Tag: Storytellers

Week in Review

This past week was something else…Some pretty cool UPs and some dramatic DOWNs.

UPs – The Shiny Dome Music Group has been born. you can check it out on Facebook and Myspace. There is now a Facebook Artist page so you too can become a fan There is no music on MySpace just yet, but wait and it’ll be uploaded fairly soon. I have been talking about the music stuff with everyone I come across. Everyone that I’m around is SO PUMPED that there will be an EP coming out in the coming months. I can’t wait to get this running…

UPs – Storytellers GVC will be allowing me to play and share again soon. April 25th actually. It is on the events whether on facebook or myspace. Run, don’t walk and make sure that you are there that night.

DOWNs – Well, we have miscarried again. It happened last week. This is our third pregnancy and our second miscarriage. But, hey, don’t be sad. God has our babies. They are at the feet of Jesus celebrating the salvation He brings and they are worshipping the Creator of all. While we aren’t able to hold our babies, God is holding them.

Storytellin’ on “Race Weekend”

So this passed Friday night was the Storytellers up at the GVC in Gadsden. It was fantastic. Not a huge crowd, but very attentive. There were three singer/songwriters that were there to perform on Friday…Laura (my sis-in-law), Cherie (pronounced Shuh-rEE), and myself. We all played our tunes one at a time. They told me that I would start off since I was seasoned at public performance. Of course, I haven’t really played like this in a couple of years.

After the Telling of Stories gig, Lovely, Little Bear, and I grabbed a bite with my parents, Glammie and Munk. We just sat for a while, just talkin’ and catching up a little. It was great!!! Usually when we get together with my parents it is over food and we pretty much talk a few minutes before we eat and (with the baby here now) fairly soon after we eat, we leave. Not a lot of depth. But this weekend was different. They talked about their loft in Attalla, AL, and how things were going with that. We talked about how Little Bear is growing so fast and other things that are going on with us. We just had a great time reconnecting. Well, after we decided to hit the road, Lovely and I just decided to see if we could afford to stay in town for the weekend since my dad was preaching at GVC on Sunday. We went to one place….$159.00. “Hmm…not too bad. Oh, wait! That’s per night?!!! Crap, no!” Another place…$189.00 per night. A Super 8 motel with no continental breakfast, no pool or Jacuzzi, or anything…and crappy parking. $159.00 per night!?!?!? I finally broke down and asked why everything was so expensive from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. “Talladega weekend, dude! Didn’t you know that?” So I called my brother to see if he knew a place to stay that wouldn’t be outrageous. His response? Dude, just come hang at our place. We got couches. We have a packNplay for the little’en. Just come on.

So around 11:30 p.m. we pull up in front of their hacienda. Unloaded and all, we chat for a minute or two and then off to beddy-bye-land…until 5:30 a.m. Little Bear was on her weekday schedule.

So we, Lovely, Little Bear, and I just chatted downstairs as not to wake our gracious hosts from their slumber. Good news…they have a six-month old, so they were up about an hour later. We ate some hella-good food and got ready for the day.

We didn’t have a plan for the day, but my Pop said he was going to be working on the Attalla building. So we zipped out to the Wally World to pick up a few things for Little Bear (diapers and such) and went over to see the new-old place. Its gonna be a sweet place. Later that night, Kris and LBC zip out to a get together and we offer to watch little BAC. Free babysitters? Word! Munk and Gammie brought flesh of pigs for us to dine on. A good time was had watching the little’ens.

Sunday a.m. Little Bear is up at the BUTT_CRACK at about 5:30 (when I normally wake up for work). She was having nothing doin’ of going back to bed. So…we’re up. After I get a little of the groggy off, I zip out to get biscuits for the house since they’ve so gracious as to let us heat up their couches for a couple of nights. I take little Bear with me as a Popi/Daughter trip. We get back and are headed up the front steps. I stumbled up the stairs and fell…with little Bear in my arms. Luckily, my elbow caught most of the fall. Little Bear just barely bumped her noggin. Not a scratch or bruising or lump. I felt horrible. I medicated by eating.

Church on Sunday was quite awesome. I forget how much I like the GVC. It is less polished that the DTC. It seems to make it a little more intimate and accepting…I guess. Anyway. Bruce lead the worship with some stellar 1990s Vineyard tunes that made my heart just melt, and my dad, Munk, spoke on Sunday morning. He spoke on freedom from the bondage of Satan. This was something that I didn’t really agree with theologically, but he brought a passion that I haven’t seen him have in a while and I praised God for that.

Afterwards, we grabbed a bite with my parents and just talked about life. It was good. We laughed a lot and watched little Bear be as cute as she is. There didn’t really seem to be any distractions like there usually are…it was great.

All in all it was a great weekend. I’d do it all over again…just not on race weekend.

Creative rush

So the Storytellers is happening again tomorrow night. I wish I could go, but I’ll be working instead. I lot of people that I have had the pleasure of meeting are being asked to participate over the coming months. The Gadsden Vineyard crew is a plethera of artistic talent in almost every aspect. Photography, music, art, dance, and more…and that is just my sis-in-law.

So I was asked about a month ago (I think) and I have not really had time to play let alone write. And actually I have been in a writing dryspell for a long time (uhm…about 4 years or so). What makes this worse is that all of the songs I have written were locked up in a storage unit that we put our stuff in and we lost the unit when the money folded a while back. ALL 40+ SONGS ARE GONE!!! So now, all I have is what I have written since then or had in a different place than the others. To date, I have two songs that are originals. EEEEK!!! The Storytellers are asking us to bring 5+ songs. That means I have some creativity to churn out here, people.

I think I’ll make it okay. At lunch today I wrote down a song-story about a guy on campus. He is a great guy, but no one really knows he that is here let alone what he does on campus.

Well, I hope everyone’s creativity gets boosted the next few weeks.

Write, create, perform, revise, recreate, perform…

JUST DO IT!!!

oh wait, that’s Nike.

Awaiting the date…

Over the weekend I was… Well, I wasn’t really asked. I was, more or less, informed that I was playing a gig in Gadsden. Relax, it was not a high pressure situation. And it isn’t playing in a place that I hate or anything. It is a small place with a pretty good amount of natural reverb and typically a good crowd. By brother and sis-in-law told about a deal they have going on in Gadsden. It is a take off of VH1 storytellers concert series they did back in the day. It is on the first Friday night of each month. They set up about 2-3 local artists and give them a spot for about 2-3 songs. The artist gets to describe the song and give the “story” (you guessed it) behind the song.

When they mentioned it I was all excited. Then they said something to the affect of “we already told so-and-so that you should do the show.” “Well, it’s just that you are a great musician.”

A while back they did a similar thing called Fellowship of the String which was awesome in itself. We would sit in a huge circle of guitar players and friends and family and play songs either that we had written or songs that meant a lot to us that someone else wrote. After a season, the FOTS disintegrated.

I do hope that the Storytellers fridays will be a flaming success. I have been looking for a venue that is low-key and real. I’m just waiting to find out if I am telling my stories in September or October.

I’ll keep you posted.