THE NIGHT MY MUSICAL ARROGANCE WAS HUMBLED AGAIN

There are humblings that hurt
and humblings that heal.
Friday night at the Panida was the second kind.

KRFR Radio’s Holiday Spectacular was meant to be lighthearted —
local musicians, a house band, holiday songs.
But something in me shifted again,
the same way it had years earlier at The Longshot,
on that Middle Fork trip,
and the first time I heard Little Wolf sing about coming home.

It happened the moment Kjetil Lund walked onstage.

He stepped into the lights barefoot, pants rolled up like Huck Finn,
a blond afro exploding around his head,
buffalo flannel hanging off him like some parallel-universe folk hero wandering in from Clark Fork.