Greetings, whoever-reads-this! It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. And it's been awhile for one of these blogs. So here goes..
Noticing something of a paradigm shift as I move into age 70. The actual date is 5 months and 4 days away, but I'm already there. These are my findings so far:
You've got a few more aches and pains than you had a decade ago. And you might have already had a knee or hip replaced. And as far as those aches and pains, you're either helping someone in your family or someone in your family is helping you. And your house probably has a few bugs in it that need fixing.
At the moment I have a roof that needs some work. The windstorms of the past couple weeks have pulled up a few of the panels, exposing my old thatched roof. But the leaks are still taken care of. I had quite an adventure this past year when another storm put a good-sized hole in there. Not a fun experience. Still feeling great relief at having that patched, and not having to go all 1800s bailing out the rainwater..
Sometimes happiness is just having misery taken away..
Music news. Same old same old . Still practicing, and making YouTube videos. And still getting new subscribers here and there. It's great hearing from them. And it keeps me practicing.
Trying to rotate the guitars I play, to some extent. I've got a sunburst Epiphone ES-335, a Gretsch Streamliner(basic ES design), and my Jim Hughes guitar- which is its own shape. I'm hoping it adds interest to my YouTube videos, having a different visual and sound every so often.
At the moment I have eleven guitars and one bass guitar. One of them is an Ibanez classical electric, which currently needs a couple strings. I've never changed nylon strings, but I guess I can take a shot at it. It's a guitar I used to play a lot of, both on recordings and gigs.
I'm not a collector as such. Guitars are just something you accumulate, one by one. And every guitar serves some kind of purpose. The classical electric, once it's restrung, will add a unique timbre. And I've got a Mexican Fender Tele for any kind of twang- plus many other sounds. Plus a couple of archtops-one in particular- for that big guitar tone. And so on.
This is a long post. But it has been awhile. Nice to see people stopping in to visit the site. I had some more music stuff to talk about--to do with picking, and some stuff I've figgered out--but it'll keep. Thanks as ever for stopping in and reading. Much love. More later.
PS today's pic goes back to 2013. This is downtown at the old PNC Bank. My first gig in retirement. Kevin Ellis on bass and Jaro Howse on drums. Tim Roseberry took this picture. My only aerial photograph..
