Used Shirts...

 I have about three shirts that my parents gave me for Christmas sometime in the late 70s. They are good shirts, durable and besides needing an occasional button or slight mending by my needle and thread capable wife they have served well and I still wear them often. Besides a few other shirt gifts I have received such as the big foot and tuba shirts that everyone feels are so appropriate I get my shirts at the thrift store. There's one particular snap button western shirt I own, bought used that lately I have seen two others like it. 

Someone asked me yesterday the question, "when did you have it done?" I couldn't exactly say so I said, "before COVID," and they understood and it immediately cleared up all confusion. So this western shirt I got before COVID. I was standing on a French Quarter street corner. It was morning of a bright spring day full of possibility and I spotted a guy coming down the street pushing a wheeled clothing rack stocked thick with shirts. I stopped him, you can do that in the great southern cities. Try it in the northern towns and that person might fight you off. 

The guy had taken thrift store snap button shirts and embroidered various designs on each shoulder. I was having modest success playing music and making cigar box guitars at the time so I was on the look out for stage costumes so this fit the bill. I bought one with crawfish on each shoulder. 

I used to like crawfish. On trips to Louisiana it was old cheap food that didn't fill you up too much so you could drink plenty of old cheap beer. The salty, spicy taste also made you want to drink more old cheap beer so it was really a hand and glove kind of thing. They go together. Now days I don't drink beer and for the price crawfish sell for I usually spring for the lobster. I'll just wear my embroidered shirt when I eat it.

I don't know how many shirts with crawfish that street vendor had that day. I have never seen another one. I was walking across the parking lot of a big box building material store and I spotted a shirt of the same pattern on a skinny wizened up little guy. It looked in good condition. These are after all quality shirts. I didn't mention to him I had one just like it or take a photo because my wife has coached me not to talk to other guys about what they are wearing. Not that there is anything wrong with that it's just something that might not sit in the moment right, which is a moment in the parking lot of a big box building materials store. 

The second shirt I saw like mine was in an online video released by New Orleans based folk singer Mark Rubin. I follow him on Facebook and he's a banjo/tuba/punk/bluegrass/Jewish dude. Pro tip: when you follow stuff like this on social media it wrecks the algorithm. When I saw his shirt I headed over to his band camp page and bought his latest release. I guess I should have left a comment, nice shirt. 

Here's the shirt in action.

Once I was at a little BBQ festival and saw a band play. I'd say they played about 75% of the songs a band I was in planned to play at a different festival he next day. I told the singer about this and he said by way of explanation, "Them are good songs." I guess you could say, "Them are good shirts."

That morning in the French Quarter I also bought another shirt but it will be another blog post.

        

         

Cigar Box Guitars in Mississippi...

 I made this photo on the Crossroads Cultural Arts Center in Clarksdale, MS on our recent visit for the Jessie Mae Hemphill Festival. Lots of nice local art hanging around and those two cigar box guitars on top of the piano look like ones I might have made.

When people ask me about my music I often tell them, "well the most money I ever made in the music business was making and selling cigar box guitars." Some fun times, like in the photo of going to craft fair days, setting up and playing, talking to people and usually selling enough to make what probably figured up to be a couple of bucks an hour for all the time invested. 

Time moves on. My old red barn painted workshop in the backyard has begun to lean precariously. The arthritis in my hands hurts turning the small screwdrivers required to install box corners and electronics. When I stir up a bunch of sawdust cutting and sanding I start sneezing. All this has taken out some of the fun. 

Every now and then someone says, "Hey I have a good box, want it?" It's nice they remember what I was doing but I have a bunch of boxes, carefully stored in garbage bags where I think they remain in good condition that I should probably give to someone to make their art. Actually a couple of Christmas ago I got some candy in a nice tin and being that I always liked the ones I made from tin for the banjo type sound I bought some nicer than normal pickups and planned to make me one more super instrument but have never got past the planning stage. 

It was nice to see these instruments in Mississippi and it brought to mind a story a patient told me when I worked in nursing homes and would often entertain the residents with a cigar box show. This patient was 98 years old and from Pine Bluff, AK. When he saw my guitar he said when he was a boy in Arkansas everyone black, white, all people had one of these when they didn't have anything else.  

