The Marian Anderson String Quartet at The Museum of East Texas...

I wrote about how there is so much music and so little time in my last blog. I finally made it to the Museum of East Texas to see one of the Sights and Sounds Series performances. These concerts feature performances sponsored by the Musuem and the Angelina Arts Alliance by jazz classical and bluegrass musicians and coming up in may is the polka group Brave Combo which is always a good time. The group I saw was the Marian Anderson String Quartet.

The Quartet takes it's name from the famous contralto singer Marian Anderson. She sang opera to spirituals and was influential in leading the way to recognition for African American artists.

I have often thought that we leave too much history to be written by the politicians, the generals, the scientists or the very rich. I think we would do better if we let the artist write the history through their lens of understanding. The Marian Anderson Quartet presents folk music influenced by folk music, old spirituals, western swing, European classical and pieces that drew inspiration from the songs of Native Americans. The groups' outreach is education and if we believe there is a place in history to tell the story of all people why not use music to do it? If anyone does not agree to the beneficial aspects of music they are not going to agree to anything. 

Check out the Sights and Sounds Series. It's bringing good things to our town. It's free but there are contributions you can make to help further education and excellent events such as these. 

You can bet I'll be there to see Brave Combo. 

              

  

 

So Much Music So Little Time...

  They say the first music was notated on paper 3000 years ago. Before that and I mean a really long time before that somebody whistled, clacked a couple of sticks together, picked up a turtle shell and thumped on it or who knows what and liked the sound they heard. They then strung a series of these sounds together and had a riff. You and I have done the same thing. 

There are so many riffs and these riffs turn into songs and there are so many of them that you just can't listen to them all. I often wondered if one of my grandkids might ask me, Pop-Pop, you were in your teen age prime in the mid 70s did you get in on the punk rock scene that developed about that time?" I'd have to say no because I was doing entirely different musical things at that time and there was no internet so I could find out what was going on somewhere else. Later I did get to appreciate punk music. 

It was about the same way with disco. I did not listen to it at the time it was the rage but later I find some tunes catchy.  There's lots of music like that. It just passed me on by because I was doing something else.

Some one told me the other day, "you have seen so much good music." Tom Verlaine of the band Television passed away. I never got into that band but probably could have. I did see them on some kind of reunion performance at Riot Fest in Chicago in 2015 and got a good photo of Verlaine and a guitar he was famous for. I think I took that photo because I had just hacked up some old Harmony guitar and put lipstick style pickups in it myself and I saw that's what he had. 

Listen as much as you can. Some will pass you by but hold tight to what you find. 

      

Those Blog Visits Are Totaling Up...

I had been building and selling cigar box guitars and a musician friend asked about them and I said, "check out my blog, there's pictures of some I've made," and gave him a business card with the address. Now a days it would be that picture of a thing that probably has a name but I don't know it that you scan with your phone to be taken right to the site but when my friend heard the word "blog" he said "you don't say bad things about ____ on there do you" and named the sitting president. He went on to say he would not be able to read it if I had said bad things. 

I guess I had not said anything bad about _____ because he bought a cigar box guitar.  His reaction made me see that apparently some folks think a negative thing at the use of the word blog. I'm the same way when someone mentions their podcast. I've never been able to get past the first 30 minutes of a podcast where they talk about how great it is they are having a podcast. 

Technically I guess the reading comprehension required for a blog is a lot more exhausting that the listening of a podcast so I guess it is of note that in the almost 18 years of blog operation I have going on I will probably hit 2000,000 page visits sometime next month. I thank all of those that took the time.              

Of course the last couple of blog posts have had only 3 visits so the success is based on the ever popular posts Another Guitar Story  and the Girls on the Beach Blog Post. There's also a blog posts that involves an ex son in law that's had 540 visits for some unknown reason but we won't link that here. 

Back when I started writing this blog my father in law, the late Bill Cooney urged me to monetize the blog with ads. I could link to the type of perch jig I use when I'm out in the canoe and while I'm at it the type of canoe and so on on Amazon and if you clicked the link I'd get .0002 of a cent or something like that. At the time I was pure, a writer who wrote. 

Now I think "well what if everyone of those 200,000 visits had scanned that thing I don't know the name of that I have started putting at the end of the blog when I think about it and donated a dollar it would have been a nice chunk of change." I mean not life changing money because after all in my life I've bought a house, about a dozen or so cars, several outboard motors, put all my kids that wanted it through college, put myself through college, visited at least half the states and at least 8 foreign countries, saved up a couple of retirement 401ks that are speculated to last me till I'm 90 years old gone and done what I wanted and ate pretty much what I pleased. $200,000 I'm here to tell you isn't what it used to be and wouldn't cover all that. 

