Watching the Weather

With three outdoor activities coming up in the next few weeks, I'm keeping an eye on the weather:

Thursday 7/24: Was a little concerned about the weather for the Guinea Pigs gig at Billings Forge Farmers' Market. But things look OK - partly cloudy, high 70s, 50% humidity, and low chance of rain (0 - 20%)

Saturday 7/26: Om Street / Yoga on LaSalle. Although the weekend forecast reads 86, Few Showers, and 30% Chance of Rain, the hourly forecast shows sunny, 60s, and 0% chance of rain in the morning. Let's call that a "go"

Tuesday 7/29 through Monday 8/4: Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. Looks like a mixed bag. Tuesday - Thursday look good (high 70s, sunny or mostly sunny, 0-10% chance of rain) - which are key days for me in terms of setting up campsite, relaxing with friends, getting prep work done in merch trailer land Friday and Saturday show showers and light rain (boo!) although we're looking 7-8 days out so lots of opportunity for changes. Fingers crossed and hopeful!

Too Busy to Blog - 2014 Edition

I seem to have this problem every year around this time. The weather gets hot, life gets busy, and I fail to blog. At least I got one more post in this July than I did last year.

Why so busy? Teacher Training at West Hartford Yoga ran through June 22 - the last weekend was really draining and there was a bit of catching my breath after that. Not that I got much time to relax; the 2014 teacher trainees jumped right into assisting; I've had 1-2 of them in most of my classes since the end of training - which keeps me on my toes and takes a bit of pre-class and post-class time to process.

Meanwhile, my web and social media clients over at Essex Steam Train launched a new website in mid-June; I'm no longer doing the tech for the site but still manage a lot of the content, so there was a lot going on there. They also started their daily operation (June 21), started planning for their summer circus train, and a bunch of summer events and features that have kept me hopping.

Finally, my band The Guinea Pigs has gotten busy - with fun gigs at MCC on Main (June 14), Blue Back Square (July 13), and the Manchester Bandshell (July 18) under our belts, and Buillings Forge Farmers Market tomorrow (July 24).

That's all the regular stuff. Summertime also brings some special events. West Hartford Yoga is doing their 4th Annual Om Street: Yoga on LaSalle event. Just another yoga class, except that I've been the audio engineer since year #1, when I rightly realized that event founder Lululemon had no idea what they were getting into, sound wise, and I volunteered the studio sound system (and my muscles and brain to make it work). This year, we're adding remote speakers; I've been busy at work drawing up plans and coordinating equipment - this year's acquisitions include 200' of XLR cable and a digital delay unit to sync up the remote system.
.

Right after Om Street, I leave for Falcon Ridge Folk Fest - my 22nd year as a volunteer (since 1992, with one year missed for a business trip to Malaysia). Like Om Street, it's not all fun and games; I've been in charge of performer merchandise since 2007 which involves spreadsheets, several supply runs to Staples, a small level of organizational OCD, and an equal measure of codependent over-functioning. I'm taking the year off from teaching yoga (I've been leading a 7:30 am practice in the dance tent since 2008) so hopefully will have a little bit of down time this year. Looking forward to nearly a week of camping, relaxing, hanging with my festival family, and more good music than I am able to absorb.

So - my busy life. I'll try to blog more often....

Big Music Week

By whatever vagaries of calendars and scheduling, this is turning out to be a big music week for me.

Sunday, my Guinea Pigs played at Hartford Hodge Podge. Always a fun gig, and we got a sunny and warm day (last year it was COLD)

Tuesday, a local friend from the yoga / spiritual communities organized a house concert (that moved to the HartBeat Ensemble's new carriage house theater) with Danny Schmidt and Carrie Elkin, two Falcon Ridge Folk Festival showcase alums (circa 2008) - was a lovely, intimate experience. I bought Danny's album "Little Grey Sheep" back in 2008, and added "Man of Many Moons" this week. It was really a "Danny" gig (Carrie is his fiancee and was in town for something else, so she backed him up and played a few of her own) but I'd love to see Carrie in a featured performance someday.

