let’s see, this weekend was supposed to consist of: gig on saturday night, trip to poughkeepsie ny to pick up a new console for the studio…in a nutshell, anyway. of course, none of that actually happened.
we showed up on saturday night to play to find someone elses name on the marquee – double booked. everyone took it in pretty good spirits, though. quin and darryl were inside eating when i got there – barry showed up not long after and wasn’t in quite as jovial a mindframe about it as the others were…he did book the gig, after all…but even barry wasn’t too terribly worked up about it. i think that all of us are aware, even if it’s in an underlying sense, that we’ve got a lot of work coming up in the months ahead, so i don’t think anyone was too broken up about it.
well, we took advantage of the night off and went out for a great meal and came home and i picked up where i left off, changing guitar strings. in fact, i feel like i spent the whole weekend with a guitar in my lap. i bought a 30-pack of string sets a couple of weeks ago, and i decided that i wanted to spend some time actually setting up my guitars, making my “fall adjustments” (weather does affect wooden instruments in some pretty interesting ways) to the ones that i play the most, but i ended up going through a solid majority of my 50 instrument fleet and tuning ’em up accordingly. i just finished my es1275 doubleneck and one of my martin d35’s a couple of hours ago and decided i was gonna take the remaining hours of the weekend off. wendy and i watched the premier installation of “the blues” on pbs earlier tonight while i was on my restringing binge, and that’s been pretty much one of the two tv highlights of a football day that saw a lopsided sunday night game and a largely boring afternoon of football (eagles almost lost another one and the late game was a yawner). in fact, football doesn’t get really interesting for another month or so, i don’t think.
The other highlight was watching the closing ceremonies for the vet – veterans stadium in philly. it was a totally classy, nostalgic movement, and i loved it. i remember watching the phillies win the world series back in 1980 when i was in high school from back home in savannah…and i remember exactly where i was when joe carter hit mitch williams’ pitch out of the park to beat the phillies in the 1993 series. todd and i were playing at the holly in in mount holly springs, pa, watching the game on the tv in the bar from the stage while we were playing. they had representatives from all the phillies teams that had played at the vet from 1971 up through 2003 come out onto the field, then a “starting lineup” of three players from each position – the current starter, plus two other notables from that position (for instance, mike schmidt and dave hollins at third base) – come out as well. then, they had tug mcgraw come out onto the field at the very end, and that was just the perfect closer to that part of the ceremony.
the part that got my attention, though, was hearing my buddy skip denenberg in the midst of all this, playing a song that underscored a video that they showed on the stadium screens during the ceremony. felt real good. i was proud of my pal.
i was also supposed to go look at a new van this afternoon, but the dick who currently owns it never bothered to return any of my calls. c’est la vie.
i think, though, that this weekend may be as close to what normal peoples’ weekends are as mine tend to get…went out to eat saturday night, hung out close to the house and lounged and watched tv today, took in some football, and didn’t do much of anything….well, save for change guitar strings. (i have a wastebasket still sitting in the center of the floor right in front of the sofa stacked to the top with old strings and string wrappers.) the fleet’s in good shape now, though…gotta get the stragglers back in from the shop, and all will be well. dylan’s rickenbacker bass is in there, i have two telecasters, and chet atkins acoustic, a metal bodied dobro in for repair, and keith is building a stratocaster for me with lindy fralin pickups in it, which will be replacing “smokey” as one of my main road guitars.
well, it’s 1:30 in the morning…i have a weissenborn hawaiian that i’m high bidder on about to close on eBay in less than an hour, but i can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
...from the rear view mirror 