Fall assemblies are a wonderful thing. My friend John Christie has lined up a couple of these at his school in south Allentown over the last two years and the energy is great. The kids know the material, the faculty is willing to have some fun, and John always brings some great chops to my music. He only brought three guitars today.
We did the first assembly inside the gym for the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades and there were perhaps over 400 kids. We worked through the good old stuff, I played The Cat Came Back with the different groups singing the chorus in Cat, Rap, Frozen and Opera. It continues to be a nice was to acknowledge the various parts of the community and bring folks together.
Several of the male teachers were interesting foils, especially when they lagged in participation with the songs. It was great that John could feed me their names on the fly, so they had no where to hide. That led to some great situation to see their teachers have to put up or shut up. That’s all part of the process in doing my leveling best and make the audience part of the same event.
I did All Around the Kitchen as the final number and, as usual, I invited the lead culprit teacher, Mr. Shoemaker, to come up and show his dance moves, and asked that he pick out two other teachers to come up as well. An interesting scattering takes place among the faculty, and he actually got four to come up. His dance move was The Look (hands on hips and nasty glare), which the kids mimicked perfectly when we did the dance.
I packed up for the second assembly, now scheduled for out side in the large grassy hillside ‘courtyard’. Back in a hour for part two.