Bonus, one of my regular yoga students is the Co-Artistic Director & Education Coordinator at HartBeat. I need to keep that organization in my cultural sights going forward!

Friday, CT Folk is featuring the Boxcar Lillies - 2013 FRFF Showcasers (and good enough to earn the coveted "Jude buys your CD" prize) - a trio of women along the lines of Red Molly. Yes, please!

And Saturday, heading out to Southbury for the FRFF Crew Chief meeting and a follow-up concert with Wooden Nickel.

More music, more music!

Affirmed and Disappointed

My beloved Guinea Pigs played a gig yesterday at Billings Forge Farmers' Market. It's a lovely, small urban market, on Broad Street in downtown Hartford. There were a half dozen or so local farms, some products and crafts, and a handful of food trucks (including my fave, G-Monkey, from which I procured a hearty serving of cold peanut soba noodles, yum!)

We've played this particular market the past few years and it's always a fave for us, with friends and fans stopping by, and folks from the local arts and business community stopping in for lunch or their dose of fresh produce. The market itself serves the local community by accepting SNAP / WIC benefits for fresh local food, and doubling their value for produce purchased at the market (which admittedly does sell for a premium compared to the local mega-supermarket, not that there are many of those in Hartford)

I was affirmed a bit yesterday - a young woman who described herself as a "yoga newbie" recognized me from the studio, and perhaps seeing a free-spirit, artistic side of me that I rarely admit or see in myself, commented that "I need to get more creative in my life". Whatever stories I happen to be telling myself about who I am and how I live my life, I rarely would call myself creative or artistic. Yet this young woman, with her simple "I wish I were more like you" musing, held a mirror up to my own life, especially the choices of the past decade or so. It was very sweet and affirming.

And I was disappointed yesterday. I serve and belong to a "community" through my yoga practice, yet I can count on one hand the times a friend from that world has taken the time to support me, to come see my band play. Occasionally people stumble across me, but only 1-2 times has someone come specifically to see us. I know we're mostly east of the river, so when we do come to this part of town, I guess it sparks a little hope that "this time I might see a familiar face" of the 100s on my Facebook friends list. I'd guess that fewer than 2% of the locals on my 480+ Facebook friends list have ever come to hear me play despite my sharing every single gig since 2010.

I need to look at that a little. Part of it is certainly my own compartmentalizing my life / lives - with separate communities for music, for yoga, for GLBT, for ballooning, with a handful of people, events, and venues that overlap. Part of that is my own strong nature and ability to stand on my own two feet without a lot of support - the folks with needs and crisis and struggle seem to attract and receive both attention and love. And part of that is the complexity of boundaries and relationships in a world where I am teacher, student, client, friend, and employee, and pull back a bit to keep from getting enmeshed in drama.

But over and over, that part of my world continues to break my heart. 

When Things Go Right

Took a few hours last night to go see Robin Lane at Whole Foods Glastonbury.

Now, I last got to see Robin Lane perform around 1981. I was a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) which had a pretty decent rotation of musicians and performers in my four years there. Robin Lane and the Chartbusters was a regionally hot, on the verge of breaking through kind of group, along the lines of Blondie or The Pretenders. I picked up their self titled debut album on vinyl, which followed me around for many years, until one final vinyl purge (everything went except for Springsteen and the Roches - strange bedfellows to be sure). But a few years back I picked this album up on CD.

Thinking back, I spent many hours with this album cued up on the turntable, figuring out the chords and the riffs. I must have worn that record out because to this day I still remember the lyrics and I bet if I spent a moment, the chords and riffs are still in my fingers. It was perhaps my first experience of connecting to a local musician / band that is perhaps not on the national scene, a habit that has lasted throughout my life.

Here's Robin Lane and the Chartbusters  at the Rathskeller (aka "The Rat") in Boston, a venue far cooler than the WPI gymnasium.



So, Robin Lane came to Whole Foods. She's been off the grid for many years, but has a new project called  Song Bird Sings, subtitled "Healing Trauma One Song at a Time". Their mission:

It is Songbird Sings mission to transform those silenced by domestic violence enabling them to give voice to their experiences and emotions through songwriting and creative collaboration in a safe, enjoyable, and structured environment. To help participants to learn inner strength and resilience as they come to trust themselves, and others, while building support systems between those with a shared history of trauma.

