Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Good Stuff

Okay - this is a great Eric Bibb song - he sings it with Maria Muldaur on Sisters and Brothers which has nothing but good songs on it:

And this is a song by Norah Jones, that I'm working on with The Decanters:


Enjoy.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Ignominiously Scrubbed

It's true - I've been ignominiously scrubbed from Blabberon's list of people who blog about walking their city streets, and I completely deserve it. I don't do that much walking, these days.

On the other hand, I'm getting to know Socorro in all kinds of different ways. In the year since we unpacked our belongings and said "Okay, this is home now" the introvert in me has taken a back seat to the frenetically social extrovert.

Socorro is like that. It's a small town where everyone is literally and figuratively your neighbor. You can keep to yourself to some extent, but eventually you have to go to one grocery store, where you are likely to be greeted by the manager who is also a city councilor, or the other, where you are likely to to be greeted by the manager who is highly involved in the community theater. Everyone is important, and everything is interconnected. There aren't six degrees of separation - more like two.

I should probably change the name of the blog - most of my strolling is highly figurative now - but I'll keep it the way it is. I may eventually walk all the Socorro streets and want to tell somebody about it.

Here's what I've been doing instead. Yesterday I winterized my swamp cooler. That was Big Deal. I don't mind getting up on the roof, but getting back down scares me. And I fired up the furnace for the first time this year, and put that shrink wrap plastic up over a couple of drafty windows. Made a big pot of home-made chicken noodle stew. Started learning some new songs for one of my bands. Read the Funny Times, and took a little nap. It was lovely.

Last weekend I was barely home - played with my new band, Fargo, at an Obama Rally up in Los Lunas (Worried Man Blues, Hard Times Come Again No More, that kind of thing); visited my mom in Albuqueruqe; played kids' music at the coffeehouse with my Bug Soup band (If Pigs Had Wings, There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, that kind of thing); and did a two hour set at the Stage Door Grill Sunday night with my band, The Decanters.

If you're in Socorro, check out The Decanters at the Socorro Springs on November 22nd, and at the Stage Door Grill on December 7th.
And don't forget to check out the annual Festival of the Cranes. It's awesome.