I Heard This Happening

Weezer tour bus crashes. Heard a lot of sirens and all this morning early. Had no idea what was going on and I had forgotten it until I read the news.

Not music I listen to, but Alan likes them. Glad the injuries weren't serious.

Here is an update from the band website.

Steve Earle

And the Del McCoury band playing The Mountain

Thx to a good Facebook and MySpace friend for this one...you know who you are.
I will get Macro Monday done asap/

Wanna Get Your Patriotism all Fired Up?

Listen to the Cactus Cuties sing the Star Spangled Banner.
Thanks to Teri Conroy for posting this on Facebook.

Vermont State Fair concert

The girls got their pictures taken with everybody, I swear. That is Caleb, Trent's bus driver, on top. On the bottom is Emerson Drive's bass player, Arlo Gilliam, who was out in the crowd between shows and was kind enough to allow a photo. I did not get my picture taken with anybody....I was behind the camera (and quite happy to be).


The fairgrounds was beautiful at night and I took some video of the lights of the rides as they moved against the sky.


E-Drive and the night sky

Liz's story

Here is Lizzie's tale of how she ended up with all access passes and getting to talk to Trent.Tomlinson





And here is a picture of the calf she named after him.

Trent Tomlinson and Emerson Drive

At the Vermont State Fair...which is a really neat fair, not at all huge and crazy and intimidating like the NYS Fair.

Joe Hash

Joe Hash is one of the many wonderful musicians we have discovered on MySpace. He also wrote Stay, a song for anyone who has ever loved an extra special dog.

I have found so much music that I love on MySpace that Ialmost never listen to the radio any more. I just find artists I like, buy their songs from ITunes or somewhere similar, and listen to them on my IPod or burn CDs for the car or the barn sterio. I happened upon the Roosters in just that fashion and found my favorite song, Kill the Mullet, which as it happens is not about a fish.


Joe Hash sings "The H Word" at The Moonshine Café

Senior moment

Who is that handsome boy playing tympani?

And singing in the chorus?

If you don't know, don't feel bad...evidently the band director doesn't either. There are three sections in our high school band, concert, wind ensemble and jazz band. It is a time honored tradition at our school for seniors to be acknowledged during their final concert. In fact Alan wanted to drop band this year and fill that slot in his schedule with something more useful for college. I encouraged him to stay in so he could enjoy his moment of glory as a senior with 8 years of percussion behind him. He did so.

Then last night, the director who shall remain nameless, gushed all over how wonderful the seniors in jazz band were. Raved long and loud about the seniors in wind ensembles. They took bows and got buckets of applause and I am sure were delighted with the attention they received.
And then, completely, totally (and unfixably-this is their LAST ever high school concert after all) forgot the three seniors in the concert band.

We waited and waited for their special moment but, oops, no such luck. They just filed offstage unnoticed. I won't get into the way this particular director has taken what used to be a fun music program and made it technically excellent, yet miserably boring, (instrument of torture comes to mind) for the audience. He likes that weird kinda music and he is the boss. We can suffer through a few hours of really painful music a couple times a year; we are after all adults and all....but to slight kids who have been in band for so many years, since before he was even hired. Well, to me that is inexcusable.

The highlight of the night was wonderful though. Alan's good friends' younger brother (you didn't hear about the helping with the sneaking of a piano into their house for him for Christmas this year because I had to keep Alan's part in that operation a secret for obvious reasons) COMPOSED one of the numbers last night! And it was awesome! One of the two best pieces all night. Lively, dramatic, exciting! (Everything the rest of the program wasn't...no slight to the kids, they play very well. It is just the directors taste in music that hurts.) The young composer got a standing ovation and he richly deserved it!
Then he went on to accompany the mixed chorus on piano completely from memory! Wow!

Anyhow, here is MY salute to 8 years in band. Hey, Alan, we won't forget and you or Anne or Rickie. As always you looked and sounded great last night. Good job!

Hal Ketchum

Thanks to brother number one Liz and I were able to get tickets to his concert at the Egg last night, sort of as an early birthday present for her from me. It was a great concert; we had a terrific time....but it was a little weird in a way. Most of the audience, there is no doubt in my mind, take the same multi-vitamin that I do...you know, the kind that are sort of grey only they call them silver. Add to that the fact that the Egg is a very genteel venue. There were ushers and rules and all that stuff. However, then you had to factor in that Hal and his band play very powerful rock and roll, blues-type country music. Everyone sat very quietly through each song as if at a performance of a nice Beethoven sonata.

