3/31 The Wade Mountain Wanders, featuring Wade Taylor on mountain dulcimer, Sue Charles on autoharp and Glen Ponder on guitar and mouth harp performed at the store this evening. It was a great night of old time music. We had a good crowd and the band really sounded good. We were taken back in time to the days before the ascendancy of bluegrass bands and the 60's folk revivial. This was authenic Appalachian mountain music the way it was played in the past, before Nashville got ahold of it. A rare opportunity to hear stuff like this anymore. They do some modern folk as well, such as John Prines "Paradise", some Gillian Welch songs, etc. but it all fits together very well. Wade does the best version of "The Farmer's Curst Wife" that I have ever heard. He had the audience rolling on the floor. Wade may be the best dulcimer player I have heard in a long time, usually you can harldy hear it, but Wade makes his sing. He brought three instuments so that he would not have to retune. Sue Charles has played here many time and is a wonderful singer and autoharp player, a real treat when she comes. Glen's authenic sounding guitar background and mouth harp added just the right touch to highlight the music. I hope to have them back before too long.
3/31/07 I was invited to attend the Kites in the Trees and Barbeque 111 picnic held on the Messersmith Farm in Cullman County today. This event is put on annually by St Paul's Episcopel church in Cullman And Grace Episcopel Church in Huntsville. I was invited to perform folk music by Larry Woellhart one of the organizers, chief barbeque chef, and great folksinger. He and I shared the stage. It was a fun event. It was a warm, windy day, just right for flying kites and a professional kite flying group(or maybe its just and expensive hobby) from Decatur called "Field of Strings" was there flying some remarkable kites, one had to have a wingspan (?) of 10 feet or more. There was great food, Larry's group outdid themselves, and drink; the ususal tea and lemonaide, but unlike Southern Baptists these Episcopels know how to do it right- they also had a keg set up, and it wasn't in a back room, it was right there in the midst of the picnic. Larry had set up a sound system on the Messersmiths deck and I performed my old stuff for 1/2 hour or more then Larry followed. During lunch the Susuki strings performed, a bunch of young folks playing violins, they were good. It was a nice day, but I had to leave early to work at the store, I had to relieve Erin and we had music that evening.
3/30/07 A couple of months ago one of my regular customers and Wallace State biology teacher Connie Brien asked me to conduct a field trip for her biology class to do some water monitoring. I told her that we could do a stream bioassessment for about 15 students and she agrred, so today was the day. I met the class at the biology building at Wallace at 8:30 and taught them the basics of stream ecology and bioassessment techniques for an hour. Basically what we were going to do was catch stream "critters", specicially benthic macro invertebrates becasue they are a really good indicator of what is happening to the creek. These are critters who live on the bottom (benthic), are visible to the naked eye (macro), and don't have backbones (invertebrates). Since they live in the creek and are fairly stationary they are good indicators of how polluted or pristine a creek is. After our orientation session we headed to the creek. I chose Thacker Creek, about 10 miles west of the college since it is an EPA listed 303(d) stream, meaning it has been found to be impaired by ADEM (Al Dept of Environmental Management). I wanted to see if that was still true because we at Soil and Water (my part time job) felt like the problems had been address and that this creek could be delisted.
We convoyed from the college out to the creek and only one car got lost on the way, but he showed up about 15 minutes later. We divided the students up into three teams, I had three nets, and we began collecting critters. The procedure was for two students to hold the net on the bottom of a riffle while the third disturbed the bottom by kicking (we call these kick nets) the rocks and soil on the bottom 2-3 feet upstream of the net dislodging whatever lived there allowing them to float into the net also. Then they were to rub lightly the bottom of rocks, etc to dislodge whatever lived on those. Then they carefully lifted the net with its contents out of the creek and laid it on the bank. Within seconds the critters would begin moving and wiggling and the students picked them out by hand or with forcepts into a pan of water. Then came the tedious process of identification. Some were easy like crayfish, mussels, snails (both right and left handed), helgramites, but some were more difficult such as the fly larvae; mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, crane flies, dobson flies, etc. We had to use magnifying glasses on some. As we identified the bugs, we separated them into three categoires which are dependant on their tolerence to pollution, Category 1 being the most intolerent and Category 3 being the most tolerent. Then using a simple math calculation devised by Auburn, we were able to rate the creek as to its status. We collected over 125 organisms, most in category 1 (over 100 mayflies and stoneflies alone), but because there were more species, even though the numbers were less in Categoty 2 and 3, the creek rated very good rather than excellent. But I was very pleased since this seemed to confirm our theory that Thacker Creek no longer needed to be listed as impaired. It was a very good day, very enjoyable, it was a lot of fun, and from the feedback I have heard very informative and meaningful for students. I would do this again.
