Thoughts From The Townedger-November Edition

 Well, another month and we got shut down by the jams.  I'm finishing up the new Townedgers album and once I get a damn CD Duplicator going, I'll send it out to my 10 biggest fans.   Talk about a loss leader, Maier Records are full of Townedgers albums.

Against Julie's wishes, I have gone out and played at open mics, not because of being selfish but keeping promises that I would show up.  I never had a woman that worries so much about me while in the meantime, she's been under the weather.  I promised that the Dec 3 open mic would be my last for 2020, intill the COVID vaccine is available.  I do think Jim Jacobmeyer has gone out of his way to sanitize the mics and place down.  Blues Rox does have a practice for this month, we got canceled out of Cedar Ridge this month but they might have us next month.   Just in time for snow and cold. 

 

Our former singer of Boyscout Hippies, Cali Jean Blake has been keeping us posted with her forthcoming new daughter, due sometime in DECEMBER.  She decided to shoot some photos and she looks marvelous. Also our very own Dewayne Schminkey is a grandpa times two, with twin daughters from his son n wife.  I think he'll be  granddad a few more time before this is over. (I need to proofread this shit, she's due in Dec not September). 

The COVID epidemic took out the Sunday Funday jam after two weeks of putting it back on.  I don't expect it to start up till next year now.  Terry and the boys put their best effort into making this happen.  It is drum practice for me to interact with other musicians.  I haven't done that with Blues Rox all month.  Chances are good we will be idle for a while.

Three and half months from the shitstorm, Cedar Rapids still looks like a bomb went off inside. The Sinclair Park walking trail still has tree limbs up and down and the old oak tree is still there. Things are improving tho, But the way it used to be is now long gone. 

Contrary to what Russ believes, I get annoyed with him saying that I have all this money and I should spend it more on crap I don't need, aka Neil Peart Caress Of Steel drums that's up for bids.   I'd love to have my own house, own space and do whatever I want to do.  I have to put up with his ignorance on this for most of my life.   I did bid a 1,000 dollars  just to make Paco happy.  The bid was rejected.   Looks like he won't get that as a Christmas present from me. 

Blues Rox has played at The Glass Tap twice this year, once at J and A Tap, once at the Norway bar, four times in their home and once at the blues jam in Marion this year.  I have hosted the Waubeek open mic three times, helped the Boy Scout Hippies twice this year.   We have gotten canceled three times this year as well.  For Acoustic Adventures, one paying gig and plenty of Stone City and Artisan open mics as well as four times at the Pub 1848 in Moline.  With no forthcoming gigs, I am finally finishing up the Townedger's new album and am considering to do a live TE album.   But only if I start feeling better. 

If I had to do it all over again, I would have taken music theory and lessons in order to understand how to play guitar or drums, but in the past I was quite hyperactive and attention deficit disorder which nobody knew or gave a shit about.  I was always the so called smart child, and could figure it out for myself.  I always thought once I got the drumset or guitar I could start playing right away but it never happens that way.  I was always lax on practicing part and even today I have moods of being lax on things in life.  You can get easily taken advantage of, which explains why I seem to fall for the slight things in life.  Sometimes I think that's how life has made me out to be.   And the reason why I look like this below.  

Sorry to scare y'all. 

So, that's it for this month.  Not a lot going on.  A couple of Open mics for next month and then we'll see how 2021 will be.  Stay tuned. 

Elegy-The Latest Townedgers Compilation Album

 The Songs:

The End (The Doors)  9:33

Fool For Your Glasses (R.Smith)  3:38

Molly's Folly (R.Smith/K.Miller) 6:24

Saving Grace (R.Smith, G.Redding)  3:15

I'll Have To Say I Love You In A Song (J.Croce)  2:46

Jimmy Brown The Newsboy (M.Wiseman)  2:05

Drawn In The Dark (R.Smith/G.Redding) 4:07

Walk In Solitude (R.Smith) 3:25

Six Days On The Road (D.Dudley) 3:25

Slippin' Away (Bill Anderson)  2:45

Ain't No Grave (Trad; Arr by The Townedgers)  5:34

Rodney Smith-Lead Vocals, Rhythm Lead Guitar, Drums

Geoff Redding-Guitar, Backing Vocals

Robby Knowles-Bass, Backing Vocals 9-11

Martin Daniels-Bass 1-7

Compiled By R.Smith.

