If you’re within range of one of these stations tonight (Saturday, December 31st) we hope you’ll join Mike as he hosts another edition of Tent Show Radio from Big Top Chautauqua. Information on streaming the show here.
In this episode’s monologue – delivered from the backstage dressing room with the one lonely little lightbulb burnin’ – Mike discusses leaky boots, farm supply stores, salt blocks, the Happy Schnapps Combo and goat theft.
You can join the Tent Show Radio Facebook page here.
If you’re here because you just heard the radio interview, info on the upcoming show in Northfield, MN, is here.
Info on the upcoming show in LaCrosse, WI is here.
Info on where and when you can hear Tent Show Radio is here.
Tweet triggered by book passage I’m working on: Sometimes you need a little patchouli to go with your logger boots #ShamanGirlDrivingAPickupTruck #MyWife #LuckyOldMe
Had a companion in the office this morning. She’s taking a nap now, but left some of her friends behind. I am told that among this herd are Aurora Dawn, MoonPlanet, DaisyPink and some other names I didn’t catch but go good with purple braided tails and over-sized blue eyes. I look over at that chair, and it’s like I popped mushrooms.
Missing from photo: StarBottom the purple bear, she’s helping with the nap.
All from my Grandma’s collection.
Best part? I’m listening to them on this:
…good neighbors.
An excerpt from something I’m working on about our good neighbors (the guy riding the bike is 82 years old; Jane is my youngest daughter, a tiny toddler at the time of this anecdote):
I slow to turn up the driveway. It’s a dirt two-track, and long ago recovered from the cement truck ruts – although 45 years on, Arlinda still grumps about the construction foreman who promised to fix the driveway and never did. The drive is a good half-mile long, cut through a cornfield. Wavering bicycle tracks are visible in the sandier patches. In fair weather, Tom pedals out to fetch the mail. Recognizing where we are, Jane raises her gaze and uncorks her thumb. “I can feed Cassidy a bone?”
Cassidy is the Hartwig’s three-legged dog. Took me a while to figure that one. For the longest time I thought the name an unusual choice. Tom and Arlinda, the type of people they are, you think they’d go for something more in the vein of “Shep,” or “Buster,” or even, “Ol’ Hound.” (My brothers Jed and John, in their own way younger versions of Tom, have named their dogs Jack, Frank, Leroy, and Sven.) You will get a sense of how my brain floats when I admit that it took two years and a quiet moment alone before the epiphany struck: Cassidy…Hopalong Cassidy! I was alone at the time, but I said “HA!” right out loud.
We are grateful for our elders. Especially if they like a good long-term three-legged dog joke.
Revision: my favorite stage in the writing process. This is when the obsessive-compulsive tendencies that frustrate me to the edge of madness throughout the rest of the process (and daily life itself) suddenly become an asset. This is the inky equivalent of a musician tinkering with the mix.
The band and I will be doing two shows in January. One in Northfield, Minnesota, and one in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. As it says on the calendar:
Appearing onstage with his band the Long Beds (featuring special guest hotshot Andy Dee of Big Top Chautauqua Blue Canvas Orchestra), Mike will weave stories and humor (including material from The Clodhopper Monologues) throughout a lively concert of original songs, including those on his most recent album, Tiny Pilot (Ambledown Records).
I’ll be doing a few new stories, and Andy Dee will do ridiculous things on lap steel. See y’then, then.
Pleased my recently-declared worldwide moratorium on the phrase “killing it” in reference to musical performance is finally taking hold. Next: superfluous beards. Feel my power. Also, yesterday I shaved.
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