I originally published this as a Note on Facebook in 2014 or so. Since Facebook has shut down that feature, I will begin migration of some of my Notes to Medium, editing them a bit in the process.
For a couple of years around the turn of the millennium, I was helping to develop the career of a hugely talented, recently-turned-twenty-one-year-old singer-songwriter, Rachael Davis. Because folk venues in Michigan and the Midwest, where I (and she) lived at the time, tend to be long drives from each other, and because the Midwest media (outside of Chicago, perhaps) tend to not pay much attention to “folk” music, I had recommended that she move to Boston, which — in addition to having many folk and/or singer-songwriter-friendly venues within its metropolitan area — was close to many, many more folk venues along the east coast. This, I thought, would be a better leaping-off place for the next phase of her career than would be Cadillac, Michigan, her hometown. At the same time, I was booking concerts for the Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse concert series in East Lansing, so, I was pretty well-acquainted with not only the wealth of talent that existed in Boston, which I thought would welcome her into the fold, but I was aware of the many venues within relatively easy driving distance. AND it had an audience that I thought was likely to eat her up.
She agreed, and the date that she had planned to make her long drive east was 12 September 2001. First, though, she had an opening-act gig in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the 10th, and a show in Chicago with her family’s band, Lake Effect, on the 11th. In Grand Rapids, she opened for Clive Gregson, an English singer-songwriter, at the One Trick Pony, a cozy, cottage-like restaurant/pub. My songwriting/music-promoting friend Ralston Bowles knew Gregson, who lived in Nashville at the time, and had arranged the concert, so he put Rachael on the bill.
It was a lovely concert. The young upstart wow’d the crowd; the veteran satisfied them. An amusing moment came up during a song in which Gregson sang about turmoil in the streets just as a fire truck went screaming by the Pony.
After completing his set, Gregson was called back for an encore (actually, I don’t think he even left the stage), and decided to sing a song without using amplification. He pushed the microphone out of the way and sang a song that pretty much everyone recognized. It was The Beatles’ “Across The Universe”, and at the end of the last verse, Gregson led the audience in a heart-stopping a cappella singalong of the chorus:
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world
On that 10th of September, 2001, of course, no one had a clue.
