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STEPPING INTO MY SPACE.

I often get emails that have a preachy tone.
The senders probably mean well, and think they're helping me,
so I try to send a polite response.
But they are stepping into my space.

Some religious groups think that everybody else is doing it wrong,
not in contact with God,
or just plain headed for hell.
Maybe they get that idea because we're quiet about it.

Some don't think we're pious enough
if we don't agree with their political and moral opinions.
Politics, government, and religion get closer together every day.
The constitutional idea of separation of church and state isn't bad.
It would be nice if they had it in Iran.

I'm for women's freedom of personal choice,
which is not a popular belief among certain groups.
I am not for casual abortion,
if there is such a thing as "casual" abortion.
I doubt if any woman who has experienced it who would say it's casual .
It's not a thing to do on your vacation.

I had a colonoscopy once, and that sure wasn't casual.

We never had organized prayer in my school,
but somehow I turned out OK.
I wouldn't protest against it,
but I think you can grow up to be a good person without regimented public prayer.

Why does the prayer have to be written by somebody else
and memorized by the kids?
That sounds a little like mind control.
How about just a moment of silence so the child can pray in his or her own way....
according to their family's faith... or not at all, if they so choose.
Or sneak a peak at the girl across the aisle.

We didn't even have "under God" in the Pledge to the Flag,
but we have surprisingly few serial killers among our alumni.
In fact the crime rate was a lot lower then,
and the criminals even seemed nicer.

Most of the kids and teachers in my schools were Jewish.
I'm not.
They never tried to make me say Jewish prayers.

Our family didn't go to church together,
but we were taught the basics at home.
We knew about the Bible... had one in the house.
I joined the congregation on my own when I was twelve.

I don't have religious symbols or bumper stickers on my car,
but I have nothing against people who do.
Be happy.

If I do have a relationship with a higher power I don't feel a need to tell people.
Maybe I would if they asked me and I knew them well enough.

I'm not interested in converting anybody to my way,
or to judge them in their pursuit of spirituality,
or their lack it.

I don't trust all preachers and organized religions.
There is too much money and power involved.
But I've known some preachers who I admired,
and who helped me when I needed it.
I have to take them one at a time.

Being a religious leader is not a guarantee that you are honest or trustworthy.
Some are. Some aren't.
If you minister to others your words and deeds will be your credentials.
Mainly deeds.

Helping others is probably the big part.
I think that there is too much emphasis on what we shouldn't do,
and not enough on what we should do.

Most of all, I don't expect to change anybody's mind.
I don't want to.
I'll probably get a bunch of mail about this,
but, hey, as long as it's cordial I can handle it..
I won't be hurt if you just file this under "Delete".

Whatever works for you is OK
until it pushes too hard against me.

Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

-- 
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.
HOME PAGE: http://jackandmisty.com
BROWSE OUR CD CATALOG HERE: http://elvinsystems.com/jm/catalog.htm
BUY OUR CDs HERE: http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/jandmorder.htm

SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jackandmisty
MySpace: http://myspace.com/jackandmisty

LIFE IS EXACTLY LIKE A SONG.

A song is exactly like life...
except that in a song you don't brush your teeth
or go to the bathroom
or drop things
or watch a duck
or go to the store and they don't put the donuts you paid for in the bag
or sleep
or tell somebody "bite me"
or look at a hole in your sock
or wonder if there's a monkey under your bed
or get bored, or watch too much TV.

In a song people talk in rhyme,
and funny or sad things happen,
and, unlike life, there is often a point to it.

In life you can listen to songs
but in a song you probably can't do that,
unless it's a lyric about a guy listening to some dumb song
that he can't get out of his head...
like Teddy Bears' Picnic...
when he's trying to watch Judge Judy.

Otherwise life is exactly like a song.

Man is the only species that can sing a song, or cares.
Animals have little interest in karaoke.

A song is just this:
Life distilled...
And then whittled down...
Until it's small enough to get in your ear.

Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

-- 
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.
HOME PAGE: http://jackandmisty.com
SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863
MySpace: http://myspace.com/jackandmisty

THE LIAR.

The first time you meet George and spend a few minutes with him,
you come away with conflicting impressions.
He's brilliant, and he's almost got sincerity down pat.
He talks big money, but he has scotch tape holding his glasses together.
He knows a lot about everything, and has some good sounding ideas.
He can create excitement and mistrust at the same time,
and the oddest part is that you kinda like him.

