Pete's Bluegrass Blog

Bluegrass Beatitudes

2009-05-31T20:50:00.004-04:00

Well, as it has been a year or two since I scribed in "this year thayng", as they actually say in PA, I guess I should begin by saying that you can't go wrong entitling a blog with a word nobody in the world ever uses, except Catholics in a time of duress.
It's pronounced "BEE-Attitudes" and not "BEAT--TaTUdes", although I am pretty sure that last one would be a pretty good name for a band.

So I guess the first thing is to explain everything that happened since the last time I posted, but that would involve pigs flying and other things that are even more problematic, health and safety wise.
So here's the highlights of the last year. Played with Sav and Andy Reisser and their gang at a beer fest in Bloomsbrg in early May--that was a good idea! Then Sav, Andy and Johnny Skehan from RR Earth joined us for a train fest in East Burg, along with the son of a son of nephew I played with when I was about 180 pounds and still had black hairs, young lad named RJ Cramer, who will be heard from soon, I betcha. In between, I've had the luxury of getting actual music lessons from an actual professional, and I can safely say that the idea is not over-rated.
Hell, I can almost play in F now on the mando, so you know that' some pretty powerful mojo right there, buddy!
So this past weekend I went to Danny Steward's festival, and it is a winner---the man figured out a way to build a Shin-hopple style festival in two years, and that is a record, I am sure.
Place was packed, lots of great jams throughout the park, which is drop-dead gorgeous--lots of shade, trout stream running down the campgrounds, and all of it was run as tight as a tick...weather was gorgeous, the musicians sterling, and the comraderie perfecto. *
Hickory Project did a set that blasted the paint off of some chairs, none of which had human booties in them as everyone was dancing.
Danny's idea of having one stage for the blue-hairs and another for the "more exuberant" tikes was a hit--next year he informs me that since the second stage is located near some guy that sells slammer ham an cheeses on a pretzel, the state will be called the "Twisted" stage. Lots of really nice music on that stage, some swing, jam-bandy bluegrass and of course blistering instrumentals--cold as it was (and it was cold last night!) those boys and girls were ripping it up.
For the first time in about twenty years, I opted to crash last evening at only about 1, without having played a note all day. The night prior, Micah, Noah, Andy, Geoff, Heather and some whole buncha other great pickers went at it until I am pretty sure I saw a little sliver of sun coming up just before I went off to nod-land.
So last night I heard this really great jam going on just across the swale from where I was, and as it was frakin COLD! I just settled in and listened for a change.

It's a funny thing--when you do that, you hear stuff. Anyhow, Danny's got himself a hit on his hands with this festival, and my hats are off to him and his lovely family, which of course includes the virtuoso, Danny Jr., who now plays guitar, bass, banjo, outfield and does a pretty mean Macharana, by all accounts.

Well, that wasn't so bad. I'm sure I left stuff out, like the unfortunate visual images scribed on my brain-pan by Greg--thanks a heap, you kazoo-love-killer---but it sure was nice to be back in the festival mode.
I think the rest of America should try it! Think of how many carbon footprints we could clean up if the whole world weren't chasing their own tail.

Imagine!

*by 2023, Hispanics will be the largest minority in the US, beating out whites for the first time ever. So I'm gonna start sucking up now. Timing is everything, as they say! *S*
Happy festival season, each and every one!

bluegrass re-entry

2008-05-20T21:01:00.004-04:00

Well, I've been meaning to get a post up here before now, but life happens, so I was a tad surprised to discover I've not posted for lo these many months.

Where to begin?
The winter was a long and cold one, and I got a beast of a new stove over Christmas while Alex and brother Pete were here, Pete with a Navy buddy who is also a mormon*--Lynn got to reading on that whole thing while we were en rotue to or from Annapolis, where lad Peter is currently, a plebe no more. The stove burnt up about 3 chords of wood, just from the holidays to now, but we were glad we had it; the man cave was actually too warm for habitation most of the winter hehe.

The last time I wrote on this blog I had just seen Pete after basic.

Tempus fuggedaboutit, I guess.

So the winter passed, and I had some chance to play and learn some tunes on the mando, more or less...finished my coursework for the doctorate...w00t! And am working on the dissertation, which I dropped off today.

that was like dropping off a load of wood. A big load!
I was up to WindGap a few weekends ago for their sleep-over shin-dig. Rich and I got there on Saturday, cause it was raining like a dog Friday. Weather was perfect and Rich had a really nice grille set-up that the perfessor from work set up. Grilled meat and drank carbonated non-citrus-flavored adult beverages and played a bit of music, but mostly just sat around camp and jawed, which was very cool, as I had not done that sort of thing much the last year or two, being busy with the schoolwork.

We racked out about one in the morning, heater working like a champ and hot and cold running water..sweet! Last thing I remember was Rich saying he had sausages, pork, venison and steak...potatoes and chips...and he was hungry for chicken, which I had forgotten!

the next morning damned if Rich doesn't wake up and say he hears 'coons, even though I was pretty sure I had secured the food, then a minute later he says:

Big chickens! And there they were, two roosters and a half dozen hens out in our camp, clucking and then eventually crowing their heads off at six freakin thirty

But it was cool. Broke camp and dropped the camper off at around 9, then home to work on my writing and some chicken wings hehe...

Mando is coming along, and I've played at cheap jobs; played at Borders last weekend for a book signing, where I met some very nice people--hiya Tom and Gail from Millville or Milton or wherever you were from in PA..
it was nice meeting you all.
This weekend is kinda goof-around time, maybe take a couple trees out and dice 'em up before the poison ivy gets too far along.
Weekend after I'll be up in Tunkhannock for Danny Steward's Festival, playing Sunday--a gospel set and another in the early afternoon. I was gonna head up on friday night right after school, but Mill Creek scratched so I am not playing there....

and I'll play Kettle Creek again for the 17th time, God be praised!!
As a mandolin player. nannner nanner! *L*
*they had an eye-talian angel in that book of mormon, name of maroni, that would be beaunie's brother of an angel, and eveybody knows they are eye-talian.

Bluegrass Good-byes

2007-08-21T15:01:00.000-04:00

Well, it could have been titled "Semi-annual Bluegrass", but that would only pertain to how often I post these days, not the frequency of bluegrass in my life, which promises to remain an almost daily obsession with me.
Fact is, along about May of this year I realized I had enjoyed about as much of The Lost Ramblers as I could stand, and quit the band I have moiled with lo these many many years to concentrate on enjoying myself and learning more mandolin, a goal I might have to re-examine, considering the shifting sands of bluegrass, another outstanding name for a band hehe.
The Shifting Sands of Grass.
what a nice ring that one has. You could dress up like an Arab and maybe get a camel, or smoke Camels---something like that.
Anyhow, I say that because it seems like everybody and his uncle and aunt are playing the durn things these days, so at HickoryFest this past weekend, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting a mandolin player, many of whom were way more better than me.

Sheesh. Anyhow, off to Wellsboro I went as a single unit, got the Palamino set up under a large tree for shade (very sweet!), running water and electric included in my little home away from home, outdoor shower, heater, refrigerator, pretty nice neighbors, great locale. I really enjoyed being back in population like it was in the old days when about twenty of us would commandeer a piece of Rudy Klein's Grove, hoist the Rebel flag (don't ask me---it wasn't my-un!), get an industrial sized tarp or tarps strung, and proceeded to pick until our fingernails fell out. phew!

Weather was ideal, although to be honest I did not pick as much as I might have---people were laying low during the heat of the day, and by the time the stage shows were done, so was I, so that left little hours here and there that people would sit down and pick---kinda nice because the cast of characters changed every hour, like a TV show or something, just with more beer.

And we played "Corn-hole", which many mistakenly might call "bean-bags", and found it to be highly addictive: under the lights, there was a game on almost 20 hours a day. I did get some nice jams in and finished the story-board for my dissertation, which was kinda strange. Storyboards are usually reserved for films and stuff like that, but outlines have never worked for me, so I did a storyboard for Bluegrass that really helped me keep all the action and characters straight and the stuff happening in a logical order.

Anyhow, no celestrial inspirations like Stony Deer, a tune I wrote there 2 years ago, although I did work up that tune I heard Dan Paisley singing to me this past WinterFest. The story on that was that I was joking with Dan very very late one night about a tune called "YOu can't talk to Jesus with whiskey on your breath", went to bed, slept too long, but woke up with this song jammed into my head, like I heard it in my head in my dreams, I guess you could say.

Really, I'm not going loopy on ya; not any moreso than usual. But I just wrote the dang thing down, chords and all....not a bad little tune, if I ever get to sit down and record the dad-durned thing, along with a "Bluegrass" novel on tape.

Man, I got a long list of to-dos!

Hmmmm. UYep. Anyhow, went to the Mennonite store and bought killer tomatoes, chicken salad, great bacon, and other little niceties, and spent 4 glorious days just having fun. The other ramblers showed up, John in his 27,000 dollar VW bus and Neil and John Ace, joined at the hip. I went for a ride with them to some supposed jam in Ansonia that turned out to be nothing except a local song-writer that is pretty good to listen to for about 10 minutes, then you gotta clear your auditory palate and burp or whistle or something hehe.
All in all it was a nice end to a delightful summer, as I have been simply camping and playing bluegrass without having to run all over creation playing every freakin' weekend. I sat in my camper Sunday morning at 10, drinking my coffee and relaxing while the boys ran around getting stuff together for their show, which sounded exactly like it did six months ago except Kendell is playing bass and not me. Listening to it made me realize that being a bassplayer for the Ramblers is not for the faint-of-heart, you might say.

Anyhow, Kendell did fine, even with the other clams that are still swimming in the rambler soup that made me laugh.

I mean, making the same mistake in the same place in the same song for 29 years? wow. You gotta admire that kind of consistency! *L*

Well, perhaps I will work backwards towards the first WInd-Gap. I mean, how cool is this music? Just like civil war battles, we have firsts and seconds; first Manassas, second Mannassas, first Windgap, Second Windgap....an embarrassment of riches!

Oh--no rattlers this year, although the campground owner said they went up into the woods and caught the one from last year that tried to get into the front gate without a wrist-band.

I swear, those rattlers have no scruples at all!*

*I almost wrote "snakes", but I want to be fair. Maybe mambas are better behaved. I don't know, never having seen one. Oh---and I almost forgot the signiture asterisk, which it seems to me Gary Bonds is gonna have to start paying me for the use of it, just my opinion.

WinterFest Bluegrass Blues

2007-02-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

WEll, it's all over but the tall tales of things that did and didn't happen: about a hundred bluegrass musicians descended on the unsuspecting towns of Stroudsburg and Eastburg here in the foothills of the Poconos for the Pocono Bluegrass and Folk Society's 7th annual WinterFest, the work for which is done by about seven volunteers who actually work and several hundred attendees who stand about laughing, drinking and opining.*

Things got off to a dicey start because the brains behind our operation (part of which is me hehe) decided that it would be a good idea to practice using our outdoor sound system indoors---well, when you have 18 bands in 12 different venues, a herd of Elks, 10 bar owners, thirteen workshoppers, an exhorbitantly expensive caterer, the White Trash Racing Team on security and perimeter patrol, and hotel reservations to deal with, of course there's plenty of time to screw around with forty three cables, five amps a smokin, four bins a buzzing, THreeeeeeeeeeeeeee golden things**, two sound techs calling and a cartridge in a speaker tree.

Anyhow, it was okay, but a lot of work for a very little savings, IMHO, but that's only because I had to deal with it and the brains dint. So once we got all the wires running right and that whole deal taken care of, we could turn our attention to making seventeen shows in 57 hours, and that took some real trip-tick stuff on the Rambler's part---Mollies and then the Sarah Street Grill on Friday after being up till midnight on Thursday setting up the sound and writing checks while the other Ramblers dreamt of sugerplums (whatever the hell they are) or some other things, to the Elks on Saturday to deal with parking issues, kids workshop at the library, the needle-D*** from Rosens, smoking issues, stage management and fifty-fifty sales, mechandize, a screwy remote video feed for the downstairs, bank deposits, and of course the sound issue.

From there we went on to the Hamilton (6-8) thence to the Sherman theater where Scotty Eager and Davey Hampton and the Blue Roots boys joined the Ramblers for a realy nice show--that sound guy sure knew what that hell he was doing, and the concert was very well received by the hundred or so that came out for it. Next year we do better, I hope, based on word of mouth.

By Saturday night this reporter was pretty bleached out, and since cousin Chris had put my cooler in the Paisley's bus, of course I had to leave the excellent jam down in the Best Western Lounge to go and fetch it up in their room, which I did and promptly fell into yet another jam that was juuuuuuuuuuuust too cool, really saying something there since the downstairs one had Ed Lick and Andy from the Center of the State on twin banjos, Chris Marcera on dobro with his hottie girlfriend singing like a bird, all way cool stuff.

I would have crashed in the Rambler Room (kinda like a rumpus room with music and beer hehe) but the Smith Brothers had like seventeen young music lovers in there, all of the female persuasion, so that seemed like trouble. Off I wobbled to the 4th floor and was amazed at the room Frank Brown had hooked me up with---top floor, corner room. I tell ya, I felt like Donald Trump--I wanted to make some phone calls and fire some people hehe.

At any rate, my wake-up call came and went while I was sleeping the sleep of the just, and the lads couldn't find me--seems the front desk had lost me somehow, so I missed the Gospel show, much to my chagrin. I wouldn't have felt so bad if my own sainted wife had not been one of the acts preforming for the service, but the Ramblers (with the aid of Austin and Coleman Smith) did the job and the service went off without a hitch, a testiment to sound planning on my part (yeah take that Johnboy!).

It wasn't until I ran into Davey Hampton that I realized how non commpass mentus I had really been the night before. The next morning he said, "I have to compliment you, Pete. Last night you was having the most intelligent converstaion I ever heard somebody have with a coat-rack."

Now those who know Davey Hampton know that he is renounded for several things---incredible guitar-playing, general congeniality, tall-tale-telling and a tendency to revel a tad more than is usual, even for a musician, so I was ready to write that off as just a fabrication, but then his wife, who like mine is noted for her veracity, said, "Yep. You was talking in tongues." Anthman is starting rumors that I insulted somebody from North Carolina in some way, shape or form, which, if true, I certainly regret, as I have never met anyone from Carolina, my adopted home,I didn't like, but then, that is Anthony talking, and he and Davey are definately members of the same tribe hhe.

All I can think of is that somebody musta put one of them date-rape drugs in my Yeungling and then thought better of it, leaving me to float blissfully alone until the beautious rays of the next day.

At any rate, Sunday night when I was laying my weary head down to rest, I remembered that Dan Paisley, TJ Lundy and a couple of the other guys had been talking about good song titles, and I suggested "You can't talk to Jesus with Whiskey on your breath," and so laying there at midnight and reviewing the whole WinterFest experience, who do I hear singing a song in my head but Dan P his own self, right down to the title up above.

So that's for another post, but it's a lopey kind of Del feel to it, probably best out of the key of D, and has some pretty nice lines in it like "You cannot share that cross you bear, towards shame or victory." and "You can't get right with God above if you're afraid of death" and other smart things that make me know it didn't come from my brain pan.

What did Plato call inspiration? The divine spark.

Amen to that, my dead Greek friend!

So thanks for the song, Dann-o, and my fondest regards to Chris and Maureen, Christina, Sherrie, Gary, Loretta and Nancy, of course Debbie, Skip and Peg, Ken, the Smiths, and all the volunteers, musicians and listeners that made the event what most called "the best one ever," even if our numbers were down from last year.

Hell, maybe it was the people who didn't show up that made the event so nice heeHE!

* that has nothing to do with wood or woodies--it means shooting off running yer mouth, or as some might say, runnnin' yer yap. Spouting your pie-hole. Putting in your 2 cents. Yeah. LIke that.
**that should go in some hole or another but don't seem to fit)

Bluegrass Christmas from the Man Cave

2006-12-30T18:30:00.000-05:00

Christmas passed like three or four ships in the night, only after being delayed a day due to all those folks out in Denver hogging all the snow, of which we have had none.

Got a book on grammar for myself, from which I have read, and I am appalled. hehe. Anyhow, Son Alex was snow-bound in Colorado until the day after the "ordinary" Christmas, so we waited until his arrival and had Christmas and pizza, a very nice combination.

