Mumford & Sons

I just discovered Mumford & Sons. They are a Celtic flavored English folk rock band.

I love their music. Absolutely love it.

I randomly discovered them on NPR. They were being interviewed and they played some of their songs. My soul came alive and I realized I had discovered a band I could truly love. As is my way, I immediately procrastinated about digging into them.

Until yesterday. I was doing that Sunday thing, that lazy recliner thing. Came across a concert documentary thing called The Road To Red Rocks and my head exploded.

Allow me to explain. There are certain things in my life that I definitely want to experience. Not just want to experience, have to experience. As I get older I have to cross more things off the list. This distresses me but that's life, baby. There are a few things I refuse to give up on. One is digging a concert at Red Rocks. Another is visiting Arizona. If I don't make it, there will be a clause in my will binding my loved ones to travel my corpse to both destinations before they set me on fire and dance around my memory.

The Red Rocks Ampitheatre is a gorgeous outdoor concert venue literally carved out of the rocks in Red Rocks Park near Morrison, Colorado. Do yourself a favor, go on line and look at the pictures of this place. It will blow your mind.

The Allman Brothers play there almost every summer. It has been a lifelong ambition for me to see them there. That would be the ultimate concert for me and I would drown in tears of happiness if I ever pull it off.

It may not happen, but it hit me yesterday that Mumford & Sons would be a worthy second. That is how much I love their music.

I am so happy to discover new passions at the age of 59. It gives me hope, keeps me vibrating at the frequency of life and revitalizes my soul.

Their debut album Sigh No More came out in 2009. Their second album, Babel, was released last September. So I am only two albums behind and I will own them soon.

They just won a Grammy for album of the year for Babel.

As I dug this concert yesterday I was blown away by their energy and enthusiasm. They love what they are doing, they bounce around the stage, they rock and sway, they are passionate, I almost had to leap out of my leather heaven to experience them fully.

Guitar, mandolin, drums, banjo, keyboards, accordion, electric and stand up bass - an eclectic mix of instruments that levitated my soul out of lethargy and floated me to ecstasy. I am smothering you in hyperbole but I am not exaggerating my emotional response.

What a great thing to be lying in repose, resting, marshaling all my energy and intellect (?) for the life change that looms ahead of me, and to be suddenly blasted off to a place of pure joy and experience, to revel in pure emotion, to experience someone else's take on life set to music that made me smile continuously and washed the worry out of my eyes with intermittent tears.

Their energy became my energy and I felt so damn good.

And the lyrics. Always the lyrics with me. I have to do a lot of reading and you can bet I will come back to bore you with my opinion, but what I have picked out already, I love.

Marcus Mumford, Winston Marshall, Ben Lovett, and Ted Dwayne.

Music, sweet music, I love our relationship and life long commitment. I picked you out as a companion somewhere around 50 years ago, my soul assuming you would enrich my life.

My soul was not wrong.