AMERICA

Here I Come
LL

     It's been nearly 8 years since I took a Greyhound Discovery Pass tour around the USA. Much has changed, much has been lost, much needs to be recovered, and nobody ever gets any younger. Although I believe, within the physical limits aging imposes, that youth is a state of mind. Don't give up the ship, or the ghost for that matter!

     This past winter has been a huge growth time for me. A woodshedding space was provided for me, and with studio time included in December my music grows in leaps and bounds. Melodies for several songs I once only strummed chord changes to. (Nineth-Wave, Surf-A-Jesse...) Reggae arrangements for several songs. Plus I've assembled a book of old favorite songs I've always loved, like AS TIME GOES BY, THAT Lucky OLD SUN, and GEORGIA, ON MY MIND.

     I'll be doing house concerts, playing public places, parks, college campus gates (like the one in my avatar picture at my alma mater Indiana University) and maybe some mystery guest appearances so far.

     Towns I'll visit, Bloomington, IN, Louisville, KY, Baton Rouge, LA, St Petersburg, FLA, Atlanta, GA, Columbus, OH, Syracuse, NY, Rome, NY, Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, Kalispell, MT, Missoula, MT, and other places too numerous for this blog today.

     The Pass I have is good for 60 days from 5/21. If you'd like me to visit your town, and especially if you'd like to trade a couch, guest room for a house concert, send me a message here at busker4freedom

OH...one last thing. My deep gratitude to Country Joe McDonald for posting a re-write of his FIXIN' TO DIE RAG I sent him in 1999, it's been in his ALL THE FIXINS file at countryjoe.com for these past 10 years.  When The WholEy HOG REALLY FLIES

Starting

April 17

Greyhound to Myrtle Beach,

South Carolina, to visit with friends, play music, make videos, walk the sands of Myrtle Beach one MORE time...then up top NYC, and NJ to visit family and friends there, and play some MORE music...

IN

THE

GROOVE

I am happy to say, that I've greased the wheel long enough this spring, that songs I know are bubbling up out of my memory now, presenting themselves to my conscious recollection in a flash, ans I play them from memory, and they are all there, a little polish work necessary, and a dropped word from the lyric here and there, but otherwise intact...WHEW! Thanks, memory, for doing what you do, without the need to intend that it be done...

Other songs, like Dylan's Tangled UP In BLUE, continue to happen in a fresh, tell the story kind of way, which gives me excitement each time it happens, it's like play the role of the narrator in a movie of the song...

Healing

power in a song

I can remember still when I heard it first, in college at Seton Hall U back in the mid-sixties...before the controversial Forest Hills Tennis Stadium concert...ANYHOW, I was out busking early this evening, looking to bust out of a case of 2-3 day blahs, and I gravitated to this jangly old acoustic chestnut...LIFTED me right out of the mopery I'd been feeling, it did...by the time I got to the 3rd verse I was full bore...

"...and if you should laughin' spinnin' swinging madly across the sun,
It's not AIMED at anyone, it's just escaping on the run..." (entire song for those not familiar with it)

Such is the perennial beauty of music to sooth, to FREE one's soul! My favorite time to be singing it is right around the crack of dawn in the 3 summer months...ask any singer/player you know well enough to get a frank answer, and you'll soon hear that there are entire shows that one can do where nothing special happens, and you are simply glad to get thru without any mistakes...I'd venture to say most performers love certain songs that for them have rejuvenating power...even though there is no guarantee that one particular song will ALWAYS work in this regard...even one's own...
 
What say you?

Busking 4 FREEDOM

again...first warm day this year...

Today, in Bloomington, Indiana the temperature reached the high seventies during the afternoon, so I packed some song sheets to work on, my trusty star shaped box and headed for Kirkwood Avenue...playing and singing at both the corner of Grant and Kirkwood, across from our county library, and the Sample Gate entrance to the Indiana University campus...I was happy to discover several of my favorite covers were still intact in my memory, and 3 of my own songs also could be rendered without any "crib" sheet...It's good to here that jingly-jangly sound of Dunlop pick on bronze and steel strings backed by the mahogany wood of my old Gibson 6-string...

Neil's Blog

Here's a chap in Perth, Australia describing what it's like for him...I noticed he's talking about a critical skill for busker(s) shows...how one handles the presence of "regulars" who can be a challenge, especially if one is "pitching" - playing for "meat and potatoes" - I've had my own challenges to meet, reading Neil goes to show how similar folks are all over the world...

I was walking to my library to post a notice/create a page about an experience I had two months before at the Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah, OK...(And many might beg to differ with this, but New York - in some spiritual but otherwise indescribable way - wouldn't be what it is had Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, America's own BARD, not graced it with his presence...in Howard Beach...) An Oklahoma group was singing a song about how the FBI refused to dna trace a murdered Canadian Indian woman's found in an alley in North Dakota...after all, she was JUST an indian...the rage in the singer's voice was mighty and palpable...standing in with the group was Bill Miller...a Native American himself...playing along on a very bautiful hand drum...I felt something HEAVY IN THE WIND and began to shudder and feel troubled for a deeply unfathomable reason...Miller then gave the land, the trees, the skies above us a blessing in his native tongue and translated it for us all...it was a profound moment...

I struggled with putting this story on my web-site page about that song and that feeling for two months...after the events September 11, I was devastated...for I had experienced someone saying there is a judgment coming...and it was someone whose nation had been all but wiped off this planet by the people who came here from Europe...it took me TWO more years to get to the place where I was able to compose this story...

My feeling found their way into this blues:

Blues is burning, burning in my soul,

Blues is burning, burning in my soul,

Blues is burning, burning hot as coal...

Change is coming, coming down the wind,

Change is coming, coming sown the wind.

Don't cry it's the end, sing it's time to begin!

Chaff is flying, bushel has been tossed,

Chaff is flying, BUSH...EL has been tossed,

Time to recover, all we have lost...

Change is coming, coming down the wind,

Change is coming, coming sown the wind.

Don't cry it's the end, sing it's time to begin!

OFF they COME!

I have begun to shear my facial hair!

This has been planned for over a month...I shaved each side of my face along the jaw line...I will be uploading pics of each stage of this bit of "performance" art...my beard is in a braid at this point...in a few days, I will create TWO braids and shave the middle of my chin...once I get to the weekend, the last few stages won't be mentioned aforehand, but will be photographed for posterity's sake...it took a year and a half of NOT shaving (Simple isn't it? I wasn't "growing a beard" - I was simply NOT doing anything about what happens naturally when it comes to facial hair...LOL!!!), I was/am in no hurry to get rid of it all quickly in one swell foop!