Too long…too long I say.  I have been away from these pages way too long.  It is time to catch up.

I am back to work.  Have been since July 18th.  My work as a school counselor at the local high school up the road has me busy and my head in that mode right now.  I try to give it all I have.  Hence, speaktherights.com has been a bit silent…even this past weekend.  I can tell you that I heard Brad Paisley singing on Saturday night.  I was not at his concert, but my dear wife, Carrie, and I were within earshot of what we used to call Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana and could hear him playing.  The hotel where we were staying is about five good tee shots from the music venue….depending on the bounce.  I have seen the Moody Blues there six times.  Five of those were orchestra shows.  Hearing Paisley was reminiscent of a day when Carrie and I were visiting some relatives in Mississippi some twenty or so years ago and Brad Paisley was playing a festival of some kind there and it was all quite simple.

On Monday after school, Carrie and I stopped by to see my folks.  Earlier that morning on my way to work, I dropped off a cooler full of burgers, hot dogs, and chicken I had grilled the evening before.  I picked up the empty cooler that evening.  Empty cooler aside, I can tell you I so enjoyed the hour we spent, Carrie and my folks and I, just sitting in the living room talking and telling stories and enjoying each other’s company.  It was almost like a throwback moment.  We told stories and laughed.  Time flew away.  Not the minutes we spent that went by so quickly, but time in the relative sense.  We were somewhere else enjoying our speaks and our laugh.  It was 2016.  It could have been 2006.  It could have been 1996.  That is when you know you have caught lightning in a bottle.  These times are most defined by laughter.  On this day, we laughed and had a great time doing so.

Football season is approaching.  Thank you, Lord!  I mean that.  It may sound a bit unrealistic.  I do believe that the Good Lord doesn’t care if the receiver or the corner back catches the ball, no matter how much credit the receiver may give the Good Lord.  I do, however, believe that the Good Lord doesn’t mind that we enjoy and revel in our football.  We were made for joy in this crazy world.  Joy is not a bad thing.  I find great joy in watching football and rooting for my team.  Is it brain surgery?  No.  Is it important?  Well, it is important.  More important to folks in Alabama than in New Hampshire, I can attest.  But know there are a few fans rooting for the New Hampshire Wildcats just as hard as millions of Tide fans root for Alabama.  It is relative.  It is not a bad thing.

I cam across the following pictures recently.

Carrie took these as I was writing songs for my current project.  It is a work in progress.  I am glad she took these, even though she was being a bit stealth about it.  I have never seen a photo of me writing a song before.  I don’t mind a bit.

Did I say I was looking forward to football season?  The speaktherights.com College Football Preview is on its way.  I did a little studying this summer.  I discovered one thing for sure.  I believe there will be a team come on the scene and we’ll ask…where did they come from?  Kind of like when Wake Forest made some noise a few years ago with Riley Skinner playing quarterback.  He was fun to watch.

We’ll get there.  Hey, at least we are here!

Speaking the rights….

Danny Johnson

Somethings just come back in a hurry.  They don’t mean to.  They just do.  Usually when that happens, I think it is time for that precious thought or memory to come back.  To know you were changed and look back, if you are fortunate enough, to see how good fortune and blessedness turned out over the years.  I have many of these moments.  I hope we all do.

It was twenty-eight years ago today.  I can show you the very spot in the Sears show stockroom at the Greentree Mall.  It was 8ishAM.  I was stocking shoes.  Using a broom stick with a shelf on it to move sizes and brand up lines of vertical shelves.  It was a maze of a place at times.  Judging what would fit and how so was an education all its own.  Problem solving.  As I listened to the radio that morning I discovered I had a problem.  I had a real problem.  Thankfully I was where I was when I was.  The Moody Blues were to play a concert at the Timberwolf Ampitheatre at Kings Island  outside Cincinnati on August 18, 1988.  I had tickets to the show.  I had plans.  We were going to have a good time.  Her name was Elizabeth.  She was going to the show with me.  All that changed when a radio DJ informed the listening world that The Moody Blues show at Timberwolf had a change of date.  The day?  Today!  And I had no clue until I heard it.

