” Tumbling Tumbleweeds” is a Roy Rodgers cowboy song, sung around the campfire with fellow cowhands on a starry night, with a crackling fire, when the herd is quiet and coyotes are howling harmony.
The song’s lyrics are plaintive as the western landscapes shared by cowboys, Indians, outlaws, and cattle.
” See them tumbling down/Pledging their love to the ground/Lonely, but free, I’ll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Cares of the past are behind/Nowhere to go, but I’ll find/Just where the trail will wind/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
I know when night has gone/That a new world’s born at dawn/I’ll keep rolling along/Deep in my heart is a song/Here on the range I belong/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds… ”
The last lines of the song crawl into my tent and bite me.
We all have songs to sing, but tumbling is what I like to do the most.
Girls like to sing the blues too.
Their blues are mostly about guys that don’t leave quick enough or stay long enough, guys who can’t make up their minds and stick with what they finally decide on, guys who drink too much or not enough, guys who are running around looking for thrills when thrills are right there at home.
Blues seem to come with human territory and the girls, tonight, are putting on a good show for friends and guests at the jam.
When the place closes down and everyone goes home, some here will meet the blues first hand, and probably have a drink in their hand.
Meeting our own and other’s expectations is often difficult.
For things to work out, a whole lot of tangibles and intangibles have to be rowing in the same direction
My last conversation with a skeleton was at an Albuquerque Starbucks, on Halloween.
Before that, I shared a sidewalk bench one sunny afternoon, with a man of bones in Tulum, Mexico.
Today, outside the Kaktus Brewing Company in Bernalillo, New Mexico, another set of bones greets me.
I wouldn’t swear to it but I believe this skeletons right toe is tapping to the music in perfect four four time.
Good blues can bring back the dead, but they often make us feel like we want to die first.
It’s always bad luck to walk past a skeleton without tipping your hat.
Teaching and playing are different disciplines.
Some musicians play. Some musicians teach. Some musicians both play and teach.
There are lots of filters that can keep a teacher’s message from reaching his students gas tank. If Chadd could just run a USB from his brain to my brain, he could download his considerable music knowledge and we wouldn’t have to wait for me to go through hours and hours of practice.
At the heart of every jazz solo is technique, clarity of thought, pureness of emotion, and an intent to swing.
There is, unfortunately, no USB connection that can bypass practice.
My attempts to master flute playing have been unsuccessful.
Chadd tells me the oboe is the hardest instrument to play he has ever tried.
I’m stuck with alto sax and clarinet, my original horn.
Right now, playing one horn well is about all the gas I have left in my tank.
Right now, listening to Chadd play a flute solo, is as close to the flute as i want to be.
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This group belongs in cabarets in Berlin, London, Paris, after World War 2, without the smoke, SS Officers and floozies.
A first response to new music is often to discount or find faults with it because it is new. Another response is to recognize new music as new, overpraise it, and find no faults at all.
I leave criticism in my back pocket. If all music were the same, or all posts, or all websites, or all opinions, or all people, it would be a sadder world.
During one of the songs, vocalist Tina Panera, holds a hat up and sings a sad song about ” this old hat..”
I am enchanted.and drop a crisp bill into Tina’s old hat so she can buy herself a less comfortable new one.
Musicians know lots about tip jars, old hats, sad songs, war and peace, love, injustice.
You hear some great music in airports when you least expect it.
I’m getting whisked back on a time trip in the Albuquerque Sunport International Airport and I don’t even have to go through security or board a plane.
Wars experienced vicariously are much better than those you have to fight in.
People come to the Old Town Plaza for the annual Christmas Stroll, saunter down lumanaria lined sidewalks and blocked off streets, shop and eat, enjoy friends and family, stand under Christmas mistletoe, lick candy canes, and listen to street musicians.. If they like what they see and hear, they stop and listen.. If they really like what they see and hear, they drop money in the tip jar.
Chris solos, Dan(tenor sax), Scott(alto sax) and Sara(alto sax) provide accompaniment..
With music, seeing and hearing it live is hard to beat.
Playing in the dark is part of a musician’s territory.
It’s not much of a Christmas thought, but, playing ” Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” I’m wondering why Santa comes and night and sneaks down the chimney?
Is this someone we want in our house?
Going into the hole you add pipe, coming out of the hole you take away pipe..
It is snowing but the drillers don’t stop. When you are drilling a mile down you don’t leave the hole open long. The Earth doesn’t tolerate straws dipped into its reservoir and can close its teeth with a snap.
You drill, test, lay pipe and produce, or plug the hole.
Trying to hit a target you can’t see and can’t know the size of , covered by roller coaster layers of Earth 4000 plus feet down, is tough.
A fair number of wells are busts.
A few are bonanzas.
Every project looks good or you wouldn’t be out here freezing in the middle of winter in a place not even fit for cows.
My brother Neal, at my request, always tells me, before we drill a well, about John Steinbeck’s rabbit in ” Of Mice and men. ” Keeping your dream in full view is essential for any initiative to get off the ground.
Before each calculated gamble, on Neal’s skill and experience, I rub my stomach, like a big Buddha,for good luck.
In this life, you can never have too much good luck and too many superstitions.
This fountain stands in a plaza in Albuquerque’s Old Town and this morning, while Alan and I walk the square, local birds play and preen in its cool waters.
Birds enjoy showers and they don’t need soap, soap dishes, or towels.
From their songs, I don’t think they have a care in the world, and, at the moment, neither do we..
If I could sing like these birds, I would sing opera and clean up several times a day when it gets hot just because I could.
This morning, I enjoy the fountain, the birds and my brother’s company. I whistle ” Bye Bye Blackbird ” softly, and plan on coming back soon. Our family used to come to Old Town once a month to eat at La Placita and browse the shops around the square.
Life, I have heard people say, is ” for the birds.”
I don’t, for a moment, believe a word of it.
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