Blues n' Babble

 And this on the heels of the story that never ends, it just goes on and on my friend...The Twelve Bars. Call if synchronicity. Call it sage sequencing. Call it random bullshit.

Some folks dig having a boatload of background information about the folks in the band as they feel it enhances the overall experience. Others would rather make something up, imagining, for example, that Kevin Hayes was once a Hindu goat herder in the Himalayan foothills, and that his interest in drums was engendered by whacking the beasts on their asses with his staff. Later, Kevin won a new face in a raffle at the market in Kathmandu. As a result his goats no longer recognized him and ran away when he approached, leaving Kevin with no asses to whack. So, reluctantly, Kevin left his beloved goats and came to the United State, where he traded his whacking staff for a pair of drumsticks. The rest, as they say, is hysteria.

Other folks might comb the web for background information on the individual musician so, when for example Bonnie is packing up her keyboard, they can can regale her with questions about how she ended up writing songs for Bonnie Raitt.

My experience has been that many folks are curious about how the band got together, how they came up with their name, whatever happened to that rather strange harmonica player who told all those off-color jokes on stage. But as we know this gig is a little different as it's been put together to showcase my novel and also the very tasty styling of writer/musician Greg Glazner.

Greg and I met at the Rainier Writing Workshop last August in Tacoma. The workshop happens on the Pacific Lutheran University campus, and quite naturally there is a library/bookstore/micro-brew bar a few blocks away where students and staff gather nightly to drink and play tunes. While I was too fried by the whole experience to play music (I am going to take a personal valet with me next summer so I can be guided to where I need to be and when) I did get a chance to hear Greg play and...well, he's the real thing. Turns out Greg and his companion Pam Houston, who captains the creative writing ship at UC Davis and had a big hit with her novel Cowboys are My Weakness, along with two Irish Wolfhounds (Edward and Fenton) were renting a place on the Patios out here in Stinson for Oct./Nov. Greg, as a faculty member of the Rainier Writing Workshop, has a vested interested in the success of the students there, thus he's helping to promote Hack. And so, this here gig.

I've been playing with Bonnie and Kevin for a fair bit I'd say. We have a trio +1 (special guest) gig called Bonnie's Lil Jazz Thang and we play whenever Kevin is taking a break from his duties as a touring musician, of late with Roy Rogers and Matt Scofield, and for many years before that with Robert Cray. Bonnie keeps herself crazy crazy busy with a million different music projects, playing gigs, recording, producing, teaching (she taught last summer at Berklee School of Music in Boston). So we get together when the stars align, as they are this Friday!

Of course there are a plethora of fascinating human interest stories that would keep Limboland buzzing for weeks on end, like the time that Bonnie played a whole gig dressed in scuba gear and suspended from a Haitian Love Swing. So stay tuned. Weird shit is always happening here in Limboland!

And I hope to see all you local little Limbolanders this Friday and we'll all get low!