This picture was taken this morning…

It was a beautiful sunrise.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I also saw some interesting wildlife this morning.

Trying to catch the dolphins rising to  the surface of the water is very difficult.  Even better this morning was something Carrie and I had never seen in any off our NC travels.  We saw a humpback whale this morning.  It came out of the water much like a dolphin but it was huge.  Its tail was larger than the dolphins coming up and out of the water.  It also spouted off at the blowhole on several occasions and it was a significant amount of moisture being spouted off!  We were delighted and a bit taken “a back” if you will.

The sunrise yesterday morning was impressive.  I took a photo yesterday that I really enjoyed and that is hard to do.

It may look like just another picture at sunrise to some.  For me, it was just plain cool.

My mother has been on my case a bit about writing more while I am out of town.  Truth is, I have been reading for a change instead of writing.  I read the recently published autobiography of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.  It was a good read.  It was painful at times.  The guy has been through it, let me tell you.  I don’t think I have read the words of a more humbled music artist. That he is still here making music is a miracle.  I believe that.

Though I was never a great Beach Boys fan, I didn’t turn them off the radio if I heard them.  That sound is a part of the fabric of the culture of this country.  A piece of fabric we could use some more of.  It was an optimistic sound.  There was a tone of what was possible to accomplish.  There was a great deal of that in music then.

I wrote about Carrie and I seeing Brian Wilson last year at the Tanglewood Shed.  It was a special concert in a special place.  I appreciated that afternoon much more after I read this book.  Brain Wilson mentioned The Moody Blues in the book.  He too mentioned them by name as well.  He says he likes them.  The man is pretty smart.

Take care and Love and Mercy to you.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

My dear wife, Carrie, and I are in North Carolina for Spring Break.  With all that is going on back home again in Indiana, it seems just a bit odd to be here…but I do think we are supposed to be here.  That is all I will say about that.

Carrie and I are at our spot along the North Carolina shore.  Yesterday we went to church at Faith Harbor United Methodist Church.  Rev. Duke Lackey is the pastor and we think the world of him.

A lady at church asked why we come back year after year.  We told her we enjoyed the area that much and we never tire of coming down here.  After I pondered on the yearbook answer that was given, I realized I should have looked at the lady and said, “You do.”  Well, maybe not her in particular.  The folks here are folks we can relate to and feel very comfortable with.  Last Friday I spoke to an 11th grade English class about a variety of things regarding literature.  I told them they are drawn to characters that A.  Remind them of themselves and B. Remind them of who they want to be like.  That is how it is here for us.  Carrie and I were in Chicago last month.  We had a good time.  We spent three nights and were ready to come home.  When we pack up the car on Saturday and make one last sweep around the place we are staying to make sure we have not forgotten anything, we will look around and sigh.  This place is not easy to leave.

When we leave and come back it won’t look the same.  The way to get here, this barrier island, is over a “swing bridge”.  This bridge is two lanes and swings 90 degrees to allow water craft through the sound side of the island.  This is quaint…but it is also bad if there is an emergency.  If a soul needs 10 minutes of care for their health, that 10 minutes can come and go without the hope of getting down the road to medical care it may need.

I love the old bridge, personally.  The grooves in the bridge make a sound as your tires ride over it that is unmistakable.  I will miss that.  The high rise bridge, there is one on the other end of the island, is to be completed by September 2019.

A view of the bridge as you go over it toward the island.

The bridge moving to allow water craft to pass.

Like this.

Carrie and me toward the ocean side.

Carrie and me with the bridge behind us on the sound side.

Carrie looking for shells this morning.

The sunrise was beautiful this morning.

Of course, Carl is here.

He read all about the Tarheels beating Kentucky yesterday.

And he inspected the shells Carrie brought up from the beach.  He approved.

Work on the new bridge.

