I just came back from the 2010 Folk Alliance which is held in Memphis. It was good to hang with my pals Richard Flohil (older than I am) and Gene Shay (likewise). The best aspect of the Folk Alliance is an overflow of young talent that just seems to reinvigorate itself to overflowing. It's not cheap to come from distant cities to set up camp in Memphis for four or five days but they were there from Brooklyn and Bow Bells to Adelaide and Austria. There's something universal when 16-year-olds bring out their fiddles and guitars and mandolins and jump right into a song.

There was a panel deevoted to the newer technologuy of electronics and, of course, there were geeks aplenty looking to beat the next wave. One instructor announced that his class was going to be streamed live in IPhone so a few dozen people whipped their phones out and brought forth the image of the teacher who was, of course, alive in the room right before them.

I had a real oddity happen when I met a musician/songwriter by the name of Gary Nicholson. It was beyond coincidence because it seemed that we have shared major life events with the same people. He has songs covered by Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, each of whom I managed for decades. He said that he had just seen a photo exhoibit at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville that was so good that he wanted to get out his camera and take pictutes of them and then I had to tell him that it was my exhibits. He is a close friend to Jim Gianopoulos and Jeff Bridges, who are the producer and star of "Crazy Heart." for which he wrote a song.

He was a whole evening of coincidences piling up and we are going to have dinner in Nashville when I go to pick up my images in the middle of April.

All in all, it was a fun weekend of seeing old friends and the luck of making a new one . . .