What it would do would maybe put me in Gibson guitar territory. Which I don't know that I really need at this point because I mostly play at backyard fish fries using my old Student Princes and somehow I don't think all that would be as much fun with expensive guitars. There's always a guy going to sit down where you lay it and Student Princes are pretty rugged.  

I have been paid a little now and then to write someone a blog and I certainly sold cigar box guitars through the blog and I play my best when I'm singing for my supper so I guess I've done all right.

Thanks for reading and here's this thing I don't know the name of. Someone actually left an anonymous comment on the blog about how much they enjoyed it "but couldn't justify leaving me any money" whatever that means. At least I got some blog material from the visit and the comment. 

    

      

 

RB Morris and Bark at The Live Oak Listening Room...

It's been my birthday weekend so I'm just kind of drifting and doing what I want. Some think that's what I do all the time but regardless of what your opinion is I can't really argue if you don't post it on the internet and then you need to be a stranger to get a reply from me but it turned out to be a really good weekend for live music around these parts with the Pink Martini show Friday night and then a show at the Live Oak Listening room with RB Morris and Bark.   

I must admit I had never heard of either one of these groups so I did not know what to expect other than an evening with friends and I was pleasantly surprised that at the high quality and variety of the show.   

RB is from Knoxville Tennessee and is a playwright, a singer songwriter, a poet and actor that has served as the Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee. He can also lead a rocking band. The Live Oak was the perfect place for him to display his songs, poems and storytelling and the Band Bark was strong backup, delicate when called for and rocking pedal to the metal when given the space. 

Lately Cathy and I have both reread the Cormac McCarthy book "Suttree" which is set in Knoxville. I would imagine that RB knows some of those places in the book. 

   Bark is a drum guitar duo with the guitarist playing a 6 string bass. He was a man after my own heat being that I play a similar baritone guitar. Both of these have a rich array of sound to put to use filling up the space in a band setting and it was great to see it used to a powerful effect.  

A song about Lazarus is always a good one. There is lots to ponder in that story and I'll take all the help I can get. 

If you don't know the Live Oak Listening Room it's in Nacogdoches. A bunch of old hippies all cook something, bring it and everyone shares a meal at about 6pm and then the music starts at 7pm. There's a jar on the table you put money in. No one tells you how much but apparently enough gets put in to bring shows like this to town. It's a thing that works like the world should work. 

Drift over there sometime. 

Pink Martini at the Temple Theater...

Pink Martini is a band that has sold 3 million albums over the last 28 years. We have been buying their cds probably for the past 15-20 years and have at least 5 including the Christmas album. While it all has a laid back Cuban mambo beat they sing in 25 languages and have performed about anywhere that matters. A great tip of the hat to the Angelina Arts Alliance for bring them to Lufkin. 

Great drums, singers and horns! 

Every time someone says "They don't make music like they used to," I listen to a band singing in a language I don't understand who really play music like they used to and still do, with a beat that suits a conga line and try to figure out the age old question of, "how can I play this."  

In a time when everyone wants to find themselves be sure you listen to music that helps you do that instead of music that sells you who you are.  

Support the Angelina Arts Alliance. They are bring great shows and the past couple of years seems like they check my record collection to make the bookings. 

 

Thanks For The Birthday Wishes...

 This is what 66 years old looks like on me. Before you say "it looks like them tictok teens making bathroom selfies" (this was her idea) I'll tell you that my dad passed away when he was 66 years and 5 months old. My mom lived till she was 95 and I have quite a few first cousins older than me with some of them still pretty spry ranging from 75 to 95 or so. It's not really fair to cry bad genes. 

When I think about what I thought about my dad way back those 32 years ago when he passed it does feel like I am nosing the boat so to speak into unknown waters. It seemed at the same age my dad was a slow old man or at least that's what I thought. Maybe he was as he was starting to get sick and I was a dumb young man who maybe did not know as much as he thought he did at the time. Makes me wonder what my kids think (I really know what they think, I think) about me at the same age and makes me think that those waters might not be what I don't know but what they don't know. To make it all more mysterious makes me think about if we all know anything at all. 

Thanks to all the folks who reached out through social media, texts, phone calls, sent cards, gifts, or bought me a birthday dinner. It's a humbling experience to know how many people think about you in a special time. I'll try my best to follow the example my fine friends set as I continue to navigate the waters of life.     

I Read Books and Tour Old Forts...

I think I'll write book reports as a 2023 New Years thing. A good idea that will help me keep up with what I read and it will probably be fun until I read something totally trashy, escapist and embarrassing that I don't want you to know about. The first book is one I picked up in the museum store at Fort Pickens while on our recent travel trailer trip.  It's called The War Lovers. 