Cigar box guitar, the great equalizer. I'm glad to have played a part in the history and culture.       

 

KwannyKash...

One thing I really liked about the Jessie Mae Hemphill Festival we attended in Clarksdale, Mississippi was how accessible the performers were. If you didn't introduce yourself to them they usually came and introduced themselves to you. It was that relaxed and casual of an atmosphere. Cathy even got her photo on the facebook page of Spit Cup and the Jukes hanging out with the band. One artist I met and talked to was Kwandarius Anton "KwannyKash" Perry.  

KwannyKash was not a performer but was introduced and had his folk art instruments on display. I was naturally interested because of the cigar box guitars I used to make so I introduced myself and we had a visit.  

KwannyKash told me that he was making instruments, music and writing poems and enjoying himself when one day someone saw him and said, "hey this is folk art." He said, "I did not know this. I was just doing me." His next scheduled gig was an appearance at the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation Homecoming in Avalon, Ms. 

KwannyKash was a nice guy and he gave me a drawing with a story he had written. I am going to use his comment, I was just doing me as inspiration to myself as I seem to have hit some road blocks in  consistent production of my on music. I will aspire to do me more.     

 

 Last night I was at our St. Vincent de Paul meeting and a member brought a mattress as a donation. That's valuable because we consider it a dignity issue to get beds for people clawing the way out of poverty. We made our way to the back of the church property to unload to our storage and in the dark we startled someone from the open air shed beside the locked storage. I called out to the person and they stopped. To appear nonthreatening in the dark (I'm a big hairy guy) I asked if we could help in anyway. The young man stopped and walked back. There has been an old piano stored in the open shed.  It belonged to a parishioner in the neighborhood who moved and supposedly the family was going to take it for restoration. The young man said, "I come by every night and play." I asked him to play for me.

 

 He tinkled the keys in the dark of the open shed. Not a concert pianist by any means but I thought about what KwannyKash said. 

I was just doing me.    

The Mighty Orc...

 Saturday saw us at the Live Oak Listening Room to celebrate the proprietor Jerry's Double 40 Birthday Party. The BBQ was by Richardson and Crew and the side dishes, brought by everyone else overflowed the tables. The music was by the Mighty Orc and it made for a truly great evening. Thanks to Jerry and Patty for opening their home and venue to our community. 

If you don't know The Mighty Orc you should give him a listen. We saw him open for Fantastic Negrito in Houston and he did play the local brewery blues fest here in town but we missed that because of travel so we were glad to see him again. He's a great electric blues player but our favorite part is his resonator and cigar box guitar playing where he uses ambient sounds and delay to blend songs into places you might not suspect them to go. He's also has a great set of pipes and an excellent band that makes this a really great show. I'll go out on a limb here and say that his version of the much recorded traditional tune "John the Revelator" is my favorite of all time.  

His youtube shows him to be very generous with lessons and tips which I'm going to give a listen. Looking at his tour schedule it looks like if you are within the area of Houston, Tx it would be pretty easy to enjoy a show. 

  

 

Dictator of Taste...

We saw one of my heroes last night at the Heights Theater in Houston, Tx. Think if you rolled the Temptations, Curtis Mayfield, Archie Bell and the Drells all into one then spiked blues singers Ledbelly and Mississippi Fred McDowell's whisky with ayahuasca and you get what Fantastic Negrito calls "black roots music for everyone."  

I called this blog "Dictator of Taste" because that's what he had painted on the back of a gold flowing thrift store costume he wore. Fantastic Negrito's story is a good one and it's why he's my hero. Poised for pop success with an album out in 1996 under his given name of Xavier he suffered a near fatal car cash which left him in a coma for three weeks. The crash left permanent damage to his right hand. In 2015 he won NPR's Tiny Desk Concert contest and has since won three Grammy's. 

His stage show is very energetic and his dancing energy does not indicate that he's 56 years old. The songs are the story of a man examining his life. His experiences guide the music and he is an independent artist with his own record label for people who were told the were too old, the wrong body type or the wrong color. The backing band was treat. Everybody was a singer and sometimes there was so many parts going on vocally, high gospel harmony and low bass singing that it could be hard to keep up with.       

