Category: About Me

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In the stack… current reading about blues, guitars, pedals, etc.

Grant and me at the local guitar shop…

I have the great, good fortune now in my retirement to spend as much time as I wish focused on all things guitars. After a harrowing visit to the Mayo Clinic for an annual physical, I was eventually declared good to go, so when I returned home I felt even more fortunate to have time to develop my musical sensibilities and skills.

To that end, I scheduled my first “gig” at the local coffee shop for early April. Along with my friend Grant, we will perform for a couple of hours on a Friday night. Cup of Joe is a pleasant, low pressure venue to perform… the coffee, tea and snacks are great and the people are kind…

Cup of Joe in Cedar Fall, IA

Grant and I will take turns alternating at the mic during the evening. He plays his original Folk-Punk-Americana on acoustic guitar, while I play finger-style and bottleneck country blues on a couple of resonators and a Taylor hybrid acoustic/electric guitar. So we are both feverishly sharpening our chops for the performance next month.

I am not particularly anxious about this gig, as I’ve performed at Cup of Joe numerous times at Open Mic Night… This time it should be more pleasant for me, as I won’t feel the time pressure that you do when all you have is fifteen minutes at the mic and there are people lined up to play after you…

In addition to working on my chops, I also have the freedom to read as much as I can abut all things guitars and blues… Here are some the books, on my short stack that I am either reading, have read, or intend to get to in the short term:

I just finished reading this wonderful book. Compiled by Jas Obrecht a lifelong musical journalist for journals like Guitar Player Magazine. Of the dozens and dozens of guitarists he’s interviewed over the years, he offers in this book some of the very best. It was fascinating to read what some of the best players think about their music and how they approach the instrument. Included are interviews with Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Tom Petty, Carlos Santana, Ben Harper and Johnny Winter. Highly recommended if you love all things guitars! Published by the University of North Carolina Press, so it’s a classy binding.

I was so pleased with Obrecht’s Talking Guitar, I went ahead and picked up two of his other books that fall right into my wheelhouse of interest. Both new books are about blues players. The first about the early pre-electric country blues players and the second about the players who led the transition to Chicago/Detroit style electric blues. Reading these books should add to my knowledge base when I banter with an audience about the music I play…

Pedal Crush is a monumental tome about anything you could possibly want to know about the pedals that are used to augment and enhance the sound of a guitar. Published by Bjooks, I had to order this one out of Denmark. It’s coffee table book big and pricey, and I am just about 1/4 of the way into it. Including interviews with various pedal builders and guitar players who use pedals, it is a comprehensive and wonderful journey through this particular world of technology.

If you’re wondering why I am so fascinated by pedals, here’s my latest board iteration. It’s great fun to sculpt sound with a pedal board. For more details about most of my pedals, check here…

Until later…

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Today I felt retired…

This was one of those incredible early Autumn Iowa mornings with the sun shining and the temperature in the low 60’s F. Ordinarily, at this time of year on a Thursday morning I would be at the university teaching a class. Instead, Nike and I took a 2 mile walk into the woods and along the bicycle trail. It was a perfect moment to savor the day as a gift.

Some have told me that adjusting to retirement is a process… perhaps it is, but it feels real fine right now… I’ve had the great, good fortune to travel around the world during my life… not everywhere, nor to the really exotic, but I do not feel the need to make grand retirement gestures by traveling… walking the dog, playing guitar, taking photographs, reading, and cooking for Annette are the little treasures of life being well lived during retirement… It seems to good to be true…

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Friday Night (high)Lights… or life in the open mic world…

Exterior of Cup of Joe, on the corner of Main and 1st Street…

In Cedar Falls, Iowa, right smack dab in the middle of flyover country exists a funky little coffee shop that’s been in business for twenty some odd years. The coffee is excellent, the baked goods are great, and the authentic retro-fifties furnishings give it an ambience unlike other coffee shops I’ve ever been to. In short, it is one of those idiosyncratic local treasures that inhabit small towns. The shop is called Cup of Joe…

Besides purveying what coffee shops typically offer, Cup of Joe is also a patron of the arts… The owners rotate through the walls of the shop varying two dimensional art forms, including paintings, sketches, photographs and prints. In fact, a couple of years ago, the shop was kind enough to host an exhibition of my landscape and prairie photography.

