Dreams

        

 

          "You can't campaign with a machine gun."
          I'm not sure what that means, but apparently I said it in a dream one night last week. A couple of nights later, a guy came up to me in another dream and said "You can't campaign with a machine gun. I heard you say that the other day. That was so cool!" It got me to thinking about dreams...mine, and dreams in general.
          I'd be willing to bet that I'm not the only person who dreams about being able to fly. I have had dreams about flying at least since I was eleven or twelve years old, if not earlier that that.  In my dreams, flight is so easy. It's almost like treading water. I wave my hands back and forth in the direction of the ground and I rise right up. Sometimes I fly horizontally and parallel to the ground, but as often as not, the sensation is more like being in deep water (that I can breathe in, and not feel any more than I would feel the air) and moving at will, untethered from the ground. I have them fairly often, and I probably don't have to tell you what a disappointment it is to wake up and not be able to fly.
          I wrote a song one time from a dream I had about being in a wheelchair. Twenty years ago, we were living in eastern North Carolina, in a two-story house with a woodstove for heat. In the winter time, we would get a good fire going right before bedtime and then close the dampers down and go to bed. About an hour or so before it was time for everyone to get up, I would head downstairs and open the dampers, add a few logs, and then go back to bed. The living room would be nice and toasty in the morning. Around this same time period, I was playing music at a lot of biker bars and functions. If you hang around enough bikers, you'll start seeing folks on crutches and in wheelchairs. I guess it's only natural that those images would infiltrate my dreams.
         One night, I had a particularly vivid dream about being in a wheelchair. I was hanging out in a house with a bunch of other "wheelies". Somewhere (not anywhere nearby) there was a guy who had a motorcycle rigged so that he could ride it in spite of the handicap that had kept him chair-bound. We couldn't see him since he was way down the road somewhere, but we were somehow psychically connected to him. We he fired up his bike, we knew it, and we all went nuts. We rolled out into the front yard, hooting and hollering, because not only was he doing it, he was doing it for all of us.
        Then I woke up.
         I was halfway down the stairs to put some wood in the stove when it hit me. I was walking! Just a few minutes earlier, I had been stuck in a chair, but now I was on two feet and walking down a flight of stairs. It shook me up a little. Then I started thinking "What if it was the other way around?" What if I could walk and/or ride a motorcycle in my dreams, but woke up to life in a wheelchair? That day I wrote a song called "Morning Rolls Around". Within a week, I had recorded it with some of my picker buddies, and included it on a cassette that I put out.

          Another kind of dream is the waking one of "What do I want to do with my life?". They are actually aspirations, but we often refer to them as dreams. A dear old friend of mine contacted me the other day wanting to know how to purchase a copy of my "What's Not To Love About That?" CD to give to her elderly country music loving cousins. She told me that she thought "What's Not to Love" was the most beautiful song she'd heard in a long time. "Truly, truly lovely." She added that it made her glad to know that I was living my dream.
          I guess if my dream is to write songs that touch people emotionally, then yes, I'm living my dream. Now, if only I could fly....

Any Cock'll Do? Not According To Our Hens.

         

 

          Well, we solved the too-many-roosters dilemma.
          We had hatched some eggs from our hens before the coyote attack known as "The Great Chicken Massacree Of Twenty And Fourteen". The daddy rooster was an Ameraucana Black/Lav Split. We had three different kinds of hens...Barred Rock, Buff Orpington, and Rhode Island Red. I built a homemade incubator out of a small Styrofoam cooler and a lightbulb, and put eight eggs in it.

          Six of them hatched. They were pretty danged cute.

          We lost one of the babies on the night of the coyote attack. The other five have grown to be beautiful birds. Unfortunately, three of the five turned out to be roosters. Along with the four pullets I bought at the Davidson Country Co-op, we had six hens and three roosters. That's not a desirable ratio at all. At least one, and most likely two, of the roosters had to go.

          Neither Nina nor I had any experience killing and cleaning chickens, but she told me that if I could kill one, she could clean it. That was the plan. I started studying on how to implement it. I could kill one easily enough, but the rest of the process seemed like an awful lot of work (and supplies) unless you were doing multiple chickens. I know people have killed a chicken for dinner on countless occasions, so it had to be easier than all the YouTube videos made it out to be. The other problem was that they were such beautiful birds that it almost seemed a shame to eat them. I started looking on Craigslist for people who were in the market for roosters.
          We were hoping to find someone who would give a rooster a good home and some hens to keep happy. Since the roosters carried the "Easter Egger" gene, we thought it would be easy enough to find someone who would want them. We were willing to give them away to good homes. As it turns out, there are a lot of people with way more roosters than they need. We also heard horror stories of people who collected free birds to use as bait for fighting dogs. One of our greatest fears was that somebody might use them for fighting roosters since they were pretty big birds.

