Although several events and people led to the concept, Jack was not only the first performer, but it was he who re-awakened my enjoyment of live music and introduced me to the concept of "house concerts." Many tales to tell here - Jack always says my intros are too long - so I'll struggle to edit my thoughts. 

My introduction to Jack traces to RMMGA and the urgings of a friend from that group (see the description of this gallery). Having been successfully urged out of my Columbia caccoon, Jack's musicianship and story telling knocked me out. We started talking about birds. I had just settled on the Maine house and told him about Lubec's shorebirds etc. The deal was I had to find him two additional bookings in the area. That was a challenge, in that I was still living in Maryland, knew hardly anyone, and email was still a novelty Downeast. But it all worked, Jack has been almost a regular here - he even brought Ronny Cox with him once - and we saw some great birds. Best one of those was a Bald Eagle grabbing a good sized fish in front of us, and having a Golden Eagle come out of nowhere and steal it. 

Not long before I wrote this I attended Jack's first online concert which was well done and in a beautiful setting. Check out http://www.jackwilliamsmusic.com/, sign up on his mailing list for future concerts, buy all of his CDs (I did), enjoy the videos... speaking of which, here's my all time favorite - not just because it's about birds. It's about life. At the time, after living and working in the same area for 30+ years, I was about to leave it all behind and pursue a dream. It sounded good, but I was scared. And I'd seen what happens to those birds to whom night was not so kind. Seen them sink lower and lower over the ocean until, spent and lost, they touched the water and were no more. As Jack says, the birds have to do it. I had a choice, at least.

And it worked out better than I could have hoped. Night was indeed kind.