Friday Concert Supplemental Post

During Friday's Mack,  Pete and Chris concert, Pete and Chris played this number and a friend of Mary's capture this video.
Check out the guy in the bottom left corner (it's me!), then enjoy watching the sign language girl imitate the artists!  She was very entertaining!

Mack, Pete and Chris Concert

Tonight was the free concert that precedes the main Aspen Deaf Camp Benefit Concert which is tomorrow. The concert by these three musicians was excellent! They played several of their own numbers as well as some familiar John Denver songs.

Before the concert we talked with Chris, Pete and Mack and their wives. Here's a candid photo of me talking with Chris Nole.  I told him how much I enjoyed his playing and ability to ad lib and add special touches to the songs that are not written in the music.  All three were very friendly as we caught up on whats going on in their lives.

Here are some close-ups of the guys in action.  They were obviously having a lot of fun while on stage and performing.
The highlight of the evening came during their encore.  I had tipped off Mack that today was Mary's Birthday.  He said he'd do something special, but I was not quite sure what how it would work out.  Well, he dedicated the encore to Mary, and then they broke into a chorus of "Happy Birthday"!!  She was thrilled and overwhelmed and it clearly made a special day even better. 

Deaf Camp Concert

Well, we sure had an afternoon and evening full of music!  Today was the Aspen Deaf Camp Concert and it featured a number performers.  We skipped the first one and wish we had arrived later 'cause the second one was hard rock and about blew out our ear drums!  But waiting for Pete, Mack and Chris was worth it!!  They took turns playing their favorite songs. In this picture Pete is playing Santa Rita Connection with Chris. He also re-told the story of how he was challenged to play Stevie Wonder's Superstition on solo guitar before playing it.  Mack did Rock Me Grandpa, He and Jack, Lucky man and a couple of other favorites.

There were several other artists who performed before the headline group, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but we were unimpressed with them. After sitting on a blanket on the ground for 5 hours, hearing these other groups was getting pretty old.
But the promised John Denver themed finale was worth the wait! All performers (and a few extras) came on stage and sang Country Roads and Back Home Again, wrapping with Mack singing the verses of Rocky Mountain High.

Off to Estes Park tomorrow!

Concert via Gondola

We enjoyed a super concert by Mack Bailey, Pete Huttlinger, and Chris Nole tonight in Snowmass.  It was  an open air concert in the center of town and was a free concert for the benefit of the Aspen Deaf Camp. The camp had a free will offering and also a silent auction while selling tickets for tomorrow's extended show with these and many more artists.

One intriguing part of this concert was arriving by gondola!  We are staying in Upper Snowmass Village and the town operates a free gondola service to connect the upper and lower parts of the town.
The three guys put on a great show, playing for an hour, taking a break, then coming back for another hour.  Mostly John Denver favorites, with a few other tunes thrown in for good measure - Pete did a rendition of his song McGuire's Landing.
They had several area guests join them on stage, with the most famous being John Oates.  They closed with a very moving encore of "Wings That Fly Us Home".

Mary took some great closeups of the guys.

After the show we hung around a while to give our congratulations, then Chris Nole and his wife joined us in our gondola ride back to Upper Snowmass.