My work shift ended at 3:30 PM.  I made a few calls and found my dear friend and fellow rock and roll aficionado (Beatles fan), the great Virgil Ragland, interested in going.  We made the show.  We had a good time.  What was supposed to be a nice day spent with a young lady as we rode roller coasters and ate cotton candy and I impressed her with my ability to throw a football at the carnival games (something I would seriously accomplish in 1991 with a different young lady I took to see The Moodies….when I took a five step drop and threw a football through a hole that had no clearance and got quite the ovation).  Instead, I think Virg and I rode the swings and ate a hot dog before it was time to head to the show.  We didn’t even make it to the Eiffel Tower.  Still, I thank Virg for cruising over to Kings Island that hot July evening.

All these years later I do have great memories of that day.  I have greater memories of that song.  It was my second Moody Blues concert.  Little did I know that in 2016 I would be talking about hearing one of their favorite showstoppers, “I Know You’re Out The Somewhere” make its concert debut 28 years ago.  But that is how it has turned out.  It was the first show of the tour supporting a new album Sur La Mer.    The week it came out my mother and I were on the road traveling to Shreveport, Louisiana to tend to an ill relative.  We played that song on a new cassette tape all night long  until it nearly snapped in two.  It is still Mom’s favorite Moodies’ song.

Looking back I say that change of concert date was a blessing.  My dear wife, Carrie, is my Moody Blues concert partner and we are not finished yet…I don’t think.  It turned out just as it was supposed to.  Thank God.

This is a special, optimistic song.  It has grown over the years.  From a song for those yearned for, to a song for those missed, a song for those out there somewhere, and a song I start to sing when I am looking for Carrie at the grocery store.

Thank you, Justin Hayward.  You have given me a masterpiece that I will never tire of listening to.  How do I know?  It would have happened by now!

Speaking the I know you’re out there somewhere rights…

Danny Johnson

Wow it is hot outside the door in my little piece of Southern Indiana.  Yesterday it was over 90.  Where wasn’t it?  And humidity?  This morning it was 88% and all the windows in the house were fogged up. My heart goes out to anyone without air conditioning.  I remember those days when I was a kid. I know it got hot then too.  But it sure does not feel like it ever got THIS hot.

Star Trek.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I went to see the third installation of the new Star Trek incarnation.  What is this Mark V or VI?  I don’t know.  I really did not pay any attention to the ones that came on television with Captain Picard.  I think they were Star Trekkers?  Anyway, this new bunch playing the crew of the USS Enterprise are very entertaining to watch.  I know that this stuff is not everyone’s cup of tea.  I respect that.  I also know that while I was never much enamored with the old William Shatner/Leonard Nimoy Star Trek…the original one…I do like this new movie bunch.  Speaking of television and space, I enjoyed that old Gil Gerard show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.  I also enjoyed the small screen offering that was Battlestar Galactica.  The guy that played the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, Ray Bolger, was a guest star on that show in 1979, I think it was.  He would have been 75 at the time.

Carrie and I did not like this new Star Trek movie.  We both like the characters.  The story was a little shallow compared to the other two new ones.  The action of the movie was set in darkness a great deal of the time.  That might be great for someone whose played video games looking at something one can barely see.  I have never done that. Things did pick the last twenty minutes and all was not lost.  I won’t tell you what happened.

I do know that the actor that plays Chekov , Anton Yelchin, was killed in June due to a freak accident that had to do with an auto’s inability to stay in park.  That was sad.  He seems like such a bright spot on the screen.  It is hard not to believe he was a great chap in life as well.

A NOD TO LEWIS GRIZZARD

One thing the readers of Lewis Grizzard, the former Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist appreciated was the fact that he just put things out there.  Lewis had health issues.  He died at the age of 47 in 1994.  It is hard for me to fathom that Lewis has been gone so long.  Like him or not, he was the genuine article.   When he struggled with his health, he wrote about it.  He was blogging before blogging became blogging.

There is a history of back ailments in my family.  My mother’s side of the family is full of a number of folks reaching back with their right hand to rub on a side here or a piece there. My mother is dealing with this mightily as I write these words.  She, on occasion, wears a brace and has been given a list of ailments that are back related.  So, yes, I had an injury thirty-some years ago.  I know what the family history is.  One day, I too will get my news that the back is not what it should be.  I am 48 years old.  That news should come to me in say 10 or 12 years.  Wrong.  This week I had a conversation with a doctor about degenerative discs and arthritis and how fusing discs with surgery is probably not a good option.  Heck, I don’t remember what all was said.  So there you go.  New habits need to be made.  Sitting positions need to be decided upon.  Though I don’t carry around nearly as much poundage as I did ten years ago, I will be making a concerted effort to “lighten the load” as they say.  No fun, but I know I can do it.

