---Michael Acklin   
    I don't get too far from good, old Poverty Ridge, especially on  early week nights. This week is different. There's been a lucky change in music styles, led by a strikingly red-haired swing player with the distinctive name of Opal Fly. I was drawn into the only alcohol-free music venue I've ever seen that was not managed by goodtime charlies for the purpose of capturing wayward stumblers and soaking them for their last little Pfenning. Tuesday night being what it is, it came as no surprise that the place was not roaring.
     The usual energy of a place like the Opal Fly Feel-Good Lounge on a slow night lies somewhere between peaceful semi-repose and terrific denial. None of that here. Opal and company use a stage full of instruments, along with internet performances by the likes of Fats Waller, Billie holiday, Willy the Lion Smith and King Oliver as a basis for a strongly engaging Blues and Swing show. None of your relentless harmonicas neither, Jim. There's competent rythm from a bass guitar (an actual four string guitar, large, wooden and hollow), and the various saxophonrs spread about Opal's bit of the stage actually get used for puposes musical.
     Vocally, Ms. Fly has an ear for scat-singing that creates its own syntax without recourse to the Cab Calloway hidey-ho antiquary.The phrasing moves in and out of actual English as naturally and gracefully as you're likely to hear from an impassioned redheaded street-singer whose whose gaze seems impossibly focussed on each lucky listener at once. While drummer and bassman break for ten, she uses the bass lines to create a melodic cycle, locking in the foundation, whose basis she uses to welcome the band back to the stage. I've never hidden my affection for 20s to 50s Swing, Blues, Jazz, and Bebop. I'm well aware how programmatic each of these styles can seem over time. Making the music your own isn't taught, but it is learned.
     I passed Opal a couple of my CDs. I could not help myself, though I'm not sure I wanted to. For the couple of hours I could stay, I felt compelled. I even took notes, though my writing has degenerated to sloppy microscipt not even I can decipher, I guess I'll just have to go back and see them again…
 
"Reality is merely an illusion,albeit a very persistent one."
 
                                 Albert Einstein