bob's blog

November

bob — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:51:34 -0600

11/14 Laura Walker, local artist extraordinaire, held our first Coffee and Colors on Friday night 11/14. This is planned to be a monthly event, held on the second Friday evening. About 10 or so would be artists showed up, some with experience and some without,Laura gave them all the supplies they would need and they all began to paint a fall maple leaf under Laura tutoring. The class lasted from 6:30 until almost 9 and everyone had a painting to be proud of when they left. We will hold the next on December 12 and the subject will be a Christmas wreath.

11/10 Happy Birthday US Marines. Sempre Fi. I was a Marine from 1964-1969 and flew choppers in RVN for 13 months in 1966-67.

October

bob — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:30:00 -0500

10/25 James Smith the Autoharp Man was back with his one man history show. He sings the real old songs and tells the stories behind most of them. And he plays the autoharp, a rarity anymore. He is a regular on our concert series and we look forward to him coming. This is real folk music at its best.

10/25 This was the Pinehardt Historical Farm Day, an annual event where Dr Pinehardt opens the historical farm to the public. The farm focuses on the 1930's and tries to replicate what it was like living and working on a farm in Alabama then. It takes hundreds of volunteers, of which I am one, to put this show on. There are people demonstrating how to make soap, hew logs, run an old sawmill, grind corm meal, work bees, milk cows, pick cotton and so forth. He also has a museum which houses a vast collection of old tools and implements. The farm is also home to many vintage shacks, barns, sheds and other old buildings. I helped Tim Scott run the turpentine booth, we do this every year. We demonstrate how the tree is tapped for the rosin, how it is collected, taken to the mill, distilled, and show the final products. For our distillery we have an old moonshine still. Its funny how many people recognize what it really is and the stories they tell about the moonshiners they knew or even how they used to make whiskey.

September

bob — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:38:34 -0500

9/5/08 I saw in a Nashville newsletter that Jerry Reed died today. Jerry Reed was one of my favorite performers, he was an inspiring guitar picker and songwriter. Of course he wrote the theme song and played third banana to Burt Reynolds and Sally Fields in Smokey and the Bandit. Some folks might say fourth banana, but I liked him much better than I did Jackie Gleason as the high sheriff. My favorite Jerry Reed song was Amos Moses. He died under hospice care of emphesyma, he was only 71. I particularly remember him from the Glen Campbell show where he was a semi regular along with John Hartford.

August

bob — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:37:54 -0500

8/30/08 August was one of the better months for music we have ever had and I wish I had kept up with this blog and reviewed them all in greater detail. As I mentioned I will add to this writeup as I have time, which seems to be at a premium right now..
But I spent the whole month of August recovering from our California trip and didn't blog at all. There was just too much going on. Go to September for a brief update of August events I haven't covered.

8/23/08 Bruce Jones a Birmingham folk singer came on the 23rd. This was a really good show, but not well attended which was too bad, this was something to hear.

July

bob — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:23:10 -0500

July 31 We leave California today, flying to Alabama via Los Vegas. The last couple of days have just been maintenance days getting ready to go home. I think I have been here too long, there is so much more I want to see again before I leave, I could stay another month. We never made it up to the Mount Shasta/Susanville where I used to work in the woods, or the Redwood National Park which I have never seen, we didn't even go to San Franciso, thats a first. We leave SF at 2:15 pm and arrive in Birmingham at 11:10 pm. Gerri has been ready to come home for a week, I think she saw enough of the mountains, I could live there.

June

bob — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:33:19 -0500

June 28 This week Berkeley bob's was named Cullman's Best Coffee for 2008 by the Cullman Times Readers Poll. I forgot to even fill out a nomination form and I don't think Gerri or Erin did, so we didn't try to work the system to get this award like some. So thanks to all of you who voted for us.

June 28 Jerry Ryan was back for an encore performance. He was hot and the house was full. It was a great show. He did something unusual I thought: he let a member f the audience sing several songs with him. It was Jamie Weathersby, a regular here. The did Proud Mary, Ride Sally Ride and Who Stopped the Rain. They met before the show she asked him if she could sing and they practiced and it worked out well. Jerry was having some voice problems and I think the break was helpful. I will refer the reader to my April 12 blog for a critique of Jerry's show "Me and Blue" this was as good or better. i am thankful to have wonderful professional talent like Jerry Ryan who enjoy coming here and a customer base who appreciates them. That is the only reason we can continue these venues. Jerry says he will be back.

May

bob — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:48:16 -0500

5/31 What a wonderful surprise the Double Shot band gave us. This is a new band, made up of really good musicians who hadn't played much together, and none of us really knew what to expect. The band is composed of John Lott, Julie Lindsey, Martin Mann on bass, Bill Warren on drums and Zach, a young hot guitar picker. Julie did most all the vocals, which surprised me as normally she and John evenly share the venue. Julie is a great songwriter, but in the past she had been shy with her vocals and even the mike had trouble picking her up and she used to get very nervous and it showed. But what a transformation! Tonight it was a different Julie, confident, energetic, great stage presence, belting out her songs, talking between sets and really feeling the music from the band which at times had her jumping around on stage like a rock star. It was great, she has a really nice voice and she put her personality into every song. Many of the songs they performed she had written and I had heard her perform them in the past, but with John's country rock band backing her up, and they were really good, the songs sounded brand new. It was an incredible performance, one that could have played anyplace. The band was led by John's hard driving guitar in his very unique style which set the mood for the band and for Julie. His guitar sound made this band really special and then add Julie's wonderful vocals on top, and it was an impressive and enjoyable evening.

