By the time you read this, we will have celebrated lighting the 49th and final campfire of this particular journey, this Pilgrimage, with a concert and the release of an album of fifteen new songs. I am filled with gratitude, thankful to discover I had the grit, and thankful for the grace given and received. I look forward to the next adventure(s), but not before taking some time to truly appreciate this one.Thank you to all those who have shared the journey and have helped make it possible.

As I reach this moment in the journey I am reminded again how long life takes and the fact that it is over in an instant. I am surprised that the last three stages of life turned out to each be ten year long. It was certainly not planned that way. While I’m too close to it to judge the quality of it, telling my story around forty-nine campfires has certainly been the most important and satisfying work that I have ever done.

There were a lot of significant benchmarks in the summer and fall of 2015. There was my 50th high school reunion and 50 years of friendship and musical partnership with Mike McCoy. My older brother celebrated his 70th birthday and my younger brother retired. Those moments combined with others involving lifelong connections or friendships made me realize that, in my own way, I was arriving where I started and able to see things with new eyes and as if for the first time. 

As the pace of lighting these campfires increases—and the goal of lighting the “last campfire” on May 13th approaches--I realize what a luxury it has been to meander slowly through the memories and discoveries of a lifetime.At this campfire I talk about becoming part of a Civil Rights Pilgrimage in the fall of 2014. Preparing for those nine days on the bus awakened countless memories and connected me in new ways to who I had been and what I had thought and believed in 1968 and 1969. Looking back I realized how much faith I had in March of 1968. When I turned twenty-one that first day of spring I believed that Robert Kennedy would become the President, that Martin Luther King, Jr. would live long and eloquently. The recently released Kerner Report, looking at the Detroit riots of a year earlier, offered a road map to racial reconciliation. I also believed that the Viet Nam War would soon be over. I mean, even Presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, tapped his coat pocket and talked of a secret plan for peace. Twelve months later so much had changed. I also learned during that time that my father had been in a mental institution when I was born and much of what I believed was suddenly in doubt.To be able to see that time from this place is enlightening for me both from a perspective of where I was and we were then as well as shining a different light on where we are now.Understanding what it means to be part of a larger Pilgrimage has also helped transformed my personal journey into a Pilgrimage. That realization fills me with gratitude. 

When I started this journey of Gratitude, Grit, and Grace I thought it would be mostly one of awakening and recording memories. I continue to be surprised—pleasantly for the most part--at how much of it is about discovering and discoveries. By shining light into dark corners I am seeing things differently or for the first time. By opening long doors long shut I am able to make connections and see pathways. All of it has proven harder and more satisfying that I could have ever imagined.

A few things became clear as I got ready to share my songs and stories in a series of virtual campfires. I would need a team of people to help me. It was going to take a lot longer than I first imagined. What I thought was going to be simply a journey of memory quickly became one of discovery as well. I also quickly realized that the exploration allowed for and demanded that I open “doors” long shut and often locked. To do that was more difficult and more satisfying than I could have ever imagined.

In the summer of 2007 I began what became the 7th and final stage of my personal and professional journey, “One of Those Times in a Life.” I realized I had finally faced long hidden fears in a way that I was able to live with them instead of in them. One of the ways the change appeared to show itself was in my songwriting. A process that was often anxiety producing more and more became something that brought feelings of joy and a sense of fulfillment.Due to a combination of choice and chance and circumstance in the fall of 2010 I had new albums that represented all of my professional careers: songwriter, solo artist, member of The Brothers Four, and with Mike McCoy. Looking and listening to those recordings I realized I had arrived at a new appreciation for each of them. I had also spent a season writing about my family’s history. The time had arrived to take a lifetime of stories and try to tell the story of a lifetime.

It has been a while since we lit the 41st campfire. In the interim I have written a number of new songs and recorded a 15 song CD. I am also getting ready for a concert to celebrate the release of the new album and the lighting of the 49th and final Campfire on this amazing journey, One of Those Times in a Life.I had promised myself when I began this journey more than six years ago I would only work to living lines and no longer work to deadlines. Setting the concert date of May 13th months in advance has changed things a bit. The remaining eight Campfires will not have an oral Chronicle but a written one. My plan is to return in time to these Campfires and add a spoken Chronicle to what we are sharing now.

In the summer of 2004 I released a solo CD called “The Missing Peace.” At the same time my lifelong friend, Mike McCoy, joined me in The Brothers Four and during the 2004-2005 concert season The Brothers Four did a series of performances in the US with The Kingston Trio and Glenn Yarbrough and his group. In 2006 McCoy and I released a 25th anniversary edition of “Between Friends.” The 41st Campfire talks about how those events put me on The Road To Going Home. 

The 40th campfire talks about the spring of 2004. That season I successfully completed the vocals for my most ambitious solo album, there were significant personnel changes within The Brothers Four, and I had a life altering moment with my older brother. Together those experiences propelled me on “The Road That Leads Us Home.”

In the 38th Campfire the long held and deep-seated fears that resided so long in my unconscious were found and freed and soon running wild. In this, the 39th Campfire, those fears begin to be given names and faces and in the naming and facing them I am able to begin claiming them.