Playing "The Shack" on Saturday, September 3

The Shack is a very cool Northern Beaches venue. You're even encouraged to bring your own snacks and drinks:

The bio:

Little Thom sings wickedly funny songs about medical procedures, bikinis, an obscene dog, whiskey, and whether or not life is really all it's cracked up to be. And some other stuff. He has written hundreds of songs in his three-decade-long career, and has released three recordings, the latest of which, Bottomfeeders, contains no hits whatsoever, including the tender, "I Can't Wait (To Do a Tracheotomy)."

Federal Agents Raid Gibson Guitar Co.

It's about the wood they're using, apparently:

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company's manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. "The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier," he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

Jef Fretwell and the Detractors

There's four of my best buds right there:

Rock on, boys, rock on.

Music to come later...

Email From a Fan in Thailand

Just noticed an email in ye olde email receptacle. I thought it was spam, naturally, but turns out it wasn't:

Dear Little Thom,

Hi. This is Kiattisak from Thailand. I found one of your songs 'Inside Joke' from a podcast of The Word Nerds, and liked it very much. I bought the song from iTunes Store last year, so it's been a while but I can sing along only roughly. May I ask you for its lyrics, please?

Best Wishes,
Kiattisak

Kiattisak is in Thailand, singing along with one of my songs, if unintelligibly at the moment, possibly right now. Take that, Bob Dylan!

Oh, wait...

Thank you Kiattisak. (And yes, I sent him the lyrics.)

8 Deployments, 1 Suicide

Good god in heaven:

A soldier's widow says his fellow Army Rangers wouldn't do anything to help him before he took his own life - after eight deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army found Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann's body at a training area of Joint Base Lewis McChord a few weeks ago.

[...]

Ashley says her husband Jared tried to come to grips with what he'd seen and done on his eight deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"And there's no way that any God would forgive him - that he was going to hell," says Ashley. "He couldn't live with that any more."

 

This coming on the heels of the news that that U.S. Army set a record for the most suicides in one month in July. 

 

I Miss Michael Hedges

Went to an open mike last night (at the Terrey Hills Tavern). A guy there played Michael Hedges style guitar, and quite well, surprisingly. I saw Hedges two or three times, at the Oregon Country Fair, in the early 1990s. I have never seen anybody glow the way Michael Hedges did when he played. Just unbelievable power, palpable, incandescent joy in his performances. (And when I first saw him I said, "He does this standing up? No way!") Such a rotten loss when he went, in such an awful way.

This is my favorite song of his:

Morning Bird Calls

Morning in Sydney, here.