So Far... What A Summer!

As is the usual I've been derelict in my duties at providing y'all with blogulatory entertainment, see... it's 'cause I've been busy.  Business has picked up a touch at the shop (good Lord, it needed to) and the band has been busy as all get out.  We've had a few pretty nice gigs this summer, a couple of pretty memorable ones.  One of those was up in a little town in Iowa called Exline, on the 4th of July.   Our crowd was small there, but I think it was one of my favorites.  About 10 minutes into our second set it came a rainstorm of epic proportions.  We were in an outdoor pavillion and the rain was blowing all the way across.  After it calmed down in 'bout 5 minutes or so with the wind, we just unhooked, got the crowd all under the roof with us and just played acoustic right smack dab in the middle of 'em.   That was pretty dang special.  I'll never forget it.

Played some local events, one being a little town's "homecoming" near here.  The little towns in Missouri have these and if they can't think of anything in particular to celebrate like Donkey Days or Moonshiners Week or Farting Midget Saturday... they just call it a Homecoming.  We had a nice stage and professional sound setup, nice lighting and a GREAT crowd. 

*click the pics for bigness*

We hit our first music festival of the season up in NE Missouri, The Sally Mountain Festival.   Camped out up there for a couple of nights, made contact with a friend that I hadn't seen since about 1976 and played til about 3 in the morning one night with him and a bunch of other musicians.  Almost got ran down by a Winnebago whilst I was tending to business in the porta shitter the next morning.  I didn't finish that task, it's real hard to concentrate when you've got that immanent death sensation going on and the last thing you want is folks whispering at your funeral and giggling 'bout how you checked out without finishing up the paperwork and stuff. 

No, I don't want that.

Sally and I celebrated 11 years together in bang up fashion with more camping and music with friends.  Honest to gosh, it's been a whirlwind this summer.

Anyhow, here's you a nice video of the band.  A young man attended one of our shows and shot some video of us with better than average sound.  This was on Memorial weekend at the Faces Of Freedom in Macon, MO.  A celebration of our nations veterans and I was honored to also Emcee this event.  2 days prior I had no voice.   Had a killer cold and lots of snot and hacking but I made it through it without too much embarrassment, and pulled a little bit of singing voice outta my butt.   A very touching and emotional day... I almost went thru the day speaking without having to stop to hold an emotion.   Almost.

Here's Wagon Wheel from that day... this song is on our CD which is available online, just clickity click click it up there on the right sidebar.







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