Bands battling - good and bad

 HERE IS AN interesting event May 31 in Quincy - a battle of the bands, put on by Quincy Raceways.

Intriguing. There hasn't been a "battle of the bands" around here for a long time. When Second String Music started up we were involved in several of them, and while it was great to see local talent on the stage, the experiences weren't always the best for us.

For one thing you have to have judges, and judges are biased, no matter how experienced and fair they might seem. You would hope judges give each act a chance and decide how good they are by performance. 

And there's a telling statement in the Quincy Raceways promotion for people attending - "bring your best dance moves." Hmmm. Makes sense, because they want people to be entertained.

Right now there are not that many bands period, let alone younger bands, in the Quincy area. Twenty-five years ago when The Funions were around there were amazing younger bands like Fielder, SuperImposed, PreDawn Hour and many more. Now? I'm getting into trouble because I know there are younger bands out there, so my apologies are issued in advance.

This should be about bands, not people who play to tracks. There are performers out there who do this and are very good at it and that’s fine - but this for bands. There is something real about actual live performance. 

There is a thriving area metal scene and some seriously talented bands. They do what they do very well. But most local venues aren't going to pony up for that kind of scene. They. Just. Aren't. That's why you see great shows at places like The State Room, where five or six bands play on the bill. Those bands do it for the love of playing and I have a lot of respect for them.

Friends like Brad Fletcher and Ian Carlstrom are involved in such projects and they are incredible. They should be playing sold-out arena shows, not sharing the bill with five other bands in a cramped basement venue. Then again, bands like Continued Without A Finding love playing in cramped basement venues. Or Iceland at a death metal festival. It's who they are. Rock on!

Somewhere I hope there are younger people who want to play who are motivated by the Quincy Raceways event. Dreams, belief in what you do and the passion for playing are beautiful things. If it takes a battle of the bands and a $5,000 first place prize to stoke the fire, so be it. Do it!

Combat the cold by thinking Goony

Indian Mounds Park this morning.

 

  THERE IS SOMETHING lucid and searing about a cold and pristine winter morning. We just got back from an Indian Mounds Park walk - the dogs love careening through the snow and it's not bad if you keep moving.

But ... the snow and the cold can get you down. Do what I do if you want to combat the winter blues - think about a Lake Michigan beach and Goony Races!

 

Roland Hart, my cousin, sent the above photo from about 10 years ago. I think Sheryl may have taken it. Roland’s father, the late Peter Hart, is my uncle. Peter and Helen Hart lived on a wooded dune above Lake Michigan, and we spent countless sun-drenched days on his beach between Saugatuck and Holland.

You can see Peter's grandchildren and others lined up, ready do the Goony Race. I invented it, more than 20 years ago. Peter is just to the right, egging us all on. We all lined up and charged as fast as we could into the waves of Lake Michigan, acting as silly and "goony" as possible. At the end, the silliest person won. It was always me.

Uncle Peter could be a serious man who tackled serious issues, like world peace and conflict resolution. But he also delighted in the absurd and he took great joy in ... joy. So the Goony Race was right up his alley.

I'm feeling the warmth of the sun from this golden day a decade ago. It's probably on a Labor Day weekend. It looks to be early afternoon. The grandkids had been begging for a Goony Race for a while. When you are on the beach and listening to the waves and having good family conversation, you took your time before unleashing Goony.

Of course, the cold beverages ("rivers of beer" as Peter called them) didn't hurt either. And by late August or early September, Lake Michigan was warm enough to swim in and cool enough to take the sting out of the summer sun.

You can see Peter laughing as we all head to the water. He didn't go in, of course. It was his way of pranking us. But I also think we wanted to see all the silliness and sheer childish joy unfolding in front of him. Who can blame him?

I'm already feeling warmer while starting out the window at the winter landscape.

The snow will melt and the air will get warmer and soon I'll be making plans to go to that beach to help spread Peter's ashes. Maybe I'll be a little Goony when I do it.

Think warmer Goony thoughts and we will get through these cold winter days. In other words ... Just. Keep. Going.

Resolutions ... whatever

 NEW YEAR, NEW plans. Blah blah blah. I think New Year's resolutions are like Silly Putty - fun to play around with and stretch, but no practical application.

But ... I'm gonna try a few things. Why not? If you fail, you fail. Just. Keep. Going.