I like to tour the old forts that ring the coasts of the USA and I've also seen one in Puerto Rico. It's generally either free or I they waive all fees if you have a parks pass. Most of the forts began construction after the War of 1812 when we decided we did not want the British over here again. I think there are ruins in various states of repair over looking all the coasts. I am pretty sure that none of them ever fired a shot at another country's navy. Some of them, including Fort Pickens did their best work during the Civil War when Americans decided to shoot each other with the guns entrenched there. Here's a photo of me on the ramparts of Fort Pickens with a gun that was used by Union troops to great effect firing 300 pound shells that destroyed two Confederate forts across Pensacola Bay. From the looks of the emplacements I'd saw there were at least 9 of these in addition to smaller guns for close range targets. 

Leading up to the Spanish American War, which is the topic of The War Lovers, ships had become more armored so these guns capable of a 300 pound round were replaced with guns that fired shells in excess of 1000 pounds. If you check the Fort Travis link the industrial military complex pretty much began gun replacement projects, money making projects, at these forts as technology advanced up until the late 1940s when man tried his best to make war a push button affair. 

So all this brings us around to the book about loving war. Seems like in the 1890s you had a generation that held in great esteem the exploits of their forbearers during the Civil War and the genocide that subdued the Indigenous people of America. Only thing was there was no war for them. Men like Roosevelt and Lodge or the newspaper man Hearst who was busy setting the pattern for the modern news network by making up stories that divided the opinions of the everyday person. The upper class Angelo Saxons felt a certain anxiety and neurosis by not being able to charge into battle which was a nobel thing man should aspire to so they thought. Anyone who opposed this was called a mugwump which though they meant in in a bad way actually comes from an Indian word that means independent thinker. My dad was a mugwump because after he landed on Omaha Beach in WW2 he told me to never join the army. 

A little background to all this is that a few years before the Spanish American War these people tried to drum up a war with England over a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guyana. When they failed it was Spain's time in the barrel and they were more successful. 

More successful if you were Hearst and Roosevelt I guess. The triggering event of the war, the explosion of the battleship Maine has pretty much been proven an accident attributed to poor powder storage. It's estimated that combined there there were as many as 60,000 dead from the war of which 90% of these were from yellow fever. I did not look up causalities for the guerilla war in the Philippines that followed. 

Though Roosevelt might be a personality that would be what we would call toxic masculinity these days he was a fair president so like many men, myself included there's good with the bad. I really can't like Hearst at all. 

Here's Cathy with a gun at Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine, Fl. It's the oldest masonry fort in the USA and construction was begun by the Spanish in 1672. It has actually been in a battle of the Spanish vs. the British undergoing a couple of sieges and much cannon bombardment that had little effect on the walls. 

 Read a book. Tour a historic site. See if what you believe adds up with history. Real history not something written by William Randolph Hearst. 

 

              

     

 

Old #9...

Mary and Miguel told us a while back they were expecting another baby. They waited till yesterday when we finally got our whole clan together to reveal the sex and it's going to be a boy. If anyone needs advice on raising boys looks like this couple is going to be the go to because this will be their third. 

The due date is May 25th which is coincidentally their wedding anniversary. Mary always keeps quiet when another baby is coming so it does not seem like these are long pregnancies at least to me. It's a little different from when my generation was getting pregnant. Now they have tests where you can know if you are or not about 15 minutes after the latest opportunity and when you find out that quick 9 months seems like a long time.

Anyway however you do it we pray for them and all mothers and fathers to have the best of luck with children. 

They need it because as this is our 9th grandchild it's going to be hard not to say, "old #9, coming down the line" all the time which may impart certain personality traits. I don't know what those might be but I do know that in some cultures 9 is considered the perfect number. 

Mary and the new blog character. 

I think I captured most of the blog characters in this photo if they weren't chasing down other blog characters that need more supervision.

Coming soon the official family photos. For good work contact Newfoundland Photography.   

       

 

Kids With Instruments...

 You know what they say. Change the world and all that jazz and I'm pretty sure this is jazz. 

 

Immigrants From Chicago Come to Get Our Catfish...

Our daughter Katherine and husband Peter are off on a little vacation and we have our Chicago grandkids Wallace and Hamish for a few days. We got their stay off to a good start with a fishing trip and a catfish dinner. 

Old Hambone is a big pointer. He sees something he points so you can see it too. I think maybe His first fishing trip with us on the boat. 

Wallace is an old hand. He's been to the lake and East Texas a few times so he just put a few more hours experience on his boat driving skills today. 

Me and Wallace have caught some google eye perch from a quarry pond near his home in Chicago but this might be his first Texas fish. I set the hook but he did the man against beast thing at the side of the boat. 

