The Rockingham concert, with 40 in attendance, was our first foray into southern Vermont. We had a concert scheduled for the next day in Guilford, the farthest-but-one town from our home base in northwestern part of the state; so, to cut down overall travel, we looked to find another concert in the area, making this our first double-header weekend and our first overnight. That’s why our Chevy Bolt is packed so full. (It’s amazing what a roomy car you can build onto a small chassis if you leave out the engine, transmission, and gas tank.)

This was also the first concert since Essex Junction’s “divorce” from the Town of Essex became official on July 1, 2022–hence the change from 251 to 252 in the program.

Maryann McArdle, a counselor at Vermont Academy, invited us to play at Main Street Arts in Saxtons River (the town of Rockingham includes two sizable villages some distance apart, so people more often indicate location with “Saxtons River” or “Bellows Falls” than “Rockingham”). She suggested not one but two different young singers, Ruby Besson and Kaylee Desmarais, as local collaborators. Meanwhile I had asked our old friend Julane Deener if she would sing; she had to decline but recommended a young singer from just across the border in New Hampshire (nobody’s perfect), Alyssa Becker, who studied for many years with Julane in Bellows Falls. So this was also a triple-header as regards collaborations.