whassupTA

Holiday special

2011-11-27T17:40:00.003-05:00

How come you you ain't gone here to git your Christmas presents, daggumit!?

http://www.doublenaughtrecords.com/rapidcart/index.html

Crazy video

2011-11-05T11:19:00.000-04:00

On the Delbert cruise, I was about a foot away from being overboard, a hundred foot drop into the Pacific, and the wind was howlin'! Good times!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJxQDxcuHs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Interview with Tom

2011-11-03T18:42:00.000-04:00

Did an interview with my friend Tom Compton from Chicago, check it out!
http://ia700709.us.archive.org/29/items/DrivewayDrinkerInterviewsTerryAnderson/TerryAndersonSmoothInterview.mp3

OAK-hio!

2011-10-26T10:38:00.020-04:00

" Wait a minute!... you mean we got a gig TONIGHT?" I'm always the last to know. We were just an hour or so away from Columbus when I came to this realization. We'd been on the road for a good six hours and I had no clue when or where the gigs were. So, from now on when you hear me say "I'm just the drummer!" you’ll know I’m not kidding! Just tell me when and where to be and I'll turn it on... and that’s what everybody in the OakTeam did. We killed it every night of our trip to Ohio this past weekend. I think at every gig, Thurs.-Sunday afternoon, I heard somebody say "This is the best band this place has ever had in here!" And of course, that’s why we do it. But not just that, we are honestly having more fun than anybody in the place. We love playing with each other and the songs and just trying to make each other laugh at every turn, even during the 2 slow songs we do.
Our new best friend friend, Erica Blinn was on board. She flew down Wednesday night to play with us at Deep South, the bar, in Raleigh. We did her new record every night, 6 songs plus she and Dave sang "Purple GTO" together. She and I hopped in the "Scooby doo" seat in the back of Jack's Expedition Thursday morning about 10am.

eeeeeewwwwboy! This might have been a mistake! It was a bunch'a fun hangin' back there with her though. She is so cool. I'm sure we'll be writing together soon for her next record.
When we got to the Crown Sports Bar thingy in Columbus I realized that they weren't shittin' me, we really DID have a gig! Meeting us at the load-in door was Jerry Blinn, Erica’s dad.

He promoted a couple of these shows and ran sound. He had to come in at 10 in the morning to set up the PA and get everything ready for us. He and Carolyn waited on us hand and foot. The folks at the club were really nice too. They brought out HUGE salads and took our order for the cold pizza we had after the show. We had to get on stage before it was ready. And you know what happens when we get started? Well, let’s just say its kind'a like a train coming down a big hill. You just cant stop it! We did about 50 locomotive minutes and then brought Erica out. She kept the energy up and maybe even kicked it up a notch! It was "highly entertaining" (in the words of some old coot!). We carried on for another hour or so and loaded the trailer in the windy cold.

We had to get to the radio station and be on by 2pm, but our first favorite thing to do when going to Columbus, is to eat grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup at Colin's Coffee. It was awesome as always, then we stopped by the liquor store (no! not “on the way to revival”!!!), and then headed down the road to the radio station. The radio show was silly, but fun. We pumped up the Sat. show, the big CD release party at The Rhumba Café by playing 3 songs live in the studio. All week, I was continuously telling folks that we had TWO new records out, ours and hers...actually released the same day!

Friday night was another "this is our first LOUD band" gig. WTF!? These two clubs hadn’t tried the loud Rock yet and this place, King Ave. 5, was especially set up fer it! BIG room, BIG stage! It was a great Rock venue that had yet to find the right bands. We seemed to fit the bill, and made the most of our time there. We LOVE big stages! WE can run around (even me!...on drums!), chase each other, and act as stupid as we really are, all while rockin' some great tunes. Greg's keyboard caught fire early, literally! Smoke poured out of his Nord about 3 songs in and made him step out of the batter's box for a moment! The trainers came in and checked everything out and found that only 8 keys had been lost. He did the rest of the weekend sans those 8, but I couldn't tell. He's good like that. We were REALLY REALLY good that night. I sang my usual 50+ songs and only missed one LETTER! I sang the right word, but put a "G" at the beginning of it. eeeeeeeewwwwwwwboy! …but I was still pretty proud of myself!
Saturday was the day we could actually catch our breath, soundcheck wasn’t until 6. WE lazily fell out of our beds and went out for a proper breakfast at about 1pm...and you know, what could be a better breakfast than INDIAN BUFFETT?! Chutney’s or whatever it was called was kicking our asses! It was all great. We got back to the room just before 3 and we all had a sleepy feeling come over us. We ALL passed out for at least an hour. Greg and I (better known as Ivory and Tubs, for obvious fuckin' reasons) were thinking ahead and brought our bathing suits. The pool at the Crown Plaza is the BOMB! Its design is straight out of the late 60's, plus hot tub! Greg and I hung out with a nice wine (given to me by cutie uber fan, Miss Linda) and a "Liquor Latte" in the water for about an hour before heading to soundcheck, which was INTERESTING but we got through it and had a great Greek meal @ LaVash on High St. before heading back to the room to get ready. The club was full of Erica fan's AND OAKTeam fans when we got there just after 10pm. The opener finally figgered out how the bass rig worked and came on around that time. The drums stayed in the back and Erica rocked they asses until about 11:45. We learned "Stop Draggin' my Heart Around" in soundcheck and pulled that little nugget outta our hat. She had a great show and we followed with one of our better shows of the year, if not THE best show of the year! I swear, we sounded at least as good as the record, if not better that night. I would proudly put the whole show up on YouTube if I had it. Those shows are the ones we live for. It’s like golfers playing for that one great shot of the day. Perfection is fun!
Got to bed after 4am, so 10am found me moving slowly...if not hardly! We creeped into Rock mode and got out of the hotel by 12:30pm and headed to Delaware,Ohio. Who'd ever heard of such a place? But we got there and damn it! It was a REAL place! We missed out on eating at Bun's (the pride of Delaware) when our starving asses walked by a fairly new Mexican restaurant in town. They made guac right there at the table that kicked quite a bit of ass.

Again, we had to shorten our meal and get on stage. We boxed up the rest and threw it in the truck for later. We got back to Roop Bros. and blowed the hell outta them folks' minds! They never seen nuthin' like us, boy! NUTHIN'! We played my hits to give'm a primer and then put it into 2nd gear with a few songs from the last record "Goin' or Comin'" into "Willie Mayes" which set up songs from the new, highly acclaimed record, "More Smooth Jazz and Sweet Sweet Jams". Erica came up and made the folks dance even more for about 45 minutes and then we took a short break. We came back and did about 8 more songs and genuinely thanked the folks for coming and said goodnight. They stomped and screamed and moaned and laughed and hollered and yelled and swung their fists in the air, kicked things, got on the floor and breakdanced, stood on their heads, did the Chuck walk, the "diggin' taters dance" from THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, ballet splits, touchdown celebrations and finally we'd had enough...we got back up there and did a special "Punished" (which has NEVER been the same...EVER!) followed by "Thunderbird". They loved it, and we loved them. We loaded up and hugged all of our friends goodbye and hit the road, headed for our Holiday Inn in Charleston.

Wow! See how fast 4 days goes by! Before I knew it we were in Burlington, NC listening to Erica on the radio via iPhones.

I felt like the lifespan of a fly had just gone by me...but what a glorious life!

Buy the CD NOW!!!

2011-10-10T21:16:00.002-04:00

School Kids Records Raleigh has copies of the CD and Vinyl...NOW! If you buy a copy at the store you can get into Deep South Bar for free! So get on down to the store and then we'll see you at the club. All you have to do is show the door person your store receipt. Admission is good for any one of the three Wednesday nights left in the month of OAKTober.

22!

2011-10-09T17:09:00.000-04:00

thatza my boy! We love you Will!

Oct. 18!

2011-09-25T11:11:00.005-04:00

Have a look at what a great job Jack and Paul did on the new cover (photo of us by Raymond Goodman)

www.oakteam.me

chitlins anyone?

2011-09-24T17:59:00.003-04:00

Today I had the pleasure of eating at Barbara's Lovin' Spoonfuls Restaurant in the nearby community of Margaret. My son Will was playing with a group called The Barnes Project. They are a gospel bunch with three of the best singers you'll ever wanna hear. Since it was a restaurant gig in the middle of the day there was no need for their drummer. Will had his guitar hooked up to some kind of sampler doo-hickey and started a beat sample on his guitar to sing and play to. With Andrew on bass, just the 5 of them made a beautiful uplifting and joyful noise. While we were waiting for them to start, Grace and I had a fish dinner with boiled potatoes, slaw and hushpuppies. It did NOT suck. In fact it was so good, I gave Miss Barbara a motto for her place "when you eat here you're family...the broom is in the closet!" No wonder they were celebrating Barbara's second year in business. Now if I make it out for some chitlins next Thursday, I'll report back...

2011-09-04T21:16:00.000-04:00

2011-09-04T20:55:00.000-04:00

2011-09-04T20:50:00.000-04:00

2011-09-04T20:38:00.001-04:00

DOWN IN FRONT!!!!

2011-09-04T20:30:00.000-04:00

2011-09-04T20:25:00.000-04:00

Why?

2011-08-30T17:41:00.000-04:00

Hey Terry, why did you give your great new record such a stupid name?

It was the morning after another rockin' gig at Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom and the OAKTeam were are all sitting' at a table in the food court of the Arcade in the downtown Hyatt. We'd found this great little Mediterranean place downstairs from our hotel rooms and were all looking forward to our hummus and falafels for breakfast. The groggy conversation suddenly switched to the eclectic mix of sassy funk instrumentals being piped into the strategically placed speakers around us, prompting this drummer/lead singer guy to fill in as DJ in his best radio voice;
"And now...more smooth jazz and sweet sweet jams!"...

TMI chorus

2011-08-20T18:56:00.001-04:00

Songs are persistent. They'll bug you for years! Such was the case with the chorus to "Too Much Information", first song on the next record due out November. That little guy would come over and knock on the door to my brain nearly once a week for about 5 years. "hey! Can the verses come out and play today? Are you ready to turn me into a real song yet?" "uh...no TMI chorus! They are not ready to play yet...they may NEVER come out to play...so put that in your pipe and smoke it!" TMI chorus would turn around, bottom lip out and slowly walk away. Of course, I was hoping to turn TMI chorus into a real song but there was no rush and plus, other choruses were coming over too, like the chorus and first two verses of "Gambled and Lost". "I'm your Radio" had been knockin' since 2002!
So when Jack said we needed songs for the next record I finally gave in and played with TMI chorus and the others and we had a great time! Now they are all complete and playing together on "MORE SMOOTH JAZZ AND SWEET SWEET JAMS" and they look and sound so happy. Now, what to do about these other guys that keep coming over!?

cross stitch me!

2011-08-13T15:26:00.001-04:00

I think it would be cool to have some of my lyrics in some stupid cross stitch book where folks could make beautiful, frame-able, "words of wisdom" art of dumb stuff like this:

Killin’ Down in Dillon
Words and music by Terry Anderson

Mama knew that Wanda was a’ ready and a willin’
When she slipped out of the window and she headed off to Dillon
With the boy that mama said who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger
Getting married to the first one that was dumb enough to take her
When she went into her bedroom and discovered she was missin’
She grabbed her sawed off shotgun and a box of ammunition

She said “if they tie the knot there’ll be a killin’ down in Dillon”
“if they tie the knot there’ll be a killin’ down in Dillon”

In her Chevy Monte Carlo mama took off trying to catch’m
Talked a woman that she worked with into going to help her fetch’m
She packed a ragged t-shirt and another pair of jeans
A half a fifth of Dickel and her biker magazines
a’lookin’ at the woman while’a ballin’ up her fist
she took another hit o’ Dickel said “I’m gonna tell you this…”

“if they tie the knot there’ll be a killin’ down in Dillon”
“if they tie the knot there’ll be a killin’ down in Dillon”
“if they tie the knot there’ll be a killin’ down in Dillon”
“if they tie the knot there’ll be a killin’ down in Dillon”

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba….solo

Mama saw his El Camino it was parked out on the street
By a rusty metal sign a’ readin’ “Justice of the Peace”
Slammin’ on the brakes, she threw that woman to the floor
Grabbin’ Wanda by the hair and up the aisle and out the door
Left the boyfriend at the altar with his mouth hung open wide
And told my baby sister when she got’r butt outside

“If you’d ‘a tied that knot there’d been a killin’ down in Dillon”
“If you’d ‘a tied that knot there’d been a killin’ down in Dillon”
“If you’d ‘a tied that knot there’d been a killin’ down in Dillon”
“If you’d ‘a tied that knot there’d been a killin’ down in Dillon”

http://www.ursasoftware.com/macstitch/macStitch.html

college try

2011-07-31T22:17:00.001-04:00

Well...I gave it the 'ol "college try". This pic is a few months back before the facial hair became a "problem". Last December, while out on a short OakTeam run, I cut myself shaving and decided to give my chin a break for a while. After a month or two, I thought "hey!"..."what the Hey!"..."let's go the whole year lettin' that mess grow on my chinny chin chin, looking dumb as shit and scaring people away even more than I usually do". A year goes by in a flash, right? I should be able to withstand the thing poking me in the chest when I look down or jamming me in the throat in the middle of the night. It got at least twice this long, to the point that it could touch beyond the tip on my nose. I could look down and see it. It was finally put in order by my wife who braided it into a nice little weapon. I've worn it like that for the last month or so until today when I took out the braids to dye it. Yuck! what'a mess! I got to thinking about the original plan of having a raffle at my birthday show Christmas night to give away the right to buzz it off. I looked at the hair in the sink as I combed it out. "This thing AIN'T gonna make it that long!" I thought. I mean, you're talking about 5 more months of discomfort and shedding and braiding and getting poked and dying it and looking stupid(er). I sat the dye down at that point and knew it had to go. I realized the relief of failure would be greater than the glory of winning. The $10 hair buzzing shears from Dollar General were already plugger in. All I had to do was pick'm up, flip the switch and apply to face. The first swipe went across the bottom of my chin. Hair the length of my fist suddenly floated into the toilet and there it lay. OK...it's done. Finish it off...and so I did. I left just the "soul patch" plus a little south of that. I was only slightly disappointed. 8 months is a long time. I gave it all I cared to give it. Isn't that what the "college try" is? Do it until you don't give a shit anymore?

The drummer has the keys…

2011-07-05T11:32:00.000-04:00

With a rollicking “Pat Boone Debbie Boone” intro, the drummer cranks into the tune like starting your dad’s prized hot rod. You gave him the keys. He can go as fast or as slow as he wants. You’re riding shotgun and the rest of the band is screaming back-ups in the backseat. You must really trust this guy driving. You have to be sure before you get out there that he knows where he’s going and that the audience following behind doesn’t get lost on the way. That’s why you guys spent weeks in the garage going over the map. A lot is riding on this trip and it’s very important that the drummer keeps it between the ditches. You guys can cut-up and act the fool, but he really has to pay attention to the road for the song to come off sounding totally together. If there’s a (train) wreck, he’ll get the brunt of the blame. After all, the drummer has the keys.

Still pushing...

2011-07-01T18:12:00.003-04:00

So ya know we're really trying to get the new record out, here's an example of the replies we're getting. This from a major label:

"I just wanted to tell you again how much I like your new album. It has so much of what I love about rock n' roll in it - the driving, beat-ey songs, the more melodic numbers, the catchy arrangements, the cool and sometimes funny lyrics - it really is just a blast to listen to! Like so much of your stuff, it harkens back to the great NRBQ records ("Ridin' Around" especially!). I hope you do well with it. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you but - to sell records these days you have to be out there consistently playing live ... that was always the case but now more than ever. I dunno if that's in the cards for you guys but, while it can be done without it, you really need to be ready to accept the inevitably lesser results if you don't. Most of all though I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you sharing this fantastic music with me - best of luck with the project!!"

Dirt and sticks

2011-06-29T21:22:00.000-04:00

Don't ya love it when your new neighbor starts fixin' up the yard? Set aside the fact that the "yard" is just a bunch of dirt and sticks that fall out of the pecan tree for a second, if it was MY house I would more want to mow IT down than the yard! I've painted in there, it's a dump! And from what I hear, it's MORE of a dump since he's moved in. The cops came a few weeks ago and dude was cussing THEM out, "git the FUCK outta my yard!!!" he yelled at the county sheriffs. I was really surprised they didn't cart him off! Guess they didn't have the goods. But he's a scruffy loner that blasts the local rock station from the only building worth a dime on the lot, the barn garage thingy. He's damn proud of his dump, no matter how dumpy it is! I've never said a word to him, nor he to me. Guess it's gonna be that way, since he's been there for a few months now.Thass fine. I'll just look forward to the off week when he is mowing the dirt and sticks. It's damn hilarious! BwaaAAAH!! WHAP! WHAMM! bwaaa...b..bb..BBB... Off!
He cranks it again and repeats...in a cloud of dust!...away!
Bwaaa...bamm! Whap! Whamm! Blamm! Bwaaa...

Uncle Terry's Painting Camp! Yay!

2011-06-18T20:14:00.000-04:00

Hey kids! Tired of the same old summer camp you go to every year? Do Mom and Dad send you off for weeks at a time doing boring stuff like swimming, hiking, singing stupid Lady Gaga songs around a campfire with a marshmallow on the end of a stick on fire? That is such KID STUFF! Don’t you wanna be a big boy?...or girl? Well, you’re in luck cuz this year there’s UNCLE TERRY’S PAINTING CAMP! Yay!! For a whole summer long you can go with Uncle Terry to meet new friends and climb REALLY tall ladders in or outside of their houses. You’ll be taught to carry a paint bucket up the really tall ladder with a brush inside of it, and when you get REALLY good maybe a caulking gun under one arm too! Doesn’t that sound like fun!? Wowza! Uncle Terry will teach you how to fold drop cloths, wash out brushes and rollers (he hates doing that, so you’ll get plenty of practice!) and you’ll learn the joys of scraping old lead paint off the sunny side of the house! Every morning Uncle Terry will wake you up (maybe a LITTLE early, 6 am-ish) and throw your asses…I mean, show you to your seat in the back of the old pickup truck and give you your favorite flavor of pop tart (grape or strawberry…store brand) and off we’ll go for the day’s adventure. After climbing up and down ladders for a while we’ll stop for about 5 minutes for a great (again, store brand) beanie weenie lunch with a few (store brand) crackers, and some water scooped from the nearest crick! You love them crackers don’t ya? I’ll teach ya how to roll walls with a REAL paint roller! Uncle Terry will even give you your own, with your name on it and everything and you can use it all day every day, for at least 8, maybe 10 hours! Then, after a hard..I mean, FUN day of work we’ll come back to Uncle Terry’s house and flop down on the floor for the evening with a few racy HBO movies and a bowl of your favorite (store brand) pizza rolls right out of the microwave, just like you like’m! So tell Mom and Dad you’re tired of those clowns down at the beach camps or them hillbilly hiking camps. Tell’m you’re getting just a little too old for that KID STUFF. This year you’re going to UNCLE TERRY’S PAINTING CAMP!

