Well... This Was The Perfect Father's Day.

What a great day... and it ended with one of the most touching things I've ever read, and it was wrote about me by one of our kids.


But first, Jake shows up and we hang out a little, he gets out the weed whacker and trims the yard that he'd mowed yesterday. What a great guy. In between everything else that was going on we got to chat a little out in the shop 'bout motorcycles and cars and women and things like that. Just cool stuff.

In between of all that was going on here with Sally getting ready to take off on a week long quilt retreat with her quiltin' buddy and wrapping up some things out in the shop and my folks coming over for an early dinner of grilled burgers and fixins, my daughter Nicky was calling me everytime I was outta the house or outta cell range. LOL

Then Nathan called from San Diego where he lives and we talked about music (he's a very talented guitarist) and his latest interest is bicycling and he'd sent pics of an old bike that he'd tore down and converted to a classic velodrome style, with direct gearing. Awesome job on that thing... wow. Here's a pic of it.





Then my daughter Amanda called and we visited for quite a while... and she wanted to know 'bout my music and stuff and I told her about the show we played at last nite and the crowd of cottontops that came to hear us and seemed to be a little puzzled by it all. :-) She's an RN in probably the worst and hairiest ER in the state of Missouri, thrives on adrenaline and related an "exposed brain" story. (Gag and Gaahhh!)


Next Nicky FINALLY lol got hold of me on the phone and we had a real cool conversation, 'cause we always do. Talked 'bout the show and kids and all things relevant to the two of us. We do lots of laughing and I taught her a whole lot about being a smart ass and she's retained most of that training into adulthood. I ended that call with a conversation with my 4 year old grandaughter Emma who wished me "Happy Birthday PaPa!" and then was coached in the background with "No... happy fathers day" lol


And THEN... just a few minutes ago, I looked at Nicky's blog. She made me cry. Big ol lumpy me... What a tribute that just ruined me.



This is the post that totally, 100 percent, without a doubt... MADE my fathers day complete and wonderful.




I'm almost speechless.




Wow.




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More Music Stuff... way WAY Cool Recording Gizmo

Eh, I'm on a roll with the music topic here lately... why spoil the roll.

I had a request in for a piece of equipment for Father's day, or I was just gonna get it myself. :-) I'd been wanting something to do personal recording for myself and informal stuff with the band and had done a bunch of reading on what was new and hot stuff. The new thing is these little, almost joke sized, personal digital recording "studios".

The one I had picked out from reading reviews was the Tascam DR-1. Here's a link to the thing on Musicians Friend. This little device is about the size of a Blackberry... a little larger, but not a whole lot. Even after reading all the rave reviews on it on the internets, we are all TOTALLY blown away by the recording quality. Just incredible!

It'll either record in wav or mp3 format, does over dubbing, adds several styles of reverb if you want, allows you to change the sampling rate... and on and on and on. Plugs right into a USB port on your puter, you download right offa the smartcard... and you've got sharing ready music in just minutes.

I've got a song that I wrote for my daughter Nicky and did it this evening on my old Fender acoustic, just using the onboard mics on the Tascam. I sent it to Nicky... made her cry real hard... so I musta got it right. :-)

Might be a mistake or two... just ignore that 'cause I did too and Nicky loved it just like it happened. Slip some headphones on for the best sound.

Here's the link to the song "Nicky's Song".



Lemme know what you think! Thanks.







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Les Paul

Les Paul is 93 today, and was the driving force to develop solid body electric guitars and changed the sound of music as we know it forever. Here is a little youtube video of Les Paul and Mary Ford generating a whole slew of smiles. Fantastic showmen... the both of 'em. From about 1954, live on the Colgate Comedy Hour.

This'll make you grin.





Here's the URL if you wanna see it a little larger on Youtube.





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Gimmee A Guitar Quick... Here Come The Nuns!

Last sunday evening/night ended up with a whole bunch of fun, a lotta music, quite a bit of beer... and 2 drunk nuns.

The folks that usually play guitar and bass in our regular band gave me a call and wanted to know if I wanted to play guitar at another guys party place. Well hell yeah! Thats' like a given. A chance to play music AND have fun, me and Sal.. we're all about that!

We weren't unplugged and I was on guitar instead of the mandolin. First time we'd played together as a group and it sounded good enough we're gonna do it again this Sunday.

Now the nun part. The local theater group is doing Nunsense this month and a couple of the traveling actresses that play nuns showed up with their own supply of Miller Genuine Draft and the correct attitude and a desire to be backup singers in a band. What a riot!

