8-21-05

    Hi Brian & Marybeth,

                 I talked to Brian yesterday and we are still trying to lock up

      and confirm a cameraman for the 15th.  I will talk to him the beginning of

      next week.

                I'd like to share a story with you from the gig  the

      other night. As I was finishing setting up, an older women approached me. 

      It was hard to tell her age because she was dressed and looked like bag

      lady.  She had about three coats on, a floppy hat on top of shoulder

      length pure white hair, framing a round, bulbous, blood-veined, alcohol

      ravaged face. 

      She asked if I knew the song "Galway Bay", and if I let people sing along.

       I said I was I sorry but I didn't know the song but would try to learn it

      for the next time so she could sing along.  She sat alone in a nearby

      booth, never undoing any of her coats, and listened to a few songs with

      her eyes closed, then shuffled out the door.

                About an hour and a half later she returned, her face a mosaic

      of red blotches and pale white patches, and sat down.  I was finishing an

      old folk song and just manage to hear a rather sweet harmony note at the

      end of the song.  The room was pretty quite with five or so people sitting

      at the bar on the right and my bag-lady friend in her booth.  I figured

      what the hell I'll try another old tune and see what happens. I played

      "House of the Rising Sun" and around the second verse I started hearing

      some delightful harmony notes.  Now, when I play "House of the Rising

      Sun", I build to a crescendo by the last verse, (one foot on the

      platform,one foot on the train), and I look over at the booth and there

      she is  just belting out great harmony notes, her eyes closed and her face

      shining in a beautiful Gospel-singing radiance, transported a million

      miles away and to another time.  The effect and the song ended up being

      awesome.   The folks at the bar who had been very quite most of the night

      erupted into applause. I then asked her if she ever did gospel singing. 

      She looked me in the eye and said, "Honey, if your trying to get me to

      church your barking up the wrong tree. This barroom is my church."  I

      laughed and said,” not to worry there would be little chance of me trying

      to do that and thanked her for singing.  Then she shuffled out the door.

             There is a little more to this story but that about sums it up. 

      Sometimes I wonder what I am doing at my age recording songs and playing

      solo on off nights in empty dives. And sometimes I don't.

                                                  

John 

More to come.  Keep watch.