It was such a pleasure seeing and hearing Robin. She lives in Western MA and plays house concerts and small gigs, and I hope I'm able to attend (or perhaps even held to arrange) one in the future. She did a mixture of old rockers and newer, folkier numbers, as well as some songs from the A Woman's Voice album. (which I picked up at Whole Foods but the CD was not in there.....grumble). Abetted by bass player John Pfister, a couple of Whole Foods percussionists (Callem and......?) and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Chen from Them Damn Hamiltons (on keyboard), she was...in a word, delightful.

Here's Robin in the 21st century:


It was a wonderful look back into my past, fondly remembering my misspent youth. Robin and I - we are aging well. As a bonus, my fellow Guinea Pigs Sandy and Dan dropped in for a listen - it was sweet of them to come share the music and my passion for this particular artist.

Tell Me Your Name Again....

I have this issue with people. I'm pretty sure I have exceeded my mind's capacity to retain and remember all the people in my life.

Let's see - I teach yoga. There are perhaps 60-80 people I see each week, some weekly, some occasionally, some just once or a few times. I never really get to know their names; when a regular comes in early and I can sneak out to the desk I can match a name to a person, but I'm not all that good at keeping it all straight.

Then of course, there are all the yoga teacher trainees. 48 this year, 35 or so in 2010, 2011, 2012. That's a good 120 folks to remember - and I really do struggle with many.

I move through other worlds - music (my other members of my band, the Guinea Pigs, belong to the same UU church and many of our fans come from there), ballooning (probably 50-60 people), camp (250 or so, with a broader community of past campers), and my folk festival (perhaps a core of 40 key volunteers, with another 100 or so I ought to remember but usually do not). Add in musicians I meet, folks in the local arts, cultural and GLBT worlds, folks in the greater spiritual / yoga world. And of course, my extended family - a child of two roman catholics, I have close over 50 first cousins, and now they are breeding. It's way too much.

I have (as of this morning) 466 Facebook friends, and that's even a bit low, since I (a) almost never reach out to friend people myself and (b) accept friend invitations only from folks I have actually met in real life.

Last night, at our gig, a woman who clearly knows me came up, grabbed a hug. I had no idea. Turns out she is a friend of the other band members (goes to UU church), has a yogic name (shakti) and is on the merch crew at Falcon Ridge. I had no freaking idea.

This is a problem. Not sure how to deal with it, but it's annoying, inconsiderate, and kind of rude.

Music and Arts Update

There's a bunch of music, social and arts events coming up on my personal horizon:

• February 21 - Little Ugly and Paper Hill Casket Company at Black Eyed Sally's
• February 22 - The Inaugural Mouth at Mark Twain House
• February 23 - CT Lighter Than Air Society Annual Dinner (postponed due to the Blizzard)
• February 24 - Oscar Night Hartford at Mark Twain House
• March 2 - Ellis Paul up at the Iron Horse 
• March 7 - CT Forum / A Meaningful Life
• March 8 - Guinea Pigs gig at the CT Audubon Society, Glastonbury (come!) 
• March 9 - Kate Callahan and Friends at West Hartford Yoga

Hold my calls....

Neil Young: Still Rocking

Way back in 2006, I saw Jonathon Demme's Neil Young biopic Heart of Gold. I blogged about it back then:

I thought how blessed Neil Young was to go toe to toe with mortality, to survive, and to be wise enough to throw his own goodbye party / concert and to film it. May we all be so fortunate.

Little did I know that Neil Young would survive his aneurysm survey, and keep right on rocking. And I was fortunate enough to see him as he came through Bridgeport (Webster Arena) last evening.

