Great Weekend
Friday afternoon, Margaret and I drove up through the Napa valley to Clear Lake, to see Bob Dylan at Konocti Harbor. We had a reservation at Spirit Lake, a small Bed & Breakfast in Lower Lake, about 20 minutes from Konocti. Spirit Lake is a small BNB, in the foothills off the highway. What's really nice about it is that it has a private lake (guess the name) of about 8 acres. We got in about 3:30, and after unpacking we had an hour or so to swim. There were a couple of other couples there, but no one in the lake, so we had this nicely sized lake to ourselves. The water was about 80 degrees, the air temperature in the 90s, so it felt fantastic. We also walked around the lake, and saw dozens of small frogs (about the size of my thumbnail) on the trail. Very relaxing.
Konocti Harbor, which we had seen before, but never gone to for a concert, was a nice venue. Our seats were good, though a bit far over to the right. A tall mountain rose to the left, and we could see across Clear Lake. We saw Blair and Ronnie, and chatted with them for a while before the show; I've been seeing Blair at Dylan shows for a lotta years now.
Bob was really fun. We got a ncie setlists, highlights included I Don't Believe You, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine, Dignity, Every Grain of Sand, It Ain't Me, Babe, Things Have Changed, and Moonlight. Bob was very animated, laughing, and seeming really pleased with himself. He was in terrific voice. He didn't play guitar all evening, just keyboard. He plays keyboard, of course, like he plays guitar and harmonica, mostly as a rhythm instrument, but still very expressive. When the guitars took over, and he wasn't playing, he sort of sidled over to the middle of the stage and kind of "danced," hands forward for a few moments. Very fun, entertaining; voluble Bob is wonderful, though the show maybe lacked the transcendent moments Bob delivers from time to time.
One thing I was thinking, when he was singing I Don't Believe You, is how he puts himself into these songs, and recaptures the feeling that he had when he first wrote and recorded the song, or finds another emotion in it. When he's on, he really puts the feeling of the song over, though of course you get those who complain that they can't understand him, or that the songs don't sound like they did on record. To me it's more astonishing that you'd expect a 62-year old man to sing a song in the same way that a 24 or 32 year old man would. But when he's on, he really puts so much into these songs, and the emotion is so visible. There was more, yes, acting, in any one of these songs than he put out in the entirety of Masked & Anonymous. A song is different than a movie, of course, but the contrast was still pretty striking.
On the way home we were listening to the soundtrack to that movie. Not everyone likes it, and I won't listen to it often, but I do enjoy it. I was listening to Senor, and thinking that in those few verses, he told a better more evocative story than he did with all those actors in Masked & Anonymous. There's so much room left for you in the song, so much more in a phrase like "let's overturn these tables/disconnect these cables," than there is in actually seeing someone trying to do that. Funny stuff.
After the show, back to Spirit Lake. No one else was there (it only has 4 rooms), so Margaret and I sat in a large hot tub for a couple of hours. At midnight I turned 50, so that was special. We heard bullfrogs croaking down at the lake. Our room overlooked the lake, and we got a fantastic sunrise that morning. The other four couples were there when we came downstairs for breakfast, and we had a good time talking with them. After breakfast, they all took off, so once again we had the entire lake to ourselves, and swam for a couple of hours before hitting the road. We really enjoyed Spirit Lake, and recommend it.
On the way back, we were passing by Mt St Helena, and I suggested we stop and walk on the trail at Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. RLS wrote a book about his time there, called The Silverado Squatters; I have a copy but haven't read it. We headed up the trail, climbing steeply. The Stevenson plaque (placed in 1905) is about a mile up the trail, and the peak of Mt. St. Helena is about 5 miles. We didn't have water or other supplies, so we just wanted to go to the plaque. We were nearly there, when we spotted a couple walking downhill. I stopped them and asked about the trail, when Margaret recognized them! She works with them both, and we've been to their house for dinner. A nice coincidence, and we walked back with them to the Stevenson site, then down the hill with them.
Saturday night, we went to dinner for my birthday in Albany with Margaret's sister Barbara, Ken and Janice Poe, and my old friends Eric and Rachelle. Lyal was here from Santa Cruz. A terrific dinner at Beauregard's and I really liked their clam chowder and the French Cosmopolitans I downed. After that we had a get together at our place, and Liz and Mark were there, as well as Gary from down the street. I drank quite a bit of both Balvenie and Glen Morangie. I didn't realize how much I'd had until the next day, not suprisingly.
A nice birthday weekend! Big thanks to those who had dinner with us and came over, and also to Randy Alfred who never fails to send birthday greetings, Anne Raya, Mike Erickson, Dave, and Gary Gunderson (who also never forgets to call) for emails and calls, Genevieve for making the cake, Denise for the bike shirt, and to Margaret for putting it together.
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