1. Find yourself an incredibly talented singer/songwriter like Edie Carey who is coming to your area and is willing to do a house concert.
2. Send out a “Save the Date” notification to all your friends and family.
3. Two weeks before the concert, send out reminders and begin panicking that things won’t go as well as you want them to.
4. One week prior to the date, ratchet up the panic as a few people cancel and send out emails to the rest, telling them to invite their friends.
5. Get a friend to put together a lovely case of wine for your guests and count your wine glasses.
6. Have Bubba prep the smoker, make his famous rub and BBQ sauce and buy two enormous slabs o’ pork shoulder.
7. Pick up your oldest, dearest friend from the train station the day before the concert and confide your fears (the “I’m having a party and nobody’s going to come” variety) to her while she commiserates and helps you set everything up.
8. The night before the concert, massage Bubba’s rub into the pork and smoke it for twelve hours over some hickory chips.
9. The day of the concert, spend hours catching up with your friend, sporadically setting up chairs and furniture and utensils and wine glasses.
10. As your guests stream in the door, realize that this night is going to ROCK!
11. Pour yourself a glass of wine, watch everyone congregate around the spread of food and listen to the conversation fill up the kitchen.
12. Call everyone to the living room where you introduce Edie and watch her captivate everyone, young and old, male and female, with her humor, her musical talent, and her genuine-ness. Revel in the fact that you are getting to share your love of her music with an entire group of people you care about. Hear them laugh at her jokes, sing along in perfect harmony, and enthusiastically cheer her performance while outside, the dogs and some kids are playing in the yard (except when your dog peeks in the window to whine along with the music.)
13. Say goodnight to your guests, secure in the knowledge that each and every one of them had a terrific time.
14. Make a cursory effort to tidy up but end up leaving most of it for the next morning.
15. Collapse into bed and feel incredibly blessed to have shared such a wonderful evening with some really special people.
If you haven’t listened to Edie Carey’s music, I can’t say enough about it. Her songs grab me because they are so real, the themes so universal. Her voice has an incredible tone and she is a whiz on that guitar! I have seen her perform live three times and each time I am struck at her ability to perform. She speaks to the audience as an honest, genuine human being. She tells stories, both in and around her songs, and she is engaging and connected to the people she is singing for. Go visit her website and look up her tour schedule. Find her somewhere near you and go listen. You will be enchanted. I promise.
