Latest Vinyl Buys...

I ran into a friend Joe the other day and we were standing around, supposed to be helping with a church project. I spotted an old record tucked into a bookcase and commented I thought I had that. Joe, who helps out with the Joseph House thrift store said if I'm still buying vinyl they had some. Finishing up chores I headed over there. I picked up this stuff for a buck a record. 

At the top is a Readers Digest Box Set of hits from the early 30s. I have been collecting these and have several big band and swing collections from the 30s and 40s. Good packaging, superb recording and sound these were owned by folks that took care of  records. Unlike a lot of used records from certain eras this has not seen the inside of a dorm room or had weed shifted and rolled on it. Back in the day I would not have been caught dead being so square as to own some Readers Digest thing but now, especially bought in a thrift store I love them. Looks to be a 1989 issue and apparently these sets cover everything from opera to Elvis. I Gave $7.99 for the 7 records in the set and that's about the going price. 

On the left is Johnny Puleo and his Harmonica Gang. Johnny was born in 1903 and was an active performer from the late 30s to his death in 1983. This record looks to be some pop tunes, classical and marches. Johnny was a dwarf and a master of pantomime. Check this clip from the Milton Berle show. 

Next up is a couple of records that look to be some stone cold country. They are by Bill Nash and I say looks to be because they are sealed unopened records with nothing to indicate the date of production. Judging from the clothes it could be 70s-80s material. Recorded in Houston, Tx I have not decided on opening them just yet. It took a bit of looking but seems Bill was the first person to ever record a Kris Kristofferson song. Now a days Bill and his wife Kim seem to be performing gospel and patriotic material and I bet he is not covering some of this early stuff like "Two Drinks From Forgetting" and "Funky Hoedown." That's ok. I'm not covering some of my early stuff either. 

I think I will bust into these records.  And by the way don't bother with the vinyl at the Joseph House Thrift Store. I hear it's pretty picked over.  

Big blue cats...

Cool day on the lake and we spent it floating the pool noodles to see if we could catch a big blue cat feeding up for the winter. 

You do know what we mean when we say floating noodles I hope. Take a kids pool noodle, cut it in several short lengths, tie a drop line with hook and weight and toss it over the side of the boat to float till a fish bites. Kind of like the James McMurtry song where he mentions catching a big old blue cat on a drifting jug line but in our case there are no connotations of meth, automatic weapons or incest. 

Cathy and her brother Matt hold up a fish. We had 7 cats today up to 4 pounds. 

Matt holds up one. When the noodle starts pulling up and down in the water your run the boat up there and using a hook on a stick, snag the line and then net the fish. It's kind of a good old man against beast struggle at the side of the boat. 

We had good bait today. A half dozen or so cast net throws at the boat ramp captured small sunfish, threadfin and gizzard shad. 

Of course some of these guys are swimming in our belly. 

Dana Cooper...

Last night the Live Oak Listening Room in Nacogdoches , Tx hosted Dana Cooper. Cooper is a classic singer songwriter type guy, originally from Independence, Mo. He relocated to Houston in the mid 70s where Cathy became a big fan seeing the Shake Russell/Dana Cooper band many times as a teen. I can count several times I have seen Dana in Houston, Doches, Austin and Camp Street Café in Crockett, Tx. 

He's a song singer/story teller in the fine disappearing art of the traveling musician who has always led a much ore interesting life than you have. I connected to one of the song stories of how as a 13 year old in Independence he once threw a cherry bomb on Harry Truman's front porch.  I have toured the Truman home, it's pretty modest. I've stood on that porch and seen the kitchen where Harry patched his own linoleum. Dana mentioned later in the show how at this time of his life he had managed to accumulate several hundred dollars in savings. At the time he threw the firecracker Harry was living on the pension of a WW I artillery man and it was not until 1966 that congress voted ex presidents a pension so at the time Harry probably had as much money as Dana does now. 

I don't know a lot about how the Live Oak came to be. A couple of friends invited us to this show I met the owner, Woody. It's the old Live Oak Baptist church and while most of the interior has been left just as it was the walls are hung with creations by local artists. 

Dana mentioned that he had 28 albums since his first release in 1970 that featured him backed by Los Angeles studio heavy weights Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel.  

Great venue, good show. 

Always Go Over the Edge...

I came upon these old photos the other day. The were made in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma sometime in the early 1980s. Me and, my friend Jeffery and another guy who after all these years I only remember as "Bill's brother." took two trips up there one year for the  purpose of rappelling down the cliff sides.  