His idea the day we met him was a chain of restaurants
called "Misty and Jack's Family Picnic".
We had the name value at that time,
and had been looking around for a way to exploit it.
Of course George had that all figured out ahead of time.
He knew what buttons to push.

The decor would have white trellises, with artificial climbing vines,
picket fences, flowers, etc..
He told us the seats should just be comfortable enough,
but not so comfortable that people would sit around all day taking up tables.
He had invented a way to make pizza in a microwave
and have it come out just like oven baked.

Naturally I came up with my usual type of suggestions,
like a chicken place called "Chicken In A Casket".
We could serve them on their backs in black cardboard caskets with a red lining.
We could have plastic toothpicks made in the shape of little white crosses,
and stick them in the top of the chicken for decoration.
Unlike most mental cases, George had a sense of humor.
He got the jokes.

He had us set up a dinner party at our house to meet a potential investor,
who just by accident was a psychiatrist.
A high profile local shrink.
The psychiatrist was nuts, too.
All through dinner he psychoanalyzed me in front of everybody.
He told me everything he thought I did wrong in my life, and why.

He ruined the party showing off his shrink ability at my expense.
I kept my cool for the sake of everybody else,
but as the guests were filing out the door, I said to him:
"I bet you don't get invited back to many parties".
He was shocked, and asked me why I would say something like that.
I told him how he had behaved, and he said a real shrink thing to me.
He said: "You handle your hostilities well".
I felt like pulling his lower lip up over his head.

George was one of those loud talkers.
He'd be sitting with us at a restaurant table,
conversing at a level that could reach everybody in the room.
He was an actor playing to the back row.
He used a lot of phrases like:
My people...
My people are loyal...
We've leased the entire top floor for our offices, etc..
His office was a twenty year old Chevy.

There was a recently divorced waitress working in our club,
who talked a lot about marrying a rich guy.
She was going to find one, you just watch.
Goldie was money hungry a little more than most of us.
She could hear George talking about his people and his big deals all the time.
A month later they were married
and moved into the most expensive penthouse in town.
The marriage lasted about a month,
until Goldie and the landlord realized that the rent check was going to bounce.

George could discuss any subject like an expert.
I'm sure his IQ was off the chart, but his IQ wasn't running the show.

I wanted brochures: He knew the name of every fancy type font.
He sent what he called a rough contract to me in Nashville.
I took it to a friend, a law professor at Vanderbilt,
who said the contract was excellent legal work.

We didn't see George for a few years and then one night he was on the Channel 9 News.
They interviewed him as a scientist who had invented a coffee substitute.
I said to Misty, "I think that's Postum".

Another year or two, and there he was being interviewed on Channel 9 again.
He was wearing a white lab coat, and was introduced as a local scientist
who had discovered a particle smaller than an atom!
They asked him how he had done it when nobody else could,
and he said something so stupid I thought a hook would come out and pull him off.
He said: "Nobody else was looking for anything that small."
The reporter said, "That's amazing!"

I ran into that psychiatrist a while later and asked if he knew what George was up to lately,
and he said: "George is a pathological liar".

Yeah, but we liked the liar better than the doctor.

Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

-- 
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.
HOME PAGE: http://jackandmisty.com
BROWSE OUR CD CATALOG HERE: http://elvinsystems.com/jm/catalog.htm
BUY OUR CDs HERE: http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/jandmorder.htm

SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jackandmisty
MySpace: http://myspace.com/jackandmisty

EVERYBODY HAS TO START SOMEPLACE.

It took us a while to find out who we were supposed to be.
Maybe some musicians start out one way and never change,
but we tried just about everything.

In Miami we played jazz, we played rock and roll, rhythm and blues,
society ballroom music, and doubled on a variety of instruments,
just trying to find our niche...and to not starve.

Once I brought a trombone home and tried to play it.
Property was sold on our street by neighbors fleeing from the racket.
It sounded like a crazed elephant.
I paid no attention in my fervor to be a tromboner.

Eventually I learned to play one song well, "Georgia on My Mind",
and the audiences liked it and asked for an encore.
I was dumb enough to try a second song.
I knew I didn't have the lip for it but I was caught up in the glory,
and went ahead and assaulted the second song.
My lip gave out half way through, but I continued trying to blow my liver out the horn.
It sounded like an ambulance hitting a buffalo.
A guy at the first table said "Is that out boat leaving?"

I tried the bongos, timbales, and the vibes but didn't see our career improving.
I played "Swingin' Shepherd Blues" on the flute... Nothing.
You could hear crickets.

