Category: Words and music

Reset button

Listen to this post:

I have been retired, for the most part, for 15 months. I still do about 10 hours weekly of clerical work for the last day job. Actually, I never had a “day job”; pretty much every job I ever had required working nights and/or weekends. And come to think of it, I haven’t worked a regular 40-hour week in 10 years.

When my position was eliminated (“Nothing personal, it’s a financial decision”), it was my full intention to work for myself from that moment on. I declared myself a full-time author and started an online “newspaper” for the local news desert southeast of my home. After four months a paper on the other side of the bay decided to recruit me for their open editor’s job, and they were so eager to fill the position that they agreed to let me work 28 hours a week so that I could maintain my online newspaper on the side.

Truth be told, my side hustles never brought in enough revenue to pay the bills. Social Security and the 28-hour job kept the lights on. But I really enjoyed the four-ish years that the online news site survived. I was filling a void and making my own way.

I was also stalling. If I really wanted to be a full-time author when I grew up, taking on two news-gathering jobs was an excuse not to grow up. 

I retired 50 years to the day after I started my first full-time job. For these past 15 months, technically, I have been what I wanted to be when I grew up: A full-time author, with a part-time clerical job to help with groceries. Funny thing about growing up: It seems I don’t wanna.

Monday always has been a good day for a reset, and I write this Sunday evening with my finger poised over that button. Will this be the week that I finally start being a full-time author in practice as well as in theory? The fact that I wrote it as a question, not as a declaration, is telling.

I know me. And if you’ve followed this blog, you know me, too. I’ve made declarations before. The first time I declared I was going to become a full-time author, the goal was my birthday in March 1990. I’m currently two-thirds through a novel that I once declared I would publish by the end of 2021. And so I’m going to leave it as a question and not a declaration like, “Yes! From this day forward I am a full-time author!”

But keep an eye on me for me, please. Feel free to ask how my new book or next album is coming, as politely or as rudely as you wish. You don’t even have to be interested in reading or listening to them; just receiving the question will motivate me. At least I hope it does.

Being accountable to someone is a good motivation. I’m planning to have a spaghetti dinner at Mary’s house this afternoon, and my goal is to read her what I’ve written today. That seems to be a good way to reset my brain and motivate me; we’ll see how that works.

If pressing the reset button does work, and the good Lord willing, from this day forward I will be an actual full-time author. The thought both excites and frightens me.

Another Players triumph

Listen to this post:

I wish we had gone to see “Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash” a little earlier, so I could shout from the rooftops that you should see this show, because by the time this post appears there will only be two performances left, and at least one of them was already sold out when I bought our tickets for Thursday night’s performance. The good news is that means they didn’t need my help to spread the word about how excellent this show is.

I have always loved coming to Peninsula Players, the professional summer troupe that stages five shows every season along the shores of Green Bay just south of Fish Creek. I consider it the premier event in a county that is full of amazing productions every summer. This was the first time Mary and I went there together, and it just may be the best show I’ve ever seen at the Theatre in the Garden.

Five actor/musicians — Joe Casey, Aja Alcazar, Trevor Lindley Craft, James David Larson, and Paul Wyatt — tell the story of the Man in Black through his songs, seamlessly trading instruments and roles in a dazzling display of fivefold virtuosity. I wish I could see it again. In the future when we meet someone else who caught a performance, we will exchange a smile and a knowing glance that we experienced something special.

Highlights: In “Daddy Sang Bass” the performers took turns playing the instruments and singing parts, each showing their prowess on guitar, bass, mandolin and banjo without dropping a note anywhere.

I got goosebumps during “Delia’s Gone,” a solo performance with Larson alone in the spotlight wrenching every bit of pathos and humor from one of Cash’s creepiest songs, and with Alcazar’s mournful wail in “Sweet Bye and Bye,” the song that marked the death of Cash’s 14-year-old brother. As the only woman in the cast, she had to represent Cash’s mother, first wife, and second wife June Carter through the course of the evening, and she pulls it off admirably.

The players unveil “Moon Over Buffalo” on Wednesday, playing through Sept. 6, and then “Murder Girl” Sept. 9 through Oct. 18. Find the details at peninsulaplayers.com.

This is living

I have set up my stereo set in the living room like my father did. On Saturday mornings Dad would celebrate the beginning of his weekend by cranking up big band music, sometimes before his three boys had crawled out of their beds. Believe it or not, it is a fond memory.

This Saturday morning, while I fiddled on my laptop, I put Artie Shaw on the turntable, specifically The Complete Artie Shaw, Volume IV: 1940-1941, a two-record set from Bluebird Records.

I think my dad was aghast when I confessed one day that I thought Shaw was better than Benny Goodman, whose music I heard on many a Saturday morning growing up. I am no judge of which man was better on the clarinet, but I thought Shaw was more adventurous, as when he incorporated harpsichord on Gramercy Five recordings like “Cross Your Heart,” the first track on this album.

This particular album covers studio sessions in chronological order from September 1940 to March 1941. I found myself once again marveling at the technology that enables me to time-travel and listen in on performances from more than 85 years ago.

The set includes Shaw’s version of “Moonglow,” the song that was playing when Dad proposed to the girl who would become my mother a few years later. I’m pretty sure they were listening to Benny’s take on the song.

It was a very long time before I discovered that “Moonglow” actually has lyrics, as none of the versions I’d ever heard included singers. “It must have been moon glow that led me straight to you … I still hear you saying, ‘Dear one, hold me fast,’ and I start in praying, Dear Lord, please let this last.” That’s an appropriate song for a marriage proposal.

I have no special message to share today, other than life is better with music, Artie Shaw was a remarkable talent, I’m glad I kept my records, and my parents were always a cute couple. That’s probably enough.