Cup of Joe interior… performance space in the far back… Note artwork on the wall…

Most importantly, on every third Friday of the month, Cup of Joe hosts an open mic night for musicians, poets and what have you…

In fact, last night was my first year anniversary performing country blues guitar at the Cup during open mic and a great night it was…

Through some arrangement for which I am unaware, open mic night has been hosted by three gentlemen who referred to themselves as The Three Blind Mice… They consisted of Rick Vanderwall, Bill Guernsey, and the late Rick Nees. They would perform themselves at the opening of the event and then help out others during their time at the mic. As Rick V. was out of town visiting family, the evening was hosted by Bill alone.

Bill and I mugging for the camera…

Here I am with Bill at the end of the show; however, earlier in the evening my friend Grant Tracey and I helped him haul in his equipment as he was working alone that night. He brings in a PA system and microphones, as well as an amp suitable for electric and acoustic guitars. During the show he tweaks and fine tunes the sound such as you can in that particular space. Most importantly, Bill maintains order and keeps the participants in line and within a 15 minute timeframe.

What was unique and particularly fun that night was the shop owner, Dawn’s request that Grant, another guitarist, and I participate in a video feed advertising the night’s festivities. We all have different music in us… Yeah, you can quote me on that… Grant is a singer/songwriter, largely influenced by his youthful devotion to punk rock… Me, on the other hand, I love those old time, deep rooted, foundational country blues and that’s what I play… You can see our introductory video below: (you may have to click twice)

After Bill warmed up the crowd with a Neil Young cover, I opened the night with a fifteen minute country blues set. It’s my preference to play first, and I will arrive at the coffee shop a good hour before set-up just to get my name on the list first.

Here I am playing my set of 4 country blues tunes. That night was the public debut of my newly repaired Taylor Solidbody Custom Walnut electric. I had the guitar signal passing through my pedal board with compression, some gain to fatten up the sound a bit, a dash of vibrato, some slap-back delay and all blended into some hall-like reverb… Even though I painstakingly set up the pedals at home through my Fender amp, it sounded a bit boomy from where I was sitting… fortunately Bill smoothed it out for me with some amp equalization. Still, when sitting behind the speakers it’s hard to assess how your rig sounds… a performer monitor would be nice, but that’s a lot to ask for at an open mic night…

My set included:

  • I Do Blues – a new tune for me credited to Rev. Robert Wilkins
  • Police and a Sergeant – Rev. Robert Wilkins, arranged by Catfish Keith
  • Railroad Bill – traditional, arranged by Etta Baker
  • Cocaine Blues – traditional, arranged by Stefan Grossman

I was prepared to play more, but Bill put the hook on me as there were a number of others signed for the mic! I did a pretty good job on three of the four tunes, but shanked a few into the rough on Police and a Sergeant, which I played flawlessly at the Bandshell performance last month. Throw of the dice at this stage of my performing career, I guess… It’s not for lack of practice that I shank one, but more dependent on keeping focus and maintaining the brain/finger connection…

My beloved wife Nettie was there to take photos of me playing. She does a great job with an iPhone… I hope to upgrade my iPhone from the current 6s to the latest because the cameras on the new ones are so “dadgum” good and perfect for supporting this weblog.

You’ll no doubt note that, as is typical, I am obscured by a music stand… There are reasons why. First, I much prefer playing sitting down because I have better control of the guitar and secondly, I like referring to the charts while I play because I simply cannot remember most of my pieces which have fairly complicated finger movements.

Before the next time I perform, I hope to convert to an iPad, equipped with a foot pedal, to dispense with the paper and music stand, which should obscure me less while I play…

  • Lillian and me…
  • Jacob and me…

After my performance, I had a chance to catch up with one of my former Northern Iowa Textile and Apparel majors, Lillian T. If I missed teaching, which I do not, it would be because of special kids like Lillian… she was an absolute delight to work with in the classroom… I also had a chance to interact a bit with one of the two Jacobs in the coffee shop that night… He is a Northern Iowa music major and a tremendous guitar player… he noted my tasteful use of pedals and the pleasant “acoustic” sound of my guitar, which obviously delighted me to hear!

