Gentlemen,
From January 22 when I purchased my tickets for your superb Allen Room show last week until the preternaturally good concert itself, I joked with my expectant wife that your concert would be the perfect place for her water to break. The reason, I said, was that I wanted to begin the mythology of "my son the mandolin prodigy" as auspiciously as possible.

This was a bad idea on any number of levels. To start with, I knew full well that the date was three weeks before the optimum 40-week term was through. I also have no intention of being the stage parent from hell. Despite being one of Michael Daves' thicker mandolin students (and a duffer on the local bluegrass circuit), I'm sure my son will surpass me on any stringed instruments he chooses, but only (of course) if it's his choice. Should he ignore music and (sniff) bluegrass and take up a paint brush, tread the boards like his mother, become a carpenter, a firefighter, a novelist, an anarcho-syndicalist, a horticulturalist or a SCUBA instructor--all are choices that would please me provided that they are his choices and that he is happy doing what he likes.

Also, I have to thank you for giving Virginia and me yet another thing--your music--on which we enthusiastically agree, after I introduced her to you guys at the Sheriff Sessions gig last October. Since then, she's been a big fan, and has been asking repeatedly when the new album was due.

Anyway, I digress: short of the food and wine tables down front, our seats in the center of the front row could not have been better. The new piece was brilliant, and the fact that it was punctuated by phases of the last full lunar eclipse until 2010 was nothing short of beatific.

We decided not to hang around after the show, partly because we'd already bought your album online that day (d'oh!) and partly because there was already an adoring mob waiting to tell you how great you all are. Also, Virginia was feeling a bit tired (we'd just finished putting together the crib that afternoon).

Apparently that full moon and eclipse had another effect besides blessing your piece's debut. At seven the next morning my wife woke me up to tell me that her water had broken. Of course, I thought she was kidding. Following the trail of puddles to the bathroom, I realized that she wasn't joking. We got our things together and, ready or not, headed to the hospital.

By the end of the day, we had our son, Owen David Hatt, who weighed in at an awesome (to us) 5 pounds, 3.2 ounces. Maybe I haven't been paying attention (I haven't) but I've never seen a more alert, engaged baby.

Now, the nurses on the delivery floor were talking about how slammed they were, with 25 babies, including two sets of twins. And some of them attributed this activity to the full moon/eclipse combo. Personally, however, I think that little Owen David heard you all playing and realized that, full-term be damned, he wanted to be part of a world where people could do that…on the bass, on the fiddle, on the guitar, on the mando, and yes, even on the banjo.

And so the three of us would like to say thanks and ask that, next time we see you, could you sign our copy of your album as a welcome to Owen? Whether he ever ends up playing a lick of music in his life, I'm sure he'll appreciate it, because you are a very big and very good part of his birth story.

For that, we thank you.

Peace,

Doug & Virginia Hatt