Welcome to the newly renovated news/blog page of ChrisJonesMusic.com. This is all made possible by the beautiful and brilliant web designer Lisa Jacobi of Curmudgeon Cafe (www.curmudgeoncafe.com). This is my first initial post of the new era. By the way, I’m hanging in there with my New Years resolution to update this blog at least once a week. My resolution to learn “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” in Portuguese isn’t going as well. I’ll be back for more soon.
I know this was on my previous post, but I wanted to repost what I had written about Butch Baldassari for the Bluegrass Blog last week:
I’d never heard of Butch when he called me out of the blue one day in 1988 and asked me if I was interested in joining a band in the southwest called Weary Hearts. I did, and that band changed the direction of my life and career, and I’d say
that’s probably true for the other members at the time, Mike Bub and Ron Block. Butch’s mandolin style and tone helped define the band sound, and it was his business sense and discipline that helped us grow and eventually move to Nashville together.
Butch managed to combine a dedication to the business side of music with a love and understanding of the art of music that’s rare in a single individual. I’ll miss not only Butch’s music, but also his unique perspective and humor. There have been many times since Weary Hearts were together when I’ve thought to myself, “what would Butch say in a situation like this?”, and it’s likely he would have said something insightful and funny. He had very little use for the cliches and standard assumptions of the business, instead creating his own “conventional wisdom” (or maybe “Baldo’s Wisdom”), which often enabled him to see things more clearly and pinpoint the heart of the situation.
I feel privileged to have known him and played music with him.
