Saturday's Internet Edition, May 17, 2008.
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| Singer/songwriter Mike Cross will perform a free concert at 4:30 p.m. Saturday in downtown Mocksville. |
Road musicians are gone from their families for months on end. Boone, the explorer, was gone from his family for years on end.
And as a student of history, Cross is looking forward to his performance at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Junker’s Mill outdoor venue in Downtown Mocksville as part of the Daniel Boone Family Festival. There is no admission.
Cross didn’t grow up a musician. He was a golfer, and dreamed of playing professionally.
During his junior year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a friend introduced him to the guitar. It wasn’t long before that friend had him on stage during an impromptu concert on campus.
“My friend and I had been playing old blues and Simon & Garfunkel. I wasn’t comfortable playing in front of people.”
In fact, he stopped playing halfway through the first song.
But his interest in music grew.
“My ear was so untrained, that for the first six months, I could not hear the difference between a minor chord and a major chord. Music was one of the first things I realized I knew nothing about. It was a huge mystery.”
After graduating, he worked at the Carolina Coffee Shop during the day and often hung out at the Endangered Species Tavern in Chapel Hill on weekends. The stage performer didn’t show up one night, and the owner asked Cross to play. The bartender had a guitar.
Cross still didn’t want to take the stage.
“We struck a deal that if I could sit at a table with my friends and talk and play, others could come around and listen. It was just hanging out with my friends.”
It worked. The bartender asked ... subscribe to the Davie County Enterprise Record, P.O. Box 99, Mocksville, N.C. 27028.