Don’t Try This at Home!

2011-06-05T11:38:00.001-04:00

I’m still really astounded at my strength and endurance for my old age. I work as hard, if not harder, than I ever have. It blows my mind seeing folks my age slowing down and becoming decrepit before their time. Here in Bunn I see a lot of that. I’ve started taking some new vitamins that seemed to have given me a little more energy but even without them I was going strong every day. For the past two weeks I’ve been working outside on a house in Raleigh. The first week wasn’t so bad heat-wise but man, this week was BRUTAL! Tuesday and Wednesday were both 98 degree days with high humidity sending the heat index up around 105F. Now just standing out there for 8 hours would be enough for most folks, old or young! But my job required me to haul a 32 foot ladder around, navigating bushes and trees, lean the thing against the house, without breaking any windows or hitting any power lines, and going up and down all day with a paint brush and a bucket in tow…and not to mention the PAINTING part! It was tough, but I came up with a pretty good idea that helped a lot. I brought a cooler (thanks Karen!) full of ice and wrapped a few cubes at a time in a bandana and tied them around my neck. As they melted they sent ice water down my spine. My neck was pretty much numb all day but it was worth it. I was wet but that was gonna happen anyway, so it may as well be a COLD wet, right? Afterall, there was hardly any wind stirring, adding to the misery. I think the hardest part of those days was the code orange air quality, it was just hard to breathe it was so hot. After work on Wednesday I had to go rehearse with two bands. We met over at Dave B’s place of business and practiced an HBO set (without the star, Chip Robinson) at 6:30 and went through the set we would play Friday night at midnight. Then at 8:30 we went through the OakTeam set we’d play in Chapel Hill at 9pm on Friday. I made it through practice OK, but by 10:30 I was outta gas, and rightfully so I think. I finished the job on Thursday (not as hot OR humid) around 1pm, and went back home to work some more on the bamboo flooring I’m putting down in the kitchen. It looked so amazing I couldn’t wait to finish. That’s a tough job too, with all the squatting-standing-squatting, up, down, up down…Friday was more on the floor, trip to the dump, then pack up the drums and head out to play the two aforementioned gigs. Both were REALLY rockin’! The OakTeam played great in Chapel Hill, KILLING all of the new songs we stuck in the set: Gambled and Lost, Enabler, Time for You to Go, Nervous (Around Pretty Girls) and my fav to play live, Ridin’ Around. It was a short set so there was only time for 4 others. Hence, a mudhole was stomped in dey ass! Headliner, Nashville Pussy had their work cut out for them! We quickly packed up and made the 30+ minute ride to downtown Raleigh and set up for the Chip show (The official name of the band is Chip Robinson and The Heavy Beat Outfit) Chip moseyed in just before showtime and we were ready to go. I was worried we would give him “sloppy seconds” but instead we were all (minus Danny Kurtz on bass) warmed up from the previous gig. We were on FI-YAH! I think it was probably our best show with him and (Slim’s owner) Van Alston was almost in tears he was so happy with it. He thanked me repeatly for kicking his ass so hard. It WAS a blast! The whole night was. Beats the hell outta sitting around and getting old!

Budget Blues

2011-05-27T08:09:00.000-04:00

The North Carolina State legislature has proposed deep cuts to education in this year’s budget. I hope one of them calls me to paint the outside of their new house because by their standards I can just go over there, slap a coat of anything on it and call it done. Just like a new house, kids need to be prepared for the elements. Any fool knows you gotta prime bare wood and caulk any and every crack where moisture or worse, insects could get in. Kids need that same preparation for life. They NEED that knowledge for the confidence and courage to tackle real world problems. Can we get some common sense up there in the State House? Under-educated kids are far more likely to become pregnant teenagers or juvenile prison inmates…or both. The under-educated have a much harder time getting a job, thus ending up on Welfare, Unemployment or food stamps. Are our children not worth the investment? Education is passed along from generation to generation. A kid from a poor family that gets a good education can break the vicious cycle of poverty that he or she grew up in and thus make it MORE likely for themselves and THEIR kids to become productive members of society. Is that too much to ask? Or would we rather spend twice the amount they’re cutting from schools on prisons, hospitals stays, Welfare and food stamps? Our kids need all the help they can get so you can pay now or replace a LOT of boards later!

Flies and old folks

2011-05-18T23:01:00.002-04:00

Kill me. Kill me now. I've been working for the past 5 workdays for these old folks that are a total aggravation. Both around 80, but just spry enough to get in the way. Especially him! I can't tell you how many times I've turned around and bumped face to face into him, or tripped over him. You know, there's a reason I work alone! In the words of Jed Clampett, "don't help me boy!"
Yeah, he thinks he's helping but he's just making it harder on me.
He is some kind of kin to me, his mom is my Granddaddy's sister, so whatever that is. And they think I know everybody in the family. It wasn't 2 minutes into the thing before she was saying shit like "that was bad about William won't it?"
What came to my mind came outta my mouth, "William who?"
Yesterday they got on the 2 home phones, conference style, and talked over each other to SEVERAL "cellophone" companies about getting their grandson on their plan. That lasted about three hours. Brutal!
Their house is pretty open, so I can't get away from them...or their TV. It's the usual daytime fare, Regis, blah blah blah (what I hear), local news at noon, soap operas, Oprah...any of which I can be left alone with for a WHILE! Thanks!
I almost left an hour into the gig, the wife used the N-word...and rather viciously. My first thought (after oh-no-you-dint!) was "pack up, let's go!".
But my dad got me the gig so I let it slide, begrudgingly.
They are just down home hicks. They can't help it. They are so country you can hardly understand them. I can, because I've heard that "whing whong whang whong" before. Reminds me of that time in Scotland and trying to understand a painter I was talking to. And they are old...what we all strive to be.
Today for about 3 hours that woman was calling me "Ricky", outta the blue. I guess she didn't hear her husband call me "Tony" all those times.
Oh well, I could bitch about him sticking his head in the way while I was unscrewing switch-plates or wiping shit down (that I had already wiped down!)
WHILE I was painting it! But it's all in a day's work and everything is looking great so whatever...
I just know one thing, like my dad says; "flies and old folks are about to worry me to death!

What to say?

2011-05-15T21:58:00.001-04:00

Sorry its taken so long to blog but I've been re-correcting all the words that my iPad has auto-corrected on the following blogs...
*What to say... what to say! So much has happened but yet so little. I know folks are tired of any talk about the next record so we'll skip that! Except for the news about a major label that is LOVING IT!
*Jack left yesterday for Iraq. He's doing that thing he does, you know saving babies and all that. OakTeam representing in Iraq, Yo! We got a show opening for Nashville Pussy on the 3rd of June at the Cradle in Chapel Hill.
*My beard is still growing...since December!
*Went to Nathan's talent show Friday night. He did great. He got up there with his (my) drums and played solo. It was a medley of just the drum parts of Led Zepplin's BLACK DOG & Immigrant Song. That took balls, and he pulled it off! The crowd loved him!
*I keep thinking about musians who are so insecure that they cut power on the PA or limit you in some other stupid way if you are opening the show. A long time go I first experienced these poor folks on the campus of East Carolina University. Some metal band named Maxx Warrior, had us open for them at The Attic in Greenville, NC. They were so shaken by our (The Fabulous Knobs) legend (ha!) that they gave us half the bank of lights and half of the PA. Pretty sad, I know! But those kooks are out there! Folks like (and I'm outta the loop far enough that I can say his name) John Hiatt will do shit like fart around on stage right up until "doors" so that YOU'RE setting up and doing soundcheck in front of the rushing in masses. Once with the 'Hoos, in Springfield, MO, he delayed the show until we agreed to play acoustic. When we didn't do that he said we could only have 4 mics. We put one in the kick drum, gave Dan one, me one and one to the left side for Scoe and Keith. Of course we rocked the bitch. But what was sad was that he was great too!
And he didn't have to lose our respect to BE great!

Paper towels

2011-05-15T21:20:00.002-04:00

You know who lays low? Who does a good job of hiding out? Yep, you took the words right outta my mouth...paper towels. Them sumbitches hide when you have'm and when you don't have'm. They got a way of being forgotten just before you get in the car to go shopping. I know I shouldn't use'm. Its a lot more ecofriendly to use cloth. But I ain't got no dogs to lick up my mess otherwise so I needs something! I hate to use my good oil changing rag to wipe egg off the floor! Thass what paper towels are for! Ain't no tellin' WHEN you gonna need one! You might sneeze and half ya brain comes out! Better catch it!
Its really OK, right? I mean, can we have ONE vice? Mine is paper towels!

backstage Mallorca

2011-05-07T23:01:00.001-04:00

miss these guys!

2011-05-07T18:39:00.000-04:00

Scary day!

2011-04-17T17:29:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to all those who were concerned about the safety of the Anderson family in yesterday's tornado outbreak in our area. To be sure, there were several moments when we didn't know which way the destruction was actually headed. The most worry was over the intense cell southwest of Raleigh that took out an entire Lowe's Home Improvement Center and travelled straight in the direction of Bunn. This is the same cell that went straight through downtown Raleigh. As it left Raleigh though it moved more northerly than north easterly, thus skirting just past Bunn and more towards Wake Forest. The kids and I grabbed a drink and headed to the basement. They played scrabble on line as I watched the radar on my iPad. Unfortunately, before it left Raleigh, the tornado hit Ferguson Enterprises where my wife, Grace works and tore the shit outta the place. Grace looked out and saw solid black with debris flying everywhere.

A PVC pipe slammed into the side of her car as it sheared the roof off of her building. She and the others rounded up customers and led them to safety at the back of the building, which was condemned today. She'll be working from home for a while.
It was a scary day and we are all so thankful that everyone was able to be in a home that was intact and spend the night in our own beds. Not everyone in North Carolina was so lucky.

Printh

2011-03-30T20:55:00.003-04:00

ya know I'm a little sick of hearing folks bad mouth my man, Prince...and I respect your opinion, but I beg to differ..whatever you say. Last Wednesday night dude tore the roof off the sucka (and NO Chaka Khan was NOT better, her catterwallin' was embarrassing and she even forgot the words a couple of times, oh and BTW there were teleprompters on the stage). He played almost ALL the hits, I say almost because as he said "I got so many hits, if I did'm all, we'd be here all night!" All I really wanna say is if Printh aint the King of Pop right now then...who? Michael's gone. Who has more hits than Printh? Who has more HOOKS than Printh?...I mean, melodies that you cant get outta yo head? He's unoriginal? Pleeeease! "Sign of the Times" is unoriginal? Yeah, there are songs with the same beat as "You got the Look", but hell I WANT MORE OF'M! Get on something and ride it, maybe thass why the rest of us ain't "made it" (Whatever that is?). Guitar playing? shut up. Singing? shut up. Dancing? shut up. Sorry. I seen his ass (once in Rotterdam) too many times to think any different. Aint nobody in North Carolina got that much talent, I know thass right.

our new baby

2011-03-27T11:14:00.001-04:00

“Push. Push!” (that button) “Turn. Turn!” (that knob) Check the patients’ breathing… “We’re fine.” Jack and I say. “Tape!” yells the doctor. “I’ll get it” Jack barks back. Finally, after 10 hours of labor (and I mean HARD working labor!) we have ourselves a beautiful, bouncing, uh…made in America Rock and Roll record! This past Friday, Jack and I took our fingernail size USB chip over to Doctor Brent Lambert who did the Lord’s work and delivered the little devil. And what a beauty! I think we’ll call it “More Smooth Jazz and Sweet Sweet Jams”! Brent, in between his stories of clients ordering strippers, his kids wrapping Dean Smith in packing tape and catchers doing back flips, did the equivalent of parting the Red Sea. Not that what we brought him to master was that bad but more just how astounding it is for me to hear how much of a difference he really makes. He finds space where there is none, like when the B3 organ and Marshall stack guitars are fighting for supremacy. He makes drums that were once pushed around, bullied and trying to fit in feel like they belong and in their own happy place. And the thing he does so miraculously for Daddy T is he makes Terry’s voice less nasally. And that’s been my problem all along for this record. Ya see, that’s the technical problem I’ve had with it all this time. Because TECHNICALLY, I CAN’T SING! Over the past few months, Jack has been more than open to my unhappiness with my voice and has been more than willing to set the mics up and let me sing those songs until they weren’t fingernails on my blackboard. We COULD have gone the Chris Brown, P-Diddy route and autotuned the shit outta everything but how Rock and Roll is that? No, it was through the not-so-modern-day wonders of Organic Throat Coat Tea that I overachieved in singing the songs on this record, which I feel are some of my best ever. The difference in singing with the tea is like the difference in pruning your rose bushes WITH gloves as opposed to doing it without’m. I can push a LOT harder without sounding like the Hick-from-Hell that I usually sound like. It really is remarkable, I won’t sing again without it, live or on Memorex.
So in closing, I want to thank everybody involved who got us to this point, everyone, near and far, from the North, South, East and West, here and abroad. It took your ideas, your encouragement, your many gifts (the ukulele I wrote HALF the record on comes to mind, Victor!), your spare bedrooms and your caring and hard work to make this record what it is. And it’s that caring that keeps us, especially me, going.
You really don’t know how loved you are until you see people care that much about your music!

You're fired!

2011-03-16T23:23:00.000-04:00

I ain't never been fired...but once. Since I've been in business for myself I've had nothing but repeat business and have had no need for business cards on the strength of word of mouth. Now, January is always slow, especially in the last few years. But as soon as the weather stays above 50 degrees F the phone gets to buzzin'! But back to my other jobs. Of course, I worked for my dad for what seems like forever. I started going to work with him in the summer of the year I was 14 years old. I remember scraping paint off of the the old Wake Forest Elementary building for about a dollar an hour...hot as hell! Yep! 40 years ago! I have a book of stories in my head about hanging out with the drunks my dad hired. When they wouldn't show up, or if they did...wanted a loan, I decided I'd be better off to work for myself if my dad ever retired. He was a good boss...to me. If I ever screwed up, he'd give me a raise which, of course only made me work harder. Pretty brilliant, actually!
In my summers in high school I worked at DQ. Yep, Dairy Queen!
Big Edna hired me and I actually enjoyed my time there. 'Course I was making milkshakes and sundaes, fun stuff. Occasionally, I would get stuck on the grill. On Sundays we'd do up to 6...SIX! hot dogs for a dollar! There was a line up the street.
The only other job I've ever had (that I remember), other than songwriter, drummer, recording superstar...was as a kid (lost in the fog of when, prolly during the high school year) was stuffing envelopes somewhere in downtown Raleigh. Who knows what propaganda I was partisan to in doing this but for weeks I was nose to the grindstone, working my ass off filling them things. One night I went to take a piss at the back of the room when I noticed one of my co-workers reaching up behind the cigarette machine. I was a step away from hanging it out getting my piss on and getting back to work but no, I stopped to see what the dude was up to.
He was reaching into the back to grab a few free packs. I ain't never smoked so I didn't want in on the goods and walked off. Or so I thought! AS I walked off the boss showed up, and his ignunt ass fired us BOTH on the spot! Hell, I was just walking by! Whatever! It was a boring ass job anyway. I'da much rather been making milkshakes or scraping old lead paint!

Like a chicken with...

2011-02-24T20:40:00.001-05:00

My buddy, Raymond is a great photographer. He's also starting a farm and among many of the vegetable goodies he'll be growing and selling, he's also gonna have bunch of chickens. I forgot to ask him if he was gonna keep them for eggs or for ringing their necks and selling them as meat...or both. I was thinking that if they were for meat, i could get a job with him killing them. Of course i was kidding, there's no way i could do that. I can't tell you how many times I watched my grandma stop by the shed for an axe, go in the pen and pick out a chicken for dinner or Sunday lunch and carry it kicking and screaming to the big oak stump behind the house and chop it's head off. For the next 5 minutes we watched them things run around with blood spurting straight up out of its neck in circles, straight lines and figure 8's until it didn't have another drop to keep it alive and fell over. It didn't seem as sad then as it does now. Hell, I wasn't even a teen yet so everything was funny to me, especially a chicken with no head, hauling ass aimlessly around the yard. Knowing me, I was probably thinking "I wanna be like that someday". "Like your grandma?" you ask. (no chance of that, she was awesome!)
NO! like the chicken! That's pretty much how I've ended up!

Bo-hon-glaze

2011-02-13T08:13:00.001-05:00

Every month or so I will "treat" myself, more like "allow" myself, to stop in for a greasy, nasty good Bojangles biscuit. If you don't know Bojangles (pronounced by the hardcore as "Bo-hon-glaze"), first of all I feel sorry for you but secondly, it's a Cajun oriented fast food joint only found in the South. And just like any fast food joint they are all different. Some have mayo based slaw, some have the vinegar based, some have grits, some don't, but they all all have the basic tasty menu, complete with all the Cajun spices and hot sauces, chicken, fries, pinto beans and yes, biscuits! Their biscuits rock! Which makes for a great morning business right? There's usually a line around the building no matter which one you go to. The one I stop at mostly is the one coming into Raleigh on old 64 (not coming into town on the "AutoBunn"). And keep in mind that it's when I feel my worst that their biscuits are the best. So I feel especially bad this past Wednesday morning and decided it was time for a couple, yes two! ...egg and cheese biscuits. Dude hands'm out the window and I tear into number one riding up the road, Day-yam! "thass good!" I say as the grease starts reaching to my wrist. I feel around in the bag for a napkin. "wait a minute!" I can't find a napkin! I feel the other biscuit and actually dumped it from it's wrapper looking for a napkin. You mean to tell me there's not a napkin in the bag, I don't have one in the truck and the shit is running to my ELBOW?! This is disastrous!
"Those muthaf***ers got all that money and they can't afford to put two little napkins in a damn bag! what do napkins cost? A penny for like...30 of'm or something...jeez! You bastards! I ain't NEVER coming back to this bitch AGAIN!" I'm cussing the hell out of'm as I pull the other biscuit from the bag. I look inside and sure enough, no damn napkin. I start wiping my arm off on my paint clothes, cussing away. I can't even taste the second one cause I'm so damn mad. Finally, I'm done eating as I'm weaving through traffic and almost reach my destination. I grab the bag beside me and crush it in disgust and throw it into the passenger side floorboard. I peak again to the spot where the bag came from because two little white things caught my eye. Two napkins laid innocently, waiting to serve me. Apparently, in my haste to grab the first biscuit I had pulled the little darlings out of the bag by accident and they fell to the side.
OK, Bojangles...You're off the hook this time...but I'm watching you!