I did not get the guitar players name. Good playing and singing, a strong back up man, doing it all. Great costume also. A stage show, it's what we want to see. 

We enjoyed the show from the gallery balcony seating. I'd say maybe 200+ people at the show and while certainly dedicated fans our seats were good and not crowded. 

There was a great performance of Ledbelly's "In the Pines." That's a good song for me as I have an oscilloscope reading of this tune tattooed in tribal style around my left upper arm. As I say, we connect. 

  Fantastic calls himself a recovering narcissist. "My dog died, my cat died, how can I make this about me?" He says there a lot of steps to this journey of taking the bullshit and turning it into good shit.    

Opening band was the Houston based Mighty Orq. Great guitar sound playing electric and a wonderful delay drenched cigar box guitar and resonator used to good effect. I think he has played locally at the Live Oak Listening room and looks like he has guitar lessons on his YouTube channel  

Check out these bands and check out the Heights Theater. Be a Dictator of Taste. Turn that bull into something good. 

How Many Streams...

 Famed record producer Jim Dickinson who played with the Rolling Stones, his sons formed the band The North Mississippi All-stars had a metaphor for the music business. He said it's a long tube of money traveling overhead through the sky. With much difficulty you claw your way up into it where it's a dirty, crowded, hot and degrading effort to stay there and get the money. Folk singer Otis Gibbs, I have tickets to see Otis next month, added to this by saying that this tube of money has leaks. A DIY guy like Otis sets buckets under these leaks and makes a living by going around checking his buckets and therefore avoids the nasty business of getting in the tube and staying there. 

There was recently an article in the New Yorker Magazine about a famous record executive Lucian Grainge and the future of AI in the music industry. All that was interesting in it's own right but the article included this statistic from the research company Luminate. In 2023 there were 184 million tracks available on various streaming platforms. 86.2 % received fewer than a thousands plays. 24.8% or about 45 million songs received zero plays. There are 120,000 new tracks uploaded each day and many of these are not music at all but are "functional music" for a task such as meditating or exercising and are titled "Baby White Noise" and "Rain on Windshield." It's estimated they get 15 billion streams a month. A vacuum sound recently hit #7 on the Swiss Music Charts. The article pointed out that AI was likely to increase all this and there are agreements being signed so that artists cam make AI "functional" versions of their songs. 

I haven't listened to any of this. What I have done is analyze my own streaming. My YouTube "Reggae on Tuba Man" has had 12 plays. That puts me somewhere under the 86% but well above the 24% that got a big fat zero. 

My best upload of all time has 18,000 plays. "I am the Bread of Life" a classic Catholic favorite of which  this video was a rehearsal for Karl Dutt's funeral. Of course the comments are a bit mixed ranging from "the best version I have heard" to "you turned a classic hymn into a cheap dancehall number" so you mileage various with publication. Actually I was trying to make the tuba thing into a reggae dancehall number but but at least they are talking about me. 

My facebook uploads generally get 25 to 400 views and I didn't bother to count my plays on soundcloud or bandcamp but I am getting what I wanted. People, some my friends and some strangers listen to my music and I am not getting dirty, hot or degraded. Those buckets are not catching any drips from the big tube but my cigar box guitar building bucket caught a pretty steady stream a few years ago. 

If you are going to make something, make it. Stats show it will be better than 24% of what is out there but might not get as many plays as "A Dog, Snoring." That's a cultural thing it's not about you. . 

   

         

Preserve the Voice...

Cathy used to now and then catch me off guard with the question, "and how many guitars do you have?" I'm sure she means to include in that count anything which has one to eight strings though some may question the merits of a turtle string with an axe handle affixed as a guitar. Of course when asking this question she does make it known that she has one guitar which certainly serves her well but over the years I think she has softened a bit as I have proven that for my creative purposes all those stringed instruments do something different and it's something I usually make good use of eventually. I guess I should count myself fortunate that there have been no challenges to the two tubas, the baritone, the tenor horn or the trombone. Most of those I don't play as well as I do the turtle shell with the axe handle affixed but I did mention good use, eventually. 