Now, Neil Young and I go way back. I thing I wore the grooves down on my Life Rust album (remember double albums?). I owned an erratic sampling of his works on album and cassette: his self titled first, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, American Star and Bars, Re*actor, Trans, Landing on Water, Freedom.  And when I made the jump to CD, I've picked up a bit over the years: Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Rust Never Sleeps, Decade, Life Rust, Sleeps with Angels, Mirror Ball, Ragged Glory. Not canonical by any means, but a good sampling.

And as an angry young rocker, Neil Young was an icon. Needle and the Damage Done was part of the walking D acoustic trilogy (also, Willin' by Lowell George and Friend of the Devil by the Grateful Dead). A guitar, and amp, and the right effects pedal, and one could blast out the riffs to Hey Hey, My My. Every band I've ever played in had some Neil Young in the set list - Powderfinger, Hey Hey My My, Like a Hurricane. Even today, the Guinea Pigs play Cinnamon Girl.  Neil Young's music is nothing if not messy, emotional, heartfelt.

First thought: Is that the set from Rust Never Sleeps? Indeed it was. No idea if Crazy Horse gigs have had this set all along, but dude - that album came out in 1979, the year I graduated from high school. And yet, here it still is, 30+ years later.  It was both reassuring (some things never change....they stay the way they are....) and kind of sad.

Similarly, the intro to Needle  and the Damage Done (with the lightning graphics and sound, and the Woodstock "please get off those towers...no rain" recording) was straight out of Live Rust. For someone who often obstinantly refuses to play the greatest hits (the folks behind us were kvetching about previous concerts where he did nothing old or classic), Mr Young is awfully faithful to the past.

And there were Greatest Hits - Mr. Soul, Hey Hey My My, Cinnamon Girl, Powderfinger, Needle and the Damage Done were all woven into newer material. It felt a little polarized - old FM classics or brand new material. Not a lot of middle ground, mining the many albums of material out there.

I was struck by a certain level of goofiness, bordering on surrealism, that infused the concert. The big amps and microphone, and the video monitors (trimmed out to look like 60's TV sets hung in the arena) reminded me of a bunch of kids playing in the basement - Neil and the band (with the exception of the keyboard player) hugged the center of the stage, facing inward towards each other as if avoiding eye contact with the audience. This was their fun time playing, and we got to watch and listen, if we dared.

Their set opened with the National Anthem (dude, you are Canadian, right?) complete with flag unfurled behind the band - serious or making fun? Hard to say. During one song, an old pump organ was rolled out on stage, and when the short organ instrumental rolled around (played by the keyboardist on a more modern instrument) the old pump organ was spotlit, unplayed. At one point, the roadies crumpled papers and bags in front of a fan, blowing across the stage for no real reason other than perhaps the joy of watching things blow across the stage. You get the feeling that maybe back in '75, someone decided to screw with Neil and send stuff blowing across the stage via a cooling fan, and they decided to keep the bit. There was a lot of that going on. Like some weirdly serious, weirdly comic ritual that has evolved over 40 years - nobody knows why they are doing all these things, they made sense once upon a time.

Me at 51 is a far different person than me at 18. I grew tired of the endless guitar riffing, and the prolonged (10 minutes maybe?) of messing around with feedback and sonic blasting.  I wanted a little more song and a little less riffing. But, 35 years down the road Neil Young is still rocking it out. He was up there amusing himself in 79, and he's still up there amusing himself today. We can choose to come along.

The second song in was the anthem Powderfinger - and it was like I was scratching a 35 year old itch to hear the song played live, after playing it so often in my own basement rock past. It did not disappoint.

Jonathon Demme has a follow-up film (Journeys) - part of an accidental Trilogy - and I need to see that. 2006's Heart of Gold was amazingly moving. But for now, I'll let the ears ring and the energy settle. Glad I finally got to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

Happy is What Happens....

My friend Amy has a saying, "Top Ten Day". When the weather is perfect, the company is great, the venue or event is amazing, when the food is delightful. Amy let's us know - this is a "Top Ten Day". Of course, Amy is so generous of spirit and delightfully optimistic that she probably racks up 20 or 30 Top Ten Days per year. But that's another story.

