Set Opener

"Time changes everything," sang Bill Monroe. As if to prove him right, here I am, a married (twice now) father of a three-month-old, a homeowner, a Fortune 500 corporation employee, a "well-trained amateur who gets some gigs" trying desperately to evolve into a "semi-pro musician."

Ten years ago I was undergoing high anticipation of a 4-night run at the Omni in March, that for three nights of which I had mail-order tickets. It turns out that last Atlanta show was the last one I saw.

I'm still driving the same car, but that's about the only constant. The radio and tape player have long since given up, so it's a "quiet ride." It gives me time to think.

I was a joe-come-lately, to be sure, as I waited to see the Grateful Dead until after they had taken the previous 27 years to "get it ready for me." While growing up, I never liked what I knew of the band, even through the MTV era when "Touch of Grey" found them a great many new "friends." I started listening -- really listening -- as a senior in college, to a dorm buddy's own, acoustic renditions of "Jack Straw" and "Wharf Rat." Then he loaned me some bootlegs, of course, and I'm sure you can guess the rest, but it was literally a matter of months before I was miles away in Charlotte, NC for one of the single greatest experiences of Life as I've known it to date.

This didn't start out to be about me, it's about you out there -- you who also may have shorn some locks and "grown up" and are busy being fine average citizens -- but when you drive by me, I can hear your CD/MP3 player just fine, and you're playing "Tennessee Jed," circa 1982 at 7 AM in a plain burgundy car that has no stickers and no personalized "R U KIND" license plates. I want to tell you, all of you, that I love you and miss you.

I also want to find out where you are, what you're doing, how the (perhaps) only common thread among our lives is (or isn't) helping to shape the communities we inhabit, the choices we make, the dreams to which we awaken -- in short, the Future.

And lastly for today, as wrong as I know it to be in many ways, I want to play their songs. I want to play their songs, not by myself sometimes, but with a whole band of plugged-in, tuned-up aficionados. But more on that later....