On Friday, March 24th at 7pm The Kenwood will host another social hour where we’ve invited only the best entertainment to visit. The Flemming Fold has both an amazing story to share as well as amazing music. Please join us for this free concert in the Parlor.
Here is the story they shared:
My wife, Sandra, and I had always dreamed of performing music together professionally. We tried over several years, with occasional spurts of practicing and two or three performances at church. But because of our busy lives raising our two daughters and teaching music, we never could really get it going. I often thought about teaching my daughters to play music and having a family group, but Sandra didn’t think we could find enough time, and in reality, neither did I.
As the economy started to turn, we downsized to a cheaper home in a small town. That was January of 2008. We quickly realized that we hadn’t bought cheap enough, and our mortgage was too much for our income. In November that same year, to make ends meet, Sandra began booking small gigs for me playing fingerstyle guitar at any place that would pay and a few that wouldn’t.
Around that time, Amy, our church’s organist, who is also an activities director at a nursing home, asked me to perform for her residents. She then surprised me by saying, “why don’t you bring the whole family? I’m sure the residents would love anything the girls can do!” At that point, they could only play a few guitar chords and sing along to a few songs, and that was all. But by then, we had even chosen a name for our nonexistent family group… The Flemming Fold. So when Amy presented the idea, I immediately said “We’ll do it” and much to my surprise, so did Sandra. We told the girls that we were now officially a group and had a gig scheduled for January, one month away!
So there we were with a gig and no songs. We didn’t even know who would play what instrument! After a lot of practicing, we had four songs as a family. Sandra and I were on guitars and vocals, our 7 year-old daughter would play a mini-guitar and sing, and our 5 year-old would play autoharp and sing. It was decided that I would sing and play two thirds of the performance myself with occasional help from Sandra, and we would insert the family songs at intervals throughout. The month went by very quickly with our nervous anticipation growing more intense every minute. Well, turns out we had little to be nervous about, the show came off without a hitch and was a big hit! Once we saw the smiling faces and heard the applause, we were hooked! And thus began our amazing adventure.
