Snow and Scotch.

Thanks for all the awesome messages and comments on the earX-tacy blog. I get stressed out about my blog far too often -- usually by commenters on Mojo who misunderstood my point ... odd how Facebook, MySpace, and my regular blog, seems to have much more clever audience. Frankly, I don't understand how op-ed columnists have survived for years. They must either take a lot of Xanax, or have emotional callouses thicker than a cello player's. I don't have good enough health insurance to get pills, so I'm just trying not to take anything personally.

In related news, I'm thinking about getting back into Scotch. I first decided I loved Scotch when I was playing in Glasgow about a year and a half ago. Peter McGee and Matt McGowan of a local Glaswegian magazine came out to review my show, and afterwards, they personally took it upon themselves to introduce Peter Searcy and me to Scotch. Of the two of us, I was definitely the whisky-phile (Peter had been drinking beer), so I personally took the Scotch tutorial for both of us. I sampled whiskys from the Lowlands, Highlands, Speyside, and Islay ... and Islay is my absolute favorite.

Which brings me to exciting news -- at least for me.

In May, I'm performing at the Islay Whisky Festival. Islay is a wee island off the West cost of Scotland, and it's where all of my favorite Scotches are produced. If you are not much of a whisky drinker, you probably shouldn't begin with the Islay Whiskies. They are smoky, peaty, and very effective. I think they smell like smoked cheese and taste like candy. I'll be playing at the Laphroaig distillery, which is one of my absolute favorite Scotches of all. So fair warning to my travel-loving, whisky-loving friends ... book a flight, and maybe I'll see you in May?

As glamorous as that sounds, my entire existence has lately been spent trying to book other gigs surrounding that date, in random small-town Scotland. So if anyone has any leads near Loch Lomond ... I'm all ears.

And by the way, please don't correct my spelling of "whisky." It's "whisky" when it's Scotch or of Scottish-descent (Maker's Mark is "whisky" for that reason), and it's "whiskey" when it's other lineage.

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