Piano was my best instrument but Misty played better than I did,
so I was trying to play something else.
Misty would switch around too, from piano to organ to vibes,
while I did a piano number.
Funny...we never thought of featuring vocal duets until much later.

The worst move we made was to try to be a comedy group.
We found out later that we could be funny on the mike with just talk,
but starting out we didn't know that.
So we went to novelty shops and bought rubber chickens,
Groucho glasses, and arrows that go through your head.
We didn't know we could ad lib,
so we rehearsed corny routines with our sax player, Paul Mclaughlin.
Here's a picture ... http://...com/25dlbo
Is my face red?

In retrospect, what we were doing was imitating other bands
who were getting better jobs.
One miraculous day we found out we were supposed to be Jack and Misty,
and not everybody else.
We wrote some songs, sang together in our own new style,
and took the act to Key West.
We had a recording contract within three weeks,
and went to Nashville for our first sessions.

We have never varied from our personal style since that time,
even when the pressure was on us to conform.
A lot of artists got richer than we did, staying in the mainstream,
and we've been through some hard times,
but if we had it to do again we wouldn't change much at all.
Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

--
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.
HOME PAGE: http://jackandmisty.com
BROWSE OUR CD CATALOG HERE: http://elvinsystems.com/jm/catalog.htm
BUY OUR CDs HERE: http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/jandmorder.htm

SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jackandmisty
MySpace: http://myspace.com/jackandmisty

LIKE A ROLLING STONE.

We were standing in line for the CMA Awards Show in about 1973 or '74,
and talking to friends who were waiting with us.

Faron Young was right in front of us and he gave Misty a big kiss and hug.
I didn't get one.
He had recently been in a car crash and I asked him how he was doing.
He said that he'd split his tongue.
Wise guy that I am, I said this: "Can you do any birdcalls?"
We all laughed.
That's what we all do when we're not winning the awards that year.
We stand in line and make each other laugh.

George Morgan was just behind us and we got talking to him.
Somehow my kidney stone problem was brought up.
I had been to a doctor because of an abdominal pain and he told me what it was,
and that I would have more of them.
I never did...just that one, but it was a good time for all.

George told me to buy a case of beer and drink one after the other.
It made a weird kind of sense because beer is a diuretic and a sedative.
I should have gone home and followed his instructions that minute.

"Home" was our motorhome parked in The Music City Campground,
in LaVergne, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.
After the awards we went home to bed and forgot to buy the beer.

I woke up in agony around 2 AM.
If you're a guy who's never had the thrill of a kidney stone,
it's a lot like giving birth to a porcupine.
I asked Misty to kill me or get me to a hospital.
She chose the latter and took off for the Murfreesboro Hospital at about 60 miles an hour,
with cans and dishes flying out of the cupboards, the TV antenna still up,
and the awning flapping like a sail.
I was moaning on the floor in a fetal position, hoping to be struck by lightning.

We got to the Murfreesboro city limits, when we realized something...
we had no idea where the hospital was.
Just then a cop pulled us over.
He said, "Follow me", and shot away like a bullet.
We never saw him again.

We eventually found the hospital
and the nurses put me on a cot in the emergency room and went to The Bahamas.
A month passed. Well, maybe an hour, and no doctor came to see me.
I would have welcomed Kavorkian.

Misty stormed down the hall, saw a guy with a stethoscope around his neck,
and asked him if there was a doctor employed there.
He was miffed that she didn't recognize him as a doctor,
with his new stethoscope and all.
He said these exact words:
"I'm not going to give drugs to every hippie that comes in off the street."

She assaulted him verbally for a few minutes,
and then dragged him out to look at our motorhome,
which had our names and "Columbia/Epic Records" written on it.
He made a couple of phone calls and verified our identity,
and suddenly he became a bowing headwaiter.
He quickly gave me a shot and some pain pills,
and put me up for the rest of the night in the children's section.
I don't know why.
Maybe he kicked a kid out of the bed.

I woke up at 7 AM to a room with Donald Duck wallpaper and cartoons on the TV.
I got up, walked out to the parking lot and woke Misty up to go find my clothes.
She'd had a bit of wine after the ordeal, and neither of us felt great.
We left the Murfreesboro Hospital in our dust and vowed to never pay them.

The pain pills ran out the next evening,
and we got the case of beer George Morgan had prescribed.
I took it like a good boy.

