Coraline in Springtime RePost...

Coraline in the Spring Time...

Coraline sits in the bluebonnets at Pop and Geneva's. Look out Coraline needs help. She calls "Duke."

The Great Jug Band Scare...

Jug band music is growing in popularity right now. Here are some photos Cathy took on the recent Chicago trip of the Barehand Jug Band. She bought me one of their CDs. Other recent releases I have been listening to are the Mississippi Sheiks, the South Memphis Jug Band and The Jake Leg Stompers. I think the venue name was the Open Door. This picture caught a man in motion, but check out the acoustic bass made from a marching bass drum. I'd like to try this kind of music, I got banjo, washboard, mando and most inportant of all, jugs. Any takers?

New Guitar Day...

New guitar day for Mudbelly, look what UPS brought. What we have here is an Eastwood baritone guitar, the Sidejack Deluxe model. Tuned B to B it's same relative pitches as a standard guitar tuned E-E so you play regular chords, they just sound different notes. What this means is you can't look at my hands and know what chord to play, I'll mess you up.











This is a Korean made guitar, very nice. The baritone guitar is the deep twangy sound you hear on old rockabilly, western swing, surf recordings and spaghetti western movie sound tracks. Now a days you often hear it with the new metal bands with lots of distortion. This guitar is a copy of the old Ventures model made by the Mosrite Guitar company of Bakersfield Ca. For a try out jam last night with friends I got experiment with it through a Mesa Boogie Mark I and an old big hair rack mounted Marshall. The P-90 pickups in this guitar killed through those amps but I expect to be using it nice and twangy with gobs of delay with my old Fender amps.

Matachines Dancers...

Entertainment at this past weekends festival opened with Matachines dancers from St Andrew Parish in Lufkin.


They are religious dancers who perform through out the year with their most important season being Advent and the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which falls during that time. The dancers act out the drama of Montezuma, but most join the group to venerate Mother Mary, a Saint chosen by the group or simply worship and praise to God.


The bad guy of the play, sometimes dressed as a bull, sometimes masked, portrays Satan.

St. Patrick Festival...

Dancers shake it for Los StratKats at the St. Patrick Festival held where else but St. Patrick Catholic Church. It was also a celebration for the 10th anniversary of the new church building dedication. All proceeds are for a re-surface of the parking lot.
Plenty of entertainment. Russell and friends groove on drinking and cheating songs.
Jamie's guitar students.














Play it Studio Irish music.

Some Folks are in Chicago...

This morning I get nice pictures, emails titled "at Shaw's" or something like that. Cathy and Margaret supposedly went to Chicago to help Katie pick out a wedding dress. If they are "at Shaw's" the only Shaw's I can think of is an establishment located in Nacogdoches selling fine men's wear and righteous threads. Here's the sisters.

Margaret, Katie, Peter. From the looks of that tin bucket in the middle of the table I think they are in one of those Roman places.

St Pat's Festival March 20th...

Catch Los StratKats (among other acts) Sunday March 20th at the St Pat's Festival, St Patrick Catholic Church. Entertainment 1:00-6:30. We play at 4:30.

Also available food, games raffle with all proceeds to be used to resurface the parking lot.

I spent most of today working on this set up.

So if You are Playing in a Band with Me...

I stumbled on a web site that might be worth a look. It appears to be written by a banjo player so that gives it extra creditability.

http://www.dannybarnes.com/blog/how-play-someone-elses-band

Congrats...

Miguel has been accepted by the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture at the University of Houston beginning this fall. Hard work, here in this photo he rests.

More Austin Photos...

Got a few shots by email that were made by Larry on a recent Austin trip.
Here's me and Morgan at the Continital Club. Looks kind of like I am slumming it in Austin with a tooth missing on the left side but that's really just my special gold tooth with all 26 essays of "The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran engraved in it's surfaces. "The Prophet" was written in 1923 and it deals with the human condition, the man woman thing and other subjects which cause it to still sell about 5000 copies a week, I feel lucky to have mine, come over and read it to me sometime.



Junior Brown and lovely wife Tanya Faye. Those two Fender Twin Reverb amps you see behind them are what is know in these parts as "Texas Headphones."







He calls this guitar the "guitsteel."

Coraline Visits...

Coraline and Grandma take a self portrait. Thanks to Rose and Juan for letting her take the VW bug up for a short visit. About time she got that driving thing down.

All on A Mardi Gras Day...

Decided I'd get a little dressed up for Mardi Gras this year.






Actually an old 35mm shot I made in a museum way down yonder in New Orleans.

Looks Like Little Rock This Year...

Mary continues on the tournament trail with a 1st in sparring and 3rd in forms last weekend in Humble. She is currently ranked middle of the pack Top Ten in the world sparring. If this ranking holds she will compete for world champ in Little Rock this summer.










Thanks to Miguel for the photos, I had to work so no old manning around at the tournament for me.