12/18/07 What a great open mike Monday night! Many of the Wallace students who left last year to go away to college returned for open mike last night and brought their parents, we had a full house. This was the first time many of the parents had met each other, it was a special occasion. We had 14 singers including Dennis Kaylor, Josh Brooks, Carlo, Mark Magee, Joe C, Opie, Meliah, Abby Smith, Emily's mother even read some poems, John Lott, Garland Talbert sang Grandfather's Clock and recited Little Boy Blue, John Mitchel, me and others. Everybody hung around afterward and talked, it was really nice.

12/16/07 Last night was probably the best concert that Bimini Road has ever performed at the store. Everything was "on". This was the first time we had a band perform on the new stage and I was really surprised at how good the acoustics were. Chuck had the sound system working at peak performance, you could hear every musical and vocal nuance. We had a great crowd too, a full house pushing 50 folks. The band consisted as always of Chuck and Ruthie Puckett on vocals and lead guitar, Richard and Daniel Eves on vocals, bass and congas, Shelly Heard on mandolin and Jason on second guitar. They performed all of their old favorites: with classic Grateful Dead tunes, some really neat originals and other covers. Ruthie belted out her now famous bluesy numbers Summertime, Me and Bobbi Magee, Chactahatchee Bridge, Halelujah from the movie Shrek. Chuck's guitar picking was superb and Jason did some great breaks also. Of course Richard on bass is as good as it gets as is Shelly on mandolin and Daniel on Congas. They did a lot of great jamming and improvos. They are a great band and could play anyplace. We are very fortunate that they like to play here and do regularly.

12/5/07 A concert by Phillip David Harris, Nashville singer songwriter, was scheduled tonight, but he was a no show. This has only happened to me once before. James Smith the Autoharp Man didn't show for a concert last year. In that case we got mixed up on dates. I don't know what happened to Phillip. I kind of had a premonition that he may not show as he didn't reconfirm with me earlier in the week as I try to get all the performers to do. I also tried to contact him but was unsuccessful. I really enjoy his music and was disappointed. We had a pretty good house waiting for the show. However, I had asked John Lott earlier in the day to bring his guitar along just in case and that really paid off. At the last minute, without any preparation, I opened for John, sang my old stuff for 45 minutes and John playd for another hour or so. Everybody seemed to enjoy it very much, in fact I got so many good comments I scheduled John and I along with Dennis Kaylor to perform on January 6th.

12/3/07 Open mike night, but I was unable to attend much of it due to the Soil and Water Conservation District Christmas Party at Camp Meadowbrook. I finally got there about 8:30. Josh and Erin were running the show, it was a fairly good crowd, but winding down by the time i arrived. According to th signup sheet they had a good number of performers.