It was just like a real Christmas morning except that after all the gift-unwrapping and laughing and hollaring and all that, we had a lil nip and went to bed, which is all you're fit for after a real Christmas morning with kids anyhow, and so all was good.

It got better when Chris and Jen tooled up from Carolina. Lord God how I miss Carolina sometimes in the grey woods of early winter here in Pennsylvania. I know the ice-caps are melting and all, but this past early winter blossed into a real pleasure for me.

We got a nice cold spell there in early December just in time for the last half of hunting season, so I could leave the deer hang for a week or so and get ready for Christmas, and then it turned warm enough that I could finish all those little items I had neglected because of the curse that will only be named something that rhymes with "Doctoral Studies".

See there I put my period outside the quoted words, which looks and feels entirely right to me.

Or you could write, " See, there! I put my period outside the quoted words etc"

Or You could write "See, there I put my period outside the quoted words etc.."

hehe that's rich. My first lesson when we get back? Nah.
I do hope I haven't committed any fieaux Pauex(*) grammatic-clerically *speaking.

In the meantime, I am now sitting in the Man Cave, as Aaron and I have christened the erstwhile basement. He has decorated it in fieaueax cavepaintings that look pretty real to me, all except the stick-figures of men that have wavey lightening bolts coming out of their heads, kinda like that petrogliph dude with the flute that struck by lightening.

He needs work on his bison, though.

Anyhow, The woodstove is cooking, upon which simmers the last wing segments of the wings that will be fried tomorrow during the Eagles game at brother Frank's in Bedlam PA. the start of our annual Pappalardo Pajama Par-tay.**

That's a hoot, let me tell you. So to all my friends and readers, a very prosperous and wonderful New Year to you and to us all. We need it after what we've been through, doncha' think?

(*)See my "Deercamp:Part Daieueuaex" for an explanation of this outlandish Franch disability

*Yeah. So sometimes my son Chris is right. Sometimes I make up words. But they're good words. Like "acluistic". Means you have no clue. That's a good word, don't you think?

**imagine a room full of Pappalardos. wow. You gotta be strong to take that heehe.

Bluegrass Deercamp (Part Daeioux)

2006-12-07T14:46:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons that the poor Polish people have to spell their names with x's, y's and z's is on account of the French, who, as you can see from the title of this piece, use up vowels at a dizzying rate that would cost a a bazillion dollars on Wheel of Fortune, as evidenced by the title up there. I mean, an American cat says "meow", but a Franch one she says "Mieaux", a waste of two perfectly good vowels and one reason the Germans kicked their butts in WWII---by the time they got the orders out the war was over for them.

At any rate, I'm not here to dispense with history lessons, as German or germane as they may be. My intent is to bring all my readers* up to speed on the deer camp experience, which would make a pretty good movie, I think.

Opening morning was slow for me---three doe with a place to be and no time to get there was all I saw all day, makes for a long and pretty boring day. Anth man did no better, although his dad, the famous Jimmy Hansen, did nail a doe which he managed to skin out after dark without a flashlight.
And he didn't even lose any digits doing it. What a man.
Early the next day I was surrounded by does, watched them doing all the deery things they do, sniffing and stretching and pooping and eating, so that was pretty cool. I din't have a Tioga county doe tag, and truth be known, I had actually been hunting the whole time with last year's licenses because I forgot to change them out before I left home. Just as well I din't get something. My luck, we would've been stopped and I would lose my rifle, my car, and the lovely set of credenza covers I picked up in Wellsboro.
Seems the Pa. Game commission has powers even Jack Whatsis-face doesn't have in that TV program "24", and if they bust you, they take everything that touches the crime scene--houses, boats, children. I knew a guy that shot one squirrel too many and they confiscated everything that man owned including his iron lung, and by the time they had all the legalities straightened out, the poor fella was deader than a mackerel and harder than a carp.

I mean, granted, it was a large squirrel, but as Jimmy would say, "Lord GOd! Shit Fire!"
To which I say, "Amen!"

In the meantime, I was reminded of the futility of bringing my good friend Neil along as "camp cookie" seeing as how he eats only an apple and three pretzels a day. Fortunately the lovely and talented Sue Cunningham was up after a job they had and dropped off a delicious pot of chili after a chilly day out of doors, which really hit the spot, I must say.

Monday I went out after school, just as I have for twenty years, and I was not expecting anything much--I had seen two doe coming up the gasline on Saturday afternoon and thought perhaps that might be a good place, so off I bopped with my tree-stand on my back around about 3:45, thinking they wouldn't show until it was too dark to shoot, popped my head out of the woods--and saw a deer!

I mean, you coulda knocked me over with a feather, really. So I quick ducked back and dropped the tree stand (not quietly, I might add), but as there are houses everywhere and they couldn't scent me, they didn't spook. Turns out there were three of them, and three minutes after I began I had dropped one, a decent shot at about 125 yards, so that was cool--meat in the freezer and the best chili in the world for the next season.

Saturday I have a book signing at WaldenBooks from 1 till 3, so I'll have one more chance to fill my second doe tag or maybe get a buck, once more in the morning and another afternoon hour, and then my hunting is done for the season. I have to admit, standing long hours or climbing trees is getting a bit tiring, and the burning desire to hunt is dimmed a little bit, although I still get all jazzed up when there's a deer in my scope or a turkey coming in, so with one hanging I'm satisfied.

Not that I'd turn down a nice twelve pointer hah.

Snow is in the forcast, and I still have to button up a few little details at home, then I'll be praying for snow. The kids at school are restive and I am burnt out from my doctoral courses, mostly because of one professor I have with zero humor and a dictatorial streak a mile wide.

I hope I remember that in my own classroom, because her complusivity** really didn't do anything for me or anyone else in the class, although I have to admit that I have always had that subversive streak to me. I'm thinking that goes with the whole bluegrass ethos.***

So in a week or so, Christmas is right around the corner, the annual volleyball tournement at school will ensure that no meaningful education occurs here at school, and I can chill at home and keep the fire stoked down in the man cave, or the clubhouse, as my basement is now called. Hey, it might not have nice curtains or credenza covers, but it's got fire and axes, and a dartboard I might just have to put back up after all these years.****

yeah. So safe hunting to all my bluegrass buddies, and congratulations to Kim Gluckler and Earl Karlson on their upcoming marriage, which should be a hoot.
And a Mrry Chrtms and hppy nw yr to all!

*one of which is in ALgeria, fer cryin' out loud, and to whom I apologize for tha whole Franch thing up there.

**It is too a word, Pat. You knew what I meant. hehe.

***An appropriate time to plug my new novel, "The ComPleat Dartshooter" now availble from Authorhouse and a ripping good read, from early critics.(*)

****There's two wods I betcha you never saw together hehe.

(*) Next time----a review of a "real" review of Bluegrass which appeared in Bluegrass Unlimited in March of this year which wasn't all that bad!

Bluegrass Deer Camp

2006-11-21T08:18:00.000-05:00

Well, the past few weeks have been a study in mania; seems Anthony has "Ramble On" mastered and we are just waiting on the artwork to be finished. Brandon Durand is working on that, and it should be a hoot. Brandon's been doing the artwork for WinterFest the past three years---he draws the best elks hehe. Anyhow, in the interim Anth took the Deer Head tapes and mastered them as well, and he and the lovely and talented Jillian Griggs slapped together graphics and all that and had a feakin' CD in three days which has got to be some kind of land speed record for a CD. Rich Levy's recording was spot on and the damn thing sounds pretty good. Not as smooth as "Ramble On," but definitely a good listen.

In the meantime, Anth has convinced me that it wold be a good idea to spend the opening day of deer season with him in his capacious digs in Wellsboro. Any other year I wouldn't even have considered it; I've been hunting the pines for over thirty years now, and I've taken dozens and dozens of deer from there.

But this past summer the gas company scaved out a fifty yard wide swath like a big field running right through the pines, and there are five new houses up on top of the hill. To top it off, soem wanker by the name of ******* bought up the last lot on the access road that I've been using to park, and even though it is a right-of-way, he's decided to be a butthead about it and blocked it off.

That's illegal and stupid, as I explained when I found his fat ass leaning on the hood of my van last year on the first Saturday and he told me he didn't want me hunting on land I have permission to hunt and on which I have walked lo these many years.
I was nice to him when I first saw him there, explained all about the right-of-way and how it didn't matter if I parked there near his house or on top of the hill, as I would still be hunting the same spot, safely away from his home. That, he said, was not the point, he was worried about the emotional damage deer hunters sould do to his delicate daughter. I told him that I certainly would be cicumspect when I drug my deer out, check to see that there were no little impressionalble darlings prancing about in the yard, but he didn't want to hear it.
"I didn't ask you to hunt here," he said. And I said, " I didn't ask a hundred thousand assholes from New Jersey and New York to move here, either, but I'm dealing with it."

Then he said " I'm from Blairstown." Like that was different, like that was some kind of exemption. Pah! Last I checked, Blairstown was still in Noo Joisey.

So I'll take anthony's invite, although I am concerned, because the Smith brothers are going to be there, and Neil is threatening to come along, so that means late night sessions. I blush to admit that I have combined bluegrass with fishing, drinking, writing, crafting, wood-working and chain-sawing, book-signing, pig-roasting and a myriad of other pursuits.

Never with hunting,though. ehhe Should be interesting, and there are some massive deer running around out there in the big woods.
Odd how the plot of Bluegrass has all turned out to be mostly true. Odd, and sad, too.
So I'll spend the first days out there in Wellsboro, playing music and trying to blast the bejesus outta some huge buck, and the opening Saturday I'll be home and set up exactly 151 yards away from that butt-head's house and let 'er rip.

Maybe I'll even shoot at a deer hehe.
********I had his name up there, and he deserved it, but now I'm thinking that there might be nice people in his family so I took it out. hehe.

The bluegass dumpster of life

2006-11-07T20:14:00.000-05:00

Well. Nothing like a perky beginning to get you back in the saddle after you got bucked in the rodeo of life, which phrase, together with that snappy title, almost certainly can make somebody a lot of money as either independent song titles or as a part of a song, or you could do the titles separate and then sing about those songs in another song, thereby getting your bluegrass mile out of song-writing out of eleven littlw words.*

Except you have to add a couple hundred more, but that's no biggie with sterling titles and/or lyrics like those. Hell, that's right up there with "Mountain Dew" or even "Rabbit in the Dodge" or whatever the hell that song says.

Yes, I might as well have entitled this entry "Stokes of Geniuis in Bluegrass Marketing", which is a little bit oxymoronic, but hey.

We're goobers, remember?

Not to mention the bluegrass action figures. Del with the hair and Ricky and Dolly...wow. I bet they'd be pleased to be imortalized that way, with their hairs all perfect forever and no chance of being sweaty or greasy looking. Unless somebody dumped you in a cruet of earl er sumpin.

Anyhow, The Ramblers have been busy as the dickin's with wrapping up the 3rd CD,
titled Ramble On under the expert guidance and recording genius of Anthony Hannigan with a BAH-zillion players on the disc: Jillian Griggs and Scotty Eager and Miss Barbie McMahon, Bob Dorough, Sue Cunnigham, Billy who needs no last name from Flaw-da, Coleman Smith and Hannigan himself on Banjer, mandolin and fiddle.

You could toss the vocals right in the dumpster and the disc might actually be better , but they were acceptable, too. Actually, "Petticoat Junction" and "Calipso Soldier's Joy" are gonna go the distance. Too bizarre and cool to be ignored hehe. The disc also has a "special guest"---the original Mr. GreenJean's bass escaped and made the trip to Wellsboro to be on the disc, courtesy of Joan Brannam, the late Hugh, AKA "Lumpy" Brannam'd widow living there in Saylorsburg, PA., home of the Hamilton Wellness and Fitness Center and Bistro.

What else? The regular turmoil of teaching and taking classes, raising kids...eesh...and trying to fit in time to play, increasingly short supply the past few weeks. But the wood bin is almost full, hunting and deer season a few short weeks away for me, or maybe earlier if I get my bow out this Saturday. We'l see. Or my turkey gun, one or the other. It's been 6 years since I plugged a turkey~! That's the length of time I've had kids in High School. Hoo boy.

Anyhow, the CD should be out soon, and plans are already underway for WinterFest, the last week in January this year to avoid Stupor-bowl. Ramblerosity will also reign down in Hellertown this coming Sunday at the VFW (I think, or maybe the American Legion) as guests of the AFBA, that stalwart bunch down to WindGap.

*Yet another get title. My brainpan must've bust up against a whole boatload of 'em. kinda like the Titanic of song-titles.

AHhhhhhhhhh!**

** I never did go back and put those footnotes in that one post of mine aways back last year. So maybe I will. Later. Out of beer! OMG!

Homer and Jethro Tull Bluegrass

2006-09-17T20:59:00.000-04:00

I have to admit, getting a good title up there really gives a guy a boost up, if ya know what I mean. I can look up there every ten minutes and see if what I'm writing about has any bearing whatsoever on the title. If it doesn't, that's a whole paragraph right there explaining what went wrong.

People love to know what went wrong. They hang on every word of a what-went-wrong tale, grimacing convincingly at all the really bad parts to let you know how deeply your tale of woe moves them. Then they tell all their buddies about how you thought you could use your shop-vac to siphon gas from the Dodge to the Plymouth and caught your garage on fire.

Shit-fire. It said right on the outside you could use it for liquids. And what is gas? Hmmmmmmmm????

Anyhow, we played at Waterloo, NJ, and I have no idea what relationship this place has with Neapolean or with the other English guy, ummmm..not Wellington, that's those funky boots all the Brit's wear when they are mucking out stalls or paddocking or whatever else they do over there. Besides smoking, that is.

Anyhow, today everything went pretty much bang on, as the Brits would say. We arrived at the antique show, and all the vendors and shoppers were happy as hogs. Weather was
picture perfect and the music was like a dream.

Last night I went over to Neil's and jammed with Anthony Hannigan, winner of the 1999 World Championship Mandolin competition someplace out in Kansas. Gibson gave him a Sam Bush model mando..killer, and Anth man traded it off for his daddy's Hutto, the twin of the one I ordered and got after my brother Paul died.

Scotty Eager was there, too, his hand was kinda mashed because he had a disagreement with a fork-lift and the fork-lift won. He plays any instrument twice as better as me with only 3 and a half fingers.

And then Anth man's friend Jillian was there, played bass on one set and left me play the mando, as they would say here in Mun-roe county, with Scotty on Banjer and Anth on fiddle--that was a nice set, even if my left hand was falling asleep every three seconds. That fargin carpy tunnel thang, from my days as a tileman, may they never be repeated!

Then she picked up her flutes and her whistles, and it was just like the title says up there--Homer and Jethro Tull. I mean, we did Buck Ellington's song, that there "Caravan", and she was growling and fluting all over the place, just like that Ian whoosis.

Folks loves seeing them girls up there, blasting out the tunes. I could understand why!

So it was a blissful day, with the exception of the Eagles, who defected late in the game and gave heart to the team who knows no state: the "Giants."

A bluegrass pox on their house. We may be Christians and we know that we should always forgive our adversaries, but we also know that all men are sinners, and we would hate to let the good Lord down. So we'll just hold onto that grudge for a couple weeks.

Tops.

In the meantime, I have a trip slated out to the wilds of Wellsboro to correct some clams in the recording. Chances are better than even that I'll be using Mr. Greenjean's bass, a gorgeous German full-sized baby that really makes the rafters rattle. His real name was Hugh Brannen, and his wife, Joan, was wanting it played.

I was kinda choked up about that, tell the truth.

Anyhow, if I can get Bob Dorough into a studio this week up here in Stroudsburg and Scotty in one also down there in Ahhhhhlantawwwwwwwn, they can download the "files" and we might have the Rambler Nation CD after all.

This hick music is all done with space-age electronics and sent on the internet, which I think is kinda funny.

Then I have to get the PR out for my book-signing at the Deerhead on October 8th, with Johnny Skehan and Coleman Smith, maybe Andy Goessling and Tim Carbone from RR Earth as well.

Lord God. Now I understand what Lou Gehrig meant when he said he was the luckiest man in the world.

Well, to my readers, I send my regrets that I am not on here more often to report on the life of a bluegrass mime. Many wonderful and happy things have transpired this season, but things have also been unusually hectic this past year, what with the death of my best friend and brother Fred---may he travel light and happy.

