Archive for April, 2011

Rehearsed with the Long Beds in Billy’s basement last night. Getting ready for the show in Appleton Saturday. We’ll play some music and I’ll tell some stories old and new. Please note: This is a fundraiser hosted by the Friends of Appleton Public Library – we’ll have a good time, and help the library to boot.

Also pleased to announce we’ll be featuring special guest Andy Dee, a longtime friend, superb musician (among other things we’ll be featuring him on lap steel guitar) and a member of Big Top Chautauqua’s Blue Canvas Orchestra. Andy was a founding member of Molly & The Heymakers and has played with Soul Asylum, The Proclaimers, Jonny Lang, and many more. But for this one night, he’s a Long Bed.

Two of my favorite Andy Dee numbers are “Lovin’ in the Automat” and “Hot Rod Beauty Queen.” You can listen to them here.

Spent morning in pole barn digging out last-minute tax stuff. (I don’t have a filing cabinet, I have a pole barn).

Friend of mine from New Auburn sent this photo of her two turkeys…she says they come up on the porch and stand there watching TV. No word on their viewing preferences.

…brought to me by Didier Henry’s version of “Pie Jesu” from this album. Sometimes I am rough around the spiritual edges, but never so rough that I have forgotten to yearn, to hope, to wish the least among us might one day be borne aloft by wings unseen.

Noodling around searching for something else, and this came up. Not so long ago, but things sure looked different. And life…it just rivers along.

Big ol’ willow tree fell across the neighbor’s fenceline, yesterday my buddy Mills helped me cut and clear it. Then we cut up a bunch of oak slugs I’d been wanting to get to for three or four years now. They were left behind from a logging operation…good wood, but mostly too short or crooked or cracked. They were sunk into the ground some, and matted with old weeds. In order to get them sectioned without ruining the chain on the saw, we’d cut them 3/4 through then roll them to finish the cuts. So I got to use my cant hook.

This hook was given to me by my Dad. You can see he put some blobs of fluorescent orange spray paint on it so it’s easier to find if you forget it in the brush or it drops off the skidder and falls in the snow. The cant hook was originally owned by my friend Ricky. He sold it to my Dad. I wrote about Ricky in Coop.

The wood was still in real good shape, it’ll burn nice. Get’er split, and let’er spend the summer stacked in the woodshed, and it’ll stoke right up. A few big grainy drifts of this year’s snow still remain, but it’s never too early to begin building next winter’s fires…