RIP Charlie

2011-01-30T09:20:00.002-05:00

We lost a good one this week. Charlie Louvin and his brother, Ira blew my MIND the first time I ever heard them. My dad pulled out one of their records (on the SEARS label!) when he lived up at the farm. I sat there and played it through twice. This song was on there (Charlie's the shorter one, in case you're not familiar with them):

gotta give'm credit

2011-01-29T09:47:00.000-05:00

People LOVE when I throw my 2 cents in about Amerkin politics, like it matters what my opinion is, ha! "We didn't come here to read this shit! you're 'sposed to write something funny, goddamnit!" "Now tell us some more stupid shit about The Knobs, Yayhoos or Bunn!" Actually, if anybody's been keeping up with Washington lately they'd be laughing their asses off! The new nutballs in the House are doing everything they can to avoid talking about JOBS! They are bringing up old social issues that were NEVER mentioned in the campaign, addressing the emergency topic of "Shariah law"? WTF! Now, the lack of jobs is far from funny, but their tactics to avoid talking about them are. Fact is, they wanna do ANYTHING BUT create jobs, because the President will get all the credit for them. He has bent over backwards trying to work with them but all they wanna do is drag him down, they've even got an arsonist car thief trying to trump up charges on him. The birther thing hasn't worked out so well either! But his JOB is to get things going again for the Amerkin worker and here's how I think he can do it. GIVE them, the GOP, all the damn credit for these infrastucture projects we so badly need. What the President has to do is acquiesce ONE more time and actually NAME the projects after them. We could give king of the national debt triple'rs a bridge, THE RONALD REAGAN MEMORIAL BRIDGE! Oh man, they would work hard to get that going. Maybe even build a big 'ol statue of him on top of it saying "Tear down that wall!" I can hear it now "How much do you need, Mr. President?!" Or how about that high speed train? We could name it after the weeper of the House, THE BONER BULLET! YEAH! That's the ticket! We could name some high schools all over the country after Mitch McChinless! He'd go for that! ...and since people are used to using these two words in the same sentence, THE BUSH DAM! I don't see a problem with this plan at all, and I don't think The President would either if it gets folks back to work. It don't make a damn who gets the credit!

band or group?

2011-01-22T12:17:00.020-05:00

The Terry Adams Rock and Roll Quartet
Berkeley Cafe, Raleigh, NC Jan. 21, 2011

Someone on the radio was discussing how a "band" plays their own music and a "group" plays other people's music. One of my favorite bands ever was NRBQ. As strange as it seems to ME, there are actually folks that didn't "get" them. I can't believe that there are people alive that couldn't find a place for their ass inside that massive dry river basin of a groove they always laid down. And on top of that, the vocals, especially harmonies sounded like the Everly Brothers on steroids. So you had this rockin' ass band with beautifully sung melodies so what was there NOT to "get"? Never figgered that out. They were savants too, so unassuming and without pretense and no major label corporate "direction" to point to and frown on. They WERE the music they made. All of that ended in the early '90's when Big Al left. Go to YouTube and watch the Connie Chung interview with them. Terry Adams in that interview says "If any one of us left it wouldn't be the same" and followed it with something to the affect of what any member of a great band knows, no one member is greater than the sum of the bands parts. Al has done quite well for himself as a writer and player in Nashville, meanwhile NRBQ struggled. Replacing Al's presence on stage was a daunting task, not to mention his guitar playing wild abandon. Johnny Spampinato could more than take care of the guitar part of the equation but I'm sure even he knew that Al was a big part of what made the cartoon so funny...and the band so fun. Ten to 15 years of dwindling crowds told the guys it was time for a change. Terry had some health issues that found him in Florida for a few years. When he re-emerged last year at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh I was actually astounded at the ensemble he had gathered. Not only did the drummer play like Tommy, he KINDA looked (no offense) like him too! The cute, skinny heartthrob bass player was an amazing singer and player, leaving all the holes that make you love great bass playing.

As my friend, Bob Davis put it "I think the boy has done his James Jamerson homework". Guitar player Scott, sings and plays so much like Big Al that it's downright scary! So that was then, about a year ago. At the time I saw them as remarkable understudies. They had learned their parts to perfection.
So what made last night SO much better? Ladies and Gentlemen the Terry Adams Rock and Roll Quartet is now a BAND. They are a force. They have GREAT new songs that could easily have been slipped into an NRBQ show. Last night they sang like innocent children, nailing the notes and breaking your heart with every word. When Pete, the bass player sang "Things to you" I felt the swoon of every girl in the house swirling through. I can't believe I could EVER say this and I pray it never gets back to Joey but, DAY-YAMM! NObody could have sang it any purtier! NO-BAH-DEE! He sang it with the emotion of someone who had just written the song, which he did not! Scott, like I said before, has Al's voice down...and now he's got his GROWL, his confidence and yes..his presence. You can tell that he is still, to this day blown away by Al's playing but all the while he adds a little sauce of his own to the parts. "It Feels Good" was the solo that made him throw his head back and almost vibrate with the joy that it was giving him to play it.

But tonight it wasn't Al's solo, it was his. I really think that's what blew everybody away last night. The great new songs were theirs, the singing was their own and even the NRBQ songs seemed to be theirs. They were definitely a band and NOT a group of individuals, understudies if you will, trying to imitate art. They are now their own brand of art, their own cartoon.The Terry Adams Rock and Roll Quartet is now a band that reminds you of why you go see bands and why you always wanted to be part of one...especially one like this.
When it was all over, people were hugging and walking around in a daze like there had been an earthquake or something. We were all asking around, checking each other's pulse, making sure everyone was alright. Oh yeah, we were alright.
Much MORE than alright.
Oh, and did I mention...they had a pretty good piano player too!

Porter

2011-01-19T21:40:00.000-05:00

I don't know why but today the famous story about Porter Wagoner popped into my head. I actually saw Porter at The Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh once a loooooooooooooooooooooong time ago. I guess I must'a been 10-ish when my Dad took me and his buddy and fiddle playing phenomenon, Stanley Fish to see him and his band. After the show we waited in the cold by his bus. He finally came out of the building and my Dad yelled something at him as he was stepping up to get in. Porter tuned around and yelled back at him "Man! When you're hot...you're hot!" That was worth the wait and I'm glad my Dad got to actually talk to one of his heroes...AND that I was there to witness. But now that I think back on it, I wonder if that was the same bus from the famous story. You know, the one where the band is trying to get in and the door is locked and they're all going on about how he was prolly in there nailing some hick chick. I think they were in Mississippi or somewhere. And sure enough the doors finally open and the white trash (and I mean that affectionately) sweet thang yells back at Porter "Thank you'unz for the peter!" They never let him forget that...and I bet she never forgot it either. He was rumored to be rather enormous in that respect.

lemme know...

2011-01-16T18:18:00.000-05:00

It so much fun rockin' with my band The OakTeam! ...and I wouldn't have it any other way! If I had to choose how to rock it would be like this, more often and more widespread mind you, but just like we do it every night. But as hard as it is to admit, it is so limiting to our target audience. Yes, the folks that love our music are older. I noticed this playing with Jason and The Scorchers last weekend. It was white hair followed by white hair....Not that I mind that you're as old or older than me when you come to the shows, I just wanna know how to get in touch with you and let you know about future shows! Garrison Keillor AIN'T inviting us on his show! We rock too damn hard for that! ...and we won't get seen on MTV's THAT METAL SHOW cuz #1: we ain't metal and #2...uh...we don't WANNA be on that show! So...how do we find you so that you can find us? House concerts? Turn down? Acoustic shows? Go Country until we can't stand it anymore and have to kill ourselves?..or is rock and roll really dead? The folks in Ohio and Europe don't think so...

Clarion

2011-01-14T22:00:00.001-05:00

OK, I got this great idea for a commercial that will prolly never get made so I might as well share it with you. The spot would be for the Clarion Hotel chain and start off something like this; business dude is driving late at night (alone...not with a van full of drunks singing Fleetwood Mack songs) and he's flashing back through the day and remembers everybody yelling at him and all the stupid scenarios of him screwing up the presentation and he's wishing he could just pull over, get a room and put it all behind him. Suddenly, he comes over the hill and just as he is turning on the radio, there's a beacon in the night shining brightly ahead. The music blasts out of the speakers, it's Kansas singing their big hit, but the words are changed: "Clarion my wayward son...!"..."there'll be peace when you are done!"
(he's shown checking in) "lay your weary head to rest" (both hands behind his head as he's falling back on the bed!) "don't you cry no more..." he's turning out the light as the announcer spews his bullshit and as the music continues...it would be awesome!

fox folks find facts on floor

2011-01-13T08:01:00.000-05:00

"Hey what's this?"says Bill "Oh! it's some kinda directive from the Big Dog, some kinda fact sheet or something" says Glen. "Well, what's it doing on the floor?" "Well, I threw it down there, I don't need it, my show tonight is about how tomorrow is the end of the World!" "hmmm...Lemme see that!" "ya know, nothing here for me either, my show is on the fear and loathing of our black President, how much can you be afraid of him and how much can you hate him!"say Sean. Bill grabs the sheet of facts, "mumble mumble blah blah...2010 tied for hottest year ever...blah blah..., nope nothing here I can use, my show is entitled IS THE EARTH REALLY COOLING?" "oh, I'm also doing a bit about that whole tides thing and who's really behind that..." throws it back on the floor.

nothing is unpossible!

2011-01-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

Here's the shirt I had on last night. Absolutely the stupidest thing I've ever seen!
A dinosaur on a jet propulsion motorcycle flying through space with a mermaid on his back holding an American flag!

Grace's pics

2011-01-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

We had an awesome time rockin' with Jason, Warner, Stacie and 'em last night!
Here's a couple of pics by my wife, practically untouched...

Bands as places

2011-01-09T14:27:00.001-05:00

As my young son so astutely points out, bands named after PLACES absolutely do suck. But what he says that is so mind blowing is that the BIGGER the place they're named after, the MORE they suck! Take Europe for example, or how about ASIA! Now they both blow chunks! But let's explore the rest of the list. Alabama sucks, but they've had a bunch of hits on Country radio which is somewhat excusable if you like that sort of thing. Kansas, well they suck, but at least you can laugh at some of their songs. Boston is smaller than Asia, and I would agree that they might suck less. Chicago, heeew boy!..OK, moving on. America is NOT my favorite either! Toto, on the merits of their song, Africa can be thrown in the mix, just because #1 they suck and #2 they have a SONG about a place. Rascal Flatts, now they suck like all get out, it's in Oklahoma. Black Oak Arkansas definitely sucked. Egypt is a band, they HAD to suck cuz I never really heard of'm! Ya know, all this really tells me is that our first manager must not have thought a lot of us, cause he wanted to name us CAROLINA!

written with the help of Nathan A.

Key Words

2011-01-06T12:29:00.001-05:00

Throughout my performing “career” I’ve been really hard on myself for forgetting lyrics. With The Ass-Kickin’ Team being capable of spitting out 80 songs in a row there is NO room for my being a slacker in this regard. I’m not about to go the route of Lucinda Williams, with the music stand on stage and all that. Every time I’ve ever tried having a lyric sheet, it’s ALWAYS resulted in failure. Hell, my songs are usually so fast that there’s no time to read a piece of paper on the floor. So it’s taken this long, well…since just a few years ago, to figger out what works best for me. Number one was NOT drinking during the show. The one sure way to wash lyrics outta my head is a shot or two of tequila before going on. I need a clear mind to work with. You may see me with a beer or something late in the show but not outta the gate or throughout the bulk of our allotted time. Number two, instead of learning the whole song and stressing over it, I pick out key words that will spark motor memory for my mouth. Take for example the song, “Lost Your Number”. The first line in the first verse I need to know is “I wasn’t trying to ignore you”. So the ID word for the first verse is IGNORE. The second verse is “It wasn’t that I didn’t want it”. DIDN’T WANT are the key words. The third verse, “I hope you find it to forgive me”, so there it’s the word FORGIVE I need to remember. So at the beginning of the song, the words IGNORE, DIDN’T WANT and FORGIVE flash through my mind. I have no problem with the rest of the Iines in each verse once I get them started correctly. I have at times written these key words on my snare. I usually do this if we’re playing brand new songs with lyrics that have yet to sink in. There are times when we don’t play for months, which makes it hard to recall these key words, but once I get them in my head I usually score at least a 96 from the judge from Bunn. Here are a few of my other key words:

POW’FUL MERKA:
#3 (and an eagle tattoo)
FF (Freedom Fries)
TV (…in a shop out back)
Works (…hard, comes home tired)

INDY 500:
Love (the sound…)
Paid (for talking…)
Refrigerator (‘s full of food…)

WILLIE MAYES:
Standing (at the plate…)
756
Whatever (it takes…)

NERVOUS AROUND PRETTY GIRLS:
Stumbling (words…)
No problem (with spitting it out…)
Too smart (I know you’re not that kind…)
(The second half of this verse for some reason escapes me at times so I include: )
A lot of LUCK (is what its gonna take…)

Karen

2011-01-06T10:57:00.004-05:00

I've been hesitant to post this, because I, myself was afraid to ask what really happened to my friend, Karen Crawford. It hurt twice as bad to find out. After thinking about it for the past four days and waking at night freaked out by it, I feel I need to share her story. Maybe you know someone in an abusive relationship who may need your help. This article in Redbook magazine tells you why you HAVE to get involved:

"I lost my best friend."
—Kriquette Davis, 41, associate executive director of the Goldsboro Family YMCA, North Carolina

My dear friend, Karen Crawford, was murdered by her partner, Peter Matson, on January 1, 2006. I found out she'd died when another friend of Karen's, Becky, called me at work the next day. She said, "I need to tell you something." And I was like, "Oh, my God." I knew something had happened. Becky told me Pete had found Karen in bed and that she was dead. But later, we found out that Pete had strangled her in her bed, pulling the covers up to her chin and waiting some 30 hours before calling the police. Pete was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He got 20 to 24 years — the maximum for his crime. But that doesn't make me feel any better. Nothing will bring her back.

I first met Karen in 1986. We both worked for a fitness company and hit it off. We even lived together in Raleigh for a short time. Then I moved to Goldsboro and got married. She got a job working for a pharmaceutical company and bought a house in Chapel Hill. But we still saw each other often — we'd go to the Brookline Steeplechase horse race, football games, and Jimmy Buffett concerts. She even dated my brother for a while.

Karen first started dating Pete in 2004, but she was very private about her relationship — all I knew about Pete was that they worked together and he was in the midst of a divorce. I was happy she'd found someone, but when I finally met him at the Steeplechase, I didn't like him one bit. He was cocky, controlling, and made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to say a whole lot to her: Sometimes even with your closest friends, if they feel like you're trying to control them, they go in the opposite direction, and I didn't want it to escalate into a long-term relationship. They dated for about a year, and I was so relieved when they broke up.

But after Pete lost his job a few months later, Karen agreed to let him stay with her while he got on his feet. When I visited her that fall, Pete was storming around the house, mumbling to himself. He was mad because Karen asked him to paint her roof in exchange for staying there. During my second visit, around mid-November, Pete was in another foul mood. I got the sense he wanted Karen all to himself. That evening, Karen told me she hoped he'd find his own place soon.

I called her the morning of January 2 to say, "Happy New Year" but got the answering machine. Pete's name had been on the outgoing message, but that day, I heard, "Hi, this is Karen. Please leave a message." I did, happily. Her message meant she'd finally kicked him out!

The next thing I knew, I was at Karen's wake. The funeral home had dressed her in a turtleneck to cover up what Pete had done to her. I have asked myself, Why her? every day since. She's been dead for nearly two years, and only recently have I been able to get through a day without crying. I started seeing a shrink to deal with the loss and the anger I'm feeling.

I've heard others call Karen's death a crime of passion, but that's utter stupidity. It was murder. And it could have been prevented. Domestic violence is still this dirty secret, but if we don't talk about it, how will it change? I don't even know if that was the first time he hurt her; she never said. But since Karen's death, I have learned that it's all right to say to your friend, "I don't think your partner is treating you well." That's being a good friend.

Loved ones have organized a charitable fund-raiser to honor Karen. Learn more at http://www.nccadv.org/

day of surprises

2011-01-02T23:29:00.005-05:00

Woke up today, which was good, all yawning and shit, not much in my head. The biggest chore on my mind for the day was picking up (usually) small twigs from the pruning of my Japanese maples that I finished doing yesterday! Pondering the impending diet, I had a small apple for breakfast, fuji. I walked around in circles for about an hour until my cell phone beeped. Jack: "Wanna see the Heels play today?"
Me: shit yeah! Jack: Meet me here @ 2. I did and we went to Chapel Hill forthwith. A dicey parking spot and long walk (w/ 5 yr. old escort) later we hand our tickets to the lovely Hawaiian girl who scans'm and hands'm back. The game started as usual, numbers at zero and getting larger. The Heels were in a deep hole..3 points down after 3 minutes of play! Oh Shit! Then they blew they asses out, game over. TarHeels win by almost fifty. Good times good times!
Well, except at halftime when the old guy was in the bathroom peeing with his pants around his ankles, that was NOT "good times good times" right there! After the game Jack and I went to (our friend) D.R.'s place in CH.Hill, The Drunken Mule. Some girl with a hot pink wig walked over and kissed me on the mouth as I sat down with my beer. "Hello!" "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!" she said robotically. Evidently, it was her birthday and we were on her list of things to do. Next on the list "Someone has to skip throughout the place with her". "He's your man" I said pointing at Jack. He obliged. The guys next to us were annoyed by them. "Kiss me and go way!" they seemed to say. (she did NOT look bad!...btw!) They were watching the Cowboys play football. Poor souls! We had finished our second beers when we stood up and bid no one adue, we got in the car and sped towards Whole Foods in Raleigh. Jack wanted tuna and I was in desperate need of tofu (my, things go backwards sometimes!). I bagged his groceries and we headed out. Got to Jack's place and he gave me an extra "Exile" super duper re-release box set extravaganza thingy. I thanked him and fled. Getting close to 8pm, it was reaching the bewitching hour before it was too late to open my wine. Stopped for $10 gas on #3, when I listened to pleasantries between pumps. After all the sweet talk, dude cranks up to leave and sceamo death metal fills the air at the Bunn Hess station. Home in time! Salad+tofu+wine. I never know what's coming next, but thank the Lord for old dudes with their pants down, surprise birthday kisses, and late birthday gifts!

my love

2010-12-31T15:44:00.000-05:00

Whenever I hear the song "My Love" by Paul McCartney, I'm counting the seconds till it gets to the solo. The song itself is a bit sappy but the solo always kicks my ass. It's beautiful melody is played perfectly with a guitar tone from the Rock Gods. Its always meant a lot to me, this solo, because it always brings back an image in my mind of a first love of mine, Karen Crawford. We hung out together some in high school, and she never let on that she knew I was in love with her though somewhere inside I'm sure she DID know. It was always more about listening to music and making each other laugh and just being a friend who was a girl more than a girlfriend. David Enloe and I used to go to her house at lunch with our chips and bottles of Boone's Farm wine and she'd play us some Frank Zappa or James Taylor (her favorite, not ours, but we were OK with it cuz we were with her). She was really cool to hang with. She was in with or at least accepted by the "cool kids" but was equally at ease with us misfits. She was at times stunningly beautiful and at others, ehh...but it didn't seem to matter to her either way. When I got my first car, a '71 Fiat 850 Spyder, she was the first person I wanted to drive around. So I put the top down and took her for a spin. We drove around for about 30 minutes before this song comes on the radio, "My Love". It was the first time I'd heard it. Her hair was flying out of the back like she was in a WARRANT video or something, it seemed like time slowed almost to a halt. The solo came up and at that moment I knew exactly what love was. It was happening all around me. It was a red sky, late afternoon on the Raleigh beltline and I was consumed by it...and by her. She was unbelievable.
Today I was on Facebook and found out that as of tomorrow Jan. 1, she will have been gone for 5 years. I had NO idea. I don't keep up with a lot of folks from high school. But I DO keep memories of some of the good times and she is in a lot of them.
Not sure if I will be able to listen to that solo again.

who dvd

2010-12-27T22:12:00.001-05:00

Do you ever wanna put out a dvd that makes your fans hate you? I think maybe...NOT! As one who believes in first impressions, that's a little bit the way I'm feeling after watching the first hour of the Who dvd "The Who: Maximum R&B". We (Santa) gave it to Nathan for Christmas and it's, well...embarrassingly bad! The singing is especially awful. Granted, a lot of it is live. SO! If you're releasing it, it shouldn't suck, should it? Even Keith Moon, a lifelong hero of mine is suspect of talent. Watching him play made me wanna find one of those "isolated tracks" websites and see what he really sounded like solo. Pete is Pete, he's not a great singer (nor am I! so shut up!), but he plays fine. Entwistle is prolly the best of the bunch. Roger, as Pete puts it, "loses" in every one of their nightly competitions. One thing it DOES do is it makes me feel even better about our power trio performances. Shit! From what I've seen so far on this thing, at least I wouldn't wanna be turning us OFF! It was honestly putting me to sleep. Had to stop it and go outside in the cold to wake myself up! I guess we'll put it back on just before bedtime! Hate to say it, but at one point in my day today, I hated The Who!

snowkids

2010-12-26T15:06:00.000-05:00

10th annual birthday party!

