Our dog chewed up the lenses in my glasses so I’m having to wear a much older pair until they get repaired. I’m actually surprised that I can see as well as I can through them. They don’t do well at very long distances and I can’t read anything, but at least I’m not falling around legally blind as I would be if I wore none at all. My only fear is that the good pair will take a little more “getting used to” after my eyes have adjusted back to these. If luck holds out I will have my regular pair back and good as new by early next week. The Thanksgiving holiday may prevent their delivery, though, and if that turns out to be the case I won’t have them even at this time next week. I do not relish that possibility. The dog has been forgiven, seeing as how he’s only a puppy and puppies do that kind of thing. He needs to learn that stuff on the table is not for his amusement.

I got a real “wake up call” Friday. Jeff asked me if I wanted to play a few songs for an Employees Recognition Day thing at the newspaper where his wife works. I was eager to do it, having not played in front of people in a long, long time (the same was true of Jeff). It was to be an informal jam kind of affair. I wasn’t sure about the level of professionalism they all expected, but lucky for us there weren’t all that many paying much attention. They were serving chili and I guess most of the employees were getting in on that action. Maybe 15 people in the place where we were set up, and of those there were probably 5 who were paying any attention at all.

I have to wonder what those 5 people thought. I couldn’t find the rhythm in any of the songs. The few songs I tried to sing sounded like shit. Jeff had trouble, too. I hate to think what our “audience” thought about our duet. The worst thing about it was not being able to think of the next song to play. This was to be a very low-key affair so we didn’t think it necessary to bring song lists. Big mistake. We found ourselves dragging out old shit that we promised ourselves never to play again. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, “Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band. I felt we fared better on the original songs we pulled out, but you just can’t be sure anyone’s even listening if they don’t recognize the tune. Jeff did “Someone’s Been Lying Here”, which really is a fine number that might well have done something had an established country artist taken it. And I did “The Ladder”, which I’ve always thought highly of (my friends like it a lot, so that’s why). I don’t know what they thought of it, because they weren’t applauding, not for us or for the other two guys who were also playing for the jam. I have a hard time thinking of how to describe what they played. They did “I’ll Fly Away” twice, and made me wonder if that old gospel music was their stock in trade. Their line-up consisted of an acoustic guitarist (who had a badge pinned to his belt, so I assumed he was a lawman), and a very mild-mannered banjo picker. For the first few songs I was convinced that this banjo man was not too many steps above “beginner status”. But then he did “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and nailed that sucker flat. I guess he poured all his rehearsal time into getting that one down perfect. I’ll say this for them both: they were soft spoken and seemed extremely docile. I might not have noticed that had I not wondered how an officer of the law could act so much like a pussy. They did another song called “Prayed Up”, a not-so-clever play on words in which the term “paid up” is conjured to less than clever effect (IMO).

It was okay by me, though, because it meant that we weren’t the only ones who sucked so bad. It meant that the whole affair was so off-the-cuff that it didn’t matter whether or not we were competent musicians. This was no professional gig. You can bet on that.

My son’s album is almost complete. We’ve been working on it since June, and I know that seems like a long time to be on one project, but you have to take into consideration that we only get to do it one day a week. We’ve missed two or three weeks as well, so when you take that into consideration I suppose we’re doing quite will. Had we done it five days a week I’m sure it would have taken less than a month to complete. As it is, though, it’s a toss-up over whether the record will be in the can by our projected release date. Now that I think about it, most likely we will NOT have it done when we hoped, calculating what still needs to be recorded and the mixing/mastering process. Will take a small miracle. Or I suppose we might have a chance if we do it a couple of extra days next week, since my boy will be on Thanksgiving break. But I somehow doubt that, because Jeff will probably doing something on that day as well. Will be lucky if we get to do our usual Sunday.

Anyhoo, I figured I’d better write something, what with all the inactivity here in the Listening Room. Does that make sense? “All the inactivity”? I don’t think it does.

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