1. DRY JANUARY: Just got done with two awesome band gigs, at The Club Tavern on New Year's Eve and Jan. 1 afternoon show at Shorteez in Clayton. I had very little to drink NYE, and nothing to drink yesterday. I feel surprisingly good this morning. Hmmmm .... might be something to this whole not drinking thing. So, January is no booze month. We'll see how long it lasts.

2 LESS IS MORE: Santa brought me a Strymon Iridium pedal for Christmas. Actually, he made me pay for it and he charged me shipping, but that's another story. This thing is amazing, just a small box that replaces your amplifier. On stage, it means way less volume because you plug it right into the PA. I used it the past two gigs and it made a huge difference. How nice it is to not have your ears ringing for days! The moral of the story is that less is more. Musicians tend to get obsessed with gear. If you play in a band, nobody cares what kind of guitar or amp you have, they just want to hear good music.  I am a very average guitar players but the Iridium is helping me play better. So the less ends up being way more!

3. MORE, NOT LESS: I gotta do more of these blogs. I go long stretches where I'm struggling for ideas and unmotivated. That has to stop. The number of blog hits doesn't matter. I'm not great at it, but writing is therapeutic and rapidly becoming a lost art.

4. UNCLUTTER: I have a really nice Fender Blues Junior IV I don't use. I'm selling it. PM on Facebook if you want. I'm going to try and go upstairs into the junk room and slowly but surely get rid of stuff. 

5. EMBRACE IT: We have snow coming this weekend. Everybody around here is panicking already. Why? It's fun to play in and it's better than icy rain. When stuff comes up, you can bitch and moan, or face it and deal with it, even own it.

6. READ MORE BOOKS: Stop going down stupid social media rabbit holes less. And don't read the comments from the Web Warriors. Nuff said.

So there it is. 2025 - Just Keep Going. Here's to a better year.

Old houses demolished and the new year

I DRIVE TO Hannibal twice a day for work. In the morning I usually cross the Mississippi River in Quincy since I'm at 9th and Broadway. So there's a lot of driving on U.S. 61.

There is an old farmhouse on the west side of the highway about a mile before you get to Doyle Manufacturing. It's abandoned and ready to fall down, windows and doorways boarded up, gutters sagging, paint peeling. You wonder who lived there, how old it is, what stories the walls could tell.

There's been activity on the property lately. It looks like something is going on. Is somebody attempting to save the house? Or are they giving up and just going to knock it down, finally?

No saving. Lots of knocking down. Yesterday I drove past and the house is now a pile of rubble. Workers were sifting through the mounds of dirt and wood. 

Some places beg to be torn down. There was an ugly Quincy house at Sixth and Jefferson recently demolished, thank goodness. It was an eyesore. Yet somebody built it, somebody lived there and maybe took care of it years ago. Do their spirits cry when the house comes down?

The debate about preservation versus renewal is fierce. Both sides are understandable. I'd rather try to save something then knock it down. But sometimes there's no choice.

There's a bit of anger because somebody let this old farmhouse go. Why? Did it get passed down in the family and did the kids just not want it anymore? Too many painful memories? Did something terrible happen in the house? You gotta put lots of love into maintaining older properties, which is code for old houses are expensive.

The old farmhouse just seemed to lean drunkenly to one side, as if it was giving up. So in a way it's a good thing it's coming down. Maybe something else will be put up in its place.

At 24th and Broadway there was an ugly bank building which recently came down. Sure, there are people who worked there and have fond memories. It was undoubtedly considered modern and eye-pleasing when it was built. Something else will go up, and in 50 years we will probably have AI tell us it's ugly and not feasible anymore.

Build it and tear it down. You come up with the metaphor. Maybe it's appropriate on New Year's Eve, where we start over and hope for better things.

Anyway, I need to keep my eye on the road, especially on that stretch of U.S. 61, where vehicles enter the highway from tiny side roads without caring you are going 65 mph and are going to crash into them. Happens once a week.

But I'll keep an eye on the property. Maybe it will sit vacant, memories the only thing left. Or maybe somebody will put something else up there, garish or beautiful. They will build it. 

Who knows how long it will stand.

 

Death, finality and Christmas

Uncle Peter’s Lake Michigan Beach.

I CORNER NO market for misery. We all go through ups and downs. We all deal with death, finality.

It's a hammer blow and it leaves you reeling, especially at Christmas.

