Thoughts Of The Townedger December 2014

I hope 2015 will be a much better year than 2014.  2014 sucked from day one.

I have no idea what musical projects will be forthcoming.  Acoustic Favors was done on the cheap and impromptu form.  It's interesting to put up an album of new songs and take a day to do it.  It may lead the way for more songs that will compile the next effort.

I tell Russell in our last get together that whatever we do will be not The Townedgers.  The TEs are a controlled democracy with me dictating how things will go and sound.  The TEs are Rodney Smith, just as Vufcup is Diggy Kat.  It's called working for the man.  Of course the biggest question is time to get together since nobody is on the same page and I admit I'm guilty just as the rest not to get together.  Jam sessions are always encouraged.  Russell says he knows a few musicians and I continue to tell him to get a couple and let's have some fun with it.  Nothing more to say about this.

For the past three weeks I have a visitor in the year, a stray gray lap cat that nobody knows where it came from.  I call it Callie Rustbucket,  Callie was a name of Donna's cat (Brooksie) that I thought was a nice name, Rustbucket due to all the orange and brown spots on it's coat.  I am not a cat person so it stays outside but she gets fed quite well by the neighbor next door or me sneaking snacks out there. I'd say she's about four to five months but is very very friendly, even to old crabasses like myself.  I don't plan to keep her, my brother don't want her in the house either but she has free rein of the yard.  She must have ESP, when I go out to get the mail, you don't see her, but coming back to get the mail, she's on the walk laying down.  She knows when the door's open, she'll peek in and she knows the car well enough to run to it when I get home.  Speaking of the devil, she's peaking in..  BRB.

One thing I do notice is that Callie not a big fan of the waterbed.  Nor anything water.
But I would love to give her a good home, she's a good kitty cat.

Townedger Radio on Lucky Star has been a fun show and quite different and it's nice to play music that I want to hear.  It's a month by month experiment and I have shows till March.  It's the third Wed of the month at midnight CST.   In other words, another show nobody listens to.  I don't play Free Bird or Killer Queen or any overplayed garbage on Corporate Radio.

I guess the band highlight was the reunion of Paraphernalia in Facebook in January to which just about everybody that played in that band got together to remembrance the past and although we didn't play too often when we did, we were pretty good.  Especially when fumbling through Free Bird on our last show, a song we never did beforehand.  And never will again.  The 30 year statue of limitations past this December with our final show in 84 so the band is now officially broken up.  I hear rumors about Mike wanting to know when we're going to get together again from Russ, but coming from the source, he may have heard that in his dream.   And I suspect that Russell will continue to think that way for another 10 to 20 years from now.

Forthcoming Trains is a better album than 30.  There was more focus and we didn't labored too hard on the songs.  I come to find it's best to revisit songs and see if they can fit better on a new album and I think I picked the right songs, which will be the norm for the next album.  Nobody buys albums, nobody listens to albums and nobody cares about albums anymore but if I'd buy my albums if I seen them in stores. If I didn't have that mentality, then it would be pointless to tout the music.  My albums are my diaries of that certain time, there's no throwaways, it's like chapters in a book.  If it keeps you interested, then you keep listening.  And that's what I want to do make music that people will continue keep listening to, like a book.  If it don't work, you put it back on the shelf and go with something else.

I guess that's it for now, work beckons. On behalf of Martin Daniels, Russell Swearingen, Michael Swearingen, Geoffery Redding, Callie Rustbucket and the rest of the Townedgers crew I bid you all Happy New Year 2015.