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.

We are now selling a selection of what I call "Alernative Christian" books. These are books that look at Christianity and religion from a different perspective. They basically try to sort out the real message of Jesus from the religion that has developed around it and smothered and choked it so that it is barely recognizable. Some are written by authors you may have heard of and some are more obscure. For example we may have the best selectin of Jaques Ellul, my favorite Christian theologan, in Alabama. Some call him a Christian Anarchist which is probably where I hang out. "Christianity Without the Religion" I would recommend his book "The Subversion of Christianity" as a place to start a very revealing journey deep into the heart of Christianity. Check them out. We have discount prices, lower than you can get them for at say Books A Million.

5/29/07 Still don't have a computer with broadband, so doing blogs is slow and tedious from my home with dial up. We bought a Dell two weeks ago, but are having major problems with them and I don't know when we will get it. In fact we may cancel and start over. I have bought Dells by mail before and it has been a good experience, but not this time. The problem is "customer service", we can not get any help or questions answered. We have traded many emails and talked to many semi literate (in English) customer reps (they sure don't represent me). We can't communicate. I read the book "The World is Flat" so I understand about the India connection, but if they can't speak English well enough to communicate what good is it. Gerri told one guy she couldn't understand him and he said "I speak good English", but it wasn't any brand of English we were used to. We did get one lady in Seattle I think who was working out of her house and thought we had things straighted out, but alas not for long. Still working on it with patience getting thinner each day.

We had a really good open mike last Monday, the 22nd, we had ten performers and a decent crowd, Maybe things are coming back. Had a really good contingent of regulars and some new folks too. John Lott went first with a Towns van Zant song and then did some of his originals, "Down For the Count" and closed with "Man in the Bed". Dennis Kaylor was next with some of his classics "Bubba Burned the Marijuana", If My Wife's Cat Was an Alluminum Can", and his newest one a civil war song "Billy Yank and Johnny Reb". Then Jessie Mitchell a new poet read three poems, all filled with fairly deep philosophical images. Meleah Miller sang an original and "Adewise" acappella with her wojderful voice. Then came Kerry Calvert starting with "East Wind" a cowboy song in his rich gravelly voice,he closed with "My Old Friend". Kerry's songs are nostalgic to me, they tell stories, but allude to the past when I was (and he was) younger. He has a laid back, relaxing, sometimes bluesy, a lot of times county/folk style. Seth Richardson from Birmingham was next. Seth has one of the most unusual and talented voices I have heard in a long time, very captivating (he should have auditioned for American Idol when it was in Birmingham recently) and he writes his own stuff. He opened with "I Am a Slave"and closed with an original called "Happiness" which is not what you'd think. A newcomer, Susan Vaughn took the stage and opened with "Girlfight". Her music is pretty raw, she sings about life gone wrong, abusive relationships, straight forward, but not in an offensive way. Carlo was next and invited several on stage for a jam session. Shea Heatherly started with an obsure Hank Sr song and did some originals. Garland Talbert closed with "The Grandfather's Clock". It was a great night.

5/21/07 Csilla Elam, the Romanian born, Christian singer songwriter (she now lives in Cullman) performed last night at the store. Josh nd Courtney Brooks opened for her. It was a very inspiring night, we had a good crowd. Josh and Courtneys set was really good, they hadn't played together in a while and it was really good to see them together. Their voices really blend together into a wonderful smooth folksy sound. Josh performed some of his originals and then he and Courtney did some covers, my favorite is "Please Come to Boston". There are some really good old 60's and 70's songs that they could really do well, "Come saturday Morning" hits my mind or maybe "Four Strong Winds",or "They Call the Wind Maria" for starters. Josh will be playing in concert at the store on June 16th, this should be a good show as he is wanting to get back into song writing and performing after a time out for school (he is a divinty student at Stamford's Beeson School of Divinity). Hopefully Courtney will join him for a few duos.
Csilla was as "on" and inspiring as I have ever heard her. She was full of energy and personality and her songs are great. She is an incredabily talented songwriter and performer. It is amazing to me how much meaning she can pack into a song and not only are the lyrics great, but the tunes fit them so well, and her style just pulls it all together. She sings from life and for an old guy like me it is hard to remember that a mere 30 year old could have experienced so much to write about, but then by the time I was 30 I had too. It was a great evening, inspiring, and I'm sure it brought tears of joy and hope to many an eye, I know it did mine. Here is a new touch, she gave away her cd's to anyone who wanted them as part of her song ministry. She even brought a door prize to give away, a "I Want To Die Empty" T shirt, the title of here signature song. You can read more about her at her website dieempty.com

