One year ago today: April 14, 2023, $500 max.
Five years ago today: April 14, 2019, JeePee is whistle-trained.
Nine years ago today: April 14, 2015, as Borat would say.
Random years ago today: April 14, 2007, bookstore single women.
It dropped into the 60s overnight and my peach tree stopped growing leaves. That was a surprise, it stayed cold until noon. That means you get more editorial. For music, today’s addendum is a gem. As for gigs, I have us a time slot at a north end kava bar. It’s super close to the Prez’s house. I stopped for a twenty-minute chat with not the gal running the place, but her boyfriend who I instantly spotted was a musician. Here’s the scoop.
Hello from Miami, I did get out of town but a number of hours late. It was and ideal drive, five hours for that three hour drive, one of which is the final 33 miles through town. The delay was a lawn mower, and you get the facts because it was a unique event. You see, before the dog attack last year, the Reb used to borrow the neighbor lady’s lauwn mower. But the metal rotd have made even the lightest clutch too strenuous, and that yard in Tennessee is quite large. By comparison shopping, the electric lawn mowers have doubled in price. Or rechargeable, I mean. Plus the spare battery scam is very well known.
Here’s a seemmingly bland photo but one that goes back a long ways. This is Tamiami Trail, the original road from Miami to Tampa and one of only two southerne routes through the Everglades. (The other is the famous Alligator Alley.) This shows something that was decades in the making, if you look both sides of the roadbed are green. In years gone by, the road blocked the flow of the “River of Grass) to the south side. I have pictures of how that area became a pock-marked arid moonscape.
Then the ecology people had a hand in having a single ramp around a mile long that allowed water to again flow into the area. The catch is it took forever. I would drive that route on the motorcycle, but speed zones, bad patches, aggressive reservation police, and endless construction finally got me taking Highway 27 most of the past eight years. Imagine my surprise this trip to find the ramp complete, plus two more that were little more than pylons last time I looked.
The south side of the road has rapidly turned green again, show even fifty years of drought barely affects Mother Nature. There are futher signs the ramps, around every ten miles, are being extended. Meanwhile the rest of the roadway from Miami city limits to Monroe Station remain as wretched as when I first say them in 2000.
Later,=. Not this Monday, but the following, we are invited to play the kava brewery. It is first-come, first-serve open mic, and the guy says we are welcome to play as long as we want if nobody else signs up. They have a house PA, so all we need is our own personal gear. I’ll clear it with the Prez and let you know. I was also late getting away due to the logistics of getting this show underway. Bill us as the oldest band that has ever played a kava bar in Florida history.
Fort Abraham, N. Dakota.
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My criticism of economical digital cameras proves true again. I stopped in to see Agt. M and family. Now with three sons, the guy is rightfully looks like he has not had a good night’s rest in a while. Ha-ha, but the camera let me down. I lost photos of the guitar, the toys he’s build the boys, and both vehicles he fixed up. One is a Volt (electric car) which I am slated to test drive in around ten days. I took over twenty photos of the motors, batteries, and interiors, none of which turned out. Way to go, Panasonic.
Getting in late, we went over the statements and letter since last meeting, then simple propped up our feet and watched is always-on free TV channels. There was a movie I’d never seen, called (I think) “Buffalo Soldiers”. A lot of Hollywood crap that never happened, replete with portrayals of honor and chivalry that was never there. I have permission to mention the drama. His lady, the one that nobody likes, was been evicted up in Miami Springs. The impact here is where will she live? This place it too small, even if she was able to crash on the old sofa in the living room like I do. I can sleep like a log and the noise from the road past the Mall, I just tune that out.
The simple facts are that he’s got a real problem this time and there is no solution. None. Whereas we get along a day or two, anything even a couple days longer is out of the question. I have no idea how this can be dealt with, but I do know the condo association would also not allow her around. I’ve told you before, she causes trouble everywhere. Stick around to see how this plays out, I’ve told him he can crash at the cabin. That’s 200 miles away. Yes, that is the same gal he has broken up with ten times per year since 1994. (This is not gossip, all of this is well-known to all friends and family, and most strangers within earshot.)
ADDENDUM
How are we fixed for some words on band management? The Wednesday gig was cancelled and we seem to be the only ones who got it figured out. I’ll describe it momentarily, but over the six months, my duo is the only one who got anything out of it, and that, folks, is the difference. Looking at the general reaction, the others are right back where they were in October 2023 and, if the facts were known, that’s where they were in 2003, in some cases 1993. The show was not managed and the people were not managed, simple as that. Such other musicians who showed up did so once each except for the lady who only knew two chords.
The fat-boy had a few flashes but his musical circle was two drinking buddies with the same song list. Yes, he did well at times. My guitarist did attend the jams for a couple weeks after I pulled the pin, but you see, after experiencing proper band management, it’s a chore to put up with the rest. Was the whole jam a flop? It depends. A lot of people were disappointed over showing up to find the show canceled without notice. I think Bradford may have bought one of his expensive amps thinking the show was going to last. They certainly got nothing in return.
On the other hand, my duo emerged from the 15-odd shows a fully experienced and popular show. The exposure is evident in our stage behavior, our song list has been revamped to match audience reaction, and we have the resilience to put on a show even with missing equipment. We probably played more full-time gigs than any of the other regulars have in many years. Musically, many unknowns were covered without the usual grind, such as who sings what, stage patter, and best of all, harmonies which we could not have learned any other practical way.
So, what went wrong? The Prez can joke that we’ve played three spots and “lost” all of them. (Not so, but that is another tale from the trailer court.) We have a solid working band and it was non-music that caused the canceled show. It works like this. For all those months there was nobody in the club until the bum’s rush at 9:30PM when the craft brewery up the road closed. How did things go awry?
The club wanted to get people into that two-hour dead spot, 7:00 to 9:00PM. They didn’t say they did not want any live music later in the evening when the other crowd showed up. My duo was the only part of the sjam with enough material to go past 9:00PM, resulting in many times we were still playing by 10:00PM. Visualize that happening repeatedly. The local guitarists get up in front of an empty house and quickly run out of material. There were rarely more than five patrons present except toward the end. But by the end, as the crowd begins to filter in, the only peeople with any fresh material left were the Prez & I.
See how that works? The crowds and curtain calls invariabley happend after the jam was formally over and only when we were playing. But that is not (as we now know) what the club wanted. More explicitly, it was not what the barmaid in focus wanted. She was not there to see either the evolution of the show, the curtain calls, or the dynamite jams with the mandolin or xylophone. She hasn’t been around for two months and then finds a full show going on that’s now biting into her jukbox time slot. Nor was she present to inform anyone that was not the plan, so don’t go admonishing any musians whose goal is normally to play to the largest group possible.
