Skier

He swings down like the flourish of a pen
Signing a signature in white on white.

The silence of his skis reciprocates
The silence of the world around him.

Wind is his one competitor
In the cool winding and unwinding down.

On incandescent feet he falls
Unfalling, trailing white foam, white fire.

--Robert Francis

from Room for Me and a Mountain Lion: Poetry of Open Space, selected by Nancy Larrick.

Open Mic Night at Freight and Salvage

It is an important acoustic and folk venue, and it is an historic Open Mic:  the longest-continually running one in the East Bay.

Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse on some alternate Tuesday nights is the host to the Open Mic.

Open Mics are part of how I got my start and developed my chops in Fort Collins:  Avo's, Lucky Joe's, The Canyon Open Mic in Masonville and more.

Signing up to play a new tune, or test one's stage presence as a performing artist, to get known in a new area, to meet other song-singers and song-writers are some of the reasons that men and women add their name to the list.

As a listener/observer, Open Mics are always hit-or-miss in:
the talent department,
or the ready-for-prime-time department,
or the stage-presence polish-department,
or trying-out-the-new-material department,

but that's exactly the point.

On a recent Tuesday, I threw my hat into the ring, bought the ticket to get in, hitched up my baritone mountain dulcimer and traveled the BART across the bay.  Important learning: Arriving 20 minutes before door opened almost didn't get me a spot to play.  There were several other hopefuls behind me in the line who DIDN'T get a slot to play that night.

Before I went, I thought I'd check in my with colleague, Kerry Patrick Clark, about which song to sing for my "Freight" debut.

I have a large repertoire, I play many instruments and when faced with a "one-song-set" am sometimes stymied by which one to choose.

"It's a no-brainer," he said, when I finally reached him on the telephone.

Then he named the perfect song, but it was one I had completely overlooked when trying to balance: instrument, style of song, goal of song in giving my debut performance on this stage.

"We need to move the audience to laugh, or to cry, to move them toward community," he noted.  "It's the stories that have the power."

Of course he was right, and I played the one he suggested.

I drew #26 out of a line-up of 28 performers and even though I waited for nearly 3 hours through all the preceding performers [and found myself really being moved by a third of them!] I had a blast!

And my sweethearts: (my spouse and my daughter) both came to smile and support me....
....and they said,

"you did good."

Off to California

Here I am in my new studio, with just a tiny sampling of my work behind me!

The physical transition was completed with my arrival in San Mateo last Saturday at 4 pm.

I can't even begin to describe the beauty I witnessed while crossing Utah and Nevada on I-80:  the colors of rock, the shades of tan, the raw umbers, burnt siennas-- I finally realized where Crayola got the names for some of the crayons that I used from my 64-color box.

The mountain peaks reaching up to scrape snow or rain out of the clouds, or was it the clouds leaning down to be scratched like Baloo the bear in Jungle Book?

The clouds hovering over the Great Salt Lake, the snow draped peaks with the deep blue-green of the tree lines in a band of color below, while the spring-yellow slope that rose to meet the tawny border that separates them all like the fancy parfait treats made by my mother.

The perspective I learned in art class in Junior High was demonstrated with the long road to infinity stretched ahead.

Towns every two hours apart, a family friend to visit in Reno, the foggy, snowy Sierras which gave way instantly to SPRING!  The bright orange of California poppies and the white bobbing heads of jonquils on springy green stems.

I didn't come close to hearing everything I'd planned to hear from my iPod, but instead kept repeating tracks over and over to sing with Holly Near, Sandy and Pat of Emma's Revolution, Jim Croce and more.

So now I am here, learning my way around, correcting forwarding errors at the post-office, finishing the fiscal transitions and sitting on my back porch, watching the planes in their final approach across the Bay to SFO.

Pinch me!

Homeless or On Tour?

Two days ago the moving truck pulled away from our Fort Collins home of 10 years.

Yesterday after a couple of landfill/recycling/hazard waste runs, a pawn shop visit, the packing of my car with my two-weeks worth of clothes, instruments and gear, and the beautiful restoring power of the "final housecleaner", I signed the papers to transfer ownership of the house to just the right couple who have been looking for a long time and jumped on the PRE-availability of our house on Christmas Eve.

Because I had no idea how long it would take to sell the house, I booked northern work  (in North Carolina and northern Colorado) through the end of February.  So, I have no home here anymore, but my spouse and our pooch are now safely ensconced in a rental house that will become our new home in San Mateo and all of our stuff is in a truck in-between us.