Whatever comes,  we still need to press onward.  I may be holding my back…but I won’t hold too much back…I will still…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

There is a guy outside my house working on a satellite dish receiver.  I am getting what they call in the Satellite TV business an “upgrade”.  I may not get anything today the way the wind is whipping up with a threat of bad weather out there.  It ain’t worth it, my friend!  Get in here now.  Unless you’re just about finished with the outdoors part and hurry up!

For years and years my dear wife, Carrie, and I have been looking at a big old box of a television that just refuses to play out.  If I get as much quality life out of the new TV we just bought, I will be shocked and delighted.  Right now I just hope I don’t get shocked by lightning.  I got struck once before, you know.

The cabinet that held our land-locked smallish to today’s standards of a television set is gone. Well, it is dismantled waiting in the garage to be picked up.  With its demise came the opportunity to get a larger television for the room I look at football games when I am sitting on the couch and not sitting in the floor doing sit-ups during commercials like I did when I was a much younger man with a much smaller gut.  I remember having sit-ups contests with a friend of mine.  We’d call each other after every one half hour during prime time commercials…back when we had four TV stations and one television oddity that played Big Bird, Mr. Rogers, and documentaries by folks that sounded like they were doing either promotional work or auditioning for NPR.  PBS has come a long way, baby.

As the sky gets darker and the threat of a storm is still with us, if not getting stronger, I still have not heard from the young man whom drove up in a blue and white van filled with stuff that will.. or so they say, enhance my football on television watching experience. The television I recently procured looks like a drive-in movie screen compared to the postage stamp of a picture we once had in there.  I watched Manning brothers win four Super Bowls on that postage stamp.  How can I get rid of it?  Well, I watched the second half of those games on the postage stamp after watching the first halves over at my folks’ house on a TV bigger than my postage stamp.  I still have not gotten rid of that TV…yet.

I hope the fella outside working in my TV infrastructure is still hanging in there.  He is still working.  I think.  If he would have been struck by lightning I am sure he would of hollered.  Maybe I should check.  I just heard some furious thunder to the west.

Never mind.  He’s okay.  I hear him using a drill out there.  Sounds like he is hustling.  Sounds like he is changing tires in the pits at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  It is forevermore dark out there.  I would take a picture…but then you would look at it and criticize me for not going out and telling the boy to get in the house.  Hey, he is a professional.  Let the man do his work.  While he does, I think I might head to the storm shelter.  Its looking worse all the time.

Gotta go and think about speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I was not raised to be calculatedly critical of others.  If someone does me wrong, I need to chose a careful path.  I was never good at knee-jerk reactions.  Many a “jerk” came out of exactly that.  Turning the other cheek and letting things go in one ear and out the other are abilities that I have been blessed with.  Some might interpret that sort of action as being “uncaring”, a mistake in the world of getting a facebook timed reaction.

Here I am trying to make the best of a good situation.  That too is contradictory happenstance.

I am looking at the Atlantic Ocean along the North Carolina Coast.  This is my favorite place to be in the entire world.  I doubt a delicately fried piece of flounder could be as good anywhere else on the planet.  Here I am next to my dear wife, Carrie.  She is reading a cooking magazine in between glances and gazes at an ever-changing sky in front of us.  Yesterday evening we were blessed with the sight of a herd of dolphins bobbing up and down in the water in front of us.  One little fella even decided to jump out of the water to show off for us.  It is easy to care when things are going as good as that.

It is easy to care when things are going our way…when the practice of caring is not relentless…when the circumstances before us are calm and, well, just plain nice.  What we would give to have that on more days than not.

Even in the face of an ocean of peace and calm like we see in front of us this morning, there is always the possibility of troubled waters on the horizon.  There are times the skies will look grey and ominous.  Just ask Carl.

On Sunday, the Rev. Duke Lackey of Faith Harbor United Methodist Church in Surf City reminded us of the story of the Good Samaritan.  Duke’s sermon was titled “Do This”.  Do as the Good Samaritan did.  Help the helpless.  Do as Keshia Thomas did in Ann Arbor, Michigan twenty years ago when a KKK rally was happening.  The protesters turned violent toward one of the Klanpersons.  Keisha Thomas, a young black lady, came to his aid.  She threw herself over the white man and told those inflicting punishment upon him to stop, declaring… “You can’t beat goodness into a person.”  Do as our military members will do for us like no one else we know.  Do like Duke Lackey and say the right things that are led by God’s word.  Do this.