I hope and pray all is as well as it can be back home in Indiana.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

March madness.  The tourney is here.  College Basketball’s Sweet Sixteen is as sweet as it can be.  I get a kick out of telling folks I have seen at least 68 of the FBS college football teams play in person and then tell them I have never seen a college basketball game.

Here’s the thing.  By the time football season is over I am tired.  My eyes are tired.  I have to give them a break.  A month and a half after the Super Bowl is played, March Madness, the college basketball tourney comes around and I enjoy a few weeks of basketball.

It wasn’t always like this.  Once upon a time I used to watch Indiana games on TV and I would watch the Louisville Cardinals on TV and I would watch the Kentucky Wildcats on TV.  The Hoosiers were on Channel 4, then Channel 41 when we moved to Harrison County.  Chuck Marlowe called the games. The Louisville Cardinals were on Channel 11 and Dave Conrad called the games.  The Wildcats were on Channel 3.  I think Tom Hammond and Joe Dean called many of those games.  Probably Cawood Ledford was doing them before Tom Hammond.  Local teams played on local stations with local announcers.  It was all very simple.  It was all very nice.  I miss those games.   That is what we watched.  We didn’t have 100 stations to choose from.

Not long ago I was rattling off names of old Kentucky Wildcat players to a friend I have not know that long…he is a Wildcat fan.  He was amazed that I knew who Charles Hurt and Fred Cowan were.  Cards I miss are Roger Burkman and Darrell Griffith.  They were fun to watch.  My favorite Indiana Hoosiers were Kent Benson, Scott May, Ted Kitchell, and Steve Alford.  I sure hope Alford is the Hoosiers new coach.  I would finally go to a game if he was the head coach.  Well, maybe not.

I don’t dislike basketball.  I was never very good at playing it.  When I played in a summer league in my early teens I once scored 8 points in one game against South Central.  I hit a shot at Springs Valley and was fouled.  I made my free shot.  I scored at Salem too.  I don’t think I scored in any of the games at home.  I didn’t play much in those home games.  Parents came to home games…not road games.  Had the coach, our high school varsity coach at the time, played me at home there would have surely been parents wondering what on earth the coach was doing.  I have no beef there.

Basketball was also tough for me to play.  I have asthma.  Stuffy, hot gyms…there were no air conditioned gyms in those days….were not kind to my pipes.  I didn’t get to play football my 7th grade year because I could not breathe well enough to do it.   It was awful.

I hate that I won’t be able to stay awake to watch the Purdue Boilermakers play tonight.  The start at 9:40ish.  That is too late for this old boy.

I truly enjoy watching this tourney.  I have a bracket.  It stinks this year.  Some years I have done quite well for a guy that never watches many if any games before the madness starts.  I do read though.  I read newspapers.  I keep up that way.  It is easier than watching the games and giving my eyes more work.

Go UCLA…Go Steve Alford!  Go straight to Bloomington after your last game at Westwood.  Leave that traffic…say goodbye to Route 210 and come back to highway 46.   There is a difference.  This is Indiana.  I hope that still means something.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Now and again I reach out for some inspiration.  Not far from my desk is a stack of football cards.  I rarely touch them.  On my music collection shelf is the CD “The Concert for New York”.  That was the show we watched  after September 11th as we wiped away tears and were reminded why we love our country. The football cards I picked to feature are Roger Staubach from 1978 and Walter Payton from 1977.  In 1978 Roger Staubach, Captain America, led the Cowboys to Super Bowl XIII where they played and were defeated by the Pittsburg Steelers.  Walter Payton led the Bears to playoffs for the first time in my young life.  I was nine.  Walter, from my parents’ native Mississippi, was tearing the league up.  I would say he is the player I miss watching more than anyone, with the exception of Ken Anderson….my quarterback.  Around the corner is Walter Cronkite.  He too is not far away on the bookshelf.  We need you now, Walter.