  • Grant digging into his Mustang…
  • The Jacobs laying out masterful Jazz riffs…

After my set, as you can see above, my pal Grant played a 4 tune set on his beloved Mustang, including some soulful picking of individual notes within his chord progressions… The show concluded on a high note with the Jacobs, both exceptionally accomplished jazz guitarists, who laid out their improvisations in masterful style…

September’s open mic night was a night to remember… until next month… I am working on some new tunes as I write… see ya…

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Time well spent… or my continuous stream of consciousness about a life of reading…

When I first announced I was going to retire the most common reaction I received beyond congratulations was a dubiously phrased, “What are you going to do?” Initially, I was caught off guard believing that my interlocutor thought my plan to retire was somewhat suspect. So, in response I would list off the many activities that I engage in, including photography and guitar playing/learning to prove I was worthy of retirement…

Then after I while I became fatigued with trying to prove that I was prepared to retire, and instead stated that, “I would do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to…” which, so far, has been pretty much the case within the resources I want to allocate to the “whatever I want to do” aspect of my time spent.

It’s actually a little more complicated than that… Though it initially it seemed that time is available to do anything/anytime, there are still chores around the house like cleaning and yard upkeep, as well as time at the gym to avoid backsliding health wise… Nevertheless, I do have dedicated activities that I hold sacrosanct and one of them is reading…

I’ve been a devoted reader almost all my life… perhaps when I was a nascent reader it was a little rocky, but by the time I was 10 years old. Ian Fleming and Edgar Rice Burroughs enchanted me into a world of fiction where all things are possible… I am still there in that fantastic world of spies, detectives, space ships and time travelers… I found the vintage paperback covers to some of my gateway books into a life of escape reading…

So, I’ve lead the life of a voracious reader… to prove the point, I was not a lit. major in college, but I managed to take a lit. class almost every semester, including classes devoted to Shakespeare, Greek Tragedy, the Literary Significance of the Bible, and Late 19th Century American Literature…

The fact is, my dedication to literature is a bit of a problem… there is no room in my home for anymore books yet I keep buying them…. I really should read more books on my Kindle, but I feel suffocated and constrained when I read books electronically… I like to flip ahead sometimes and that is difficulty with an electronic reader…

I have to make way sometimes by disposing books… some I give away to friends, others get deposited at the local library’s Book Nook… most if the books I toss off are not what I call keepers… I still hang onto the books that are “classics” or ones that really affected me.

Some of the giveaways make a difference. Yesterday, Coach Chip, a young man who coached my son Parker in club basketball when he was in early grade school and who subsequently gave him private lessons in our driveway shared on FB that his “travel” team just one second place in a tournament. I know how hard Coach Chip works and congratulated him. His response was:  “All because of the book you gave me!” Well, I think there’s more to it than that but it was fun to hear from Chip. Below you can Coach Chip and the book I gave him… It was a first edition of Dean Smith’s Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense.

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North Carolina… nothing could be finer…

with my brother in Winston Salem, NC…

I came of age in North Carolina, so it is a very important location to me… I have two children, three grandchildren, a brother and his family, and some of my oldest friends situated throughout. It was North Carolina to where I drove two days cross-country to spend a week or so with friends and family… I’d been looking forward to this trip all summer and timed it to coincide with the beginning of school back in Iowa… I wanted to be away from that craziness, having just retired… bwahaha…

My first stop along the way was at my brother Brian’s house in the Greensboro, NC area. He’s about 10 years younger than I am, and a retired physician enjoying his life immensely. He loves traveling around the world…

I had great fun catching up with him, as well as with his wife Andrea and his daughter Maddy… We had a grand time at one of Brian’s favorite watering holes, The Wise Man Tavern, a craft beer distillery and entertainment space in Winston Salem, NC. The Tavern is built within an old downtown warehouse… Classic gentrification and renewal of an old mercantile district. It’s an excellent space and the weather was perfect for a late August weekend in the South!

I had the great good fortune to see the new grass band Gipsy Danger playing inspired covers of “bluegrass-rearranged rock songs, such as the Beatles “I Am The Walrus” or Fleetwood Mac’s “The Weight”… They get the house rockin’… and you know what? Tar Heels party way better than the folks do in the midwest… no doubt about it… Click just below the name of the band on their image to follow a link to a Dave Matthews cover…

Bourbon Cask Aged Brewski

The beer was killer too… I had a dark beer that’d been aged in a previously used bourbon distillery cask. Tasted great and went down smoothly which just a hint of bourbon flavoring… pretty high alcohol content; however, I only knocked down one…

After two days with my brother, I took off for Chapel Hill, NC, one of my absolute favorite places on earth… every time I’ve ever left Chapel Hill in the past, I’ve always wondered if it’s the last time I’ll get back, but somehow I manage to do so… I spent the afternoon and evening with an old frat brother, Ron Parks, an artist and long time musician who plays in multiple bands, as well as writing and recording his own songs. We drove to Cary, NC where one of his bands (The Doug Prescott Band) was playing at a local art festival.