Yesterday, driving out to the Coventry Regional Farmer's Market, I had my own moment of thankfulness and awareness. The day had not yet turned steamy, so the windows were open, and the bright sun filtered through the canopy of leaves on the windy country road. I had my musical instruments and amps in the car; a cooler of water on ice, and a large tarp to use as a sun screen. I was en route to spending three hours doing something I love - playing music - with some wonderful people and musicians, my beloved Guinea Pigs. And I was headed out to support a farmer's market where local farmer's were selling their produce, grown with sweat and love, to people who appreciate fresh, local, and healthy food.

And as I was driving along the road, enjoying those sites, sounds, and smells before me and contemplating the day ahead, the realization or awareness suddenly emerged that I was happy. For those who have done Enlightenment Intensive work, it was like a tiny little Direct Experience. My life was not blown wide open, but there was a little slice of divine awareness there, and it colored the rest of the day with thankfulness, joy, and delight.

Buying Art

The Guinea Pigs (my folk rock band, I play bass and a little guitar) played a gig this weekend in Glastonbury, at the annual Audubon Society "Art for Nature's Sake" event. Last year, I took advantage of the event to purchase a piece of art (a painting of a downy woodpecker, which has become a little bit of a spirit guide to me). This year, I once again did a little "unreasonable" (in the sense that buying art is a little bit extravegent for me) and purchased another piece.

The artist, Lesley Braren of East Hampton, CT, has a very nice web presence. And I found my purchase online, entitled "Bird Cat" - a monotype of a red winged blackbird perched on some cat-tails, so you can see it as well!

Not sure why, but I really liked the impressionist feel of the monotype form as worked by Ms. Braren. I'm not an art scholar so never heard of this before, but Lesley describes it thus: 

"Monotypes are oils that are painted on glass and then transferred to paper. Sometimes it's only possible to make one print from the painting and other times there is a second one that's called a "ghost". Rarely a third one would be "ghost 11". Everyone is different."

It's funny, moving through the various artists tents and looking at the work. Several artists work impressed, some made me laugh or smile, and a couple I really liked. But like a suitor at a dance, there is usually one artist whose work speaks to me at that moment, an perhaps just one or two pieces that step to the fore. In this case, my continued delight and appreciation for birds, and the bright colors and textures of nature drew me in.

It's a lovely experience - finding something that speaks to the heart and spirit, and giving the artist some livelihood (in the form of money) in exchange for their vision and work. I'm a latecomer to the appreciation and collection of art, and I am sure I will never have the time, space or money to collect seriously, but it's nice to put a little bit of good karma into the art world.

CT Pride Day

Wandered down to Bushnell Park this afternoon for Connecticut Pride. Was a beautiful morning / early afternoon, although it clouded over and cooled down a bit.

I really liked the layout of the vendor / organizational booths - it contained the energy and created a feeling of critical mass, as compared to other years. Think I've missed a few years there so this may not be a new thing, but regardless, I approve. I'm not much for the music at Pride; just not my cup of tea. And without a posse hanging out together, not a lot of fun hanging out all afternoon. So I popped in and out.

Mostly, it's my annual check-in with folks. Some friends I have known for 10-15 years; Pride is my one chance to really touch base every year. Others I see more often, but nice to see them all together. And always a couple I have lost touch with, it's a nice surprise to reconnect.

And always a little bittersweet. Organizations I have been involved with over the years; membership has turned over and now I know nobody. New organizations that have sprouted up that I have no connection or history with; a little awkward to wander up and say "Hey, I used to be somebody, 10 years ago". And a sense of missing the GLBT community a bit:

* Living in a liberal state where GLBT folks are seamlessly integrated into other communities, a lot of the community spaces (community center, bars, coffeehouses) and resources / groups have faded;

* Moving through the world without making waves or encountering much in the way of discrimination or hate, which limits my incentive to stay connected to the support and activism organizations;

* Being way too busy with work, hobbies, and life - I try to stop in to community events when I can, but "when I can" is a pretty thin slice of life.

