In 2014, before this blog began, even before RV travel entered our lives, Sue and I traveled to a blues jam near Augusta, ME. This event was run by a high school teacher and tennis coach with a serious guitar habit who calls himself “Cowboy” in the BGU forum, though his real name is Wilbur. At Wilbur’s jam, we met a whole bunch of cool people from the Blues Guitar Unleashed forum, including one who had chosen “sloslunas” for his forum name, likely because his first name is Steve, which starts with “S,” and he lives in Los Lunas, NM.
But that was my first jam of any kind, my first time playing my guitar in public, the first time I ever plugged into an amp and played at stage volume – a whole bunch of firsts. At one point Steve came to me, acting real serious, and then he told me I was a player (“You’re a player, man!”). I found that to be incredibly encouraging, uplifting and enabling. We became friends. When Sue and I started all our traveling, we stopped in to see Steve and Hy in Los Lunas. That was in April 2017, way too long ago. Though we’ve tried a few times to get there again, each of those efforts was thwarted – until this year!*
Steve and Hy live in a great neighborhood in a very cool house with a wonderful southwestern feel that they’ve been working on, improving and customizing for a few decades. With courtyards and gardens around the house, cozy and private behind the surrounding adobe walls, it does have the feel of a compound, which is how Steve often refers to it on the BGU forum. But the formality and rigorous security that the term implies is, I’ve found, thoroughly tongue-in-cheek. In truth, The Compound is as open, friendly and welcoming as the residents therein.
And speaking of open, friendly and welcoming… Da Boyz, brothers Milo and Goldie, the Compound’s crack security team, were a year or so old the first time we visited, and they’re around 9 now. They’re still swimming, chasing tennis balls, wagging their tails and screening visitors as before, just a little more slowly than when we first met.
After a good catching-up session between the four of us, Steve and I retired to his studio for some guitaring. Steve has a very nice collection of instruments, so we both kept rotating our way through them (I didn’t even get mine out of the motorhome). We played songs we both knew, shared songs that only one of us knew, and we did a fair amount of improvisation (watch the video!). Steve’s sweet solo lines just blew me away. So much fun!
While Steve and I played (which we did for most of the afternoon on the day we arrived and as much of the next day as our fingers could stand), Hy and Sue spent time chatting about our respective families, philosophy, solving world hunger and… food! Hy was born and raised in New Mexico and is an exceptional cook, well-versed in the nuances of the regional cuisine, and we learned a lot! New Mexican chiles, because of the growing conditions in the high desert, have a flavor that is different from the Mexican chiles and so they are used differently. The hot, spicy food we love is traditional New Mexican fare – Mexican food is (generally) less hot and relies more on spices other than chiles for flavor. Of course, we got to sample her awesome cooking! Sue and Hy also explored the neighborhood, once with Da Boyz and another with Hy and Steve’s niece Mariah and their 2-year old great-nephew, Ronan.
Our morning goodbyes included lots of coffee, a small dose of shared political opinions and plans for the next get-together.
For those interested, more pix in this album.
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*Actually, I should say until this month, because one of those attempted visits was going to be just before the Denver Jam in October. It was while we were getting ready to leave Parker and head to Los Lunas that we had our second breakdown.
