Richard’s Notes

Milton, Connecticut. Our neighbor and old friend Bill Lauf has been writing and performing both his own music and other people’s for over thirty years in this meeting house in the small town of Milton, Connecticut. My wife Anne who’s lived around here longer than me has been to almost every one of these yearly concerts; I missed the first ten years but have been going for the past twenty. Many of the people in the audience you see the backs of here have been following Bill for a long time and each year we all get together to hear him play. It’s a wonderful tradition.

He’s good, he’s really good and it’s a great concert, always, but the other thing that makes it great is the audience. We see faces in this audience who we only see once a year, in this audience, but, with enough years they’re familiar. With enough age, yearly traditions can have great meaning.

The town of Milton and this meeting hall go way back, pre-Revolutionary War and you can feel that history in the place. It’s heated with an old, leaky wood stove that puts out as much smoke as heat but we don’t care, we come ready for a great evening and Bill always delivers.

Bill played three acoustic guitars, this one with pickups and with a modest PA system filled Milton Hall with a great warm sound.

You can see the old woodstove here on the left side of this frame. Notice where we are sitting (far away from it). Over twenty years of experience with concerts in this place and we’ve learned a few things.