Back to Seedy Bars

There was a time in our parenting lives when the only way we could get to see much of our kids was by visiting them in seedy bars in questionable parts of town.  Three of our kids were in a band called "Lawsuit" for ten years and we tried to get to most of their shows--and since they played nearly every weekend, we spent a lot of time in bars.  Which is fun for someone who doesn't drink!

Lawsuit packed up its bags and faded in to the annals of music history in 1996 and while there is a revamped band, Preoccupied Pipers, they aren't as organized, don't play as often, and only Ned is in it regularly, Marta occasionally, and Jeri when she is in town (rarely).

But tonight Preoccupied Pipers played as part of an extravaganza called....

Ned has been working with Tom Fay to put  this show on and publicize it (lemme tell you...if you want a good publicist, Ned's your man!  He managed to make and post a video a day for the past week advertising this gig, in addition to an appearance on a Sacramento morning TV show and getting his mother to write a half-page long article, with two color photos, on Tom Fay, "The Christmas Miracle.")

And so there was no way we could skip this concert.  Harrow's isn't exactly as "seedy" as some of the bars we have visited following our kids around Northern California.  It actually has a menu of real food, so we could have dinner there.  Ned saved us a table overlooking the stage and dance floor

A quartet opened the show and then Tom and his band, the Rhythm Kings, took the stage and did their set, ending with The Santa Rhumba.  To look at him tonight you wouldn't think he was 75 and nearly died of a stroke two years ago!

There were a couple of other bands following the Rhythm Kings and then Preoccupied Pipers came on  The thing that was always interesting about Lawsuit is that they always filled a dance floor.  Even in a crowd that hadn't danced to other groups the same evening, would always be dancing to Lawsuit.  That's what I thought when I saw the group dancing to Preoccupied Pipers.  It was a Lawsuit flashback.  (Walt pointed out that I could tell my mother that we went dancing tonight!)

It's always fun to see Ned on the drum, though he's hidden behind all the instruments in front.  He did come out in front with guitar to do a duet with Marta.

There were also several "guest stars" whom I did not get pictures of, like Sarah "Sarge" Clanton and Barbara West singing a trio with Marta and later Paul's best friend Kag sharing the lead with KC Bowman on the finale, one of my favorite Lawsuit Songs, "The Grassy Knoell," their off-beat tribute to Christmas and the Kennedy assassination.  Even Ned's brother-in-law Brad got in there playing the tin whistle.  Everybody just had a great time.

There was another band after Preoccupied Pipers, but we decided to skip it and just came on home to watch Jeopardy.

 

As I write this, I am uploading my video of "The Grassy Knoell" to YouTube.  If it actually uploads, I will link to it here tomorrow.  It made me teary remembering the Lawsuit years and missing Paul.

We came home on such a high, the show having been so much fun, and with the happy news that Doug Jones had won the Alabama Senate run-off.  

Of course by the time I got to the end of this entry, Roy Moore had refused to concede and was demanding a re-count and you just know they'll find some way to reverse the votes.

The Christmas Miracle

I always go through the tortures or the damned before I do an interview.  I knew today's interview would be easy because I would be with Ned, who knew the information he wanted Tom Fay, the lead singer of the Rhythm Kings, to talk about and is a take charge guy anyway.

The last interview I did I did in the lobby of Atria because it's the most quiet place around, so I chose that for our interview today.  

Ned with Tom and Ned's friend KC

The point of the interview was to get information to publicize a fund-raiser Tom and Ned are working on, to raise money for a Sacramento animal organization.  Tom has been doing an annual fund raiser for about 7 years, now.  Each year it's a different organization and with the glut of animals needing care this year because of the fires in No. California, this seemed the ideal charity for 2017.

Tom wrote the Santa Rhumba, which I embedded yesterday.  I heard  that he wrote it in his sleep, got up one morning with it all in his head, wrote it down and recorded it.  So my main interest was in finding out how he dream-wrote it (especially since I dream-wrote my pig entry the other day!)

