Ed doing John Prine Justice

Betsy at Work

March 3 at the Melrose Trading Post

I think I Know One

Here's how you too can be a prima donna musician, or at least act like one:
1) Show up late to the gigs - let everyone wonder if you're ever going to show up. Show up 10 minutes before your band plays, if at all.
2) Act bored and disinterested - while playing the show, look like you'd rather be somewhere else. Stand up against the wall with your legs crossed while playing guitar. Don't smile. Wear sunglasses at all times. You can also play with your back to the audience - that's a true sign of a prima donna.
3) Demand special treatment - If your bandmates each get two drink tickets at the show, demand that you receive three or four. Demand that you get extra people in on your guestlist. Demand M & M's on your rider (if you have one) - with the red and green M & M's seperated.
4) Complain about the sound - Yell at the soundman - tell 'em you can't hear yourself in the monitors. Tell him to turn you up louder than everyone else. Call him a moron, even.
5) Refuse to load gear - Before or after the gig, refuse to load any gear, except maybe your own guitar. Tell 'em "it's the roadies job!" If you are a singer, don't touch nothing!!!
6) Ignore your "fans" - After the gig, when audience members try to talk to you, just give 'em a nod and then ignore them. Again, wear sunglasses at all times. This shows them that you are a true prima donna to be contended with - a "player".
7) Always dress the part - Always dress in the finest of threads. This means, if you play rock music - leather. And of course, always wear shades.
8) Don't show up to practice - Tell the guys, "I'm not the one who needs the practice". Show up to every other practice, but only if you feel like it.

What I told a band mate

I was talking to my band mate about doing another open mic in April. It turned out that I was going to be gone the sign up day, so I told him to sign himself up and I'd back him. I was cool. The last time we played at the Melrose Swap Meet, we were doing a couple of original pieces while the band took a break and I played a song I wrote called "We Outgrew It" and after I finished a guy about this age tells me from his table what a great song it was. I told me band mate that had set me up for a couple of months.

Then there was one

We had three. The second one is packing up and we're driving her up to where she's going to work and live. The last one is still in college. She looks very intelligent, don't you think? She's bearly going to be around the next couple of years, but she will still have her stuff here. We might even get her back for grad school.

\Video of the Jam

That's my foot over there. Where else can you go and hang out with cool sixty year old women? 

Another One Waving Bye Bye

The second one is packing up her stuff and is leaving us next week. It's gonna be even quieter around here. 

Pictures from the Jam- The big guy is you know who

Shots from the St. Patty's Day Jam yesterday. I got there at 10:00 am and left at 8:00 pm Rhubarb played from 4 to 5 and then we stuck around to jam some more. Big group actually, folks coming and going. At Leisure World. 

Just love this CD Cover And the CD

The girl they mourned

Well, we won't tell Lilly Library. I just got this letter with the first 50 pages out of the library's manuscript collection. Helena's daughter had typed up a whole lot of her mother's letters to Molly Foote, a close and good friend. This has to do very quietly with the death of Minnie Temple, the inspiration for Henry James' "Wings of of Dove" Minnie was Helena and Henry's teenage buddy. Helena's first infatuation. Minnie has just died. "Open Image In New Tab" can give you a closer look.

Figuring it out

My very first self created banjo tabs- now I get to practice them for a month to see if I can play them

This is Truth

How To Write:

1. Sit down every day and write something
2. Outline
3. Know Act structure
4. Know Sentence and Paragraph structure
5. Know Meter and how it works
6. Read everything in the world
7. Throw in everything in your heart including the kitchen sink
8. Get and accept criticism from everyone
9. Rewrite until you make yourself physically sick
10. Do not make excuses, do not justify anything
11. Write only what you know
12. Realize there must be drama, reality can only be caught in essence
13. Never repeat yourself
14. Learn how to communicate
15. Realize all of it is art, some of it more equal than others
16. Finish what you start
17. Realize that there are tens of thousands of people out there that write and think they do not have to do any of the above. Be polite to them.

I'm a 125 year old stalker

Just sent for the copies of the first three folders of Helena's letters that her daughter typed up. They're at the Lily Library in my home town. Something entirely different to read. She was a painter in NYC in the 70s to the uninformed, (The 1870s) This is a Winslow Homer painting

Did I mention I finished it?

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

About This Book 

 Well, I'm probably never going to read all of Goethe, but I did manage The Sorrows... and Elective Affinities and will probably get around to Faust before I die. He's a good read, except this one just got dumb at the end. He sort of graduated at the end I guess, but I have problems with namby-pamby characters who can't make up their minds.  One should dip in here- but I'd suggest The Sorrows of Young Werther. 

I've started a friend's 787 page manuscript- quite a change.

Me Working

 

Me holding up the canopy with my head. This was what we had when we were done. Didn't quite finish.

Where I've Been

I left Friday morning at 3:30 am to hook up with a car that was leaving from Long Beach at 4:00 am to go to the place- its 90 miles south of Tijuana -past Encinada. The couple I rode with were in their twenties, married. He was a music teacher and part time construction worker and she was finishing her Masters in Marine biology. The other guy with was a little younger than me, with three high school kids at home.

I has tempted into this because it was working on a summer camp for kids- construction -stuff like that and I was promised by my buddy music at night around the campfire. It all came true. There were four groups. Four or five of us that worked for two and a half days building a canopy over their eating area for refuge against sun and rain. A bunch of folks that built chicken coops to give away to poor families (with chickens of course) and a a group that took the orphans from the orphan home to the beach and a group that worked a medical clinic. We did other outreach too. The guys went off to serve dinner at a rehab place for men and the women went off to do the same for a place for women. And we all ended up back at a fire circle at the end of each day.

The place was very raw and rustic. Needs a lot of work. I'll probably go back with the next trip in October, even though it was a lot of Jesus for me. I've volunteered to do a backpacking trip to Yosemite to do fundraising for them, if they want me. The video gives you a rough idea. I didn't actually see any kids - I was construction grunt for three days.