          I found an ad for a fellow who said he was at the Triune Flea Market every weekend with about six hundred birds of different kinds. He also said that he was interested in buying birds. It's about forty-five minutes away, but I drove down there to talk to him yesterday morning. I didn't take the roosters with me. It was more of a seeing-what's-up kind of excursion. He wasn't there when I got there, but I did talk to two other people who had birds. Both told me to bring the roosters down and we could see about swapping for some hens. One guys birds looked kind of ratty, and he wasn't overly-friendly. The other fellow had some nice looking birds, and he also seemed to be a pretty nice guy...just a good old boy loving life. I told him I'd come back this morning.
          We were having trouble trying to decide which rooster to keep. Two of the roosters looked almost identical, and one of those two was huge. It was a toss-up between him and the third rooster, who is one of the most exotically-colored chickens I have ever seen. The hens decided for us. We went out after dark last night (the best time to catch chickens) and opened up the henhouse. The two hens were sleeping almost on top of the exotically-colored boy, while the other two roosters were perched away from the group with their backs to the door. The first one was a pretty easy snatch. I grabbed him up and dropped him into the dog crate that we had borrowed from the neighbors. Unfortunately, that caused a ruckus in the henhouse, so we had to wait an hour to go snag the second rooster. They spent the night in the dog crate on the front porch. This morning we were treated (?) to stereo-crowing.
          When I got back to Triune this morning, all of the vendors were raving over the roosters, and wanting to know if I had any more like that. I said "One...but he's staying with us." The guy who I traded with told me that he thought whoever bought them would want them for yard roosters. In fact, he told me that he was keeping one for himself. I felt pretty good about that. He was going to trade me straight up for two adult hens that were already laying, but he told me that if I wanted some slightly younger pullets, he would give me three. I took three Barred Rocks that are right around the age of our younger chickens, who are three weeks younger than the ones we hatched. He told me to come back any time.
          We now have nine hens and one rooster...a much better ratio. 
          I think everybody's happy.

Miso Shiitake Soup With Tofu

         I did a little experimenting in the kitchen today. I've been wanting to try cooking with seaweed, and I like the pre-packaged-just-add-hot-water miso soups that you can buy at the natural food stores okay, so I decided to make my own.
         I picked up some SHIRO brand miso paste (made with non-GMO soybeans) and some GENKAI Ito WAKAME dried seaweed yesterday at the international market when I was on the way home from getting new rubber put on my Nissan Versa tour bus. (Only two...what you might call semi-retirement.)  I also replenished our stocks of sesame oil and ZIYAD brand Red Hot Pepper Paste.

        This morning, I went to the nearest big corporate grocery store and bought fresh a ginger root, some shiitake mushrooms, some firm tofu, and some random fruits and veggies that our refrigerator seemed to be lacking.

       First things first. I cut about a third of the block of tofu into small cubes, and set them out to drain between several paper towels and on top of some newspaper.

        Then I cut about 1 1/2 inches off of the fat end of the ginger root. I peeled it, cut it thin slices crossways (this way you cut the fibers and don't end up with stringy pieces of ginger), and then chopped it somewhere between small and fine. I ended up with about 2 tablespoons. I cheated and used pre-chopped garlic. It's quicker, easier, and not so stinky on the fingers.
        I have a shallow stainless steel pot that I like to use for things like this. I put it on a medium heat, and added a splash (about a tablespoon, plus or minus) of sesame oil. Once the oil was hot, I added the vegetables that I had already prepped...some small-diced onions, some thinly-sliced celery, and some julienned (small thin sticks) carrots...along with the ginger and about a tablespoon of garlic.

Once the vegetables started to soften up, I added the sliced shiitakes, a teaspoon of the Red Hot Pepper Paste, and a tiny splash of soy sauce.

      The next step was to rehydrate the dried seaweed. You should always use way less than you think you're going to want, because once you place it in cold water, it gets HUGE. I wish I had realized that. I soaked it for five or six minutes, drained the water off (I used a mesh-style strainer) and then squeezed out any excess water. I then chopped half of it up into pieces that seemed like they would be comfortable to eat with a soup spoon. The rest went into the refrigerator for some other experiment. (I told you it gets huge.)

