"King (street) for a Day" and "Let's do the Time-warp" were also titles I considered for this article.

What
an amazing New Year this was. Two days of magical encounters with the
best parts of my past. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
I
headed back to NC for the holidays, as you may have gathered from my
airport soliloquies posted earlier. My first day in the state, I got to
go to the family reunion on my mom's side of the family in
Swepsonville, an event I hadn't been able to attend in about 6 years or
so. At this gathering, I got to see cousins I hadn't seen in more than
a decade, and meet second cousins I didn't previously know had existed.
We ate and were merry. I spoke at length with my cousin Phil about his
son, Bobby, who is now in a band. Everybody wants me to meet with Bobby
and show him a thing or two, but alas, Bobby couldn't make it to the
gathering. On Sunday the 23rd, we had our traditional gathering of my
father's side of the family in Winston-Salem. Here I saw more cousins I
hadn't seen in ages, and met more second cousins I'd never previously
met. And I met my aunt's new husband. Christmas eve, I spent the day
with old pals Reuben and Allan. We went shopping and had some lunch. I
bought some books, like I always do. Christmas day we did the
traditional family breakfast, although without my brother who was in
Spain with his wife's family. We did our gifts and ate my mother's
famous breakfast pizza. Later in the afternoon, Reuben and I drove down
to Statesville to visit with Chris and Kelley, and found ourselves in
the midst of the Mitchell family gathering, which we were warmly
welcomed into. And again we ate. We then went back to C&K's to play
with their new Wii. Mike was arriving from Colorado at ll pm that
night, and since Reuben was flying out the next morning, we headed back
to Greensboro to hang out with Mike until the wee hours. Wednesday and
Thursday consisted of me and Mike remembering how boring Greensboro can
be. We went out to a movie on Friday night (Walk Hard), then on
Saturday, after doing some shopping at the mall, we went down town to
try and find something to do. We wound up at the bar we had used as a
reunion spot several years ago in old Downtown Greensboro. We played
pool and watched the New England NY Giants football game.

I
think it was Friday night when the idea occurred to us. We had already
planned on heading up to Boone for the day on Sunday. Kelley had
decided to join us, since Darby was visiting grandparents, and Chris
was in Greenville for a gig. So I asked Mike, "You wanna take some
guitars up and show up at beansTalk to play some?" "Sure", he said. For
those of you that don't know, beansTalk is the legendary coffee house
that was essentially the headquarters for our very lives during the
90's. It had gone through some troubled owners and had been shut down
for several years, and had recently triumphantly re-opened with an
owner that used to be one of the regular clients during it's heyday.
Visiting beansTalk was one of the big reasons we so desperately wanted
to get up to Boone for a day. So then the music idea mutated. I'll be
there, Kelley will be there, Mike will be there...why not call it a
3-five-7 show? Kelley thought was up for it, so we decided that would
be what we would do. Now, some of you know that this is not something
that we could possibly do without telling certain people, for fear of
our very lives if they were to find out after the fact if we hadn't
told them. So before telling anyone, I talked to Wil, the new owner of
beansTalk, to make sure the night was free. He told me we could play
there any time we wanted to, and would be thrilled to have us. So I
created a MySpace event/blog/bulletin and invited everyone I could
think of who lived/might live within reasonable driving distance, even
though the event was sent out with only about 17 hours notice before
show time. Now, we were expecting to have the 4 or 5 people we still
know that live in Boone show up, and have an intimate little
performance for them, and maybe some friends from Greensboro or
Asheville would make the drive. So, Sunday morning, Mike and I headed
up to Boone with grand plans of visiting past residences, and eating at
our favorite local restaurants (McAdoo's, Boone Bagelry, Backyard
Burgers). When we got to Boone, we went straight to beansTalk, just
like in the old days. Wil greeted us and we noticed a large sign in the
window proclaiming "Live Entertainment: 3-Five-7 Ten Year Reunion!!! I
must admit, it was a little eerie to see 3-five-7 advertised at the
beansTalk for the first time in a decade. It was already feeling a
little time-warped. Mike and I did a walking tour of downtown Boone,
lamenting the recent closings of longtime landmarks The Appalachian
Twin Theater (local dollar theater we frequented) and Grapevine Music
(famous local music store that had been there for 40 years). I got a
call on my phone that Kelley would arrive shortly, so we headed back to
beansTalk to wait. While at beansTalk, Greg and Stacey, Craig and
Justis and Amanda all showed up, and we wound up talking the time away.
With time running short, we made a trek to MacAdoos for a quick dinner,
joined by some of the others. Then we utilized beansTalk's storage
building as a make-shift rehearsal space. After our rehearsal, it began
to dawn on us that this show might be bigger than we had expected.