I suppose I enjoy getting some of my old relics out, like ball cards, music, and the countenance of a news man we could trust.  If for nothing else, just to remind myself of a better place in time.  I remember watching Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley and John Chancellor deliver news and show us sights and sounds around the world that made me think “man, I sure am glad that ain’t going on here”.  Look…I am no puritan.  I know this country has had its share of growing pains.  Most of them were needed, as many growing pains are.

I love this country.  I don’t like what I see from her right now.  The Russians must be laughing at the Cold War we are playing on ourselves.  US vs THEM I can relate to.  US vs. US looks scary and sad and, well, pathetic.  Right now our country is pretty pathetic.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.    

President Jimmy Carter July 15, 1979

Tonight I exposed myself, on purpose, to the US vs. US mentality that is ripping this country apart.  The news media is the chief culprit.  Walter Cronkite is gone as if he never existed.  While I was exercising (3 miles on the elliptical and some weightlifting) this evening I tuned into CNN around 6:50 PM.  Wolf Blitzer is not easy for me to look at or listen to.  What he was talking about was the Federal Judge in Hawaii overturning the President Trump-laden “Travel Ban”.  That was the lead story at the top of the hour on the show hosted by Erin Burnett.  She is even more difficult to listen to than Wolf. Where have you gone Campbell Brown? You were better for news than you are for education.  Anyway, Erin Burnett started in on the travel ban too.  I then turned it over to Fox News and watched as their host, a lady-person, and Brit Hume and another guy started in on Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and how she produced two pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return and gave details of it just last night.  The Fox News bunch grilled and made issue of Rachel Maddow doing this for a long time.  And really, who cares?  How is this helping anyone?  At 7:12 Fox News got around to making mention of the travel ban overturn ruling handed down by the Federal Judge in Hawaii.  The news of this…which could affect, uh, many, was mentioned by Foxs News and swept away before the before the clock hit 7:13.  Not even a minute was given to a ruling affecting many Americans and their families and their loved ones trying to find their way.

That is where we are.  US vs. US.  United we do not stand.  The Russians must be loving it.

You have no idea how much difficulty I have writing this.  Somewhere in a creaky drawer in the Harrison County Courthouse in Corydon, Indiana there is a piece of paper with my name on it that has a capital “R” next to it.  R as in Republican.  That is more difficult to admit by the hour.

Tonight after Fox News went on and on about the “tax rates” that were assessed to Donald Trump 25ish% and Barack Obama 18ish% and Bernie Sanders 13ish%, their pictures were above their numbers, one politician, a Senator from Kentucky, he’s a doctor so you’d think he might have some sense, made a comment that Sanders needed to get his check book out and make a check out to the government in lieu of his low tax rate.  HELLO?  How stupid can one guy be?  Trump reportedly made over 150 million dollars.  I doubt Bernie Sanders will see that in a lifetime.  Economics and tax rates and paying any attention to how the real world works will tell you that folks making more pay more.  What lump of coal has this guy been hiding under?  No offense to my friends in West Virginia…Friends of Coal.

And Donald Trump?  It is difficult to call him President Trump.  But…President Trump?  Commander and Tweet.  He is a walking talking smokescreen.  How long can he keep lawmakers from getting down to the business of helping the country?  Helping people?  He just leads the media and his lackeys down one rabbit hole to the next.  It is great entertainment.  But isn’t that why we have Hollywood?  It is on the other coast.  Washington is suppose to be the antithesis of that place, isn’t it?  Well, it’s not working out that way.

Jeb Bush had it right.  He claimed that a Trump presidency would be a “chaotic” presidency.  Have you seen the looks on some of the Republican faces in Washington lately?  I give them an “A” for effort in trying to keep the party together.  It won’t last.  Trump will eventually wear everyone out.  He is not a leader.  He is an actor.  America elected an actor.  It worked out once before.  But that guy had some political experience.

