Stone City/Rumors: A Rehearsal For Retirement

Stone City Set:

Fox On The Run

It's So Hard

Goodtime Charlie Got The Blues

My Baby

Switch Board Susan

Logic And Lies

The Life We Lead

Just To Satisfy You 

Ring Of Fire

Cinnamon Girl

Baby What You Want Me To Do

With:

Carl Meiners, Karl Hudson, Katy Merrifeild, Bill Schlatter, Sarah Boyle and Bart Bock

(Ed Butler, Freddy Jones, Me, Nate Hines-Billy Bourbon's photo collection)

Rumors:

Everything Is Gonna Be Alright

I Don't Worry About A Thing

She Caught The Katy

With:

Nate Hines-Lead vocals and guitar

Brian Laurio-rhythm guitar

Freddy Jones-Harmonica

Ed Butler-Bass

Billy Bourbon-Keyboards on She Caught The Katy

Terry McDowell-Host

Dan Johnson, Jeff Taylor and Tommy Bruner-Sunday Funday Band

Julie has talked to me about thinking of retiring from my place of employment.  With the onslaught of spring processing and 21 straight days of working (not looking forward to that) I figured this would be another day of doing open mics and jams before owing my soul to the company store.  

A sparse crowd of jammers at the General Store and Sarah Boyle stole the show with her run through of Blown Away.   Carl Meiners returned back from Arizona to help out.  Karl Hudson hosted and had to pretty much play more than an hour's worth of songs before I got up there to play.  My performance was shaky, even while I went through Fox On The Run,  I messed up most of the chorus line and mumbled most of the words to It's So Hard. I finally found the groove on a blues version of Switch Board Susan and I did four originals to past the time.  The lack of being prepared didn't help and my GD guitar tuner fell apart while I was trying to tune up.  Thank goodness I have another Snark ready and willing to take the place of the one that I was using.   In hindsight, I should have went home after playing but I promised I show up for the Rumors Sunday Funday Jam.

(Brian Laurio, Ed Butler and half a Crabb) 

The place was packed and there more musicians at hand, including Bear Clair, Jeff Taylor back visiting folks and Ed Butler playing bass.  I'll try to post the rhythm guitar player's name but he was a cool cat.  Basically blues based songs from Nate, tho Billy popped up on keyboards and didn't have a clue on She Caught The Katy.  Then again, being a drummer, I didn't have to worry about chords, just how to play the beat and Everything Is Gonna Be All Right I got thrown for a loop on the stop start breaks of that song.  I admire Nate's throwing new songs our way.  The Mose Allison one was the kicker.   With a hour left, Terry had to pencil in Sir Bob Miller (now clean shaven) and some other guy, who didn't have an idea how to play Keep Your Hands To Yourself.  Tim Kauffman played before me, and was playing too soft so we told him to hit a little harder.  So he did much the chagrin of Nate who shot him a couple of dirty looks when Tim hit the power crashes a bit too hard.  I still had daylight to do a bit of a power walk around New Bo when I got done with my songs.

It has been a very long weekend of playing, starting with the Friday Night Blues Rox gig at Checkers, to which I posted pictures but no comments.  It was the first gig with Russ that we finally sounded good together, tho there was guitar glitch issues with Feel Like Making Love and the vocals not up to par.  Kris played great and really came out with How Blue Can You Get before ending the night on a noise filled guitar ending to Voodoo Chile.  Kris tends to freak out when I tend to play too fast so I have to focus on him during Pride N Joy.  Of course, Kris' mom always wants to hear me play Wipe Out, so I grit my teeth and play on, but if people want to hear a drum solo, who am I to argue.  But on a good note, we didn't play Free Bird.  A win-win for all.

With spring processing happening, I have to put the jams and open mics on hold for another three weeks.  With co workers retiring, I have noticed that my time is forthcoming, that the wear and tear and dealing with incompetent inexperienced help and bitchy seniors has drained the energy out of me.  It showed a lot during the Stone City open mic.  I thought hanging another eight years but Julie believes that I should retire a lot soon after that. We're getting older each day and time is getting short. A lot of good musicians and people have passed away in the time I have been back.  Being a musician I still believe I have another good 10 years to play music, tho I don't move as well as I used to be.  I'm surprised I haven't gotten arthritis in documenting my musical adventures and playing drums and guitar strumming.  65 seems to be the right number, by then I won't have to deal with the constant fighting traffic, red lights and other bullshit just to earn a paycheck and take more bullshit.  And to finally come together to live with Julie in harmony, tho us being introverts we tend to get on each other nerves.  My folks have been together for over 60 years, a remarkable feat upon itself.   I pray they will still be around a while longer.    I do look toward the day, that I can finally retire, go back home and live my life out the way I have been doing.  Music and records and more music.  With Blues Rox, I have a band that still can make an impact, the The Townedgers and Acoustic Adventures, my own outlet.  

For now, I have to get a paycheck and save up towards summer when we have time off.   But in five years we won't have to worry about that no more.