Then as soon as each song ended the crowd erupted in whistles and screams and barrages of clapping. After the last song there was at least a five minute standing ovation (which achieved the desired result of us getting to hear Small Town Saturday Night, without which the evening would have been somehow lacking.) My favorite song was Past the Point of Rescue, which has always been one that I really liked even before I knew who Hal was. We also really like a new (to us) song, Yesterday's Gone.

It was a great night, worth the insanity of hitting exit 24 at rush hour (remind me to tell you about the loonies in 2 little cars that squirted through between us and four solid lines of flying traffic. . It was like a billion-dollar thrill ride in some macabre theme park. (Thank God for Lizzie's youthful reaction times.) I felt exactly like those folks you see in advertisements for the world's biggest roller coaster, white-knuckled-clingingto-the-door and all. I had my eyes shut most of the way. Liz wanted to close hers too.....however it seemed as if one of us should keep them open...and she was the one driving.)

Even the time we spent waiting for the show to begin was entertaining, thanks to some folks sitting behind us...we now know more than we could ever ask about how comfortable men's undies can be for women and several other topics that extended my cultural outlook immeasurably..

Guitar player Kenny Grimes

Bassist Keith Carper

***Pictures were taken with the little camera. An email to the Egg said some folks allow cameras, some don't. I figured the little one was more discrete in case Hal was a don't kind of guy. Of course he wasn't. Wish I had taken the big one...as you can imagine from the quality of the photos.

Here is a review
The reviewer kind of whined about Hal's story telling, but Liz and I loved it. He was so very funny. Little things like the wonders of modern technology in the studio and liquid song enhancement, along with tales of his youth here in upstate NY

Video from some other year at the Egg

Another shot, also showing drummer Nico Leophonte

****My humble apologies to anyone who read this while I was milking this morning. I got up at four to check a cow that calved last night and I simply wasn't in any way capable of coherent editing...not that I am now really, but at least I can see.

Garth Brooks benefit concert

Liz and I stayed up past our bedtime to listen to the concert Garth gave to benefit California wildfire victims. We heard some of our favorite songs, but others were preempted for commercial breaks, which seemed interminable....as in one song, ten commercials. We are about to give up and go to bed when Friends in Low Places came on. We both stood there waiting to see if he did the third verse.

He did, so all was redeemed. It was worth waiting through all the commercials.
It made me sad to read that he really means to retire after finishing the series of benefit concerts. I hope the lure of the stage proves too strong though and he continues to perform at least occasionally. One of my dearest friends always meant to take me to see him, but passed away before we got the chance. I have always regretted that we didn't manage it.......Beaches of Cheyenne came out and I heard it for the first time on the way home from a dog training outing with her. I couldn't wait to ask her what she thought of it, as I liked it immediately. Sadly I never got the chance to ask that question either as I never saw her again. It was a very hard time...at that point in my life I had never lost anyone so close to me and the pain was darned near unendurable... that song will probably always bring me poignant memories. (and of course it was one of the ones they cut in half for commercials.)

Today was a good day though. We began the day laughing ourselves half sick over I don't remember what and ended up laughing over that third verse. I guess there are worse things than a day bracketed with laughter (even though in the middle of it we had to clean out a cave in of bridged feed in our grain bin, a long, miserable job, which involved hammers, mallets, screwdrivers, shovels and four of us...ugh.)

Honorable fingerpain (no T)

You can't see the grooves that occupied these fingers last night, but they still sting a bit. Yesterday was our annual either too early for 2008 or just a shade late for '07 brother, sister and kids and cousins Christmas gathering. Part of the tradition is that next younger brother and I play some guitar. He is good, I am awful, but if I play real quietly no one says too much.

We played Leo Kottke's Pamela Brown
John Prine's Paradise
John Denver's Country Roads
Danny's Song

Mike played Amazing Grace.....I watched. It was beautiful. He is so good I get cold chills.

We played Coming into Los Angeles, which we used to play with the band. You would think I would remember the chords, but I had to watch his fingers and could not quite keep up.