I wish I knew why two black guys were shot by police officers.  I wish I knew how a girl could sit next to a dying man and be that calm while recording video of the situation.  And I wish I knew why she would do that.  I wish I knew I was right when I looked back on news footage of 1968, the year I first saw the light of day, and was so sure and glad we had come far enough not to “do that again”.  I am afraid of what the upcoming National Political Conventions will bring.  I wish I knew why so many people hate each other for no other reason than the color of their skin.

In teaching I often use a personal example of how problems between black folks and white folks can show themselves.  I tell students that they are being affected by fear of something they don’t know anything about.  Fear and ignorance is the truest recipe of racism.  And, yes, it works both ways.  White v. Black and Black v. White.  And yes, that is a damn shame.  I end my speaks to students with this sentiment:  In my life I have been called names, kicked, pushed, made fun of, punched, shot at, and had my heart broken…all at the hands of folks that were white and not black.

I wish I didn’t see one step up and forty-eight years back.  Makes my time on this earth so far a little less meaningful.  But…I must get over that and press onward.  I need to get the negative out of my system in cathartic ways like this one.  I suppose that is one reason why I do press onward, I do look for a better day, I do try to do something about it, and I do…

Speak the Rights.

Danny Johnson

I got word recently that my Aunt Nell and Uncle Bob will not be hosting our annual Hines Family Reunion this year.  A sister and brother-in-law to my Mother, they have been playing hosts to the family reunion the last fifty years.  Not this year.  Circumstances beyond our control have presented themselves.  It was a great run.  My Mother’s oldest sister, Authula,  turns 90 soon.  As I said,  it has been a great run.

I spoke to my Aunt Barbara last night for the first time in a while.  She told me she has recently lost two of her buddies Ruth and Carolyn to illness.  Cancer is the worst word I know.

On Saturday I thought about my Aunt Nell and Uncle Bob.  Their spirit was on display and it is every year around 4th of July time.  Our friends Tim and Michelle, not New Hampshire Michelle, but Marengo Michelle, play host to many folks as we have a great time celebrating our country’s Independence and celebrating each other’s company.

Tim and Michelle gladly invite us to their home.  They open their doors and say “Y’all come on in…”  It is that spirit and heart of invitation that automatically makes this a special time for those of us fortunate enough to be there.  We talk and we laugh…and we laugh some more.

Good folks.

Good food.

Even the rain could not dampen the good times we had.

Here Bob thinks about just how bad the Tennessee Vols will beat Alabama this football season.

Fireworks.

Tim and Michelle put us on a hill with a house that looks like it is waiting to be discovered by Southern Living.

Michelle, Michelle, and my dear wife, Carrie.

I am delighted these three have remained friends.  Gives me places to go in the summer!

This is like a reunion for families and friends and we just have a good time. Thank you Brother Tim and Michelle.  I will  not be so kind when Ole Miss beats Bama for the third year in a row in a few months.

Three years ago Carrie and I made it down to Mississippi for the Hines Family Reunion.  The size of this family has been the subject of past posts.  My mother had 16 brothers and sisters.

Little did I know it would be the last time I would hold forth with my cousin Harold Finnegan.  He is in the red shirt having speaks with me.  Harold was a Vietnam War Veteran.  He graduated from Ole Miss.  He lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  He was 68.  Did I say how the word Cancer is a dirty word?  I meant it.  His Mother, my Aunt Jewel, was a fine lady.  His Daddy, Frances, was one of the most interesting characters Mississippi has ever known.  That is saying something.

One more photo from that day just because I can.  Me and my cousin Doyle Crout.

Take care of each other….and when you need to…

Speak the Rights.

Danny Johnson

It is a cool cloudy morning in Amherst, New Hampshire.  Our vacation is coming to an end.  Tomorrow morning my dear wife, Carrie, and I will be making the 1012 mile trek back to Southern Indiana.  We do plan to stop for the night, mind you, below Cleveland.  Over 600 miles will be down by then.

