Abbey Road on the River is over for another year, and as always, I find myself sitting with a lot of feelings in the days after. The sets went great, the audiences were incredibly gracious, and there were some genuinely wonderful moments where other musicians joined me on stage. But what I keep coming back to — what I think this year was really about — is family.
And I don’t just mean that in the loose, feel-good sense of “we’re all one big family here.” I mean actual families.
Over the course of the weekend, my wife and I talked to so many people who told us about bringing their kids to this festival every year — kids who now have kids of their own. We’ve watched little ones grow up at this fest. One of our good musician friends mentioned watching our son grow up over the last few years, which hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting. Our son is four years old now, but we’ve been bringing him with us since he was born. This festival has been part of his life from the very beginning. That’s not a small thing.
One of the real highlights for me was the Bowie set. After I came off stage, person after person came up to tell me that David Bowie had changed their life — that they came to specifically for that set. That kind of thing never gets old. Bowie had that effect on people in a way that very few artists ever do. He didn’t just make music; he gave people permission to be whoever they needed to be. To hear those stories, right there in the moment after performing his songs, was something I won’t forget.
I also want to say something about the spirit of the musicians at this festival, because it really is something special. There’s a generosity here, a joy in just making music together, that doesn’t have an agenda behind it. Nobody’s trying to outshine anybody. People just show up and play, and that kind of comradery is rarer than it should be. It’s one of the things that keeps me coming back.
There was also the Denny Laine / Joey Molland / Billy J Kramer / The Hollies tribute set, which carried a lot of emotional weight for reasons that go beyond the music.
Years ago, a good friend of mine — a musician I have a lot of love and respect for — toured with Denny Laine and the two of them were very close. When they came through Louisville, he asked me to be part of a show, and Denny even borrowed one of my guitars that night. It’s one of those memories that sits in a special place.
At the festival this year, my wife and I were talking with our friend about that night. My wife had actually recorded video from the show and pulled it up to show him. I watched his face as he watched the video.
I’m not going to say much more than that, because his emotion isn’t mine to narrate. He’s a private person, and that moment belonged to him. But I will say that witnessing it — being present for that — brought the whole weekend into focus for me.
Because that’s what music does, isn’t it? When you make music with someone, you build something that lasts. A bond that holds even through loss. Even through years of distance. Even when you’re sitting in a hotel lobby at a Beatles festival watching a video on a phone. The feeling is still right there, just as strong as it ever was.
That’s the family that music builds. And loss is part of family too.
I’ve been coming to Abbey Road on the River for a long time now. Every year it gives me something. This year it reminded me that the most important things don’t happen on the stage — they happen in the conversations in between, in the faces of people hearing a song that changed their life, in the little ones who have grown up knowing this place as part of their world. Music has this remarkable way of holding everything — the joy, the loss, the years, the people we miss. It doesn’t let go of any of it. And neither do we. I’ll see you all next year.