Greetings fellow travelers:
“Let’s have coffee when you’re’ not bloated”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Personal ad from Seven Days newspaper in Burlington
“It is very hard to be simple enough to be good”………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Here is my secret: I don’t mind what happens”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Krishnamurti
“Scrabble anarchy
after ‘putzhead’ is placed on
a triple-word score”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Haikus for Jews
And…there were zillions more this week, but you can’t eat all your chickens unhatched (!!??!!)…so some we have to save for bit later and some for another Blog day……….We have lived an absolute whirlwind for the last two weeks, and…at our advanced ages (mine more than hers)…are just about out of breath (could mean literally!) …so despite the extraordinary rich amount of material that has been generated here at The Inn at Scum Pond……survival dictates this will be a “moderately” BRIEF (and mostly clean) recounting…………………….
The Jersey Thing…………………No sooner had we gotten back to the mountains, when I took off for parts and Marriotts unknown, completing a three day blitz to Minneapolis (a lot nicer than in January) and Baltimore (a lot hotter than in May)….returned from this, to take off again Saturday morning for an overnight trip to western New Jersey (there is such a thing)…for the second annual reunion of my Bronx childhood posse…..an ethnic extravaganza of eating, drinking, cigars and stories that probably should not be told again in this lifetime…these are guys I have known since we were around six, which amounts to more years than should be written down…five plus hour each way got us back Sunday afternoon in time for the start of their arrival of The Bunty Band boys
The Greasin’ Thing………………not to drift away from the structure of the story….but you may recall the narrative from a few weeks ago about Jenn’s proclivity to get things done thru sweet talk with our local artisans and townspeople (see “Greasin’ the Bowbee from Blog post # 4567). Well, her newest conquest has been with the farmer who provides our unpasteurized milk product- getting him to meet her time demands for overnight milk delivery….this is Farmer Johnson….so now we have graduated to Jenn Greasin’ the Johnson……..
The Naven Thing…………..like clockwork, our dear friend and band member, the Naven, arrived Sunday evening with Lucy’s BFF, Rosie – both taking up residence for the week. Nave is really easy to hang with ..with the possible exception of having to listen to Cubs games on the radio each and every day…but we had a nice dinner on Sunday night, a little hiking and the first of six straight days of BLTs for lunch (Nave brought a shipment of home grown heartland tomatoes)on Monday and then Nave joined for the weekly folk club, which got a little nuts since our founder and leader (a calming influence) has been gone for six weeks. Tuesday we began prepping for the week’s music activities and the Festival, but found time to head down to the Weston Playhouse for a performance of “The Million Dollar Quartet”, featuring an over the top, amazing portrayal of Jerry Lee Lewis, which highlighted the night along with crazy thunderstorms and wiping out a massive eagle in flight on the drive home in the rain
The Johnny 99 thing…….We arrived home to find our second band member, Lloyd (who likes to call himself Johnny 99) passed out on the couch. We had made dinner for him, expecting him by 5, but he apparently rolled in at 9….after an unimaginable 17 hours on the road getting here (he somehow went through most of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with a quick side trip to Schenectady)……apparently Johnny eschews both GPS and Maps of any kind. We hauled him off to bed for the night. The Johnnie 99 experience is woefully hard to capture in any coherent way that does it justice. He tends to disappear with his beloved pipe for hours at a time and speaks in something approaching tongues……so I’m not going to really try too much to explain…so if you know the legend, no explanation required…for the rest, well, consider coming to the Fest next year to see for yourself. I will say that J-99 did leave us with a string of indelible quotes for the week (some of which even I could not comfortably reproduce), but highlighted by: “Who the F___ cares what a three eyed raven does”…….and……..”F___-off, I’m in Vermont”
The Sound and Electric Waves thing…..Our Music on the Green gig was a big hit….except for the fact that we blew out two sound boards just trying to set up and at one point were forced to play acoustically to a sizable crowd. We eventually got rolling and since we got a late start played well into the dark with the throngs (ok- maybe a little less than throngs) calling for more, until we weren’t sure if there were five or fifty people left…..Johnny 99 got fed up and left the stage to find beer at one point but we soldered on…joined by some gifted percussion player who appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared back into the night…then we had a car that would not start after that…the Grid in the mountains can sometimes s be a bit mysterious…….
The Rock Star Thing….And then we got to go to the local cable access TV station in Ludlow on Thursday and drank bourbon at 10 in the morning…and recorded 12 songs in their very cool studio with both video and audio(we’re like MTV guys now)….we played live to tape acoustic living room music with boom mikes for the instruments…..which produced some manor ranting behavior on our blues number…which you will no doubt be waiting with baited breath to hear…12 songs…four hours… and on to the next endeavor… (tired yet reading this?)
The Fest Thing…….finally arriving at Saturday, after mowing and trimming and prepping and setting up endless chairs, tables and tents…and somehow avoiding a line of major thunderstorms that threatened to bowl over the whole thing…..turned into an amazing day with lots of musicians, food, much drink and tie-dying……we were on stage for most of five hours with various people joining us…..discovered an incredible local talent, Tim, who played with us (where do these people materialize from?)…and then the leftovers/diehards adjourned to a roaring campfire (thanks to the Queen of all things Vermont) and mystical Tim then played for a couple more hours while the peace pipe made its way around…the day was generally a who’s who of Blogville, with (among many): the Jewish Pig Farmers, The Jewish Fish Monger, both the German and Russian spies the ONE Gay Black Man in Vermont, The Massage in the Trailer lady, The Solar Queen. The Organic Mr. Smith and the extended family of 20 Jamaicans from next door who came up from the urban quagmire for the event.…no one wanted to miss being seen the Fest it seems……
The Goat Thing……and, this, I cannot resist. The lovely Vermont Queen often harasses me about what she suggests is some degree of exaggeration in my reporting. One, for instance, is that she feels I tend to stereotyping of the Jamaican clan next door by often inferring that they are out in the yard roasting up goat. I have reluctantly apologized for this in the past….BUT…during the Fest, the clan came up for a while to tie-dye and I asked them if they wanted to have a bite to eat…..to which they replied that they had to go back down the hill to the encampment to finish BAR-B-Q-ING THE GOAT…..Faith has been restored ….and I can now continue stereotyping in with some degree of immunity…..
The Recovery- Please go home now thing…….so the boys all left today, except for The Nave who kindly stayed to drool with us and clean up the mess…..the weather turned overnight and it dawned sunny and very temperate with a hint of leaf change all around……FALL is coming….we are somewhere on the long and winding road to recovery…waiting for the next set of events and visitors…and of course, already planning next year’s magical mystery tour…
And that, my friends, is it in a nutshell….too many Pix, I know…but, who cares….This pasts weeks show and studio recording will be on line and available this coming week and I will post links for those of you so inclined….given the sound issues, not sure how the Green show will sound or look, but I have high hopes for the studio sessions…
Be well and talk back, Ferlin’
