Just got back from Texas. If you recall, I went down for the Wildflower Festival Songwriting Contest. The Wildflower is a fabulous music festival which drew around 60,00 people to Richardson, TX- there was even a Spam-Mobile set up, now we're talking. Pat Benatar, America, The Guess who, all rocked the masses. I was one of the 10 finalists in the songwriting contest.

On Saturday, we each played our 2 songs on stage in the Eismann Theatre, situated in the middle of the Wildflower Festival, which was a super cool performance venue. My two songs were "Periphery" and "Map in My Lap", both from my upcoming release.

In the end, there we no losers. All of the performers were absolutely top shelf. I watched them all (I was the 9th performer) from the green room as they brodcasted the entire show throughout the building.

After a 2 hour deliberation, the jury came back and announced the winners. There were 3 runner's up who took $500 home (Betty Soo, Anne Zimmerman, and Thomas Scott Pearce). Then they announced the Grand Prize Winner, First Place...yeah...yours truly!

So I went up and they snapped a few photo's of me with my new Collings Guitar (valued at...well let's just say a lot of $$) and I won some cash as well. I felt a little stunned, amazed,  blessed, validated, relieved, ya know, a little sad for the ones who didn't win, because I've been there, believe me. But this time, I got to celebrate! I walked around in a daze for a few hours, met a lot of nice folks, made some phone calls, and took a swim.

That evening, I played a full set at the festival and got a great response, sold some cd's, made some new friends. Later that night, we had a song circle back at the hotel with; Betty Soo www.bettysoo,com, Tim Grimm www.timgrimm.com , Dave from Twilight Hotel www.myspace.com/twilighthotel  (from Canada), Johnny Miles www.myspace.com/milesjohn . Mike Hatley and I passed around the Collings for the others to play. It was so wonderful to hear all of these amazing songwriters playing their songs on my new guitar. I got to hear how just sweet it sounds and I really believe they all left their mark (figuratively of course) on the guitar, sort of blessed it for me...let's just say that Morning Came Along Too Soon...

So, in short, I "acquired a new guitar at a very low cost, and WON some great new friends."

I wanted to say thanks to all of you who sent me a note of encouragement and "go get-em's"...it really helped..lifted me up somehow..

Ok, so that's the big news, now, it's off to Kerrville for the next one....

Peace,
Bob
www.myspace.com/bobsima