3/20/07 We had a really fun open mike last night. It was not well attended, but the musicians had a blast as did the poet who was there, he got a chance to read more of his great poems than ususal. Carlo did some great old folk song, sea chanties to be exact. Steve Bluestien showed up after a long absence and it was great to hear him. He has been livng in Corpus Christie, Texas. Dennis Kaylor and myself rounded out the evening.
3/20/07 We are in the process of redefining our cold drink line. We want to be your source for healthy and exotic cold drinks. Check out our smoothies made with ascai, pomegranite, yerba matte and rooibos teas as well as our standard fruit smmothies. We will soon add real fruit smoothies blended here at the store. We can also make a variety of hot or iced teas from a wide selection of white, green, oolong, black, herbal and medicinal teas, mix and match to your preference. Don't forget our iced and frozen chais and frappes as well as our California creme sodas, the Berkeley Hippie may be my favorite although the Orange Blossom Special is mighty good as is Flower Power. We still have the 20 degree Below Zero frozen hot chocotlate. We also plan to start a new featured drink each month. So along with the best coffee and espresso drinks in town, try our soom to be famous cold drink line.
3/20/07 I haven't commented on the Organic Church for a while. They still meet here at the coffee house every thursday night from 7 to about 9:30. I have really enjoyed it, it has been very inspiring and uplifting to me. I think that this must be something like what the original church did. No religion, just Jesus. There are probably 30 folks who come, but usually we have 15 or so a night which is the right sized crowed for what we do. Any more than that and I think we lose the bond that makes this so strong. Jason Elam is our facilitator and does a really good job keeping things moving along as needed. The folks that come are from all denominations, this meeting transcends denominations. We have baptists, methodists, Church of God, ex Catholics, some who don't go to church, and more. It is really an eclectic bunch. We start with singing, usually David Spepegle leads us through some contemporary songs and then its wide open. Anyone can sing, pray, talk, praise or whatever and people do. When that is done Jason usually has a scripture for us to discuss, but usually we don't get that far, something from the open time stirs us and we will discuss that as long as possible. I guess if we have a recurring theme it is how to live as a Christian, reflecting the freedom Jesus has given us in the world and st the same time recognizing that the organized church is caught up in legalism and other issues which trap people in religion and they miss the real freedom of the gospel and stifle the movement of the holy spirit in their lives. These discussions are far ranging, frank and very revealing and strenthening. We close with prayer and this can be done in several ways, but we usually all express our concerns and we pray about these and other things as well as individuals and as a group. The relationships we have developed here continue through the week, its neat. It is a new type of church, for us, but probably really the ancient way it was intended to be.
3/19/07 What a night!! One of our customers said that the whole time he was thinking "Surely I'm not in Cullman, Alabama, this is what you find in a big city coffee house". He was referring to our concert last Saturday. I played for the first half hour, just some old folk songs played with my longneck banjo in the old frailing style i use. I tried to do some that I don't usually perform. Then the Maple Trio took over at 7:30. Jarad Lewis with his hot guitar, and his wife Allyson on upright bass, Chris Synard's wonderful vocals,and Bobby Painter's great mandolin picking and his base voice which adds so much to Chris' stuff. They play an eclectic mix of buegrass, folk and tradtional. Last Train to Birmingham, The MTA, Summertime, Lighthouse were a few of what they did. Real crowd pleasers, and we had a very enthusiatic crowd which filled the coffee house. I hope to have them back soon.
The Devastators closed out the show playing from 8-9. They are a "punk rockabilly band" more rackabilly than punk at least when they play here. Tony Perdue is their lead guitar player and lead vocalist. There other two members fill out the band on upright bass and drums. They are an energetic and very fun band and people were dancing in the aisles. Just a really good quality show.
3/7/07 I am a member of the board for Daystar House in Cullman, a home for homeless women. Daystar is funded partly by United Way and the rest by donations or fundraisers. Due to donations to United Way being down they have been told not to expect as much helop in '08. So, with that in mind, we have been brainstoming fundraisers. How 'bout this- we want to have a folk festival in Cullman in the fall, and this was not my idea. We had our first meeting yesterday and got the ball rolling. I'll update you on the progress as we move on. If any folk musicians read this and want to particpate get ahold of me.
3/5/07 James Smith and I apparantly had different dates on our calendar. I expected him to show up Sat for a concert and he didn't, that's the first time in the four years we have been doing this that I had a no show. When I called him he had the 24th on his calendar. I don't know how that happened. Thanks to Dennis Kaylor who came to see the show and ended up using my old Stella guitar to be the show. Then I broke out the Berkeley Bob Hootenany songbook and we all had a '60's sing a long. It was fun and the attendees seemed to enjoy it.
3/2/07 Today is the 40th anniversary of when I was shot down in viet Nam. I always keep this day to myself best I can remembering and being thankful. I won't go into the account here, you can read it in my last years March 2nd blog if you wnat.