So, with so much stuff and a place eventually to put it, I can't rightly say I'm homeless.

So I will say I'm on tour, based in a place I've never lived and have only visited a few times.  But that is where my love now lives and as Valentine's Day arrives, is where my heart beats and yearns.

Thanks to the generosity of my friend, Paul, and pets Roxy and Orra, I have a place to park in Fort Collins until the car points west to leave this wonderful home of 17 years in my rear-view mirror.

Of course, I may not be able to see it....

Celebration: Music Director’s Final Worship

Steve Eulberg, the Director of Music at LCM/CSU for the past 16 years, will be present to lead worship music for the final time on February 16, 2014 at 5:15 pm.  Please come and share in celebrating his service to the community.  Steve is leaving to join Pastor Connie in San Mateo, California at the end of February.

The community of Lutheran Campus Ministry at CSU has had a long tradition of a using variety of worship settings (the Lutheran Book of Worship, Gather, The Chicago Folk Mass).  It has also had a tradition of creating worship forms that served the community in their worship of God.  (e.g. St. Thomas Celebration).

In addition to being published in This Far By Faith, Worship DVD (AugsburgFortress), Chalice Praise (Chalice Press), and Upper Room Worshipbook(Abingdon) Eulberg has continued this tradition by creating several liturgical settings of music in use in worship at St. Thomas Chapel during his tenure:

St. Thomas Blessing & Praise was commissioned by LCM in 1998.

Christ Is Our Peace (2002)

Dulcimer-Friendly Evening Prayer (1995)

Advent Chorale Service (using Dulcimer-Friendly Worship, Vol I: the season of Advent)

We Have This Treasure (2006)

Hope for the Future (2008)

Sophia’s Dance (2009)

Anam Cara (Celtic Worship) (2010)

An Evangelical Lutheran Worship Setting (using selections of liturgical settings from the ELW.)

Several World Music Celebrations.

Several of these worship settings are in ecumenical use at congregations, camps and retreat settings across the USA and Canada, testimony to how the gifts of Campus Ministry continue enrich the entire church.

(this post originally appeared on the lcmcsu.org website)

Farewell to Fort Collins (or How to Start a Musical Career)

(Here is the original edit of my Farewell to Fort Collins "Soapbox" Article for the Fort Collins Coloradoan.  You can read the shorter, Soapbox edit here.  If you'd like to explore making a living in music, come to the workshop I'm hosting Dick Weissman on February 1, 2014. More info here.)

When we moved to Fort Collins, about 40,000 citizens ago, I had no idea what I was going to do  with my time and skills, other than parent our two children.  After a dozen years of serving as a pastor in the innercity of Kansas City, I was exhausted and ready for a change, and I was feeling a vocational tug in the direction of music.  To be honest, this was the tug that had been there since my earliest memories as a child.  I didn't know exactly how to go about starting such a career, although I felt confident in both my performing and teaching abilities since music had been a key organizing tool for our multi-ethnic congregation in Missouri.

The short story I like to tell is this: I threw every line into the water and pulled on the ones that bit.

I played special music for worship at an ecumenical set of congregations, I gave programs for   Church Women's United, the CSU Women's Association, Rotary and Kiwanis.  I contacted the local funeral homes and provided music for several funeral and memorial services.    I led music for Brownie and Girl Scout Day Camp at Lee Martinez park for two years.

I walked a block from my house to meet Russ Hopkins at KIVA studio, and he became my recording engineer, mentor, co-producer and peer.  With him I recorded and produced many records which have gone on to win awards and acclaim and continue to find the ears of appreciative listeners.

I went weekly to the Bluegrass jam at Avogadro's Number on Wednesdays, and was warmly welcomed into the experience of learning, playing and sharing music by ear.  I played the weekly Open Mics at Avo's and Lucky Joe's, and several others as they cropped up around town.  I auditioned to play at Barnes and Noble, and landed a Wednesday lunch-time gig at Deja Vu (at the time, the oldest continuously running coffeehouse in town) that lasted for 10 years!

I auditioned for the accompanist job for the Rainbow Chorus, and didn't get it.  But I filled in when they needed a sub and then was commissioned by them to create and arrange a suite of songs for their millennium concert and recording.