Shout out to my wing women; Alison from yoga and Sandy from the Guinea Pigs, who both wandered down to check out the festival and wander around with me for a while. I usually just do a circuit or two, say hi to old friends, and head out. Instead I hung out with them and chatted for a few hours. I Am sure they both broke a few hearts this afternoon; sorry ladies, they are straight! Although Alison's sidekick (an adorable pug) was like catnip to the gay men....

I doubt I'll get to any of the evening festivities - a bit too old for the bar scene, balloon chasing in the morning means a 4:30 am wake-up call. But it was nice to check in. The Eros Film Fest is coming up in November...

Much Life, Bad Blogging

I find myself in the embarrassing position of not having blogged one bit in July, to date. Aack! Bad blogger!

I have excuses, however. I was in Montana from July 10 - 16, on a Yoga & Ceremony retreat at the Blacktail Ranch, with Heather Tiddens and Cheri Clampett. An amazing week - the land, our hosts, and these two amazing yogis, healers, and spiritual catalysts. I'll blog in detail in a bit. But while I was there, I was 100% deprived of cell phone and internet service, so it was truly a "get away from it all" kind of weekend.

In the days proceeding the Montana trip, I was scrambling to get ahead on work. And similarly, right after the trip I had a backlog of things on the to-do list that I needed to plow through. Then off to my second "getaway" - 5 nights in a tent on a farm in Hillsdale NY for the annual Falcon Ridge Folk Fest. As usual, I had a blast, and the weather was much better this year than in previous years (we got some rain, but only SOME rain, and no tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, day long monsoons, etc.) I shall blog as well about the folk fest.

On top of all that, Guinea Pigs stuff - a gig at Billings Forge on July 8th, and another coming up at Manchester Community College Farmer's Market on Wednesday, July 28th. Some rehearsals in there as well as a visit to the recording studio to tweak the bass tracks.

And now, back in my life for the first time in a few weeks. Work to catch up on, laundry as well, airing out the camping gear and stowing it. I got in a good practice with my teacher Barbara tonight - wonderful to be back in my body after so much rough service. Just puttering tonight - folding some laundry, straightening up, listening to my folk fest music purchases, looking forward to This American Life at 11....

I'll leave you with this snippet of folk fest life:

Who Needs a Webmaster?

I've recently started playing with a small musical group, the Guinea Pigs. The group has had a minimal web presence, so I've been slowly setting up a website. Instead of a formal website, I decided to simply set up a free blog, using Blogger technology. Here.

Pretty please with the blogger technology (this particular blog dates back to 2005, and I have not done much updating to the format or template). But nowadays, blogger lets you set up a text boxes, additional internal pages, a host of layouts and color schemes. It's all very easy to use, flexible, and powerful.

Would encourage any of my friends looking into a small website to promote a group, a small business, etc. to consider using blogger. It's fast, it's free, and it's pretty powerful!

Coventry Regional Farmers Market

The Guinea Pigs played the Coventry Regional Farmers Market yesterday. It was a totally fun gig!

I saw local friends - Jane (one of my yoga teacher friends), and also from the studio, Dayna aka the Crafty Scientist. She had a booth set up and was selling various soaps (and handmade fabric objects especially in skulls). Her logo looks like her, only evil - she seems rather angelic in person.

Another posse of friends wandered by, surprised to see me playing. Not sure why they missed the news (I was rather annoying at spamming my Facebook friends list with the gig). And when I asked them what brought them to Coventry, they informed me that it was a lesbian meetup or womyn's gathering of sorts. (Not sure if its formal, through some organization, or its just something that has organically developed). So I was amused and delighted that by the end of the afternoon, there were small clusters of earthy women hanging out - listening, chatting, occasionally dancing or singing along.

Feedback was very good from the patrons, vendors, and staff - we do a nice mix of music. People stopped to listen, danced a little, applauded. We only were asked to "turn it down" once.

Pictures here (my flickr account, I handed my digital camera to some friends) and here (drcope's flickr account, fewer but much higher quality photos)

Again, a total blast, hope we get out there again this season!

Slow News Day in New Britain

Don't It Always Seem To Go....

....that you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone....