It was the old days of rappelling and you had to learn how to tie the Swiss seat harnesses, maintain and check your own ropes and all that. Since then I have rappelled one time and everything was like supervised and safe off a man made tower with a person on the ground to belay you. All the things I had learned on this trip came back and I was probably the only one there that had actually done it in the rough like these photos show. There was no belayer on the ground. It was down the rope you go. 

That's my old friend Jeffery. He lives out in L.A. these days and plays golf in nice places. Don't hear from him much anymore. 

I don't know what our chances of dying were as we played around on these heights. We would just basically climb up as high as we could, secure a rope and then rappel down and if things went pretty smooth we would climb back up and do it again. If we though it was too dangerous to try again we coiled the rope and climbed again till we found a place more to our liking.  

I can't find one particular photo but I remember it was of my climbing partners standing on the edge of a cliff and way across the valley in the background you could spot a speck of a man clinging to a sheer cliff. 

Bill's brother. Never saw this guy again after these trips. 

Camping was rough, pack in everything with hiking into the mountain areas only.  We woke in the mornings to wild buffalo grazing beside our tents. The threat of stampede was real. 

Lesson for today boys and girls? Always go over the edge. I may not physically go over the cliff edge anymore but you know what I mean. Way back when I learned to do it. 

Birds...

I'm on the water a lot so if I am not taking a photo of a fish I caught or my wife I turn the camera to the birds of the shore. With the onslaught of fall in East Texas and the brutal 50 degree temps I long for summer on the water. Of course we will fish and take bird photos all through the winter months with great success buton't get as many pictures of my wife in a bathing suit. 

This is maybe the best bird photo I have made lately. We were surf fishing and as me and brother in law Matt sat in lawn chairs hoping for a good bite on the long rods we were approached by the member of the heron family you see in the lower right of the photo, a red egret. We tossed a few bait shrimps to him and that made him really like us. Every now and then the gulls would beat him to a bite and when he got mad he could make his hair (feathers) stand up on his head. I never got a good photo of that behavior but a little internet research describes this species feeding behaviors as "bold, rapacious and graceful." 

This bird actually returned in the evening to see if he could get a few more bites from us. Peter Dunn, 

a famous natural history writer has referred to the Red Egret as " t rex of the flats." 

Roseate Spoon Bills on the bay. This photo is a bit grainy due to the zoom distance. They were a couple of hundred yards away. The spoon bill wades and swings the head side to side sifting the mud to catch the tinier critters that the big wading birds miss. Life lesson learned, there is a place for everybody. 

We switch to fresh water for this blue heron photo. How many blue herons are there on lake Sam Rayburn?How many times have I taken this particular bird's photo because I usually take a shot of any one I see. They say that the first time Indigenous American peoples saw a camera and the photo that resulted they surmised that it was a way for the white man to steal your soul. Whether that is true or not I don't know. It's a mystery, just like any other belief and you just have to have a strong faith. If it's true I have stolen a lot of heron souls. 

Ok and to clean up these old thoughts in my old head to day we will post a photo of buzzards on a sand bar with a token wading bird that my dad always called "some kind of crane." Those buzzards are members of the Sam Rayburn Chapter of the East Texas Hygiene Committee. There's a place for them, eating the dead stuff and we might have contributed to that because for three days we cleaned fish and dumped he guts in the deep waters off this point. It's possible some drifted up but like the soul of an Indian, they are not there anymore. 

Here's Some Music For You...

I ordered a CD by the band Delgres.They are based in Paris and it's not the Paris in Texas. The music is sung in a mix of English and French. A three man group, the guys play resonator guitar, tuba and drums. I figure gotta have something going on with those instruments. 

As I say I don't know what they are saying because of the language differences but they take their name from Louis Delgres who was a mulatto leader that fought the reoccupation of Guadeloupe by Napoleonic France in 1802. This reoccupation would have meant a reinstating of slavery which had been abolished in the time that the British had held the island.. A good source of info on some of the slave revolts of the Caribbean and their influence on French, British and American politics are in books by Ned Sublette. 

So I think that's a good name for a band. Always a good idea to keep in mind those that stuck up for the repressed. Here's one of their newest videos. Tuba, resonator on a boat, can't go wrong. 

Gig Report for the Weekend...

After a period of relative inactivity as far as public performance goes we were back this weekend with a couple of events. We have had some good family jams at parties and such but we have some new songs and more in development so the itch to get out there is back and you might see us scratching it a bit. 

Saturday night our little duo of me and Cathy, billed as Goat Rodeo played the Stonewall Rockers Fall Jamfest in Groveton, Tx. It's an MD Anderson Cancer Center Benefit sponsored and hosted by Travis Kitchens at Stonewall Studios  with numerous bands and solo acts performing. I did not get any photos of Goat Rodeo but here's the all star band the Stonewall Rockers. 