2010-12-26T15:00:00.001-05:00

Oooh Lawd, I was ill as a snake yesterday afternoon, and on my birthday no less! All indications were heavy snowfall was on the way and I had a gig forty minutes away. I did NOT wanna chance gettin stuck in that crap and slipping and slidin all the way home at 2 in the morning. As fun as I knew the gig the would be, the drive was worrying me. I DID wanna play, especially after watching a Led Zepplin DVD that afternoon. I wanted to get on stage be "John Bunn-ham" for a while. That boy's an inspiration to me! Finally, it was decided that yes, the gig would go on. Good thing too, as we all brought the Rock. Evidently, Jack and Dave watched the same DVD because they played inspired too. I wonder if maybe it was their super gear set ups though.

Jack brought both Hiwatt heads, both Boogie 15" cabs WITH his regular basspod setup while Dave had his Line 6 Flextone 3 teamed with a Marshall head and cab rig, why not, right? Let's be The Who for a night. Greg was MIA, so at that point we become a power trio. We did "Nothing on You", one of my favs from the second record plus 5 of the new ones mingled with many other of our "Hits". The crowd was light but many more than I expected given the forecast. They were great too and really enjoyed another stupid addition to our shenanigans, the iPad sythn. Beside the floor tom on a music stand, I had my iPad hooked into the PA with a direct box. My kids had downloaded the MorphWiz app into it earlier that day. It simulates a Moog sythn and makes quite an awesomely stupid fuss. So whenever I had a free hand I'd reach over and try to find a note to play. I think the funniest part was how badly I was failing in that quest. The noises were cool though. Hell, what you expect? I just got it that day!
All in all, my 10th annual birthday party was a huge success and I didn't feel so bitchy once it was all over with..AND the drive home wasn't even that bad. It was still too warm for the roads to be icy so I made it back just before the big snow came. Woke up this morning to TEN inches! Thank you, Lawd for letting us get our Rock on!

54!

2010-12-25T12:32:00.000-05:00

Now, is this the face of a 54 year old man?

53, we hardly knew ye. In and out in another blur of a fantastic rockin' year. Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes. I hope to see many of you tonight at our regular TA B-day party...though the threat of a minor blizzard at this writing leaves our togetherness in doubt. Keep your fingers crossed people!

DOOBIE IN MY FUNK!

2010-12-23T20:33:00.002-05:00

About the only thing I love as much as my new iPad is my XM box. Some crazy lady I worked for a month or two ago gave it to me. It was her dad's and he died, which was why I was there painting. He lived in a small apartment that they built on to the side of their house for him. Anyway, satellite radio is great! I can listen to my "shows" as much or as little as I want to. There's tons'o music channels that I can listen to (for a little while) also. I'm split between the Underground Garage, the 70's channel and the Soul Town channel. I'm as disappointed as many of you were, when "Soul Street" got scratched during the merger of XM and Sirius. It was 50 times better than what's on now. I guess they had to pay extra for the GOOD soul songs! We used to do the late night rides to the next town listening to Soul Street and flipping out at some of the great stuff on there, some we'd never heard before. "Let's cover that one!" was often screamed out, but not with THIS channel! It downright sucks! I really kinda just listen to it for how bad it can be! Like today I was checking it out and there was a Curtis Mayfield song on and the bass was so damn outta tune I wondered aloud (even though no one was there) "who would approve that take?" So I continued on for another hour or so, putting up some white-boy soul, Spinners B-sides and meandering Barry White melodies when the straw that broke the painter's back came on, it was The Isley Brothers cover of the Seals and Crofts song, "Summer Breeze". Oh HELL NAW!! You wanna talk about sucking?!..OH.....My....GAWD! And the worst part about it is that it reminded me that I actually paid money for it when I was younger. I bought some "best of.." thing with it on there and I remember, even at 18 years old, I thought it was a REALLY REALLY REALLY bad idea. Don't put no "Doobie in my Funk!" (as Parliment Funkadelic put it), and make DAMN sure you don't put no damn SEALS AND CROFTS IN IT! NO! you can NOT make ANYTHING funky!

Sent from my iPad

HD

2010-12-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

There are times in your life when you don't WANT HD TV!

2nd record revisit

2010-12-20T22:40:00.003-05:00

Some 14 yrs. after "What Else Can Go Right" came out on ESD records (Minn., MN) I'd like to think back at what made me do what got did. As for the hat on the cover, I got nothing. I just remember Roscoe and I were walking through a hat shop in Nashville when I saw this thing and had to have it. Evidently, I didn't have to have that $125! The back cover, as you may remember, is the Caddy I used to drive to high school every day. Jasper White from Bunn bought it from my diddy and let me borrow it for the shoot. The trailer on the front cover is one of Jasper's rentals here in "town". The model inside did some work for some famous fashion designer but was living in Garner NC at the time, she threw up them 3 tall Buds she drank during that shoot, having not eaten that day.
The songs themselves go like this: "jesus in the alley": my favorite memory of this song (other than Mitch Easter walking in as I cut the vocal) was when The Yayhoos played it at Roskilde in Denmark. I started the show off in front of about 10K people, solo on guitar, thrown to the lions, but pulled it off. It was downright FUN! "beer drank in' woman" is a good song, would be better with some Country hunk doing it. I'm disappointed by the vocal mix, could'a been up a bit. "read my picture" is one one I'd put on a "best of" CD. I love the bridge especially. "getting' back together" was written about The Woods. I'd had a dream that morning that we DID get back together, woke up and wrote it. (I didn't remember dedicating this record to the Woods though!) Now here's the damnedest thing that's ever happened to me in my un-illustrious and stupid "career": #5-"man, that rocks!" was left off the list of songs on the back cover despite going through FIVE proof reads! What a bunch of dumb asses!
"what in the hell" was an old Woods song, which turned out a lot like we used to do it live. "college girls" speaks of the wonders of a girls young nubile body, over 18 of course! That would put her at about college age, "just about right". "No one knows it" was my best Keef impersonation. I played all the guitars. Actually, I played 7 of the guitar solos on the record. NONE could touch any of Mike Krause's amazing melodies though, like on the next song "what else can go right"...or the next song "nothing on you", another "best of" candidate! You may hear this one Saturday night! "one good heart" was kind of a throw away I wrote in the DADDAD tuning. "street fightin' man" was Steve's idea. He ran the record company. I gave it my best shot, but wouldn't have done it otherwise. "rotted on the vine' took me back to hanging around on my grandparents' farm growing up. I used to go help grandma pick strawberries or grapes (eating more than I picked, of course!). Sometimes they'd send me out on my own to cut a collard. Once I lost grandma's favorite pairing knife, throwing it like Daniel Boone. Still feel bad about that! But I DON'T feel bad about this record, given the bit of talent I was doled out.

new iPad!

2010-12-19T16:29:00.004-05:00

It's been a a wild, yet really great weekend. My wife, as she is of want to do, has again outdid herself in the
Christmas present dept. She gets bonus points/gift cards when she sells certain items at her job at Ferguson
Kitchen and Bath. This year she acquired enough money on her cards to get me an iPad. I had been wanting
one for several reasons, not the least of which would be for the 4trk Tascam app that I could present new
songs to the band with. I had to work on Saturday. It wasn't my usual painting gig. A little old lady that I DO
paint for called earlier in the week and said her house had been broken into while she was outta town and
could I come replace the broken windows. That's no problem, I do that for folks when I paint outside and they
have broken panes. Once I was done, she was so appreciative that she not only negotiated my price upward
but she also threw in an extra C-note! So I get home Saturday afternoon excited about my winnings and then my
wife hands me the iPad. shooz! I sure have been having bunches o' fun with this thing! So today, I take my tip
money up to Best Buy and get this Zaggmate thing. It's a case for the iPad
with a real keyboard in it, thus making it a mighty portable netbook type thingy. So welcome to the world of
Apple, Mr. Anderson.

Butterball

2010-12-15T18:26:00.002-05:00

Some of you don’t do Facebook and I understand that. You either don’t think the rest of the world would be interested in you or you’re really not interested in them. It DOES seem to be a waste of time most of the time. I mean, there’s a reason we lost touch with some of these people, right? I said when I got on it that I was gonna “clown” it from beginning to end. Unfortunately, that’s when I began to use it as a crutch for an outlet of my stupidity. I would throw something up just to get a conversation started, or say something dumb as shit just to make folks laugh. It became a replacement for the blog. I realize now that some of the things we say MAY need further explanation, like when I changed my name to “Butterball” on FB (of course, if you’re not on FB you would know nothing of this). Nathan was changing his name…not daily, but damn near. So I figgered I’d give it a whirl. “Butterball” was the first thing that popped in my mind, primarily because of my weight. I’m pushing 2 bills on the scales right now and I’m gonna keep that name until I lose at least 20 pounds. There’s no real effort being made at this point but at least I've got something to shoot for when I DO decide to lose it…becoming TERRY Anderson again!

Sir Paul

2010-12-13T22:55:00.001-05:00

When I woke up less than a week ago on Dec. 8th, I knew there was an important milestone connected to that date. Yep, it was that day, 30 years ago, that I cried in my mama’s arms because some dumbass shot one of my heroes, John Lennon. It blows my mind that it’s been that long since then and that through it all Paul has carried and on, not that he shouldn’t mind you, but that he sounds so amazingly no less for the wear. His 67 year old ass proved it even more tonight on XM radio. It was a celebration of XM’s 20 millionth subscriber. And good on’m, I really love having XM. You can get damn near anything on it. So here’s how tonight’s LIVE show went down by Sir Paul and his amazing band! They started things off about 8:15-ish with MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, followed by:
JET
DRIVE MY CAR
ALL MY LOVIN’ (Paul played the SHIT outta the bass on that one!)
1 AFTER 909 (my spelling, don’t like it?!...just wait!)
LET ME ROLL IT (an OakTeam practice fav)
FOXY LADY (huh? Yep…instrumental)
LONG AND WINDING ROAD (did NOT suck!)
1900&85
MAYBE I’M AMAZED (complete with wrong chord/start over!)
BLACKBIRD (who knew it was about the civil rights movement?!)
I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU (Paul still on acoustic)
AND I LOVER HER (w/claves & bongos)
-some Russian song about PATRUSHKA?
DANCE AROUND TONIGHT (a newer one)
ELENORE RIGBY
HITCH HIKE (yep, Marvin’s song he did as a tribute to the venue, The Apollo Theater. The PA went out so he did it twice!)
BAND ON THE RUN (all parts)…crowd roars…
OBLA-DI OBLA-DA
BACK IN THE USSR…more crowd roars…
DAY IN THE LIFE (INTO…)
GIVE PEACE A CHANCE
LET IT BE
HEY JUDE (cool breakdown with only mellotron & drums and crowd singing along)

First encore:
WONDERFUL CHRISTMASTIME
17
GET BACK

2nd encore:
YESTERDAY (w/keyboard strings)
SCRAMBLED EGGS (just a verse)
SGT.PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (INTO…)
Oh yeah! Alright! Are you gonna be in my dreams tonight….
THE END (wacky but cool)

Well that was it…He didn’t make me think that like Brett Favre, maybe he should just go home and fade away, like an old pair of Wrangler jeans. Maybe Sir Paul has more than a few years left in him on stage. I couldn’t hear why not tonight!

goodbye "Cocky"!

2010-12-12T10:24:00.001-05:00

Oh Lawd, Oh Lawd! We DO miss our “Cocky” up in here! A few months back there was a push by SOME in our neighborhood to rid ourselves of the community peacock that showed up here about three summers ago. I was NOT one of them. His loud yelps were few and far between and I only took them to mean that he was pining for the peahen of his dreams to come join him in his Bunn wonderland. I loved seeing his kabuki dance every Spring. It was so cool watching him spread his beautiful silken feathers tall and wide. His visits were always welcome. We laid out everything from seeds, to bread to pizza for him and he enjoyed them all and thanked us by returning another day for more. So one day a peahen WAS brought in to try and capture “Cocky”. I asked the Bunn police chief about these efforts and he said some folks were tired of his screams and blocking the road. Huh? “Cocky” was always quick to move whenever a car was coming! I didn’t believe him. Anyway, the peahen in the cage did NOT work! He, with his tiny little peanut brain, was smart enough to figger out that if he had to get inside that thing to get some then it wasn’t gonna be worth it. So he roamed the neighborhood for a few more months until that fateful day. This Fall, as he sat in a tree a kid walked underneath in a new coat. By complete co-incidence I’m sure, “Cocky” shit right on him. The kid threw things at him and got him out of the tree and chased him down. He took the soiled coat and dove on our bird, wrapping him in it. The kid took the coat with “Cocky” in it and called the Wildlife folks and they came and took him away. My youngest, Nathan was totally distraught. He called my wife crying and vowing to take revenge on the kid. But by then it was too late. No one was gonna bring “Cocky” back and release him into our yard for another pizza dinner, or allow him to sit on our fence again, watching cars go by. There would be no more kabuki dances in the Spring, no more feathers to put in a vase. No,it was the end of an era, and once again our little town seemed that much less enchanted.

my night out

2010-12-11T15:09:00.008-05:00

(seen here with Nantucket's Tommy Redd!)

Living 35 minutes from downtown Raleigh, it really takes a lot to get me outta the house after cocktail hour. I’m hell bent on not getting a DUI in this lifetime so I usually wanna just hang at the house and open a bottle of wine and relax my tired old bones after 6pm or so. Last night was different though. There were THREE events calling my name. Our friend Colin Gawel was in town from Columbus, OH, our other friend Kenny Soule was in town from Queens, NY and OakTeam keyboard whiz, Greg Rice was performing Steve Miller songs with his band, Spring Collection. Luckily, the time slots co-operated somewhat. Colin was going on at 8pm, Greg was (supposed to be) 11:15pm and Kenny’s show was a late-nighter at Slim’s. I got to Colin’s show a bit late, either that or he started early (which is my version of what happened). He’s another one of the few people I know that can do a solo show and keep it interesting. I saw maybe 5 songs and screamed along with the other 20 plus people for more. We hung out at Sadlack’s for another beer before heading downtown. Greg’s thing was at King’s, which has moved from its old location and for the better. The new place has a much better vibe and sound. “The Great Cover Up” is a yearly benefit (for juvenile diabetes) event they have that features local bands performing as other bands. Greg’s band, as I said earlier was doing STEVE MILLER. This was a “must see”, so I was even willing to endure three other “acts” before they went on. First up was BECK; the band doing these songs was capable enough but I for one, care less for the music. I mean, it’s alright, it just don’t really move me. Next was much worse. Three guys got up there pretending to be KILLDOZER (whoever in the taste that is!). It was in a word, horrible, brutal and painful (OK! THREE words!). The guitar player kept tuning even though he wasn’t playing real chords or notes. The “singer”/ fuzz bass player kept telling us that he got the lyrics from the actual “songwriter”, even though you couldn’t hear a DAMN thing he was singing. And the drummer only played floor tom and ride/crash. I couldn’t decide if I hated the music more or the band on stage for making me aware of this noise. Jack’s friend said it was what Cheech and Chong’s rock band would sound like. The REAL low-light of the evening though was just ahead. The next “band” (I thought you had to be musicians to have a band!), were performing as RADIOHEAD. It was more like RadioSHIT! The singer looked like he was watching TV and would have rather been anywhere else but there.

There was supposed to be a quick change-over of bands but for some reason these clowns couldn’t get it together. I guess they were up there trying to figger out where to plug in the guitar cord. Forty minutes of prep time and out they come…complete SHIT! The word “SUCKED” would be a compliment. That would imply that they could carry a tune in a 5 gallon bucket…nope! I, being one of the World's worst guitar players, am at this writing better than all three of the ones that were in that band last night…put together! They took too long to come on, they double-super-sucked and then on top of that they overstayed their welcome by at least 2 songs. I wanted to kill them. But Greg was up next and I thought “Well, I’ve made it though these shitty pretenders this long, why cause a disturbance and get hauled off by the Police just when the fun is about to begin?”

