Dinosaur, Jr.

I may hold the distinction of being the last human being to have a cassette recorder (actually two of them) repaired in central PA.  The company I contacted called me today and informed me that if I wanted my Sony transcribers repaired, I'd better do it now.  They're closing up show at the middle of next month.  It's been a day of reflecting on obsolescence, changing times, flexibility, and what the hell am I going to do next.  I know the answer, of course: I'll continue to be a lifelong, creative problem solver.  Some days that's more fun than others.

Joreen, Mary and the boys are down on the island watching baseball.  I decided to stay home and work for a while.  I have some transcripts I want to turn in, so I turned on the Flintstones machines and got down to it.  Also, I have a tune rumbling around in my head that is trying to get out, so I've been jotting down stuff there.  Meanwhile, it's 8:25 on one of the longest days of the year and I think it's time to go take Lucy out for a walk.  This weather is like Paradise, innit?

Another Week Underway

Saturday was every bit as much fun as I had hoped.  The American Roulette job was a blast.  I knew I was on the right track when they told the sound guy to take my guitar out of the monitors altogether.  Yep, that's about right.  Considering that we had never played together at the same time, ever, the show was pretty tight.  It's great to be with players who can think on their feet and keep their ears open.

Today, it's back to work.  I found a lead on someone who can repair Sony transcribers, the kind that use cassettes.  If I hear any of you kids say, "What's a cassette?" you'll get such a smack.  I know it's dinosaur stuff, but I've never had a cassette vanish into thin air with no explanation, unlike some of my digital recorder colleagues who have had whole days of work vanish and had to reconstruct them from -- you guessed it -- their cassette backup machines.

Travis and I just got done with an experiment.  We're trying to make our own slider rolls.  It's an effort to keep one step ahead of the grocery-inhaling children, but it's a lot of fun too.  One of my goals is to get the boys a little more involved in cooking and baking, which can come in handy in more ways than one down the line.  Travis was into it. 

Joreen's back from Vacation Bible School, which doesn't sound like much of a vacation to me from the way she's reaffirming how happy she is to not be teaching anymore. 

I'll try to keep this blog from stagnating in the future.  Hopefully there will be more shows to plug and things of interest to share.  Meanwhile, summer is here for sure.  I can tell because it's time to cut the grass again, already.

All Work and No Play, No Way, Jose.

Yesterday was action packed.  I did a whole day of hearings in Northeast Philadelphia, then got back in time to "put the band back together" for a Just Friends reunion gig coming up next month.  Considering that we haven't played together since New Year's, we remembered more than we've forgotten.  At my advanced age and with the memory of a guitar player, I'll take that as a win.  It was fun hanging with Vince, Mark, Jim and Craig again.  We'll be in Thurmont, MD on July 11th for a firemen's carnival there.  It would be nice to do a show locally so our local friends could catch us again.  I'll keep you posted.

Tonight I'll be working on fine-tuning some songs I'll be doing with American Roulette at the East Pennsboro Carnival, Ricci Park, tomorrow night.  This is a new project featuring Dave Brinkley and Dale Stipe, whom I've played with before, and Jon Hill and George Williamson, two other good players.  They all sing, and their songbook is impressive.  If you're looking for something to do Saturday evening, we're on from 7 to 10 and it should be fun.  You can listen to my guitar parts and play "spot the clam."  Fun for the whole family!

Hot Enough For Ya?

As the first day of summer comes sweltering in, it's interesting to see people's perspectives on the weather.  Mary, who until Sunday lived in Texas, is laughing at the people who are crying about a little 90-something degree weather.  Her definition of "hot" is when you sit under the air conditioner and you can't feel the cool air on your back.  It's all relative, I guess.  I was on retreat in upstate New York on Lake George, where the weather was warm one day but mostly cool, staying at or near the low seventies.  With the windows open day and night, I was in Paradise.  The lady who lives in Tampa was wearing a jacket all day and running a space heater at night and was less happy with the temps.  I just pray for a little more balance in the weather this year, and less torrential rains, at least until I get a new sump pump.  Like much of my equipment these days, I'm asking it to run a bit or a lot past its design specs.

Now, where were we?

The last time I was on this blog the interface was completely different, so I apologize if things go a little awry.  Life has been chockful of interesting developments, including the return of Mary and the boys to the house.  There's something nostalgic about watching two loaves of bread disappear, and it's a good thing.  I'm in a different place workwise, in that it's a bit scarce, but that's temporary.  I'm also back from a weeklong retreat at the Paulist Fathers summer home in Lake George, New York, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world.  There's some fun musical events coming up as well.  I'm sitting in with a band called American Roulette, and learning a bunch of songs I always wanted to get around to, such as Dancing In The Moonlight and Dirty Work.  There's a Just Friends reunion gig coming up in a couple of weeks and "we're putting the band back together" for that.  As if that wasn't cool enough, I'm going to be doing a gig with central Pennsylvania's most handsome country band, Laredo, playing bass and trying (unsuccessfully) to fill my brother Bill's shoes. 

