(photo from Evan D Music’s Facebook page)
May 29, 2018
Amazing Live Music: Evan D Music
Our weeks are pretty full of stuff. Between our crossing driver shifts, taxiing children to and from college classes and groups, and just general life – it is awesome to have a mostly-weekly couple getaway afternoon on Mondays. (THANK YOU! Shout to my amazing sister, Becca, who is brave and possibly just as crazy as me to sometimes text, “Pick them up by 8am tomorrow.”)
That is what we had this week.
The adventure of just Louis and me began with dropping off 7 children at 4pm (Anastasia had “sleptover” Sunday and Christina’s Monday class was canceled because the college was closed) to 6:30am the next day. Only one cab ride to take someone home before the night was ours.
We had worked in the morning (all 3 cab calls) and ferried Christina to Marine Street for her Civil Air Patrol volunteer time, then spent almost 4 hours playing yard and board games with the girls (I even got to conquer an Age of Empires map with Rebeccah!) so when our time started it was like, “okay, what now?”
I wanted to walk on the beach and surf… wrong tide, and I don’t do baiting-shark surfing (aka night surfing).
Louis said, “I remember hearing some really good music downtown two weeks ago at the Tavern.” (He means the new Taberna del Caballo.) Oh my! You should go there on Mondays from 4pm to 8pm – trust me, your ears are in for a very special treat!
So down we went.
And there, I was transported backwards to the very skillful, amazing raw guitar sounds that I heard my minstrel-of-the-dawn Daddy playing when I was a child and the awesome worship jams with Louis and his team and I first met. Clean music, inspiring riffs (…you know, the things where a string musician picks the strings with his fingers so fast the fingers blur all together and you sit in awe with your mouth open…) and timeless songs.
We were listening to the sounds of Evan D Music. (This guy is about to release a record too… yep, I’m not that old, but projects are records of time and passion, even if they are downloaded on a smart device in snippets.) He plays around town almost every night but at the Taberna del Caballo Mondays from 4pm to 8pm.
One lady at another table had the best stadium whistle I’d ever heard (right through her fingers, no device!) I’m sure people at the Oasis on the beach heard it. You should have seen the two adorable kids dancing along with most of the patrons when one particularly moving song was performed. (Louis doesn’t dance, so I’m not going to dance without him… but had the girls been there, we would have been dancing around too.)
I love live passionate music. You can tell when an artist puts their heart and soul into their work – and Evan surely does. I grew up listening to my Daddy play “story” songs from Phil Collins to Gordon Lightfoot to Jackson Browne, Moody Blues, Beach Boys, and all in between. (We sat down to hear Evan playing “Kokomo” which was way cooler live with a riff-master on guitar – and he can sing the higher harmonies – I hadn’t heard that since my little brothers’ voices changed!) My Daddy’s eyes would light up like he had stars in them when he strummed the tunes. For years, I thought Lightfoot’s “Minstrel of the Dawn” was the story of my Daddy. I loved just listening to the guys play when Louis and I first met; they’d be crammed in Grandpa’s attic room and wailing away and I’d hide on the stairs or they’d be practicing in the empty auditorium and I would slide off to the dark side entryway and dance. I still love it when Louis (who claims he’s really rusty) plays guitar or Christina or Becca play piano.
Real music is the love of my heart. It lifts my soul, engages my mind, heart, memories, and emotions, and spins a relaxing web of tranquility through the air. This is what I felt listening to the talented Evan D Music; and this wonderful little place on St. George Street will be a regular haunt for us from 4pm to 8pm as long as we have Mondays off and Evan is playing there!
Check Evan D Music out on Facebook and YouTube and come be in his audience before he makes it to the Amphitheatre!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you later…
~Nancy Tart