AJ Croce

Tonight, Meg, Cameron and I met her friend Mallory in Wabash for what we thought would be an evening of Jim Croce music sung by his son.  Meg had found out that he was singing at the Honeywell Center several months ago and couldn't wait to see him.  The three of us have several Jim Croce albums and love listening to his songs.  We have debated all summer about which songs were the saddest and which ones were our favorites.  Meg had even introduced us to one this summer that I didn't know that well - Box #10.  Just like so many of his others songs, we liked it right away.

Tonight's performance was incredibly different than I imagined that it would be.  I really thought that we would listen to AJ Croce sing his Dad's songs and talk about his limited memories of him.  It wasn't like that at all.  AJ Croce did sing many of Jim's songs, but he also sang those of Same Cooke and Ray Charles He told stories of his long history of playing in blues bands along with memories of his famous father.  AJ Croce also had written several of his own songs as well.  He had a different musical style than his dad, but we still enjoyed him very much.  Halfway through the performance, I regretted not inviting Doug to join us.  He would have loved listening to the Blues.

Although Meg said that I would probably cry through the entire performance tonight, I only teared up at the end.  The last song that he sang came with a video of AJ and Jim together.  As soon as the words to "Time in a Bottle" began, tears started rolling down my face.  I decided not to fight it and cried through the whole song.  I tried to explain to Meg and Cameron later that it wasn't the song that made me sad or that the fact that Jim Croce had died when his son was just a toddler, but it was because that time period had passed by so quickly.  For a brief moment tonight I was back in my brother's bedroom listening to "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" on 45 amazed that someone could say "damn" on a record.  Life really is juts a blink of an eye and I was reminded of that tonight.  As sad as that made me feel during Time in a Bottle, the rest of the concert made me incredibly proud.  Tonight sharing my brother and my love of Jim Croce with my own children was a true moment of life coming full circle.  What a wonderful feeling.