It’s almost over: only a couple of concerts remaining, but we finally made it to Furman’s “Music By the Lake” free concert series tonight. It’s an odd crowd: college students who stick around for the summer, families, and literally bus loads of elderly from local nursing homes.

Of course, as soon as the music strikes up, the Girl wants to head to the lake and look at the ducks. We wander down, listening to the strange echo: enormous speakers in the clock tower transmit the concert over the entire campus, but there’s just enough time delay to make a cacophony of otherwise fine playing.

Even behind the stage, it’s noticeable. Not to mention annoying.

The best place: midway up. Good sound, and lots of room for the Girl to run around, dance, fall, and be a three-year-old.

And there’s a lot of reason to dance tonight: the Andy Carlson Band is playing, and Andy Carlson can play a fiddle like no one I’ve ever heard. Classically trained (he’s a professor of violin, after all), the man brings a deep understanding of music along with phenomenal playing. It makes for bluegrass of a rare quality.

Of course, who can go to Furman and not take a picture of the clock tower?