Wow–It’s Been a Whole Year!

I dunno why I stopped posting almost a year ago–I suspect it was FaceBook, as well as a number of other activities.  But now I’ve decided to start up again, whether or not I have anything worthwhile saying, which is doubtful.  Anyway, here’s the first post for 2012, and, with luck, it won’t be a year before the next one!

February Album Writing Month

Each February since 2007 I’ve been participating in FAWM–February Album Writing Month–a web site started by Burr Settles back in 2004.  The idea of this site is to invite songwriters from all over the world, whether professional or just hobbyists, to a challenge where you write 14 songs (about the average for an “album,” in 28 days.  If you meet the challenge and post 14 songs on your FAWM page by the end of the month, you are one of the “winners,” although there are no actual prizes other than the satisfaction that you completed an ambitious goal.

So–have I ever reached that goal?  No.  The closest I’ve come is around eight or nine songs, but I don’t do it to “win”.  I do it, I suspect, for the same reasons that the several hundred folks involved every year do it:  to post your songs and get feedback in the form of comments from other songwriters from all over the world.  I never cease to be amazed when I check my posted songs and read comments from people who are total strangers, but somehow found my song and took the time out of their busy day to listen and write a comment.  The comments are almost always positive, as, I imagine, folks who don’t like the song will simply not leave a comment.  This doesn’t bother me at all.

There are a number of people from SummerSongs and WinterSongs, the songwriting camps that I attend each August and February, who also participate in FAWM.  It’s extra fun to perform some of the songs I write in February, then perform them at WinterSongs live.  Other FAWMers, as they’re called, are local artists that I meet at gigs or festivals.

So if you aren’t familiar with FAWM and want to check out my page and songs, just go to http://fawm.org/fawmers/papajoe/ and see and/or listen for yourself.  If you’re a songwriter or maybe you think you’d like to try crafting some tunes, it’s not to late to join the fun!

Metamora Open Mic

The last Friday of each month the folks who put on the Metamora Old Time Music Festival host an open mic.  In the warmer months, it’s held on the outdoor stage at the end of Lover’s Lane.  During the winter, it moves indoors to the Mill Street Pizza restaurant on the main drag of this historic Indiana town, approximately eight miles west of Brookville.

I’ve been going to this open mic for several years now, and it never fails to be a good time.  Lots of local talent graces the stage, and there’s always an appreciative audience, which is not always the case for open mics in general.  Gail Ginther, one of the most active behind-the-scenes people in the historic and entertainment events in the town, took this photo of me performing last night.  Also performing were several “regulars” such a Kevin Rose, The Harvey Branch String Band, and, of course, the Baggy Bottom Boys.

I started performing in Metamora on the canal boat, one of the last horse-drawn canal boats in existence.  The cozy main drag of town is lined with buildings built in the 1800′s, and includes an operating grist mill, as well as a steam locomotive and a host of gift shops and eateries.  I’ve also been invited each year to perform at the Old Time Music Festival, which is generally held on Labor Day weekend.  It never fails to be a great weekend of music, food and jamming with good friends!

It Started in 1898

Today is my father’s birthday.  He was born on this day in 1898, one hundred thirteen years ago today.  He was 44 when I was born, so I never really knew him as anything but an “old” man.  (In the 1940′s and early 50′s, men in their 50s looked much older than they do today.)  He was a pretty good father, but he was a product of his time, and so carried the prejudices and extremely conservative values of most other men of his generation.  The picture shows each of us around the age of 20 (that’s me on the left), and there is some family resemblance.  The pictures were taken over 40 years apart.

My dad died in 1990 at the age of 92.  It’s hard to imagine what he must have thought of the world in his final years.  He grew up at a time when there were no cars, no radio or television or airplanes.  He stood only 5′ 2″ tall, and his father, who was born in Germany, never even reached five feet.  Yet these were not unusual statures for the time.  He grew up on a farm in what is now Shrewsbury, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.  He was the first one in his family to go to college, where he earned a law degree and started practicing law at the age of 21.

During his lifetime he saw what must have seemed incredible changes in the world around him.  He grew up in a house without indoor plumbing or electric lights.  As he grew and aged he witnessed two world wars (he was in the army in WWI but didn’t go overseas), the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, Communist China, the Korean conflicts, etc.  The appearance of television (we got our first TV around 1951 or so) must have seemed surreal.  I remember him being completely confused by personal computers in the mid-1980s when I showed him my primitive Radio Shack Color Computer on one of my visits.

Now that I’m closing in on 70 and taking my place in the “senior” arena, I understand him a lot more than I did when I was younger.  Fortunately, today’s seniors, the baby boomer generation, are generally in better health and have many more options than our parents and grandparents.  If someone told me back when I was a teenager that I would be writing songs and performing at coffeehouses and music festivals after I retired, I would have thought they were crazy.  Life is a strange but interesting adventure.  I’m sure my dad would have agreed with that.