April

bob — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:19:19 -0500

4/23/08 Our local paper, The Cullman Times, has an article today about me taking Connie Brien's Wallace State College Biology 101 class on a field trip to Thacker Creek. This is the second year in a row I have done this and we plan to make it an annual event if we can. Our goal is to do a Bio-Assessment of the creek. This involves collecting macro-invertebrates, which live in the creek, and classifying them by species and pollution tolerance. These critters are good indicators of the health of a creek. Macro-invertebrates are living creature big enough to see with the eye, but which have no vertebrae; they include crawfish, snails, worms, beetles, fly and beetle larvae such as hellgramites, mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly larvae and others. No fish or animals with backbones are included in the survey. We collect them using kick nets. These nets are held by two people with the bottom of the net placed on the bottom of the stream and then another one or two people disturb the rocks and soil upstream from the net to dislodge the critters. Then the nets are taken to the shore, the critters picked out and identified and placed in one of 3 containers depending on the pollution tolerance of that particular macro-invertebrate. When 200 or so critters have been collected, we total up the number of species and individuals in that species and use a matrix provided by Alabama Water Watch, a part of the Auburn University Fisheries Dept. We use their protocols in this study, and we assign the creek a numerical value from which we can determine how polluted or clean it is. The biology students, about 18 I guess, had a ball and we collected some really good data. In the end Thacker Creek came out Excellent, this is a big deal because several years earlier the US EPA had declared Thacker an impaired creek. Over the past 5 years or so that I have studied this creek, the creek has steadily improved due mostly to conservation practices being put into place by livestock producers. All in all it was a great day, the students learned something about aquatic biology and water quality issues and we were able to provide some data for the AU Fisheries waterway data base. Thanks Connie.

March

bob — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:48:27 -0600

3/31 I don't think I have said anything about our Japanese and American Friends in Cullman Association. We meet here at the coffee house twice a month. In attendance are several members of the Japanese community here, mostly from Topre, a local Japanese industry and several members of the local community. The purpose of the association is to share aspects of our two culture with each other and the community in general. Our first two outings were cherry blossom viewings, a traditional Japanese custom, first at the Japanese Garden in the Birmingham Botanical Garden and then at Dr Adams place outside Cullman. The Birmingham viewing was hosted by the Japanese American Society of Alabama and the Topre wives sponsored the local viewing. I went to both. The Birmingham Japanese Garden is very beautiful, I go there as often as possible, and the Tea House was open, a rarity. It was a nice day, but the blossoms were not fully opened. At the local viewing the Japanese ladies provide traditional Japanese food, sushi, rice balls, and many other things-delicious. The cherry trees were in full bloom and the day was beautiful and warm. We had a great time. If I can figure out how, I will post some pictures. Anyone is welcome to attend our meetings, just let me know. Our goals are to provide venues so the Japanese can teach Cullmanites about their culture as they learn about ours, we also want to find a sister city in Japan and a long range goal is to have our own Japanese garden. We are all excited about this, although I did have one major disappointment: I found out that the Japanese screen in my Japanese Tea Room is really Chinese. I guess I'll have to change the name of my tea room to our Asian Tea Room.

February

bob — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:49:35 -0600

2/26/08 I have heard nothing but favorable comments on Larry Woelharts performance here last Saturday night. Larry does a really great job playing and singing all the great music from the 60's and 70's. We had a good crowd and he played for two hours straight. Larry is very versatile and can play anything from Gordon Lightfoot to Janice Joplin, with John Denver, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, John Prine, Kenny Rogers and you name them, thrown in for good measure. He plays enough familiar stuff that everyone can join in on something. As I watched the audience, on almost everything he did, someone knew the words and was singing along. On some songs like Kenny Roger's Lucille even those who didn't know the words, the kids mostly, after the first chorus joined in. It was great. Even on the serious songs like the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald, everyone was paying attention to the story as it unfolded in song. However I think I was the only other one there that knew all the words to The Canadian Railroad Trilogy, which I rate as Gordon Lightfoot's best song. Its difficult for a singer to sing famous songs which are signature songs for certain artists and have credibility, but Larry does it very well and pulls it off. He has a great laid back style, both vocally and musically, that allows him to be successful doing that. He doesn't try to compete with the original songs, or clone them, but simply performs them in his style and it is very effective. Larry also plays at a neat venue in Huntsville, on Governors Drive just down form the Botanical Gardens, called the Nook, I think he plays on the first Thursday night. The Nook serves 120 different kinds of beers and is a laid back establishment, not rowdy. I like dark beer, but limit myself to two usually (three if I have been there for a long while) and they had the best dark beers I have ever had. The owner chose the ones he wanted me to try and they they were outstanding. I hope Larry will be back soon.