The Trump phenomena puzzles me.  Did that many people not want a woman president?  Did that many people think a black president for 8 years was enough and they needed a white guy in there?  Was it Clinton fatigue?  It could not have been about an email server.  Maybe everyone already knew Trump Tower was wiretapped!  They just didn’t tell.  Yeah, right.

I am dumbfounded when I see and hear of the support Trump gets from the South.  I am child of the South.  My parents were born in Mississippi.  I almost was.  For many decades I did not hear many complimentary things about folks from the North.  Yankees were some sort of odd appendages to many folks in the South.  And now they want to support this guy?  The garbage mouth from New York City?  Was there a power outage in the bible belt when word got out about how Trump spoke of women in such a vulgar way?

What I would give to get the days back when Southern folks made issue among themselves when a Northerner said “you guys” instead of the prevailing “y’all”.  Ah, the good old days.  They days when Walter Cronkite was telling us “That’s the way it is…”  When my grandfather in Louisiana was yelling “Throw it , Roger!” when the Cowboys came to line of scrimmage.  When my grandfather in Mississippi was sitting on a front porch spitting his snuff in a Hills Brothers coffee can as he watched the wind blow and listened to the weather report on a transistor radio plastered to his ear that could barely hear.  When Walter Payton was making an entire defense lose its collective breath trying to chase him down.  When we still had World Trade Centers.  When we enjoyed the political process.  We did, you know.  That was when we got along and the Russians were not laughing at us.  They were concerned.  Not any more.

I think about John Kaisch and I want to cry.  He could have beaten Hilary Clinton.  I think I could of beaten her.  But the voice of reason doesn’t win over in the age of Tweets and Fox News junkies.

While I am sad for the kids exposed to this today, I am glad I still know the difference.  Even if some trying to lead have no clue.  Like every other sad time in our history, the ones screwing things up will be gone one day.  Learning from these current tragedies means it won’t take much time to correct.  Common sense will once again be ready to fill the void.  The rest can be worked out by folks wanting to do what is best for each other….not US vs. US.  There may be hell to pay to get there.  It usually works out that way.  In the meantime I will get wistful now and again and miss the days of “film at eleven”.  We were confident in those words.

Speaking a sad rights…

Danny Johnson

I received a special card in the mail.  She never fails.

Paula Lincoln is a friend of mine.  I have known her since I was in high school.  Our first official introduction was when I looked at Mick Rutherford as an announcement was coming over the school intercom.  Mick and I were in English class and we just happened to have a substitute teacher that day.  An announcement came for all the choir members to report to the gym for a picture.  I looked at Mick and cleared my throat like any good choir member would.  I gave him the nod and he followed me out of the room.

We were not in the choir.  He asked where do we go now?  Paula Lincoln, listening to two brash 9th graders looked in our direction and barked “GET WHERE YOU BELONG!”  I swear there was fire coming out of her eyeballs when she said it.  We scurried back into English class and told the sub we decided to quit the choir that day.

Paula Lincoln turned out okay.  We got past that first meeting.  She was a great teacher and an even better friend.

Paula is sitting to my right in this picture.  Her husband Walt “Old Sport” Lincoln is to her right.  To my left are Kelly and Nancy Samons.  kKelly and I met in 1979. Jerry Brown, a guy who knew me long before anyone else in the picture is to your far right.  This was my birthday dinner in 2014.

Paula Lincoln always sends me a birthday card.  Without fail.  I turn 49 on March 18th.  She sent me another card.  She always does.  Though I have not kept all the cards she has sent me over the years, I have held on to a few that I will share with you.

In earnest, I think this was my 40th birthday.  I keep it not far from where I am typing these words.  I consider it a classic.

This was the one I received this year.  I hope I can Golf-a-Lot this year.  I hope the back holds out.

Some of the other cards I have gotten over the years are…

This was the 40th birthday.

This above was given to me when I graduated from college.

