NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Sun, 13 Aug 2006
Such A Night
Did I mention that I have the greatest job in the world?
Last night was the 36th Birthday Party of the Armadillo World
Headquarters down at Threadgill's, where I am the audio production
guy. Carolyn Wonderland opened (with JC the sound guy at the helm, a
reunion of sorts in and of itself — we've been running into one
another since at least the Mercado Caribe days in the early '80's...)
and Commander Cody closed the place. So many familiar faces, so many
smiles, so many compliments. Eddie Wilson held court; Michael Priest
was the emcee again; Larry Monroe got up and explained how Cody is the
guy who told him to move to Austin oh-so-many years ago, something I
never knew.
So much of my life has revolved around that old place, even to this
day. I was the guy who powered it down for the last time in the early
morning hours of New Years Day, 1981 — Finney couldn't bring
himself to do it, and went home early. It's where I met my partner in
the synthesizer stuff I was doing a quarter century ago; it's where I
met Zappa and Metheny and Feat, and made the jump from cooking eggs at
the Omelettry West to hanging out with rock stars and pushing faders
in arenas. It's where I got the street cred to be able to get past the
front desk and be a recording engineer in a town that pumps out 100
RTF graduates a semester like clockwork. It's where I met most of the
people that I've created music with for the bulk of my life.
You'd think that events like last night would be nothing more than
warm and fuzzy nostalgia, and there's a lot of that for sure. But what
struck me as I basked in the afterglow is that it is all still
alive. All of these wonderful creative people are still
creating, still going strong. We all have a quarter century of tire
marks across our backs, but we're all still of the same family,
too. It is a strange and wonderful thing to walk up to someone that
you haven't seen in a quarter century and resume a conversation
you were having like you'd just stepped away for a minute to grab a
beer. It happened over and over last night. It is so cool.
As I ponder these things, I realize that the Armadillo — which is
a living group of people, not a dead concert hall — has been the
runway from which I launched a pretty interesting life. I took off
from there many moons ago, and I flew high and far, and I saw many
things that most people don't get to see, and now I've landed back
home.
What I realized last night is that I've landed back at my home
not because I am through flying, or because I am tired, or because I
want to be safe. I landed to tell about my travels. I landed to see my
family. I landed to refuel.
Keep that runway clear...
Posted at 13:34 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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