The first beats of “Swingtown” began as the curtain was being pulled back. There they were, The Steve Miller Band!...with Greg in a wig on keys, Sam (looking EXACTLY like Keith Christopher) in a wig on guitar and singing and Mark and Terry on bass and drums. It was loud and it was rockin’, everything I’d hoped for. And the packed house was letting out a great big “Ahhh…” as real musicians were actually giving them what they came to hear. The song ended in a swirl of keyboards as Sam started up “Fly Like an Eagle”…”time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future…” They nailed it and the crowd raised their fists in approval. A recognizable beat followed…”woo -woo!” they sang. It was “Take the Money and Run”. Everyone knew these songs and it was great to hear them played so well and so loud. Folks was all dancin’ and shit. But given the allotted amount of time that THEY respected, there was only room for one more. Sam cranked up that impeccable clean guitar sound of Steve’s on “Big ‘ol Jet Airliner”. Everyone in the room sang along. It was well worth the wait and at that time worth putting up with some of the worst shit I’d heard all year. Greg and Spring Collection were no doubt the hit of this year’s Great Cover Up. It was on to Slim’s from there to up the musicianship ante with My Three Sons. Kenny Soule is bottom line, the best drummer I know. And to tell you the truth, there’s not even anyone I DON’T know that I’d rather have as a drummer. He’s unbelievable and has been for as long as I’ve known him (since the early 80’s). Playing with him was old pal and stupid-crazy-good guitarist, Pete Petty and the beloved, stupid-crazy-good- bass player, Bobby Patterson. Bobby was the bass player in the band my wife was also in, No Vacancy. He’s a sweetheart and like I say, one of the best bass players you’ll ever find. Hell, when Grace was travelling with him years ago, he used to SLEEP with his bass! He has a hottie young wife now that I will assume is much warmer. They played jazz/funk instrumentals that were waaay beyond my musical comprehension or pay scale but I still enjoyed it. Trying to avoid the aforementioned DUI, I figgered it was time to leave before somebody bought me another beer as they are sometimes of want to do. I was satisfied that I’d had enough and came to see what I wanted to see. Well…minus that bullshit in the middle, of course. KILLDOZER?! Pppsh! Gimme a break!

In case you missed it!

2010-12-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

The Bunn Christmas parade is always a hoot!

http://picasaweb.google.com/terryandersonrocks/IGotUpEarlyForThis#

daddy's ding dong

2010-12-08T07:24:00.001-05:00

I guess about the stupidest thing that happened on my hiatus was the situation with my 82 year old dad’s erection. This is about the last thing you wanna talk about with your folks, right...their sex lives? And I definitely don’t wanna talk about how well his junk is working. When he was in the hospital a couple of years ago, I made sure to avert my eyes while he was cock-a-floppin’ all outta that gown. I mean, eeeewww! But after a recent trip to see his doctor my dad called and wanted me to order something on line for him. At first, I had NO idea what he was talking about because he was hesitant to explain it and that was the last thing I would have thought he needed. Apparently, the young lady of 70-something that he’s been seeing (he finally broke up with my Aunt…DON’T ASK!) is an insatiable little minx in the bedroom and in the words of Billy Idol needed “more, more, more!” So l took the numbers and codes down necessary to order the Cialis and did what I always do, gave it to my wife to do. So she started to print out the coupon for him to take to the pharmacy and it came out first…FOLLOWED BY 30 PAGES OF DISCLAIMERS AND WARNINGS! Thirty! Three, zero! It was $15 worth of ink! Anyway, I rushed it over to him the next morning and he later said it worked but took too long. He called the doctor back to see if he could get the dosage increased but I’m afraid to ask how it’s been going since then. I really don’t wanna know, ya know? I don’t wanna know NOTHING ‘bout daddy’s ding dong!

more notes..

2010-12-07T09:30:00.005-05:00

On the blog hiatus, yeah, thanks for your patience. At some point ya gotta take a break and find your voice again. During the last few months there hasn’t been a damn thing going on but the rent. I mean I COULD’A told you stories like; I was running on the beach and suddenly saw a dolphin jumping out of the water with an alligator biting down on it’s tail and then an eagle came swooping down pecking at its head and then a bear comes out of the dunes and then blah blah blah…but that ain’t what I do. I only tell the truth up in here. It’s straight up. So when there’s nothing going on but me going up and down a ladder and then coming home and drinking a bottle of wine…well, I’ll spare you the details of that.

So here are a few other notes about the trip that I remembered after writing it yesterday: One was that Greg had a diabetee in his finger. Well, lemme explain. On the ride out of NYC Greg passed out and slept on his hand funny. When he woke up he had NO feeling in the end of his pinkie…and it stayed like that for 3 days! It was Saturday before it returned to normal. Now, obviously it was a pinched nerve or something but I kept telling him he had a diabetee in it. He didn’t have diabetes. Just the one.
Something I failed to mention about Erica that she told us backstage in Wapak, it’s not that she rides a Harley, NO! It’s that SHE rebuilt the engine HERSELF! Let’s see, how did Mike Myers put it?...SHWING!!
Come to find out at The Wapak show, Jim S. from Illinois came to the show with his new bride of 3 weeks. He told me they walked down the aisle to my "Rock and Roll Girlfriend". How awesome is that! "She's kinda crazy obviously, if she's hanging out with the likes of me, she stays up with the late night crowd, and she don't care if the music's too loud, that's why I like hanging with her..."
There’s a doughnut joint up that way called Tim Hudson’s…or is it Tim Horton’s?. Hell, I’ve completely forgotten! After we stopped there on Friday morning, we started referring to it as anything BUT it’s real name…Tommy Hilfinger’s, Ted Dansen’s, Tim McCarver’s…so now I got no clue. I know the dude was some kind of hockey player or something. Just across the street from it was a Skyline Chili that offered up this fancy deal:

Beside THAT was a Clarion Hotel. As I was riding by there I came up with a great TV commercial for them. Let’s just say it involves a Kansas song…”Clarion, my wayward son…”
The scariest moment of the tour came while I was sleeping. Friday morning I had the most awful-est dream. I dreamed that when I got back home my kids had gotten a baby bear, a cub, as they all called.
I was freaking out. “What are we gonna do with it when it grows up?!” “Don’t you know that thing is gonna get big and KILL us!” I later realized that there was a California flag in the studio that subliminally put that image in my mind.

Oh, and in the dream…we had a swimming pool in the house. Just saying.
More pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/terryandersonrocks/OakteamNYOH1210#

Better than Shitty!

2010-12-06T17:33:00.013-05:00

Better than Shitty...
It sure didn’t take long to come up with the name of our tour last week. After not having played since August, there was potential for a few slip ups on stage. I think we were within a mile of leaving, at 9am last Tuesday, when Dave offered that despite our long lay off we would surely still be “better than shitty”. Hence, it was named…although Gregory (who flew up later in the day), being told of this, kept getting it wrong and calling it “less than shitty”, which I guess could be taken to mean the same thing.
It was smooth sailing on the ride to New York. Traffic was never a problem as we reached D.C. just after lunchtime. We got to the Holland Tunnel (why’d you go that way!?) around 5:30pm and had the usual delays through there, but we were other wise pretty excited about our arrival time at The Lakeside Lounge of about 6:30. We caught our breath and got our land legs back as we waited for the sound dude. We had heads and strings to change so it was a cool hang. At game time, some familiar faces started rolling in. Raleigh boys, Godfrey Cheshire and Kenny Soule showed up. Josh Grier was there (hadn’t seen him in a while!), a couple of the “taper” guys, Nate and some New Heathens, and so were some of Greg’s friends that he knew from Pamlico County, NC. Funny thing happened to Greg in the LaGuardia Airport bathroom, NO! not a “wide stance” incident. He heard some guy singing in the stall next to him and when the guy came out Greg realized that he’d gone to High School with him in eastern NC. They had a chat and the guy was on a layover on the way to Portland…small world!
The gig was rocking. I was MORE shitty than expected but the thirty or so in attendance didn’t seem to mind so we came back for a couple of numbers, cheating curfew by about 5 or 10 minutes. It was a quick pack up. The Lakeside is kind enough to provide “back line”, so you just haul in guitars, chords, snare, pedal and cymbals and you’re good to go. After a quick stop down Ave. A at a nearby pizza joint, we slipped on outta town and headed for Pennsylvania. We had rooms waiting for us near Penn State and that was a good long haul. The weather was messy and Greg and I entertained ourselves with beers and mini-bottles.

Of course we were excited to see each of the “Rest Stop Ahead” signs. We were less than excited to see the “Rest Stop Closed” signs. I don’t know how he does it (other than he’s young and energetic) but Dave managed to carry us in his van (sweet “eVANgeline”), with a Rock stop off in NYC, all the way from 9am one day until 4am the next. I’d say I was too old for this if I wasn’t having so much fun!
We woke up 10-ish to sound of sleet beating on our first floor window. The winds were still howling and as I looked out I noticed snow beginning to mix in. We still had GOOD 4 hours to go. After a fairly decent continental breakfast, with entertainment provided by a gay employee trying to pick up a couple of husky construction types, I proceeded back to the bathroom to cut my chin off. My four blade razor took a circuitous route and somehow skidded sideways to make a fancy little slash deep into my skin. I had some liquid band-aide with me but I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding long enough to apply it. So away we went along I-80 with me riding shotgun, grabbing a fresh napkin all along to hold my chin on with while listening to “The Best of Jerry Clower”. It wasn’t until about showtime in Cleveland that it actually stopped bleeding long enough for me to give it actual medical attention. The show we played that night was my favorite of the week. We had worked all the kinks out in NY and found our groove. It was a respectable crowd for a Wednesday night and we gave’m our best. Every song was in the pocket and our singing was just fine. I couldn’t help but miss one face in the crowd that was always there though, Cousin Dave. He was the local DJ that had such a big influence on the music scene in Cleveland. I first met him and my friend, Samantha Fryberger when she took Dan and me over to Dave’s studio to do a live interview and a song or two on the radio before a Yayhoos show. We went back several times and The OakTeam even went and performed there one of the last times we were in town. I never knew he had health issues. He was such a sweet, soft spoken guy who, more than anything in his life, loved good music. I dedicated this, our best performance in Cleveland to his memory. I couldn’t help but think that while we were playing he really was still in the Beachland Ballroom with us, bopping along.
Again after the show, we had a ways to go. The rest of our trip would be based out of Columbus, OH, staying at the illustrious Crown Plaza hotel. Dave and I again were the last to be awake so we watched some “Family Guy” via NetFlix on his iPhone riding down the road. Our arrival was not quite as late (3am instead of 4) as the night before but I was ready to put my head on a damn pillow yo!

…and NOT 4!! I only got ONE head! Why I needs 4 pillows? I ain’t no infant! I don’t need one on each side of my body so I don’t roll off! )
I slept really hard and felt pretty damn good when I woke up the next day (same day really!). I hadn’t drank too much, a couple beers at the club and I mixed a couple of margaritas in the van. My chin still trickled blood after I forgot and used a hot facecloth to wake up, scraping it back open. We had an 11am downbeat in the studio to do some demos with our friend, Mike Landolt, an engineer/producer who has a studio there in town and has also done some pretty big projects in LA, not the least of which was O.A.R. He said he wanted to help out a really talented local girl (just 23 yrs. old) and needed a good band to back her up. As it turned out, we had a show drop out on us for Thursday in Toledo so we had the date open. After receiving the songs (in a VERY skeletal form) days earlier via Email, we were more than happy to play along.

The four rockers and one slow song couldn’t have been more perfect for us. Erica Blinn met us as the back of the van, ready to start unloading and start rockin’! What a cutie! It also didn’t hurt that she sings her ass off and plays the shit outta the guitar (…and harmonica, we later learned)! We went in and got right to work. Within an hour and a half, we’d laid the first track down perfectly. This was gonna work. We ran through a few more and ordered up some rockin’ Greek food. Please pardon my insensitivity but at some point I began translating everything Paul (Friedrich, our graphic genius and merch dude) said into “Hair-lip”. I doubted aloud whether Rosetta Stone had a program available for that language. At days end, we’d recorded all five of the numbers sent to us, and they sounded great! Erica said it was the best day of her life. I know how she feels. There’s nothing like hearing the songs in your head come to life. They’re great songs too!

Our next order of business was to treat ourselves to an awesome Thai dinner. Mike said the place to go was BASIL on High St. Our friend, and self-professed “stalker”, Linda Potts met us at the studio and joined the party. We had a blast and the food was as good as expected (although I still didn’t like the papaya salad, Jack!) By the end of the night, I was starting to get a bit, shall we say… “tipsy”, and started blowing my referee’s whistle. Apparently, that type of behavior is frowned upon in downtown Columbus because it was soon after that that the staff began coming over and taking our plates. Mucho, mucho thanks to Linda and Greg’s mother in-law for their donations of $100 each towards our dining pleasure. Our beautiful playing at Greg’s wedding prompted Mom to pass down some love and we really appreciated it.
Friday morning was pretty lazy as there was not much urgency to get to the studio. We’d cut rhythm tracks on all five of the tunes and just needed to do a few add ons. We also wanted to cut a version of “Weather or Not” for Erica to sing. At some point in the day I reminded myself that we had a gig that night. We also had a dinner date with Linda at her house before said gig. (I was really looking forward to her spinach lasagna!) After getting “Weather or Not” down we broke for lunch at Q’doba’s Mexican Grill. I think the food set us back because when we returned back to the studio there was a lot of lying about.

Finally, it was time to load into the Rumba Café. I didn’t even unpack my drums because there were two bands on before us and I figgered I’d just do it while they were playing. There was a buzz in the room, a 60 cycle hum or something that was affecting Jack’s rig so it took a while to find and cure it. We arrived at Linda’s (and her husband, Dave’s) cozy abode just after 7pm. After some “Oooh-ing and Ahhh-ing” at their wall hangings and Civil War memorabilia, we got down to business. I sat down and did exactly what I said I WASN’T gonna do, eat too much. That lasagna was so damn good that there was no stopping this little butterball. She had some awesome marinara sauce on the side (I heard the sausage sauce was THE BOMB too!), some rockin’ ass bread and of course, mighty tasty wines. We waddled back to the van and drove back to the club. Unfortunately, we were having such a wonderful time that we missed Erica’s set with her band. Boooooo us! Colin Gawel (from Watershed) and the Lonely Bones were just getting started when we got there. Colin’s our connection in Columbus. He hooked us up with the studio gig, the real gig and has in the past helped with securing some radio interviews. He and the LB’s had a new Christmas CD with a song that blew up that day on the FM lunchtime show. The club was packed. There was also a video crew there to record them playing the Christmas tune. I listened in the back, in a room just big enough for a sink and a broom. I had somehow fit my drums in there and had to try mightily to unpack them and put them together in that little space (that had also been crammed with the other band’s cases and shit). It was like changing clothes while driving! Insane! It took a while to change the stage over with no room to move pretty much ANYWHERE!
Of course, once we got on stage all of the hub bub instantly settled down…sanity restored. We brought 5 of the new songs out on display this trip and performed them “better than shitty”. There were a few heads turned like the RCA dog, but once finished the crowds roared in approval. They seemed to REALLY like “Ridin’ Around” and “Gambled and Lost”. The bartender in Cleveland was all about the latter “Those background vocals really MAKE that song!” We played late into the night because…that is what we do! We love playing with each other (shut up! not like that!) and we haven’t had much of a chance lately. And too, sometimes we just can’t stop the damn train from rolling down hill!
We sat up in room 443 just talking till 3am.

The next morning, after watching some horribly gross human on the PBS channel trying to sell us his “Play Piano Yesterday!” rip off CD’s, we kicked it on over to Colin’s Coffee Shop…Yep, THAT Colin. “The best grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup in town” the sign says and it don’t lie! We had a round of each served up to us and we pretty much inhaled them. Our new best friend, Erica Blinn had so much fun hanging with us that she didn’t put up a fight when we wanted to throw her in the van and take her to Wapakoneta with us. So when we left Colin’s, we picked her up along with her guitar, amp and harmonicas and left town about 3:30 or so. The boys acted like they weren’t gonna have room for my Carolina blue Christmas tree (being the Duke and State fans they are) with her gear in the van too, but I found a damn way to get it in and ON STAGE that night (after the whooping UNC put on Kentucky that day! Woo hoo!).

The tree was given to me the night before at the Rumba. It was part of the video shoot. It was a fun, but cold ride to Wapak. I only yelled “FUN WAY!!!” one time. You’ll remember that as our ice breaker when there’s a lull in the van. Everyone has to turn around ass forward until I yell “FUN WAY OFF!!” Big Ron was happy to see us and he was working them phones when we got there trying to get folks out. Rt. 33 Rhythm and BREWS is our most favorite place to play. Them people come to Rock and they get IGNUNT drunk! The place is famous not only for its Rockin’ but also for its pizza.

We destroyed 2 larges after sound check. We rested a while on the “Pow’ful Merka” couch backstage before the 9:15 show time. That’s when the Olympic theme blasted from the speakers and out walked the band…minus me. As our intro music faded Dave blasted into “Battleship Chains” right out of the gate. I strolled out looking not unlike Timothy Leary in ALL WHITE and my Mardi Gras love beads. Once I sat down behind the kit it was ON!! BLAMM! “You got me tied down….” “Killin’ down in Dillon” was next and on down the line we went…whatever we felt like playing. “It’s your gig, do whatever you wanna do” says Big Ron. The first set was over an hour of rockin’, closer to an hour and a half I’d say. We took a short break and brought Erica on at the top of the second set. The girl’s a star.

She’s got the look (Hey! There’s one we haven’t played in a while!) and sounds great. She’s been in bands ever since she was 15, granted that’s only 8 years but she is solid as hell on guitar. I never heard her screw up once, not that I expected her to.
She looked like she was having the time of her life up there rockin’ wif us. Hell, we did too! I think I might have mentioned that she’s got some great songs and playing them loud like that for the folks was a good old time. We kept her up after blasting through three of them for her to sing along on “Purple GTO”. Dave broke one string and pulled a few more off for his guitar solo, noticing this I called out for “37 Miles in Reverse” as next song. I knew his spare was in an open E for me so I figgered it best to get that one outta the way. He later said “Good call!” Only problem was that the song that I had spit out perfectly (after not playing it since ?...Christmas of last year?) the night before, became a brain fart to me in the last verse. We stopped the song and talked about it on stage. Dave said what it was but I didn’t believe him. So finally I just stood up and handed him the guitar and said the hell with it! We’ll rock another damn song! The last two numbers have settled in to being “Enabler” into “Time for You to Go” (a sentiment the crowd took to heart in C-bus!). It’s a perfect match; one goes right into the other. Erica came back up and played the absolute shit out of the harmonica (like on the record) like she was born in Chicago in the early 30’s! We rocked the hell out of it and said “adios amigos”. The crowd was going ape shit… swinging tables around, throwing chairs out the windows, chewing they’re arms off, hitting themselves over the heads with beer pitchers, humping each other, acting like they were kicking a football…OK, they WEREN’T acting like they were kicking a football, but they WERE screaming their guts out! One guy’s liver fell right out of his mouth! So in order to restore order we came back out and did “Weather or Not!” into “Punished” (as it’s called). Every version of “Punished” is completely different and this one was no different (HUH?!). Somehow this one took a weird twist when I brought a China-man into the mix. It was damn silly as hell but I made it work. I think next time we play there we should be billed as “The OakTeam: Band and Comedy Show!” I mean things were already wacky enough when I started singing “Can’t pay the rent, put food on the baby’s feet! It’s all been spent, putting shoes on the table to eat!” in “100 a week”. Erica said that’s when she knew I was dumb…”you are SO dumb, you are really dumb!” “Thunderbird” and “Check Please” rocked the lights back on and it was time to wipe our tears of joy and load the van. Big Ron is always good about offering up shots before we leave. So we had our toasts, got our hugs and our pizza to go and headed back to C-bus. On the way back, we listened to…believe it or not, ELO and Fleetwood Mack and sang those songs loud as hell as we enjoyed a few more cocktails. I had a half a bottle of wine left from the club and poured it into a tumbler for the ride. Greg laughed at it. He couldn’t believe I had that tea glass poured to the top full of wine. We were all very sad to drop Erica off at home.