Things may slow down soon. Fact is, I'm kinda looking forward to winter and a bottle of nice Shiraz, a fire and my sweetie-pie.

In the meantime, here's hoping all your tunes are toned!

Upscale Bluegrass

2006-08-07T17:31:00.000-04:00

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.

Chainsaw Bluegrass

2006-07-23T22:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I have to admit that I have been lax in the postings here. My last post, arguably the pinnocle of my literary attainment, has footnote numbers without corresponding footnotes, and somebody out in Sunnydale California has been logging in for like 3 seconds looking for them, so I guess I better trot out the excuses before hand and then report on my new personna as lumberjack and brush-buster.

First of all, there has been so much death and destruction to deal with all at once around here that it's left me a little distracted, you might say. My brother and childhood Fred has left this world and begun his travels; I'm not worried about him, because he always did beat me to the good seats. Bastadge! And another childhood kinda close chum cashed it in because his epi-pen was out of date. Nobody ever said that the most profound tradgedy couldn't also be incredibly simple, sometimes even stupid.* That's not to mention floods, torrential rains that make me think I am living in the frikkin' horse latitudes, and muggy buggy weather that caused me to break out in a rash.

contact dermetitis, that's what that was. Bastadge!

But I'll save the sad details of all this for another post or maybe just throw in a few shreds of truth in here later on, if it serves the purpose. This is how I was voted into office as log-humper and brush-buster.

First of all, the developers up here--I can't mention any names, but anybody how lives up here knows the "Big One"--slap up housing tracts on land only a nitwit would build on, then the poor city folk, freaked out by all that green shit, pave most of it, so when we get a gully-washer, it turns bad quick. So when we had like 8 inches of rain in 12 hours because our citiot friends decide that driving a freakin' SUV that gets 6 miles a gallon 200 miles a day is a good idea and global warming has reduced the frequency of the 100 year storm to about 87 days, things got kind of dicey here in East Stroudsburg.

Four trailors up the street at the Buttonwood Court were destroyed, bulldozed by the borough because they were within an ace of being washed downstream and taking out the interborough bridge when they went.

And a 100 year old red oak ame down out in Cherry Valley, buried my wellhouse in brush and left me with a new afternoon job for the month of July. Seems the royal old oak just couldn't keep a grip on the mountain, whose limestone was chock-full of water. So when the second day of summer school was preceded by a 6 am phone call, I was giddy as a school girl thinking that all that rain was prolly gonna be another flood, our third in 20 months, and I was thinking I was getting a "rain chain" call.

I was wrong. It was my tenant, and he said, "About 4:30 that big ash took out the transformer, and it exploded for about ten minutes and fried all the electrical appliances, and then we lost power. So we were sitting on the couch in the dark when we heard the loudest, scariest sucking sound we ever heard, and then it sounded like the mountain was coming down on us."

I got up and drove out there, and sure enough, this tree, almost four feet in diameter, had come down somehow without squashing any cars, buildings or even deer, although I bet it scared the pellets out of a few and caused more than one bird to wake up fast and fly. The root-mass was probably ten feet tall and twice that wide, and the hole where it had been was full of water to within an inch of the top.

Getting back to school was no picnic either. I watched a dump-truck full of gravel just barely make it through some water, and decided to take another way, and got to school a couple minutes late and wondering what the *((@^ $# to do with this tree.

But with the aide of some very dear friends who prolly don't want to be named, we had a 4th of July chainsaw party, and the sound of 5 (or with my baby Stihl, more like 4.3) chainsaws going was something special, and we had very nice grilled steak and turkey BBQ for lunch, all of us with fingers and toes at the end of a muggy buggy day with rain, and I have about 1200 board feet of sweet red oak--beautiful stuff, about 5 cords of wood, almost half split, and a nice piece of ash,** about 25 feet, straight clear log right next to the road.

Well, I did my duty and got this news out; I'm apposed to be working on my literature review and I have to clean the basement.***

And it's almost midnight. So I guess I'll declare victory and sign off.****

*Pronounced "Stoo-Pit!" by most teens these days. Use it and be cool!
**some wanker has been monitoring my references to derrieres, so I have been trying to moderate. Who knows? Maybe they have a point. But here in this column we call a spade a spade and an ash and ash.
***I found cans from 19-freakin 84. Mushroom buttons in water. What the hell was I thinking?
****See you later!

Bluegrass Rain Reducks

2006-06-27T21:07:00.001-04:00

Hehe. Seems I already finished this blog back in Joon, (Lord God that was an eon ago!) and I finished it again away up there in Jew-lie, so now there are parralel versions of this blog, which means you can't read them both at the same time or they will be like matter and anti-matter and change the course of history.)

hehe. That's funny stuff, right there. I kinda like the original--which is this one. Seems I'm kinda harsh on the old-timers up in that other one. Also I made an errow in my use of footnotes.

That's gonna cost me some serious academic leverage right there.
Oh, well. Read and enjoy!

t's been raining here for 40 days and 40 nights. Those would be dog days and nights, but still. The water is a little excessive, me thinkses.
the tribe has survived the twists and turns of outrageous fortune, we are all deposited where we were meant to be, and life as a "normal, routine" thing begins again. Let's see how long this round lasts before we get a stiff upper-cut to the psyhic jaw, eh?
In the meantime, it is back to business as usual for this lad and the Ramblers. OATS is this weekend, and perhaps I will crash that thingumie wit bud Neil, just for a hoot and the chance to play some mandolin.
In the meantime, back at work-a-day world, I got a call from a nice fella from up in Layton, NJ, who wants to work with the PB&FS* on a project that involves a folk icon whose name I cannot even type on account it would get me in trouble with the law. But the guy is really really good, a huge stage presence, and well-known to all who are worthly of the name "Bud."

Or, as the Dutchies around here prefer, "Chooney."

We got to talking about how it all might work, because to this guy, music is music and if it's good, why wouldn't in belong on the same stage?

Well, some folk say that opera is pretty good, and then some folk say that the rip-rap stuff is fly. Or whatever. I'm pretty sure that those two don't belong anywhere near each other--it'd be like matter and anti-matter, or vinegar and baking soda (what the hell does that "soda" word really mean, anyway?), or even like

Blue states and Red states.

ohhhhhhhh!

However, when it comes to bluegrass and folk music, you just landed on the oil and vinegar or the blood and water or the fat and lean of the music world. As a lad schooled in both of the traditions, I could write a book about all this crap, but this is the way it seems to me.
Bluegrassers are Red staters all the way. They got the pick-up truck, the gun-rack, prolly don't mind NASCAR much, they wear boots and they call girls "babe" if they are guys, or if they are girls they call the guys "babe", which is some kind of strange equality, I suppose. They favor meat, beer and whiskey, stay true to their school and never dis their mother. They go hunting and fishing, smoke Marlboros, join the service and sometimes they die from excessive activities of one sort or another.

Now your average folkie, on the other hand, is more likley to be found sipping a nice Piniot gregio while wearing berkenstokers er whatever, eating granola and slapping "Save the Whales" stickers on everything that doesn't move, even if they are surronded by twelve tons of whale-shit that is just stinking up the place, like that whale they blowed up on spike TV where it rained rancid stinky piles of blubber for like ten minutes and everyone within a mile wondered what the (*^*( they was thinking about watching somebody blast a dead whale with a half ton of TNT.

Bet they was wishing, initially, that they had a small tactical nuke.***

Well, that was what they call balanced journalism right there, where you mention both sides and then you let the reader figure out which music form is better, one that is more like AMERICAN football or one that is more like some kinda OTHER football.

And they say it's so hard being balanced. Sheesh. Just sit down and let you Buds do the rest!

Bluegrass Rain

2006-06-27T21:07:00.000-04:00

It's been raining here for 40 days and 40 nights. Those would be dog days and nights, but still. The water is a little excessive, me thinkses.
the tribe has survived the twists and turns of outrageous fortune, we are all deposited where we were meant to be, and life as a "normal, routine" thing begins again. Let's see how long this round lasts before we get a stiff upper-cut to the psyhic jaw, eh?
In the meantime, it is back to business as usual for this lad and the Ramblers. OATS is this weekend, and perhaps I will crash that thingumie wit bud Neil, just for a hoot and the chance to play some mandolin.

Back at the work-a-day world, I got a call from a nice fella from up in Layton, NJ, who wants to work with the PB&FS* on a project that involves a folk icon whose name I cannot even type on account it would get me in trouble with the law. But the guy is really really good, a huge stage presence, and well-known to all who are worthly of the name "Bud."

Or, as the Dutchies around here prefer, "Chooney."

We got to talking about how it all might work, because to this guy, music is music and if it's good, why wouldn't in belong on the same stage?

Well, some folk say that opera is pretty good, and then some folk say that the rip-rap stuff is fly. Or whatever. I'm pretty sure that those two don't belong anywhere near each other--it'd be like matter and anti-matter, or vinegar and baking soda (what the hell does that "soda" word really mean, anyway?)

Fact is, the folks that like old-timey music tend to dress like they were still away back there in 1969, granny glasses and peasant dresses and ponytails. And the women dress odd too, never shave their legs and whatnot. And musically, there is just a world of difference between the old-timey and bluegrass ways. Old-timey folk just chime right in there with their notes and whatnots, all at the same time, not like the bluegrassers that each wait their turn politely. *

There are other subtle differences between bluegrass and old-timey fans. First of all, it's usually called the bluegrass. Now you ever hear of somebody calling it the old-timey? Of course not. And bluegrass fans wear boots, not berkin-whatsis-es. Old-timey folk sing about this land is your land, this land is my land and all that, but bluegrassers sing about this land is my land, end of story, and get yer ass off it.

Bluegrassers are for the armed forces, the flag, guns, and heavy drinking (songs). Old-timey folks sing about murder, but them guns scare the bejesus out of 'em, usually. Bluegrassers drive pick-ups or buses, old-timey folks drive them SUV yuppie vans and stuff.

So you might consider the bluegrassers like the "red" states and the old-timey, kitten-hugging, granola-eating, banjo-slammin' old-timey folks to be the blue states, and I'm not sure the bluegrass crowd would know what to make of, say, Taj Mahal or somebody like that.

I personally love Taj.. I got my version of "Fishin' Blues" from him. SO maybe I do like kittens. A little. And granola, if there's cold milk.

I'm still not sure we could have a folk/bluegrass festival without some serious words, and maybe even some birkin-whatsis marks on our butts. ALmost makes me want to try it!

*later they get nasty,about what you played. But they let you play it. You have no one to thank but yo'self!**

**sorry there's not more footnotes. I been writing scholarly crap all day and just felt the need to ffffffffffflow hehe.

Circumnavigational Bluegrass/Sea Oats

2006-06-24T00:06:00.000-04:00

Well, I am recovered almost from my circumnatigation around the Cheasepeake, which, like Columbus, I really didn't mean to do, but which actually occurred over 16 grrrrrrrrruuling hours last Saturday. Pete had to be deposited at Annopolis, where apparently they have many boats and an Academy, and which also apparently wasn't really six hours away from Hatteras.

Somehow I forgot to notice on the last trip how far away Hatteras really is for a poor boy in NE PA. It, unlike many things in life, turns out to be really as far south as it appears.

I was hard-put to get that boy there, I can tell you. They had more traffic down around DC in more different kind of ways than that couch-boy there, Rain-man's brother, has moves on a futon.

Anyway, I got Pete there at 4 oclock, which is my low point, according to both my circadian and crepulcular rhythm's, respectively.

Not that they don't argue which should be first. That's perfectly natural. But being subverbal entities, I didn't need to worry about it so much, because, in my code, the "squid was on the beach."* However, I soon did grow worried when I looked down on the map and I realized that it would be twice as quick to go home than it would to go back down to Hatteras.

I was sad. I couldn't go back the way I now realized I should go, I was awe by myself, and I had no tunes. So I did what any good bluegrasser does, and I stopped at a "Royal something-or-other" place and got some really pretty good chicken and some cold ones and I had one of then cold ones and about twenty-seven chicken legs, which are the preferred road food of this Rambler**, as you can flip those legs out the window as slick as snot on a doorknob, and then I stopped at another place and I bought me a new CD player, since my old one which costed me 33 bucks crapped out and I was stuck listening to a choice between Garrison Kieler and some static-y cuts of "Bennie and the Jets."

That's when I discovered that I left my CD case back in Hatteras, thinking no doubt that I would wile away the time with the picking and the grinning.

Alas, it was not to me. Curse you Garrison, for having me say things like that to you, as your programs are entertaining and, some might argue, enlightening. Mostly curse the NPR for not shaking down the big money body parts people who dominate the air-ways so we could all get more air.

They're gonna be so surprised, them big-wigs, when someday we don't have any more air. I bet they're gonna get all p*#@+!! off and ask for some studies or fines or something.

I'd like to be around then, and see what they have to say. Yeah!

But anyway, I went all the way around the Cheasepeake in 17 hours, drank 36 cups of coffee, the smell of which kinda turns my stomach right about now, and I am glad and grateful that all the many travellers I have known and met these past two weeks--hundreds of them!--have been reunited, each with their own.

Sweeter than that, I took the final for my law course and I am certain I did not fail. If I did, I will cite Madison vs. Marlpole, Tinker vs. Repressive School District, and of course Liston Vs. Clay as my witnesses, if any indeed are still alive.

Well, after my nautical adventure, all I can say is what Walter Winchell said," Goodnight America, and all you ships at sea."

*Yeah. It's amazing the way I can just pull out the monikers like that. It's a curse, as "Mr. Handsome" would say.
**God help me if they invent steaming hot and crispy scrapple sammiches. I'll weigh like seventeen hundred pounds.

Outer Banks Bluegrass

2006-06-16T10:39:00.000-04:00

Well, we survived a bazillion miles with a U-haul on the back of the van on account of this reporter measured the van from the floor to the ceiling and not the size of the tailgate, making transportation of Chris and Jen's entertainment center an exciting adventure in and of itself.
Turns out the sucker would not fit on it's side, although it rode pretty nice on it's back. But that left me only 2 seats, and I had two kids to transport, so, with my sainted wife Lynn already gone with Alex and his buddy, I thought perhaps I could dump Aaron off in Bethlehem on the way down and let him catch a ride with brother Frank.

That would have meant letting Pete drive while I sat in a lawn chair inside the entertainment center, which in the bluegrass world is perfectly normal proceedure, but that would have only been to "Bed-lem", only about 35 miles.

That's fine,said the wife. How areyou gonna get all five of you from statesville to the beach?

that stumped me right there, then I thought I could strap the seats on the roof, also an accepted bluegrass practice.

Long story short, Igot me a trailor and became the official wedding present deliverer, dropped the entertainment center off in Durham,Chris's new home and came on down to the shore.

I'll write more when I leave Buxton in afew mintunes. Seems my car's CV joint is bad and tomorrow's trip up to Anapolis warrented me finding a good mechanic down here. I think Jarvis is just the man for it. I don't know his last name yet, but I will before I leave.

I'll close this rant by describing Darrel,a guy they call "the singing cowboy." He rides a bike around Buxton singing songs with lyrics he makes up on the spot, and deserves his own entry, but suffice it to say here that he mixes C&W, biblical and situational references into a stream-0f concsciousness song that's pretty nuts.

I learned he's been that way since his brother was murdered here in Buxton a couple years ago.
"Yep. Kid hid in the bushes and when he came home, he shot him. Then he runned him over."

That's the word from Jarvis on Darrell.

I'll write more in the Ac bar up in Avon--seems my car is done and I am outties.

Beautiful day!

Statesville Bluegrass

2006-06-03T19:24:00.000-04:00

Blissful is the seat I sit upon and the seat seated on the seat hehe. My seniors have fled the nest, most convincingly, and it is with great pulcritude (1) that I bid them all adieaux (2) and Godspeed...

*sniff*
yeah. So I'm gonna miss those guys and I definitely am sorry that I will not be able to watch them march. I'Ll tell you a story about the last year's graduation, though. It was a hot one, and threatening storm, so the event was inside, simulcast to the overflow crowd in the old auditorium because the new one was not opened yet. So we strolled in all serious, all us teachers, and we filed into our seats, which faced the basketball court sort of like they were bleachers. Out on the floor of the stadium, the kid's chairs were arranged in tidy rows, and even the kids that had been such pains in the elbow (3) all year long were being so charming and handsome and beautiful and sweet. I was so proud of all of them for behaving so well and glad to see them take that big step.

