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Agriculture, skepticism, politics

Internet Radio Broadcast

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Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve made a log entry. Things have been very busy. Be sure to check out the internet radio show this Saturday. The link is available on the front page. Should be a good time. Might even talk Ron Clark into getting up and playing some with me. We’ll see. I’ll be back to regular entries this week.

Blessed are the snow plow drivers

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I just got back from Andover. My top speed from Wichita to Salina was 45mph. It was unequivocally the worst driving conditions I’ve ever encountered. It’s 11:24pm and we’re still setting up for our sporting goods auction tomorrow. It’ll all be a bad memory as I’m driving to Boland’s show in Hays tomorrow. It’ll be good to be back to the music after a week from hell.

I’ve heard some rumors that Pearl Grey may have a guitarist joining the ranks. I’ll keep you posted best I can.

Quote for the day: “Now I’m dry heaving so I can puke anywhere!” –Lucas Thornton, ill Purple Wave employee, the day before the Raytheon Aircraft auction.

I keep on driving.

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I had a fantastic weekend. Friday night it was off to Pete‘s show in Hays at the Brass Rail. He had a very good show. Thanks to him for letting me open and thanks to his friends for insisting that I drink so much. Or maybe not.

I decided that his awesome guitar sound comes not from his guitar, but from his sound board. I plugged my Martin in to his board and it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard in my life. He had some different speakers on Friday so it was pretty obvious that the sound is in his board. I’ve got to get me one of those.

After the show, I decided I needed to up my cheeseburger consumption total for the day from 5 to 7. I pull in to Burger King at 2:30am because they were the only place open on my route back to Victoria. As soon as I pull into the chute to where I can’t turn out or back up without hitting a curb or the car behind me, the place is swarmed by 4 police cruisers. They cuffed, questioned, and searched the car directly behind the drive through window. I waited in line for 45 minutes to get 2 cheeseburgers and a water. It was probably not the best time for me to wait in line around Hays’s finest.

Saturday it was westbound 70.

The Colby show was great. I hadn’t played with a band in a long time and certainly not with red dirt country music. I was amazed at how good we sounded, especially considering that we had never practiced it together before. We sounded so much better than anything I could have possibly imagined going into the show. I guess that’s what you get when you put together top-of-the-line musicians. It’ll be interesting to see what we can do once we have time for a few practices.

The crowd was pretty damn good. We had a lot of dancers. It’s not something to which you become accustomed with one man, one guitar. We took a 3 minute break after our first set which we ended with the auctioneer song and this lady came up to talk to me. She said, “Could you write down the name of the song and artist for that one song…um…” I decided to help her out. “Leroy Van Dyke’s ‘The Auctioneer?’ “No,” she said, “the combine song.” She couldn’t believe that I actually wrote that song and she seemed very upset when I told her that I had only a sample available for download. Oh well. There were two groups of people who knew and requested stuff from TGD. That was cool. I wish we had known more than the two or three that we played. We had a lot of dancers. That’s not something to which you become accustomed with one man, one guitar. Sure, you get a few couples dancing here and there, maybe some really drunk people towards the end, but we had a lot of dancers. The place was full all night, but after the show the owner said it was kind of lackluster, probably due, he guessed, to the football game that everyone came out early to see. Apparently the owner had several requests to have us back. We booked a Friday and Saturday in February. Check the calendar for information.

Upon returning to Hays by 4:30am I decided we had made such good time that I should not stop. I guessed that I had had enough caffeine, both black and white, to make the rest of the drive to Manhattan town. This was a decision I came to regret about the time I got to Salina. Thanks goes to the nice lady working at Salina’s Petro:2 which seems now days to be my favorite port out in the storm. I guess I looked so terrible amongst all the republicans that just woke up in their damn neon orange hunting hats that she gave me my coffee for free. That made me feel good enough that I didn’t start to nod off again for at least another ¼ mile until I got to the on-ramp back to my king-sized, four-lane, asphalt mattress. I got back to my house at 7:00am. Enough about my stupidity. I’ll probably be out of the loop for the better part of next week because we’re selling a division of Raytheon Aircraft in Andover, KS, on Thursday.

Go see Pete tonight at Rusty’s in the ‘ville. Should be a great party.

Thankstaking

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Thanks to all our friends, new and old, who came to see us on Saturday at Buster’s. Crowd was rather thin at first, but come 9:30 the fun begun.

It seems as if I’m going to have to miss band practice on Friday night…for a show. For those of you who got the email, this Friday will not include Jimmy Billinger at the [Brass] Rail. He’s going to be getting together with [Johnny “]Papa[” Lapka] to get ready for the show in Colby on Saturday. I’m very excited for Friday, though. I haven’t opened a show in a while. Pete always puts on a good one. I just hope I can survive and make the Saturday show.

I was coming back from home on Sunday and got some trucker buddies at the QT. They were a different brand than I usually got. They were big and yellow. I thought, “These must be chewables.” I chewed one. I then tasted it. It wasn’t a chewable. It ferociously entered my blood stream and remained there, talking, laughing, dancing, and otherwise socializing with the caffeine from the coffee in which I’d been drowning, until 4:00am this morning when it left my system and released me from it’s fiery grip. Why am I typing this and not going to sleep?

20 mpg

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My new pickup gets 20 mpg.

I just got back from the Hays area. We got some recording done. Should be a new EP coming out soon. We’ll use it as-is for now. When we start pushing it at our band shows we’ll have full instrumentation and harmonies. Look for it soon.

Party at the Ampride

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Headed to the Hays area tonight. We plan on doing some serious demo recording tomorrow. I bought a new pickup tonight that should hopefully get better gas milage. I figure that I can put a quart of oil in every 400 miles or I can put a quart of power steering fluid or hydraulic oil or engine oil or transmission fluid every four blocks in my car’s belt-driven oil spreader that used to help me steer.

rockkansas.suck

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Quite possibly the worst review I’ve ever read.

It’s horrible. This fruitcake wouldn’t know the differences between different types of country music if they ganged up on him and bit him in…

Just go to the new site, www.countrykansas.com. Register. Post. Don’t ever go back.