Some instruments I have bought because it's what I wanted, some like a stray cat have found me, some were rescued from junk no one wanted and of course there are ones I have made. Whatever the case I do like to get the instrument's voice on video or audio for the record so to speak even if it's a weird thing buried in a thick sonic mix that some nerd will use an AI program to isolate long after I'm gone just like they did to find out what television show John Lennon was watching while he wrote songs and recorded them on cassette while sitting at his kitchen table.

Most people know my cigar box guitars and other primitive instruments I've made and I'm sure a few readers own one. I could never sell this Elvis Christmas Tin guitar. I thought Elvis, people love him but like the two tubas, the baritone, the tenor horn and the trombone I have often misjudged what's going to be the next big thing in the music business. The Elvis Tin never sold. It was more kind of an art piece because the long box of the body kind of threw the scale off so it did not play as well as most of my inventions. 

Luckily in Nacogdoches there is a place, an old church turned into a listening room where local artists have their art hanging and fortunately for me they love Elvis and I donated the guitar to the residents and owners of The Love Oak Listening Room, Jerry and Patty. Jerry strikes a mean pose and the guitar fits the décor.   

Of course I recorded it to preserve the voice. Maybe a little more Arthur Big Boy Crudup than Elvis but as they say, that's alright. 

Oh yeah, never trust a man with out a guitar, a trombone, a turtle shell or two tubas in his house. Let the voice be heard. 

 

    

  

A Banjo Story...

 I have been in museums and seen Louie Armstrong's cornet, Jimi Hendrix's Stratocaster and even William Bell's double euphonium/tuba horn which though I know there's a blog post but I can't find it right now. . They were all behind glass, on exhibit for history and it makes me a bit sad to think that they are not played. 

I recall when I was a teen and I went over to a friend's home and as we sat in his bedroom and talked music and listened to records he pulled a case from under the bed containing his brother's electric guitar which had been left there when he departed for college. I don't recall the make or model but with the strum of a G chord which was all I could manage at he time I sagely noted it was in tune. Sometimes as I drive through town I pass that house, it's probably brought up several families since then and I imagine that guitar possibly still under the bed forgotten and unnoticed.     

This past weekend when we made it up to Shreveport, Louisiana for a Mardi Gras parade we also got in touch with Cathy's nephew, Chase, who is her dad Bill's grandson. He's a guitar player and owns nice instruments. One thing that has been a process since Bill whose main instrument was the tenor banjo, passed in 2020 was to get his instruments to homes where they would be played or cherished. 

A few years before his passing Bill gave away a couple of his main instruments, a banjo and a tenor guitar to the young people he wanted to have them. That left us to later pass out to those interested dulcimers, ukes, clarinets and old pawnshop guitars and such that were part of his life's collection. 

There was one banjo left that Bill had bought and used a few years before his death when he felt his #1 had got too heavy for him. We gave that banjo to Chase. It's a Deering Tenor  and very nice. In fact I saw one for a good price once in a Chicago pawn shop and almost had a weak moment where I bought it but then remembered that I was flying and really needed another banjo like a hole in the head. 

I know Chase will make good use of this instrument but I neglected to tell him that his main fan base was going to be older women and his band mates were going to be tuba players and accordions

Or maybe cigar box guitar players. 

One day all my instruments will be looking for new homes. I hope they end up in good hands instead of behind glass or under beds. . 

. 

 

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. 

    

      

 

I Take Music Workshops...

Decades ago I had picked up the electric bass and was getting to where I could play a little bit on it. A friend tells me he has a friend who plays bass and is coming from Shreveport to jam this weekend. I immediately think of the rich rhythm and blues history that springs forth from that part of Louisiana and I think, "I bet that dude is good." 

   The dude came down and jammed. I don't think he played a right note all weekend. I don't think he even knew it. He was happy as a clam playing music. At least at the time if I could not play a right note I didn't play a wrong one and I reverted back to that strategy this past weekend as I got totally out of my musical element taking workshops in old time music at the Old Mill Music Festival this past weekend. It was energizing to learn something new and like that Shreveport bass player I was happy as a clam. 