Then there was LA Freeway...same situation with the chords. (I should really, really, really practice more, but every time I sit down with a guitar, people feel that if I have free time I should spend it talking to them rather than tuning it and learning new songs...so I have more or less given up.... whine, whine...)

It was a very happy time. There was talk of doing it more than once a year and I hope we do. He let me play his best guitar (mine stayed home as the neck isn't quite right. He plays a lot of songs with a capo....put a capo on mine and all she does is buzz). Because I was playing his best one, he played his 12-string, so his fingers were almost as bad off as mine. I have perhaps the best pair of brothers to ever be created. Dang, I love em.

Dan Fogelberg passed away

An incredibly talented man, who wrote and performed a number of my favorite songs, including Run for the Roses, Leader of the Band, Same Old Lang Syne, and so many other great ones. Prostate cancer claimed his life at only 56.

Dog Song

No, not the Gary Paulsen book of the same title (although it is a good one, if not funny like Wood Song).

This is an actual dog song I stumbled upon on MySpace. I can't remember how I became friends with the fellow who wrote and sings it, but I was clicking along yesterday, hit his profile, and it began to play. I stopped clicking...frozen...listening. (If you aren't a dog person don't bother.)
But if you are you will get it...and it will get you I promise.


The girls got it when I played it for them when they came home from school last night. (Mike got some big hugs I can tell you.) The only way I could figure out to link to it is to put it on my MySpace page....so go there, click on the music player and listen to "Stay," by Joe Hash.
It is the perfect anthem for all the old dogs out there, past and present, and all the dog folks who love them.

***(There are some fine dogs whose folks have links over in the side bar, such as Feather and Flounder, Lucky,
Shasta, Cubby, Sugar, Fat Buddy
plus
Dog blogs, blogs with dogs,
this is by no means all the dogs and dog folks, but you get the idea)

Todd Fritsch

Video

***there is just something about the kind of bands that play county fairs....

Should it finally materialize (off topic, but what the heck)

I will immediately listen to the singing on this video....all at once and without waiting a week for it to load. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs, (which the guys watch and which I can't seem to avoid watching even though I am really trying to read the latest JA Jance) is the only person I have ever heard sing the National Anthem without straining for a single, solitary note. All the way through, beautiful and painless. I could listen all day. Way to go, Mike.

Todd Fritsch Cheyenne City Limits

Every now and then I write the Farm Side about barn music, (and the wars that sometimes accompany it)...that is, what we listen to while we partake of the staggering ennui produced by milking the same cows over and over again every twelve hours infinitely (or so it sometimes seems). We are a musical bunch, some talented (not me) some just appreciative (yeah) and there is always something playing; Jason Aldean, Kieth Anderson, Trent Wilmon or sometimes George Strait. And sometimes Queen, very loud, if no one is around but Alan and me. Northview has a wee advantage over my thousand-word weekly moment of newspaper fame though. Here you can actually listen to what we listen to.

Or at least you can if you click on Todd Fritsch over in the side bar...or right here.

(Mattie, bro, I am talking to you here....you will like this guy if you can get your dial-up to download it. I just wait it out because it is worth it.)

Somewhere on the site (it moves around) you will find a little juke box. Once you find it, might I suggest Faith Ain't Faith, Bob Wills Song, The Cowboy Song...(or really anything else on there)? This guy is somewhere between Chris LeDoux and Garth Brooks and sings cowboy songs in a sweet, warm voice. He is a real Texas rancher so he knows what he is talking about too. I can listen to him all day (and in fact I have been listening to Faith Ain't Faith for the past twenty minutes.)

"Cheyenne city limits, ridin' a busted thumb, saddle over my shoulder, headin' back where I come from.
Rank broncs they left me, broke and all tore up....
An old man stopped to give me a lift in his beat up pick up truck
I crawled in and we drove off through that dark Wyoming night
It was downright eerie how that old man read my mind.
He said, son you've stopped believin' you can ride in the rodeo
Remember what your grandpa said, when you were twelve years old..

Faith ain't faith until it's all that you have left. Ridin' high is easy, but the lows are life's true test. Do your best to keep believin', the good Lord'll do the rest.
Faith ain't faith, son, until it's all that you've got left."