Their parents, friends, and family, on the other hand, should have volunteered for organ donor statis, they were so rude and ignorant. Let's face it, who hasn't been at a choral concert or a band concert, to name two, where somebody's cell doesn't go off, or somebody is elbowing you in the face so he can use his videocam or his digital cam or his freakin' x-ray-I-can-see-you-naked-under-that-dress cam. Or how about the fat jerk that always jumps up shouting his or her kid's name out like he or she was at a Yankee's game.(4) I"ve seen kids cry, they were so embarressed by their parents. Hey, that is a teenager's thing, being embarressed by the 'rents, as we used to call 'em back in the day.

But last year, our seniors were cool. They were beyond cool. So when some fat lady with too-black hair and too-red lips came lumbering out of the stands with her balck spandex pants, the crowd was agog. And when she started hollaring her kid's name, the teachers and all the student's started looking at each other and almost laughing, this lady was so out of the box (5)

But when she shanked her way onto the floor of graduation and shimmied right in front of my face, some of the girls I had taught just rolled their eyes in disbelief. I swear, if I had a can of orange marking paint, I'da tagged that b*76%(* right there, her butt was so close to my face---like four freakin' inches away.

I swear. Where do these people come from anyway? Nevermind. I think I know.

Anyhow, I will not be at graduation as I will be in my adopted state seeing my eldest getting married, and so I will end the way I began, to say how blessed I am to have a loving wife, handsome, kind and wonderfully talented children, a job that gives me more joy than heartache, and my small gifts as well.

I will add footnotes later, as the Ramblers will be having an Irish session at the lovely and talented Miss Barbie McMahon's abode, or actually at Dean's garage (6), in just a few minutes.

hehe.

too much fun!
Caoi~! (er however them eye-ties say that word)

Happy Bluegrass Memorial Day!

2006-05-29T20:16:00.000-04:00

It's my honor to write a brief "thank-you" to the folks who defend our borders and other's rights around the world. Today, I visited with a few veterans, saw many march past me, and wondered what a sensible and grateful man might ask or say. A mere "Thank you" seems so insufficient, but it's the best we can do.

So, Vets? Thank you.

Back at the local bureau, I was honored (again!) to be co-conspirator with my sainted wife Lynn to help celebrate the wedding of Chris and Jenn on the 10th of June, an affair that featured "toilet-paper brides" that were really out of this world! ha!
oh, and "May there tribe increase!"

And I am eternally grateful that we are blessed with the country we love, those we would always defend, and the chance to make a difference in this world.

Happy Memorial Day, veterans, and accept the thanks of a grateful Nation.

Jerk Bluegrass Chicken

2006-05-21T23:01:00.000-04:00

Yeah, well the title will need "some 'spainin'", as Ricky used to say. The Ramblers have survived the second annual East Stroudsburg ChickenFest, a made-up celebration much like Kwanza that is essentially designed to delight those of us who have impulse control problems.

We got the big tent, Neil nailed down a bunch of food vendors, and the sound system worked to perfection, at least until Updike touched it hehe. That's when the monitors went out, which mattered not, since the sterling sound of Skehan and Smith saturated the air and we played like "Tommy" on that rock and roll record.

This year we had some little problem, as the East Stroudsburg Rail Tower Society had nabbed "our" date, but we made nice with them, and they had the big tent up also and got a train out of Steamtown to come down. I want to tell you, seeing a steam engine up close and personal is still pretty cool. At the end of one of our train songs, I guess the driver was listening, because just as the last notes of the song were dying out, I began to hear a rumble and a roar, right in tune with the song. I initially though it was the sound system getting ready to blow, but it turned out to be the lonesome sound of the train goin' down---made my hairs stand up, and not just me, neither. It even spooked my sainted wife, who had come to see our son perform with the EastBurgers, a barbershop quartet that every old lady wanted to adopt immediately.

Then at one point, Spenser Read joined us on stage, and there we were with scat-man Read singing and playing his &*^%$off on guitar** along with us-----such sweetness.

Anyhow, I guess we had about 1500 folks walking around, kids with smiling faces well painted, watching chicks hatch courtesy of the Penn State Extension Service, artists, musicians, train nuts, para-military posers, bluegrassers and lots and lots of locals.

That local thing was one reason I may help again next year. I swear, there were hundreds of people there and hardly any of them seemed to be from the evil empire across the river. I mean to say that my best mate Neil is busy "closing the Gap" while I am of the mind that we should blow the bridge.* Anyhow, now that you're back, I have to say that the motto of the Arts Council, "Culture Builds Community" finally made sense to me. Duh. By 5, everybody was gone, and the folks from the Steamtown train (from Scranton, PA) and all the locals that came out left hardly a trace in the way of garbage.

Well, I never claimed to be a cultural tour de force, although I am pretty damned adept at cooking, which is all I cared to do today after playing a triple-header yesterday along with setting up and breaking down. So today I cooked up some killer baby back ribs, and I will tell you the secret here--marinate them in olive oil and spices, then cook them with slow heat until they are cooked perfectly, like about 3 hours at 275 or so. Then a light coating of your perferred BBQ sauce to finish and you have you something gooooooooood!

Over ribs I was talking with Dean, a good friend and genius with cars. Talking with him reminded me that our school teachers should take a lesson from some of the trades, so here are few:

A mechanic knows that one way is not the same as another. Ever.

A tileman knows that what sticks cannot always be unstuck, although sometimes stuck is not forever, and a wise tileman knows the one from the other.

A policeman knows that there are no small problems.

A carpenter knows that well begun is half done.

A painter knows that you can't always cover up some things, that a drop-cloth now is worth twleve mops later, and that some colors just suck.

And a garbage man knows that one man's trash is another man is treasure.

I'll bet twelve cold ones that most teachers don't know these things, and I'll also bet that there aren't five admin types that could elucidate on even one of these things convincingly.

Or even who would know that "elucidate" means. hhe.

**yeah, so what? I edit from the bottom up, okay? I just wanted to say that I would have written "ass", but some chick flamed me about the overuse of that particular part of the anatomy, and cast aspersions on my sexual proclivities, which is ludicrous. I have as many proclivities as the next guy, thanks very much. Besides, I have to plead cultural immunity. Bluegrassers do so use "ass" frequently--to describe bitter anynomous internet editorialists, all citiots, as well as in idioms like "having been shot in the ~, showing your ~, another day shot in the ~," and other colorful gluteal references which I think the world needs and admires.

Although that's just my take on it.

*Prolly typing that will mean that I am now on the NSA radar and maybe soon I will abducted and taken to Guauntanamoe or however you spell it. I don't care. I've lived large. But I'll be damned if they can make me wear them hoods. They look too much like the KKK for me. I'll take a pillowcase or maybe one of them face-masks that look like Reagan. I'd be cool with that.

Bluegrass Nirvana

2006-05-16T18:50:00.000-04:00

Well, another weekend shot gone, and a glorious weekend it was, too! I'll start with my youngest son's appearance in "The Wizard of Oz" at John T. Lambert Middle School, a place which some folks refer to as JTHell, after the many teachers and administrators who “practice” excessively there. I'm sure that dealing with 7th graders is no walk in the park, but hey! Do you really have to treat them and their parents like there were complete idiots?

My wife's not an idiot, generally. Maybe on one day at one moment, but 23 years later I can honestly say she is still the girl I fell in love with. And although the general consensus is that I am an idiot frequently, occcasionally I do some right thing that messes up an otherwize perfect record of idiocy.

But! Back to the past!

I watched 80 middle school kids run sound, lights and crew stage, act, sing and generally act up a storm of wonderfulness. So right there you could say that not all my kid's teachers are buttheads. In fact Mercy Shemansky should get some kind of award. Maybe I'll make up some awards in woodshop today instead of working out.

So after bawling because Aaron is almost a man and he is the last of the line and I will never again watch a musical at JTHell, Neil and I went to Linda's Hide-away in East Burg, which was the site of International Night. Turns out the guy that owns Doughboys is Bulgarian, so we yakked and drank I learned how to say "hi" in Bulgarian, which goes something like "Bzyxzxwi"*

Saturday was my law class, which wasn't too bad, and then we played downtown with Coleman Smith, and we were a study in perfection. You couldn't buy a better band for a thousand bucks, and the weather and the listeners were themselves perfect. Yeah. I love springtime.
Then yesterday we were out at Peters Valley with John Skehan from Railroad Earth,a newgrass band that's gonna be famous soon, and he was crushing! I seriously think he's a better mando player (just as good? Gooder? in the same league?) as Grisman or Bush. I swear, as Neil said, he didn't play the same lick twice all afternoon.

And he made me laugh, too, just like Coleman.

Peter's Valley, once called "Bevans"* is a craft village the nazi scum Park Service expropriated from honest and powerless Americans. The village of Bevans is no more, but at least the village now boasts some incredible artists who create things of beauty, which, as the man said, are a joy forever.

If I might wax lyric for a moment, imagine sunshine in a beautify country dale, furniture that is radiant with light, paintings of fruit that are gorgeous enough to eat, the music a perfect compliment to the people creating and the good-looking people who come out to buy. THis is N.W. Jersey at its best; there are the good old boys from the fire company**, and lots of she-she girls with sun dresses and very nice attributes. All that was lacking was cold beer, but I had a few on the long ride back to the Elks, and then many more at the Depot, which was a blissful way to end the weekend.

And all the glory and wonder of the weekend made me think of my summer of Bluegrass Nirvana, which was one where I did not teach but instead made

every

single

festival

possible!

Yeah--Bucky's gathering, then Newfoundland, Harry Grant's Windgap festival, GREY FOX!!!!!!!! (we were hired as a camping group's private band, for goodness sakes!) OATS, HIckory Fest! (GOd! What a great festival!) AFBA WindGap and SullyFest. All in 12 weeks.

Here's how it would go: pull in on a Sunday, beer bottles and coffee cups spilling out in the garage, go inside, kiss the wife, shower up and crash, wake up MOmnday and clean the car out and sort through the camping stuff, catch up on the news and mow the grass, thinking all the while of cool summer evenings and ice-cold beer, grilled venison and smoked trout, friends as far as the eye can see--RAmbler Nation!--Tuesday on the phone to nail down personel, Wednesday smooze and snooze around the house, to blast off again on Thursday for another festival.

And if you get to play with Skehan and Smith simulateously, you are indeed blessed!

That will happen, btw, at the AFBA august festival, and I swear by my father's boots that we will be the hottest local band there, with the possible exception of Scotty's group. Not to brag, but those two guys are really geniuses!

Okay, so that's the end of this rant. Next weekend is Chris's graduation from Duke U. and his marriage is in a month.
I met two new friends at Peters Valley, and life is good.
I think of Fred and I am sad, but as I thought to myself this past weekend, a long time ago God breathed out, and someday he (or she, if you like) will breath back in, and all the pain and death and beauty, the faces, lithe young bodies, lust, love, ferocity, gentleness, all matter and all souls will return to godhead. Perhaps that is what people really are, the breath of God. Soon he will breath me in, I suppose, and I am hopeful that the next adventure will be like a perpetual bluegrass Nirvana!

*Pronounced "Bee-vans", I was told.
**(Remind me to tell you about a drunken biker/fireman wedding where they almost burned the firehouse down hehe)

Black and Bluegrass

2006-05-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

Seems I overdid the weight room and am now am suffering from some kind of rotator cuff injury, which makes even hoisting a cold one painful. Guess that means I'll have to lay off the high heat and pitch 'em junk, not hard for a bass player cum mando wannabe. hehe.* Serves me right for rushing through my workout instead of savoring the smell, discomfort and constantly too-loud pop trash music you might here in work-out facilities.

Who in the world decided to make those idiots rich? Well, quite possibly the answer lies, or lays, or sits or sets, all around me here in Spring School, which, for those of us who weren't paying attention during class, is like Summer School except it happens, yes, dear, reader, in the spring, the season in which a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

So what does a young lady's thoughts turn to? I certainly would like somebody to answer me that one!

Anyhow, for the next two weeks I get to spend an additional 3 hours here at school so that I can make enough money to screw around this summer, which has at least two really really cool festivals I'll be able to make--HickoryFest out in Wellsboro and the AFBA small fest at WindGap. I'll have to write about those two things separately at some point in the future, there is so much to say about the unique and insane blend of inanity at those festivities. I'll try to define them both in two words. For the AFBA, I would pick "pick" and "Beer". And for HickoryFest I would pick "pick, Hippie and not-beer"**.

Anyhow, I have the pleasure of teaching five subjects in one room with fourteen students who have failed everything from Earth Science--"Say this here trashcan is the Earth, see, and pretend that orange over there is like a meteor or something"- to Environmental Science--"say that trashcan over there is like the ocean and that orange is some endangered whale.." to biology--"so the orange is really a cell, and the rind is like the membrane, except it's not fat and orange, and then the juice when I squeeze this puppy would be like the cytoplasm, except gooopier like a booger, kinda.."

I tell ya, teaching can be a real joy. So these kids seem fine, a little rammy, but that's what being a teenager is all about, is it not? Come to think of it, most bluegrassers I know are in a kind of perpetual childhood. I mean, what grown up goes camping out, makes whooping sounds when the sun goes down, bays at the moon amd pees in the woods?

Or maybe that's dogs I'm thinking of.

No matter. This music certainly keeps you young at heart, and playful. Don't let me forget to say playful!

SO I asked the kids why they failed all these various subjects, and at least five of them said "He gave me a 64!" with genuine shock, like that last point was worth a million bucks. In a minute I'll ask them how many of them had men for teachers. Men teachers love to put the smack down. Makes 'em feel all manly, I guess. I'd ask now, but they are working nicely becuase I asked them nicely, which seems to work for me.

Makes me wonder why some of my mates never try it. Yeah, so if I asked them, they'd be hollering answers out and talking about it and asking questions, whcih proves that they really aren't uninterested in learning. Just depends on the topic. Oh--and I bet lots of these kids have ADD, which, they say, never happens during the summer.

Oaky..here goes an instant survey:

How many of you had male teachers for science and failed?
13 out of 13
How many males and females in the class?
8 girls, 5 boys

How many of you have ever been failed another subject?
6
How many have been failed by female teachers?
5
Top subjects to fail for spring schoolers?
5 for math.
Top reason to fail (One word only!)
homework
I'm lazy
teacher doesn't like me
style of teaching
attendance

So there you have it!
No gender bias here!
well--it's spring, and we are outties! Yippie!
and happy Friday to me!
*I said a latin word!
** there are three kinds of people in this world--those who can count and those who can't.
yeah boy!

Springtime in the Bluegrass

2006-05-01T20:10:00.000-04:00

Yes, dear readers, after the winter that wouldn't die, it appears that spring has sprung here in Northeastern PA, and a prettier place is hard to find when the monumental amounts of dog poo, leaves and other organic trash has been removed from the back lawn, the deck furniture is spiffed up and the barbecue refurbished.

In fact, we enjoyed a little deckage yesterday, ribs slow cooked and some achingly cold non-citrus-flavored carbonated adult beverages of a Canadian persuasion. Today in school all I saw was thirty kids and a teacher all of whom had wistful thoughts of the weekend past.

The season is beginning to heat up; only a few weeks until our ChickenFest, a celebration of all things chicken. Last year I got some folks a tad annoyed when I claimed that no chicken would be harmed in the production of the event, which featured chicken dishes, a Frank Perdue look-alike contest, chicken dance competition, chicken-chunkin' with rubber chickens,and the perennial favorite, the rubber chicken make-over contest, which was won by a local cafe that had a chicken waitress that looked like a hooker.

I wonder sometimes about our judgment concerning judges, which I suppose makes me unfit to judge myself because I am too judgmental. I guess the jury is still out on that one. Anyhow, when I said no chicken would be harmed, I put that in there because I didn't want anybody to think we were tossing live chickens around. Now I'm not saying that it's wrong to do so, mind you--that is up to you and the chickens, I suppose. It's just that I wouldn't recommend it in broad daylight with a thousand people around.
That's just bad form. So, no lie, it was only three days after my chicken tribute ran in the paper that somebody shot a letter saying, in effect, that you couldn't eat chickens without harming them, which is true, to a point.