Ham tells Cathy, "see that stick out sticking out over there? It's call a stick out." 

We ended the day with 10 catfish that we had to kind of work for and were of no significant bragging size but they were all legal sized fish in Texas which means when fried they will make the skillet stink. Fry them we did and Ezra and Luca joined us for supper. Even though those Zamora boys had eaten they could not turn down catfish. Ham enjoyed his share and while Wallace can catch them he's going to have to make up his own mind on the merits of fresh fish. 

The new truck pulled the boat at 19.9 miles per gallon which is quite an improvement over the old one so all in all a very good day.  

  

 

The Old Truck is Dead, Long Live the New Truck...

I believe you can jinx the car you drive. 

One time I had a 1987 Suburban. It was the first car me and Cathy bought together and we bought it so we had something to transport four kids in. It was about as plain as a car could be, did not have rear air because we believed the children had to suffer to survive and it cost $17,000 which was a princely sum in those days. 

After driving it nearly 200,000 miles and lots of kid hauling, fishing and camping trips we began entertaining thoughts of getting the dents taken out and maybe a funky paint job of some kind and just continuing on down the road even further when a guy pulled out in front of us in a great crash that made us the recipients of the miracle that we were not killed. We weren't jinxed but those plans to refurbish the car sure were.   

Just a few weeks ago a friend was telling me of his 22 year old truck. I don't recall the make, probably one of the big three but he had spent thousands on truck repair and maintenance and he thought that was better than thousands on a new truck. My truck was 11 years old. It seemed to be fine and I thought, "Yeah, I'll do that." Jinxed again. 

So a couple of days ago Cathy has a wreck and she tells the story of how relieved the young policeman was when he arrived and she claimed fault. Apparently no one admits this on the wreck scenes. Luckily other than a couple of scrapes and bruises on Cathy, the other person was not injured and their car was not too bad. Ours however was very bad. 

So as they say if money can cure your problems you do not have problems. We shopped around a bit locally and settled on this 2020 Ford from the used lot at the Chevy place. It was not the first deal we tried to make and we had to walk away with our money in our hands at another local place but Jorge was our salesman at JM Chevy, he did a good job and the truck, drive out and three year extended warranty came in under to price of what I paid for my house back in 1983. I'll call it a win.        

Cleaning out the old truck I found the old window sticker with the price I paid for the old truck and that helped me feel better about spending money I had not intended to. This price was not terrible much more and it is a nicer truck. 

Since this was a used truck on the test drive I took it by my mechanic at John's Auto. John has worked on my cars for almost 34 years. He pronounced the truck mechanically perfect but his caution was that on the Ford Eco Boost motors he would not buy one without getting the extended warranty. He said the turbo will go out but you don't know when. As he described the signs of Eco Boost failure I realized even though my old truck had just hauled the travel trailer all around on an 11 day trip, the boat on hundreds of fishing trips and a couple of recent heavy firewood loads and seemed to be running fine there were some signs that indicated this failure was coming and with it a repair bill that John described as "thousands of dollars." So maybe we received another miracle though I know some will say, "at least it was not an electric car that needed fixing."

I'm not really extend warranty guy but I followed John's advice and got it. Jorge the salesman made the deal good enough that with the drive out and the warranty the price was what other dealers had as sticker price on similar trucks. It does cover oil changes for three years and with that service nudging up in the neighborhood of $100 I think I'll be ok.        

Just for the record here's the old truck. It made it 158,000 odd miles. If you search the blog there might be other wreck cars pictured here and there. I would also like to make a shout out to Solo Wrecker service. They will treat you right so like them on facebook and put the number in your phone. Never know when you will jinx yourself.

  

 

Year End Live Music List...

Back in the days when I was buying CDs I would pride myself (don't look that up in an urban dictionary) on how many releases I might or might not have have bought that ended up on someone's best of year end list. Usually best I would do was 3 or maybe 5 if it was a top 100. My taste is pretty eclectic so when I was buying stuff it was stuff that no-one else bought. 

I looked at a few year end lists this year and there was nothing I had ever heard of on them. Guess I'm out of the loop. 

Now that I have reached that fixed income stage of life I pretty much gave up buying new music and I have not listened to Spotify at all. Instead I have concentrated on buying a few goofy thrift store records, listening to the New Orleans public radio station WWOZ and spinning the (at a conservative estimate) 1500-2000 cds and records I have. 

Sure there have been some music I would like to have bought but it was usually by bands I have been collecting for years so I decided I would just play the ones I have.  

I did see live music in 2022 and here's the photos of shows I went to. I didn't label them or anything but I think you can enjoy anyway.    

 Just one more. 

And another.

Why not me?