A Friday night in Wichita

The last Friday of the month is something special in Wichita. That's when "Final Fridays" come along - a night of celebrating music and the arts in the heart of the city.

Folks can stroll through numerous venues to listen to musicians; study paintings, crafts and sculptures; sip wine and nibble on hors d'ouevres - and it doesn't cost a thing.

Needless to say, it's something I've always enjoyed. When I learned a friend of mine was performing this Friday night - someone I haven't seen sing for several months now - I made it a priority to make it to her venue.

So off it was to Savage Threads in Delano to hear Nikki Moddelmog sing. Nikki isn't just a talented musician, she's been one of the massage therapists I have seen to deal with the stresses from work and the echoes of the whiplash I suffered in an auto accident in 2005.

I was delighted Final Friday fell on an unseasonably warm day for late January. This Final Friday would be crisp but clear. No ice or snow storms to derail the evening.

Nikki's talent is no secret in Wichita or the surrounding area; she's a fixture at the Wichita River Festival food court and the side stages at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, as well as several venues in and around Wichita. She's putting the finishing touches on another album, and I was curious to see how many of her new songs she would perform.

It was a little after 8 by the time I found a place to park and made the two-block walk to the store. Nikki was in mid-song as I walked in. There was a modest crowd browsing merchandise and listening to her and a couple of her friends perform.

I spotted Teresa, a friend who told me she would swing by the store to see me for a bit before heading to Twist next door to pick up some yarn. We chatted softly while the music was playing. I don't know what it's like for others, but I'm one of those people who enjoys the human tapestry in crowds --- what they wear, how they talk, how they interact. It's like a moving mosaic, and it's almost never dull.

Nikki was in fine form, and her friends accompanied her well. My only frustration was with the noise level of the swelling crowd, which treated her music like background instead of a bonus feature. Too often I couldn't hear the lyrics as Nikki sang, and I felt cheated.

I welcomed it when the crowd thinned and the noise dimmed, so those of us who were actually there for the music could enjoy it more. I've known Nikki for a few years now, and one of the small pleasures that blossomed from my time on her massage table was discussing the intricacies and challenges of writing melodies and lyrics - the creative process, if you will. How rhythms and tones can help shape a song every bit as much as its words. How changing just a word or two can have such impact; not just for the unfolding story but for the flow.

Listening to Nikki sing filled me with both gratitude and pride...to see her lose herself in the music, singing with passion and assurance. I'll be watching for that new CD later this year with great interest. From Friday night's evidence, she's better than ever.

One of the treats of a Final Friday is stumbling across talent you didn't know about before - and that happened at Savage Threads. During a break in the session, I saw Nikki talking to a young woman in the store. I didn't think anything about it until Nikki asked her if she wanted to sing something, and she agreed.

I figured she'd strum her way through a folk standard. Instead, she offered up an original piece with such conviction and clarity a hush fell over the crowd in the store. I had to fight to keep my jaw from dropping. "Who is this?" I asked myself.

She asked if she could sing a second song. Duh. This one, about love and loss, riveted the crowd anew. She sang with her eyes closed and with a freedom that left me thinking it was as if she were alone - even with dozens of sets of eyes watching her.

When she finished, there was a momentary pause, as if the crowd collectively went "Wow" before offering applause.

"That's the kind of person that should be on 'American Idol,'" I thought to myself, "if they didn't frown on the singer-songwriter format."

After she had finished, someone near her asked, "You wrote that?" as if they couldn't believe someone so young could write something so poignant and pleasing to the ear.

Teresa, who knows a thing or three about music, marveled at how effortlessly she had captured the crowd's attention. My years as a reporter have given me a courage that I didn't possess when I first left the farm many years ago, so I didn't give it a second thought about going up to say hello. She was warm and gracious and told us she hoped to perform again in the next week or so if she could find a venue.

Her name's Emily Scheltgen. She has one CD out and hopes to do more recording this summer. Rest assured, I'll be looking for that CD around town.

After listening to Nikki play 'til well past 9, I decided to head to my other mandatory stop on this Final Friday -- a showing of photographs from a road trip to Obama's inauguration taken by a group of people I chat with regularly on Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking site that asks users to answer "What are you doing?" in 140-character bites. It's blossomed into much more than that over the past several months, but Twitter is best tackled in another blog post.

This group of six blogged about their journey for the Eagle, posted "Tweets" on the site, and asked me for weather forecasts and travel tips at different stages of their journey. I wanted to see the fruits of their travels. Plus, while I "tweeted" with several of them, I'd actually only met a few of them in person. So I headed over to ROKICT, just a few blocks from Savage Threads, to see some pictures and some peeps.

I was pleasantly surprised at what the group, dubbed ICT2DC (translated 'Wichita to Washington'), had put together -- a combination of photographs and Twitter posts that, while modest in number, offered nice glimpses of a firsthand brush with history. I admired their courage and inspiration to hatch a dream and then turn it into a reality they'll share with their children and grandchildren some day. My trip to Rome with a group in 1994 was like that, so I can relate to their enthusiasm.

I enjoyed seeing Tweets I'd met before, such as Amy and Josh, and meeting people I'd only known through their Twitter names before; folks such as Shea and Dustin and Lynette and Sam and Al and the Tarms - Victor and Julie.

And I smiled when Jared cut loose on the keyboard with a riff that seemed to vault the energy of the gathering to another level. I'd never heard him play before...and he's good. I could feel the bass pulsating through my legs.

"That's when you know it's good," Amy said.

Soon there was a quartet up there with one guy on bongos and another on guitar and another singing into a cordless mike. There would be awesome jazz and blues later, but I wouldn't be there to enjoy it. I was getting sleepy, and I had family coming to town on Saturday morning, so I left before 11.

A sliver of moon shone in the western sky, the air so cold you could see your breath as you exhaled. It had been a good night.