5/20/07 Today was Cullman's first annual (we hope) "Pickin in the Park" a bluegrass festival held at Sportsmans Lake Park from 11-9. I played at 1 with Adam Duke (of the Warrior River Boys) backing me up on some old folk songs. The organizer, Jim Blankenship, wanted to expand the venue somewhat to include some other type music beside bluegrass and he asked me to do a few folk songs. I think I was the only other non-bluegrass guy there there. He and Jarad Lewis (of Liberty Junction) had built a beautiful stage at the Park, it is really neat, I am trying to get our folk ferstival, schedule d for Sept 29th at the Farmer's Market, moved there, may know early next week. I had to leave at 2:30 to relieve Julie at the store, so I don't know how things went after that, but there were at least 100 people in attendance when I left. They had hoped for more I am sure, but the crowd was very supportive and maybe more came as the day progressed. I got to hear four bands and they were all very good. I don't know the name of the first one, they had already been introduced when I got there, and I didn't really listen to them as Adam and I had to work some stuff out, but they were good. The next two bands, Blue Sky from Jasper and Iron Horse from Florence, were great, I was very impressed with Iron Horse. Liberty Junction, who played at the store last Sat night, performed after Iron Horse, and I think they were a little nervous about going after such a great band. but they did wonderfully as always. Great picking and their wonderful harmonies. A couple of more bands were scheduled to play I missed them, but one, Cullman County Bluegrass featuring Roy Crawford on fiddle (he is a champion fiddle player), always puts on a good show. The weather was great, sunny with low humidity, can't beat that in Alabama. Hopefully this will turn into a really great event through the years.

5/15/07 My computer at the store died a week or so ago and I have been unable to update anything. I am attempting to do so at home on my dialup internet which is not as easy as with the broadband at the store. I have updated the schedule of events up through August, although I may add a couple of acts between now and then. There are three events I want to cover, Liberty Junction's performance last Saturday night, our last open mike on the 7th and a fairly important thing that happened to us. I'll start with that, we won Cullman Chamber of Commerce's Best Small Business of the Year award. It was a complete shock and surprise to us as we do not get involved in things like that. In fact I didn't go to the presentation, Gerri and Erin did. Although I am grateful for the award, I know that there are many small businesses out there that deserved it as much or more than we did. I sort of hate to see some singled out and others just as deserving not recognised. I have to give a short speech to the Chamber on the 25th about our business.

Liberty Junction, some of you may know them as the Maple Trio (before Allyson Lewis joined) or Flat Rock when there were five of them, gave a wonderful concert last Saturday night. They were in the zone the whole time. I opened for them with a 45 minute session of old folk songs and then they got the place rocking, if you can say that about a bluegrass type band. I say bluegrass type because they do much more and they aren't wholly configured for bluegrass, no fiddle, no banjo. But they have some hot mandolin picking with Bobby Painter, as good as I have heard, and some hot guitar with Jarad Lewis. Their vocals are as tight as any group around with Chris Synard in lead, backed up by Jarad and Bobby who has a great bass voice. They do a lot of the old stuff like Black Eyed Susie, and tradional songs like Summertime (Chris brought down the house with that one), and even some experimental stuff. It was a great show and they will be performing this Saturday at "Pickin In The Park" at Sportsman's Lake Park in Cullman, their show starts at 12. I will open for them at 11:45.

We had a great open mike on the 7th. Not a big crowd, but some really good pickers. Kerry Calvert, Shea Heatherly, Dennis Kaylor, Jason Wright along with some others and we had a good diversity of music.

5/5/07 My webmaster Jason Nunelly from Tech Anything and Steve Hart a local photographer spent four hours at the store photographing our teas and coffees in anticipation of setting up an internet store. We have been talking about this for a while and hopefully it will come to pass before too long. Stay tuned.

5/4/07 Microwave Dave and the Nukes played to an enthusiastic full house Friday, it was a great concert. Microwave had been here twice before with his solo act, but this time he came with the Nukes, James and Rick who add so much to Dave's hot guitar and gravel voiced blues vocals with their bass and drums. Rick played electric harmonica also while playing bass which added a richness and fullness to the band besides bringing the house down, There is somthing about the harmonica when played in a blues style that yanks the feelings right out of you. Its sort of the same way that bagpipes stir your insides. James is a great drummer and was able to play everything he needed to, some really hot licks and solos, without driving everyone outside, he was able to keep the drum volume in sync with the surroundings, no mean feat. The Nukes added a whole different sound than we had heard in the previous two concerts. It was hard driving, straight from the soul, professionally performed blues. Just a great sound and a great night. Thanks to Dave, Rick and James for sharing their unique music with us. We had a full house by probably 7:15 and the concert didn't start until after eight, since the band performed at the Poke Salat Festival in Arab earlier, they were rained out and the program ran late and so they were late getting to us. No one left before the band showed up and they played until after 10:30. Dave told me after the show that they would like to come back in October or November. Come on, we will be ready!!

5/3/07 We thought we had WIFI available at the store beginning today, it was hooked up last night by the technicians from an outfit called "Geeks on Time". The name was a misnomer as we waited I guess a month and a half for the hookup which was supposed to happen within two weeks. Anyway they came and hooked everything up and checked it out and left last night. Today we had wifi internet available for a while, but out desktop internet connection at the store office computer didn't work. We have made several phone calls to try to get this worked out but so far to no avail, so now we have neither wifi nor internet service at the store. I am submitting this from my home computerwh9ch I seldom do as it is dial up and therefore can be pretty aggravating.

I put off getting wifi for 4 1/2 years and finally gave in when I met a company at the Coffee Fest show in Chicago in Feb that offered to put it in for free and showed me how I can control it so that at busy times I can shut it down and the wifiers won't be tying up tables my lunch crowd needs (we hope). It seemed too good to be true, It may be, but I'm not going to give up on them quite yet.