Cathy and I both took a shaped note sacred heart singing workshop. This kind of singing developed when someone decided it would be easier to sight read a song if the notes of the do, ri, me scale were each assigned a shape such as circle, square, triangle and so on and you used a four part staff for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses all singing different parts. 

Here's the class singing in some kind of old sawmill apparatus called the burner where the acoustics we very good. Other workshops on this were sometimes held in an open field where it also sound good.     

I enjoyed this class and by the end of it I was at least recognizing the notes. As far as staying on my part that's hard because I kind of sing the part of next as I singn whatever the person standing next to me sings. I they are singing melody that's what I sing but if they suddenly switch to harmony don't expect me to stay on the melody.  

I took a mountain dulcimer class from Stephen Seifert. He travels around the country playing these festivals and giving workshops. I took this photo during his performance of him playing with Lloyd and Elijah Wright. I did not get a chance to take a photo in the class as I was sitting between Stephen who plays with symphony orchestras and Margaret Wright who is probably some kind of national dulcimer grand champion and I had sweat running down in my eyes trying to keep up. 

I have owner a very nice McSpadden dulcimer for years that was a gift from my parents but have only strummed it in a way that amused my self. It was amazing that at these jam sessions you could often find a a group of 6 or 8 fiddle or dulcimer players all playing the melody of some old reel in unison.      

It was the old fingerpicking guitarist Brownie McGee who claimed his dad never let him play slide guitar because he said if you start sliding you never go back. That's what I did on discovering open E tuning. For this workshop with Gary Mortenson of the band Rosebud teaching I got away from the bluesy and rock sounding E tuning to the more country G which took away all my licks from the places on the fretboard where I found them and and forced me into working on little two note grabs and pull ons and offs Those are techniques I have wanted to learn and can use on lap steel as putting everythng in open E is what makes me sound the same whatever instrument it is I'm sliding on. 

Cathy sat in on this class on rhythm guitar playing tunes like I'll Fly Away and Life is Like a Mountain Railway giving us something to sol against.     

Gary and a local player, Josh, I met who works in Lufkin. 

Cathy took the recorder class offered by Don seated on the left. Somehow I did not snap to this and I had a pile of recorders at home I could have brought but Cathy bought one and is well on the way to learning to read music. They had so much fun the managed to work in one unscheduled workshop and she has practiced every night since the festival.  

Even though I forgot recorders I managed to use every instrument I brought, the resonator, the dulcimer and I used the acoustic bass (plenty of string basses around here) backing up the ukulele workshop. Cathy plays a bit of uke and I'm going to bang a couple of these around here into shape for her.   

Playing the old time music was maybe not totally out of my comfort zone but I definitely spent the weekend not only enjoying listening to good music but getting my hands and fingers it also. Seems like I might have kind of developed myself into a stunt guitarist over the past decade or so and it might be time to search the roots of things again. 

I don't remember that Shreveport bass players name and I never saw him again. I'm headed out for some woodshedding so no one gets us confused.      

 

Throat Singing at The World Music Festival...

We saw a Tuvan throat singing band at the Chicago World Music Festival. The band was Tuvergen and though they are actually based in Chicago they travel the world performing a "folk fusion" blend of Mongolian, world percussion, didgeridoo, traditional instruments and melodies that certainly bring to mind blues riffs.   

Throat singing has it's origins in Siberia and Mongolia, places that are distant, isolated and where sound carries a long way. I had heard recordings but this was the first live performance I've seen and I learned that the horse is very important to this culture so most of the songs are about horses or water and grass which horses eat and drink. The various vocalizations and pitches are descriptions of Earth, Sky, Wind or other elements of the natural world. 

I enjoyed all the performers and the stringed instruments brought to mind some sounds I have made myself on various homemade lo-fi instruments and cigar box guitars. I really enjoyed the drummer who played the Australian didgeridoo which harmonized and blended so well with the other instruments and voices that they used him as their tuning pitch. His drum kit was a DIY outfit which I like and could probably assemble from my collection of percussion that I don't play very well. It consisted of Irish Bodhrans, Peruvian cajons, splash cymbals and a variety of shakers and chimes. 