In the late 1993 the Nebraska Cornhuskers Football Team was taking a beating from the media because they were beating foes up and did have a relatively weak schedule compared to other schools and other conferences. I was sick of the criticism.  I say down and wrote Coach Tom Osborne a note of encouragement.  This was in November for sure.  In December I was delighted to receive this card.

Two summers ago I was inventorying football cards.  I came across some cards from 1990 or 1991.  Jack Elway was coaching a World League team…the Frankfurt Galaxy.  I had about five football cards of his.  I looked at them and decided then and there that these cards need to go to John Elway, Jack’s son.  A month and half later I got this card in the mail…

Below 2014 on the balcony at The Ryman to see The Moody Blues.

A few days later…

That day was in the cards, for sure.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Last weekend I put the closing chapters into an album of songs that are very important to me. I did not think I could be this pleased with a group of tunes.  It was a nice surprise.  I will say it here, as I have said it to a select few that I have discussed this with…though it is not the simplest thing to verbalized or write about.  For better or worse or good or bad I feel like I have finally found “my sound”.

That may seem odd.  It is not odd to me.  I got to music via a crooked road that I have written about in the past.  After my dear friend Malcolm Todd “Corner King” Lincoln, Sr. passed away in late August of 1997, I was reeling.  At the behest of my dear wife, Carrie (we had been married less than two years….she knows me well), I took up the guitar.  This was October 1997.  In August of 1998 I was in front of a church singing and playing songs that I had written. In the next few years I played a bit in front of some folks at a place or two.  I enjoyed it.  I did not enjoy the fact that for oh so many years I felt like I was trying to just plain keep up with everyone else around me I was playing or working on music with.

I never learned how to play the guitar very well.  I can, however, meld words and melodies that make sense and go well together.

For the longest time that was just not enough.  I was struggling trying to fit in to a musical sensibility that allowed me to be comfortable with everyone else in the room.  I just didn’t feel like I was worthy of being there.  Know that I have been, thanks in large part to my dear friend and recording partner, Jeff Carpenter, SURROUNDED by musical greatness from my first trip into the studio in 2001 until now.

In 2001 I found myself with a large combination of songs that I had written. The CD Leap of Faith was recorded. The songs were all over the board.  Rock, Country, Spiritual, Rootsy….I was glad to be in the room with them.  I had a friend with a great studio and we were off.  It worked as well as it could have.  I knew nothing about what I was doing.  I brought my songs played them and started taking orders.  Not thinking you belong at the grown-up table will do that.  The irony is that all these people were gathered together to make music because I was the one that brought the songs.  For me, it just still wasn’t enough.  I saw the talent they had as musicians and as people.  I felt I had no business to be playing in their ball park and I was the one pitching.  It was an opportunity and an experience that I will always be thankful for.  The song I wrote and sang about Lewis Grizzard was good to me.  I was on a television show in Georgia and I was awful.  I was so nervous and, yes, thinking I did not belong there.  Alex McRae was very kind to me that day.

In 2004 I had another sack of of songs that I had written.  I really liked them and I thought they were a leap of improvement.  One day I was talking to Jeff Carpenter and he mentioned to me that Tim Krekel had expressed interest in working with me.  What a compliment this was.  Tim had written hit songs for the likes of Crystal Gayle, Patty Loveless and was the lead guitar played for Jimmy Buffett during two different stints one in the 70s and one in th 80s.  Legend has it that Buffett was in Nashville looking for a new guitar player.  Also in the audience was Chet Atkins.  Atkins pointed at Krekel and told Jimmy Buffett he had found his guitar player.  Tim also toured as a member of Billy Swan’s band during the time he hit it big in 1974 with his classic “I Can Help”.  Ironically enough, that was the first song outside of church that ever got my attention.  It is on my IPOD.  It was on 790 WAKY when I was a kid.