I've been lax in updating this blog, and I'll try and do better.  First I have to figure out what all these new buttons are on this blog interface.  Why in the world do we have to update stuff that's already working?  I'm just askin'.

Riding The Storm Out

We were spared the worst of the hurricane, thank God. The hype had me worked up enough to go buy a gas-powered generator, which kept my basement mostly dry while the lights were out for 11 hours and also saved not only my refrigerator but the fridge next door. Prayers go out to those who had it so much worse.

Evening air last night made it plain that it's close to September. Kids are back in school and time to pull out jackets. We got done a few of the things we planned for the summer, and saved a bunch for the fall, winter and spring. Joreen and I have been working on our duo shows and have one coming up at Cornerstone Coffeehouse on Saturday, Sept. 3. It's Labor Day weekend so we're looking for the staycation demographic.

I know my brother Bill checks this blog, so hey, Bill. Hope you're feeling better. I'll contact you later on today to see how things are.

What A Marvelous Night...

... for "Moondance," "Old Time Rock and Roll," "Blueberry Hill" and a couple dozen other tunes played on a perfect warm summer evening. It's reassuring to have an outdoor summer show that doesn't involve swirling black clouds on the horizon, angry red blotches on the Weather Channel map and furious unfurling of tarps to protect gear. Tonight the most stressful thing was deciding whether to eat more WingDings (oh man they were good) or a second crab cake sandwich. We played down in Thurmont, MD for the Guardian Hose Fire Co. and the organizers couldn't have been nicer. Bob Oxendale, our contact person, turned out to be a great guy, and his wife Diane was a sweetheart as well. These are hardworking people trying to raise funds for firefighters, who in a perfect world would be fully funded and Jason Werth would need to have a bake sale to pay for his relocation costs to D.C., but let's not turn this into a rant. If there's no justice all the time, at least there's good people doing good things. Just Friends had a blast tonight. It's shows like this that make the good memories you take down the road with you.

Tomorrow night, we're back at the Dillsburg Legion for the first time since last Christmas. These are some serious dancers and we have to bring our A-game (what is this, the Sports Channel? But I digress).

Our Friend, Mr. Caffeine

I just booked a few shows on the coffeehouse circuit, two at Cornerstone Coffeehouse in Camp Hill and one at a new place for me, Warm Hearts Cafe in Mechanicsburg. (Thanks to Roger and Hemlock Hollow for the lead on this place.) These are smoke-free, alcohol-free and family-friendly venues, and it's always a treat playing for a sober, alert audience. These are no-cover venues, but donations to the tip jar go to a worthy cause, the Change The Strings Foundation, "... because strings can't change themselves." Show times are on my schedule.

Tomorrow, Just Friends plays the Guardian Hose Co. Carnival in Thurmont, MD. It's supposed to be a glorious summer evening, so if you're in the mood for a road trip, we'll see you there.

Life Has Its Ups And Downs

Ups include finally releasing a project after years of preparation and anticipation and months of hard work. Downs include losing an opportunity to promote the sale of that project to a DJ. Hell, they don't even carry crates of albums in and out of venues anymore. "Mouse jockeys" is more like it.

Yes, It's Hot Enough For Me, So Buzz Off

Man, it's a hot one. My little window AC units keep things bearable, but running errands today was a reminder how July in central PA can be. I spent a bunch of time trying to find suitable CD mailers, without success. Funny how life's lessons come at you in strange ways. I am learning why "shipping and handling" can add so much to the price of stuff. Those mailers are a bugger. I'm trying to find something cheaper on the Internet. I sent out a few discs to some folks, and that's cool.

Summertime, And The Livin' Is Easy -- But Cutting The Grass Is Not

Sitting in my office AC waiting for the sweat to dry enough to type this entry, I am nonetheless grateful to be able to go out and do it. I have friends and acquaintances whose backs, knees and other equipment won't take the stress. I wish they were in better shape. Then they could come and do mine while I made blog entries.

Joreen and I had a great time at the New Oxford carnival last night. If you're a Facebooker, you can see the pics I took of Laredo and of my dear wife sitting in front of my CD. She was the only one to get within touching distance of the thing, but we still had a blast. Because of her Mass schedule she couldn't get there in time to perform with me, but we are intent on forming one of those husband and wife duos, like Sonny and Cher, only without the plastic surgery, the fur coats, the right-wing Republican politics, the divorce lawyers and, of course, the tree right in the middle of where I'm skiing. Ouch.

