Tuesday, August 22, 2006

You Want Johnny Cash at Your Wedding?

In the old days, everybody wanted the "Wedding Song." Thanks be to god those days are over! Apologies to Paul Stookey, but I'm still sick of that song. Fortunately, we've been asked to learn some different songs for this summer's weddings, including "You Belong to Me" made famous by Patsy Cline. It turned out well enough that we use it in some of our non-wedding shows. But I never would have guessed someone would want a Johnny Cash song during the wedding ceremony itself. Maybe the reception when people want to dance or hoot and holler, but in front of Grandma and Uncle Fred? Very surprising but not altogether unpleasant either. In fact, it turns out that some of those Cash songs are actually a challenge to learn, much to my surprise. Thus, Luther Perkins gets even more respect from this guitar player. Looking forward to this next wedding. We get to play both the ceremony and reception at the Wildfire restaurant.

And now the weather has cooled on the Olympic Peninsula, and you have to watch out for foggy conditions coming back from Seattle as you climb Walker Mountain after the Hood Canal brigde. Everybody complains about the extra summer traffic on the Peninsula, but compare that to I-5 during rush hour(?)in Seattle or Tacoma or anywhere on the west side of Puget Sound. It so much better to take Metro after walking off the ferry in downtown Seattle. A few weeks ago I had some extra time on a routine visit to see my dad who lives down south in Burien. Figuring it would take at least an hour to bus to his place I planned accordingly for a leisurely bus trip. But after call Metro and being directed to a really fast express bus it only took fifteen minutes to get from second and Marion to his place in Burien. Astonishing! Pray for subways and light rail! More about public transportation in later posts.

So tomorrow we take the new teachers to lunch at Cafe Garden. Maybe some of them sing or play the guitar (it's a fairly safely bet) and I can convince them to come down the Junction in Port Angeles for the open mike/jam Sunday nights starting at 7:00 PM. Stephanie and I continue to work on new songs and plans for a podcast right here on this site. Stay tuned!