Right now I am sitting beside Bob and Michelle’s pool listening to Manchester’s Classic Rock Station, 96.5 The Mill.  This is my favorite radio station.  I listen to it via the www at home.

It has been a busy week.  We left The Berkshires, but not before a round of putt putt golf at a most challenging course in Lanesborough, Mass not far from the Olde Forge Restaurant. There were also driving range stalls that were quite old and unique.  I wish I would have brought my driver.  Though I imagine I would be just as frustrated with my tee shot here as anywhere.

The course.

Driving Range.

There was also ice cream involved.  Carrie and I must have driven past this little gem of an Ice Cream Palace thirty times or more in our visits to this area and never stopped to play putt putt or partake in the ice cream.  We enjoyed it all.

A couple days ago Carrie and I ventured to the coast. It is not far from here.  It was, however, a Sunday, the weather was warm, the sun was out, and the good folks of New England just don’t have a great deal of what the rest of us would call “summer-like” weather.  In fact their warm on this day was kind of lukewarm to Carrie and me.  She had long britches on and was glad she did.  The air coming off the Atlantic Ocean at Salisbury (MA) Beach felt like air-conditioning.  It was a very cool breeze.

What’s a visit to a beach filled with amusements without a little Skee-ball?  I wish I had taken a picture of us playing.

What was not lost on me was the opportunity to take a picture of a unique “pay toilet”.  Restroom facilities are at a premium at Salisbury Beach.  For a quarter you can use the one at the arcade!

It was a flashback for me.  I had not seen a pay toilet since a visit in the mid-70s to the Indianapolis International Airport.  For a dime you could use a stall.  For nothing you could use the stall on the end.  There was a line there.  As for me, well, I was seven.  I didn’t pay a dime for the expensive toilet.  I crawled underneath the door.  Of course I did thoroughly wash my hands with warm soapy water for thirty seconds after I crawled back under the door and found a sink with soap and water that was free of charge.

After the beach visit in Salisbury it was up the road, not far, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to find a lobster roll at The Beach Plum.  Not on the beach, not a recipe to be found that included a plum, still, this was a strike.  Graeme Edge has said that finding Justin Hayward to play in The Moody Blues fifty years ago was like “sticking in your thumb and pulling out a plum.”  Well, I pulled out a lobster roll.

Oh, not to mention onion rings, fried pickles, and corn fritters.

This was not my meal exclusively.  Carrie and I shared.  In fact, I can report that we left more than a few morsels behind.  We were hungry…but we weren’t THAT hungry.  To our defense, we had no idea the portion sizes of these orders were made with offensive line of The Green Bay Packers in mind.

A funny thing happened on the way to the ball park.  Well, actually, it was inside the ball park after the game had started.

Last night Bob and Michelle and their youngsters Davis, Sabra, and Siera treated us to a Double-A baseball game in Manchester between the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and the Hartford Yard Goats.  Michelle, being the detective she is, noticed that the Hartford second baseman had a name that was familiar.  His name: Zach Osborne.

Well, well.  It just so happens that Carrie and Michelle graduated high school from North Harrison with Zach’s dad, Troy.  Troy and I played football together in elementary, junior high, and high school.  Zach scored a run last night.  Before the game was over, Carrie and I went over to the Hartford dugout.

Zach very politely reached up to shake my hand.  I told him to tell his Dad that he had run into us.  Rest assured I will peek in on his progress now and again.  His team won 8 to 2.

It was New Hampshire State Champs Night at the old ball park last night.  Below are members of the Souhegan Sabers State Champ Baseball Team.  I went down and jokingly asked them if they were the championship bad mitten team?  Davis was less than enamored with my jocularity.  He is the one in front.  They seemed like a pleasant bunch of chaps.

I am just glad that boy in the blue button up was giving me the index finger and not another one.

Bonus material:  Though I have no photo, Carrie and I passed Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.  One of Pat Conroy’s characters, Bernard Lowenstein, in The Prince of Tides went to Phillips Exeter.  We miss Pat Conroy.

Speaking the rights one last time from New England…

Danny Johnson

You have heard of the Dream Team?  Yesterday I ate the Dream Meal.  I dream about it often. This is the third year my dear wife, Carrie, and I have paid a visit to a place called The Berkshires in Western Massachusetts.  Each time we have paid a visit to the Olde Forge in Lanesborough.  A short drive to this place is filled with  the anticipation of a kid going to bed on Christmas Eve.  I meant that.