We wished we could have kept her and kept on going to another city. Lexington, KY, Nashville, TN, Atlanta, GA…and on and on…
Sunday’s ride home was uneventful, but beautiful. Snow blanketed the West Virginia mountains, but thankfully the roads were OK. Dave missed the turn to our last chance to stop at Dairy Queen.

Damnit!! A trip without Dairy Queen! Awwww, that’s OK. You know what? If you could get rich on FUN, we’d all be millionaires right now. This was one of the best OakTeam trips ever.

Jerry Williams

2010-09-23T10:32:00.002-04:00

Please read below about the loss of our friend and music guru, Jerry Williams. He started Raleigh's first real punk band. They were amazing, much due to his true genius:
Jerry Williams

the end.

2010-09-18T08:15:00.001-04:00

I can see it now. It’s a beautiful December day, just before Christmas, 2012. This is the last day on the Mayan calendar and people are edgy. But things seem normal, kids in Maine are throwing snowballs, retirees in Florida are walking on the beach with their metal detectors and fat guys are surf fishing on the Outer Banks. But in Washington D.C., President-elect Palin is being shown her new digs in the Oval Office. As she’s looking around she opens one of the drawers and shouts “HEY!! What’s this big red button do?!!!
...The End.

2010-09-11T08:58:00.001-04:00

the torment

2010-08-29T11:09:00.000-04:00

“Well that was a pretty ‘asshole’ thing to say” I told myself out loud. I was describing to my wife about my attitude towards the NEW music channels on the XM radio someone gave me when I uttered “If I wanted to hear a song like that, I’d write it!” Now that sounds like I’m saying that I’m the only person in the world qualified to write a song that I can listen to. That’s hardly the case. It’s just that my head is (and has been for a long while) always wrapped around writing the perfect song. I listen to those channels and hear great songs but I have a hard time just listening and ENJOYING the music. I have to break down what they SHOULD have done! “Oh that song’s too long! Why didn’t they go to the “5” there?! Blah blah blah!” It drives me crazy sometimes. That’s why I mostly listen to the old stuff when I DO listen to music. I know where the songs are going and it’s all alright. The classics in my mind are etched in stone and flawless. I mean what would you change about “Behind Blue Eyes” or “Midnight Rambler” or “Crosstown Traffic”? But at the same time I can’t listen to the oldies for very long either. For the same reasons I love them (I know where they are going), I also dread them. So I’m kinda in a damned if I do and damned if I don’t situation with popular music in general. When I hear the new ones I wanna change them and when I hear the old ones I’m tired of them. I think I’ll just keep writing my own and let other people tell ME what I should have done…or maybe I’ll write a classic one day!

my new favorite drummer!

2010-08-28T21:22:00.001-04:00

Fayette-nom

2010-08-21T13:11:00.003-04:00

I have to be careful about how I talk about Fayetteville, NC since my wife is FROM there but just yesterday I was thinking back on the gigs I’ve played there. All but one, the back-up singer/tambourine player gig I did with Dan’s “Hearing Impared” band, were with The Fabulous Knobs. This was Jack’s and my first band. The Knobs were no slouches. We were actually as good as any bar band you’d ever wanna hear, and I’m not just saying that because I was a part of it. Just ask anyone from around here who ever caught one of the shows. We were good enough to consistently SELL OUT The Pier, a 600 seater in the underground of Raleigh’s Cameron Village Shopping Center. The band was pretty wild, with a hellbitch (I say lovingly and I’m sure, with her blessing) banshee lead singer and an ensemble of clockwork musicians playing rocked up Motown and Soul songs, along with a growing smattering of originals. The one thing the Knobs were NOT though is METAL, the one and only type of music that military personnel seemed to understand at the time, and maybe to this day ( I haven’t been there lately). So the band never really caught on in Fayette-nom. We tried several clubs but never with much success. I DO remember one night though that I’ll NEVER forget. The club was just outta town and the crowd actually stuck around for most of the night. The stage was low and we were in the thick of it with the drunks which might have made the difference. I mean, we weren’t Metal but at least we were loud! There was a particularly drunk young “lady” there that kept yelling out the nastiest things you could think of. We’d look and each other and laugh as she stood in front of the stage and repeatedly hollered stuff like “Stick it in the hole!” (huh?) and “Play ‘Free Bird’ and I’ll give you a free blow job!” (uhhh…how much did you usually charge?). She was a complete mess. Finally, we took a break and as guitarist Keith Taylor was standing at the urinal having a piss, another young drunk pulled up (or out, I guess you could say) along side him and asked “Whatchu you think of the band?” Keith never let on that he was actually IN the band, he just smiled and said “I don’t know, they're alright I guess”. The drunk’s head popped back a bit in astonishment.
“Alright!!?? Hell, I’d rather go to a goat fuckin’!!!”
Like I said, we never really caught on in Fayette-nom.

it's Cindi Lauper!

2010-08-09T22:26:00.004-04:00

I can see it now. “Tonight’s guest star on The Donnie and Marie Show…from The Olympic Ass-Kickin’ Team!…Mr. Terry Anderson!” Marie starts singing…”I’m a little bit Country!”, followed by Donnie’s “I’m a little bit Rock and Roll!” and then I prance in and in my best Richard Simmons voice offer “and I’m a little bit New Wave!”. Marie has no words. Donnie chimes back in…” I’m a little bit whaaa? Huh?” Unfortunately, this is a dream I can’t wake up from since I actually DID dye my hair pink Saturday night. Will and Nathan were foolin’ around with the stuff when I walked in after an extended wine tasting here at the house. “Gimme that!” I grab the wand just start slathering it across the front of my head. Will was all “Are you sure you wanna do that?” “It’ll be fine” I said thinking it was the temporary coloring. The next day I not only FELT like ass, I felt like AN ass. “What did you let me do that for?” I asked my older son. “Don’t worry it only lasts for about three months” he assured me. “Oh shit!” I swear the older I get, the damn dumber I get! I look like I'm trying to find my inner 13 year old girl!

favorite lines

2010-08-07T20:23:00.004-04:00

I’ll get lucky sometime and a line will come to me that makes even me chuckle a bit. I guess that’s the whole reason I do it, the writing thing! I’ve got a bunch of favorite lines on the new record but only you, the WhassupTA blog reader get to know my favorites…

Too Much Information-
Right outta the gate, about the dumbest thing I could think of was “You and your old lady were getting’ down last night, with a hand held mirror and a cheap flashlight”. It’ll make sense when you hear the whole thing (as applies to the following tunes), but it’s NOT the nastiest lines in the song. The next verse is probably the nastiest thing I’ve ever written for public consumption, but no one will be able to figger out just how nasty it is, it’s THICKLY veiled.

Gambled and Lost-
This one reminds me of WHETHER OR NOT musically for some reason, but the lyrics are very biographical and it’s hard to pick a favorite line because they all flow together with the story of my life…along with some Temptations background singing! The last verse is always the one I’m singing in the outdoor shower though…
“when I was back in high school I joined a Rock and Roll band, and the music stole my life! I should’a studied hard and got a good job, by now I would be boss…but I gambled and lost!”

Enabler-
This is my favorite song on the record but I can honestly say that it won’t be everybody’s. That’s a good thing, right? SEX enabler is what it’s about…of course! But I dance around the obvious throughout (other than “she plays guitar and I love her licks”, probably the corniest line ever!) and tie it all together in the last verse... “She says I don’t need no help, there’s no need to deny myself, but I’ve got a problem I’ll admit, I’m addicted to her, and I just can’t quit!”

Ridin’ Around-
This one, more than any of the others embodies the spirit of the whole record. It’s summer and the top is down the stereo is cranked!! What says that more than some kids ridin’ around and hollerin’ at girls?!
“I’m a good looking guy, I can find a rich wife, she can take care of me while I spend my whole life just…ridin’ around…” gives the best excuse for not doing homework and hanging out with my dudes…

Spend the Night-
The first verse sets up the whole thing…
“I think I’m already in love and it’s our first date, and we’ve been having so much fun but it’s getting late, and we’ve both had too much too drink, so let me tell you what I think…spend the night!”

Time For You to Go-
This one is making everybody hit replay… and more than once! Probably…NO! Positively! The most
BADASS/EVIL song on the record. TIME FOR YOU TO GO as in…get the hell out! Our friend Rod Abernethy knocked it outta the park with his harmonica playing. You’d a thunk we had him shipped in from a blues club in Durham, 1948.
“Oh… hell naw! I can’t be missin’ another bottle of Patron” is my fav line on this one.

Nervous Around Pretty Girls-
This song started the recording process for the record…my second favorite…but man! That hurts to say! It could easily be a Prince song. Dave’s solo is beyond great as many of them are on here.
“You’re too good for me, I know that it’s true, but beautiful girls…they need love too!”

318-
Again, put that top down, baby! It’s all about summertime, cars (my BMW 318i in VERY particular!) and having a blast. Best line on the record, bar none is in the bridge…
“Stereo sweet and loud, making every Bavarian proud”

I’m Your Radio-
Hope you like beach music. Of course, it’s not sappy like Chairman of the Board would make it. It’s much edgier. “I can keep you company and make you fall in love with me, beside you when you fall asleep at night, I’m in your dreams and off we go when melodies and harmonies unite!”

Not Turning Around-
This one is as deeply personal as it gets. It all started with me being pissed off because my dad was mad at ME for not going to church. I am A.D.D (attention deficit disorder) as HELL! I can NOT sit in one place for that long listening to something I’m skeptical of, sorry. Maybe with medication, I could be a Christian! It’s got a STRONG anthem feel and I’m basically saying I YAM WHAT I YAM! …and at 53 years old… I ain’t fuckin’ changing a thing! “Disappointment in your eyes is all I see, it’s killing me, trust me when I’m telling you we’ll be OK, we’ll make it through!” … “I just know we’ve come this far, I’m not turning around!”

Your Sweetness (is my weakness)-
The humming line between verses and choruses is actually my favorite part of the song but if I had to pick a line that summed it all up, it would be the opening ones…(btw-shout out to Greg for playing beautifully on this one!)…”Snakes and spiders are your worst nightmare so you pull me tighter, you’re soooo glad I’m there…and something inside of me… says where else would I be?”

As you can tell we’re really excited about this record and those close to it think it will “blow up!” With any luck…fingers crossed!!!

hey! you! get offa my truck!

2010-08-03T09:03:00.001-04:00

“SURE!” I said excitedly “I’ll be glad to haul that metal off for you.” What grabbed my interest was the small pile of copper laying there with the old lawn mower, chipper shredder and other heavy household items. She was also throwing in rusty old steel barrel bands, a destroyed toaster and some general crap that I had to find a home for. We loaded up about half of my truck with the junk and I headed to the recycler dude. I had carried stuff to him before and for a VERY small amount of metal received about $110, worth the ride for sure. Friday I pulled in and both bay doors were closed. It seems the guy took an early weekend, closing before 4:30pm and leaving a note saying he’d be open at 8:30 in the morning. The next morning I had nothing much to do so I decided to ride back up to Raleigh and get that crap off of my truck. I figgered I’d stop by my dad’s and see if he had anything to contribute. Of course, you’re not gonna stop by your dad’s and get away in mere minutes, it took close to an hour to get away from there…and with nothing added to the pile. Finally, down the road I headed to the capital city. Just over the next hill, my uncle was picking blueberries. I hadn’t seen him since his wife died so I really needed to stop and say “Hey”. “Don’t you want some blueberries?” he asked. “SURE!” I said excitedly again. I poked around in my truck for a plastic grocery bag and shot the shit with him while I picked and ate, a damn fine breakfast as it were. Thirty minutes or so went by when I decided I’d had enough. We said goodbyes and I cranked the truck and pulled into the next driveway, my sister’s house. Thirty minutes later I was finally leaving and headed to the metal place. I drive for the 35 minutes it takes to get there and pulled in again to find the doors closed! “SATURDAY 8:30-12” the sign said as I looked at my phone to see what time it was, “12:10”. I remembered my uncle telling me about another metal place in town and sure enough it was closed too. So after a brief stop at Jack’s house to talk about the record I headed back home with not a damn thing to show for my efforts, some 4 hours after leaving. “It’ll have to wait until Monday” I thought. So the ugly bunch of crap sat on my truck the rest of the day and all day Sunday. Monday morning I was looking forward to freeing myself from this cursed metal thing so I was there at my original dude’s place bright and early at 8:40. I told him I was having trouble finding him and he looked in the back and quipped “Well, you ain’t got nothing for me!” “What about that copper?” I said. “OH!...oh yeah!” He picked the pieces out and threw them on the scale. He told me the weight but all I heard was “$29.08”. OK, that was gas money. “The rest of that stuff is steel, you gotta go to the other place. He takes everything!” So being that it was time to go to work I figgered I’d wait until afterwards to drop the rest of the pile off. I worked hard all day and took off about 3:50pm thinking that gave me plenty of time to get there if they too closed at 4:30pm. Of course, I get there and the rude young fellow says “We’re CLOSED! That’s why the gate says CLOSED!” “Well, it was open enough to get into!” I said. There were no closing times on the gate. You had to drive in and around to read them. “I’ll take the shit to the dump!” I muttered, driving off. FIVE times I tried to rid of that shit! I never made it to the dump so as of right now it’s still on the back of my truck. I’m gonna try ONE more time today! If I can’t get rid of it this morning I’m gonna pull down a damn dirt road and start throwing the shit in the woods! Thanks a lot, lady!

nothing new under the sun

2010-08-01T10:01:00.006-04:00

Well….as they say, there’s nothing new under the sun. Jack and I got into the discussion yesterday of song titles. It all started with what I was calling “Sweetness”, the last song on the next record. He Google searched the title and showed me about 4 million other songs with the same title. “OK, this’ll make it 4 million and one!” I thought. But he urged me to make it different and I finally gave in and so most likely the title will be printed as such: “Your Sweetness (Is my Weakness)”. OK, Google search THAT and what do you get? Barry White! Are you kidding me? Barry White has/had a song called “Your Sweetness is My Weakness”? You know, I thought I was pretty clever coming up with that song but it only reinforces the notion that you have to be pretty obtuse to say anything new at this point in the history of songwriting. I make it impossible for myself to steal song titles (unless I just do it on purpose) by not listening or HARDLY listening to anything that’s come out since 1973. I’ve pretty much been walking around in a daze since then listening to the music in my own head (what the song “I’m Your Radio” is all about).
This morning I got curious about the rest of the titles and here’s what I found just on the first page of Google searches for the names of each song:
“Too Much Information” – is also a song by Duran Duran and a song by The Police
“Gambled and Lost”- has a 1982 copyright and seems to be performed by The Greg Austin Band (?)
“Enabler”- is a June 24, 2010 release by “string shredder” Mark Harkins and this girl who also sings a song nothing like mine…

“Ridin’ Around”-couldn’t find one entitled this (oddly enough), but Google reminded me of Chuck’s “No Particular Place to Go” and the lyric “ridin’ around in my automobile”…
“Spend the Night”- of course, I realized the conflict with The Rolling Stones “Let’s Spend the Night Together” but decided to write the song anyway, it’s where the melody took me...and I’m glad I did! But there are also songs with this title by someone called PLIES and Rashaan Patterson, not to mention that it’s the title of an album by The Donnas.
“Time For You to Go”- came up as a song by BARLOWGIRL and there’s Bobby Darin’s “Until It’s Time For You to Go”. I guarantee that neither one rocks like ours!
“Nervous Around Pretty Girls”-is a lot more rockin’ than Justin Bieber’s “Sometimes Nervous Around Girls” and not nearly as stupid as “Pretty Girls Make Me Nervous” by Fruit Basket.
“318”- Yeah! I did it! No songs found with this title! There IS a website dedicated to the car though.
“I’m Your Radio”- again none found but there’s of course “I’m Your Captain”, “I’m Your Baby”, “I’m Your Man”…etc.
“Not Turning Around”-someone has a song called “The Significance of Not Turning Around”. There’s also Bonnie Tyler’s “Turn Around” and Jimmy Buffett’s “Turning Around”, so I win again!
And that’s all of’m. This is the first time I’ve actually sat down and concerned myself with this nonsense. I really don’t care. I mean I really REALLY don’t care how many songs have the same names as mine. If I stopped to worry about that, it would eventually come down to me Google searching every line to see how original they were. My brain is pretty much turned to the OFF position when I’m writing. To turn it ON would be over thinking and thus, waaaay less creative in my book.

free porn!

2010-07-31T16:17:00.001-04:00

There was something about growing up in Raleigh that I always found to be a little weird. After the drive-in movie craze started going bust due to the advent of the VHS and later the DVD, there were a couple of them that started showing well…shhh! Porn. How did I know? Because it was right there in front of God and everybody, visible as you drove by, right there on the main highway! The Tower Shopping Center is now where the Tower Drive-In used to be. It’s right beside Old 64 Hwy. and used to be on the way to my Grandma’s house. If we were on the way back at night, it was nothing for us to pass by and look over to see it all hanging out. I mean, how was this legal? You could just pull over and walk up the hill behind the place and have a seat and enjoy the show. In fact, my great Uncle lived on TOP of that hill. I’m sure he peaked out the windows a few times, if he wasn’t actually sitting out on the front porch with a cool one. There were no fences or anything to try to hide these people’s dignity. Oh wait, they were porn actors and actresses, they had no dignity! Anyway, the same was the case as you left town on Hwy. 70 going towards Garner. I think it was called the Star-light Theatre or something, but it too was a full frontal get down pointed in the direction of the passers-by. What made this one even worse is that it was kinda in a curve so there was a longer time of XXX-posure! I’d never be caught dead at one of those places. I always went to the Forest Drive-In, which faced AWAY from the road. At least they had enough class to keep it away from the kiddies!