Ron ripping out a solo on his vintage Strat…
Doug Prescott Band, with Ron on rhythm (left) and Mike (right) on lead…

In this particular band, Ron serves as rhythm player, but gets the opportunity to sing and rip out a solo lead on occasion. Most of the leads are played by Mike who rode along with us to Cary. I had great fun comparing notes on guitar playing and pedals with Mike. I shot a series photos of the band, post-processed them and loaded them up to my Zenfolio hosting site for the band to use. I you click on the image you can follow a link to the Zenfolio site.

Best of all, that night after Ron and I ate dinner in Carrboro, a twin town with Chapel Hill, we went back to his home and played guitar together into the night. Ron was way patient with me, adding fills while I played my repertoire of old country blues tunes. He played a Breedlove acoustic dread, while I plugged into my little Mustang travel amp and played my Taylor T3, semi-hollow bodied electric.

After spending the night at Ron’s, I tooled over to the Research Triangle Park in Durham, NC and spent a couple of days with another frat brother from days gone by… retired naval captain, Mike Schoedler. I had an excellent time catching up with “Sheds”… we took in a film one night and the next, Sheds cooked up a great batch of seafood gumbo and Ron came over for the final gathering of old TEP’s (Tau Epsilon Phi.)

me, Sheds and Ron…

I am incredibly grateful for the kindness shown to me by my brother, his family and my old frat brothers during my visit… on to Wilmington to see my daughter Sally and her family… perhaps my son Ben will find us too… and Nettie arrives Saturday!

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An Indispensable Companion…

I retired recently, which is several years before my wife, Annette plans to do the same. So most mornings she packs off the university to do her good work as an academic unit director. For me the house goes instantly quiet, which would be a bit unsettling were it not for my constant companion, my dog Nike…

Since my childhood, I’ve always had a dog or two around. In fact, I could not imagine life without a dog… I’m a dog person… I’ve had cats too and they’re fine; however, every cat I’ve ever owned has gone bad, soiling the house… No more cats…

Of the several dogs I’ve had live with me, some have been excellent, but Nike by far is the best dog I’ve ever been involved with. Indeed, as I was writing this piece she interrupted so that I would let her in the house from the backyard and then she promptly jumped onto my lap. She is a most attentive creature.

Nike is a Brittany. As her breed suggests, her gene pool was refined in the French province of the same name. At one time they were referred to as Brittany Spaniels; however, some years ago the AKC decided they were different enough from their Spaniel cousins to drop the designation. Now they are just plain Brittanies. Brittanies were bred to be hunting dogs, specializing in pointing and retrieving game birds. The characteristics required to be an excellent “gun dog” include toughness, endless energy, and intellect. Nike possesses all those characteristics in spades. She is the brightest dog I’ve ever taken into my life. In fact, she’s scary bright. Very little gets by her, she’s exceptionally attentive to her people and quite demanding too. When it’s time for her long evening walk, she will let it be known with a verbal lecture.

as a pup on the hunt…

Like most dogs too, she can be a pain in the ass at times… Stealing food from the kitchen counter, seeking attention by dragging out underwear from the dirty clothes basket, or excavating the yard. Nevertheless, taken in balance Nike is an indispensable companion and member of the family.

I do not hunt, so Nike does not get to express her instinctual gifts in the field, but she compensates… She roams a nicely sized yard bound by an “invisible dog fence” which gives her the freedom to police her kingdom. Living adjacent to the woods, there is enough wildlife activity to keep her in Defcon 1 mode most of the time. In fact, as sweet as she is to our family, Nike is a stone cold killer. She’s recently bagged three ground hogs, two of which I was able to save, and just the other day while Annette and I were sitting on the back porch, she nailed a big fat squirrel and dispatched it before I could intercede!

Fact is, she’s becoming a much more effective hunter over time. She studies the behavior of rabbits, ground hogs, birds and squirrels like a Talmudic scholar and knows intuitively when they make a mistake and expose themselves. Like a P51 Mustang fighter plane going after a Japanese Zero, she goes in high and fast and makes the kill… It’s a bit unnerving but I love that dog and she keeps me good company.

