minutes he pirouetted and slashed the air in front of the screen with the confidence of a hardened ninja. I was charmed by the artful balance of his pudgy form and his intense focus as he swept across the darkened theater. When the credits and music finally faded he took his dustpan and began picking up trash.
