Every year Shoreline Amphitheater closes out the year with another Bridge School Benefit. The doors opened at three, but after I got there I found out the main stage didn't start to get active until 5 PM.

     

Off to the side there was a trailer with music coming out of the side. Some were listening.

  

That woman was somehow very funny and quite good. I wasn't ready to sit down so I wandered on. Just enjoyed people watching and stuff like that for a while.

Before long the Native-Americans did some sort of blessing ceremony to consecrate everything about the evening and everyone involved with it.

        

     

Then Peggy Young gave some history about the Bridge School. They'd started it as a way to help special needs kids find the help they need to learn how to make it on their own in this world. They have grown a lot since the beginning, fifteen years ago. She reeled of a long but quick list of thank you messages. Then she introduced Neil Young.

     

Yup. Watching good live music with 20,000 of my closest friends.

This band is named Spoon. One of their songs is a big hit. They played it and I recognized it immediately. Didn't know their other stuff but it was fine.

  

St. Vincent is simply a looker. Sounded good to, but not stuff I was familiar with at all.

     

Gary Clark Jr. has a great blues sound, but the issues aired out in the songs just left me feeling disconnected.

  

Somewhere in there they raffled off the tee pee I'd seen wandering around just after they opened the gates.

     

  

It was a treat to listen to this guy. Worth the price of admission for sure.

  

Sheryl Crow started her set with "A Change would do you good!"

     

She made a comment that felt like "Wow! I'm sitting at Neil Young's piano for this one." Then she played another song I've heard on the radio many times.

At another point in her set the Dixie Chicks came out to help with a song.

     

The Dixie Chicks were the ones I'd really wanted to see with my own eyes. Back in the second Bush era there was a time when we really needed someone to speak up. It was one of those "It's so much more real when you're quoting real people in the struggle now whose names are public footballs" kind of thing. Singing in London at the Bush Theater, the lead singer had said "I'm ashamed of President Bush" or words to that effect. It was enough to make the name "DIXIE CHICKS" a hot potato. Overnight they went from being a top Country act to every mainstream liberals darling. Conservative talk radio hosts vilified them into retirement. They had a rough few years.

I think this is very early in their return tour. A year or so ago I saw an article in which the woman said "I said that because I was reading in the British press that President Bush was speaking for all Americans and it just wasn't true." Thank you Dixie Chicks!

It was an honor to see them with my own eyes.

     

Several of the songs Neil Young sang amounted to prayers for mother earth. A great note to go home on.