I wanted to write back and tell the lady that we only permit the serving of suicidal chickens, but times being what they are, I am sure that would have annoyed a whole new set of people, so I had to be content to remind the lady that chickens were originally bred as fighting animals, that even as we spoke they sacrificed their lives, their eggs and their blood to provide us with food, flu vaccine and protection against bird flu and the West Nile Virus, and that it was an insult to the chickens for a mere vegetarian to defend them, chickens of course being carnivorous.

Yeah, I know you don't think of them that way, but all I have to say is that if there were 50 foot tall chickens in the neighborhood we wouldn't be going on many walks, if you know what I mean. And before anybody gets their knickers in a knot about "poor defenseless chickens," all I have to say is that those folks never spent much time around poultry, which are about the most irritable critters I've seen since my son tried to paint the cat the other day.

Still up in that tree, btw, but we think he'll be down soon.

Yessir, the world is a new and fresher place in the springtime, and it's only a matter of a few months until several marvelous things happen: school will be out, festival season will be upon us, and the sweet sounds of strings will enliven the air.

So I hope you all get to join the Ramblers and other guests at the ChickenFest on May 20th in East Stroudsburg, right by the train tracks, it runs from 10 till 5 and our side of it is free. Rumor has it that a train is coming down from Steamtown up Scranton way, and there will be train exhibits as well, cheap food and expensive women, and several local watering holes nearby that specialize in ice cold beverages.

So happy spring! Watch the doggie doo!

A Bluegrass curse: A tragic adventure

2006-03-25T23:17:00.000-05:00

Well, dear readers, it finally happened. Forty years of addled-brained and oaf-handed skill finally paid off in spades today when some somabitch boosted my wallet in broad daylight with the news guys right there filming and Howard "Stern" camped out in the parking lot.*

Okay. To the facts:
Seems my third-eldest lad, and my namesake, has a penchant for losing things. He is so adroit at the art of addled-brain loss that he has lost the one thing that adolescents yearn for more than almost any other: a permit to drive a car.

The kid lost two of them.

Two.

I would have paid blood to get one back when I was a lad, but that was when Shawnee was half an hour from any town, back before 80 and all that noise. And if I had had my permit for more than a month, I'da lost it too. I got my licence in like seven days and I had no idea how to drive. That would be why I'd swipe my brother's '79 BelAir and then my buddies would stick me in the back and drive instead.

I wasn't bitter.

Anyway, my Driver's Ed. guy taught me all about crashes, and how to do 'em, and all that, so at the end of the day I was doing alright avoiding wrecks, just by not doing what those fellas in the films did.
That's one way to get teens to listen to you, the old reverse-psychology thingumie. Tell them kids to just go out do something so stupid only a teen would think it might work, like driving with your eyes shut, and they'll never do it. They'll shut you down quicker than a hot-house floosy-dancing tart in a bathtub full of Baptists.

If you get my drift.

Anyhow, I've only had two wrecks in my life. The first was when I was driving my boss's brand new Caddy over Christmas Break, back when my family was all busted up and the whole Tocks Island thing had almost all of us near dead, I want to say it was 1973, and I was on Long Island trying to make a few bucks to stay in college. Even then, they wanted money, more long than a lil boy like me could get on a regular basis, but I beat their odds, I got me some scholarship thingumies and I mopped floors--great upper body work-out, btw.

So here I am back on Long Island trying to make a couple bucks, and one night after work, because I'm colorblind, I slowed down and proceeded with caution out into a major highway and got waffled by some guy driving an old Dodge Dart. That hurt.
Didn't do much good for the Caddy either.

My second wreck was a few days after my 48th birfday, driving up into the wilds of the Poconos to argue with a fiddle-player about payment for our second CD, after which time I neglected to stay awake and flipped the van.

All I can say is seatbelts and airbags are two very good things!

Back to the story. Pete and I arrived at the pennDOT place with not a lot of time to spare, and because PennROT doesn't take cash, I had to go and get a money order, and being in a hot rush, left my wallet out in the open where a fella helped himself to it. They got the guy on tape, and he's a regular, so they'll have a chance to talk with him eventually, but the wallet is as good as gone.

The good news is I was already right out there so I could get me a new licence.

So I would like to put a bluegrass curse on the guy right now:

I hope somebody boosts something you really are attached to, like maybe a kidney like the guy I heard about that was a friend of a friend who got picked up by some hottie in NY and woke up in a bathtub packed in ice with a scar on his back on account they stole his kidney. Ha. That'll slow ya down.

And I hope your car stalls on 80, the part with the big cememt mediums** there that mean there's no shoulder for you to cry on.

I hope you live in a world with warm beer and cold women, that your cat pees in your shoe and your dog secretly steals your valuables and buries them. Oh--an poos right were you have to walk to get into your car.

I hope all your frozen food gets wrecked because your freezer craps out while you are on a drunken spree at Atlantic City with the cash I donated to you.

While we're at it, I hope you wake up in AC married to some hideous tart named "Alice" that beats you weekly for the rest of your life for not being able to support her in the manner to which she hopes to get accustomed.

May all your colors run, all your underwear shrink uncomfortably, and may the IRS, even now, be looking over your return very very carefully.

I hope you get new neighbors that really like Ozzie and are slightly deaf and are also insomniacs hehe.
May all your milk curdle, all your take-out food be stone cold, and may you continually and inexplicably cut yourself while shaving until you look like you stopped a load of #6's at about thrity yards.

Yeah. Bless your soul.

*I made that part up about the news folks and "Howard." I did it on account of how I am apposed to be a fiction writer now, and people have come to expect a lil' "stretcher" now and then.

** if those things are mediums, I hate to see a biggun!

A Bluegrass Tribute to Women

2006-03-23T16:31:00.000-05:00

Well, we survived the pub crawl, all six of us, reeling and jigging and horn-piping our way from one establishment to another----nine of 'em in 11 hours, and by jingies were my fingers tore up the next day, and the day after that, where we played another five shows, replete (or would that be repleat?) with kilts, sporins, brats and dirks.*

And now we're back to bluegrass reality, which is kinda like the regular version except it's more fun and not quite as politically correct as many of the circles in which I travel. Actually they are only circles in the morning; by lunch my one leg gets a little tired and they turn into ellipses, and if I have a few beverages, which happens with some regularity, there is no telling what sort of trapeziodal trapsing will be going on.

One day I think I did a tri-dodecahedron all by myself, and the next day when I woke up I was besides myself. Thank God for medication!

Anyhow, yesterday at work I had the distinct,ummm, pleasure of attending a department meeting, which consisted of myself and ten women.

wow.

I can remember the day that I would have thought that was a pretty cool thing--all them chicks and me the onliest rooster there. But age and estrogen have a way of turning even good things slightly not-so-good.

There I was sitting in a room with a bunch of people, and most of 'em were so happy with themselves they was breakin' their own arms patting themselves on the back. I mean, some of them are pretty good, but some of them are also the reason students these days think that sex won't make you pregnant, that driving fast won't kill you, and that you can drink and be smart simultaneously.

This is the same group of of teens who believe that "Survivor" is real and that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy that involved the NY Yankees, the Pope, the Mafia, Frank Sinatra and the Little Sisters of Mercy. I tell ya, my social security isn't looking too smooth.

Maybe it's because some teachers talk so damned much, what kid can hear themselves think? I'll leave about three of the women folk out of that equation, 'case any of 'em is reading this (you know who you are and I will buy the beverages tomorrow for ya!). The worst offenders prolly won't be reading anything anyway, though, being English teachers and all.

Figure that one out and you are better than Steven Hawkings.

As one of 'em actually said during a rant in which she proclaimed that all students are incapable of learning without her at their side, "I can't be reading books! I'm too busy!"

So, busy doing what? Patting yourself on the back and bitching about us clueless guys, no doubt.

As I read in one of "those books", the lady doth protest too much, methinkses.**

So here's where the bluegrass mystique comes in handy, First of all, us bluegrassers love women deeply. Except we prefer only one or maybe two at a time, depending. And we treat our women right as rain in reality. It's only in songs that we blast the begeebers out of them with our old .44's and make fiddle-pegs out of their fingerbones and fiddlebows out of their long yellow hair before we dump them in the river.

We would never really do such things.

First off, the weapon of choice for indoor use is a shotgun--deadly effective at close range and it won't punch through the wall and kill your hunting dog. And that yeller hair don't hold rosin worth a damn.

And we are against pollution, too, same as those berkenshock-wearing tree-huggers, except we climb ours and use 'em as deer stands.

The trees, that is--not the berken-whatsises.

Anyhow, what made me want to write this was one of those cutesy e-mail thingumies my wife is always getting from her "girl-friends," (hehe) basically reminding all the women of the world how awesome they are, which by default would mean that men are basically only fit to drink beer, poot and dream about sex.

ummmm. Forgot my point there for a second.

Oh--yeah! I 'member now.

These things always go on about how strong and sensitive and supportive women are--all true things!--and about how the only flaw women have is that they are too humble. So I thought I would write one about men, us guys being without any support system at all for our kind and sensitive side. I mean, women have their NOW and their THEN or whatever, but us men folk have no support groups whatsoever, unless you count the NRA, but I don't know if it counts if you have to pay your support group and you get stuff addressed to "Dear Commie-hating Gun-Lover".

Anyhow, here 'tis! Cut and paste this and send it to at least ten men you know, and then ask them to send it to ten men, and it'll get back to me in a minute and a half, because there aren't too many of us guys that give a rat's ass about this stuff unless it has dirty jokes in there someplace, which this one has.***

WHY GOD CREATED MEN.

Seems God was walking around in heaven and it was a slow news day, and he decided to make a world that would be kind of like "Survivor" meets "American Idol" with a dose of "Believe it or don't" tossed in, just to have something fun to watch.

And he thought, "I'll create a creature
that will have two eyes to weep for those in pain,
and two arms to hold onto what they want with preternatural strength,
even if it isn't really theirs---like closet space, for one,
and they'll have two feet to stamp with
when they don't get their way,
and a heart as big as a house for
little children or puppies
that magically shrinks to
the size of a bug ( a very small one!)
when anyone says the word
"Sex",
and a head for dreaming of all the things that could be
but which are not presently,
and which will get a headache when you say
"Sex",
and I will call this creature
"Man!"

And He went ahead and did it,
except God was a guy
and
so he got all that stuff backwards except the name,
and it turned out the dude was pretty happy,
dreaming about sex,
which he wasn't really sure
what it was but it seemed like it would be fun,
and he was eating fried chicken and
fishing, but it bugged God
because He was supposed to be all-powerful and all,
(and of course He is, just has a touch of dyslexia and some ADD in there (see "Bluegrass, the Novel" for more on this condition)),

and so He made
another creature
one with the same specs and
this time He got it right,
and he called this one "Woman."

And woman took one look at man and said,
"Wow. I'm looking pretty good compared to this bozo!"
but since God was still a little dyslexic,
for some odd reason
despite the fact that she was
all that and a bag
of chips
she took a shine to the guy
and they hooked up
once and
the man thought the woman would never change
and
the woman thought everything could change,
even the man,
and neither of them did
what the other thought
and they spent the next 20 centuries
or whatever
getting mad at each other.
The end.

So fellas---send this on to all your "boy-friends" (eww!) that you love so well, those creatures who are good only for fixing things, earning money, and making women look good, and congratulate them all on making the world all round and stuff.

And have a plate of fried chicken and some sex dreams on me!
Poot!

*yeah--if you have to ask I can't tell you since it's all super-secret. But chicks dig it!

** see Bluegrass Barditude for more of this! Methinks.

*** try every third word and see what-all this says. And if it's dirty, send it back to me. Thanks. Pete "the bozo" Poot-man.

Saint Patty-grass OR The Tale of The Emerald Blue

2006-03-15T22:47:00.000-05:00

So we are getting ready for the patented Lost Rambler reverse Pub Crawl on Saint Patrick's Day*, where we go to the patrons round-robin style while they stay and get nice and "toasty", which is a good thing to do when the weather is spitting snow, something which happens with some regularity here. It's a grueling schedule, although we mercifully will not also have to eat gruel, which is some awful grey glop like, ummmmmmmmm...I dunno, farina or something.

Those breakfast mushes, whether they be gruel or grits, I never really understood. Library paste, yes. But not them.

Anyway, we will march merrily with kilts asaunter to nine bars in 12 hours, five of us brave boys and girl and we will no doubt imbibe a few non-citrus flavored carbonated adult beverages and get a mite toasty ourselves.

All this talk of toastiness puts me in mind of a Saint Patrick's Day parade we were playing in one year, and we were on the back of this flatbed truck. It had no rails or anything, I suspect we had been topping off the old tanks with anti-freeze, if you catch my drift, and so every time it lurched forward, on account of we weren't the onliest ones to be getting ourselves shined up, we would shoot forward a couple steps, or have to back up quick.

We'd do that and kinda hope we were facing in the right direction or we'd shoot off that truck like, well, kinda like the dragoons that were marching right behind us. We'd be getting ready to rip into "ST. Anne's Reel" and ka-POW! they'd leave off a volley that would scare the bejeebers out of us, nearly stained our drawers, I tell you what.

Then there'd be like this big cloud of toxic smoke that would drift over us, so we were kinda like sooty angels part of the parade: people could hear us but they couldn't see all of us or sometimes any of us.

This went on through the town of Stroudsburg, but just as we got to the top of the interboro bridge, an engineering marvel placed there after the '55 flood and perched away up high so it didn't get washed away again, some Shriner in one of those little clown cars runned somebody over and the parade stopped with us sitting up there getting blowed over by a twenty mile an hour upstream breeze.

Man oh man that was cold. The pedestrian turned out to be okay, just a lil bruised up, those clown cars not being the biggest things in the world. But it took awhile for the ambulance to get there, because they were all already in the parade, I guess, and the whole time we were perched up there a hundred feet over the stream, and the dragoons behind us got bored and weren't marching, so they really laid a barrage out.

Of course they were still upwind enough for all that smoke to find us, and when we came off that bridge we were about froze, anti-freeze or not, and we looked like we just stormed the beach on D-day, all smudged up like that.

I was so cold I had to walk backwards to take a piss, and that's some cold, I can tell you.

So we gave up that parade stuff and we'll stick to the indoor venues, eat lots of corned beef and cabbage until we poot and pucker our way into Irish Rambler heaven. And the best part?

The next day is Saturday!
ha!
So---a very happy and blessed Saint Patrick's Day to all!

*A number of people complained that my last post did not contain any of the insoucinet footnotes with which they had become accustomed, and so I felt compelled to add one here, as my readers are worth every acccomidation. Both of them.**

**This is like a "hidden track" on a CD. Here are some FAQ for you.

Q: Why does a Sicilian guy wear a kilt and play Irish music?
Mr. Irish Rambler Answer Guy (IRAG): Because Saint Patrick was actually a Roman citizen that was kidnapped and raised in the forest by seven dwarfs...no, wait. Umm.. raised by...wolfs? no--that was those two boys, Rommel Uz and his brother Raim, founded Rome. Oh, no wait! It was monks that raised St. Patrick up and made him the man he was, with the snake-non-handling and all that. So naturally Saint Patrick is like a star in Italy and Sicily and all. Everybody knows that.

Q: What do you wear under that kilt?
IRAG: If you have to ask, you don't deserve to know. Unless you're a really cute chick. Then the answer is, "I'll show ya mine if you'll show me yours."
That answer really frosts the cupcakes of those guys that make fun of kilts, I can tell you that. Then they want to get them some and we say, "No way!" and laugh.

Q: Cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: Is that a proper question?

Q: Sorry.
IRAG: Don't mention it.

Q:Do cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: What girl can resist a nice jumper like that? Don't be silly. OF course they dig it.

Q:Thank you.
IRAG: What is, "Are you welcome, Alex?"

Bluegrass Barditudes

2006-02-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

I have no idea what I was thinking about when the topic of Shakespeare and bluegrass crossed my mind; I mean, I teach English and I play bluegrass, but that's not really a good reason to be putting the two together. Hell, lots of surgeons play golf, but I sure hope if they have me laid open they're not thinking about golf swings or something. How the hell would that be?

"Fore!" the guy would hollar, and then with the phizoclampet whhoossis he's holding, he'd blast your pancreas out of yer insides and right into the garbage pail.

Unless he opened his stance and sliced it into the hallway. I hate it when that happens.

