2/26/08 I have heard nothing but favorable comments on Larry Woelharts performance here last Saturday night. Larry does a really great job playing and singing all the great music from the 60's and 70's. We had a good crowd and he played for two hours straight. Larry is very versatile and can play anything from Gordon Lightfoot to Janice Joplin, with John Denver, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, John Prine, Kenny Rogers and you name them, thrown in for good measure. He plays enough familiar stuff that everyone can join in on something. As I watched the audience, on almost everything he did, someone knew the words and was singing along. On some songs like Kenny Roger's Lucille even those who didn't know the words, the kids mostly, after the first chorus joined in. It was great. Even on the serious songs like the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald, everyone was paying attention to the story as it unfolded in song. However I think I was the only other one there that knew all the words to The Canadian Railroad Trilogy, which I rate as Gordon Lightfoot's best song. Its difficult for a singer to sing famous songs which are signature songs for certain artists and have credibility, but Larry does it very well and pulls it off. He has a great laid back style, both vocally and musically, that allows him to be successful doing that. He doesn't try to compete with the original songs, or clone them, but simply performs them in his style and it is very effective. Larry also plays at a neat venue in Huntsville, on Governors Drive just down form the Botanical Gardens, called the Nook, I think he plays on the first Thursday night. The Nook serves 120 different kinds of beers and is a laid back establishment, not rowdy. I like dark beer, but limit myself to two usually (three if I have been there for a long while) and they had the best dark beers I have ever had. The owner chose the ones he wanted me to try and they they were outstanding. I hope Larry will be back soon.
Blogs
January
1/31/08 A few of days ago, Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barak Obama for president, saying that he had similar characteristics as her father John F Kennedy in charisma and ideology, and said something to the effect that he was the the most exciting presidential candidate of her lifetime. She apparently is hoping that he will inspire voters like JFK did in the 50's. Having lived through the JFK era, I was in High School when he came on the scene, and being (at that time) an Irish Catholic I was caught up in the JFK vision, charisma and ideology. I still carry some of that today although tempered with age and hopefully the wisdom that comes with it. Most people don't realize today that he got us into Vietnam and gave impassioned speeches about our responsibility to stop the Communist advance across the world in RVN. I heard him on many occasions.It was he who proclaimed the domino theory, if RVN fell so would the rest of Asia. It was because of his vision and charismatic persuasion that in 1964 I joined the Marines to help in the fight against Communism there. I truly believed that it was my duty to go, his assassination crystalized it in my mind. It was only after I got there that I realized how wrong it was. I would have followed that man into the gates of hell. I haven't seen that ability in Obama, I haven't seen the mass hysteria among young and even older voters, I've not seen the wild adulation that often accompanied JFK, in Obama. Not to say he is not avery responsible person or even the best for the job, but he is not in the league of JFK in my opinion. It makes me wonder what the Kennedy motive really is here, to preserve their legacy as our first family rather than allow the Clintons to replace them? I don't know, this is a strange twist to me. I have never been a fan of Teddy, in fact i tend to take the opposite position he supports and if he is for Obama I may have to look very hard. I only wish the Republicans had a candidate.
December
12/18/07 What a great open mike Monday night! Many of the Wallace students who left last year to go away to college returned for open mike last night and brought their parents, we had a full house. This was the first time many of the parents had met each other, it was a special occasion. We had 14 singers including Dennis Kaylor, Josh Brooks, Carlo, Mark Magee, Joe C, Opie, Meliah, Abby Smith, Emily's mother even read some poems, John Lott, Garland Talbert sang Grandfather's Clock and recited Little Boy Blue, John Mitchel, me and others. Everybody hung around afterward and talked, it was really nice.
November
11/30/07 We have been in the new store nearly a full month and business has really picked up; all of our regulars are still with us and we are seeing a lot of new people. It's really interesting how much difference a block and a half move has made. I'm not really sure why. Some reasons probably include that we have much better parking with the parking lot across the street; we are more visible, you can see our new sign coming up highway 278; new customers say we are also more inviting with the new front, especially the three new doors. I have had some people say that they often drove by the old store and wondered what was inside, but didn't want to go in. From the outside the old store was too "alternative" looking (this is Cullman Alabama remember) while the new store doesn't give that impression. I think alternative meant hippie. Some folks have always called our store "the hippie store". They also say that the new store is more elegant (I hate that term) than the old store. The doors do that. When Garland, the owner, put in the new doors I told him that maybe he didn't understand what we were doing, that we were going to move our same old junk in and try to create the same abiance as the old place. He said that was what he wanted. Anyway, although the new place looks similar to the old, it has a better feel, even folks who before weren't comfortable with our 60's looks somehow are now. Although the main area has nearly the exact square footage as the old, it is wider and shorter and has the brick wall running down one side, both of which make it feel more warm and open. We are all pleased with how it has turned out.