           The seaweed, after soaking, and before chopping.
            Once the mushrooms had softened, I added 4 cups of water and 4 tablespoons of the miso paste. After the paste dissolved into a broth, I added the seaweed and the tofu. Then I covered it and set it on simmer for a couple of hours. You could probably go shorter than that, but I like to give hot soups as much time as I can.

     It was very tasty, although I think next time (and there will be a next time) I will skip the soy sauce. Miso and seaweed are both already salty. The soup wasn't any more salty than the soups you get at most Chinese restaurants, but I certainly wouldn't have wanted it to be any saltier than it was. I found this homemade version to be way more satisfying than the instant packages.
     Don't be afraid to try this at home. I'm glad I did, You can use whatever vegetables you have handy, and the brand name items I used were what was available at my local international market. Use whatever you can find brand-wise.
     Good stuff!

I Don't Care Who You Think You Are...

          Interesting night tonight at the “The Taste OF TSAI” event. I was scheduled to go on at 6:00pm with three other writers for an hour. One of the writers showed up with an extra (and unannounced) guitarist in tow. I had never known her to need an accompanist before, but suddenly there were five guitars and only four direct inputs for the PA. Only three of the mic stands had booms on them, making it difficult to hold a guitar and sing in the mic at the same time. We decided (with the blessing of the person organizing the event) that the best way to handle it was for half of the group to play the first half hour and then the other half play the second half hour. It seemed like a good solution for making the best of an awkward situation.

          At the end of the first half hour, two people left the stage. The accompanist stood up there tuning his guitar while the emcee talked and we tried to get set up for our half hour. Then the emcee announced us and added “Accompanied by Accompanist”. That was news to me, so  I turned to the guy and told him that I would rather that he didn’t play on my songs. (He doesn’t know them, and I’m used to doing the solo thing.) Steve (the other writer) said he would prefer that I go first, so I did. I started with “My Dog Jesus”, since there were a lot of folks there who had never heard me before. Then Steve did a song.

          When I stepped up to the mic for my second song,  Accompanist said “I’m doing one now.”

          I said “Really?”

          He said “Yeah!”.

          I unplugged my guitar and walked off stage. He started playing. The soundman (who was already having issues with Accompanist) asked me what was going on. I told him I got booted. I was ready to pack up and leave. Nina told me that she thought it looked bad, and that I should get back up. The soundman went looking for the organizer, who came up to me and asked “What’s he doing up there? He’s not on the bill.” I told him what had happened, and told me “Oh, no…you need to get back up there.”

          So I got back up and played “Dickel, Strait & Jones”. Steve did another song. I got ready to launch into my third song.

          Accompanist goes “I’m going to do another one.”

          I said “No. you’re not. You’re not part of this round. You weren’t invited, and your name is not on the bill. You’ve already taken one person’s slot.”

          He acted like I had spit on him. “I’ve already taken one person’s slot?” He unplugged his guitar while telling me “You’re a real jewel, you know that?” Then he stormed off the front of the stage while shouting “You don’t ever have to worry about me working with you again!”

          I stated that he never was working with me in the first place, and that he had crashed the round.  He flew through the crowd to wherever his guitar case was.

          I was pretty torqued at that point, so I decided to do a happy song, and told the crowd so. I launched into “What’s Not To Love”, and of course I had the wrong harmonica in the rack. Swapped harps and kicked it off again. Roared through the song, and took my bows. I was headed to the green room to put my guitar in the case, when accompanist walked by me in the crowd and says at the top of his lungs “You’re a real dick!” I kept walking.

         I was in the green room putting my guitar up, when he comes in and accosts me.

        “You’re a real asshole! You should never say on a mic that somebody crashed a round.”

        “That’s exactly what you did. You weren’t invited. Your name was not on the bill.”

        “They told me that I was going to accompany her and then be in the round.”

         I asked who “they” were.

        He told me "they" were the writer who he was there to play with and the organizer.

         I said “That’s funny, because the organizer asked me what you were doing up there.”

        He reiterated that he thought I was an asshole.
         I told him he needed to go look in the mirror.
        He turned away,  shouting “Go fuck yourself!” as he stalked out of the green room.

         I found myself wishing I was the kind of guy who would stomp a mudhole in somebody who acted like that, but fortunately I am not.

