In this episode’s monologue – delivered from the backstage dressing room with the one lonely little lightbulb burnin’ – Mike discusses scrap-metal, three-legged dogs, and the pros and cons of staying grounded when there is welding going on.

You can join the Tent Show Radio Facebook page here.

SET LIST:

Blue Canvas Orchestra: Ballyhoo theme song
Arlo Guthrie: Darkest Hour, Coming In To Los Angeles, Plane Wreck At Los Gatos, Union Maid, St. James Infirmary.
Michael Perry: Monologue
Arlo Guthrie: The Motorcycle Song, Alabama Bound, Highway In The Wind, Slow Boat
Blue Canvas Orchestra: Hobo Blues

Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad.

Time to sound-proof the playroom.

If I may say so, Montaigne’s single dominant theme is our propensity for perpetual self-contradiction, and for a guy who can’t make up his mind about anything more complicated than a toggle switch on a bench grinder, I guess you could say Montaigne’s are my kind of affirmations. I admit the angle of my appreciation lacks academic rigor. But you read Montaigne, you feel like you have a friend. And that you may be a reliable idiot, but you are not the original reliable idiot.

Then again:

He also started speaking Latin at the age of four, went to college at the age of six, enrolled in law school when he was fourteen, served as a soldier and was appointed to several high-level government positions and hung out (just once, but still…) with the Pope.

Well, this is good news. I’ve just received word from Tom up there at the Big Top Chautauqua tent that Tent Show Radio can now be streamed pretty much any old time you like. Shows will be uploaded the first Friday after the original air date, and will be available online for one year (So far all shows are available…occasionally the artist may decline permission for streaming).

Several shows are online already and can be heard here. It continues to be my privilege to introduce that acts on air and to contribute a monologue over each intermission (included in the stream). Over the last several monologues I’ve been talking about my neighbor Tom and our attempt to weld up a brush hog.

Of course if you wanna listen in real time, you’re always welcome to dial in one of these stations.

In this episode’s monologue – delivered from the backstage dressing room with the one lonely little lightbulb burnin’ – Mike tells you what to expect if you ever ask his neighbor to do some welding but fail to drop cash on the barrelhead.

You can join the Tent Show Radio Facebook page here.

SET LIST:

Blue Canvas Orchestra: Ballyhoo theme song by the Blue Canvas Orchestra
Laurel Canyon 1970: Woodstock, Twisted, Dream A Little Dream of Me, Chains Of Love, Natural Woman, Feel The Earth Move
Michael Perry: Monologue
Laurel Canyon 1970: Dreams, Rhiannon, Mercedes Benz, Son Of A Preacher Man
Blue Canvas Orchestra: Hobo Blues theme

…the negligent garb, which is yet observable amongst the young men of our time, to wear my cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking in disorder, which seems to express a kind of haughty disdain of these exotic ornaments…

And he was actually speaking in approval of their dress as compared to the adults.

And for those of you who think I use too many big words, you have found a friend:

The way of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the same in writing as in speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man’s self, short and pithy, not so elegant and artifical as prompt and vehement.

In my defense, if the man was standing here, I’d tell him I shoot for a 50/50 blend.

I read a lot of Montaigne in my deer stand last fall. Everything he ever wrote is on my cellphone. That is ridiculous and lovely.