My reading the post about Gordon’s passing hit me pretty hard this morning.

I’m still trying to recover from it.

This is largely due to “Early Morning Rain,” and “If You Could Read My Mind.”

They’re two songs that I think of often.

Everyone here, I’m sure, believes that the Kingston Trio has been the soundtrack of our lives.

For some of us, this is true more than it is for others.

In the last 30 or 40 years, I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t had a thought of some sort that pertains to the Trio.

This is how it is for people like me who have my particular brand of Attention Deficit.

I believe that for every thought that “normal” people have … people like me have ten million thoughts at the same instant. For us … thinking is like drinking from a fire hose.

This can be a curse when you’re trying to think in some kind of logical way, and it’s a blessing at all other times. It makes life very interesting … I can assure you.

I got this from my mother, and everyone in her family had it. Before I learned otherwise, I thought everyone thought this way.

When I often found that my mind was way out in left field, while everyone else’s was crossing home plate …. I began to realize that something very strange was going on inside my head. Back then, ADHD had not been discovered. So, I’m sure that you can well imagine how this affected me when I was a kid. It made me very much the Lone Ranger in school, and in life.

When I found that the girl who lived across the street from me had the same affliction and that our minds could keep up with each other’s, and we could finish each other’s sentences, I fell madly in love. I was crushed when she married someone else. And, I still haven’t gotten over it. We all need our partners in crime, and she was mine for a very long time. Throughout my teenage school years, and my first two years of college.

The song that I have always connected with this ailment is Gordon’s “If You Could Read My Mind.”

Given this very personal connection to Gordon, I’m sure that you can imagine that his passing has hit me pretty hard.

I don’t think Gordon ever did a show in Kentucky. So, I never got to see him. But, I never really had to. Hearing him sing “If You Could Read My Mind” was always plenty for me.

The other piece of this thing I have going with Gordon pertains to “Early Morning Rain.”

I’ve always considered the various configurations of the Kingston Trio to be separate bands. Each was different in its own way. Even Shane was different in each of them.

The Trio that was composed on Bob, Pat Horine, and Jimmy Connor was in a class all its own.

I remember that in about 1970, when I was in the Army, at Fort Knox, and we were living in Louisville, I got a call from my last college roommate, Don Wade. Don was living in my home town, Lexington, Kentucky. Don called to tell me that The Kingston Trio was doing a show in Lexington, at one of the hotels there. I told Don … “That’s impossible!” The Trio broke up in 1967. But, Don insisted that the Trio was doing a show there, I think the next Saturday night.

I thought the whole thing was insane … but, we went. What I witnessed that night was so far from being a Kingston Trio show … that I darn near threw-up. Well, that was a lie. But, it was exactly how I felt. Because I was in the ####ing Army at the time. I’ll be the first to admit that the only time I’ve ever not been in Never Neverland was during the two years that I was in the Army. After getting out of the Army in January of 1971, it took me a little while to find Never Neverland again. But, I eventually made my way back to it. Although certainly memorable, my time in the Army was like a nightmare. And, seeing Bob Shane, and Pat Horine and Connor at that hotel in 1970 was … the icing on the cake. In a very bad way. I cannot remember a single song that they did that night. I was in a total state of shock the whole time. The only thing that I remember about it was Bob’s saying that getting older was no fun at all. By this time, his hair was starting to turn grey. And, the lenses of his glasses had gotten thicker.

After I got out of the Army, I saw this configuration of the Trio three more times. By the third time, I’d begun to like these guys. Pat Horine was from Lexington, and I’d known him when we were both teenagers. He was, and always was a major asshole. But, he was actually half decent, when I saw the Trio with him after the first time. Because of him, I got to know Shane a little bit. After a few more configurations of the Trio that followed, I began to really appreciate what these guys had done. Which was not be a nostalgia act. They did a lot of new songs.

I went to one of the last shows that included Bill Zorn. During the show, Bob said that Bill was leaving the group in a few weeks, and that his replacement had been chosen¬―a guy from Nashville. Which wasn’t exactly true. After I was at this show, I called Allan Shaw. Allan told me that he’d just seen the Trio in Chicago, and he’d met George Grove. George had not joined the group yet, he was observing Zorn.

About a year later, I went to the first show that included George, and Roger. I’m sure that I went to at least a dozen shows that included Roger. I never liked him. I didn’t like his humor, or anything about him. My feelings about Roger are so strong that I remember very little about the shows that we went to when he was a part of the Trio.

So, I can’t say just exactly when George was able to perfect his version of “Early Morning Rain.” What I can say is that when it happened, I began to believe that I really was at a Kingston Trio show again, and the guys who I was listening to really were the Kingston Trio.

From then on, for a long as Shane was in the group, I was back in never neverland just as soon as they sang this song, which was always the third song at all the shows. This lasted until 2004, when Bob retired from the show. So, in all, I had about 25 years of listening to this rendition of the song. For me, it was always the high point of their concerts. As soon as they began singing it … I was somewhere else. And, I didn’t return to where I was before the song began until after the show was over.

Thinking back on this, Gordon certainly deserves a good bit of the credit, but for me, it was George who made it all possible because of his great banjo playing on this song. In my mind, George’s greatest contribution to the Trio was what he did with "Early Morning Rain."