Produced By Terry Bainbridge and Rodney Smith

1.3,4 Produced By Rodney Smith And Richard Dennenbaugh

A+R: Diggy Kat 

Notes:

With the completion of the new Townedger album, our record company asked if there enough material left in the vaults.  Usually the line of thinking when I did Logic And Lies, we had a bunch of covers left to make another (which lead to Eminent Domain) to satisfy our fans (all three of them).  But 2020 has been a crappy year.  We started work on the new album right before the COVID outbreak and after a couple week, I got lazy and then in August, Mother Nature gave us a Shitstorm that changed the landscape around the area.   In the meantime, I was gigging with Blues Rox and helping The Boy Scout Hippies and Julie at various open mics around the area,   And The Towndgers got stuck on the back burner.   8 months later, the album finally got done and mixed and ready to continue the musical journey. 

While going through the archives, I found that what was left behind, most were tossed off ideas or demos for consideration.  Walk In Solitude, done for the 2020 album was a quick idea that I never followed through.   I added drums later for inclusion for something like this.  Jimmy Brown was the basis for The Way Life Used To Be for Logic And Lies, but I didn't think it fit even for Eminent Domain, the odds and ends record after Logic And Lies.  The Jim Croce number is a sweet little love song that I could never come with myself,  so I recorded it and then forgot all about it.    The End, is the original version that was on No Exit (later dropped when No Exit was replaced by Thirty) and even with the Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine part,  I get a kick of revisiting this part.    And get the play the Dminor strum for 9 and half minutes  

Fool From Your Glasses is from Jubilee and was left off that album due to length of the CD.  We could have added it but there's a part on there that my vocals got erased.  Listening to this version of Drawn In The Dark is much more harder edge and probably could have been used for Logic And Lies but we thought the lead vocal was lost forever due to a poor recording tape.  However, Terry Bainbridge found it and compressed it back to at least you can hear it.   The last three songs are from the 2020 sessions that didn't make it to that album.  We didn't see the need for another Six Days On The Road and Slipping Away was left off due to the fact we didn't want the new album to be an hour long.  Perhaps in hindsight we should have left Jeannette (the final act) and Just To Satisfy You as well, but they were requested by our A and R guy.  Who usually knows best.

Ain't No Grave, like Walk In Solitude, was a rough draft.  I hear this from an old Gospel CD that I found up in Madison and wanted to explore using that song but our version is night n day.   I threw the drums on one take and it's rough but then again we always do things rough.  The Townedger way.

Molly's Folly and Saving Grace are from a 2007 live recording date.  The latter, originally done on 1989's Moonlight Chronicles, is cleaned up and somewhat true to the original, except for the sloppy ending, we did another version on a cancelled odds and sods CD with Fade out but in 1989, Geoff and I had plenty of ideas.  Saving Grace here was sped up and was faded at the end.    Not one of my proudest moments but it does rock.

Going through archives, there was some songs I was trying to look for but couldn't find them.  The 2004 Garth Richardson produced Long Time Forgotten that had Rolling And Tumbling which found its way on a TE best of that got withdrawn.   The tapes to the 20 album have disappeared as well.  Most of the Pawnshops For Olivia outtakes found themselves on Townedger Country in 2009, As for the No Exit outtakes, I only could tolerate The End and the tapes  used to record were shit.  Forthcoming Trains had two versions of It Was Nice That It Lasted but neither one really floated my boat, the second version had a cool middle part where Martin Daniels' bass line led the song but otherwise we felt that song was boring.  For Logic And Lies, only Drawn In The Dark first version was used, we had a bootleg recording of Teri with Jeff Overly on soprano sax but the vocals are muffled (it was a cell phone recording from Belinda James, who at that time was my vocalist in The Egads!) and a partial of Gold Dust Woman with Julie Gordon singing, another Belinda James recording where she was singing backing vocals.  There was a Who Do You Love Jam, where we were just messing around.  Fitting Finales had Bring It On Home and a alternative version of I Know About Me and Fitting Finales but I wasn't happy with the way the drums sounded and by the time we got done with Ain't No Grave, we were at the 47 minute mark and called it a day.  Loverman, an outtake from 2020 was simply too silly with the words.   

Elegy sums up the majority of this decade, tho Molly's Folly and Saving Grace was from the late 00's.  We were quite rusty from the five year layoff between Pawnshops For Olivia and No Exit/Thirty but it was Forthcoming Trains that opened the door the return to the CR music scene and left the Townedgers on the back burner, except for the occasional albums that came out afterward.  Who knows what would have happened had I applied myself earlier (like about 1984) then later.  If I'm still living twenty years from now, Elegy will be the 2010's answer to Observations From The Forefront, outtakes that actually got better with age.  I doubt the whole world will be listening, but as long as I have  a decent copy, I'll return to the scene of the crime to hear what the fuss was all about.  

R.S.

11/20/2020

Artisan-Covid Cooties

 Songs

Rainbow In The Dark

Logic And Lies

Good Time Charlie Got The Blues

At The Crossroads

Please Send Me Somebody To Love

Won't Get Fooled Again

Cinnamon Girl

Encore

Rocky Mountain Way

Honky Tonk Woman

Lady (Little River Band Version) 

Teach Your Children

The Needle And The Damage Done

Dixie Chicken

Chuck Savage-Vocal and guitar on the Encore numbers

Phil Koening-Vocal and guitar on Cinnamon Girl and Encore numbers

Jeff Brown came down to support the cause.

