There was a time, very long ago when I took vocal lessons, sang solos and harmonies in the chorus, and was auditioning in the city- a Broadway hopeful. As I said, that was a long time ago, and I gave up my dream of performing and tried to live a normal life..(LOL)

In 2005, I did something bold, and went on vacation by myself. I went on a Jam Band cruise out of Long Beach California- the Xingolati cruise. It changed my perspective on life. I wanted to bring the vibe back east with me and considered band management and event promotion as a way to accomplish this. I was trying to find my way by networking with local bands online and in person when a close friend told me about this awesome singer/songwriter he knew, and how I should maybe try to help him. (Nevermind, I had no idea what I was doing!) Besides, how good could he be?

So I met R.L. Hargis over at my friends one snowy night, and we made an impression on one another, although it was just in passing. When we met again, he gave me a copy of his first disk, Pocket Fuzz and bits of Tobacco. I really was not expecting much. I put the disk on in the car on the way home and was blown away. I knew he really had something.( I started harmonizing along with the CD secretly in the car. ) I wanted to find some gigs for this man and his upbeat/melancholy/ poetic/ clever music.

Well, when he would play at peoples homes or at The White City Festival, or the Trenton Day festival, I would be singing harmony quietly, under my breath. I dont even remember when I brought it out the first time for him to hear. It was a gradual thing until we were visiting his mothers home in Selma, North Carolina. His step dad Johnny, a blue grass musician, heard me sing with him and went on and on about how much the harmony changed the sound of the songs. I finally got the approval I felt I needed to join him and make his music with him. He was asked to play on an Open Mic style live webcast at Touch the Sky Studio in Pa. I offered to come with him and do harmony, and we started rehearsing for the first time. We played there about every month for awhile. That was the beginning. Now if he plays certain songs without me it sounds strange.

Rodney gave me my first harmonica on my 49th birthday. Again insecurity took over and it took me almost a year to play in front of people. The key is, if youre willing to put yourself out there, people admire that. You dont have to be great, you just have to love what youre doing. And that I Do...

So the great Zimmer Man released his first Christmas album on Tuesday, October 13th. and I'll admit, I'm not a big fan of Christmas music, but I don't understand why so many people are getting so bent outta shape about it. So the bard wants to have a little fun and sing a few carols, what's the big deal? Me, I like the idea. Sure, I'll buy it, and I'll probably even listen to it a time or two, but in no way will I take it seriously. I promise.

Baseball season is winding down and it really makes me sad. Not because winter's coming, but because there'll be no more baseball to watch, and that bums me out. Few things in life are quite as much fun as kicking back and watching a game, studying the subtle nuances, getting to know the catcher's signals, trying to guess what's going on in the mind of the pitcher, watching the batter strengthen his resolve when he's down 0 and 2 in the count, is 0 for 3 on the day and is just trying his damndeest not to go home hitless. The crack of the bat, the sound of the crowds, the faces of the kids who are in utter awe of the whole thing... there's something just so perfeect about it all. And for a musician who carefully crafts setlists (sometimes) and a music lover who can rattle off all sorts of information about setlists for the Grateful Dead or Dylan or Townes Van Zandt, baseball is perfect because it's loaded with statistics and numerological anomolies and no two games (just like no two shows) are ever the same. David Gans wrote a short essay on the similarities between baseball games and Grateful Dead shows. Check it out! I've been wanting to expand on his original idea for a long time because there's even more to the analogy (the whole idea of going to a city for 2 or 3 days, then hitting the road to go to another city for 2 or 3 days, then hitting the road to go to yet another city for 2 or 3 days, etc.). But there are no rainouts of Dead shows...

But I digress... The point is that I was looking at an unspectacular drawing of a particularly unspectacular building the other day when the design of the whole thing blew me away. Imagine, if you will, our anceient ancestors who were building their houses with the walls and a flat roof. Who was the first person to figure out that a sloped roof was a better idea because the rain wouldn't gather and leaks would be less likely to form and grow? Whoever it was, that person was probably mocked in the town as he built his slanty-roofed home, and people gathered from miles around just to laugh and joke about the idiot with the slopy-roof house, and the newspapers, which were chiseled into stone by ancient scribes, and delivered far and wide by paper boys (similar to Arnold on the Flintstones) who would throw the paper and hit the house and shattered the glass windows (had glass windows existed at the time), and the ancient Internet would be abuzz with news of the slanty-roof madman...



until it started to rain.

So what does this all mean, and why do I feel compelled to tie it all together? Nothing, and I don't. Take it anyway you want it...