October
10/31 I was very important that everything went smoothly today for us to be ready to open tomorrow. I had scheduled the plumber and electrician to be at the new store at 7 am to begin hooking up our espresso machine, ice machine, coolers and sinks as well as the fans. etc. The a/c wasn't complete either and that had to be finished today also. The health inspector and building inspector were scheduled to show up at 2 pm to give us permission to occupy the building and cook so that we could open tomorrow. I had always thought it was doable, but by noon I was beginning to doubt and by 1:30 I was ready to give up; I didn't see how we could be ready. The inspectors got there by 2 and didn't really stay that long and didn't find any major glitches and passed us. I was both surprised and elated. Then it was a matter of just getting everything inplace so we could open. We had to figure out where to place tables, to get all the equipment working, put stuff away, stock shelves and so forth. By late that night we were exhaused again, but we had it to where we were ready to go.
September
9/20/07 We had and interesting discussion today at the coffee house. I had mentioned that I had heard that Rush Limbaugh is now calling Moslum terrorists "Islamofascists" and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him. I am not a Rush fan, but do listen to him occasionally on my car radio as I travel around town. My complaint is that no so called "moderate" moslums, those who say they are peaceful and believe that jihad is a personal struggle against sin and not a religious struggll to convert the world by force, ever, as far as I know, publically condemn the terrorists. They are silent, deafeningly silent.
August
8/26/07 Tony Perdue, Dennis Kahler and I shared the stage last night. Tony's new band which he has tentatively named the Fogchasers opened with Gravy Train a real upbeat song Tony has done before with the Devastators. They also played the jazzy Alabama Fish Fry, Burning, a song about the devil, Finger Picking, a folksy On The road, Sing the Blues paradoxically an upbeat song, and closed with johnny Cash's Ring of fire. His band consisted of Jason on guitar and trumpet and Price on mouth harp. They had an eclectic sound, a little rough, but they have just formed the band and haven't played together alot. Their next outing will be really good. I played next, my old folk songs and some I wrote and Dennis closed with many of his really great originals. Dennis may be the best songwriter I've known, and I have known many. It was a fun night.
July
7/27 Another reason I haven't been blogging much, I didn't mention this below, is that I am in the final stages of writing a book. The writing is done, I am working on the illustrations, I have two more to do, but they are the hardest ones. I have been working on this book off an on for probably 30 years. It is a compilation of 12 short stories that I wrote about life in the rural south Georgia swamps when I worked there in the late 1960's and 70's. The Okefenokee swamp is where I recovered from my tour in Viet Nam. I worked on a 250,000 acre private forest that bordered the great swamp on the west side. It was a trip back in time. I worke dther for five years and even now call Fargo, Georgia my second home town. After this I have another project, I want to publish a volume of poetry, I have been a fairly prolific poet in the past, much of it about nature. I hope it is not a sign of old age that I am interested in memoirs.
June
June 20 We were notified by the Cullman Times that we had won the latest Reader's Choica Award for Best Coffee House. This is our third win in the four years we have been open. Joe Muggs won it once. Thanks Cullman for your vote of confidence.
June 19 Had a really great suprise today. I got off work at Soil and Water at about 4:15 and went to the store for a double expresso. At about 4:45 two guys walked in with a guitar and a fiddle and asked if they could play. Of course I said yes. The guitar player was named Texson and the fiddle payer Derock and they were from Texas. They called their group Texson. They were in their twenties and I didn't know what to expect. When Texson started singing the first song I had to stop what I was doing, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. He has a nice easy rap/rock style, he composes his own stuff and it is all about coming out of religion and having a relationship with Jesus. He sings about religious and church abuse and how that hurts people and how God is displeased, but can heal all the hurt with a right relationship with Him alone. Exactly what I have been thinking and talking for the past two years. I believe more and more every day that there is a revolution under way to change modern Christianity to become what God wants it to be which is not what we see now. He told me that he had seen a tee shirt recently that said "Don't go to church" on the front and "Be the church" on the back. Which is interesting because Jason Elam who put together the Organic church that meets in the coffee house on Thursday nights, recently had some shirts printed with the same logo. Anyway these guys are playing at St John's church tomorrow night in a Christian rock concert they are having for the youth there. I think everyone is invited, I think it starts at 6 PM and I think there are 6 groups playing, Texson being one. I hope people in Cullman listen to their message tomorrow night, it will be offensive to some, I know, but so was the gospel of Jesus when it came directly from His lips, not the watered down stuff we hear today. Go to this concert if you can, if only to hear Texson. As we parted I asked him to keep preaching that message, I didn't need to he is committed to it. Thank God.
May
5/30/07 I went to a meeting put on by the Cullman City Council at the Civic Center last night. It is the first of 5 meetings I think which are designed to help steer Culman into the future. This meeting was run by our new City Planner Jim Fisher. He basically outlined what these meetings were intended to accomplish as far as how to help Cullman be a place people still want to live in 20 years from now. He did a great job talking about all the facets of life in Cullman and how we need to be careful in how we plan for the future, everything from traffic patterns to parks and greenways, bicycle trails, medical care and everything you could imagine in between. It is an ambitious plan. It is a plan, not locked in yet, and citizen input is needed to make sure it is what we all want and not just what a few want for us. There were many opportunites for anyone to express themselves last night. I would encourage everyone who reads this and lives in Cullman or Cullman County to plan to attend these meetings and let your ideas for the future be known. This is a one time deal. It's important, we are on the edge of major development. We need to get it right, you only have one chance to manage growth and it is ours now. What we do in the next few years will define us for a long long time. We can either be a Cullman we will all love or one we will wish we were not part of. Get involved.