NYC-CTS

2010-07-28T19:13:00.008-04:00

Jack and I made the decision a while back that this was very special record and needed very special attention. We put the bug in Roscoe’s ear that we may need a specialist. He made it clear that he was “here to help a brutha out”, as I say in the song “Time For You To Go”. So last Thursday Jack and I flew to New York and met with the doctor and discussed the ailments of our 11 sick patients. There was hope for all of them, we knew that, and we were reassured by Dr. Eric “Roscoe” Ambel that he would do all he could to save every one of their precious souls. Our host in Brooklyn was one Robert Becker. He stays in the Slopes as it’s called up there and is just a 20-30 minute G Train ride to the song hospital, also known as Cowboy Technical Services. Its 20-30 minutes if you know where you’re going that is, if you don’t, like Jack and me, it takes about an hour and a half.

Mr. Becker fancies himself a top notch travel agent, that’s because he is. He’s the MAN if ever your flight is cancelled or if you need to get somewhere FAST! He also will entertain you with stories from his family’s past and his many travels around the world.
Friday was the big day, the day to start making sense of these songs and honestly, the day they would begin to come to life. Assistant surgeon, Tim Hatfield was hard at work when we finally arrived after texting many threats to be “almost” there. He had scalpel in hand and was going to town on the kick drum of “Gambled and Lost”. Dr. Ambel trusts Dr. Hatfield with all of his finest gear. He’s a compression master! (You can also see Dr. Hatfield’s name on Keef’s “Main Offender” record as he helped engineer that among many other records I’m sure you’ve heard.) But at times when he could hear the patient failing we’d hear “Hey Timbo!...lemme in there!” and then the master surgeon, Dr. Ambel would grab the controls and take over.

Once the patient reached a steady blood pressure he would hand it back off. I was surprised at the urgency and EXTREME care that each song received…and they never let up until every ass in the room was shaking and everyBODY in the room was a proud papa. Once “Gambled” was rolled off into the ICU, “I’m Your Radio” was brought in. This one really needed help and the good doctors dug in with all they had, assisted by anesthesiologist, Mario Viele. He’s the one that kept the food coming and the wine flowing, braving the heat AND the 6 flights of stairs to make sure the family and doctors were comfortable. One by one, the three professionals took on the challenges of each patient, as Jack and I waited word (from a nearby couch) on their condition. We were there in support too, as occasionally, one of them would fire back a question about the patient’s history. It was a good team.

Day after day, from 11am to 8-ish pm, Friday through Monday, each song was brought in and worked on until everyone was completely worn out. Jack and I would eventually, after a few subway changeovers, find our way back to Mr. Becker’s house to hear a few more tales before retiring to our one room meat locker.

His dog, August barked a bit but she was just trying to get a word in edgewise. And to be fair to Jack and me, the subway tracks were being worked on all weekend so the trains would just randomly switch tracks on us and we’d end up in Coney Island or somewhere without knowing what the mumbling train engineer was telling us we needed to do to get where we were SUPPOSED to be going. But I digress, back to the songs. Sunday had been a productive day, so much so that we rewarded ourselves with some of the best New York style pizza ever made! (…along with some damn fine red wines, of course!) So on Monday, we had just a little left to do on “Too Much Information”, or so we thought. It was close to 2pm before the good doctors commenced to saving “Sweetness” (by all accounts the last song on the record), and our flight back to Raleigh was at 8:40pm, so time was running out. All was going well until the acoustic guitars were brought up in the mix, a collective “uuuugh!” rang through the room. “Mario! Hand me down that acoustic!” head doctor Ambel ordered. Somehow, I ended up in the booth with headphones and the thing around my neck as the record button went red. It was quick work though as the chords were easy and no special tuning was required. That being done, only a few more moves were left to do before we could introduce this rocker to world. As with all of the songs, the test was in the BIG speakers. They all got one final LOUD listen before calling them done. But this being the last song, we made it special by toasting a round of red wine as it met our final approval. There was jubilance in the air as the OakTeam had completed another dynamo, certainly their best record… and it all was with the help of the team of highly professional, caring individuals from the staff at Cowboy Technical Services, Drs. Eric Ambel, Tim Hatfield and Mario Viele. Cheers to them for working so hard to make not only US happy, but YOU happy too!!

Like Giant Tampons

2010-07-19T08:31:00.000-04:00

Everybody in American is hurting for the people in the Gulf and would love to help. No one feels the need to send money because that is BP’s responsibility. But all of America COULD be called into action! Think of how many old socks and underwear, dish and bath towels, sheets and blankets, old clothes, mop heads and sponges, wigs and hats, sofa cushions and pillows are thrown out every day, literally tons. All of these very absorbent items could be collected in bags by Waste Management or whoever your recycler is and trucked down to the Gulf. The shrimpers and their boats could be hired to drop their nets full of these items into the large pockets of oil in the water. After about an hour, these nets would be brought up, soaked with oil, and collected by larger ships or taken to shore for disposal. I think we as Americans would be more than happy to donate items for this cause.

executive decisions

2010-07-17T19:18:00.001-04:00

I didn’t have much work lined up after getting back from the beach last week so I figgered it might be a good time to go downstairs and make some executive decisions about what junk down there could stay and what HAD to go. At the end of the day I had a full truck load to haul to the dump. There were a few more boxes to go through once I got back though, and one was FULL of old cassette tapes. There was some serious consideration given to each tape but at least 80 percent of them were tossed. Here’s an idea of what made the SAVE pile; Countless TA demos including co-writes with Al, The Woods- LIVE at The Brewery 11/29/85 and 3/28/86, The Woodpeckers (Woods plus Dan)- LIVE 10/4/85 (prolly our last show), LIVE at Moonshadow (ATL)and LIVE at Clawson’s (HAD to be the weekend we first played Battleship Chains), also The Woods -LIVE at The Cat’s Cradle 8/5/88 and 12/31/89. Other cool LIVE stuff included NRBQ in Tokyo and at The Chicken Box in ’73 AND at 7th St. in Durham, Don Dixon LIVE in Europe (me on drums), Rod and The Faces in ’73 on the BBC (stupidly enough, this tape has audio from an episode of ALL MY CHILDREN on the other side. See, The Knobs used to…oh nevermind…) and a Keith Richards LIVE in LA boot. Some other demo type stuff included some Woods recordings with titles like ONE DAY DEMO: NO FADES! STATE LAW! and HOOKED ON WAH WAH. Of course, I found the 6 song Satellites demos that Jeff Glixman recorded (the demo that got’m the deal!) and their promo of SALVATION AND SIN. I found some ruffs for YOU DON’T LIKE ME and the test pressing of The Woods ITS LIKE THIS, something called MEMPHIS IN THE 60’S (I remembered really liking that my friend Mike Piercy made me), The Titanics badass demo including the song “Gonna Drag You Down to my Level” (so hot!), 4 tapes from my Dad’s birthday jam we always had in late April (no tellin’ what in the hell you’ll hear on them!) and a couple of things I did for the family. There was a tape of “Will’s Balls”, a song I wrote for Will’s (probably 5th) birthday that included the chorus “playing with his balls, playing with his balls!...”. I also found the “Wedding March” that I recorded for our wedding with me playing everything. I also saved plenty o’ pre-recorded STORE BOUGHT cassettes (remember that!? When folks went to the store and BOUGHT SHIT!!!? …sorry): Dylan- BIOGRAPH 1, Beatles-HELP & SOMETHING NEW, Mott The Hopple-LIVE (One of the best live records EVER!), Dave Edmunds-TRACKS ON WAX 4, The TapeHeads SOUNDTRACK (The Woodpeckers had a song on it, Dan’s “Open All Night”),Stones-HOT ROCKS and THE ESSENTIAL CARL SMITH!...and that was about it. I was pretty proud of myself for all my organizing and such and then as I was looking for something in the studio portion of my basement I pulled out a drawer that was FULL of…yep…cassette tapes! Jesus! Looks like I got about another hundred to go! Where’s the trashcan, honey?

Enchanted Fourth

2010-07-07T10:11:00.008-04:00

Boy! We had a stupid great time at the beach this Fourth. You know how you go somewhere for a few days and you come home more tired than when you left? Well not this time. We didn’t do a whole lot AT ALL but soak in the sun and the beauty around us. I heard everyone talking about how they’d never seen the water more clear. It almost had that blue hue like you see in the Caribbean and it was like that the whole time we were there.

We really lucked up with some great weather too though. Only on the last day there did the temps creep into the 90’s. The nights were cool and crisp, even dipping into the 50’s a time or two. Grace, Nathan and I left after lunch on Thursday. Our friend, David Gresham called earlier in the week and offered up his spot in Salter Path for us to stay. He’d been persistent for the past year or so saying how we really needed to go there and check it out. He couldn’t have been more right either. You walk out of his townhouse , into a small fenced in patio (with sadly, NO outdoor shower…we’ll fix that!) and then into a courtyard area. You walk past the pool (unless you feel the urge to jump in!) and up onto a huge deck overlooking the beach. There’s benches there covered by large umbrellas that you can hang out on or steps down to where all the hotties are hanging out on the sand, and there were LOTS of hotties around too (away from the public accesses and closer to where the rich folks have homes…just my theory). Nathan and I would nudge each other and nod over their way constantly. The ocean was like a lake most of our time there, and the temperature was perfect. Since the humidity was down, there was no real emergency to get in the water other than it just felt great. Being that close to the house also made it easy for bathroom breaks and beer runs. We found their beach umbrella in the closet and from that point on it was over. There was nothing much keeping us from setting up shop, parking our asses right there on the beach and watching the world go ‘round.

There was lots to see too…I mean, besides the hotties. We did the usual looking for shells on occasion, but even just sitting there we’d see pelicans fly by, a loggerhead stick his head out of the water or further out we’d see dolphins swim past. Once as Grace and I were on a walk, I happened to look up just in time to see (only about 40 or so yards out) a dolphin jump straight out of the water and back in, like he was training for Sea World or something. It was wild. They were really frisky that day. Just after that we saw one inside a wave as if to be surfing. We were always on the lookout for fins sticking outta the water. It is so cool to see them in their natural habitat. Late in the afternoons, we’d have to pry ourselves off the beach. It was just too beautiful to leave. But we’d have to start thinking about silly things like dinner and what to do that night. We threatened to leave one night to see a friend play a local club but thought better of it with the police in their Fourth of July DUI crackdown mode. Sunday we went for a drive to Cedar Island, near where Blackbeard was killed. I had never been out there and was curious to see what was beyond the popular beach areas of our great state. It wasn’t long before I realized why civilization stopped where it did. We saw lots of swamp land and water and not much else. It was beautiful, but at times it felt a little like being on the moon!

Occasionally, we’d go through a small town like Bettie, Davis or Stacey but we never saw much affluence, most folks made their living by either shrimping or fishing. Sunday night, after another beautiful afternoon on the beach, we watched fireworks over at Barry and Blair’s hot spot near Fort Macon. The deck on top of their place makes it easy to see ALL of the displays for miles around. Every town in the area has their own show with the granddaddy of them all just across the sound at Morehead City.

Some REAL fireworks sparked as we were leaving the park though. Some drunk walking his dog was staggering around with a wine glass in his hand and as we past him in the car he yelled at Grace and told her she needed to slow down. She was sitting on top of a speed bump at the time almost motionless waiting for him to figger out which foot to use next. “Excuse me!” she snapped back. “You were going over 25 miles an hour!” he quipped followed by “You want me to call the cops?!” “I wish you would!” Grace yelled back. There was more heat exchanged before we finally just drove off and left him to the rest his miserable life. Evidently, he’d been causing trouble all over the place and I think was eventually asked to leave. We dreaded Monday, that was leaving day. We put it off as long as we could. We’d go inside and clean for a while, then go back to the beach for an hour or so. Back and forth we went until we could put it off no longer. Finally, after 4pm we got in the car and left. With the weather the way it was and the water the way it was, there would be no other way to describe our long weekend as anything but “enchanted”. It was hard to not cry thinking about losing all of this to some greedy oil company. It makes you really hurt for those people in the Gulf and wonder if and when it will come and destroy our beautiful coastline.

the latest...

2010-06-27T10:49:00.002-04:00

I know, I know, your panties are all crumpled and twisted in a wad wanting to know the latest on the OakTeam record and when you can start looking for it on your local store shelves. My apologies, I’m old, I type a lot slower these days! Well, if you really must know, the hard drive containing all the tracks was lost in the mail on its way to Roscoe’s place in NYC!...FO’ REAL! I haven’t heard where it ended up or if it ever made it to anyone who knew what it was, but another was sent a week later and in fact DID make it to Roscoe in one piece. He seems to like the thing and will start the mixing at his NYC home. At some point in July it’ll be ready for the big speakers at his Cowboy Technical Services studio and we hope to go up and make the final “Hell yeah’s!” to what he does with the tracks. He always gets great drum sounds so I am especially looking forward to hearing those. We recorded them in a bigger room than before so they should sound better from the git-go. The plan is still to have fewer songs and use the remaining recorded tracks for the following record. So “More Smooth Jazz and Sweet Sweet Jams” will look (and sound) something like this:
TOO MUCH INFORMATION
ENABLER
GAMBLED AND LOST
RIDIN’ AROUND
SPEND THE NIGHT
318
TIME FOR YOU TO GO
NERVOUS AROUND PRETTY GIRLS
I’M YOUR RADIO
NOT TURNING AROUND
SWEETNESS

No word yet on if another version of the record, mixed by a mail carrier on Long Island, comes out under another band name.

tapeworm?

2010-06-24T17:42:00.004-04:00

Nathan and I were relaxing and enjoying a fabulous Mexican lunch today when he happened to look behind him at the carving on the back of his seat. I have to say it took me aback (not an easy task) when I realized the pornographic value of it. The scenario could inspire a really disturbing truckstop novella. Wanna tell me what you think is going on?

Baff House!

2010-06-15T07:53:00.000-04:00

It's just good clean fun! yo!
Finally finished my outdoor shower and it ROCKS! It 6x6 inside, big enough to chase each other around in. Come on by and bring a towel. See for yourself, ain't nothing like the great outdoors for getting naked...and clean!

Killin' Floor

2010-06-11T18:44:00.002-04:00

For me, the blues starts and ends with The Wolf. I couldn't imagine anyone still alive doing him ANY justice. Miss Linda in Columbus showed me otherwise. This is pretty badass in my book. In a "DUH" moment, who else's voice would fit this song any better?

how stupid is this?

2010-06-06T19:55:00.002-04:00

Rolling Stone list top 100 drummers...

Have we talked about this before? What is it?... a damn athletic event?
Jesus! How about the drummers with the most emotion, the most FEEL, the most
SOUL!? Where's the list for most dependable drummers?...the guys who are most like clockwork? Neil Peart #1? Why?...'cause he has the most cymbals? This list is SHIT!
I'll go with Keith Moon #1..how 'bout that? I cried like hell when he died! I'd come home from high school every day and play to Who records. Next on the list I'd have ANY respect for would be #2 Bonham who I'd also play to...and then #55, Ringo. Charlie's at 61, I'm sure he cries himself to sleep at night about that...but the real crime is that Al Jackson is at 97! Y'all some dumb sumbitches witch y'all's ignunt-ass LISTS!! It's MUSIC! NOT A FUCKIN' SPORT!!

1. Neil Peart (Rush)
2. John Bonham (Led Zeppelin)
3. Ginger Baker (Cream)
4. Keith Moon (Who)
5. Terry Bozzio (Zappa, Jeff Beck)
6. Bill Bruford (Yes)
7. Danny Carey (Tool)
8. Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater)
9. Ian Paice (Deep Purple)
10. Carl Palmer (ELP)
11. Stewart Copeland (Police)
12. Dave Lombardo (Slayer)
13. Steve Gadd (Steely Dan)
14. Vinnie Colaiuta (Sting, Frank Zappa)
15. Carter Beauford (Dave Matthews Band)
16. Tim Alexander (Primus)
17. Simon Phillips (Toto, Jeff Beck)
18. Rod Morgenstein (Dixie Dregs, Winger)
19. Matt Cameron (Soundgarden)
20. Dennis Chambers (Santana)
21. Chad Wackerman (Zappa)
22. Phil Collins (Genesis)
23. Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience)
24. Virgil Donati (Planet X)
25. Max Weinberg (E Street Band)
26. Vinnie Paul (Pantera)
27. Ansley Dunbar (Jeff Beck, Whitesnake)
28. Mike Shrieve (Santana)
29. David Garibaldi (Tower Of Power)
30. Steve Smith (Journey)
31. Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle)
32. Alex Van Halen (Van Halen)
33. Billy Cobham (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
34. Bill Ward (Black Sabbath)
35. Alan White (Yes)
36. Carmine Appice (Beck, Bogart, Appice)
37. Stanton Moore (Galactic)
38. Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
39. Scott Rockenfield (Queensryche)
40. Hal Blaine (Elvis Presley, Beach Boys)
41. Joey Jordison (Slipknot)
42. Marco Minnemann (Weirdoz)
43. Cozy Powell (Rainbow)
44. Tommy Aldridge (Whitesnake)
45. Chester Thompson (Santana)
46. Morgan Agren (Frank Zappa)
47. Jeff Porcaro (Toto)
48. Dean Castronovo (Journey)
49. Mike Giles (King Crimson)
50. Jeff Campitelli (Satriani)
51. Nick Mason (Pink Floyd)
52. Greg Bissonette (David Lee Roth, Satriani)
53. Ralph Humphrey (Mothers Of Invention)
54. Mike Bordin (Faith No More)
55. Ringo Starr (Beatles)
56. Zak Starkey (The Who)
57. Jon Theodore (Mars Volta)
58. Phil Ehart (Kansas)
59. Clive Bunker (Jethro Tull)
60. Jimmy Chamberlain (Smashing Pumpkins)
61. Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones)
62. Lars Ulrich (Metallica)
63. Brian Mantia (Primus)
64. Mike Sus (Possessed)
65. Jason Rullo (Symphony X)
66. Dave Grohl (Scream, Nirvana)
67. Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson)
68. Mick Fleetwood (Fleetwood Mac)
69. Ray Herrera (Fear Factory)
70. Brann Dailor (Mastodon)
71. Matt McDonough (Mudvayne)
72. Scott Travis (Judas Priest)
73. Jack Irons (RHCP, Pearl Jam)
74. Roger Taylor (Queen)
75. Jose Pasillas (Incubus)
76. Earl Palmer (session man)
77. BJ Wilson (Procol Harum)
78. Joey Kramer (Aerosmith)
79. Gene Holgan (Death)
80. Danny Seraphine (Chicago)
81. Igor Cavalera (Sepultura)
82. Brian Downey (Thin Lizzy)
83. Travis Barker (Blink 182)
84. Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters)
85. Nicholas Barker (Dimmu Borgir)
86. Paul Bostaph (Slayer)
87. Chad Smith (RHCP)
88. Brad Wilk (Rage Against The Machine)
89. Alan Gratzer (REO Speedwagon)
90. Matt Sorum (The Cult, GNR)
91. John Dolmayan (System of a Down)
92. Chad Sexton (311)
93. Mark Zonder (Fate's Warning)
94. Gary Husband (Level 42)
95. John Densmore (The Doors)
96. Jon Fishman (Phish)
97. Al Jackson (MG's)
98. Jim Gordon (Derek & the Dominos)
99. Dave Abbruzzese (Pearl Jam)
100. Sean Kinney (Alice in Chains

Focus?! Boaf us?

