For those of you who don’t know me, I make my living as a touring showman, a storyteller and songster – think Vaudeville for public libraries.

A few years ago, I was on a sentimental journey at the home of my dearest old friend, Ron Balthazor.  Ron and his wife, Jane Hudson, are gentleman/gentlewoman farmers who dwell in darkest Oconee County, Georgia.  Being old camp counselors, Ron and I were sharing an outdoor fire with his dogs, Oak the Great Pyrenees and Zen the twelve-week-old Pyrenees, who at thirty-five pounds had yet to reach greatness.

Ron is a retired University of Georgia English professor and is currently a tasteful and tasty jazz drummer with Big Band Athens and his own ensemble, Trio Metro. Ron and I have played a lot of music together over the years. 

In front of that fire, with Ron in his lawnchair, and I on the ground with the dogs, we happily drifted into a memory of our college days and an event that took place some forty-odd years ago when we arrived for a visit at the home of his parents. 

Now, Ron’s mother, Bev, was one of those Methodist piano-playing Sunday school teachers for whom music literacy was a primary language. To her, the midcentury Protestant acrolect of the keyboard was so natural that when she had reached her dotage and was in a nursing home with dementia, when her ability to speak had been lost, Ron would wheel her up to the piano where she would begin to play songs of Jesus from The Cokesbury Hymnal. (When I was a United Methodist kid, we all thought The Cokesbury Hymnal was the songbook for old people. And we were correct.)

On that happily recalled evening of our youth,  Ron and I had arrived at his parents' home to the sound of, not hymns, but rather masterfully played jazz standards emanating from Bev’s upright piano in the living room. Ron exclaimed, "It's Uncle Tom!"

Bev's brother, Tom, was a musician of a more secular and saltier ilk. On weekdays, Tom had a day-job as a paint chemist. But every weekend, my friend's uncle played at a piano bar. That night, Ron and I couldn't get enough of the vast catalog of tunes that Tom’s head and heart brought to his fingers, fingers that never ceased; even between songs, Tom would seamlessly segue from one tune to the next.  All through that afternoon-into-evening, Tom played and played as Ron and I sang and sang. After supper, Ron's mom joined us, and Tom modulated the songs’ keys to better suit Bev's voice, his selections now turned to schmaltzier Broadway show tunes.  If Ron’s dad, Bernie, hadn’t announced that it was late and time for bed, we three might be singing around the piano with Tom, still. 

Ron and I agreed: when Tom played, it was about the songs. 

When Tom played, it was about soul-enriching joy.

And just as it was with us singing at the home of Ron’s teetotaling parents, when Tom played at the bar, everyone who sang around his piano was the star of the show.

At that outdoor fire of our recollection, as Ron and I were laughing and remembering his now long-departed parents and uncle, my friend said something that would stick with me for a long time. Ron said,  "My Uncle Tom had a journeyman's sense of self."

I am reminded of some of the happiest times I have known in this so-called “artistic” life. “Artistic” is in quotes because the would-be artist doesn’t get to call themself such.  If they are lucky, others might.  But truly, some of the richest times in my working life have come from being a camp counselor with a guitar. Or a college theatre director. Or that guy visiting a school, teaching second-graders how to make up their own twelve-bar blues songs. 

One reaches an age in which hindsight gives one an honest perspective, a vantage point revealed, showing that some of the most soul-enriching artistic endeavors happen in small corners.

Like... a few years ago, I had my name up in lights on the marquee of The Fox Theater!...

... in McCook, Nebraska, that is. When I went to take a picture with my Swiss Army phone for th'social mediums, some of the letters seemed a bit off. Then, under closer scrutiny, I observed that the F's, the T's, and the R on the illuminated white opaque sheets were made of black electrical tape. Barbara McBride Smith, the band Steel Wheels, and I sold out that show, but to be forthright, a third of the interior of that ninety-year-old, excuse-our-progress theatre was cordoned off – not with velvet burgundy rope, draped between brass stanchions – but with yellow-and-black CAUTION tape, because a section of the rotting floor wasn’t safe to bear weight. 

But, y’all, for all who were there, it was a great night!

Yes, I have done a few hotshot jobs with some good resume mentions. Still, I am equally as proud and deeply satisfied to have danced the role of Uncle Drosselmeyer in the Nutcracker at the Porter Performing Arts Center in my hometown of Covington, Georgia. My landing that gig was the brainchild of Buncie Lanners.

A bunch of years ago, standing backstage in that same hall, while teenagers were striking the set of a mighty sublime production of Mary Poppins [BRAG ALERT: my kid Liam played, sang, danced, and flew the part of Bert], I was chatting with my old friend Buncie, our soon-to-be-retired Czarina of The Arts Association in Newton County. Buncie and I were glowing with the electric thrill, the sweetness, and the love of how community was made from friends and family in an audience, coming to be enchanted by friends and family performing their young hearts out.  As she and I watched our teenage stars-of-the-stage, still in makeup, now transformed into exuberant leather-gloved theatrical roustabouts, I said, “Buncie, this is sacred.”

Buncie, a lifelong and devout Presbyterian, turned to me in an instant and said, “...More sacred to me than religion.”

We were both tearing up when I said, “Oooo, you better watch out!”

Buncie, ever the practical and spiritual proponent of the arts, continued, “...because art is the expression of our hearts and souls. The arts are the true declaration of a Creator, and we are created in the Creator’s image...”

I said, "And there you have it."

But Buncie was on a roll. "...to create and re-create."

"Yup..."

"...which overcomes all racial and cultural differences, yet celebrates them in their unique expression of their creativity — their hearts and souls."

That's what my friend Buncie said a bunch of years ago – a quote that’s worth spreading around.

And there, off stage-left in that theatre, Buncie and I air toasted that which we know to be sacred – community arts.

And now, wherever you are reading this, please lift your coffee, tea, or sasperilla, as I lift my coffee mug – join me in toasting Buncie Hay Lanners, a wise leader, a benevolent and deep community servant, and an Artist among artists.

Andy Offutt Irwin is a storyteller and songwriter from Covington, GA. He is also a longtime columnist for The Covington News. He can be reached at aoirwin@gmail.com.