Old Nacogdoches friend of ours Jongy on sax. 

Mike on guitar. Mike often plays with us at the State Supported Living Center dances. 

I played harp and the turtle shaker with the Rockers. Someone told me it looked like I was playing a bong. If you don't know the story of the turtle shaker it is a percussion instrument I made years ago. It's one of the earliest instruments I created way back when I was just building stuff to entertain the kids. Over the years I occasionally get invited to play harp on the Rockers gigs and since every song is not a harp song I said to self "you will look like a big dummy just standing up there" so I brought the shaker and added a little percussion texture to those songs. It was a hit and now I always get invited to shake it with the Rockers. You know how it is with writing a hit song. You better be prepared to play it every night for the rest of your life. Same way with inventing an iconic instrument. 

That's Eric on keyboards behind me. 

Sunday the Catholic Churches in Lufkin combined fir a United in Jesus Mass at the Pitser Garrison Convention Center. Very well attended with almost a full house. This was the combined choir we put together with Cathy as leader. It was a bilingual service in English and Spanish. If you recall the pervious bilingual service we had played for almost 20 years was eliminated earlier this year but it looks like we will get the opportunity to put together combined groups for larger specials musics like this. 

I think the group sounded good and though I was not out there to listen it seemed like the center was an easy place to mic up a group like this. 

There's at least three mandolin players in this photo. Very strong group of young people singing and playing multiple instruments. I called them the St. Patrick's Catholic Church Mandolin Army. You might be used to the bluegrass mandolin style with the mandolin carrying a rhythmic "chop." In the Hispanic style like these girls play it carries the melody. They seem to read music or pick it out by ear either way.  

All in all a fun weekend of picking and grinning. 

More Catfishing...

Another day at the lake. Can you vote to confirm that? I don't doubt that some would lack that common sense and would vote against it but we once again joined Pop and Geneva and brought along friends Suzi and Charlie for a day at Camp Catfish. 

Cathy makes the ride across the lake to the fishing place we call the dog walker. 

Final total for the day was 32 cats. Charlie shows a good one. 

Suzi boats big fish of the day. I had my camera set on some kind of thing that makes multiple shots and they all show how hard this fish was trying to sling blood and doo doo on that white shirt. 

Me and Geneva don't get our photos taken together often. We score a double. 

Sorry Pop for some reason I did not get a photo of you yesterday. We will use a stock photo.

A bunch of those cats are swimming in our bellies. Menu was catfish, fried and blackened, a sweet potato poblano red pepper salad and gumbo.  

More Catfish...

Well catfish has not been spectacular but I guess for the amount of time spent doing it, a couple of hours each day it's been ok. We are feeding ourselves and the fish are decent size and putting up a good pull when hooked. I think Geneva got big fish honors this trip. Pop gets the honor of his photo on the blog three days in a row. 

since they have been camped out we hauled of fish cleaning table down to the lake and have spent two pleasant evenings cleaning them on the lake bank. There are 16 cats in the bucket Cathy is tipping up in this photo. 

In an age of food trucks and sidewalk coffee maybe I should drive around and do pop up fish fries. 

For some reason this woman is at every one of my parties and fish fries. 

I call this composition "An Old Man Waits For His Supper." 

A river otter even showed up to see what was cooking. I did not get the best photos of him but on reviewing the ones I took it's pretty clear he is curious about what might be on that fish cleaning table. We hope to clean again here this afternoon and we plan on leaving him a treat. 

Camp Catfish is in Operation...

People that get their photos on two blog posts in a row might get the big head. Let's hope not because Pop and Geneva have the travel trailer at Hank's Creek for a few days. They might get even more photos. 

For the fishing log we caught 13 cats. First time we have been on the lake since before the Wiley fish fry on Sept. 8th. That's pretty long stretch but I did get to whip the water to a froth on our recent beach trip so I have managed to survive.   

Cathy and Pop score a double.  You know I have so many photos of people turned around holding up their catch in these fishing chairs I might sell advertising in the blank chair back area. Could be effective to a certain sort of man or woman. 

Geneva gets first fish caught award. 

I got big fish for the day. 

Sundown on Big Sam. 

The Procedure...

You never know what will go on around here. There might be a big fish fry. We might play your wedding, quinceanera, or crawfish boil. We will even play your funeral. If you show up needing medical attention Cathy is right handy if you have labor pains and my best thing is pulling on a broken leg. 

So if all you need is to have your sutures out we can handle that. 

So just put that banjo up for a minute, slip into a patient gown and have a seat right at the kitchen table. We will get this procedure started.