Tom had lots and lots to say about lots and lots of musicians I'd never heard of (not being into the local rock scene) and I hoped he wouldn't be disappointed when I only was able to write a one-paragraph thing about the concert.

However, as he talked, I realized that what I had here was a real human interest story and I hoped that my editor would let me handle it like that (after I wrote to her, she agreed with me)

It starts with the Santa Rhumba and the CD that came out of it, a compilation of music by a bunch of local bands that was a fund-raiser for AIDS.  Lawsuit was part of that CD and recorded their "Grassy Knoel."  Tom and Ned didn't really know each other, though both of their bands played at the CD release concert.

Anyway, the song took on a life of its own and everyone loved it.  Ned was still at the radio station at the time and made sure it got played (along with "Grassy Knoel") during the Christmas season.  Since 1994 it has been played on college radio stations, NPR affiliates, and local radio stations, as well as being available on iTunes. 

Six weeks before Christmas in 2014, Tom had a stroke.  A bad stroke.  He nearly died.  And he left the hospital with a feeding tube because he could not swallow and a walker.  The doctors figured this was as good as he would ever get.  That year was the bleakest Christmas he had ever known but he was watching TV and the host of the show said he had just heard this really cool song by the Rhythm Kings and it was #12 on the Sirius Radio top 100 countdown of alternative Christmas hits.

Tom contacted the host and said "that's my band."  The guy was very excited and said "you have to get better and perform that song on our show next year!"  So Tom began to fight.

His wife Cottie (who was the bartender at a club where Tom had performed) is absolutely adorable and is obviously the reason why Tom is alive today.  They discovered that the fluid he was being fed was mostly sugar and salt and researched to find an organic liquid called Liquid Hope and slowly he began to get better.

In May of 2015 he was able to swallow again and he worked so he was able to throw away his walker and sure enough in December of 2015, he performed "The Santa Rhumba" on "Good Day."   He contacted Ned's friend KC about playing with him and KC brought Ned, who sang backup and became kind of Tom's helper.  Now Ned and Tom are working together to put on this year's charity event.

Tom still has post-stroke symptoms, but he has progressed further than anybody ever thought he could...and it's all because of "The Santa Rhumba."

Pick a Pear

I love the Food Network.  Saturday is my day to indulge in a marathon of shows like the Pioneer Woman, Tricia Yearwood, the Barefoot Contessa, and The Kitchen (I miss Farmhouse Rules since they changed the schedule--it took me awhile to get used to Nancy Fuller's delivery, but I grew to look forward to her homespun cooking).  I didn't really like The Kitchen much, with four chefs making various things, while an audience applauds each new ingredient, or any recipe taken out of the oven (dumb!)  But lately I've learned a lot from offhand comments the chefs toss out from now and then.

Geoffrey Zakarian has changed my life.  Well, slightly.

I have loved pears all of my life but for the past many years, I never buy them because I'm usually disappointed.  They are either overripe and mushy or under ripe and too firm to have a good flavor.  When I really need a pear fix, I buy canned, but of course  that's nothing like the real thing.

However, awhile back. Zakarian made a comment that to check the ripeness of a pear, you don't feel the body of it, like you do an avocado, you check the flesh at the top, around the stem.  If that is soft, the pear is ripe (if the body is soft, the fruit is overripe and mushy).

Well, hello new world!  I have had an orgy of pears this season, no longer uncomfortable wondering whether or not a pear is ripe.  I haven't had a bad one yet.  Walt now buys several pears at the farmer's market each Saturday and I encourage him because I know that I will really enjoy them....and I do.

There is something so...sophisticated...about sitting down to a lunch of crackers, a wedge of brie and a delicious, perfectly ripe pear.

I have fleetingly thoughts of using my newfound pear knowledge to make something more fancy with the pears, but I like just plain pears too much to taint them with wine or something else.

Thanks to The Food Network, after 74 years I finally know how to cook a steak and have it turn out the way I want it to, without nervous guesswork, and I have even cooked pork chops that are not overcooked and dry. Chicken is no longer guesswork and Walt hasn't had to return a piece of chicken to the microwave to zap it in a long time.

It seems like such a simple thing, but I'm proud of myself.  You'd think that at my age, those things would come second hand to me, but they have not.  I'm better at the fancy stuff than the basics.

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Tomorrow I am meeting with Ned and his friends Tom and Cottie Fay.  Tom Fay is the guy who wrote the Sacramento favorite "The Santa Rhumba," featured on a fund-raising Christmas CD recorded in 1994 that included Lawsuit's "The Grassy Knoel," certainly two of our must-hear pieces of Christmas music, along with Bing Crosby's "Jingle Bells"

Ned just created a new video of the Santa Rhumba (look for Ned in the silver suit)

Fay apparently hosts a fund-raiser for some Sacramento charity each Christmas season and this year, the recipient of the funds raised will be a local animal shelter.    Ned is not only helping to produce the show, but will also play in one of the bands, Preoccupied Pipers (which consists of some of the old members of Lawsuit).

Since he has a mom who works for 2 newspapers, he's hoping I can help get them some publicity, so I am meeting with them tomorrow  to interview both Ned and Tom and then write an article for both papers.  I don't have the OK from either paper, but I'm hoping I can write the article well enough that they will print it.

The Santa Rhumba

Ned was on TV this morning.

The guy in the middle of this picture is Tom Fay, who used to be lead singer for a group called the Rhythm Kings in the era when Ned was performing with Lawsuit (the guy on the right is K.C. Bowman, who was also in Lawsuit and now has his own recording studio and two other bands).

In 1994, the Rhythm Kings and Lawsuit and a bunch of other local bands put together a CD of Christmas music as a fund raiser for the Sacramento AIDS Foundation.  Lawsuit recorded The Grassy Knöel and the Rhythm Kings had one of my favorite Christmas songs, The Santa Rhumba.

Lawsuit called it quits at the end of 1996 and I don't know how much longer the Rhythm Kings stayed together, but apparently they haven't performed together in years.  I also don't know how they happened to have been invited to perform the Santa Rhumba on the morning program of one of the local TV stations.

Fay invited Ned to come with them to the station and KC, who had come up from Oakland to attend Ned and Marta's Christmas party and his father's 75 birthday party also came along to play the guitar.

When we saw him last night Ned let me know they were going to be on, but the show runs four hours and he wasn't sure which hour they would be on.  He suspected they would be on the 7 a.m. hour, but I set up the DVR to record from 6 to 10, just in case!

I have never watched this station and probably never will again.  Near as I can tell, all they do is tell the news and the traffic.  I cannot tell yu how many times during the course of the 3 hours I watched that I heard what the weather was going to be and saw traffic cam shots of the same stretch of highway.  There is funny chit chat among the hosts in between, and then off again to the weather report, in case it changed in the last 5 minutes.

Ned was right.  They were on the 7 a.m. hour, at the very end....and if they had cut out one of those weather reports they would not have been cut off before the song ended.

As a teaser for the 8 a.m. hour, the hosts said that the Rhythm Kings would be back and again it was at the end of the hour and the song was cut off before it ended.

K.C. played the guitar; Ned just futzed around.  He had rhythm instruments for the first song and just danced with and around the female vocalist for the second, but you know?  He's a media guy.  He has been on or around stage just about his entire life and he definitely knows how make a show interesting and how to present the camera guy with something more interesting to film other than a bunch of musicians standing in line across a stage, playing. Ned danced, kibitzed with the woman, and made faces when he could see the camera pointed at him.  As a result, he got more screen time than anybody else, though the others got their fair share as well.

It was a fun morning and always fun seeing Ned on stage.  They said they hadn't performed The Santa Rhumba in 20 years, and it was nice to see it performed live again too.