So there I was.  Ready to record with a solid player and a rock solid band that included Mike Alger on drums, Jim Baugher on bass, Rod Wurtele on keyboards, and Jeff Guernsey on fiddle.  I was, once more, the guy who brought the songs and handed the process over to Jeff Carpenter and Mr. Krekel.  Who in the right mind would not do that?  The result was the CD The Best Thing You Did Yesterday and to this day I am very proud of it.  I brought the songs.  I turned my guitar over to Tim Krekel.  I did not play on it (save a couple songs added from sessions with Tim).  Krekel played the rhythm guitar and I sang when we recorded the rhythm tracks.  We did some signing together as backup on a few tracks and I am so glad we did.  We lost Tim in 2009.  It feels like much longer than that.

While I will cherish the time I spent with the people that made The Best Thing You Did Yesterday (finished in 2006) what it was and that result, I still have a bit of a disconnect to it artistically. You may think that is hard to believe coming from the songwriter.  I was still in Minnie Pearl mode….I was just proud to be there.  And you better believe I was.

It is now 2017.  I have recorded 16 new tunes.  Not sure what the collection will be called.  Don’t want to think about that right now.  I want to sit here and enjoy it.  I am sad that the process of recording is over.  I am elated that I feel like I was in the conversation and had a thumbprint on every aspect of this recording including playing acoustic rhythm guitar.  I go back to the first paragraph… For better or worse or good or bad I feel like I have finally found “my sound”.    I was comfortable speaking up and giving my 2 cents.  I was there for every session….every instrument that added…every time the red light came on I was there to help see it through.  I knew what I needed to hear.  That was when I knew I had found my sound.  It was a liberating time, I can tell you.  I did belong in the room.  I was at the grown-up table.  And I let me tell you…it was a nice table.

John Burgard helped me immensely.  He and I took the songs and gave them the direction they needed.  Thank you, John.  Oh, John was in a group that opened for The Rolling Stones at Louisville’s Memorial Auditorium.  A blues guitar master, I am proud to know him.  He has liked my songs since the start in 2001.

Barry King played guitar….and did so superbly.  His lead licks are very tasteful and pack a punch.  Barry played with Charlie Daniels.  He also went to Woodstock.

John Hayes played the drums.  He is a tap-happy drummer who has played with everyone in town and for good reason.  He hears it two beats before it gets there.

Jason Sturgill was a rock solid bass player.  He could not have done better.  Knew where the song was going at all times.  Was harder on himself than anyone could have been.  Great player.

Jeff Guernsey played fiddle and banjo and lead guitar.  He has appeared was here in 2001, 2006, and 2016.  This was the first time I had been there for his playing.  He has played with The Gatlin Brothers and was in Vince Gill’s band for many years.  He has a music school.  Good thing, given he is a virtuoso.

Rod Wurtele of The Wulfe Brothers has played on all of my recordings.  He is a master.  I wrote about him in a post I wrote in November when Millard Dunn came over for a session.  That too made things special.  Rod’s keyboard playing is just what I need to help fill in the space that is reserved for only him.

Robbie Bartlett and my sister, Lynn, sang backing vocals last weekend.  That is when we turned off the red light for the last time on this project.  They did a great job together.  They sounded like they had been singing together for years instead of meeting for the first time that afternoon.

Jeff Carpenter.  He is the man.  Engineer extraordinaire.  I thank him for his love of the music.  Thanks in part to Jefferson and all of the folks I have mentioned on this post, I found my sound.  How does that make sense.  It is more “our sound”.

Speaking the music rights.

Danny Johnson

I told a classic tale today.  It was framed around the Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks”…the one in Chicago that still makes me nervous.

I caught our art teacher extraordinaire, David Shiner, heading out after school today.  He seemed genuinely interested when I told him I visited my old friend “Nighthawks” at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple weekends ago.  He was even more interested as I told him my near and dear association with the painting.  He agreed that a Hopper can “do that to you.”