I just go in from a long walk.  According to my ipod, I walked 4.75 miles and stepped just short of 10000 in doing so.  The walk ended with a climb up a hill that resembles Mt. Everest without all the snow.  If it were winter time, this would be covered with snow.  My peak is .8 miles up from the main road. My walk would have actually been longer had I not thought as I was walking.  I looked around as I was walking down Route 43.  There was no one anywhere to be found.  A very few cars had gone past in either direction.  In front of me there a large mountain like hill folks ski down in the wintertime.  To my right there was a small patch of corn trying to grow in front of woods coming down from another incline. To my left a small stream and another bluff going up into a thick woods.  I looked around again.  I saw nothing.  No cars.  No people.  Nothing but me walking and listening to my ipod…ear buds firmly planted as I listened to music much louder than I probably ever should.  Then I had a thought. I thought about the photos I have seen on more than one occasion this past week in The Bershire Eagle newspaper.  The photos were those of black bears that have been spotted in the area.  One of those photos, I remember, said it was taken on Route 43 in Hancock.  Well, guess who was walking down Route 43 with no one around to care if I was being eaten by a bear?  I turned around and headed back for civilization…walking a little more swiftly.  I kept listening to my music.  If I was going to get attacked by a bear, I didn’t want to hear it!

I did not want to be dinner.  I was walking to eat dinner!

This dinner to be specific…

This is a bowl of Wild Mushroom Ravioli.

You have seen folks on TV talking about the best thing they have ever eaten.  I would bring a film crew to this place on Route 7 in Lanesborough.  This is the best bowl of vittles I have ever eaten and that is saying something.  No offense to my mother’s biscuits.  No offense to Carrie’s four-layer chocolate cake or the shrimp she lovingly fries for me in North Carolina, even though she does not eat them.

The Wild Mushroom Ravioli is in a class by its lonesome.  Creamy.  Pasta cooked to perfection.  The filling is smooth, rich, and creamy.  The ravioli is served in a sundried tomato and basil cream sauce.  I would swim in this stuff if I could.

Here is the real wonder of all this meal….I sat down to this table and declared it the greatest meal ever and I did not eat so much as a single shred or morsel of meat.  I love meat!  I am at my glory with a grill full of burgers and chicken or a smoker full of babybacks.  Not so with this meal.  No meat.  I call this the dream meal and there is no meat.  This coming from a guy who once committed an awful personal foul in a high school football game and am still glad I did.  That sounds like a carnivore to me.

That is what makes this meal remarkable.  No meat…and I love it.

For starters, Carrie and I took on the skillet mushrooms.  Served with garlic bread to soak up the skillet liquor like good old corn bread and pot liquor.  Awesome.

The folks at Olde Forge are nice too.  Always good service and a pleasant atmosphere.  And that too is saying something in the Northeast.  Some folks up here can’t talk softly…let alone whisper.  They think a southern accent is amazing and they are smart to think so.    Maybe up here they had to talk loudly over gunfire with the British and they never adapted after the cannons went quiet.  Just an observation.  They are still good people.

Guess where Carrie and I are heading for our last meal in The Berkshires?

Right.  Olde Forge.  Ravioli awaits.

Speaking the culinary rights.

Danny Johnson

On a desk or on a table or in a drawer or…hopefully somewhere…there sits a package with a cd full of music that I am looking forward to listening to.

On Sunday afternoon, June 12th, my dear wife, Carrie, and I were in Al Fresco’s recording studio in Louisville, KY.  There Barry King was putting some guitar on top of the rhythm tracks that were already recorded the week before.  Carrie and I sat there in the control amazed as Barry King put down some awesome licks to many of the songs on the new recordings.

Barry King went to Woodstock back in the day.  He played with The Charlie Daniels Band.  He is a gifted Knoxville boy and he was very kind with the treatment and the compliments he gave the songs I had written that he was working with.  Honestly, it was the most fun I have had in a recording studio in twelve years.  That was the last time I was in the control room with a guitar player extraordinaire.  That guy was Tim Krekel.  He was pretty good to…(wink).

Barry King used this classic Les Paul and a Gibson hollow acoustic to add  more light and shade to the songs.

Those songs are waiting on us in that package I spoke of in the first paragraph.  That music sits in New Hampshire.  We are heading over that way to visit with dear friends Bob and Michelle and family on Friday.  It will be good times.  And finally, I will get to hear those songs again.  I have not heard the latest incarnation of our work.  Know that there is still more too add…keyboard, a horn or two, and some more vocals.  But I was so excited the day Mr. King played guitar and now I can almost hear it mixed in for the first time.  Thanks to Jeff Carpenter for holding me at bay and not rushing a mix for me to take on the road.  I know he surely did a great job putting this together.  His ear is awesome and he knows what button to push and where to move the knobs!

Carrie and I found Carlinville, Indiana yesterday.

The Judge was a movie that came out in 2013…I think.  Starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall, this is one of few movies I have really enjoyed in the last ten years.  The movie was set in the fictional Carlinville, Indiana.  It is a good thing they filmed as low as they did.  There are hills boarding on being mountains around Shelburne Falls, MA that you won’t find anywhere in state of Indiana.

Editorial Note:  A brief scene of Indiana landscape from my native Jackson County does show up in the film for a fleeting moment and I knew it when I saw it.

About the size of Medora, Shelburne Falls is a peaceful, lovely place with the Deerfield River running through separating Shelburne Falls from Buckland on the other side.

There is a Bridge of Flowers…

Small town…

Above: This was The Flying Deer diner in the movie.  It sits next to the falls.  The water was not flowing freely while we were there.  Though I did find out that it does on occasion.

This is the bridge Downey Jr.’s character  reluctantly drove across heading back to his hometown for the first time in many years.

One more look at the Bridge of Flowers…

I can also report that you can find a great Roasted Turkey Pesto on Focaccia.

Carrie enjoyed a Veggie Chick Pea Falafel with broccoli salad.

Sorry…we don’t have a picture of that.

Speaking the Road Rights…

Danny Johnson

Koussevitzky Music Shed is on the Tanglewood campus that is the summer home of The Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Tanglewood is beautiful.  Someone knew what they were doing or got very fortunate when lightning struck the brain to form this wonderful place.  In addition to regularly scheduled Pops concerts, the venue also holds concerts by mainstream artists as well.

These photos were taken after a concert yesterday.  I have been to a few amphitheaters that are referred to as the “big barn circuit”.  This might have been the first.  The others did not come along until decades later. The first performance here took place in 1938.  The latest performance took place yesterday afternoon with a 2:30 PM performance by Brian Wilson.  Yes, that Brian Wilson. My dear wife, Carrie, and I were there to take it all in.  This is the 50th anniversary of The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album.  The one that inspired The Beatles to go the concept route the next year with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

Brian Wilson played that album in its entirety along with 20 or so other Beach Boys classics.  Joining Wilson onstage was original Beach Boy Al Jardine and his son Matt who sang the Mike Love high end notes on some of their greatest tunes.  Additionally there were anywhere from 8 to 9 other performers on the platform playing a catalog of music that has help shape music as the world knows it today.

Surf City, California Girls, I Get Around, Fun, Fun, Fun, Help Me Rhonda, Wouldn’t it be Nice, God Only Knows, Barbara Ann, Surfin USA, Good Vibrations…and so many more.  Brian Wilson, the brainchild behind The Beach Boys block harmony sound was there on the stage singing these songs on the eve of his 74th birthday.  Sitting behind a piano he occasionally worked on, Brian Wilson is a champion to be on the stage at all.  Health problems have left him in need of assistance on and off stage.   Nonetheless, the music in his heart is alive and well.  What it must feel like to know the music of the youth of generations came from sitting at a piano humming bits and pieces and parts that eventually took life and changed what and how we heard and will continue to hear music.

At times Brian Wilson’s voice was brilliant.  At times he struggled to hit a note here and there and his voice faded in and out on occasion…but it never left.  I doubt it ever will.

Brian Wilson is sharing the Pet Sounds album because he wants to.  I am glad he has chosen to do just that.  He doesn’t have to.  His legend would be intact if he stayed at home and worked on new music.  He released a new album last year.  I have no doubt he is still trying to find the next sound that needs to be put down.  I get that.  Aside from that philosophical stuff, I can tell you it was more fun than I can explain to have the chance to sing along with Brian Wilson as he sang “Surfin’ USA.  I am a blessed man.

It felt like we were in the Wrigley Field of music venues.

Happy Birthday, Brian…and thank you.

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson