Fort Myers, FL (Part 4) – Beautiful Music

When we went downtown for the First Fridays Art Walk in Fort Myers we had a chance to meet some of Alice’s friends, enjoy some delicious food, browse a few galleries and hear some great music!

These are a few of the friends that Alice meets up with to enjoy First Fridays and other night life around town.  They are a sweet bunch of folks.

While we were there we heard the legendary John Mooney play blues (slide) guitar for free at the Indigo Room!  He’s a pretty amazing musician as you can see from his website.  (There’s a photo of him playing with Bonnie Rait among other things).  Apparently he has family in Fort Myers, so he comes to see them and drops in at some of the local places to play.  Sorry that the photo is blurry.  I was using our table as a tripod and it kept getting bumped, but you get the idea.   Here’s a photo from his website.

After that we wandered down to have dinner at the French Connection Cafe.  The food was excellent and very reasonably priced.  Even though we had a pretty big storm earlier in the evening, the weather was perfect for eating outside.

Check out Alice’s Steak Salad.  Mmmm!

Later we stopped in at this Arts for ACT Gallery and Boutique set up to raise funds for (Abuse Counseling and Treatment) in the Fort Myers area.  See the beautiful blue scarf hanging over the partition?  That’s where I found MY beautiful GREEN hand-dyed silk scarf by Sara Long that I promptly purchased to bring home.  It was VERY reasonably priced too.  I loved all the quilted art and textiles here.

Alice has a friend, Kat Epple that was playing music at another gallery – Space 39 (also free to listen) so we headed over there to hear her music and meet more of Alice’s friends.  We learned that Kat’s music has won 8 Emmys for film scores and has been nominated for Grammys!  Pretty awesome, huh?  Unfortunately, I don’t know the names of the other 2 musicians, but they all played beautifully!  The guy on the right is playing a theramin.  You can go here if you want to hear what one sounds like.  It has something to do with radio waves…

Well we’re headed out to Naples today, so that’s all I have time for.  We had a really fun time at the Art Walk, thanks to our host and tour guide, Alice.

Day 8 – Journal Your Christmas

Are you wondering where the posts for days 1 – 7 are?  Well, for now they’re in my head.  I’ve been too busy to do any posts, but I’m gathering lots of thoughts and ideas.  Once we get to Sunday I should have a LOT more time, I think… and maybe I’ll try to go back and catch up on some of the journaling days that I’ve missed.

This week we have practice on Weds night (which is also our 32nd wedding anniversary), our Home Group Christmas party (here) on Thursday night, Terry has a concert in Scottsdale on Friday night, we’re celebrating our anniversary on Saturday and we will be helping with worship at church on Sunday morning.   Then I think the schedule is pretty open until Christmas.  Yea!  Oh, I still have some Christmas shopping and wrapping to finish up, but that’s easy peasy compared to these last few weeks.

I thought I could post about today’s topic since it’s about the Sights of the Season.  I’ve already been snapping pics this month, so I can easily find what I need.

I love this photo above of our cat, Shredder.  She’s trying to look so innocent, but you can see the evidence of her tail wagging if you look at the trees on the windowsill.
This past Friday and Saturday 12/4 & 5 – my hubby played in a Christmas Concert each night with some of our best friends.  (He’s the third one from the right in the rust colored shirt.)  Randy Thompson is the featured musician in this band, since many of the songs were written by him.  Terry loves playing these concerts with Randy and I love going to them!  It’s such an awesome way to start the holiday season.

Another one of my favorite sights in December is the bare branch that hangs in the living room.  It’s so much fun to change the decor with the seasons.  This winter it’s sparkly!  Silver, gold, crystal and white snowflakes, icicles and other various ornaments.  With these decorations it can stay up past Christmas and through the other winter months as well.

And here’s a little peek at our Christmas bathroom.  This year, I made the two framed pieces on the walls.  The black framed picture is filled with holiday designs and expressions from scrapbook paper and the red one, framed in white is “Merry Christmas” greetings on wrapping paper.  What a fun and easy way to change out your framed artwork for the holidays!