My uncle, Peter Hart, passed away Dec. 26. I will miss him and it seems surreal that he's gone. Peter died on his own terms after a long fight with cancer, with his family near, at home, in his sleep. My cousin Roland said they've been dealing with grief for a while, knowing he was terminally ill.

But death itself brings a new finality, and that's where the world gets ... murky.

I am still angry about my friend Jeff Vankanegan, who died Nov. 23. He and his wife and family and close friends went through hell in his final months because he had a rare neurological disease. I was praying hard as death closed in that he go to a better place. He did.

And now he's gone, and it's final. It's like trying to see in the dark, or swim through lava.

My brother Steve and I had a great talk with Peter on Sunday. He wanted us to know how important family was to him. After talking to him, I went into a strange daze.

In Holland, Michigan, Christmas Eve found Peter's family surrounding his bedside, knowing he'd be leaving soon. In Quincy I brought lunch to the Blessing lab for a friend, part of Peter's message to "be a light." Then I found myself in church that night strumming away and completely out of it. I think it went OK. 

Now Peter is gone, and his wife and children grieve and move on. It's hard to describe, this huge void, but we've all been there and we all have different coping mechanisms.

I'm at a loss for words. So I'm going to let a few other people explain it.

First, this comes from 11-year-old Henry Shelley, the son of my cousin Maaike, who lives in Ontario.

"Christmas is like a magnifying glass for your life. - if things are going great, the holidays are so much fun and exciting; if you're struggling with something, the holidays can make things extra hard. Everything is magnified."

Maaike and Brian are raising amazing humans.

This is from cousin Natalie Hart, daughter of Peter.

"I feel like I understand how people came up with the idea of Purgatory. Not for theological reasons, but because of how in-between things feel for us when someone we love dies. Life has changed, but it also doesn't feel like it will when the reality of loss settled in. Yesterday I kept looking for a checklist for what to do after a loved one dies and none of them seemed right. But then I realized I was just in-between."

And finally, from my aunt Willa Hart, sister of Peter, in reply to Natalie's comment.

"I understand you. You feel like you should be able to move on faster than you are. After all you had plenty of time to get used to the idea he (Peter) was going to die soon. But then it actually happens and it seems so surreal. Death is a mystery and so  hard to accept even when it's expected. The more you loved someone the harder it is. Give yourself lots and lots of time. Death stings for a long time and then very slowly your grief begins to shift. Always loved and never forgotten."

Geesh. Just give Aunt Willa a doctorate in Understand Life right now.

I am playing three shows in the next five days, so that's how I'm going to deal with it. I'm raising a glass at each one to Jeff, Peter, and all those who have departed. I'm just going to ... keep going.

That's it! 2025 - Just Keep Going.

Peace.

Ten years later, it's still Been So Long

LIKE MOST THINGS about Second String Music, memory is kind of a blur. For more than 11 years was quite the adventure, and every now and then I miss it.

I just realized the infamous "Been So Long" Christmas video, done by the amazing Chris and Victoria Kelley at Table 16 Productions, is 10 years old. Ten. TEN. Now that is really hard to believe.

It's an original song and the video was inspired by the Cheeks McGee song and video for White Christmas, which was made the year before by the Kelleys in Washington Park and on the roof of our Second String Music building. That video features the Mitchell kids and Lucy, Sheryl's beloved Border Collie. Also I lost my keys while doing a snow angel and found them in the park the next day in the melting snow.

Typical of the Kelley genius and creativity, the Cheeks video was done very spontaneously. It snowed on a Saturday night and they decided to make the video the next day. 

Why we decided to make a video of our own is no longer recalled. Perhaps it was because we let Chris film many of his Full Frame movie scenes on the third floor (it's the room with the red curtains). I do remember not wanting a script and just shooting stuff in the building, and making it goofy.

So, on a Sunday afternoon in early December, Greg Ellery and Adam Yates joined me at the store. Ben Poland and Mike Sorensen were there to help. Chris quickly figured out what we wanted to do and did his usual job of making sugar out of shit, and boom, a few weeks later we had our video.

Yes, we almost got hit by a car on Maine Street. Yes, Angus is eating something disgusting on the sidewalk in the last scene. Yes, that is the legendary office of Mr. Houston on the fourth floor. And I just caught this at about the 55 second mark - the door in the bank vault painted by Jeff VanKanegan. What I wouldn't give to find that door today, long lost and forgotten after several renovations to the space.

So here it is again, 10 years later, as the years and memories blur. The video, however, doesn't. 

Merry Christmas!