Let The Good Times Roll

Lent is coming, but first comes Mardi Gras. Joreen, Alex, Craig Rankin and I are going to be the entertainment at St. Catherine's Mardi Gras Benefit this Friday. We are going to do both kinds of music: rock, and roll. Plus some Hank Williams (Jambalaya) and Fats Domino and a bunch of other stuff. Music is still the best. Tomorrow, I'm going over to Davy's to continue work on the solo album. It's been a very musical weekend so far, including getting to sit in with Laredo on Mustang Sally. Again. What an amazing piece of music history that song is. Even if the people playing it would like to jam chopsticks in their ears rather than hear it again, the dancers just love it. Go figure.

I Told You I Was Working On My Solo Album

I was over at Dave's studio again this morning. We had a very productive morning, doing the basic guitar tracks and lead vocals on "A Day's Drive," "Butterfly" and "Things I Keep Forgetting." At this rate, I hope to have a finished product before Memorial Day. Keep a good thought. We're having a lot of fun, which is saying something for me because I have always hated "the studio." Jerry Garcia's quote always resonated with me: "Playing live is like sailing a ship on the ocean. Playing in the studio is like building a ship in a bottle."

Love Is In The Air....

... which is an improvement over last night at the Shippensburg VFW when stale cigarette smoke was in the air, but we had fun. Everyone had a little rust and a few pieces of gear, like the lights, were creaking and cracking a bit, but we still had a good time and were well received. I provided the night's comic relief by forgetting I had done Your Mama Don't Dance in the first set and not realizing it until we were almost done with it the second time. Today we're getting ready to play at the Zembo uptown, and it's a Valentine's dance. Instead of doing what I'm supposed to do, I quickly worked up a chart for this Nat King Cole gem, and it's going to take Copacabana or Billy Don't Be A Hero to get this out of my head. Now, time to make the donuts -- I mean setlists.

Rollin'

That's what my little brother David says before he starts recording a track. We finally got down to business in the new studio this morning and before we were done we had the basic rhythm tracks and lead vocals for three tunes: "John Henry's Work Song," "Sparkle and Shine" and "Tryin'." We work very well together. David has a very keen ear for what's good and bad, and what's good and better. I trust his judgment, and he's only going to get better at this with practice. Hopefully I'll have something worth promoting and using for a demo by the summertime if not before.

Bowl, Super; Black Eyed Peas, Not So Much

I've been posting comments on Facebook referring to that halftime mess as "Tron: The Musical." As is our tradition on Super Bowl Sunday, Joreen and I played 7:00 Mass (for all 90 people that showed up, and yes, I counted the house) and then went down to the brewery. The poorly mixed, poorly performed and poorly conceived blend of LED technology and B-movie LSD visuals was way too long and, in the brewery, too loud. The best you can say for it is that it introduced folks to the next generation of lighting technology, which if you've seen Phish lately you're already hip to. Radio controlled remote light rigs in costumes is interesting stuff. If only they had used their powers for good instead of evil. Remember when "Disco Sucks" days were held in ballparks and they burned all the disco records? I propose doing the same for vocoders. They should stack all of them (what are there, about 20 or so?) in a pile and burn the lot. Well, maybe one should be kept in quarantine, like smallpox, so if the vocoder is ever developed again we'll know how to destroy one most effectively.

The football game was pretty good, though. Congratulations to our friends who are Green Bay fans. Condolences to the rest of y'unz.