Academy of Pic-or-It-Didn't-Happen

A lot can change in a decade. It wasn’t so long ago that we didn’t all require ourselves to photo-document everything in our lives. Now we have retro-FOMO for the things we did but didn’t document.

This past New Year’s Eve, my long-time band Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem had the honor of headlining the First Night music festival in Northampton, MA. Truly a staggering undertaking, the Northampton Arts Council puts on this incredible day of music, dance and general festivities that culminates in an evening set at the venerable and elegant Academy of Music Theater. It’s a gorgeous room, recently restored to its original splendor, and the acoustics are great.

We were very happy to have our friend Anna Patton, clarinetist par excellence, along for the ride, along with Pete Wildermuth, one of our favorite sound engineers in the valley. We were happier still to have our bassist Andrew Kinsey along for the ride, miraculously recovered from a truly scary accident with a mitre saw only a few weeks prior. Not only did he not lose most of his hand, but he was enough recovered to rise to the occasion and play his heart out for 90 minutes.

The audience was wonderful. The house mostly full of happy, energized music lovers. I had both my boys with me. It felt amazing to sing in that space, in front of all of those people. Everything, the space, the audience, Anna’s clarinet, the sound quality, inspired the band to play its best.

So no, I don’t have a pic (though I believe there’s a video somewhere, and would love it if someone were to send me any photos they might have taken).

But it definitely happened.