        Accompanist was in a one-hit-wonder band in the ‘60s, and hangs around Nashville pretending to something he’s not, all the while pretending to not be what he is…a self-aggrandizing opportunist. He sure hated getting called on it. I hated that I brought that drama to an otherwise fun event, but somebody had to say “That ain’t right!” I guess I got nominated. I sure didn’t enjoy it.

Addendum...because a lot of people have asked and/or wrongly assumed the identity of the perpetrator, it was NOT my friend Gary Talley. He has way more class than that. And besides, The Boxtops had more than one hit.

Personal Beliefs...Have You Questioned Yours Lately?

          W.C. Fields is purported to have said "Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." I have heard many permutations of this, including "A man has to believe in something, and I believe I'll go fishing." and "Everyone's got to believe in something, and I believe I'll take a nap." Those sayings are clever and fun, but do you ever stop to think about what you believe and why you believe it?
          To the best of my recollection, the sun has come up every single day of my life. That makes me believe that it will come up tomorrow.  Whenever I walk unprotected in the rain, I get wet. I believe that will continue to happen. If I touch a hot woodstove, I will get burned. I believe that with all my scars. However, some things I believe are not so strongly reinforced by evidence that I can detect with only five senses. I just believe them. Sometimes I wonder why. Maybe experience is what makes me believe the way I do. Maybe it's logic.
          I believe that it is wrong to hurt other people, through words, actions, or any other means. That doesn't mean I haven't done it (and probably still do) but I still don't think it's right. Why? Because it feels wrong to me. If I wouldn't want someone to do something to me, I certainly have no business doing it to them.
          I believe that if someone is going to espouse a religious viewpoint or claim to be an adherent of a religion...any religion...they should know what that religion is and what it stands for. I do not believe that a message of peace and love is something that should be (or even can be) used as a weapon against other people. If you cherry-pick words and phrases from sacred texts in order to make a religion fit your mold, you probably have no business claiming that religion as your own...much less trying to force other people to adhere to it. I also believe that people are happier when they find a religion that fits them than they are if they expend their precious energies trying to shoehorn themselves into someone else's interpretation.
           Along those lines...I know that being gay is not a religion, but I believe that people who are gay and admit it to themselves and others are much happier and more well-adjusted than people who deny who they are and, as often is the case, carry out attacks on others for being gay. The fact that these attacks are often cloaked as coming from theologies whose main message is peace and love makes it even worse. I believe that because I have observed it. My friends (and relatives) who are gay and have come out about it are in a way better place than those in the closet.

          Other things that I believe...
          I believe that the United States government (or any state or local government in the United States) doesn't have any business making laws that favor one religious point of view over another, or one that furthers any religious agenda.
          I believe that having more money than somebody else doesn't make you a better person than them. How you let money affect you says more about "class" than how much money you have.
          I believe that corporations are not people.  Corporations are formed to offer the people who form them legal protections, and therefore should not be afforded the same rights and privileges as human beings. I believe that corporations should pay taxes. I also believe that churches should pay taxes. I believe that neither of those two entities have any business writing the laws of our country.
          I believe that the earth is ours to protect and not to exploit. You can't eat, drink, or breathe money when the food, water, and air are gone.
          I believe that two adult people who love each other should be allowed to marry, be they from different backgrounds, different races, different religions, or the same sex. Most arguments against that proposal are "religious" in nature, and therefore not grounds for legal opposition. The argument that marriage is about procreation is also worthless, since many people who are unable to have children are allowed to get married...people who get married later in life, or a couple where one or both of the people are infertile...as are people who chose not to have children.
          I believe that if you hate in the name of religion, then you're doing it wrong.
          I believe that your right to swing your fist ends just short of my nose.
          I believe in Americans' rights to own guns...but I also believe that if you have to wave your gun in other people's faces to feel secure, then you are really insecure...and probably dangerously so.
          I believe that alcohol and nicotine are drugs. As such, they shouldn't be any more legal than any other drug.
          I believe that marijuana should be legal to grow and consume responsibly.
          Until logic or experience convince me otherwise, I will continue to believe these things.
          I believe you have the right to disagree with me, but I'll probably believe you're wrong if you do.
          I believe that's enough for now. Have a good day.

"Two things that can be hard to find are courage and peace of mind
Well they ain't in a bottle and they ain't in the barrel of a gun..."
         