Or perhaps, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder". I've finally returned from a week out of town. Much travel annoyance (check my twitter feed for the blow-by-blow) culminating in a not getting home Friday night and traveling Saturday. Did not really get much in the way of sleep on Thursday or Friday, so I've been pretty much zonked all weekend. Apologies to everyone who I've been out of touch with.....

But being away make me appreciate that which I have here....the condo, my dog, my bed, my fridge full of my food, my sink full of dishes, even the mess and the clutter. Hopefully it will encourage me to be a bit more mindful and thankful about it all.

The work went well; a week of equipment testing made for long days on my feet. But I snuck in three nights of yoga at Inner Fire Yoga in Madison, as well as a side trip up to Appleton to see some old friends. So all in all, a good trip. And I am not even too far behind going into Monday.....

That being said, the week ahead is a full one. I came back home to a Guinea Pigs (in future, GP) rehearal last night, and this afternoon, a few hours in the studio with Tim Mayock, recording GP originals. We prepped 7 numbers and were able to move through them all, recording two good versions of each. While I am sure there are lots of hiccups and oops moments in there, we all seemed pretty stoked about it. Hopefully the music will make it's way into the world sooner or later - not 100% sure how we plan to use these. It was pretty sweet to be in the studio (Northfield Music, in Granby) which is a lovely space, Tim was pretty wonderful. Looking forward to going back to clean some things up and see how the songs flesh out.

The rest of the week if pretty GP intensive - rehearsal tomorrow night, a gig on Tuesday (the Billings Forge Hog & Grog fundraiser), as well as Wed (a Park and Rec thing for New Britain), and finally, next Sunday at the Coventry Farmer's Market.

2nd Annual Hog and Grog to benefit Billings Forge

Make Mine Music

I've been a closet music geek for most of my life.

In grade school, a local high school band stopped by one day for a performance, and a little presentation about music. I wandered home with information about music lessons. My parents, wisely looking ahead to the day my mouth would be full of metal, steered me away from the brasses and the woodwinds. How about a guitar?

So they bought me an inexpensive guitar, and I started guitar lessons with an old guy, Joe Diorio, who appears to have played at some point with Guy Lombardo's band. He was a funny old guy - with a studio in his basement. I rarely if ever practiced, but went to his house once a week and plugged my way through the Mel Bay series under his tutelage. He knew I was not really practicing, but we both kept at it.

I never did catch fire under Mr. Diorio's tutelage - instead my musical metanoia occurred in the back of a 1969 Ford Ranch Wagon, on a family vacation through the Wisconsin Dells. Somewhere on that trip, my fingers figured out how to find the chords without my brain intervening, and my right hand started strumming rhythmically through the chord changes. Against all odds, I became a guitarist.

At some point along the line, I started playing guitar at church - in those post-Vatican II days, guitars at Catholic mass were an "in" thing. And so we'd have this wall of (probably probably poorly tuned, in those pre-electronic tuner days) guitars churning out "I Am the Resurrection" and "Here We Are". I continued to play at Mass (in various forms) for the next few decades. High school - where Janet Cavatorta held sway and infused the services with Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, CSNY, and Bob Dylan. I was too nerdy to realize how cool that was. College (a year or so with the WPI Newman society, until I lost interest). Young adulthood, where I was plucked out of the congregation (visibly singing) by the music leader who was to become my spouse. And for a few years at the local Dignity chapter.

Along the way, I started to pick my way into more secular music. I remember in grade school, one of the kids having a Beatle's songbook he wanted me to play from. I had no idea who they were - having no older siblings to initiate me into popular music. My pop music sensibilities started at the Partridge Family and did not get far past Tommy Roe (it's taken me years to not think of Proud Mary as a Tommy Roe song....)

But in high school, I started to play an electric guitar - playing in the pit band for the high school production of Godspell; and then in a late's 70s basement band. We did Cars, Stones, Knack, Zep, Hendrix (I was strictly rhythm, but wunderkind Pete Toupy was pretty amazing on lead). We dubbed ourselves Broken Bones (figuring being close to the Beatles in the record racks was a good thing, and rhythmically similar to Rolling Stones). If I recall, I think the logo had a KISS feel in terms of font) so you get where the influences were.

