Day 11 A Special Evening

We decided to walk down to Shorty's for an early dinner and were surprised to see two guys setting up to play, one had a guitar and the other a mandolin. Shorty's downstairs bar is very small with only four tables and maybe a dozen bar stools, but this is where they were setting up. There's normally somebody playing there, but this looked to be a little more serious, since I noticed Donnie Sundal, a music writer/performer that we had met earlier in the week. When these two guys started to play we just knew this was something special. It was an unbelievable session that had everybody nuts (including Donnie). After a great, great first set I asked Donnie who thes two guys were and he said the mandolin player was Sam Bush from Nashville and Kyle Ogle a locally well respected guitarist. These two guys used to play together in the area many years ago and just got together for this little session. They played off each other unlike anything I ever saw. Donnie said that Sam Bush was probably the best mandolin player in the country and he was right--I later checked the internet and he was Mandolin Player of the Year in 2007 and was nominated for Instrumentalist of the Year by the American Music Asssociation. Kyle Ogle obviously played a terrific guitar. They played a great mixture of songs; blues, bluegrass, reggae, country, and rock and roll. And this was in a tiny little bar. It was the best thing like this I ever witnessed. I also had some very good Shrimp and Grits with okra and tomatoes while Sylvia had a waste-of-time salad. An unforgetable night.