My friend, Beth McDonald Boger and I have travelled a long and winding road of a musical path over the last two decades or so. Travelling less to chase or to find something, more to follow it. In the promo copy we wrote for a show a few years ago, a line reads: "What might seem on the surface as an odd pairing has been called musical magic". The odd, or dissimilar part, is also the part that is exactly the same (Beth and I both appreciate paradoxes, so this works for us). To continue to quote the promo copy: "A reviewer once likened Beth to Miss Peggy Lee, calling her “almost....almost unapproachable.” In contrast to: "Joe, on the other hand, could be called “almost unrestrained”.

The photo above is from our recent appearance at the Stoltz Listening Room of the Avalon Theatre, in Easton, MD. We've played there together at least a half dozen times, and the theatre's promo for this last show called us the "beloved duo", which warmed our hearts. What started out as me simply being Beth's accompanist (including for a time in a jazz band in which she was the vocalist) has evolved into most of our performances as double billed shows (reference the marquis in the above photo). It is a true collaboration, and our programs these days are more of a weaving of the two of us together.  Not a balancing act so much, more as a balance between us, that is greater than the sum of the individual parts. There was actually a specific point in time, years ago, where we understood (or perhaps better, acknowledged) that there was a specific path given for us to follow, and we committed ourselves to it; a shared path, facilitated by music, weaving music and friendship into a tie that binds.