Alan J. Bloom Rocks the Pier at Blue Moon Lagoon

I can’t help it. I love a soft September evening on a deck overlooking the water with good friends and great music.

I don’t know about you guys, but it has been a long summer with much less hilarity than I had intended. So I jumped at the chance to commune among my colleagues when a new group of gal pals invited me to join them at Blue Moon Lagoon for Girls’ Night Out (thanks Robin!). You always know that GNO will include some uproarious laughs, but I was also pleasantly surprised to exhale the stress of the day and replace it with some soulful tunes by Alan J. Bloom.

Blue Moon is a little treasure tucked away on Rock Harbor Marina on the west side of town. The restaurant is almost entirely open air and overlooks the water; it’s on the Cumberland River, but we won’t hold that against it. The food is good ($$ out of $$$$) but, as you guys know, with me the story is the music!

I had never heard Alan play before. His voice has a gritty rock n’ roll texture. His set is intense, delivered with attitude, and yet, manages to put a very earthy signature stamp on songs we’ve heard a thousand times.

Before the uproarious laughs took over the evening (it was GNO, after all) I heard impressive renditions of classics like “Walkin’ in Memphis,” “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “Space Cowboy.” Good talent and good arrangements – complete with the ethnic beat from a large hand drum – brought even these age old cover tunes up-to-date with a special twist. And by the end of the night he was pumping out full on wah-wah pedal with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Aeroplane."

Of course, the highlight for me was when he played an original ballad called “What I Mean (By Love).” Apparently it was originally composed to sing to his bride at their wedding, and you gotta love a wedding song that starts out, Somehow, there’s no getting better than you. The chorus was also very approachable:

You can love me and I will love you
You can trust me and I will trust you
You can tell me and I will tell you
What I mean by love

But the line that I liked best spoke to getting through the hard times by tapping into something fundamental and drawing on inner strengths that don’t always come to the surface:

All these colors will rise up from the deep

I don’t care who you are...that’s a line that just brings warm fuzzies with it. We don’t often compare the inner workings of a relationship to a box of crayolas, but there just might be something to it.

I know this: I haven’t gotten nearly my fill of music this summer. Sometimes, real life takes over and it is all too easy to miss opportunities to enjoy the magic all around us. This is never more true than in your own backyard. I feel incredibly lucky that my “backyard” includes accidental run-ins with talent of the caliber of Alan J. Bloom.

Suffice it to say, I needed that.

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