*click the pics to make 'em big*




Then one of the nuns said she was a drummer. lol Sure nuff, she was! The short denim skirt on the drumset was very un-nun-like... and had me nearly in tears. lol











And finally... a video. (of course) Keep in mind this is the first time together for this song... but not too shabby for the test run. Marshall Tucker's "Can't You See". (lighting is a little tough.. but it all sounds the same.)








That's all folks!





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Testicles, Belly Meat, And Near Death Experiences

I've been blogging for less than a year and already I get to use the word "testicles" in a title line! I've got other good words that I can't wait to throw up there as well... I bet y'all can't hardly wait either, huh?

Sal and I made a run down to the city yesterday to run some errands and etc. As it turned out we did a lot more etc. than errand running... but we had fun, as always. We made a run over to Petsmart to grab some stuff and on the way outta the parking lot I told Sal to get the camera ready.





There's pop, with an ample supply of fishbelly hanging out for all the world to see, at least the people driving down Broadway in Columbia, MO... and to the left, Lil' Fishbelly Jr. echoing Fishbelly Senior's pose. These 2 were either watching traffic or just showing off. I dunno which.


Cutting across town to Stadium we spied a sign that you're mostly gonna find the likes of in the midwest. I gotta feeling that you're gonna be hard pressed to find a big billboard proclaiming "TESTICLE FESTIVAL!" in either downtown Los Angeles or Boston. In Missouri though, this is considered normal.






I'm gonna take exception to the look on that bull/steer's face though. I have been the active participant in... many 1000's of testicle removals on unwilling bovines. I have yet to see one with THAT expression on their face. It just don't happen.. trust me.

If you've lived on concrete most of your life and you don't know what a person does at a Testicle Festival, well it's not what you think. There ain't a whole lot of "showing stuff off"... nope. You eat 'em. Floured, fried, and fricasseed and poked right in the ol' pie hole.

No, I don't eat 'em. I figure that God hung those things there for mostly one purpose and then built a whole dang cow type critter made of eatin' beef right on top of 'em. I know where they've been, I know what they've done and I saw the cadillac they fell out of. I ain't eatin' 'em.

Criminy.



So then we're driving down Business Loop 70 and we're going to JoAnne's Fabrics, and we're going by this nasty little restaurant that we always go by and I comment that there's never any cars there and how the hell do they keep the doors open. So we're craning our necks to the left staring at the now interesting restaurant and I swing over into the left hand turn lane to pull into the little strip mall where Joanne's is. I got my blinker on and we're still talking bout the dumb restaurant and here comes a black Dodge Ramcharger coming for us straight on... fast. So of course my first reaction is to come up with a funny line that Sally will repeat the rest of the day... 'cause I'm a born comedian, 'specially when death is imminent.

"WHOOOOAAAAA BUUDDDDDYYYYY!"

I'm gauging the drive that I'm gonna turn left into and if I'm gonna make it before the Dodge kills us all when Sally makes a clever discovery.

There is no left turn lane there.

I think she squeaked some kinda blessing, I stomped the pedal to that suddenly anemic little Chevy Cavalier, to the floor with all my might, nearly touching my toenails to the fan blade of the engine and yank that baby left into JoAnne's just in time to become the black Dodge guy's number one pal. He said so!

We stopped. We breathed hard. Got a bad case of the giggles, actually Sally had a kleenex dabbing tears from hysteria. I let her out and headed on down Paris road to a favorite pawn shop to look through stuff. I'm in there messing with a guitar and my phone rings... it's Sal.

Sally: You okay honey?

Me: Uh... yeah.

Sally: Okay, I was just wondering about you.

Me: Why's that?

Sally: Well a bunch of fire engines and cops just went by JoAnnes and I thought it might have been something you done.

Me: ........

Sally: *Hysterical laughter*


She's something... lol.







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Just This...

Sal just gave me this vid. I can't see, my sides hurt. I wanna hang out with this guy and just have a few beers with him. My life might be complete then.

Wait for the little guy in the yellow shirt sitting in the middle...








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This Bloggin' Business Is Hard Work!

I ain't had time to get a decent post up, and I'm 'bout toast tonite after staying out way too late on a Sunday nite, so... I'm gonna just throw out a couple of Youtubes.


Both of these are from our recording session a couple weeks ago. The sound of course isn't processed in the videos, so it's just the raw stuff you're hearing. Lotta fun.


Love Me Like A Man, with the lovely Martina on the mic. I'm on the mandolin in both vids.






And an old country standard "Jolene" with Mary Beth doing the singing on this one. A little different entrance and exit on our version. Sal shot this one behind the glass in the booth so it's a little glarey. I left Louie's upside down harp mistake in... he went all rockstar on us and had his shades on in the studio, couldn't see squat. LOL Killer harp on it though after he flipped it over.







Hope you enjoy 'em.





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