gardening
Current mood: mischievous
It's that time of year ... and for Nashville, it comes a few weeks earlier than Louisville. Even more reason to enjoy my time there: USNA-USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6B, baby!
I planted a garden this morning. Well, for now just marigolds and pansies, but i began to prepare the bed for the delicious herbs and veggies that will feed me throughout the summer. You know it's commitment when you plant it in the earth.
Where is this elusive garden? I have no idea ... i haven't learned my neighborhood names late, but i know how to get there. I know it is 171.3 miles from my Louisville driveway. It's near I-40. The soil is rich, there's a hoe and rake in the crawl space, and a majestic black Great Dane lives across the alley. The ice cream man drives by playing Turkey in the Straw a bit too loudly (which, by the way, i can play quite well on my fiddle now). If i ever figure out where the garden is, i invite you to come sample some heirloom tomatoes, come July. I'm going to have a mediterranean-themed garden, i do believe. Come over and make a sauce sometime.
in the mean time, i'm going to have to figure out a nice way to shape my front-yard-veggie-garden in Louisville. I live next door to Mr. Lawn Extraordinaire, so i can't be a total eyesore, even if it does mean free eggplant for the neighborhood.
Yesterday, I took my first fiddle lesson. Then i came home and cranked up the New Country radio station and fiddled along for an hour. So far, i'm really good at the fiddle intro to some Carrie Underwood song. And i can play Boil the Cabbage -- without the double-stop though, so don't be impressed yet.
Wow, is my dog annoyed with me.
adventures, musical and otherwise
Current mood: creative
Category: Life
It feels like I've been blogging a lot lately about the same things. But they matter, and for someone like me -- a writer, i think is the most sensible way to categorize it -- i just have to write it down to figure it out.
i was talking to danny flanigan last week about songwriting, and how most people write about themselves and things that happen to them. I think I write when I need to figure something out -- usually trying to understand someone else's motives. Although when the song's finished, it oftne ends up being about me, or could be, or i don't knwo...
Another weird thing about blogging is that anyone can read it. Maybe that's the performer in me. I could just as easily write this in a journal and tuck it under my mattress.... but something's stopping me. Maybe editing me. It's hard to be completely honest when you know your mother lurks around myspace and reads your blog. (hi mom.) But then maybe that's just an excuse.
So Nashville updates. I went down there twice this week.
The first was an adventurous and spontaneous trip led by one Ben Andrews. We were both talking about the finer points of I-65 on Tuesday and just decided to go. He needed to pick up a Leslie cabinet or something for someone else anyway, so the trip suddenly had a point. That was a strange encounter, around 1am, in a mall parking lot, and I was in the front seat with a migraine trying to ignore the nice man explaing the Leslie. Migraine subsided by the rest stop in Glasgow, and i ended up driving back by 6am, quite awake.
But this is out of order ... first we stopped in a club down there, where the Nashville Star finalists were performing. But we were late and missed them... then i ran into all sort of people i knew ... some of the producers from N-Star, as well as some people i'd met a few weeks before at a MuzikMafia show. (This is what i have discovered: Nashville is just as small of a town as Louisville. Can't go anywhere without running in to someone you know.)
Ben and i stayed for the first part of the Mafia show, which was great fun, except for the fact that I absolutely could not stand being in the audience when there were musicians playing off each other on stage. It is driving me mad in the head that no one in Nashville really knows that I play. I didn't want to sing or be the star -- it had nothing to do with being on stage -- it had everything to do with playing with top-notch musicians. Where the Artistry reers its beautiful head. That's what I need.
So then i got a migraine... ick.
Anyway, Thursday i went back. The N-Star people i ran into at Fuel left me a ticket to the show on Thursday night. Live at the Bellsouth Acuff Theatre (i always thought his name was "Roy," but that apparently was just short for "bellsouth"). I forgot how funny TV can be. The show was actually very entertaining though, but not nearly as much as the after-party at Gibson's.
Where yet again ... the kick-ass musicians that make up the Nashville Star House Band actually got to let loose and just rock out. And of course, i had that wistful look in my eye of "dammit, if this were Louisville i would have been invited on stage by now to play keys." And then ... that's when Lee, the N-Star keyboard player (who is a killer player), saw me, and saw that look in my eye, and invited me on stage. One song, three chords, but that was all I needed.
As I told the band members back at the Semi-finals: I don't want to be a contestant on the show; I want to be in the house band. Or the touring band. Or any band of kick-ass musicians.
Like tonight, where I am playing Headliner's in Peter Searcy's band. Peter has this rockin' 7-piece band put together for tonight. I'm leaving my charts at home and bringing the rock.
Anyone up for an adventure or a tour or just rockin' out: call me.