If you have a quiet moment on a Sunday...

Have you ever thought about your earliest memories? Karin and I are curious to know if they provide clues regarding the path you are finding, the vocation you are choosing, the life you are living.

Are your earliest memories full of foreshadowing?

Our friend Michael Wilson makes black and white photographs for a living (and has photographed many of America's greatest songwriters and musicians John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Shawn Colvin, David Byrne, BB King etc, to name a few.) One of Michael's earliest memories: cars would drive by his house at night, and the shadows of the reflecting headlights through his bedroom window circled the walls just below the ceiling. Michael saw a circus train. He would lie in bed and watch the black and white shadows of the train cars roll.

Our friend Dave Nixon has an unusual facility with language one of the best teachers and writers and communicators we've come across. Not only can he read Greek and Latin and various classical languages, but he speaks French and German and? When his daughter Kim got engaged to a gentle German fellow named Matthias, they asked Dave to preside at the wedding. In deference to Matthias's family who made the trek across the ocean, Dave conducted the service in both English and German, going back and forth in an unassuming way. (I had never even heard him speak German before.) Dave's earliest memory: an older sibling correcting his English. He had used the wrong word! As a child, Dave made a mental note early: he wanted to know and use the right word.

One of Karin's earliest weekly rituals was watching the TV show HEE HAW with her Step-Grandfather. (Chosen family.) As a little girl, Karin watched some of the best country and western performers of the era sing timeless tunes, crack jokes, harmonize, perform skits, make each other laugh. She says that's how she developed her highly refined sense of humor, haha. If my wife can sing and make a few people laugh and cry, that is a good day in her book.

As for me, my earliest memory is the sound of a trumpet at a tent meeting revival. I remember the tent, the strings of bare light bulbs, my sister Grace's braids. I was sitting on my mother's lap and a little musical ensemble was playing hymns on a small stage at the front of the tent. There was a trumpet player. A trumpet! That bright brass bell, that egg-tooth blast cracked the sky of my conscious mind and helped me form my first thoughts: I had to get up there to the little stage at the front of the tent. I needed to be where the sound was coming from.

Talk about foreshadowing.

This Memorial Day Weekend, May 27-29, Karin and I are hosting our first music and arts festival on our farm, the beautiful piece of unpaved earth we call home: Nowhere Else Festival 2016. We are putting up a large tent. There will be strings of bare lightbulbs. There will be a stage at the front of the tent. When Over the Rhine and the Band of Sweethearts lean together into the harness of the songs we have chosen for this special gathering, I will get to be where the sound is coming from. I think my entire life will be present in that moment.

But this time we are taking it a step farther.

We are inviting other artists and musicians to join us for the weekend to offer their work, be present, share some of their own journey, their own bits of foreshadowing and hard won victories, small or large.

But what about you?

Do your earliest memories provide any clues?

Join the conversation if you'd like and leave a comment.

And hope to see you on the farm in May.

Rivers and oceans,

Linford and Karin

Chk out the Over the Rhine website for more.