Last Day in Aspen

Well, today was our last day here. Enjoyed three concerts to top off this fabulous extended weekend. Our morning started off with Mack Bailey and Ellen Stapenhorse leading the songs at the Aspen Chapel. That event ended at 10:30 so we had to hustle to the Cookhouse event that started at 11:00. The challenging part of this was that it was a 15 mile trip up a mountain highway in a heavy snowstorm! By the time we got to the Cookhouse there was about 3" of snow on the ground.

Even with the snow we arrived on time with only a few slips in the snow.  Jim Horn, John Denver's flute and saxophone player in his band, was there. His wife had a table to sell them so I bought one I didn't have and took it to him to sign! We listened to it as we drove around the rest of the day. There was lots of John Denver music at the event and for the meal they had a very good menu based on the song "Home Grown Tomatoes". Near the end Jim Horn joined the band playing for the event, and talked about all the famous people he supported over the years with his instrumentals, from three of the Beatles, to the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra and many more.

After a supper at the Hickory House, we headed back to the Aspen Chapel for the Mack Bailey concert with Bill Danoff. Mack also invited a young singer he has discovered to join them and sing a few songs. It was a super concert that went for 2 1/2 hours with the musicians trading off songs. Bill Danoff also told a few good stories about his songs. This picture is from the closing song "County Roads".

Tomorrow is our travel day starting with a drive back to Denver and then our flight home. We are very glad we did not have to drive today since we heard that Vail Pass was closed for a while due to snow, and earlier the Eisenhower tunnel had been closed due to an accident. So far the weather forecast for tomorrow is favorable.

Aspen Day 3

We had quite the full day today, starting out with a trip to the Maroon Bells, followed by a Ron Matthews concert, a great supper back at Hops Culture, and wrapping up with a Chris Collins and the Boulder Canyon Band concert with a guest appearance by Mack Bailey.

We got to the Maroon Bells early which was a good thing. After we got the first few pictures, the clouds started to roll in.  I walked to the end of the lake and got some nice views.


For more pictures check out my Facebook album.

At today's Ron Matthews concert I was surprised that it would be broadcast live! American Veterans Radio has a 2 1/2 hour program every Saturday and it was used to broadcast Ron's concert.  They even had a microphone setup so the audience could be heard singing the songs along with Ron.  This was especially intriguing since Ron did a large part of his show by taking requests!  He did a very good job of handling it. He had a couple of guests on the show as well.  When one of the guests missed the words on one song, the audience helped him out!

Our last event of the day was the Chris Collins concert.  They did a very good job of singing a variety of John Denver songs.  The best part was in the second half when Mack Bailey joined Chris on stage and sang 4 songs. Mack even got a standing ovation for "Wings that Fly Me Home"!
All in all it was a very good concert.


Three more concerts tomorrow then home on Monday. Heard some rumors about snow tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.

Aspen Day 2

Now much to write about today.  We had 3 concerts today.  Aspen Meadow and the John Denver Project Band (from Italy) back to back here at the Limelight in the afternoon followed by a Mark Cormican concert this evening at the Aspen Community Church.
John Denver's second wife, Cassie, was at the afternoon event and led the singing of "Thank God I'm a Country Girl".  Here she is singing with Jake Love, lead singer of the Aspen Meadow Band.
All were quite enjoyable and so far the groups have played a wide variety of John's songs.  There have been remarkably few duplicated songs and quite a few more less-heard songs that Mary recognized but I did not.
So all in all, very nice day. 

First John Denver Tribute Festival

Today's concert at the Wheeler was organized by Willie Hoevers funded by a Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign.  He opened up the performance to a lot of different musicians. Here are pictures of Julie McLain and Ron Matthews.
The event was opened by the Aspen Meadow Band followed by a series of female performers in the second set and some male performers in the third set. They all played a wide range of John Denver songs including many unfamiliar songs along with a few of the standards. Julie sang my favorite song (Fly Away) and an especially moving tribute to John that she wrote just after his death. All in all, a very enjoyable concert!

Meet and Greet

Meet and Greet was very well attended today and had a lot of musicians (as you can see). I estimated the attendance at about 100 people.  Schedules for weekend activities were handed out and the traditional 3 songs were sung. It was nice to connect to old friends from past Aspen events and other Mack Bailey concerts.
Surprisingly there were several dozen people who were attending Aspen for their first time!

I was also surprised at how different the sanctuary looked in October from the beautiful flowers that were present when we visited last July .  It was still pretty, but not near as nice as in the summer.  

Heading to Aspen

We had an "interesting" travel day ending in Glenwood Springs, our planned destination after overcoming a few hurdles.  But the good news was that it all ended well.
The day started out quiet enough.  We got up plenty early and were not rushed at all to get ready.  We even got to the airport gate an hour before boarding.  While sitting there Mary asked to use the free wifi at DTW so I reached into my bag to get out our Macbook Air -- and came up empty. Since we had extra time we had used the computer at home and then neglected to pack it.  Clearly not enough time to retrieve it before boarding even if someone was at our house to get it.   What to do!
I had been contemplating replacing it at some point since it was a few years old, so we resolved to visit the Apple Store in Denver to try that out and price our options.
Once arriving in Denver we got to Thrifty and went to select our rental car.  While checking them out I was quite frustrated that I could not find a single car there with a USB connector so I could charge my phone while driving and using navigation.
We did make it to the store where we thought about getting an iPad for Mary, but with it costing only a bit more for the Macbook Air, we purchased that (Mary is greatly relieved she doesn't have to learn new technology just yet!).  All this put us well behind schedule so we arrived at Glenwood Springs after dark, where we finally got to our hotel by 8 pm.

As to ending well, as you can see here we made it to the Glenwood Canyon Brewing Company for a fish and chips (Mary had a buffalo burger) and a glass of Hanging Lake Honey Ale, my all time favorite beer.  Ahh.. after a very long and somewhat challenging day that sure hit the spot.
After a late dinner we got back to our room, setup the new computer and crashed for the night.