Diva Kangaroo

On January 15th, a new children’s CD was officially launched at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in the Rookwood Plaza shopping center near the Hyde Park area of Cincinnati.  I was very honored to be asked to be part of this project, which includes some of the best musicians and songwriters in the greater Cincinnati area.  For this CD I re-recorded my “I Like Turtles” song, and it is one of 12 tracks on the album.  Diva Kangaroo is the second children’s CD from Little Bird Music, the creation of Prudence Hunt, who started the Ceilidh Group and started these projects a couple of years ago.  The first CD, Isn’t It A Wonder, included two of my songs, and was a great success.  All proceeds from the sales of these CDs go to a variety of children’s charities in the Cincinnati area.

In the photo, I’m performing with (left to right) Tim Kelly, Roberta Schultz and Prudence Hunt on Prudence’s song, “Just Like Tom and Huck.”  This was the final song in what turned out to be a terrific show which drew a substantial audience of parents and kids in the middle of the large book store.  It was a great way to start 2011, and I think this year will provide many special moments like this one.  One of my resolutions for this year is to try and update this blog more regularly, so here’s a start…late, but a start nevertheless!

Jam Barn

Last weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to Madison and Scottsburg in southern Indiana.  The occasion was to attend the Halfway to Ohio River Valley Folk Festival Extravaganza.  That was a fine event, but what I really loved was getting to jam with musician friends I’d met at the Festival last May.  I stayed at John Sheckler’s house in the Scottsburg area, and jammed Friday night and Saturday afternoon in Don Pennington’s “music barn.”  The interior of this barn is adorned with old posters and ancient musical instruments, and it’s simply a fascinating place to hang out, whether you’re playing or not.  The posters include groups from the Beatles to early Johnny Cash concert announcements, along with photos of many of the local bands and, of course, of Don, John and others that I jammed with that weekend.

One of the jammers Friday night was Don’s 90-year-old mother, who played piano during the jam.  She did a fantastic job–I would be thrilled to have half her skills and enthusiasm when I’m 90, assuming I’ll still be alive!  There were also several other jammers who were in their 70′s or 80′s, demonstrating the power of music to keep you young and vital.  It was a great weekend.  I never cease to be amazed at how I can sit down with absolute strangers and play with them like we’ve been doing it for years.  Music binds, crosses social and generational gaps, inspires and fills us with excitement and a genuine love of life that keeps one young and vital.  That’s why I keep going to local jams and the annual SummerSongs and WinterSongs music camps year after year.

Ireland–Better Late Than Never

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been like two months or more since I posted my last blog.  What can I say?  Fortunately, I’m sure there’s hardly anyone listening out there–this is mostly an exercise/indulgence for my own edification and amusement.  August, and to a certain degree, September, were simply crazy months where I was constantly busy.  After I came back from SummerSongs in the middle of August, I performed on Fountain Square in Cincinnati with my buddy, Greg Tackett.  Then I packed up and traveled, for the first time in my life, outside the U.S.A. to Ireland.  On Aug. 25th I flew from Cincinnati to Atlanta, where I hopped aboard a plane going to Dublin, Ireland.  It was an eight-hour flight, the longest I’ve ever been on, and I got to experience jet lag for the first time, too.

But the trip was wonderful.  I met my brother, Mark, at the airport, and he helped me find my way to a bus stop and take the right bus to the Camden Court Inn, where we stayed for three nights.  Though I spent lots of time with Mark and his wife, Resa, and other relatives, I also got to spend a good amount of time on my own, and it was those times that I got to explore a bit of Dublin, including St. Stephen’s Square Park, where I took this picture of a statue of the famous Irish writer, Oscar Wilde.  I was fascinated by the casual pose which is so atypical of sculptures of famous people.  Oscar would have approved, I’m sure.

The picture on the left shows the statue of Molly Malone, the fishmonger hero of the Irish song, one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar–mostly because it has only two chords.  The statue, not surprisingly, is one of the favorite haunts of street musicians, who are all over the streets of Dublin.  It was sites and sounds such as these that were the favorite parts of my visit to the Emerald Isle.  That and listening to the people talking in brogue that is their everyday tongue, not an act put on in some movie.  Fascinating.

I also traveled with Mark, Resa and Annalise, Resa’s sister, to the west of Dublin to towns like New Grange and Longford.  I got to sit in various Pubs and have dinner, drinks and listen to Irish music and Irish bands playing American music.  Of course, as a non-drinker, I just sipped hot coffee while the others had their glasses of Guinness.  I have many memories, many of them hilarious, such as the highway signs, e.g., “Traffic Calming Ahead” instead of “Slow Traffic Ahead” and “Divided Carriageway” for “Divided Highway.”  I was also amused and slightly shocked to see men standing on the side of a busy highway, openly relieving themselves.  (At least they had the decency to face the side of the road!)  It was at times like this that I was reminded that I was indeed in a foreign country, where customs and culture was distinctly different from the way we live in the States.

So–the trip was definitely a unique experience for me, and no doubt played a part in why I haven’t sat down and written a blog entry for almost two months.  But now that life has settled a bit, I think my next post won’t be as long in coming.