Time to go shower and play Mass. Tomorrow, a day in the AC just typing transcripts. I'm looking forward to it.

"I Do," She Did, We Still Do

Thirty-five years ago today I did the smartest thing, maybe the only real smart thing, in my life. I made Joreen Howell Mrs. Kelly, and she made me a very happy man. In a previous blog entry an anniversary or two ago, I told the story of our wedding. We're getting ready to go to Mass this morning, then breakfast. Tonight I'm opening for Laredo at the New Oxford festival.

Last night we went out, not really planning to make it a full-fledged date, but just down to the ABC for a beer. I sold two discs (woo hoo!) and then we went upstairs and saw an amazing bluegrass band called Dehlia Low. My friends Bill and Roger were there and we agreed that there should have been many more people in attendance at this performance. Of course, there's no justice in music, there's only livin' the dream, selling the discs and making memories, like "the time we spent ten hours getting from DC to Harrisburg." Good times, good times. The show was great, the dobro and mandolin were both first class, and best of all the writing was awesome, so awesome that I spent most of what I made on my record to buy one of theirs.

There is new content on the website. Thanks to my wonderful wedded webmistress, the lyrics to the songs on the CD are up with the backstory to each song. When I say I'm the luckiest guy around, just look at my website. She did that for me. How many guys my age are getting nagged about not painting the bathroom yet? She's the best. I shouldn't talk about her too much, give other mens ideas.

This Thing Is Back On

It's been some time, and the last post mentioned the recording process. It's finished, and here's what it looks like.



There's a lot to say about the whole thing, but to be honest I'm kind of pressed for time. The new website is up, thanks to Joreen, and I'm doing some content for that. I have a bunch of people I want to deliver the record to. There's an element of being reluctant to toot my own horn that I guess I'm going to have to temporarily just get over. The fact is, dagnabit, although the credit for anything good goes to Someone Else, I am kind of proud of what Dave and I have accomplished, with the help of Joreen, Bill Nork, Craig Rankin, John Wilson and the Amazing McGovern Backup Singers. I'll try to reactivate this blog. We'll see how successful I am. I'm going to need to get myself organized and focused if this is going to work. The ultimate goal, somewhere between pie-in-the-sky and fully blown hallucinatory, is to make enough from the sale of the CD to cover its costs and finance the beginning of the next one. Talk to you later.

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.

Cold Season

I have a bit of a scratchy throat and the strong feeling that a cold is coming on. It's not a bad time to have it, since my hearing schedule is light and there's no Just Friends gigs for a couple weeks. In the meantime, I've never gotten around to sharing my Youtube channel with you all. There's not too much of my playing on it other than the Just Friends demo and the Moxie videos, which didn't turn out half bad. I was having a good guitar day that night, almost clam-free for a change. The drummer in those vids, Dave Splain, will be sitting in with Just Friends at the Carlisle Moose in March. We rehearsed for the first time with him last night, and he's a good guy and it went well.

Looking at the videos I've favorited, I can't help but think of Dee-Dee Kelly's record collection and the eclectic mix of records that were in it. I credit him with my pretty whacked out omniverous musical tastes, and I thank him for it. The downside is it's pretty difficult to go hear some of this stuff live or hope that stuff like "I'm Pau" would ever get played out live to large audiences in a world of Justin Bieber/Lady Gagag (might be an extra G there). Check out some of this stuff. Now that I'm inviting other folks in, I'll try to add to the favorites from time to time. There's a treasure trove of great music on Youtube and at least for now it's all available for free. I won't be surprised if that changes, but I'm enjoying it for now -- sometimes, like when I have transcripts overdue, maybe a little too much.

Speaking of which, I better hit publish and get back to work.

Oh boy. Snow. Whoopee.

This is where I wish I could go back in time and put aside a dollar from every week I delivered papers and invest it in, oh, I don't know, whatever, and then by the time I was old like now I'd be a "snowbird" and I wouldn't have to dress like this and go blow snow. Oh, well. We have homemade bread and plenty of snacks and milk, and I did get the snowblower belts replaced today, thanks to Hornung's Hardware. Forget any other big box hardware store; Hornung's has saved my chestnuts more than twice, and today was a big one. They came, picked up the machine, replaced the belts and had it back here by 3:00, before the storm. They seriously rock.

Now we'll see if the weather will let me get over to Dave's to record tomorrow. We already postponed starting once, putting off till tomorrow what the snow wouldn't let us do today. I'm getting really antsy to get to work on this project. I don't have any delusions of being a big rock star -- there's only about six of them left at this point -- but it would be nice to have clean, studio quality versions of some of my tunes while we're all still able to care about such stuff. Stay tuned.