2010-05-25T08:41:00.000-04:00

Focus?! Boaf us? huh?
If the title of this blog doesn’t make any sense to you…well, it doesn’t to me either. I just remember that it’s the punch line to a joke about two girls and that I really couldn’t tell you much more than that. But the key word here is “focus” and to keep our dream alive of putting together a totally focused Summer/Pop/ Rock (with the emphasis on the ROCK!) sing-a-long classic we’ve come to the conclusion that SOME of our efforts may misdirect the entire record somewhat and need to be set aside for later use. Yes, I’m talking about cutting. All the big talk about songs like “(While I was) Hittin’ It”, “He’s your Girlfriend”, “As If…”, “Miracle of the Sun” and yes even the song Jack sings “Didn’t Feel as Bad” may hit the floor. I think we’ve realized in order to form a more perfect record (sounds familiar), we should collect the most summer-y, pop-y and rock-iest 12 songs and concentrate on them just so there’s a CHANCE we might get it out by Aug. (at the earliest) and more realistically September. The good thing is that as we have in the past The OakTeam could have a limited release of these other songs later, much like we did with the first OakTeam record and “You Can’t Bite Me with a Monkey in Your Mouth”. That one was big fun to ride around with as it had alternate mixes, solo-ed tracks of ignunce along with other full songs that didn’t make it, including a rollicking “Crazy like a Fox” and the beautiful “Count on It”. We could do the same with this record. So anyway, we’ll make the record better by doing this and it promises to be just what you’re in the mood for when you wanna sing along to loud Pop songs with the convertible top down!

Mr. and Mrs. Rice!

2010-05-23T00:31:00.001-04:00

For years we wondered when they'd make it official. Well, today was the day. OakTeam keyboard player, Greg Rice became the world's luckiest man, marrying the beautiful Elenore Spicer of Goldsboro, NC. It was an unbelievable event, complete with huge church ceremony, mad scientist organ player and Tarantino opera singer. The afterparty started with the remaining OakTeam guys performing the featured dances. First, Greg and Elenore danced to "S'Wonderful" sung by Jack, Elenore and her dad then danced to "If Not For You" sung by Dave and then Greg and his mom danced to "How Sweet it Is". After we worked our magic we then proceeded to git our drink on and ignore the other band who we never caught the name of.
Much love and luck to our brother and his new wife.

didn't feel as bad

2010-05-19T22:18:00.003-04:00

Last time The Oakteam was in Columbus OH, I was talking to uber-cutie, uber-fan Linda who said that our last show (which was shortened by the many band effect) wasn't long enough to give her a chance to get to feel bad the next day...Ahhh! I said...sounds like a song! Then the gears started turning in my head...Thanks babydoll, (hope you're feeling better btw!)Don't try stealing these dumb lyrics as they are protected by copyright laws, yo! Oh!...and on the record, Jack's singing this one...mostly cuz he's a better singer than me but also because this one fits his voice perfectly...

Didn’t feel as bad

After last night I was feeling alright
Yeah, I was disappointed cuz it wasn’t whut I wanted
We had a few stiff belts and you left with someone else
So when I woke up today I was doing OK but…

I didn’t feel as bad as I wanted to (x3)
And I wanna feel bad with you

And since I wasn’t out late I wuz feeling great
Without an achin’ head, I was in my own bed
Had on my pajamas and I didn’t have to vomit
Can’t believe my own luck but it really did suck cuz…

I didn’t feel as bad as I wanted to (x3)
And I wanna feel bad with you

Br.-We git to going at it and it’s all night long
Makin’ margaritas poured waaay too strong
We wake up in the morning and we just wanna die…..

Are you my baby? Well, sometimes…maybe…
Our thing is kinda loose, no chains and no noose
We’re just close friends, so let the best man win
And if I wake up sober, I want a bad hangover and…

I didn’t feel as bad as I wanted to (x3)
And I wanna feel bad with you
I wanna feel like trash with you
I wanna feel like shit with you.

new Exile

2010-05-18T23:30:00.002-04:00

Just outta Junior High School I was heavily influenced by the likes of bands like Mountain, Humble Pie, Grand Funk and dare I say…Black Sabbath. So I was a little pissed off at one David Enloe when he told me that I HAD to buy the new Stones record “Exile on Main Street”. It was $7.99 (afterall, it was a DOUBLE album!) and my mom worked at Arlens, the department store that had it. I asked for my allowance early so that I could get it. “Wait a minute, this sucks!” I remember thinking upon first listen. “Keep listening!” he told me. After about the third time, something clicked…ding ding ding! “Shit-a-mighty! This is rockin’!!” And when it kicked in…it kicked hard! This was not unlike every other Stones record after it for me. I never got them on first listen. I was always like “whaaaa?”… and once the melody stuck in my head I couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t help but think about David while I listened to the extra tracks from the newly released version. He would probably tell me “Keep listening”.

Old or Stupid?

2010-05-18T19:26:00.001-04:00

Am I getting THAT old or are they just THAT stupid? I just got back from looking for and eventually finding the new “Exile” and the first place I was told to go turned out to be a BIG disappointment. The new Best Buy in Knightdale was like walking into the CD aisle at Dollar General. I’m like, WTF?! Where’s y’all’s damn music at? So I went to The Stones section and it was all the usual crap, and not one “Exile”. After standing there in disbelief for about 5 minutes I finally walked up to the greeter lady. She was a nice black lady in her mid-30’s. “Don’t y’all have the new The Rolling Stones?” I asked. “Whass that? Is that a movie?” she says to me. I mutter “Oh my God!” and do a 180 out the door. The fact that somebody that age has never heard of The Rolling Stones just galled me. It reminded me of another unfortunate incident on Sunday at…where else but…Wal-Mart. The lady was checkin’ us out, there again, in her mid-30’s DID NOT KNOW WHAT AUSTRALIA WAS!!! Had no clue! “Whass that? “Uhhh…it’s an Island, a Continent actually…” Grace tells her. “What dey got? Why anybody wanna go there?” “Beautiful beaches, wide open spaces, cool plants, animals…” “Sounds like a bunch of dirt!” she quipped. I backed away. There was no talking to this one. I just have to wonder where we went wrong that we’re this far along in this society and folks that age are so uninformed about things that are just everyday knowledge for the rest of us. How did you get to the high position of Wal-Mart cashier and not have ever heard of Australia?! It’s like Sarah Palin running for VP OF THE COUNTRY! and not knowing that there was a North and South Korea! The other day I was behind a pick-up truck with the words “OLE’ BLUE” in the back window. I wondered if the truck was Mexican-American. I guess it just comes with the territory. I’ll just sit here and listen to my new Stones CD and have another shot of fabric softener!

I see light!

2010-05-04T22:14:00.000-04:00

Hey! Hey! HEEEEEYYYYYY!!! I see something! It’s a…a….light!! Albeit dim, it IS a LIGHT! Jesus! God Almighty!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I’ve been in a tunnel of brutal, challenging work for over three months now. I’ve been the sole painter and design consultant on a million$ plus remodel on a house since the 5th of February and I’m just days away from finishing the bitch up. I can actually go somewhere ELSE next week and work for a while! WOOHOO! The worst part of staying somewhere for that long is that it wears on you, not only physically but mentally. I would just come home every night and drink away the pain of working so hard, the saving grace being the Monday or Friday nights that we worked on the record. It was like having a JOB or something! I was soooo tired when I came home I had no interest in anything but sitting my ass down and doing nothing…no blog…no Email…nuthin’!! Hell, I was so in a daze yesterday that I drank fabric softener, nasty…plastic tasting… fabric softener! I had brought it from home in a water bottle to mix with hot water to take wallpaper down with…you can guess the rest of the story. I reached for my water…
Like I said, it’s been a 3 month beat down but I’m starting to see some light!!!

just saved you 106.4 MIL!

2010-05-04T21:44:00.002-04:00

Pablo Picasso's 1932 "Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust" sold for a record $106.4 million on May 4...and you can look at the bitch here for nuthin'!!! Hell, print it out and put it in a frame! Shit! Use the good paper, what is that?...about 20 cents a sheet?

uhhh...ya'll can thank me later...

2010-04-23T23:10:00.001-04:00

Happy Birthday Nathan!

2010-04-18T22:06:00.000-04:00

I did my best to design Nathan's cake like a drum, Grace did most of the beating on it, I just did the frosting...it was damn tasty too! Nathan's 14 on Monday! Unbelievable! We love you, dude!

his name is Rudolf

2010-04-16T22:30:00.001-04:00

“I’m ready for you NOW, man!” my lawn mower dude yells in the phone this afternoon. His name is Rudolf. He’s a semi-tall Ike Turner lookin’ chap that’s ready to damn go! I called him Thursday night at 8pm and told him I needed a belt on my lawn tractor thingy. “I’m ‘ol shoot off down there right now and check it out, I wanna get my name out around down there!” Well the neighbors are outta town, and I only cut my grass for them anyway so…uhhh….no rush, dude! But I let him come on any anyway, pulled the truck around to shine the lights on the thing and he was gung-ho as hell from the git-go. He had me help him lift it up onto his rattletrap of a Ford Bronco. “Naw, naw, c’mon!...just liff the front wheels up, like pickin’ up a basketball!” (an especially HEAVY basketball!) So we get the front end on. “Now picks up the back fender” he tells me. It really wasn’t as hateful a lift as thought it could’a been. “Now you gots my number…I just need $20 gas money to get going on it”. I wasn’t worried about this guy, although it could have been a supreme rip-off to cleverly snatch someone’s mower AND collect $20, he was just too believable. He was authentic, pure North Carolina. He worked at the Food Lion “Disthribwrution” (he BADLY mangled the word!) Center and had a daughter in private school. He was hustling for her. He told me twice about going to a guy’s house that had TWO mowers to work on. That was pretty exciting to him. “I made me 60 dollars that day!” I wished he would have charged more, I felt bad for him. He kinda reminded me of ME! …Undercharging and 90% more there for the praise than the money. He drove off in the night with my mower and I slept soundly knowing it was safe in his hands. So this afternoon, he’s calling me at 2:14pm and hollerin’ about how Auto Zone “ain’t gots that belt” and was I coming to Louisburg today…? Well, I hadn’t planned on it, being knee deep in staining a bookcase, but I guess if I’m gonna make the neighbors happy I better take and shoot off up that way! So I did. And I remembered that the hippie store that saved my life against the vicious yeast infection in ’97 was on the way! Why is this important? Cause they got them ear candles I been needin’ for my right ear…my passenger ear. It’s plugged up kind’a annoyin’-like. He finishes with “Well you call me whens you get to Ace(Hardware)!” and hangs up. After finally getting to the hippie store through the stampede that is Raleigh traffic, I give him a buzz and say that I’m there in 3 minutes. 10 minutes later, thumbs in pocket, he shows up. A couple of non-descript girls come in with a couple of non-descript problems just to make us wait. OK…let’s chit-chat. “Were you born on Christmas Day?” I asked. “Dint know if that’s why they named you Rudolf”. He smiled. “Naw man, my birthday is February…Friday the 13th….I’m bad luck!” I wondered if the 13th of February happened to fall on Friday EVERY year? Prolly not. That’s just what day it was when he was born. “ I was born on Christmas Day” I said. “You wuz?” “What can I help you guys out with?” said dude behind the counter, finally free from the bullshit that the two non-descript ladies were distracting him with. “I needs this belt right here” Rudolf says, handing him the unopened envelope with the model number on it. “A man with numbers! I love it! I can’t tell you how many folks come in here and say stuff like...’it’s a Murry!!!’ and then get mad at ME for being the dumbass!” the belt guy says. He follows with “Y’all been in here within the last few days?” “No” was my reply being rudely cut-off by my man’s “I have!”. “Notice anything different about that window over there?” We shrugged. “We cleaned it up…moved a bunch of junk outta the…” “OOOOoooohhhhh! I thought I noticed something!!!” said the Ike look alike. “Oh yeah” I muttered. “Here ya go boys…$27 and some change” “You $4 cheaper than Jeffereys” said my man. Help me get his name out. His name is Rudolf. I’m lighting my ear candle now.

sho nuff some sad news!

2010-04-04T13:43:00.003-04:00

You may remember my last summer's blog about this fellow. Sho Nuff was a cool guy and we're all hurt by his passing. Thoughts and prayers to his family...

http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/raleigh-loses-downtown-icon-sho-nuff/

Happy Easter!!

2010-04-04T13:40:00.001-04:00

For many years now, people have wondered but were afraid to ask. Terry, why are you such an ASSHOLE on Easter Sunday? What is the source of your elevated blood pressure? What makes you so hard to be around? Can you not just enjoy the beautiful Spring morning and the glory of God’s gifts to man? Are you not grateful for his love and the sacrifice of Jesus dying for your sins? Are you pissed about not getting an Easter basket anymore? Why are you stomping around like that? What in the hell are you mad about EVERY Easter Sunday!? These are all valid questions. I AM a total ASS to be around on Easter. Here’s the deal, you know that only a two lane road splits my front yard and that of Bunn Baptist Church, right? I can sum up my intolerable behavior with 2 words: SUNRISE SERVICE!!! I came THIS close to hanging my bare ass out the window this morning at 6am, but thought better of it. I know, I know…I can hear you now….”get your ass up and go!” WHY!? I can hear EVERYTHING from right there in the comforts of my own bed!

enabler

2010-03-31T08:32:00.000-04:00

Every notice how all of my songs are about sex? Well, if they aren’t about money or cars, they are. I thought I had a couple more in me before getting down to mixing this next record, and I do. But I was saving recording them for when Jack went to India next month. Dave is such a quick learner I can show him the basics and we can bust’m out at a pace of several a night if we needed to. We’ll see what happens in April, maybe we get one as fun as “Enabler”. I went to Jack’s Monday afternoon for what has become one of our scheduled meeting of the minds and wanted to get some sort of recording down of this song that had been bugging me all weekend. It’s written from the aspect of a guy who wants it (you know, “IT”) all the time and finds someone to meet that need, sex from an addicts perspective. And NO, Tiger Woods never entered my mind! But Jack was having trouble getting me a good groove. There are mountains of loops in his system and they are all too FUNKY! This is a straight up rocker. Dave shows up just in time and it’s not 30 seconds before he sees what’s going on and says “Y’all wanna go to the Storm (Indoor Storm, the music store where he works) and record?” I look at Jack and hope he’s nodding his head. Sure enough he is and we lock up and leave. I stopped to grab a bite and Dave had the drums set up and mic’d when I got there. We sussed through and arrangement for a little while and in only about an hour we were laying down seriously close (to being right) tracks. We had a great one going but I stopped during the vamp out. Oooops! “You were recording that?” OK, so we got down to business and just before the third take (later) I looked at my sticks and noticed one was broken, split from the middle of the stick all the way to the end that I held in my hand. It was sure to break during the next take. I show Dave. “Don’t think about it…GO!” It didn’t break completely but it sure was pinching the hell out of my hand. So think about that when you’re listening, along with my cracked rib, scraped (hamburger looking) arm and gouged out shin(I kicked a metal pipe sticking out of the ground on Saturday. I said the F word a LOT!), a broken stick was in my right hand and giving me a fit! It was worth it to see the grins on their faces as it was going down though. That was priceless! The things we do for Rock!...

curbdiving

2010-03-20T17:56:00.003-04:00

Bamm!!! It happened so fast I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Storm drain headed for my face, I’m putting my arm up to keep from knocking my TEETH out! With all the force of Julius Peppers hitting me while I wasn’t watching, I slammed my body against the curbside after getting my boot caught on the silk fence, in almost a diving type manner. More than anything, it hurt my feelings. I can’t be THAT damn ignunt can I? Apparently so. I was stunned, traumatized really. First, I checked my arm. I was sure it was broken, but I wiggled my fingers and there was no pain. If I had landed on the corner of the storm drain cover it would’a been a clean break, no doubt. It was SHARP! Luckily, I landed on the flat metal top. I was sore immediately though. I hurt all over, even though my arm and chest took the brunt of the impact. I felt like I’d been hit by a car. I had some soapy water on hand and cleaned it immediately. It happened just before quittin’ time, and Jack’s house was just down the street. We had recording scheduled and I made it on time but a little worse for the wear. “I need some liquor” were my first words outta my mouf. After a couple of Advil, I had a beer or two, then a few margaritas, a glass of wine…after a while it didn’t hurt to bad. Looks like hell though!
Thanks Jack for the photo!

Not Turning Around

2010-03-14T21:13:00.002-04:00

Writing songs is hard sometimes. Truth be told, I had about 70% of the songs written when we recorded them. Yes, there was work to do, still…as we were playing the HELL out of of’m! The music was in there (in my hay-ed) fighting to get out, but the actual lyrics were a line, verse or ALL the verses shy of being finished. All of the choruses were solid. Afterall, you don’t have a song without a chorus now do ya? So while everyone was assembled we went for it. It was up to me, and thankfully I relish the opportunity/challenge to make the song make sense. The hardest of this newest bunch of tunes would have to be “Not Turning Around”. The music is some of the biggest anthemic Rock you’ve ever heard, so the lyrics couldn’t be wimpy. The initial idea for the song came when I was being… shall we say… “talked to” by my Dad about religion. He is SO worried that I’m not gonna be in heaven with him. And I’m pretty NOT worried. Not because I don’t care but because I feel that I AM what I AM, and always have been. I’m living just about every day to make other people happy. Whether I’m making them happy with my painting work or with my songs, that’s my main focus, making folks happy. I have many faults as we all do, even my Dad, but I’m REALLY trying to live each day to help people and to lift some/whatever spirits I can. So the song “Not Turning Around” is about just that. I AM what I AM and I’m not turning my whole life around to be somebody else. Sorry. For as long as anyone has known me I’m still a hard rocking, hard loving, hard working MF!

I don’t know where we’re going
With the flow, or wind that’s blowing
I just know we’ve come this far and
I’m not turning around
We’re in the car and
We don’t care
Where we are or if we’ll get there
I just know I’ve come this far and
I’m not turning around

I’m not asking for directions
For any praise or rejections
Or help to find my way
Just forget your expectations
when you’re running out of patience
We’ll get there someday

Looking out across the yonder
When I feel a need to wander
And just ignore the signs
The world is to appreciate
never early, ever late for
A trip inside your mind

And disappointment in your eyes
Is all I see, it’s killing me
But trust me when I’m telling you
We’ll be OK, we’ll make it through

Any turn I wanna to make
That’s the one I’m gonna take
To find the open road
breathe the air and feel the wind
chance may never come again
To ever hear it blow

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