Be sure to click to enlarge the photos.

Decorating our home is one of my favorite parts of the holidays.  Thanks for visiting!

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Sorry to be MIA –

We had a busy weekend that I need to post about later, plus I seem to have a lot of odd tasks that need to be taken care of right now. Researching some upcoming travel, and so much more.

Here’s a link to some photos I took this weekend when Terry played with Bob Ryan, a friend of ours, for a new Coffee House that’s meeting at St. George’s Church in downtown Phoenix. There’s way too many photos (I need to cut them down) but I told them I’d take a bunch so they could use some for their future promos. This was the first time they did it and they’re hoping to meet on the Second Saturday of each month, which is why it’s called “Second Saturdays”. I think I got a few good photos, but it’s always hard to shoot musicians in low light because they’re always moving…and I hate the washed out look of my flash. I need to start using my bigger flash for these kinds of things.

There was a great turnout, especially for the first time and the guys, as well as Amber Hunter, the opening act, did an outstanding job. This was only the 2nd time that Terry and Bob had played together, but things went very smoothly and they had a really nice sound. I know Terry had a good time and it would be great if they have a chance to play together more.

Second Saturday @ St. George’s:

Another diversion before I post the rest of vacation:

Next Saturday, September 12th, Terry will be playing at a coffeehouse downtown with a friend of ours, Bob Ryan. See more about Bob & his music here.

The evening is called

Coffee House Night

You can find more info and a map to the location here. I think the times are wrong though. I think the guys start at 8:45, so be sure to get there early to get a seat. You won’t want to miss a single song. It’s expected to be just a relaxing night of music and coffee. The guys are billed as “The Catfish Hunters”. Bob picked the name, but I’m sure Terry’s just fine with it. (It’s a baseball reference and we all know Terry’s a baseball fan. Do you get it?)

The photo above is Terry, Bob and Amy (another friend) playing at Bob’s CD release party a couple of years ago. They had talked then about getting together to play again sometime and are just now getting around to making it happen. Bob writes all his own songs and plays guitar. Terry will be embellishing with mandolin, bass, banjo, and harmonica.

Should be fun! Hope to see you there!

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More compliments online for the Exit – Glory Road album!!!

You are never going to believe that our friend, Bernie Rolfe found more comments and compliments online about the Glory Road album. For those who haven’t known us long, this is the only album that was made by the band that Terry played with in the late 70’s (when we met). They recorded it the year before we were married and it actually came out the year we were married. (There’s more to that story, but I won’t go into it here.)

It’s so amazing to find comments online from total strangers raving about the music from an album that was recorded over 30 years ago on vinyl. The internet really is a wonderful thing. You’ll see that one of these bloggers lives in Australia! How in the world did he hear of GR ?

Anyway, check out these links and enjoy for yourself…and maybe even leave a comment if you heard the album or the band (and can remember anything about it).

The Ancient Star-Song – is a guy in East Randolph, NY. He has a place where you can download the whole album of music. Not sure about the copyright issues there, but for what it’s worth.

Ascending and Descending – is written by Christopher Orczy, an Australian blogger. He also has some kind words to say about the album.

Really took me on a walk down memory lane. Such precious memories of a blessed and unique season of life. Fun times!

If any of the band members read this, it sounds like they would love to hear from you on these sites.

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I am a HUGE fan of James Taylor

Even though he looks like he could be my dad, he is such a gentle soul and I love the stories he tells in his music.

I am actually signed up to receive his newsletter, mainly with hopes of finding out when he’ll be in town or nearby so we could go hear him. Terry took me to one of his concerts at Universal in California and I LOVED it! I felt like I was sitting in his living room. He’s the only musician whose newsletter I receive.

Take a look at this recent letter. He and his band are actually playing on a transatlantic cruise of the Queen Mary 2! Wow! I would SO love to be on that cruise to have a chance to hear him in such an awesome setting. There are some nice video of him singing there too.

And I just found out that he’s going to be playing in Tucson in September and tickets go on sale TOMORROW!!! I’m excited. I think we’ll try to get tickets. Anyone else want to go?