Our good friend Terri called us up on Thursday and asked if we were interested in going to a concert in a garage on Saturday.

"What?"

It seems that she met this fellow while contra-dancing who played bluegrass guitar and he was playing a private concert with his buddy at this garage in Kensington. An intimate party, no more than 200 people. Free beer and chili and music for $20 a person.

Since we make it a rule to never turn down an invitation unless we have something already scheduled, we said yes.

The garage in question is was a full auto repair shop behind the Kensington Volunteer Fire Department. The manager, Jeff Hill, who also performed as the opening act, pulled out all the cars and put in a makeshift stage and folding chairs and tables. The setting was complete with a fairly decent sound system and a couple of flood lights. Jeff's set was a workmanlike collection of country-folk tunes, going from covers of Guthrie to Prine to Dylan and a couple of well-done originals (or at least I think they were original, as I didn't recognize them). He opened solo, then had a friend join him on steel guitar for the rest of the tunes. He had an engaging stage banter that matched the intimate (and do I mean intimate, as most people seemed to know him or one of the other musicians) setting.

But that didn't prepare us for Orrin Star and Jimmy Gaudreau. I hadn't visited their site before the concert, although I had had most of the details told to me, so I knew that both men had a national reputation on their instruments. I don't think that really connected with me until they started and I stared as their hands blazed upon the necks of their instruments. I'm not a big bluegrass fan, even after its O Brother resurgence, but there's no denying the musicianship and professionalism when the music's being played live in front of you. I'd probably like accordian music if someone who was good at it played it only 10 feet away. But that's even damning with faint praise, because really these guys were amazing, and avoided most of the country cliches that bluegrass has been bogged down with for so long, possibly because Jimmy's from Rhode Island and Orrin's from New Jersey. It only goes to show that you don't have to be born in Kentucky to understand that grass can be blue.

They played for an hour and a half, with a bit of a break in between, and the time went by way too fast. The only complaint I had about the concert--solvent smell and all--was that the garage was a little chilly in this slowly coming spring.

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Afterwards, we had to play for Terri the William Shatner, which had come up in the midst of conversation, then decided to hit a diner for a little extra food and drink before heading home. Due to its close proximity, we found ourselves in Savannah's Diner during karaoke Saturday. It still amazes me that karaoke bars have Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" as an option, although thankfully no one chose anything that extreme while we were there. Most of the singers weren't great, but they weren't bad either. Almost made me want to take it up myself...except that I'd only had three beers that night and so my judgement wasn't that impaired.