Here follows the second half of the Foreward from the e-book compilation of these entries, in which I offer insights regarding the super-substantial nature of the prose, and tips on best managing its mental mastication (!). The final paragraph notes the continuation of Moonlight in 2017 under a new owner— sadly, that extended life lasted only a year or so, with no known documentation of its activities during that time… the stage soon went dark, leaving only these entries to give testimony to the delights it hosted.
Again, instead of subscribing to this account, you may acquire the en masse compilation of six years of Moonlight newsletters in e-book form, if you are a binge reader with more leisure time than patience. The link to that tome I provide here—-
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/Moonlight-Music-On-a-Mountain
I welcome your choice of either method. Many thanks for your continued interest!
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So— let me say a few things now that might shed further light on what follows—
As you embark on the body of this work in its earliest stages, you’ll see I squirmed around a lot in forging a standard template for the information it had to contain. Though the entries are, quite naturally, presented in chronological order, that doesn’t mean you have to read the whole shebang straight through, front to back— there are definite soft spots in the spirit and tone of what was served up each week, and I recommend the random sampling of pieces from different months and years. Every bit of it was written in niblets, especially at first, with minor regard to the thing as a whole— it’s turned out to be like a big bag of trail mix, each handful will have its own array of surprises— and to the degree by which your e-reader will allow you to flip the pages, I encourage you to skip around.
The prevailing characteristic of the verbiage is its density, and the nettlesome use of an unconventional vocabulary, leaning hard on multi-syllable words that for most people will require a visit to the dictionary. For me, the English language is a playground, and no doubt this style reflects the influence of our regular cavalcade of inventive songwriters, who could find the potential rhythm and sway in any given line by striking the offbeat notes. Reading this stuff is kinda like drinking a thick milkshake— you have to slow down, tug thoughtfully on the straw, and indulge yourself in the nuggets of flavor that reward your patience. I often told people that it helps to read some of it out loud.
I think it was widely understood that the newsletter had a single author, but I found it less self-aggrandizing, and a lot more inclusive, to write in a plural voice. That’s less an example of what The Dude Lebowski referenced as “the royal we”, than a comfortable editorial device meant to underscore the hoped-for communal nature of Moonlight, casting it as perhaps being directed by a small collective of volunteer advocates. Indeed, come showtime, I had indispensable help from many individuals who stepped up to assist in every evening’s production, so characterizing The Moonlight as a group effort would not be entirely inaccurate. I felt writing the newsletter from a first-person plural perspective would be a subtle way of honoring those contributions.
There’s only so many different ways to convey the same message again and again without losing your audience— ask any preacher who has to craft a new sermon to toss from the pulpit EVERY Sunday morning— so I’m proud that I always found myself able to spin new silk from the same old straw. Except for the rare instance in which I cadged lines from an artist’s promo/bio text, I tried hard to make each week’s piece entirely original. Of course, deadlines and circumstance would on occasion find The Muse taking a bathroom break— when the logs jammed, I’d reluctantly reuse an artist’s description from a prior mailing, so that the newsletter might be ready to Send by midnight every Tuesday. The last few years I did cut-and-paste the final-paragraph appeal for donations to the non-profit (those repetitions have been mostly scissored from this content), but at the same time, I somehow managed to find a completely new pitch for each and every bi-weekly Open Mic Session— all 159 of ‘em!
I never quit thinking I’d somehow get the newsletter into a more attractive and eye-catching form— sparkling with graphically exciting artwork, photos of the featured artists, the five-color Moonlight logo prominent in every mailing. Unable to transform it myself, I called for HTML upgrade guidance several times, but without success— so week after week I freighted out blocks of thick gray text. By segmenting the content with double- and triple-line spaces and snappy, all-cap exclamations, I employed various fragmentive techniques to make the thing less forbidding to plow through. I’m sure many subscribers quickly scanned each fresh week’s edition, saving it for a time when fully digesting a load of undecorated verbosity would be an acceptable way to kill a half-hour. I like to think those folks eventually returned to give it a second look; there were no doubt a great number of others whose limited leisure time or short supply of patience prompted them to hit the delete key, with little to no regret.
I take that gamble again now, reproducing these mailings faithfully in the form by which they were originally sent, and depending on your email server, were hopefully received. A later edition of this book may feature pictures of our most notable— or photogenic— performers, as I also did my best to visually document each onstage participant in our parade of talent. The Moonlight’s blue-black, starry-sky stage curtains are highly identifiable, but they’re an unchanging backdrop in the thousands of digital images I compiled over the years, which to me seem too homogenous to display en masse. I do keep all those photos in a personal collection, if you might like to see any particular ones of them, you may contact me, and I’ll do my best to dig up one or two that are good enough to share.
There are hundreds of weblinks included in this text— mostly portals to artists’ sites, others as needed for reference— and if your reading device allows, you should be able to click on any hot one, and go wherever it takes ya. The passage of time has rendered many of these links defunct, and more will become dead ends as years go by, but for the sake of those performers who are still pursuing their careers, I hope you’ll ring their online doorbells and check their progress since. Also, the text is searchable— which makes it easy to find the times or dates a particular artist appeared at Moonlight— happily, this feature replaces the need for an index in the final pages. Yay, e-books!
As of this writing, The Moonlight is still burning brightly on its Alabama mountaintop, under the direction of a young and energetic new owner— it remains a unique and valuable platform for hard-working, talented, and deserving artists to attract the audience so critical to their development and success. The final entry in this book expresses in detail my eternal gratitude for all those good people who made Moonlight the magic, marvelous world it has been from the very beginning. Please enjoy this look back at a very special time and place in my life, and quite probably yours as well— and thanks for being a continuing part of it all!
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Thank you Keith. What a delight to be reading you again.
I unfailingly looked forward to reading your content and did so religiously...even after I had moved sufficiently far away from AL as to make a trip to your venue to catch a show impractical. I’m genuinely enjoying reading it again now.
I’m hoping that once this project is complete, you’ll grace us with newly created content.
All the very best to you, Keith.
Very much enjoying reading these, Keith. Your style of prose is a delight! Thank you for everything you did for live music for all of those years.