The Club Car Mardi Gras

If you have gone to the "About" page, you may have read a little about my love of music and trains, and about the magic at Fir, which is at the top of La Veta Pass, a remote place reachable only by train, where some of the most amazing music happened.

I grew up riding on the City of New Orleans. My Grandma lived in Grenada, MS and it was about a four hour train ride from Western Kentucky where we lived. So I knew the club car that Steve Goodman wrote about in the song about that train.

And somehow, I was fortunate enough to eventually have that club car on the railroad I ran in Colorado, the one with music at the top of La Veta Pass.

Headed to Fir, with Mardi Gras on the end of the train.

Every trip took a lot of energy, greeting the performers and guests on the platform in Alamosa, getting everyone on board so we could leave on time, walking through the train to make sure everything was cleaned and stocked, saying hello to the greatest train staff in the world.

There was so much that there were times when I forgot I was on a train.

And then, just as quickly, I remembered.

The car itself helped create that feeling. The wood-paneled walls, the soft chairs, the natural light coming through the windows. It didn’t feel like a music venue at all. It felt like home, a place I was allowed to settle into.

At the back half of the car, the windows curved around, giving you a view straight down the track behind the train. If you turned from conversation, you could see the rails stretching out across the valley, the landscape slowly rolling past. You were moving, but inside the car everything had come to rest.

Rolling across the San Luis Valley

On the way back from Fir, there was always music. And everyone there listened.

They didn’t sit in rows. They gathered.

Some sat in the booths. Others leaned into chairs or stood along the edges. There was no clear front, no stage, no separation. Wherever the music was, that became the center.

Fred would start a song. I would join in. Someone would request something. Another voice would come in from the side of the car.

Fred and me, with Peggy, Emily and Nox, and others

And then, before long, the artists would drift in.

That was always the moment.

You might look up and see Anne Hills sitting just a few feet away, guitar in hand, listening for a moment before joining in. Or Suzy Bogguss, or Michael Martin Murphey, or someone else you had just seen on a stage in the middle of a mountain meadow, now sitting in an easy chair, part of the circle.

The car would tighten, not physically, but in attention.

No one announced anything. There was no shift in lighting or introduction. The music simply continued, but now it carried a different weight.

Once we had John McCutcheon at Fir, and Bill Staines opened for John. On the way down the mountain, John requested Bill's song "All God's Critter's Got a Place in the Choir" and they did a lovely duet. Never to be repeated.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/771e3e_c32793f5e5b44bfbbdf70c83476cbf3b/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

John McCutcheon and Bill Staines singing "All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir" on the way back from Fir.

Sometimes people realized what they were witnessing. They pulled out cell phones to try to capture the moment, or at least the visual part of the moment.

Sometimes people didn’t understand, at least not right away.

That was part of what made it special.

You weren’t being presented with a performance. You were inside something that was unfolding. Songs were chosen in the moment. Harmonies found their way in naturally. A request might turn into a memory, and a memory into a song.

There were no microphones. No amplification. Just voices and instruments in a car that was built, long before any of us were there, to hold people together.

And outside the windows, the world kept moving.

You could glance out and see the wide stretch of the San Luis Valley, or catch the rhythm of the rails slipping away behind you. The train was doing its job, carrying everyone back down the mountain.

Inside, something else was happening.

People leaned forward. Some closed their eyes. Some sang quietly. Others just listened. There was a sense that if you spoke too loudly, you might interrupt something you didn’t fully understand but didn’t want to lose.

Looking back, I don’t remember specific set lists from those jams.

I just remember the feeling.

A space where the distance between artist and listener disappeared. Where a song could move from one person to another without effort. Where the setting, the journey, and the music all came together in a way that didn’t need explanation.

Jeff Hanna from Nitty Gritty Dirt Band delighting club car passengers

And maybe the most remarkable part was how natural it felt.

No one had designed it that way.

It just happened, because everything else around it allowed it to happen.

And I was always a little sad when we rolled across the Rio Grande river into Alamosa, finishing the last song, which was always Goodnight Irene. Fred sang the last verse, which he wrote. "Thanks for coming on this journey, thanks for being here on our train. We hope you all had a wonderful time, please come back and see us again."

Good night Irene. Good night Mardi Gras.