Tuesday, November 08, 2005

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Real creative header, I know...

Several things to tell y'all today.

Nate was real glad to get home after IBMA to spend more time with GG and Melissa... he really missed both his girls while we were gone and was such a proud papa, showing everyone pictures and beaming a lot.

IBMA, by the way, was a great success. We worked our butts off, playing late night showcases almost every night, and then there was Fan Fest. A great many of those people had not ever heard of us until that show. They were probably wondering, who are these Wilders and why are they playing right before Rhonda Vincent? Hopefully we gave them the answers in that set. We did great.

It was almost strange playing at 1 pm after all those late night showtimes, though, and let me tell you that we sure do prefer a sound system rather than yelling and overplaying in a hotel room suite! Those can be real fun and we do know how to project, but it takes a toll. I lost my voice by the end of the week (had just enough left to sing at Fan Fest), but it was probably from talking more than singing. You know, I tend to do a lot of the talking, whenever I get a chance, and I'm not just talking about on stage!

There were a lot of folks to talk to -- always the business contacts at IBMA, and other musicians, etc. etc. I think we have secured ourselves a good place in that organization. In fact, I truly believe we wouldn't be where we are without IBMA. That's where we met Mary, our agent extraordinaire, and that's where festival promoters from Telluride/Rockygrass, Grey Fox, Wintergrass, and more, first saw us play (in those hotel rooms, past years). Many of those promoters still came to see us play showcases, and that's a great feeling to know that they want to keep up with us. We also had some time spent with the man who is going to get our new CD out to radio stations everywhere... our first publicist, Al Moss. He's a fantastic fellow, been in the biz for a long time, lives in Nashville now, and is probably even as I write this telling yet another biz person about us. He's a real go-getter -- we met him at Merlefest, and boy are we lucky.

It was great to see our Larryfest friends again, and we did get a chance to play their showcase room too. And, they have sound. (Thanks Howie!) Boy, is that a great thing. We look forward to seeing y'all in December!

A personal highlight for me took place on Friday night. I was having a high-energy big time party jam in a hotel room with some old time musician friends, and was taken aside by a mutual musician friend who whispered in my ear, "we're going to be playing in the room across the hall with Hazel Dickens. And you need to come." O-Kay! I played a couple more tunes with my friends, and excused myself, trying to be cool about it since it was brought to me in secret. I went over there and met Ms. Dickens (if you don't know who she is, let me just say -- THE singer's singer; songwriter; pioneering bluegrass lady; folk music superstar -- AND, she plays electric bass!), and played there for about an hour. It was a small jam and of highest quality and I was lucky to sit next to Ms. Dickens to hear her most powerful voice so close up. Wow. As I readied myself to leave (this was the night before our 1 pm Fan Fest play, and it was going on 3 am by now), Hazel leaned in to me and said, "you really perked this jam up. We were kinda heading down, and you came in, and just perked things up." Wow.

The next night I was at a party and in walks Hazel... when she saw me, she said, "there's My Fiddler!" Wow!! I gave her a copy of Throw Down and I sure hope she likes it and we cross paths again. She's just a regular gal, but I've never seen a singer give themselves to a song more fully than she does. Again, wow.

OK... is that a nice nugget for y'all?

Here's the other thing to let you know about. It's called MySpace and it appears to be the thing that everyone is doing. I found out about it during IBMA when some friends of mine in a new band (The Sidewinders -- old time goodness, y'all, including David Bass, the fiddler from Freight Hoppers) gave me a card with their myspace url on it. Well, it looks like every band we know and so many more we don't are on this thing. So, this weekend I started setting up a page, and it's amazing how fast people are finding us! You can join for free, and it's another place where I can add more Wilders content, cheaper and quicker than on our main site.

our myspace place

You can get lost on this thing, there are so many people out there. But it's already turned me on to a couple new bands. Just thought y'all would want to know about this, being that y'all are the best fans we got!

That brings us back around to this moment and I've got to get ready to do laundry so I have clean things to wear in Florida this weekend. That should be pretty cool, our first Florida fest! So, until I get the bug to do another wordy scatterbrained post... take care all.

13 comments:

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  7. Ok folks, pet peeve here. I hate, absolutely HATE fast forwarding holidays. Can we PLEASE get through Thanksgiving before we get into Christmas!!!

    How about we get back to the subject of dumpsters. Our next door neighbors lost their home to a fire in the summer of 2003. Later that fall, they had asked a few people over to help them throw the remainder of the smoked out furniture and debris into the huge dumpster blocking our driveway. There was a gentleman there helping that day who was a friend of a friend of our neighbors. Being a nice fellow, he had volunteered his time and put in a full day of lifting and dumping before everybody decided to call it a day. The dumpster, as I said, was huge and sitting at about a 7 or 8 degree slant down our shared driveway to the street. This poor guy decided to finish his work for the day by pulling the big door closed. What he didn't realize was that a slant of about 7 or 8 degrees + a giant steel door + gravity = one crushed human head. He tried to slow the door down and it smashed his head in the door causing a fractured skull and serious brain damage. His wife is now suing our neighbors, their insurance company, and the dumpster company for several million dollars in damages. How about THAT for a dumpster story!

    Oh, by the way, I got called for jury duty this week. So, although I have a Florida post mulling around in my mind, I won't be able to do anything about it until the trial is finished. In the meantime, I'd like to ask that no more mention of Christmas happen on the blog. Please get back to poop, pee, dumpsters or jury duty comments. Or, I guess if you have a good recipe for Thanksgiving, that would be ok too.
    later,
    pee.
    I mean P

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  8. Okay, my bad. Wrong righted. Now there's something to be THANKFUL for!

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  9. I got very little to add to all this. I'm sorta' like Woody Guthrie at this point, stunned and confused, just hanging around to see what the hell is gonna' happen next. Random thoughts:

    - They're all guilty, Phil. Just string them all up and let God sort them out.

    - They're planning to vaccinate 14 BILLION chickens in China for bird flu. How can you do that? Can we have a song about that?

    - I'm not big on Christmas CD's, you can only get into them for about a month per year.

    - I wish I'd quit sitting at the computer with my left leg folded under my butt. It's tearing up my knee.

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  10. I won't mention the unmentionable, but I do have to ask for clarification. Several mentioned "The Sleigh" and Vieta posted a link... the only thing I found was "Sleigh Ride"... is that what you're talking about?

    I have played that tune many times with some friends I've done a Holiday (Dec. 24, won't mention the name) performance with. Therefore, it's kinda specific to me and that group. Sorry, groupers, but I won't be playing that with The Wilders! It is a great tune though. I've known it since I was a kid, somehow.

    Looking at that list of songs, I remembered how much I love Winter Wonderland. Maybe I'll work up a rendition of that, swingin' honky-tonk instrumental style. Stay tuned!

    Thanks for the requests, though, keep 'em coming... at the very least you'll probably give me an idea of something related!

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  11. I can play "Sledd Ridin". Ain't a Christmas song though.

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  12. 63 comments later, thanks for the Hazel Dickens story, Betse. She is one of the heroines of old time music.

    Not to mention her duet work with Alice Cooper which did so much to introduce old time to the rock and roll crowd.

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  13. Just kidding about Alice Cooper. It was Alice (Foster) Gerrard. I was just thinking that in a parallel universe somewhere and time, a Dickens/Cooper duet would be cool.

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