You
know, people have always said things to me like, "this song got me
through rough times", or "your music saved my sanity during college",
and I never really took it all that seriously. I figured people would
always say nice things about our music because they're our friends and
they're nice. But this night would forever change my perception of
statements of that nature. It started with the sight of the crowd that
had gathered. Jon and Jen had driven 8 hours to see us perform. On 17
hours notice! Richard had come up from Fayetteville, a 6 hour drive.
Justis was up from Raleigh, 3 hours. There were 4 locals there
specifically to see us, and another 4 locals that just happened to be
there. The rest of the crowd had driven at least 2 hours to see us
perform. We were still trying to comprehend that when it became show
time. We managed to do an admirable job of remembering a good portion
of our old songs. We pieced together a 14 song set list, omitting only
the ones we couldn't remember how to play. During the show, whenever I
would look out into the crowd I would see a range of things that were
all remarkable to me. I saw people singing along, a lot. I saw people
watching and listening intently with smiles on their faces, I even saw tears.


After
Kelley sang her brilliant a a Capella piece, "Killing Time" Wil was in
tears and told us that he wouldn't have made it without that song. He
went on to say that it was this very night that was the reason he had
gone through so much to re-open the beansTalk. Now, I'm sure he meant
it was nights like this one,
not that he'd dreamed specifically of providing a backdrop for a
3-five-7 reunion. But still, we were touched. What can you say to that?
Kelley responded with grace, re-directing the crowds feelings back to
Wil, saying thanks to him for bringing back this place that had been
such a part of our lives for all those years. Wil got a well-deserved
round of applause. Then, as we finished up our final song, another
astonishing thing happened. The crowd wouldn't let us leave the stage.
We said we were done, and they didn't budge. "No you're not", they
said. We honestly were out of material, but we dug deep and came up
with 3 more songs to play, drawing on the Bob Spelled Backwards song
list. It had been a long time since I'd done an encore, and nothing
beats a genuinely unexpected encore like that.

It
began to dawn on us that night that our music actually had affected
people, had reached people. I have always liked my music, and love
sharing it with people more than anything, but it appears I've
underestimated the effect it has had. Now, like anyone, I have a list
of songs that have reached to my soul and touched my life. Usually,
it's during hard times that we all find songs that we can cling to like
a light in the darkness. I had never allowed myself the conceit of
thinking that my songs might
have been that to other people, however. Kelley and I discussed this at
length the following night, on new year's eve. It's really very
humbling to realize that my music has actually done for other people
what my favorite music has done for me. If one night could re-validate
my whole life, it was this one. It's empowering, and it could very well
be the thing that inspires me to re-commit to my music. A good example
of how unexpected this was is this: one of our old friends kept
repeatedly requesting songs that we had forgotten we had ever even
written! One song we couldn't remember, she even offered to teach it to
us, because she had learned it and had been covering it, herself. You
can't imagine how strange that is. For one night, I was surrounded by
old friends who shared with us such an outpouring of love and
appreciation that I have a hard time believing it actually happened.
Mike and I commented many times during our drive back to Greensboro,
"Did that actually happen? Did I dream all of that?" We had to reassure
one another that it had, in fact, happened, just how we remembered it.
Not only were we presented with the amazing realization of the power of
our own music, we were also presented with the unexpected effects of
the power other people's appreciation had on us. They were touched by
us, and we, in turn were touched by the fact that we had touched them.

A
musician's gift to the audience is his song. The audience's gift to the
musician is their heartfelt applause. I guess some of us never realized
how much the audience means it when they applaud.

---

beansTalk can hold the Meaning of Life.






Thanks to Mark Garrett for the photos!!