Lee Kohl along with Eliot Snodgrass was the opening act.  I made a quick stop at Half Price Books to pick up a couple of scratchy forty fives while they performed.

One month after Moline, the acoustic adventures came back on stage and this time I did play unplugged.  the acoustic wasn't going through the PA system or monitors.  I think I liked it that way.

Since Jeff was there, I played Rainbow In The Dark and Won't Get Fooled Again and dedicated those songs to him.  He forgot about the Olympic Jam at New Bo but I'm glad that he showed up.  He is a true supporter of live music.  God bless him.

I did take the songbook with me and opened up to songs that I have not played.  Despite being out of sync with the songs, I did fairly well. 

For the encore, Chuck and Phil came on stage and we did a few songs that I never played before.  I know I never attempted Dixie Chicken on guitar at all but Chuck made it easy to follow. 

Rumors-The Second Coming Part Two

 Songs include

Blues Interlude

Mary Jane's Last Dance

Honky Tonk Women 

Lie To Me

One Way Out

Jumping Jack Flash

Sweet Home Alabama

Taxman

Johnny B Goode

Bye Bye

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

She Loves My Automobile

With
Billy Bourbon-Lead Vocals, Guitar

Tommy Bruner-Guitar and vocals

Layne Goldsberry-Bass

Nick Lenicka-Harmonica

Terry McDowell-Drums and host

Rodney Smith-Drums. 

Notes:

A lesser crowd and participants, probably due to the 70 degree temps and sunshine.  One of the reasons I didn't do the Stone City open mic, which is the last of the year.  Bird Dog was in for Maki Dervo who was under the weather.  There are beginning issues with people having COVID and as the toll once again goes up from people having this, this a change things may get postponed again.  The Madison bargain hunt will hinge on this should I decide to go there in the next few days.

I know I played more than the 11 songs that we did but can't  remember the song between Mary Jane and Lie To Me.  Bye Bye was a Billy Bourbon original.   Johnny B Goode was done in the Peter Tosh style.  Jeff Brown hated it.  He also hates being called Jeffrey. 

Some poor guy had too much to drink and was wobbling all over the place and his female friend left him behind after getting fed up.  Eventually he did disappeared around the close of the jam.  George Madison, and Tami Soukup were there.  Some pictures were taken, just like last week but I have yet to see any.

Rumor's-The Second Coming

Superstition

Man-eater 

Can't You See

Simple Man

Suzy Q

Mercedes Benz

Take It Easy

Mustang Sally (of course)

The One That I Love

Purple Rain

One Way Out

Before You Accuse Me

Redhouse Blues

Commit A Crime

Get Back

Let It Bleed

With:

Terry McDowell and Tommy Bruner-hosts

Dakota McWhorter-Guitar, lead vocal on Get Back. 

Billy Bourbon-Guitar and  Lead Vocals 11-14,16

Dee Vieman-Lead Vocals 1-10

Jeremiah Murphy-Bass

Nick Lennicka-Harmonica

R. Smith-Drums

Notes:

After a three month layoff, it was decided to try the Rumor's jam.  A decent turnout, tho a lot of the Trumpers were out and about.  Had some fuck in a white pickup and Trump flags run three red lights in Marion.

Dakota took over for Tommy in my appearance. 

I got there later, so I went on later.  Dave Bonham played along with Kimberly Trevellion on her songs. In usual fashion, she lamented that she would liked me to play but Bob Miller and DJ Hovenstot did a good job as well.    And she and her husband were gone by the time I got to play.

Tami Soukup, I love her and everything but Julie is still the one that I love.  Tami chatted about wanting to leave the state due to her situation.   I'd miss her but I do feel for her.

Despite the high COVID numbers, I think we had a good crowd, tho I did practice social distancing and wearing a bandana mask, hat and glasses.  Billy was commenting on a woman's pair of boots, to which she was talking up a storm.  Billy got showered with some spit from the excited woman.

DJ an Sir Bob did their trading of the drumstool and never missed a beat. Kimberly thought I should do that, but I didn't think that was feasible.   And besides, Terry left me finish the jam, playing a hour and fifteen minutes.   I did think Let It Bleed wasn't exactly done according to the record.  We played it too fast. 

It was the first time I played Purple Rain with Dakota since the Boy Scout Hippies two years ago.  Dee sang it like Prince did.  However Billy was happy that we got the guitar lead part just right.  I'm surprised that I could remember how it went.

Jenna B from work stopped up to say hi.