What Nighthawks did for me was keep me out of trouble.  When I was in that 11th grade English class Hades that I was subject to, I was able to turn back to the period art in the back of the book and get lost in the microscopic rendition of the painting that was a scant few inches on a page in the book.  I got lost nonetheless.  It was pure mystery and well, fate, I suppose.

I enjoy art.  I do.  I want to know more about it.  I know that on a trip to The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis I saw some stuff that I could have taken a hammer to just to give the “modern art” an even more modern feel.  That is just me.  I enjoyed some of it.  I loved the “Spoon” in the courtyard.  The one with a big cherry on it.  You could look it up.

I suppose the best art I saw in Minneapolis that weekend in 2009 was the sculpture of Mary Tyler Moore that was on the street to commemorate the show in her name that was set in Minneapolis.  That and the play action fake bomb that Brett Favre threw to Sidney Rice after winding up as he rolled out to the right before he heaved the pass.  That was truly art.

Sorry Brett.  You have nothing on Edward Hopper.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

It has been over a week.  That is embarrassing.

I have had some great intentions of writing lately.  I really have.  I have also been very busy.  That is not a great excuse.  But it is the one I will use today.  I will have another tomorrow.

Last weekend my dear wife, Carrie, my brother Darrell and his wife Emily, and my sister, Lynn, and her daughter, Katie, went to Indianapolis to watch our North Harrison Lady Cats play in the State Championship basketball game for Class 3A in the State of Indiana.  We had a marvelous time…sort of.  It was more fun last year.  Last year it was that Minnie Pearl thing…we were just glad to be there.  This year there was much more optimism that the Lady Cats would be bringing home the big hardware.  It did not work out that way.  Losing stinks.  But…there are more ways to win than just on a scoreboard.  Our Lady Cats are winners.  Believe me.  They are winners.

I was a winner this past weekend…thanks to the Lady Cats.  Just like last year, the line-up of family I listed in the previous paragraph was together again.  We went to the game together.  We ate and laughed together.  We stayed at the same hotel together.  We stopped in Columbus, my birthplace, and we ate breakfast together.  We laughed.  We reminisced.  We enjoyed our time.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  Shame on us that ONLY the Lady Cats have ever done this for us…uh…two years in a row.  Am I glad we have a great basketball team?  Well, for obvious reasons, yes.  That they got me and my siblings together for two wonderful weekends will mean more to me than the trophies that will collect dust somewhere.  I do thank them.

I was asked if I would write anything up special on this team.  I could go on for days.  I feel like I did that last year on this very space.

I may put some pictures on one day.  By the way…Brilliance here left his SD card in this computer and packed an empty camera to the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indy where the Lady Cats played for a State Title.  Not good.

John Wetton

John Wetton died at the end of January.  You may not know the name.  You do know the voice.  I am sitting here listening to the John Wetton Official Bootleg Archive Vol. I.  6 cds of three concerts….one in Argentina and two in Japan.

John Wetton found his greatest commercial success when the first SUPER GROUP came on the scene.  A guy from Yes, Steve Howe, a guy from The Buggles and Yes, Geoff Downes, and Carl Palmer of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer fame joined with John Wetton, who had played in King Crimson and Uriah Heep, to form ASIA.  In 1982 and 1983 their sound was EVERYWHERE.  Heat of the Moment…Don’t Cry…The Smile Has Left Your Eyes…Hold Me Now…Only Time Will Tell.  Those were all great songs.  Though it never hit the radio…the song Heroine (the woman….not the drug…) is my favorite.  John Wetton at his best.

In 2008 this original line-up made a comeback (Heroine was on the return album PHOENIX) and made many more great albums.

I always wanted to see these guys.  Figured one day I would.  In 2009 they played in a small now defunct little joint in Indy.  It was in the middle of the week.  I wish I would have gone.

Between Justin Hayward and Elton John and John Wetton, I can tell you I have always had a soft spot for English guys whose songwriting appealed to me.

I love music.  That is why I make it.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson