La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

Music, what’s it to you, does it shiver your timbers, does it cause you to snap your fingers and tap your toes or make you breathe more easily through your nose? Certainly, one person’s music is another person’s noise, yet even in rip tearing rap, can be found a soft slap. Yeah, in righteous rock and roll can be found smooth harmonics and rad riffs and then there’s the country twang, the nasty slide guitar, harmonica, sax, drums and bass, they all can bring smiles to my face. Heck, I even enjoy karaoke, again, more as a listener, than participant.

Bluegrass, yeah, those banjos, basses and mandolins, marry quite nicely with the guitars, violin or fiddle, depending on how you hold the thing. In some parts of the country, it’s the only thing you’ll hear, around here, you can find just about everything, punk, grunge, ska, rap, soul, boho, jazz, classical, chorus, musicals, yeah, we live in a magical musical place, full of string pickers and grinners galore.

Bellingham has the most venues in the region, but Mount Vernon, Anacortes, Burlington, Sedro-Woolley, Conway, Oak Harbor and Camano Island all have music. So also do we, but maybe not as much as we could have, or need. As a mostly senior community, we need to keep our minds and bodies active. Music is medicine, even if we only breathe and tap our toes. The La Conner Live summer concert series is in full swing, with great bands treating us to the tunes of our youth. I know it helps keep me and my blood flowing.

Some of us are really missing out. We have world class musicians in the region and I feel blessed to know a few of them, like Chris Eger, a phenom from Mount Vernon and Savannah Woods from Stanwood, or Nick Vigarino from Camano Island. Mary Ellen from Sedro Woolly, Harp man Rick from Anacortes, Jimmy, a bass player from Arlington, Corey, Vincent, Jamie, Marcia, Stacy, Jerry, RK, Jolene, Janey, I could keep naming names, but we already know that we could all appreciate more live music in our lives, either as a player or listener.

Let’s pull out our old dusty friends, flick a finger on the strings, see what sorts of memories it brings. Sing in the shower, or bathtub, it doesn’t matter which, just remember, music is in the ear of the beholder, so, be holder now that you’re older, beat the drum, strum, croon, bounce around like a baby, but behave, we don’t need us to be bouncing out of our minds!

So here’s my simple message, support live music, come down to Gilkey Square on Sundays, slip out to the Conway Muse on Saturday nights, The Rockfish and Brown Lantern in Anacortes and the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon.

La Conner is full of summer sounds, so come on out and dance around, but please be careful: We don’t want anyone to spin around so many times that they fall down and breakdance on the ground. It could get bloody ugly, with some of us cussing, wearing frowns.

So, there you have it, a strategy for listening to the sweet sounds of music drifting around. I look forward to seeing you here, there and everywhere.

Glen Johnson has been dancing in La Conner for decades.