I think the last time I saw a drummer set up with an unusual kit and a didgeridoo was a show in New Orleans where Derek Trucks was one of players and also included Col. Bruce Hampton. This was way before Trucks was famous and before the good Col. died onstage with the band soaring to send his soul out among the stardust of the Universe.     

All the players in Tuvergen were great singers but only the dude playing the square looking instruments was a throat singer.         

The player on the right is using what they called the horse head fiddle. Like I said, the horse, very important. 

I take that back about the last time I saw a guy with a didgeridoo set up. It might have been at my house.  

Actually I own two didgeridoos. The one Miguel plays is a cedar wood Cajun made instrument and I have a small Australian one brought to me by my late father in law Bill after his and Geneva's trip there. 

I certainly missed a good chance to win the internet once when I posted a clip on Facebook of my own didgeridoo playing. The neighbor's donkey wandered up behind me in the frame and in the comments section someone said, "what is that? I need one." I said didgeridoo but I should have said donkey. 

Tuvergen was a free show. This festival sponsored by the Chicago Cultural Center. If you paid to see Willie Nelson this weekend a dope smoking capitalist took your money. 

       

 

Music From Timbuktu...

A couple of times I've gone to Chicago for Riot Fest. Riot Fest is a big festival event with mostly bands that were not of my taste or experience but like any musical thing sometimes I would rather see something I have not seen before than as Aldous Huxley said "keep on going through that same door." At least I think he said that. I did not go through that Riot Fest door this year. I was always aware that at the same time the Chicago Cultural Center was always sponsoring a World Music Festival which is staged at various venues around town and this year I got to attend a Show by Al Bilali Soudan.  

I'll fight you on this fact. Without Sub Saharan Africa we would not have pop music in the USA. Get your dukes up because the twanging sounds and the invention of banjo, the fiddle, the dobro and familiar chord progressions have their root there in the hot desert sands. Even the dances done by this group at the show are very similar to what you might see at Othar Turner's Goat BBQ every year. If you listen to some Mississippi Hill Country style blues you with the drones and repetitive figures in the music you would dawn on the idea that any musician from Mali would be right at home. The music is there in Mali and it sent no infusion of refreshing messengers after a certain point in time instead continuing the similar traditions through DNA and ancestral memory 

There is a big global music scene for this kind of thing and I have collected up many cds but it's usually an electric type sound where as this group was more in the folkloric tradition with the dances and acoustic instruments. You could probably compare this music to our rural blues vs. the electrified urban versions.  

Actually I've seen a few videos where Robert Plant, former lead singer for the old band Led Zeppelin updated some of that music by adding these African instruments into his group and I thought it really revitalized the old tired classic rock.     

Al Bilali Soudan means Timbuktu. 

These are free shows sponsored by the Cultural Center so it's your government at work bringing you interesting things so you don't keep going through that same door. 

 

 

Forest Festival, Lufkin Brass, Multicultural Fiesta, Did I Miss Anything...

It was a busy weekend. On Sunday our band The Lufkin Brass played the Texas State Forest Festival for the second year in a row. Our Bilingual choir played the music for Mass for St. Patrick's Catholic Church Multicultural Festival. Me, Cathy and her brother Matt worked booths, helped set up and take down and Cathy assisted with the money counting duties. Proceeds from the Festival will fund a renovation of the old church building, now called LaSalette Hall. It's where me and Cathy were married when it was the old church and word on the street is that more than enough was raised.    

The Lufkin Brass gig went well. Morgan sat in on drums. Two funny things happened in the course of this gig. While setting up for the church festival Saturday evening a young curly headed fellow with a fade hair cut answered a call for set up volunteers and after a bit he said, "ok I have to go because I'm going to the Forest Festival with my grandma." I said , "great, thanks for the help and if you are at the festival tomorrow catch my band the Lufkin Brass." He looked at me and his eyes widened as he said, "yeehaw, That's you?" I affirmed it was. 