I'd finished twelve or so bottles, and was still feeling some pain, but I didn't much care.
I went into the bathroom and in the silence Misty heard a "PING!"
And she heard me say "AHA!"

She said "Let the man who is without sin pass the first stone."

Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

--
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.
HOME PAGE: http://jackandmisty.com
BROWSE OUR CD CATALOG HERE: http://elvinsystems.com/jm/catalog.htm
BUY OUR CDs HERE: http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/jandmorder.htm

SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jackandmisty
MySpace: http://myspace.com/jackandmisty

LETTER FROM AN IMAGINARY RECORDING ARTIST.

I get emails from disgruntled recording artists.
I never hear from the gruntled ones.

"Dear Jack,

What's the deal with with all these crooked charts and playlists?
My recordings are way better than everybody else’s
and yet they don’t get any airplay. Is it politics or payola?
It can’t be my fault.
My mother says I’m the greatest thing since Tiny Tim.

I am able to sing in one key while the band plays in another,
and pull flaming squirrels out of my pants at the same time.
How many of these so-called stars can do that?
I can also play the guitar with my tongue,
but I’ve learned not to do it with an electric guitar.

I can write a song in five minutes... twenty an hour.
They all sound pretty much alike, so you know I have my own style.

I'm also a fashion pioneer on stage,
wearing my trademark open-toed cowboy boots and Bermuda shorts.

I do a lot of promotion.
I even call DJ’s and threaten their families, but it doesn’t seem to help.
I’m getting ready to quit.
I’ve been struggling for almost six months now, so I've paid my dues.
I guess I’m just too sexy for Country Music.

Would you like to invest in my career?
Let me know soon because I have other offers.

Ernest Hemmingrhoid."

* * *
Dear Ernest,
Please don't turn down any other offers because of me.
You might try American Idol.
Also try American Idiot.

Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

--
Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.
HOME PAGE: http://jackandmisty.com
BROWSE OUR CD CATALOG HERE: http://elvinsystems.com/jm/catalog.htm
BUY OUR CDs HERE: http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/jandmorder.htm
SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863

THURSDAY THE 12TH: THE OLD MAN.

I woke up old this morning.

I don't mean that metaphorically,
or figuratively,
or any of that.

It's just a fact:
I went to bed young and woke up old.
This is Thursday, the 12th.

Yesterday, on Wednesday the 11th,
I was a strong young man with big dreams and ambitions.
It all went by in a day!

The day before yesterday was Tuesday the 10th,
and I was a child.
I looked at the powdery stuff on flowers,
the veins in a leaf,
paint blisters and bent nails in a fence.
I could follow a particular ant all around the yard.

By Wednesday I was grown up.
The sounds and smells,
and the touch of things
seemed less important.
Wet sidewalks,
the outdoor faucet where the hose connects,
crumbly earth,
tools in the garage,
still had their distinctive aromas,
but I didn't notice.

I was too busy to listen to distant traffic.
I had even stopped lying on my back
and looking for faces in the clouds.

Wednesday was all adult "reality":
Money, status, success, entertainment...
The important stuff.
I had to learn fast, having only three days, and no warnings,
or time to prepare for the big changes.

I dreamed that I got up out of this wheelchair
and ran right out across that field!
But here it is Thursday,
I'm old, and can barely get around.

I don't like being called a Senior Citizen.
It's a euphemism.
It's condescending, like calling a black person "colored".
Don't cushion it, my friend. I'm OLD.

I leave my turn signal on because I can't hear it,
not because I'm senile.
And at this age, I eat my dessert first.
You never know.

I'll tell you what...
Today I'm going to sit here on my ancient tailbone
and listen to squirrel talk.
If you listen a while to their sounds
you'll see they have a language of nuances.

I'm going to enjoy the warmth of this old wool sweater,
and pay attention to that leaf blowing across the lot.
I don't know when,
or if,
I'll get to do it again.

Time is on Fast Forward,
so I offer this advice to all who pass this way:
PAY ATTENTION!
LIFE IS IN THE DETAILS.

And, tomorrow is Friday, the 13th.

Jack Blanchard

© 2009.

Jack Blanchard & Misty Morgan...
Grammy Nominees... Billboard's Duet of the Year.

BROWSE OUR CD CATALOG HERE: http://elvinsystems.com/jm/catalog.htm
BUY OUR CDs HERE: http://birdwalk1.tripod.com/jandmorder.htm

Home page: http://jackandmisty.com
SoundClick: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=69863