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Stayin’ Alive

“You know it’s alright, it’s okay
I’ll live to see another day…” Bee Gees

When you get to retirement age, like I am, it’s fun when you’re healthy, and you want to stretch that time of life out as far as you can, but it takes work… as you get older, there is less margin for error… it’s bad form to let yourself go as it’s much harder to claw your way back to a healthy level of fitness… On the other hand, moderation is important too… don’t want to injure joints or give yourself a myocardial infarction…

Stayin’ Alive takes time to maintain fitness, and luck to keep away the “undertoad” that can drag you away into a riptide of no return. So you do what you can… try to eat healthy and control your body weight, especially if you have a history of diabetes in your family… ugh… In the end, Stayin’ Alive means staying active… i.e. exercising…

Awesome hydro-massage bed…

During the non-ice/snow season in Iowa, cycling and long evening dog walks are helpful. Year round, going to the gym three days a week, I think, is essential. Most larger towns have gyms available for membership, and one of the great deals is Planet Fitness, or as I call it The Planet… It’s hard to beat… I think entry membership is around $10 and then there’s the Blackcard membership that I have which is an agreeable $20 per month. The Blackcard allows me to bring a guest like my wife or son, let’s me use Planets in other cities, which I’ve done, and gives me access to tanning booths, which are dangerous and stupid to use, but also gives me access to the hydro-massage beds which are awesome and a great way to end a workout!

Another really nice thing about The Planet is that it actively seeks members from all walks of life… It is definitely not a rhoided-up, muscle head joint, with grunting and weight slamming… there are other places in town for that… The Planet frowns upon such unruly muscle head behavior… it’s really quite civilized…

So, if you’re like me and want to stay one step ahead of the grim reaper, meet me at The Planet! There’s treadmills, cycles and ellipticals for cardio stuff… free weights and all sorts of machines for muscle and bone health… Lots of helpful people too… See you there…

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Avalon Music no more…

Avalon Music as it existed when I was involved…

Yesterday, when I was doing some background research for this weblog, I discovered, to my sadness, that Avalon Music in Rochester, MN no longer exists. Apparently they went out of business a year or so ago. As far as I can tell, this is the only store that offered “higher end” guitars in Rochester.

With disruptor online stores like Reverb, it is probably very challenging to own and operate a successful music store in a moderate sized town. I imagine that the nearby Twin Cities were also a source of serious competition. Of course, this is all speculation as I have no idea what really happened to the store, other than the proprietor selling the building for a little over a million dollars.

Avalon Music was a very nice store with a broad inventory of instruments, and a nice selection of Taylor Guitars. It was a very important music store to me as it is where I reinvested myself in guitar playing while at the Mayo Clinic for a seven week medical treatment cycle. I bought a very nice Taylor 914ce there and took lessons from an excellent fellow and they still influence me today .

The store itself was located on the main floor and lessons occurred upstairs in a series of rooms. There was a nice “living room” up there to await your lesson and to warm up. I learned some fascinating facts about that building while surfing around trying to understand why the store closed down.

The building was originally the Northwestern Hotel established by Sam Sternberg in 1919 where Jews could stay as the other hotels surrounding the Mayo Clinic would not house them… ugh… In 1944, a new owner changed the name to the Avalon Hotel and it became the first to host African American guests, including Duke Ellington. Mississippi John Hurt popularized a country blues tune called “Avalon Blues” and though I am not sure a connection exists, there sure might be.

The Avalon Hotel…

The building has been converted to offices and another of many Bistro’s that come and go in Rochester. The only constant in this world is change…

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a first post…

Nike and me in Hartman forest..

I’ve been contemplating some time about finding a new space to post my thoughts and ruminations outside of social media, particularly Facebook (FB)… privacy issues as well as maintaining a sense of well being during my retirement lead me to question my continuing involvement with FB…

I do not want to compare myself to others, nor have others compare themselves to me, which I find problematic on FB… Further, I am increasingly wary of the utterly creepy instances where my involvement with FB indicates a lack of privacy and suggests that my “data” are being used for ill purposes I do not approve…

Consequently, I am going to wean myself from FB, yet I need a place to express myself, and for those who care to peek in, a place where friends and acquaintances can catch up with what I am doing… Call it a public journal… That is what I hope to accomplish on this website, which unlike FB, I must personally finance it, but it’s not that expensive… I do this with some trepidation because there are friends out in FB land that I have great affection for and will miss their reported activities, but after watching the Netflix documentary, “The Big Hack” I am convinced that extricating myself from FB is a good idea for myself and everyone else…

I invite anyone interested in my doings to follow along and comment (in a constructive way)…