The next day right before the Brass began to play another young man comes up and says, "how are you, good to see you!" I don't recognize him but as I'm a local personality I chat him up and he says, "I'm still playing that cigar box guitar you made me." I've made and sold close to 100 cigar box guitars but probably not made one in about 3 years. I asked so its holding together and playing well? He said, "still plays great!" That's good feed back to hear.       

The church festival was great with food musical entertainment, dance groups, games and people many countries represented and working together for fun, fellowship and purpose. 

This is a Salvadorian Dance group. 

Mexican Folkloric Dancers. 

Plenty of good food at the festival. Mexican, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, and the Philippines and if there were others I hope to try them next year.  

Here's the judge and High Sheriff working the jail booth. For some reason no one wanted this job. The way it works is you pay the judge $5 and you point out the person you want arrested to the HS. He locks them up for 15 minutes. All the prisoner's friends make pictures. Someone can bail you out for $5 or you can buy a get out of jail card for $10. That's what I did since I worked the voter registration booth and had the forest festival gig. No time to get locked up.  

Another word on the street is that this festival will be on a date next year not to conflict with the Forest festival or the Diboll church, Our Lady of Guadalupe which had a Fiestas Patrias Celebration yesterday.   

Next gig for the Brass is The Stonewall Jam Fest and M.D. Anderson Cancer Benefit on Oct. 15th. 

My grandson Cullen gives Ross a few pointers on the ins and outs of drumming while we set up for the gig. Only problem was when we started playing he was out on drums and his dad was in. He was disappointed but he will be big enough to sit in before you know it. 

  

 

My Musical Ideas...

 I have these musical ideas. One of them I had about 10 years ago when I bought a very nice Eastwood baritone guitar. At the time I was playing out a good bit with a lot of different musicians and making cigar box guitars. It seemed there was a lot of opportunities and one of them I felt was to have a little trio of a hard driving rhythm guitar player, me on the baritone guitar playing bass lines and throwing in a bit of lead guitar and a drummer. 

Baritone guitar is that sound you hear doubling the string bass on old country recordings. It's that low twang on TV and movie sound tracks where the shows are either about surfing, aliens, 1960s spy themes or spaghetti westerns. I figured it would go good in a small ensemble for bass or lead especially with an electronic dose of stuttering delay, dripping reverb, and wobbly tremolo. That strong strong rhythm playing and a thudding heavy tom tom would be picking up the bass sounds when I took a lead. 

Nobody else thought this. I could not get the idea off the ground. I was just a guy with a weird guitar like no one else had. To tell the truth if I was a bit better at Travis picking I might have put the idea across. 

It's ok though because by now I have about lost the fire in the gut required to tote a big Fender amp somewhere and my neighbors have not complained about stuttering delay, dripping reverb, and wobbly tremolo that emit from my house from time to time.  

Today I played tuba, digeridoo and harmonica in the park. I can get all that stuff from the car to the bench where I sit to play in one trip. I take playing in the park in spells. Depends on how good the fish are biting or if my services are required to babysit a grandchild. I have played twice out of the last 14 days or so. 

Some days no one stops to talk. Like a band built around a baritone guitar, a tuba player on a park bench might be someone that's not quite right but I do meet interesting people that if they stop to talk to me can only be labeled as the righteous true believers. There was the out of town band director using the jogging trails who was surprised to see a tuba player on a park bench.  I once gave a harp to a homeless guy who stopped to listen and talk. An Asian lady enjoyed the music so much she gave me $20. 

Today was a good people day with many folks enjoying morning before the day got too hot A guy walking the trails gave me a thumbs up. An older couple getting in their steps thanked me for the concert. A guy with a sack lunch and a cool drink at a picnic table told me he had not seen a digeridoo since he left California. Another a walker told me in broken English with his hand to his heart, "your music, I better now!"  

I can't remember exactly when I started these park tuba concerts. Must have been sometime in 2019. It's not an original idea because as I have traveled from New Orleans to New York, Munich to Prague and Austin to Waco I see people playing in parks. It's something that I thought my town needed. It's one of my musical ideas that has worked.