And I have to confess that I am not really in a funny mood; death and destruction have been very much in evidence around here lately, and I think I may have slipped a cog or something, because I have had sudden and almost uncontrollable urges; one that I can write about is to bark at rude people and maybe even bite on them a little bit.

Maybe I have situational Tourettes. Anyhow, let's take a look at some of the bard's stuff, done bluegrass style.

Him: To be or not to be; that is the question!
Us: Poo or get off the pot; ya either have to go or not!

Him: Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I might say goodnite until it be morrow!
Us: How can I miss you if you never leave? And take that .44 outta yer sleeve!

Him: The lady doth protest too much, me thinks!
Us: Quit 'chur bitchin and git in the kitchen!

Him: Is that a dagger I see before me?
Us: Is that a booger I see before me?

Him: Romeo, Romeo! Wherefor art thou, Romeo?
Us; Hey, Tilly! You over here or down in Philly?

Him: GOodnight, sweet prince! And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Us: Goodnight Irene, goodnight, Irene, I'll see you in my dreams...
Him: Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all...
Us: She came on down the stairs and tossed back her long yeller hair, and her cheeks were as red as a rose...

Him: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!
Us: She came into the room where she met her final doom, and I ain't gonna be treated thisaway...

Him: Life is a tale told by an idiot, who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Us: Yonder stands little Maggie, with a dram glass in her hand....

Well, maybe next time we can slap together a little play, something like "Hamlet meets Macbeth and gets killed right away because he's a whiney girlie-man, and then Ophelia starts cheating on her new beau Hotspur, who can't do nothing but get drunk and sing off-key, and Macbeth gets really mad and is going to blast the bejesus out of both of them with his .44 but some dude named Shylock buys him off just long enough to steal a pound of headcheese and they all get shipwrecked and land on a strange shore where they meet a boy who never grew up and a bunch of Indians and a large alligator with a clock in his stomach, and it all looks like it will end badly for most of them, but that's where the surprise ending comes in because instead they are all blown to kingdom-come by a meteor and only the alligator survives, except that the clock never does keep the right time after that."

And they say that drama is so hard. pah!

Techno Bluegrass

2006-02-16T23:22:00.000-05:00

I love life's little surprises. There are an abundance of those nasty little suckers, too, crawling around and ready to drop down your metaphysical collar at any turn.

Brrr!

That's what the bluegrass is all about, isn't it? Things are going as right as rain and you come home with that mood ring you been thinking about getting your honey, on account of she is always letting you go and raise cain for a weekend while she battles with field-mice. And I don't mean the kind you see in that Nutcrackly Sweet they always put on around Christmas.*

Anyhow, you waltz in there and she's expecting chocolates and some roses maybe, and you smile real big and hold out that mood ring that it costed four cartons of Marlboros, and you don't even smoke, that's how much you love her.

And then you find out that you must have read the instructions wrong, 'cause when she puts it on and she's happy, it's apposed to be green, except immeditately she smacks you upside the head and your forehead turns red and then you see stars just like on Roger Rabbitt, so you never get to see exactly how she is feeling.

One of life's little mysteries, as I was saying.

But the reason I started this whole thing was because I was just trying to fill out a grant application, which is something I don't really know how to do. People keep asking me to do it, and then I do, and then they give me some more money to write it again, which to me means I didn't get it right the first time. Then they slap me on the back and they give me more papers to fill in.

Most perplexing. I tell ya, it's like pushing a rope; it's hard to do! The difference is the rope doesn't appreciate it, and evidently these folks do, because every year about this time, here they come, and every year they have some different questions to ask.

This year the stunner was, "How is your art form unique, and what characteristics does it possess that are not readily apparent to the itinerant?"

I want to go on and type a lot more about that, but just typing that tired me "right aught", as the Dutchies up here say, and besides, that's another blog for another day. All I know is, they are calling bluegrass an "artform" (!). Sometimes when we play people actually listen. The other day we sold 3 CD's and I think we're up to 4 pairs of socks for this year so far. That's up 50% YTD. Let me see IBM do that! Oh----and when we record these days, it actually sounds like what it sounded like.

That's why I call this piece "techno bluegrass." It's almost like "Back to the Future"; technology has finally caught up to strings and voices in the thin air.
And maybe tastes are changing,too.

One thing is sure. You shouldn't trust the fate of your marriage to free gifts from Marlboro. And watch out for them mood rings. Doesn't matter what color they are--them things hurt!

* Man. They play that music even the guy that wrote it was trying to buy back, figuring he was gonna chop it up and sell it in small little pieces for like baroque commercials or something, and then these freakin' kids that weigh more than I do start prancing around up there in black leotards with those lil mouse ear costumes waving their arms around. I tell ya, it reminds me of those flying monkeys on the Wizard of Oz. Brrrr....it's enough to put a guy right off his feed.

Bluegrass WInter Blues

2006-02-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

Anybody who doesn't know about bluegrass festivals and the interesting behaviors and events that occur at festivals is a cultural moron who needs immediate remediation. Hear that, Hollywood? Get my drift, Wall Street?

So I am sitting here achy and happy on a Monday morning after our 6th annual WinterFest, skipping school for a much-needed rub-down and adjustment, which I will do after I unload the car, burdened as it is with the detritus of a weekend's worth of stealth bluegrass. The Lost Ramblers and 20 other bands invaded every eatery and bar worth talking about, in addition to coming together at the BPO Elks here in bucholic East Stroudsburg, Pa. for two days worth of stellar music and non-stop laughing.

That's the one of the hallmarks of a good festival---sore cheeks from laughing too much. I'll tell my therapist to concentrate on them to begin with. Anyhow, all went smoothly at what a few folks are beginning to call "The Lost Rambler's Festival," which it kinda is and kinda isn't.

First off all, the Festival itself was the idea of Mary Herman, once of Stained Grass Window. When she first saw the Elks building she was as blown away as anyone at the vaulted ceilings, the capacious meeting hall with its valence lighting and turn of the century plush furnishings, and most of all the helpfulness of the Elks, who it turns out were closet bluegrassers all along, all except for that cheap bastard that has been coming to our concerts for seven years and has never paid a nickle to us. He knows who he is; he just doens't know that minions are putting curses on him every day. May his ears fall off.

Anywat, Mary was sitting there with her beau Mark and she said, " This would be a great place to have a WinterFest."

And I, scholarly investigator that I am, said," What's that?"

"It's a festival you have, only in the Winter," Mary said, speaking slowly and enunciating carefully.

We wondered together exactly how that would work. Six years later, I think we are starting to get the drift. You have to start with a good hotel, since camping out in February is not optimal. Then you need about a bazillion dollars to pay the bands, which you get by asking the bands to come around once a month and play for free.

Which they all do.

That was the first hard part of explaining the idea to the nice folks at the Elks. Let's see...everybody comes to hear the bands and they give you money. Well, that's pretty common practice out there in the world. Oh--and the bands pay to play, too. Well, it sounds nuts, but it works, because a true bluegrasser can't go more than about a week before he* starts wandering around with a vacant look of distress** about him.

And sitting with my good friend and bluegrass buddy Fred, we were talking about how there is at least one funny thing that happens at a festival. I was personally involved with at least two of them. One thing was that I left the Elks at around 8 to secure a parking space for the Paisleys and the Lundys and Donnie, too, although I think I spelled his name wrong back in one of my previous posts and I will be looking that up as soon as I can get to it, exhaustive research being the hallmark of
the bluegrass scholar.

Anyhow, some idiot with plates from "that other state" had his or her (sorry) big ass SUV parked in the bus slot, so I dropped Fred off to let him freshen up for the Bandomonium, got some help from the GrillBillies in locating alternate parking, and was ready to run into the hotel and start setting up the sound when Pat Brown met me coming back into the hotel.

"Get ready to get hollered at," she said. "Some woman tripped out by your car and she's screaming her head off at you."

Now I was in an unloading zone, which I guess is okay even if you are loaded, as long as you are unloading, as I was. Come to think of it, being loaded might be a prerequisite if one wishes to unload, but of course I wasn't quick enough to explain that to her just then. And considering what she was all about, I'm fairly sure she wouldn't have been interested in conjugations or even conjucals or however you spell that other word that means screwing.

Sure enough, here she came, a woman with a cane and that most unfortunate accent, wanting to know "WHo the F**** put that car there and F*** I want to talk to F**** that ignorant f***bastard etc etc etc."

So I said, "Ma'am I am the thoughtless person who placed this van here, and you are so correct, it was incredibly rude of me to leave this van here and take more than a New York Minute to unload it, and I apologize. I don't know what I was thinking."

By now the lads from Southern Grass were coming off the bus and into the hotel, and they all lined up and watched this woman screaming at me. I avoided looking at her because I was thinking, "Man, she might be like that Greek chick with the snakes for hair that turns you to stone," and so I proceeded to avoid looking at her and started to get into the van to get moving on the sound system, and the lads were all laughing at the chick, because there was no freakin' way the van had anything to do with her "fall", and they tell me spit was flying out of her mouth and she was doing the whole "Springer" bit for us.

Quite a show. I think the whole cane thing was prolly a fake, too, because she was swinging that sucker around like Joe DiMaggio and not seeming to have any trouble standing. I seriously think if she had connected, I would be writing this with a slightly different editorial tone, rather than the condescending and arrogent one I setttled on for today's message.

Anyway, I'm not one to judge her, bless her heart. Also lucky for her heehe.

Well, she was standing there spitting and swearing and swinging, and seeing it had absolutely no effect on any of us. Hell, this was nothing: we watched some guy in a porta-potty get blown down a hill during some rough weather at Kline's Grove back in the 70's, bouncing through a couple campsites before it fetched up against a big and suddenly stinky tent. So some poser with a cane didn't strike us as so unusual.

So she finally screamed at me, "Yeah, well I think you are half in F***** bag." (She liked that word. She used it all the time.)

And I said, "No, ma'am. I'm all the way in the bag. The good news is, you're not in here with me."

We all almost peed ourselves on that one, it was so rich. We were laughing and being all polite, and I guess it just put her right off her feed. Sure enough, that polite stuff actually shut her up for a moment, long enough for me to park the van practice the art of not being seen.

Of course the next day the band boys were all busting on me like crazy, except Donnie's brother, whose name I forget, since I was in a bag by myself during much of the whole experience. He said he saw the whole thing from her "fall" to my compelling exit scene, and so if you are out there reading this, "Ms. New York Cane Faker", all I can say is: "Bless your soul."

Oh---and "Happy Birthday" too!

*APA style dictates that one never use "he", "his" or "him" to refer generically to humans. I am ignoring that rule for several reasons. First, it is stylistically problematic. You get so many "he and/or she" thingumies going on you can't read the freakin' sentence. Then there is the general paucity of women bluegrass pickers, or bluegrass women pickers, or picking bluegrass women, or whatever you're apposed to call them. Whatever moniker you want to hang on those beautiful creaures, bless their hearts, they are outnumbered by males by a good five or six to one ratio. Finally, I ignore it here to annoy the APA types that like that PC crap. If some chick writer wants to use "she", "her" and her's" instead, let 'er fly. I can take it.

**Teacher said to Tommy, "Use the word distress in a sentence." So Tommy said," Hey teacher...distess makes yer butt look fat."

Smash-mouth Bluegrass

2006-01-27T22:04:00.000-05:00

Well, once again I've nailed a nice title. Let's see if I can walk the talk. The Ramblers played the Deer Head last night, that quintessential jazz club we've been sneaking into on account of the previous owner decided that we really play crackerjazz.

Of course it's all true.

When the father of us all invented the music, he took the idea of breaks, not from rock and roll so much as from jazz, where the player has more latitude in his improvisations. Think about it. When someone is playing air guitar and pretending that he is Jimi Hendrix playing "Purple Haze", does he ever vary the notes he makes with those annoying "Nar nar nar nar, nar nar nar nar~!" sounds?

Of course not.

Incidentally, despite the fact that women are genetically superior to males in dancing, face-making and interior design, you will never see one playing air guitar with their lips curled in a feral snarl and slinging their hips around like Elvis with a bad itch.

Guys---maybe you better ought to stop. And of course you will never ever ever see a bluegrass player do that stuff either.*

It's not because we're girls. Although some of us are, I guess. No, it's just that we have too much dignity for that. Oh, sure, some yupped up middle aged chicks with their slinky black dresses and that too-red lipstick that brands them as being "urban" chic might gag on their crudettes when they hear that, the idea that a bunch of crackers like us have gravitas. But we got that in spades, that gravitas stuff. Hell, people have been known to start orbiting around James King, he's got so much of it!

Tonight was a perfect example of why the rest of the world needs to tune into some bluegrass once in awhile. I was at a lovely dinner where my son and namesake was performing with a troupe of singers and actors that put on cheery plays like "Les Mis" and "Into the Woods" and other real artsy works like that were everybody dies in the end.

Now, you'd think I'd be all up for that--it sounds just like a good bluegrass song, right? Things start off bad and then you gotta plug your wife because she runned oft with some Rambling man. But, well, they didn't all look like they were having real fun. First of all, they were all decked out in dresses so tight I bet if they ate an olive they'd pop a gussett someplace. I mean, at least the women were. The guys had on tuxes, and I have to admit they do make you look good even if your body parts don't quit match up. You can always tell when you are looking at real perfoming artistes. They don't know that you're supposed to spackle or paint or something constructive while you wait to become famous, and so consequently they tend to walk around looking a bit pale and wan because they don't eat right.

And they are inordinately fond of rich folks, because the rich folks become their patrons, which is a nice way of saying that they're doing what some women have been doing since Mary Magdeline was plying her trade.

Man, those rich folks spend money like drunken sailors on stuff a bluegrasser could slap together in an afternoon. I saw a table they called a "star" table because the top was shaped like a star, and it went for 300 bucks. Hell, the thing wasn't even big enough to eat a TV dinner off of, and it had cut legs and not turned ones, so I bet I could pop that puppy out in a day or two, and my table would actually twinkle or something cool, or maybe transform into a small bed for kids, dogs or small bluegrass drunks.

Anyway, these folks got up there and they sang a bunch of Italian songs, like Faniculi and Oh solo mio and stuff like that, and that was fun. My kid and all his friends had us peeing our pants, they were so funny and they sang so well.

Makes a dad proud, I can tell you, when your kid doesn't grow up to be just exactly like you hehe. Anyhow, after they got done and all the rich folks were bidding silently on baskets and pottery and other stuff they were prolly just buying to spite the other guy, the serious professional actors came out and they started singing opera, of all things.

Man, and here I was trying to digest a second helping of meatballs and they were hitting notes that made that little piece of cartiladge in my nose start to rattle around in there, they was so high up. It reminded me of what Twain said about Wagner.

"It's better than it sounds," is what he said.

Now that Sam Clemens was one smart feller, all right. I was laughing to myself because I was wondering what would have happened if last night's Ramblers had busted in there and started playing the way we played last night. That snooty chick that managed to work into the conversation in the first thirty seconds that her outfit was straight from Kenya where she spent the last three years would have been looking aghast or askance or maybe akimbo at us, being so authentic and all, and us singing in English, of all things.

Don't get me wrong. Culture is great, and I've been meaning to get me some, soon as I can determine that I can afford it. In the meantime, we had a great time watching all these folks posing. I felt like Diane Fossa with those grillers in the mist. And there were some really beautiful harmonies in a few of the pieces (that would be "aireahs" to you, thank you very much!) that would have even made the bluegrass cut.

But. Four bucks for a glass of beer? Hell, if you get what you pay for I shoulda come home stumbling drunk. Instead I had to raid the wine cellar and break out a nice bottle of shiraz, 2001, and have some of that to calm me down from all that culture.

That stuff really got my dander up, I can tell you. Made me want to get one of them sparkly dresses and a hat with horns onto it and belt out a few show tunes hehe.

Anyway, bluejeans and a t-shirt, a bottle of rosemont and a cheap cigar go a long way to washing the stink of haut couture off a guy. And I can dream of smash-mouth bluegrass songs about plugging the bejabbers out of your girl and the guy that done you wrong and then dumping their bodies in the river, and singing that we will all meet in the great bye-and-bye, where hopefully there is some kind of quota system on that culture stuff.

It is sweet to have something to compare yourself to. *hehe*

* Unless he's been at some shine. Then he might be liable to do most anything, but whatever it is he decides to do it generally ends with one of several options: he burns down his trailer, he loses his car or he wrecks his truck. Come to think of it, you don't generally see too many girls juiced up on shine doing any of those things. THat would be another place they have it over us.