Liquor? I Hardly Know Her! Part 2: I'm Not A Fool

         

          This is a hook I came up with based on all those old Robert Young (Marcus Welby, M.D.) television commercials where he would say "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV". It had several rough permutations ("I'm not a fool, but I play one when you wear that dress" and things along that line) before I settled on "I'm not a fool, I just play one on Jim Beam".
          I was back in North Carolina at the time, and I was finishing up a writing session with Donald "Rome'" Wood on a song we had started in Nashville called "You Can Lead A Man To Water (But You Can't Push Him In)", which was about some people's seemingly uncontrollable urge to make sure that everyone they come across in life is "saved". I had met Rome' at one of Doak Turner's 3rd @ Three gatherings in Nashville. Doak introduced us since he knew we were both from North Carolina, and it turns out that we had lived only about 45 minutes away from each other. At the time Rome' was going by his radio name of Dave Stone, which is how I still think of him from time to time. He had a radio show in Fayetteville, North Carolina and a weekly segment he called "The Writers' Block" where he interviewed hit writers from Nashville and played the pre-hit demo recordings of their big songs. He had invited me on the show (in spite of the fact that I didn't have any big radio hits) on the strength of the song "My Dog Jesus" which he had heard me play at Doak's. As I recall, I played that song, "That's What I'm Talkin' About" and "I Recall My Daddy" on his show.
     Anyway, after we finished up "You Can Lead A Man To Water", we had a little time left and I pitched the idea for "I'm Not A Fool" to Dave (that's who he was back then) and he thought it was worth writing. We tossed around a few ideas before he had to head back to Fayetteville.
     I beat the song around a little bit, and had a workable chorus and a pretty good second verse by the time I talked to Dave again. I told him what I had and asked him when we could get together to finish it. He said "Are you sure you want to share it? Sounds like you've got most of it written." I told him that since we had started it together that I felt like we should consider it a co-write. We got back together and hammered away until we got it mostly nailed down. He told me that he hated the line "A cap comes off a bottle, and evil genie casts a spell". I told him "too bad".
      I ended up cutting "I'm Not A Fool" for my "What's Not To Love About That?" CD. My producer Duane Sciacqua played some great Dobro parts on it, and my buddy Jose Primero (Joe First) added some tasty accordion. It's not a combination that you hear everyday, but I thought it worked real well.
     Rome' still hates that "genie" line....

    

Liquor? I Hardly Know Her! Part 1: Jack In Common

         

          I've been thinking lately about how all the research I did when I was younger has helped me write drinking and barroom songs now that I'm sober (32 years!). One of the first songs that comes to my mind is the third song I ever wrote with my friend Bo Thomas Biermann. Bo is one of the better singers I've ever met, and a pretty danged good writer, but he is much happier as a small town guy who goes fishing after work and surfing in the summertime. Good for him for figuring that out.
          Bo showed up at my one bedroom dump apartment on 18th Avenue one day in early '06 with a hook idea " I chose the bottle, but she chose the Bible, and we don't have Jack in Common anymore" that in and of itself was not bad, but being who I am, I insisted on us changing it. We ended up writing a boy-meets-girl from a different walk of life-over a couple of shots of whiskey song called "Jack In Common". I recorded it with producer Duane Sciacqua, and it became the leadoff track on my 2009 CD "What's Not To Love About That?". Bo sang the harmonies, and his then-girlfriend Jessica Brooks sang a duet with me on the last chorus.
          Around the time that we wrote the song, my friend Suzy Q (Susan Davis) came out to visit from North Carolina. At one point she told me "I've heard that song twice since I've been here, and there's a part that has bothered me both times. It's when you say 'A little boy said'. I don't think a little boy has any business in the bar, much less in the song." Bo and I laughed and explained to her that we were saying "a little voice". I have been much more careful with my enunciation since then.
          I once sold a copy of the CD to a guy who heard me play at the Luna Star Café in North Miami. He took it to a party where everyone was apparently getting hammered and played it for the partygoers. That turned into an immediate scavenger hunt for Jack Daniels-related articles. He sent me an email and asked for my mailing address (which I am fairly protective of) and said he wanted to send me a gift. After explaining to him that my home was my refuge where I hide out when I'm not on the road and that neither my wife, nor I, nor our psycho dog appreciated uninvited "guests", I told him I would be happy to receive a token of their appreciation. Several days later, a package arrived. In it was a bottle of Jack Daniels Honey Dijon Mustard and half of a nice coaster set emblazoned with the Jack Daniels logo.
     I guess I'm living the life...and reaping the benefits...but I still won't drink to that.
     Cheers!