I've played Noontime Notes in Oak Street plaza and on the Old Town stage, all the stages at the Lincoln Center, the Fort Collins Museum in both of its locations, several locations on the CSU campus, Walrus, Ben and Jerry's, Stone Lion and Starry Night for First Night, and most Old Town street corners with Streetmosphere and countless weddings all across the Front Range.

I was the guitarist for Agua de Vida Luterana, the Music Director of First Presbyterian Church in Loveland, the choir accompanist for Westminster Presbyterian Church in Fort Collins and the Director of Music for the Lutheran Campus Ministry at CSU.  I have been a Substitute Teacher and para-professional in the Poudre School District at Lincoln (then-) Junior High.  I have taught well over a hundred students in my private music studio and have watched some of them go on to music careers, while others enrich their lives with their musical participation.

I started and ran the Colorado Dulcimer Festival located here in Fort Collins for 10 years and have passed the mantle of leadership on to an able and dedicated crew who are preparing for the 11th one next Feb 7-8. (coloradodulcimerfestival.com)

Fort Collins, it turns out, was the perfect location for me to root and expand a new career that has taken me to perform and teach across the USA, Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland and Germany.

And now It is time for us to pull up the tent stakes and move. 

My spouse, Connie Winter-Eulberg, has been pastor of the Lutheran Campus Ministry at CSU since 1997, and has accepted a call to become the pastor of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church on San Mateo, California.  So that means it is time for me to re-establish Owl Mountain Music in a new nest.  But I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for all that the citizens and community of Fort Collins has meant to us.  I will be back, and in fact have some events already planned early in 2014, so I look forward to seeing many of you then.

If you would like to bid us farewell, come on by our Bon Voyage Hootenany at the Community Creative Center at 200 S. Matthews In Fort Collins on Saturday, Dec. 14th from 6:45 to 8:45 pm.

Playing and Singing with Holly Near

Holly Near and Steve (with baritone mountain dulcimer)

Over many years, the music, witness, example and life of Holly Near, has enlivened my music, revived my flagging hope, renewed my resolve and helped me focus on how I choose to be in the midst of forces that bid me to sink to a more base level.

My spouse, Connie, and I have sung Holly's music for public gatherings, for and with our children, in our churches and communities.

She has been a long-time (and long-distance) colleague of mine in the musician's union (Local 1000 AFM) and became a friend when we met at our local's membership retreat at the historic Highlander Center in Tennessee in 2012.

So, when she invited me to join her on stage for her concert celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC)  in Fort Collins in mid-October, I was delighted.  When that concert was cancelled, she renewed the invitation to come to Boulder, so Connie and I saddled up for a delightful evening.

Rehearsing Mountain Song

Holly asked me to play mountain dulcimer on her "Mountain Song" (which has long been a favorite of mine!) to begin the Second Set.

In the conversation following our rehearsal, both she, the hosts and the other musicians and I began trading stories about being active in the movement which inspired the formation of RMPJC back in 1983:  the Encirclement of Rocky Flats.

At the time, Rocky Flats was the producer of all the plutonium triggers for the USA's nuclear weapons arsenal, the arms race was very hot and the anxiety about the possibility of nuclear annihilation of the human race and the entire planet was a common topic of conversation.

More than a thousand Colorado citizens decided to encircle the 17 mile perimeter of the Rocky Flats plant with a hand-to-hand human chain on a sunny day in October.

I was one of those citizens, and I had been trained as a peacekeeper (with a completely different mission than the missiles that then-President Reagan had named with the same name!), and I was carrying my trumpet, because I was one of the many buglers assigned to play "Taps" at the appointed hour, signifying the ending of the creation of these weapons.

There had been many demonstrations before and after and, in our conversations, we lamented that it appeared that little would every happen.

But, something DID happen.  The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center was born and has carried on with similar work for 30 years.  AND, Rocky Flats did close, the arms race began to cool down.

In her words to the gathered people at the (delicious!) reception before the concert, Holly encouraged the young people present not to give up hope, saying that even though we may not get thousands of people together with a common purpose, we could get 250 or 300.

So to demonstrate and share this experience, Holly had three Boulder choruses join her for her final song (instead of the "traditional" encore).  And for the "2nd non-traditional encore" had the rest of the audience stand and join hands around the sanctuary of the Unity church to sing the song she wrote after the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone in San Franciso in November of 1978:

"We are a gentle, angry people
and we are singing, singing for our lives...."

I was so inspired and honored to be there in 1983 AND in 2013!