SummerSongs 2010

Earlier this month, August 6-12 to be exact, I attended my sixth annual SummerSongs camp.  SummerSongs can’t adequately be described, but I’ll try.  (I probably did a post on this last year, too.  I think it was called “My Personal Woodstock”)  Anyway, I first discovered this camp for songwriters in 2005, and I’ve been going back twice a year.  (They have a shorter version in February called WinterSongs.)  The camp is located at The Ashokan Center, in the Catskill Mountains of New York.  Jay Unger and Molly Mason have a fiddle camp there, and this is where Jay composed his famous “Ashokan Farewell” fiddle tune, which was featured in Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary.

Basically, the camp features classes in songwriting and various other music-related topics (e.g., performance, harmony singing, recording, etc.) during the days, and concerts, song circles and jams that go into the wee hours of the morning.  It’s simply a week of total immersion in music, and total escape from the outside world.  The pictures show me working on a song in a quiet corner of the woods, and singing along with a jam in the dining hall.  There are folks from all walks of life, both men and women, both young and old, and even folks from other countries, such as a young lady from Scotland who joined us for the first time this year.  The camp was started by Penny Nichols, a fabulous singer/songwriter who has opened for bands like the Stone Poneys and Little Feat.  Instructors over the years have included such gifted folks as Sloan Wainwright, David Roth, Pat Wictor, Scott Ainsle, Jud Caswell, Kenny Edwards, Cosy Sheridan, Reggie and Kim Harris, and others too numerous to mention.

Tomorrow I leave for Ireland, and no doubt I’ll make a blog entry about that trip, but I wanted to document the great times I have every August at what I consider the “funnest” and most inspiring songwriting camp going.  And just to top it off, in addition to the gorgeous scenery of the Catskills, SummerSongs has the best camp food I’ve ever put in my mouth!

August…it’s a crazy month this year, but “good crazy.”

One Month Gone–Just Like That!

Time can really get away from you, and there’s no better proof than the fact that it’s been over a month since I last posted something on this blog.  Not that I have hundreds of readers, but there are a couple of people who check it out now and then, and to them I apologize for my blog neglect.  I sorta have an excuse–it’s been one *really* busy month, but the bottom line is that it just fell down to the bottom of my priority list, and on those rare times when I had nothing to do, I was simply uninspired.

So…skipping over stuff like my the fabulous time I had at the Ohio River Valley Folk Festival, playing at the Bashful Ostrich 5K at 7:30 in the morning, two wonderful days at Metamora’s Strawberry Days festival  (photo on left), emceeing the upstairs parlor bands at the Rivertown Breakdown at Southgate House, etc., etc…you get the idea.  Add to this hosting the regular Crosswalk Coffee open mic on Thursdays, attending the last Leo Coffeehouse hootenanny (season starts again in September), and trying to make some progress on the lawn between rainstorms, etc.  Well…it’s just been busy.

The problem here is that this month, June, is going to be just as busy, especially the week of June 21-27, when I have a gig at the Music Cafe in Hamilton, open mics in Eaton and Metamora, flying to St. Louis to attend and perform at my 50th high school reunion, then flying back the next day to perform with Greg Tackett and Gene Webb at the Appalachian Mountain Music Festival in Waynesville, Ohio.  So I’m just going to have to face reality–there’s never going to be that relaxed, open time when I’ll be inspired to sit down and create a literary masterpiece on this blog.  Blogging is about news–very, very local news–but news just the same, with the addition of some pseudo-philosophical thoughts from time to time.  I just have to do it more often, that’s all.  Sigh…

The Playjo

Three days a week I babysit for my youngest grandchild, Bonnie’s son, Joe, aka “Little Joe,” who is 14 months old.  He loves it when I play my guitar or banjo, but, as is natural for a 1-year-old, he wants to hold the instrument and pull on the strings himself.  So I got this idea to make him a little banjo of his own, a sort of “playjo,” that he could have so we could play together, so to speak.  I remembered that I took the metal “clinkers” off of this toy tambourine several years ago, when I first had the idea of making a real toy banjo, but never got around to it.  This time, I had no intention of making an instrument that could reproduce actual melodies.  I just wanted it to be more or less indestructible, and capable of making interesting sounds.  So I trimmed a piece of scrap wood, sanded it to remove any possibility of splinters, stuck it through the holes in the toy tambourine, then “strung” it with a long rubber band, and added a wood “bridge” glued to the head, with some carved-out grooves to hold the rubber band strings apart.

Last night at family dinner, I showed Little Joe the playjo, and he couldn’t have been more thrilled!  When he wasn’t making noises with it by pulling and releasing the rubber band strings, he was carrying it around wherever he went.  Of course, he was also furiously possessive and refused to share it with any of his older cousins, but that’s only natural for a 1-year-old.  The playjo was an instant hit.

We’ll keep the playjo here, and he can play with it whenever he’s here.  And, of course, the other grandkids can play with it when they’re here and Little Joe’s not.  It wasn’t a major project–I don’t think it even took me a half-hour to put it together–but it seems to have gone over well.  I don’t think it’ll inspire anyone to learn to play a stringed instrument in the years to come, but you can never tell…