jolomo

This was a really fun group of songwriters that used to frequent the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. I first saw The Queen of Hearts at the late-lamented Swallow In The Hollow in Roswell. If you never got a chance to go, imagine a big rustic mountain cabin with pretty damn good BBQ and live music every night. Everybody in the band wrote songs and they would rotate who would lead and everybody else sang great harmony. BethAnne Clayton was the one from New Jersey and she passed 14 January 2020 at 54. Sounds like the rest of the band were able to gather around her in the hospital for a last round of singing together. I can only imagine the emotion that day. Here's how I found out about it: https://www.ellenbritton.com/blog/2020/2/14/in-memory-of-bethanne-clayton The band got together in 1999 and it doesn't look like much of anything made it into the new world of streaming but the two albums I have are: Queen of Hearts (2002) with stand-out songs "Treat Me Right" and "He...

This was in a long-gone 2005 blog by Jon Richards but it's still relevant: He explains why it didn't get as warm as it was supposed to earlier this week, and why it's so cold today Forecasts Get It Wrong Three Days In a Row For the last three days, the predicted high temperatures in metro Atlanta haven’t been what they were forecast to be. As detailed  here , Monday’s miss was caused by a slow moving warm front. On Tuesday, we were supposed to reach a high of 70 degrees, before retreating to a low in the lower sixties today. Instead, we had a high of 60 Tuesday, and broke 70 degrees for the first time this year on Wednesday. Tuesday’s colder than expected temperatures were caused by a combination of heavy fog in the morning and a mini wedge, where the colder air closer to the ground was overrun by the warmer air approaching from the southwest. Overnight Monday, the skies cleared, and due to Monday’s rain, fog developed close to the ground. As the warmer air approached Tuesd...

It was the night before Christmas Here's a fun treat. In 1927 James Thurber wrote a hilarious version of "The Night Before Christmas" in the style of Ernest Hemmingway. Here's the beginning: It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren't even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them. The children were in their beds. Their beds were in the room next to ours. Mamma and I were in our beds. Mamma wore a kerchief. I had my cap on. I could hear the children moving. We didn't move. We wanted the children to think we were asleep. Check it out , it's pretty funny

OMG, can't believe they did it! My favorite music magazine in the last 20 years has put (as far as I can tell) every article, review and interview online. Start here: http://archives.nodepression.com Hundreds of good articles, but here's the review where I found out about Blue Mountain (1994), Mike Ireland (1998), Jim Lauderdale (1998) plus many more. Just browse the interviews for dozens of treats. I think I have all of them in hardcopy form, but this is a lot handier.

The Fisherman's Theory of Book-Buying : You will never regret the book you bought, but you will always regret the one that got away. The National Debt Theory of Book-Buying : You will never have read all the books you own, but any given book will be read eventually. The Chemist's Theory of Book-Buying : Books obey the laws of gases: they expand to fill all available space. The Gardener's Theory of Book-Buying : No matter how much you weed a book collection, it will always grow back. The Pharaonic Theory of Book-Buying : Build a pyramid and read them all in the afterlife. This was from the December 2006 issue of NYRSF by Darrell Schweitzer I've been culling and culling the books for five years now and while it's getting more manageable and more narrowly focused, there's still a lot of cruft floating around :) A third or so is on Librarything

Funniest thing I've read today (OK, I'm running behind) was this post from the fine folks at the Wren's Nest which includes two pretty interesting phone calls [that blog post from 2012 is long gone, here's a copy] Then, I got a weird phone call: LAIN: Good afternoon, the Wren’s Nest! GRANDMOTHER: Hi, I’m a grandmother. LAIN: Okay. GRANDMOTHER: And I would like you to pay my electric bill. LAIN: (scrambling for an answer) That’s …not really what we do here. GRANDMOTHER: (sounding dignified) Yes, but I’m a grandmother.  I’m raising my grandchildren.  I just need some help with my electrical bill. LAIN:  I’m sorry, but we’re a house museum.  A non-profit house museum, and we’re hurting as well. GRANDMOTHER:  You don’t understand.  I’m a grandmother. LAIN: Ma’am? GRANDMOTHER: (hangs up) ….. Then, I dialed a wrong number and got this message: ANSWERING MACHINE: This is about pimpin’!  And that means money!  And if you ain’t got no money, you ain’t g...