Happy Bluegrass Birthday

2006-01-22T22:58:00.000-05:00

Absolutely the best benefit of being a bluegrass musician is the wonderful gift of playing with people who could crush rocks in their metaphoric musical hands.

Yeah. Tonight some friends came over during the debacle that destroyed the hope of Carolina, and we started running over some Irish tunes, it being only fifty-some days until St. Patrick's day. This was after last night where our flute and whistle expert Barbie commanded the day at a local pub and eatery and reduced even die-hard Italinas to do a little jig.
So here we were the next afternoon, almost all of us back together and feeling sweet---oh, maybe a little ragged---and we started with something mundane, like maybe it was Cooley's Reel. Kendell was on bass and I was playing mandolyn, Neil emoting and Miss Barbie on the whistle and flutes. Well, none of us was jumping up and down giddy with delight on that one, but it got the blood going, and I thought we had done a credible job of playing that tune, being the first and all. It felt pretty good, sounded sound: you know! All the things that make a music thing music were there.

So I was sitting there kinda blinking happy when my guitar buddy says to me, "All I can say about your mandolin playing is, you should play less."

Now I'm not some L&I guy that is trained in labor negotiations. Last week the sumbitch was complaining that I sounded like a bass player playing the mandolin. I was all ready to hang my head until I realized something.

I was a bass player playing mandolin. OR actually a guitar player that had been corrupted by playing bass who was trying to rectify by playing mando.

So I asked him what the hell he meant and he gave me that so-smart nod and he said: "You know." Well, one thing I thought of was that maybe bass players don't play so many notes, being bereft of strings, comparitively, so I had thought to throw a couple extra mando notes in there, to get us all out of that bass mind-set. And then there was too many notes all of a sudden.

Pah. Everybody is a critic! That's when Dean stepped up and diced it properly.

"Pete," he said."You gotta shop at the play-less store."

We laughed our asses off on that one. Well--Dean and I did. Neil was still being serious. But that's not surprising. He's one of those guys walking aroung ass-less these days, pants falling off of poor them. They laughed their asses off in days of yore and they have no more ass to keep up those trousers.

And in case you are wondering about the happy birthday thingie, it was my birthday weekend, although our friends in Hamilton Township have elevated the phrase to mean something more like "screw you". So these old guys would be out there BBQing a thousand halves of chicken (best damn chicken going--they use butter and lemon juice as the marinade btw) and smiling all nice and saying, "Hey Dave! Happy Birthday, my friend!" hehe.
Think about that the next time a bunch of tuneless folks croon that old favorite. IN the meantime I have to go play.

Less. *Snark!*

Bluegrass Musicians: the Next Wave of Educational Leaders

2006-01-19T20:14:00.000-05:00

Anyone who is not awed and inspired to have the honor of being a teacher is a nitwit and should stop teaching immediately. Many do, they just forget to quit. From those ranks of toilers and lookers-on, a fortunate few become the "educational leaders" of both our teachers and our children.

Being fairly close to Presidents Day, it's appropriate to point out that the kind of leadership some of us have been treated to is the same kind that discovered the new world.

You take Columbus, of whom we eye-ties are very proud, thank you very much. We're so thankful to him that we forget that Columbus damn near died, then he found some folks running around in some banana leaves, and after claiming everything he found for some Queen, not his own one, either, sat there jabbering to that bunch of indiginous folks of indeterminant tribe thinking they were a big bunch of Indians.

Well, the resemblance was remarkable: Both the Caribs and the real-deal Indians had the same highly developed culture, architecture and custom, and they...wait. Scratch that. They had nothing in common! But they were both really strange-looking,so I guess we can forgive the mistake.

But back to leadership like Columbus, we need to remember that things didn't turn out well for Don Columbo or his brothers, or, well, the guys that sailed with him, for that matter. They did manage to try and save the Indians, but the attention didn't have the desired effect on them, either.

The whole story is a bit jumbled, on account of all the folks that were there are dead now. And that was a best case scenario. Ole Chris and cohort could've clipped a coastline and crashed, too.

So in some of our schools, these LLC's (do I really need to?) are busy leading our schools down dark alleys and trying to lose us all like some big brother that doesn't want you around and tries to ditch you so he can make out with some hottie someplace.
Mind you, I'm not saying that these folks are with some brazen hottie from a small town just the other side of the county line.* From the looks of some of them, I kind of doubt it.

But they've amazed me before.

I suspect some of them are not doing what they do on purpose, so I guess I try to forgive those folks in advance. All I'm saying is that leadership like that makes me dizzy and I want to sit down.

So I got to thinking about how the schools would be run if it was up to bluegrass musicians. Hehe. That made me feel some better, I can tell you! So now that I got that rant offen me chest, here's a short list of some of the things you would notice if you walked into a school run like that:

First, there would be lots of little groups of people with instruments in every square inch of the building, completely eliminating vandalism. Oh--and these groups would be playing music and singing and being happy, except when the banjo was too loud or the mandolin player screwed up his break or..well, they'd be happpy most of the time, anyhow. And when they weren't, everybody would gather 'round and eavesdrop, almost like a fight except nobody would get hurt and there would be no mess. Oh--and hardly any hard feelings.

Second, nobody that didn't really love being there would last long. There is no shoulder colder than a turned bluegrass shoulder.** It's the BG equivalent of being shunned. It's like walking around a festival where nobody likes you or needs you because you add nothing to the sauce. Everybody else gets offered hot dogs and high-fives except you, so after awhile you just go home. That alone would save us about 30% of our bill right off the top, chasing off that stinky 10%.

Kids would love it, too. They don't like slackers, sneaks or smackers either.

And last thing would be that the bluegrass leaders would be people who:
1. Knew how to play their instrument for real and not be all talk.
2. Knew how hard it is to learn.
3. Listened when others played or sang---really, really listened, from the bottom of their feet.
4. Had taste and knew when not to play.
5. Had judgment and knew who could really play and who was all blow and no go.
6. Understood that songs have a beginning, a middle and and a point.
7. Nurtured the players coming up and helped them.
8. Always thought of others first. Or at the very least a close second.
9. Never ever did something that would make the song sound bad.
10. Never, ever, ever forgot that music without listening is like breathing in without breathing out, like kissing somebody that isn't kissing you back, like an afternoon watching NFL without a achingly cold Yuengling and crispy toothsome hot wings and friends and freedom and health and a night without a warm bed and someone you love to come home to.***

*A fine song title, by the way.

**That would be too, except it's too hard to say fast. Try it. It's like trying to sing "The Irish Washerwoman" at warp speed.

*** Is this an old Santana song by accident? If so, I say, "Yo, Carlos! Via con Dios!"

A review of a reveiw of Bluegrass: the Novel

2006-01-18T20:01:00.000-05:00

Well, it finally happened. Somebody bought my book and then they went and read it.

No, seriously, that happened awhile ago. What was different this time was that the person actually gave half a crap and went and reviewed it. Now, I know what they say about the dangers of believing your own PR. Look at what happened to that hoser that wrote "One Million Pieces", which turned out to be more like "5 easy pieces and a big load of crap". I guess I should be grateful I got three stars and comments that she liked my writing and that the book was a "light, easy read" and a sort of multi-culturalist's delight.

That last one would have any of my friends choking on their pork rinds and spitting Yuengling out their noses.

Let's not forget that, from the moment when my father fled the perils of New York back in the '40's, with all its urban trash---human and otherwize---I was fated to be born and bred an Italian redneck. That was kind of uncommon in the day, but I've since met a few more, and we are like anybody else in the forgotten middleland of the US.

Well, let me start by all the ways I have learned that "political correctness" that reviewer was talking about: first, I have learned not to choke on my cheetos when somebody with an accent as thick as somebody from the Soprano's informs me that they have just "moved up heah from New Yawk". I want to say, "Really? Wow. I thought maybe you were from France!"

And I don't point out that the eternal bitching new arrivals here in PA bless us with about the roads, the timeliness of contractors, or the tastes, sexual proclivities and education of us poor benighted locals is ironic in the highest degree. Yes, the roads are rough and full of gravel. Shoot--don't those folks know anything about research? Just put a freakin' bluegrass album on! Yes, we do prefer the opposite sex. I mean, you take that "BrokeAss Mountain" movie that all the yuppies are yammering about. I mean, I thought about it some, and I was thinking, give the guys the benefit of the doubt---all that time up there alone and all. But then I found out these "cowboys" were really sheepherders!

I mean, do I have to draw a picture??

About the education, I guess I don't know what to say to some union trashman about how he's improved the gene pool up around here, when all us poor fools actually went to school and learned to read and write and cypher and he's brought up kids that can't survive without a cellphone planted on their ear, where they spend every waking hour talking about American Idol. Eessh.

And yes, anyone stupid enough to believe that they will see any part of a contractor during deer season deserves to be left standing on a cold concrete slab looking sadly at a half-framed house.

But hey! You ever hear me saying any of that? Of course not! Doesn't mean I like it. It just means that I've been around the block enough times to know that saying something isn't going to change much. We're in the maw of the great American Consumption--death by burbicide. God grant me the strength, wisdom and courage to run like hell in the opposite direction when the going gets that tough.

So anyway, the reviewer didn't like my ending much--she was bemoaning how a real bluegrasser should have written an ending that would reject and smash the mainstream idiots that bluegrassers despise and hate.

If they really do, that is. Hell, some of the guys that I know and play with work in East Orange and drive new cars to their office jobs. Lots, actually. Many of them actually moved east. People do that from time to time. The whole romantic ideal of bluegrassers as toothless rural idiots, well, it's just not so. Some live in the city!

Actually, the idea of the note not played points right in the direction she thought I didn't go, but that's okay. Not everyone can read between the lines. So, hoping to gain that coveted fourth---or even fifth!---star, I offer the following treatments of various endings that might please our erudite reviewer:

A. Finding that playing nice and being a gentleman avails him not, Chat steals an F-116, hires Ty to fly it and nukes Hugh's headquarters in NY. Then he flies on down to the other Pigeon Forge, meets Dolly, who, moved to tears about his plight, sets him up and allows him to retire and play until his fingers fall off.

B. Seeing rapacious development engulfing the land he loves, Chat breaks into Oprah's show while taping and holds her hostage until she agrees to allow him to appeal to the American public to save the county. The American public, however, being broke from Katrina, Iraq and mindless consumption, annoyed with Chat's accent and his swarthy, outdoorsy look, sleepy from watching American Idol and secretly uncomfotable about the whole BrokeAss Mountain thing, doesn't send him a cent, and Oprah's popularity crashes, along with the hope of an itinerant novelist in Eastern Pennsylvania who, after years of scratching along on middling reviews and the odd insult from union trashman, had finally managed to get her to read his multicultural book about bluegrass. *Snort!*

C. Chat and the boys enlist the help of the dregs of rural society, and in a scene reminiscent of the barricade scene from Les Mis, push the urban interlopers into the sea, reclaim New York and the environs, and begin a bluegrass utopia on earth where all men are equal, the woman slightly less so, except for bass players and accordianists.

D. While everyone is arguing about this and that, a fluke burst of radiation from an Iranian underground test revitalizes a fleet of vikings, and they burst on the scene and hack and slew in an east coast version of something like "Beowulf" meets "Baywatch." (and hey---I thought of that last thing waaaaaaay before the capital one commercials!)

So, whadda think of me now? Huh?
Well--gotta run. It's time for my yoga class, and from there I have to check the fwang schway on my deerstands.

Bet she won't think that's too PC or mainstream!

Bluegrass Humor

2006-01-16T21:27:00.000-05:00

One of life's little mysteries is why some things you do in a negligent sort of way turn out to be wildly popular, while more serious endeavors meet with, well, a sort of big fat cosmic yawn. So all these years I've been working on being a serious writer like Steinbeck, Bellow, or Buckwald, and some little fluff pieces I cranked out in about seven minutes on the perils of fatherhood just made people giddy with delight. So when I wrote Bluegrass, I figured I should listen to what P.T. Barnum said and give 'em what they want, which was at least a little humor every other page or so. Or, well, at least every couple chapters. That and lots of wild sex.
But I knew my mom was gonna read the book, so I went easy on the wild sex.

That got me thinking about the whole concept of bluegrass humor. Bluegrassers are a pretty easy-going lot on a good day, and they do poke fun at themselves, but deep down there's a lot of players that take themselves vvvvvvvvvvvery seriously. It's sort of like making fun of your own dog. That's fine and dandy. But let somebody else waltz in there and say your dog isn't fit to take a poop and you might just have a fight on your hands.
So I was at a shindig yesterday, playing this and that, and I got to back up a serious yodeling cowgirl on bass. I mean, the words "yodel" and "serious" just don't even belong in the same sentence, but there she was, hitting notes I didn't even know existed and going like a house afire. Some people liked it. The good news is that you'll seldom find bluegrassers with kidney stones. I think I was working on one, but that high lonesome is better than lithotripsey for busting them suckers up.

What I've noticed is that some of the second and third generation players like me have a more playful attitude about the music. I mean, hell, we know it ain't mainstream, but it sure is fun. So one thing I just got done writing is our own version of the Skynard song which I call "Sweet Home Pennsylvania", because, let's face it, Kentucky and Tennessee get all the good songs and we don't even have one. So here are the words, out of the key of E, and I think they're pretty dang good ones, even if they did result from a weekend of excessive beer consumption and sleep deprivation:
Sweet Home Pennsylvania, where the sky is often blue
Sweet Home Pennsylvania, Lord I'm coming home to you.
IN Harrisburg we got a governor
(hoo hoo hoo!)
Lord he does what he needs to do
Now our governor don't bother us.
Does your governor bother you? Tell me true

Chorus

And then you finish up with

I never heard Neil Young sing about her
And I never heard ole Neil put her down
That's 'cause ole Neil he really likes us
We're so much fun to be around....

So yeah. It won't win any big prizes, but I think it's gonna sneak onto the Rambler hit list, right up there with Petticoat Junction, One Meatball and Fishin' Blues.
Now I know some of the old-timers might think that's sacriligeous, that you should only play fast songs about blasting the bejesus out of your wife with a .44, especially if she has long blonde hair. Hell, first thing I would do if I was one of those bluegrass beauties is get me some grecian formula for women and dye my hairs black. And I think I would avoid walking down stairs, too.

Anyway, the beauty of the music is the fact that Bill struck a right good amount of jazz into the stew when he cooked up the bluegrass recipe, and as everyone knows, when you'r a jazz player, it's not called a mistake.
It's improv hehe. So as long as somebody's listening, and if music be the staff of life, then play on, MacDuff!
And flights of blonde-haired bluegrass angels sing thee to thy rest in a comfy Barkolounger chair.

Bluegrass Dilemnas

2006-01-11T22:09:00.000-05:00

Well, you have to admit, that's a snappy title, and I'm sure something will come to me about the tough choices bluegrassers have to make concerning their avocation. I have to call it that because most of us don't make any money at this to speak of, which is really a clever code that I hope the IRS doesn't understand.

Let's face it, despite the fact that traditional bluegrass nuts* are generous to a fault with the things that they have, they are equally famous for their frugality. Where else would you see an old gas stove strapped to the back of a '72 Chevy pick-up with a brace of twenty-pounders on the running boards, while the operator grills venison chops and brags that the whole shootin' match, steaks, truck, stove and all only "costed 150 bucks. And a bullet." **

Be that as it may, there are approximately 17,347 bluegrass festivals in the US each year, some as small as a church picnic and some almost as big as.....ummmm, Akron. So it's my bet that somebody out there is making money at this thing. Oh, maybe not the big bucks that Darth or Barth or whatever his name is--you know, the bald guy that has to wear that big hat? But there is cash to be had, and of course those wonderful grilled venison chops with sauteed shitaki mushrooms, baby carrots and pearl onions served with a reduction of basalmic vinegar, dago red and a dash of cajun spice.

But on to the dilemnas, which of course is derived from the latin "dile" meaning to call someone,"mnas", a combinationof "m," which is latin for "very" and finally "nas", meaning "now", or, literaly, "call somebody smart right quick." And of course you want to call someone when there are tough choices to make, when things are really hard and you have to make a decision which is a tough decision. Even George Bush knows that.