And although my interests were somewhat divided at the time - math & science geekery, part time work at McDonald's, creative writing - well, music always seemed to be core. When my father died the spring of my senior year in high school, I tucked a guitar pick into his suit pocket in the casket. He was not a musician himself, but he always seemed to take some pleasure in my music and if he was not a band parent, he was always encouraging and generous in terms of lessons, instruments, transportation, etc.

As college rolled around, I fell in with another musical clique, 1/2 of the band Equinox of Westboro MA. Don Montgomery (drummer), and Stan Matthews (guitar and vocals) and I (picking up a bass for the first time). Would get together and jam at a WPI student apartment (Fuller 22, if memory serves) and later on the 3rd floor of the Westboro Package Store building where Stan assembled a small studio with a 4 track reel-to-reel recorder. We had a couple of gigs - a talent show at the WPI Goat's Head Pub (a black and white photo exists which will be graciously not scanned in), a full gig at the Westboro K of C hall (I have the entire thing recorded on cassette!). A graduation party on a flat-bed truck (all I remember is leading us through Jonathon Richman's Roadrunner to a field full of screaming drunk recent grads)

My musical roots grew deeper - Don was a huge Stones fan, Stan adored the Beatles, the Doors and Joy Division. We played all over the classic rock spectrum - the Animals, U2, Clash, Jam, Beatles, Stones, CCR, Neil Young. It was a fun time.

After college, I drifted away from my own music. My spouse was a musician and I kind of dropped out in the way that married couples sometimes distribute interests and responsibilities. But after a brief marriage and separation, I began to pack my old Ibanez acoustic into the car and hit the local open mike circuit. Starting at the Common Ground in Bristol, and ranging all over (Susan's in Granby, Roaring Brook in Canton, Buttonwood Tree in Middletown, Equinox World Cafe in Manchester) I played mostly covers with a few originals. My singing was never particularly noteworthy, and my playing was never more than workmanlike, but I was out there.

And then, 15 years ago or thereabouts, I started to mess with gender. And as my affect began to soften and blur, and the difficulty of moving across the gender divide whilst playing gruff and growly folk music set in, I slowly set down my guitar. I continued to truck it along with me to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival (I've been volunteering and attending for 18 years or thereabouts), but after a while it never came out of the case, and then for a few years, I stopped bringing it. For many years, I did not even pick up my guitars.

A few years back, having discovered yoga, I went to an evening of chanting called Kirtan. I loved the music, I loved the energy, and when the evening was over I shyly approached the leader, Shankara. "I know you have a guitar player, but if he ever needs a backup or a rest, I play too....." Little did I know that Jeff the guitarist was stepping back from the group, and Shankara was actively looking for a guitarist. And suddenly, I had a gig. Music was back.....

I've played with the kirtan group (not so far removed from my folk mass roots, really) for a few years now - my rather intuitive playing and many years in the folk mass trenches giving me the right skills to sit and play for 2-3 hours straight, to think on my feet, to play with abandon without a particular set list or structured songs. Along the way I've picked up a new guitar (a smaller Ibanez with internal electronics), an instrument amplifier, and an acoustic bass. We're still at it....next Kirtan is Feb 11th....come on down!

And for the past few weeks, I've been rehearsing with a lovely musical duo - Sandy (Vocals) and Dan (guitar) making up the Guinea Pigs (a rather interesting name, dubbed the night they went first at an open mike). They play an eclectic mix of great stuff - Nick Lowe, Simon & Garfunkel, John Prine, Todd Rundgren - along with a good dose of originals. They sound wonderful together, and I'm totally excited to be adding my bass playing to the mix. It's been really fun learning their songs and rehearsing with them - and rediscovering my bass playing chops. (We're looking for a drummer, in case readers play or know someone who does)

They play around a bit - open mics, farmer's markets, clubs, other opportunities. We're doing an open mic slot on Monday up at Union Street Tavern in Windsor. It will be my first time performing publicly like this in many years. I'm excited. Playing music! Hope it sounds as good as it feels!