NEWSLETTER

FEBRUARY, 2005

It looks like we are finally going to have some winter in the mountains but it will be warm and full of light at the café this month:

FEBRUARY 3 – MENAGE. This Asheville trio of women present the most beautiful harmonies in a wide-ranging song repertoire. Their first time at the café.

FEBRUARY 5 – THE EVERYBODYFIELDS. This trio from Johnson City, Tennessee plays stripped down country-tinged songs.

FEBRUARY 10 – ERIC SOMMER. This Boston-based singer/songwriter is making his debut with us.

FEBRUARY 12 – NO EVIL. A big hit last year, this duo returns with its fuel-injected folk music about “killin’, dyin’, livin’, lovin’ and hatin’.”

FEBRUARY 14 – ROBERT SEILER. Smooth piano music to help you romance your significant other. Proceeds to Children & Family Resource Center.

FEBRUARY 17 – TIM FAST. We are happy to welcome this Minnesota-based singer/songwriter back to the café.

FEBRUARY 19 – DROVERS OLD TIME MEDICINE SHOW. Bluegrass the way you like it from our old friends from South Carolina.

FEBRUARY 24 – AARON BURDETT. Local favorite son returns with some new songs.

FEBRUARY 26 – PHIL & GAYE JOHNSON. This Green Creek duo is an audience favorite.

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You have probably never heard of Roscoe Robinson. I know that I hadn’t until last week. A friend of mine, a United Church of Christ minister in Birmingham, told me that I had to hear him sing so I found myself sitting in a small two-story building in downtown Birmingham waiting for him to rehearse for the next Sunday’s service.

Mr. Robinson (yes, I read the NY Times) is 76 years old, slender, of medium height and a calm demeanor that tells you that he has been around, seen much and yet remained true to his religious beliefs. He spent several years with both the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Blind Boys of Mississippi (he, however, is not blind). He had a huge R&B hit in 1966 called “That’s Enough” which sold over a million copies but soon he returned to his gospel roots.

The place where he was rehearsing is the second floor of this small building where the Beloved Community Church holds its Sunday evening services. The only other people there beside my wife and I were a piano player, drummer, the person handling the sound and the minister. Mr. Robinson stood ramrod straight with his mouth close to the microphone as the piano vamped a rhythmic introduction to a gospel song. Then he eased into the music, quietly gathering strength and energy as he went, enough to send his voice and the message soaring into a high tenor range where his notes still were clean and clear and bell-like, actually astonishingly so for a person of his age.

In a flash, he became the music and the sound while the words of faith rang fervently in the air. It had all come together in the person of this slight, almost dapper singer whose strength and serenity came from his belief in what he was singing. You could have heard a pin drop as we sat stunned in the beauty of the moment. I have rarely experienced anything so powerful. You didn’t have to be a believer to know that something amazing had taken place.

I chose to write about this experience because that same kind of alchemy also happens at the Purple Onion occasionally. Some nights it is just the right mix of performer, music and audience coming together to create a new entity that actually becomes something reverent and virtually sacred. It is a very moving time and one to be cherished and recalled at will. It is also a part of what makes the Purple Onion what it is.

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The United Church of Christ has an advertising program in progress, the theme of which is that Jesus never turned anyone away, certainly not Spongebob Squarepants who has been recently dismissed as morally questionable by James Dobson for holding hands with a starfish. Both NBC and CBS have refused to broadcast the ads as being too controversial. It is certainly a strange time we live in. Part of the message is “never place a period when God has placed a comma” uttered by Gracie Allen. A further statement is, “God is still speaking,” Some people in this country seem convinced that God stopped revealing him(her)self to us once the Bible had been written..

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If we did not live in Saluda, we would probably live in Asheville, a town that is quirky and blessed with a diverse cosmic presence. For example, in one issue of “Mountain Express”, the Asheville weekly entertainment newspaper, I saw ads for the following personal, physical and spiritual growth opportunities: pregnancy, sacred stone and Swedish massage, reflexology, endermologie, yoga, Reiki, collorescience mineral make-up, panchakarma, soul alignment, mental polarization, spiritual law, intuitive consultations and meridian reflex analysis. I feel better already.

Robert Seiler
Purple Onion Café
www.purpleonionsaluda.com