Upscale Bluegrass

My fingers are still recovering from a weekend of shuttle-bus bluegrass diplomacy, beginning with the AFBA's annual bluegrass fest at Wind Gap, PA. We made it out there on Thursday and jammed till about one, pretty tame stuff for a bunch of bluegrass party animals such as ourselves. We made it back there at noon the next day, and did two really good shows. How could we miss? We had Coleman Smith and Scotty Eager with us, both of them twice as smarter as me in just their little fingers.

Coleman had us peeing our pants with his Jimmy Hannigan imitations--that's a tough one to pull off. Lord God!

The whole time we were hanging with the Beichy's, a tribe from down around that area, and they fed us up good and were as hospitable as one could imagine, pretty much standard fare for bluegrass fans if they like you.* We even worked them into the second set--changed Petticoat Junction to Beichy's Junction and got a huge hoot out of almost everybody there.**

We would have put up the cabana, that spacious 10 by 20 with the sides that got by-gawd winders in 'em, and my new pop-up, whose air conditioning saved our butts down at the shore last week when it was freakin' 100 in the shade. Lord God, it was so hot the trees was chasin' the dogs around. Anyhow, we couldn't do that because we had jobs up the wazoo this weekend---five jobs in three days.

And what jobs they were. We played at Buskill Falls, really a very nice tourist attraction, and we enjoyed watching all the beeyouteeful people out gadding about. There were lots of folks from Noowayvo Jerko there, too, so many that I could actually do like Jane Goodall and observe them surrupticiously*** to try to gain a deeper understanding of these gentle creatures.

*snarf!*
Turns out they think the rest of the world is deeply interested in everything about them. So in between songs there was a couple sitting there in the nice shade of the pavilion, relaxing and listening for maybe twenty minutes (that's a ong time for a new yorker to sit still unless there's a ballgame or a traffic jam going on, ya know) and the guy gets up to walk to the concession stand, just across the way from us. he walks with purpose until he's halvway between us and the concessionaires, turns towards his wife and announces loudly, "I'm just getting a drink of water."

I was wondering why the hell he didn't do any of the three things a local lad might have in the same situation:
1. Tell her before you leave, or
2. turn around and walk the twelve steps back to her and tell her, or
3. Don't say anything and get what you want, and if she looks interested in what you bought, offer to get her some too, which might increase your chances of getting some later.

I came to realize the man was just being polite. Being an erudite citizen of the finest city in the world, he was doing what Ghandi or Martin Luther would have done: he was educatin' us masses. He prolly goes around doing that all the time: "I have a smal erection now because I have to pee--some call that a morning woody, but it's past noon, so that's not correct. Anyhow, I'm going to take a piss and then wash my hands, then maybe I'll go over there and get something to eat."

We're all relieved to learn about that, I can tell you. I tried it this morning at the coffee shop--I had to take a leak and turned and told all the folks there at the counter "I"m just going to see a MAN ABOUT A HORSE," nod nod wink wink, and then I went and took care of business and I was gratified to see the interested look on everybody's face when I came out a few minutes later.

So maybe that guy was onto something after all.

Then we played at a Rod and Gun club I can't mention onn account it's super secret, but I will say that a certian Supreme Court Justice who has now retired was witnessed there last year doing the electric slide to "Petticoat junction" and she was pretty damn good, too! Then we had another job at a private development that has like 2150 miles of roads and its own police, post office and fire department. No schools, though---prolly all the kids get home schooled or tutored or what-not.

Yes, the Ramblers were up-scaling it pretty good there, the only problem being we couind't hang with the big dogs back at the AFBA. Oh well--soon the snow will be flying and there will be more time.

As of now we're booked prety much through October---ballon, lumberjack, garlic, craft and jazz festivals one right after the other. Oh--and that pesky work thing, too.

Ah well. Such is life. Stay tuned for more of the end of summer blues!
Play on!
*If they don't like you, they might string you up with barbed wire, but that's another story.

**that likes the Beichys.

***Means "sneaky", but it sounds better.