Lakeside
February has been my busiest travel month in years. Jodi’s too. This week will be the first week since the end of January that neither of us are leaving the state. Fear not though, there’s still plenty going on.
This last Friday the original Nate Houge and the Honest Folk line-up made a migratory journey south. All the way to northen IA. Oh, and for you younger fans the original Honest Folk line-up is Jason Moran. Jason is was and always will be the Honest Folk. Although in the early days we sometimes went as Jason Moran and the Lying Stinkin’ Guitarist.
In IA we lead music at a jr. high retreat hosted at Lutheran Lakeside Camp. We brought a bunch of percussion instruments (about 30 altogether) and did an entire evening worship service without me playing guitar. I did lead one song on acoustic lap steel and one song on fisher price xylophone (the kind with rainbow bars) but everything really depended on the percussive leadership of Jason.
It was great. The executive director at the camp had a huge native american drum that he lent us so we included Heleluyan, a hallelujah from the Muscogee tradition (171 in the ELW) that I just learned 3 weekends ago at a global music training event. I was really pleased with how Jason and I were able to facilitate worship with the percussion, but even more amazed at what a great group of singers had assembled. Once again the bar has been raised for Jr. High kids everywhere. This group was outstanding.
It was also funny to think that only a week before I had been loading in a dozen stringed instruments and now I had traded that in for a suitcase of shakers, sticks and bottle caps, and was pretty much doing the same thing. They’re all just tools some times and us artsy fartsy types get the luxury of picking the right tool for the job.
What a great job.