BILL BLOG
Monday March 20, 2023
Monday morning and I hope you recovered from your green beer St. Pat’s weekend. I woke up to 22 degrees this morning but we climb to 53 for a high and will be in the upper 70’s come Thursday here in Nashville.
THE WEEKEND
I had a pretty busy weekend that started Friday morning with a writing session with my friend Rick Lang who was in town from New Hampshire where he lives. I think I’ve posted here more than once that he’s in Maryland, but it’s actually New Hampshire where he and his wife live. Rick and I have written online many times, but this was the first time we got to sit face to face and rhyme. And I think we made good use of the time as we wrote not one but two songs from ideas he brought in his backpack from New Hampshire. And he gave me some great news.
Rick is recording the follow up to his Grammy nominated album “Gonna Sing Gonna Shout” that our mutual friend and head of Billy Blue Records Jerry Salley is recording. Every song is a song Rick wrote or helped write with various bluegrass artist singing those songs. And there will be at least one of our songs on this, maybe two.
And then he told me that Daywind Records, the parent company I write songs for is going to do a southern gospel Christmas album of his songs and uses some of the bigger southern gospel artists to sing those. Wow. And I’m hoping we’ll have a couple of songs on that project as well. So…I’m now hoping Rick comes to town a bit more often since he brings such great news with him!
EPITAPH
One of the songs I wrote with Rick was about how short life is, and how little space there is for someone to write something on your stone…your epitaph and wondering what they might carve into words on it. Some folk chose to be creative. Here’s what some famous folks had written on theirs.
Betty Davis
“She Did It The Hard Way”
Mel Blanc who did all those cartoon voices.
“That’s All Folks”!
Merv Griffin
“I Will Not Be Right Back After This Message”.
SATURDAY
I had the honor again of playing songs in the Country Music Hall of Fame again with my friend Steve Dean. Such a pleasure every time to play our original songs in the intimate theater setting inside the Ford Theater there. It’s just a 45-minute show and it flies as it also includes time to take questions from the audience.
I had a couple of great friends in the house one of those being broadcaster Skip Mahaffey who is the morning guy coast to coast for K-Love Radio the Contemporary Christian radio station for a lot of folks. He actually threw up his hand and had a question which was funny and I wound up singing “Face For Radio” for him since he was there in front of me with his wife. So good to see both of them.
My thanks to Kayleigh Shoemaker for coordination and Dan for the great sound. Kayleigh talked to both Steve and myself about possibly being involved with some of the Hall of Fame’s other songwriter programs they have there, so hopefully we’ll be playing there even more in the future. We just could not have had a better time playing our songs and visiting with folks from all over the country who were there.
MARCH MADNESS
I did catch some of the basketball tournament going on. Some big upsets this year and maybe one of the biggest ever on Friday with the college of Farleigh Dickinson a #16 seed slays the #1 seed the Purdue Boilermakers. It was such a big and unexpected upset that there’s no one left standing in the CBS brackets. Of the millions filling out that bracket, not one person has a clean bracket sheet. And if you’re like me, you had to look up Farleigh Dickinson as I had no idea what state that college is in. For the record it’s New Jersey. They got eliminated yesterday but what a great upset. On to the Sweet 16.
HEALTH NOTES
The COVID-19 pandemic according to some may have been caused by raccoon dogs in China. Uh huh. I had to Google raccoon dog myself.
The AARP announced that more and more older Americans are opting out of vaccines in favor of natural healing. Flu, Covid, Shingles all of the above.
Good news for coffee lovers like me. A new study suggests that drinking more coffee could lower body fat and prevent type 2 diabetes.
OSCARS
They came and went with better ratings this year. And the host Jimmy Kimmel did NOT get slapped. I thought there was better odds of that happening as opposed to Farleigh Dickinson beating Purdue.
All the nominees get a gift bag…for free. Sort of. The goodies were so good this year that each person who got one has to pay $63,000 worth of taxes on it. Yikes.
The first time I ever experienced something like that was when I was a contestant on the old TNN country music trivia contest “Fandango” that was hosted by Bill Anderson. I competed against some other country radio personalities and got on a roll and won. And that meant I won several prizes. A vacuum cleaner, clothing…other assorted things AND a cruise. Then I found out we had to pay taxes on anything we took. So, we took the cruise and not much else. I can remember thinking “what”? when they told me we had to pay taxes on something we WON.
So now I always remind myself that free Ain’t always free.
PRICEY
How expensive are eggs today? Too expensive for the Dollar Tree Stores. Eggs have gone up 60% over the past year and they are too pricey for Dollar Tree to put on their shelves. The majority of their pricing in store is $1.25. You can’t get eggs for a buck and quarter no more. I think the chickens went on strike. One wrote “You Ain’t Paying, We Ain’t Laying” on his protest sign.
AND THEN…
There’s Tequila. It could get more expensive too. Extreme weather has affected the crop of Agave plants the main source for Tequila and they’re saying we could see a shortage of it on shelves. And I guess that means they’ll wind up with a surplus of worms that have no bottle to rest in the bottom in.
TODAY
This evening I’ll gather with some songwriter buddies for this veterans retreat and we’ll hang out, sing a few songs, have a little something to eat and most importantly meet our veteran nurses we’ll be writing with on Tuesday morning as we try and turn their stories into memorable songs that will be performed in concert tomorrow night. Always…always an honor.
Have a great Monday!
Comments
Post a Comment