So let's say you smell the venison steak up there in the third paragraph just when somebody like TJ and Bob Lundy show up with Dan and Mike Paisley right there and Donnie Eldridge wanders over and then they say, "Say, boys, lets play a few."

You 'd want to call somebody, right? But you wouldn't be able to, because you'd be too busy having a dilemna. That's one warning sign of those things. Another one is somebody wandering around jabbering in latin. Anyhow, I bet you a dollar you'd play anyhow and somebody else would eat those steaks right in front of you, because you can eat that kind of steak any old time, but a session with the Duke, Earl, Protector, Director and the Son of Grass, all at once? Shooooee---eeee! That's rare.

Like the steak. Hell, you know you'll still be hungry when the sun comes up, anyway, and the guy with the truck'll have eggs and homemade bacon cooking next day, and you'll get you some.

So, yeah. That's one dilemna. I was going to write about drinking beer and playing, but that's about as hard as drinking beer and fishing. Or whether to go over here and jam or go over there and jam, but it really doesn't make any difference, because if you do it right you'll play every square inch of the campground at some point or another.

I'd recommend you follow your ears first and then your nose. Oh, and make your bed first thing when you get there. There is nothing sweeter than a soft and ready bed after an all-night jam.

Unless it's the smell of coffee and homemade bacon being fired up on a crisp summer morning.

*"Nother good name for a bluegrass band. Hey--is anybody writing this stuff down out there?

**There's supposed to be a question mark in there someplace, but it looks wierd. So that's two dilemnas and I don't have to change the title. nanner nanner.

Bluegrass Superheros---it's all in the family

2006-01-07T22:24:00.000-05:00

Well, on a recent walk-about I found myself thinking about the "icons of 'grass"*, which of course includes the father of us all, Bill. What started the whole thing was the thought that almost everybody I know on the bluegrass beat is defined by the instruments they play and not the jobs they do for the other 100 hours a week.

It's exactly like a family: you see a small number of them almost every day, then a few times a year you all get together and do something wild and then talk about it for the next ten weeks or months. Who wastes time talking about Chuck, the actuary, when he is also the guy that grills the best venison in the universe or the only one that ever survived a tumble down a large hill in a Porta-potty during some heavy weather?

So there's a guy that trains ferrets or something, and another one that works in the death room at the local hospital where they wait to hear lil bells ring when an almost-dead guy twitches his big toe, but we don't call them "Ferret-trainer boy" or "dead-ringer". They're "Al, the mandolin player" or "Moe, that guy that used to play bass but is playing guitar now. But he should go back to the bass."
That's because, in the bluegrass world, you don't really care what a person does on the outside.

In the military, they would call that "being in country." Forget about CAT scans and stress ratios; forget about the number of paperclips in a gross. What you want to know is, "What year is that Martin? And, oh, you guys got a can opener? I got some Vienna Sausages here that are just beggin' to be fried up, and a jug of syrup to go with 'em!"

So I seriously know a guy that is an advise councillor for iguanas, and another guy that makes motorcycles from recycled beverage containers, and a gal that makes 20 foot-tall "installations" made of those blown out truck tires you see laying all over the roads. They are, respectively:

mad dobro man

the spoon-playing spooonster,

and the yodeling gypsy.

Maybe all these nick-names started with our "Father of Bluegrass", Bill. Hell, every sport and genre has it's nick-names: The Splendid Splinter. The Master of Disaster. The Minister of Defense. The Bear. The Lion, the witch, and the...no..wait. Scratch that last one, that there is the movie list from last Sunday hehe.

Anyway, in bluegrass we have the Father of Bluegrass, Bill, and the King of Bluegrass, Jimmy, (rest their souls!) and I suspect that if you hunted around you could find out who were the Prince, Princess, Duke and Earl of Grass, for which I would nominate Del, Alicia, and then for the last two either Dan Paisley (with the entire Paisley/Lundy Court) or the Reno brothers, in either order.

Then, I guess you'd need some bluegrass knights, and a bunch of bluegrass peasants, and maybe even a Pope of bluegrass, if you were really going for historical accuracy. I'm not sure what that would look like, but since Doc Stanley looked pretty good in the movie with that hood and all, I think he might have the whole pope thing pretty well wrapped up.

I expect you could get the peasants pretty cheap---promise them a wrist-band, maybe some sausage gravy, and they'd come, I betcha.

The knights, though, have me a little concerned. First of all, when I was playing chess, I remember the knights and the cardinals never got on too well, so you might have to watch out for the way you schedule stage times and all that if you had knights and cardinals on the same bill. Then, too, knights often have horses, and you know what that means. Besides, we're still trying to figure out what our policy is on dogs, especially those frisbee dogs with the bandana tried around their necks.

What are they on there for, anyway? Damn dog can't wipe his own nose, and the only other guy in the room is the dog's owner, so what's up with that?

Anyhow, seems to me that, in an aristocratic sort of way, we're all related in the bluegrass world. What village can operate properly without their very own idiot? After all, some of us were put here to make the rest of us look good. Every one of us fills our own little spot.

Sure, deep down I know I'll never be the arch-Duke of grass, but I still have hopes. Maybe a small town needs a mayor to buck them up and raise their hopes--I'm your man! Or perhaps they'll open up some new categories, like "Protector of 'Grass," or maybe the "Director of 'Grass."

I'd be good at that one.
I'd set in the gate when they had their festival, and they'd say, "Well, where's that bluegrass music?"

And by cracky, I'd direct 'em!

Easy as pie, and I don't think Directors need to get horses.

*I have no idea why I put that asterix up there. But that word asterix is pretty funny hhee.**

** I just remembered. That would be a good name for a bluegrass band.
You could even have uniforms or something!

Bluegrass dictionary

2006-01-01T19:58:00.000-05:00

Bluegrass has a langauge all its own. Here are some commonly used terms you can sprinkle into your bluegrass conversation to sound as authentic as a died-in-the-wool hill billy picker.

Ale: sickness of any sort.
"I drank a pint of shine and I was miserable ale." (See also chaw)

a-tall: Not any.
"He got no brains a-tall."

Blonded: Inablity to see.
" He got chaw in his eye and got blonded."

Chaw: tobacco product meant to be chewed and spit.
"He swallered his chaw and got ale."

Far: a chemical reaction producing visible light and radiant energy that is most commonly the result of oxidation of organic compounds.
"Don't sit in the far too long---it'll wreck yer pants."

Haint: a ghost, or not having the ability to do something.
"He haint goin' make that curve."

Keifer (ki-fer) an individual that "borrows" but never "returns."
"Don't loan him no pick. He's the biggest keifer that ever walked the earth."

Kin:one's relatives, alternately the ability to do something.
"I know we're kin; even Ray Charles kin see that."

pickin': playing any stringed instrument
"If you keep pickin' that geetar like that, son, it'll never heal."

Rat cheer:in this very location.
"Y'all can set that keg rat cheer were we kin reach it.

*Shine: a clear, potent, home-made alcohol with a proof of 180 made from corn, fruit, potato peels or any other organic material. One pint is usually enough to reduce 20 men to raving drunkeness and fire-sitting behaviors.

Showin' yer ass: behaving in a boorish and reprehensible manner.
"He drank a gallon of shine*, busted his geetar and showed his ass."

Spacial: unique or worthy of note
"That gal rat cheer is somethin' spacial all right!"

win: movement of air caused by unequal heating of the atmosphere.
"Dad blame it's hot. Haint no win a-tall."

wire: a specific place
"We wasn't goin' no wire spacial."

Medical Tips for Bluegrassers

2005-12-28T15:38:00.000-05:00

Medical Tips for Bluegrass Fans

The popular image of bluegrass fans among those who know no better is that we are a pack of banjo-picking, sister-marrying, toothless idiots with absolutely no taste or decorum.
Of course nothing could be further from the truth. Not all of us play the banjo. But anyway, the world of bluegrass, especially the really really really neat world of bluegrass festivals, brings with it a unique blend of medical and survival hazards that civilians might not be prepared to deal with. To avoid head, back, and heart-aches---which are all well and good in bluegrass songs but not so hot when it is you yourself that has them---I offer the following list of tips, the result of 30 years of mis-spent youth (or “Utes!”, as my New York friends would say).

Never Trust a Can. Sure, it looks like a delicious, frosty cold can of Neiweilers. But more than once I have seen it turn out to be somebodies spit-can. You don't want to know what a chug of Skoal tastes like (although the spearmint has piquant aftertaste much like, ummmmm...nuclear spearmint, I guess)

Find South! There is nothing more awesome than arriving at a campground in the cool of a summer's eve, pitching your tent, icing down the beer (see page 138 of the novel for more of this stuff), then picking all night. The goodness of that scene pales next to the pain of awaking at 9 am after picking until 5am, baked alive in a tent which is about 128 degrees, with your head pounding and your mouth tasting like a nasty combination of rancid peanut butter, moonshine, deershit and English Leather. So do yourself a huge favor; figure out which way is south and then camp near a tree so you can't see that way. Morning shade is worth a million bluegrass bucks on a miserably hot summer's day, which is one of the three possibities for bluegrass festivals, the other two being freezing cold and driving rain.
Keep That Med Pack Stocked!
No veteran bluegrasser would set foot in a campground without the following meds: 1. Advil (the 100 pack at least). Useful for headaches, sore backs and legs from standing for 20 hours picking, carpal tunnel from same, twisted ankles because only a pansy would use a flashlight at night to get from one jam to the next, and other physical maladies brought on by the rigors of camp life.
2. Bromoseltzer. Now you can bravely accept a taste of the world's hottest chili or some home-made dandelion wine, which incidentally tastes like, ummmmm....nuclear dandelions.
3. Sunscreen,because when it's sunny out, it's really really sunny.
4. Preparation H. For when you're all set up and a bunch of bad pickers set up next to you. Or for the chili and wine in #2 above.
5. Rogaine, in case some country-western hat singer like Barth or Darth or whatever his name is sets up next to them. That bald shit is catching, and don't let no doctor tell you otherwise.
6. Ointment. hehe. I don't know what for--I just think that word is funny.

Never Sit for Long in a Campfire Despite the illusion engendered by eating nuclear cherries laced with shine, your butt is not made of asbestos, and your pants won't be improved much by the fire (or "Far", as some of us say.)

Finally,
Don't Drink and Drive....Golfcarts
They may look cute and all, but you can still do a world of hurt on some unsuspecting camper when you run 'em over with one. Best thing to do is to get a caddy to drive one around behind you, so you can use your 5 iron or your banjo on any particular song.

Coming soon: Festival Sports and the sports that love to play. The sports.

Howdie, Campers!

2005-12-27T17:28:00.000-05:00

The net is a strange--sometimes a hyperstrange-- environment for a guy that grew up on Dick Tracey, Mr. Wizard and Gunsmoke, but I've met wonderful folks on-line, and of course love the freedom and randominity of the whole idea. I hope those of you who have already purchased Bluegrass have enjoyed the read. It was my humble hope to capture some of the "Wild-Wild West" realities that make up the unterverld* of the bluegrass subculture, which tends to be an amazing amalgam of computer geeks, deisel mechanics, doctors, truck drivers, cleaning ladies, all melded together by the music, oh, and especially by the musicians of this most excellent genre.
I was at an old-time C&W concert last month, playing,working sound, drinking beer and talking with the pedal steel and guitar players that were kind of my idols, or at least idoletes, back in the 70's. These guys still play, and they play pretty damn well, considering they have to jockey all that gear. (I carried one guy's amp up three flights of stairs. Them things is seriously heavy. One of my arms is still longer than the other, which is fine as long as I am walking sideways to the left on a hill.) Anyway, I dug that they were still playing, still into the whole band dynamics thing, which is in itself a sort of study in randomosity. Then, when they were on break, I asked the guitar player if he wanted to join us on a tune or two.
That's common courtesy in bluegrass circles, at least in circles of good breeding, you might say.
He said, " Awww, thanks so much. I always loved bluegrass songs!"
"Great!" I said. "So you'll play?"
And he said, "Hell, no! We'd play that if we could, believe me! But we can't, so just get back up there and rip one out for us."
I tell all of you this story for many reasons. First, because I can, and because it was suuuuuuuuch a relief to get this lil book out there that I have written not at all the last three months. AH! ALso, I'd like to try and remind America that we are suffering death by 'burbicide, and all this local loveliness is being scrubbed out by some guys that might be called, oh, I don't know, Maurey or Howard or maybe even John Madden.
I always admired that turkey he had, though.
Anyway, I thought that the absolute best thing any able-bodied and right thinking American can do is go out and hire, study, talk to, walk with, skate, bike, sleep with or adopt a bluegrass musician.
Here's ten reasons why this is a good idea:

(We're going in order and hoping to reach ten. If Letterman wants it, he can retype it hisself. I'm tired of his s*#t!)
1. They sleep on the ground voluntarily.
2. They eat sparingly and consume a wide array of animal and vegetable products and bi-products.
3. They often give you the whole bed, the bathroom, the entire kitchen, the whole....everything! Every weekend in the summer!
4. Two words: SHine!
5. They are very good with their hands.
6. Bluegrassers never steal. **
7. When they have jobs, they work hard.
8. They are extremely low maintainance. BLuegrassers have been know to survive days with only rancid slim-jims and skunky beer, long as "them strangs hold!".
9. They are known for their fanatic devotion to hospitality, even if it kills you, like when you have been peacefully sawing logs after being on your feet for thirty hours, all snug like a bug in a rug asleep and buried under twelve feet of comforter on a night that's freakin' twenty degrees, and they bravely find you and wake you up and dig you out and then say that, seeing as how you're already awake and grumpy and pissed, you might as well sing that sad song you just learned about being cold and grumpy and pissed. The really fast one.
10. They songs about real people with real care and real heart and soul. And they always have a cold beer.^***

* Fake German spoken by Madeline Kahn in "Young Frankin----STEEEN!", it means "under, ummmmmm...verld". hhe.

**They will not keep a $40,000 instrument you left in their campsite after drinking number 4 above, even if you have no idea where it is, and they know you know. They will, however, give an old lady 40 bucks for the same instrument, even if she is eating catfood, thinking, no doubt, that they may soon be able to enjoy that same experience.

^Yeah yeah--that's eleven things. So what? There's three kinds of people in this world--the ones that can count and those who can't. He. (Con't in *** below)****
***Unless it's that bunch up there in 8 above. But warm Piels ain't that bad.

If you have Zantac.

****Beats me. I never put footnotes on footnotes before. But I expect that is what people have come to expect from a scholar such as I. Am.

Tune in next week for Bluegrass Medical tips from a dad-blamed expert!

A Sneek Peek into 'Bluegrass'

2005-12-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

From the time he was two, Sterling Schiffler loved to read aloud. It came as naturally to him as birdsong, as smooth as a cool, mysterious, foggy fall morning, as definite as cedars burdened by shawls of snow, reeling ahead like ranks of defeated soldiers in the winter sun.

By the time he was five, he was a rapacious reader, big news in his hometown of Crisfield, Maryland, where most everybody either ran, repaired, built, stored, crewed, painted or stored boats or hauled oyster shells for fill or number one jimmies up to Baltimore for the pittance they gave you for risking your life.

Naturally the town was proud when he graduated at sixteen, the youngest ever in the history of the high school. They were equally proud when he was accepted at the same age to Yale, and pleased as pie when he graduated in three years with a soc degree and married a rich girl from Towsend.

His grandmother was mostly Lenape, and she was not so sanguine. She called his wife, not so secretly, “the trickster,” and said that there was something about her heart that was not right. Sterling tried his best to ignore his grandmother’s advice, but eventually there were two truths even he could not overlook.

First, he was unable to support her in the style to which she was accustomed. Even though she worked a bit organizing parties and functions¾at which she was particularly apt—she was always broke, even when Sterling started commuting to Baltimore to earn more money.

Equally unfortunate was her discovery that she preferred her own sex over the opposite. They divorced, but she refused to leave Crisfield, leaving Sterling with nothing to do but move. He could not bear it to see them everywhere, and at all the best functions, too. So he answered the first ad he found, for a job as a program specialist serving mentally retarded adults. The job was in a place called Pigeon Forge, Pennsylvania, just on the fringe of the coal region, from what he could make of the map.

He was scared and upset, but determined to make the best of it. He was determined that she would not see him hang his head.

Want to read more?...buy or borrow 'Bluegrass' today!