Nine Days in May

"?Que pasa Amiga?"you might ask. Been flying below the radar for the last few days after my Big Stomp in the Big Apple. Phewf…. Glad to be on this side of things. Hard to say about all that happened. Bottom-line—no one walked into the booth and said, “OK, we get it. We’ll take over from here.” Scot and I would routinely have some kind of similar fantasy while we were doing art fairs (1989 to 2007). We’d pull into town and some rich, and gifted industrialist would walk into the booth and ‘snatch us up’. “Sell out the Show!” That would be another one of our regular chants. Scot would have this new brilliant artwork, and we’d be so excited to have people coming to look at it, and dig it, and buy it. A lady who bought quite a few of extremely nice original pieces from me in Kansas City, over the years at the Plaza Art Fair and the Brookside Art Annual. She was there as a buyer for Michael’s. So another bottom-line, it once again appears, that we are left to cut the thing from whole cloth, once again.

We, my business partner (and Scot life long friend), Steve K. Teraberry, are committed to bringing Scot’s artwork to a bigger world. That motivation makes it easy. We got tons of people who were just like us last year when we came to suss out the show. We were still kind of in shock. Scot had only just passed a few short months ago. I was still just naturally turning to him. At Surtex 2008, it was just so great to have Steve there. It was kind of like having Scot there too. Their sensibilities have been entwined for decades. But we did get a handful of some kick-ass leads. I heard it over and over again. The work begins the day after the show. I personally made a commitment to let myself do some gardening for the Memorial Day weekend, and to be honest, my garden is calling me RIGHT NOW!

Today’s music is another wonderful “Jamula” track (Jerry, this is rude, but could you please provide the name and authorship into again?). Tom Smith demands his rhythm and the boys (Jerry Farnsworth on guitar, Tom Smith on mouth organ and Scot Halpin on bass) comply, sliding firmly into another classic “Jamula” grove. This is “Jamula” as it stood in its earliest incarnations—pure trio.

I will fill in some blanks on my lost (to the blog) days in NYC. Ironically, there I was on 42nd Street—Manhattan—and could not get an Internet connection in my room. Nor could I get an Internet connection at the Javits Center (and I tried—“invalid code”—ARGH!!!!!!). Yes I could have gone down to the lobby, late, after doing more bar hopping than I’ve done in a year in three hours. I might have been a bit better if I could have come back to my room, gotten into my jammies… That reminds me, one of the early trial names for “Jamula” was “Jammikins.”

Happy Memorial Day weekend to us all.