By Bob DorrSo, I am often asked "Bob, what's a rock star on your level do when you have a weekend off?". The answer (my friend, is blowin' in the wind) (can you tell I've been listening to early Bob Dylan?) comes after the Blue Biz that is...
Later today (Thur) we're hoping to kick off the "Last Summer" parking-lot-party season at Porky's, 44th & Douglas in Des Moines. The story I get is that HyVee has indeed purchased the land, but won't start building until after the summer, so Annebel has decided to open the patio for one last summer fling (!) We play 6-9pm. Sam "the Hammond organ man" Salomone will be the 5th piece at Porky's, making this one of those rare Blue Band shows without a sax player. Remember, this is contingent on NO RAIN, so you might want to check our website or call Porky's (515-270-6058) before coming out. The people watching, and all the Harley Davidsons, not to mention, Porky's Pink Ladies really make this fun. Rain date is Wednesday May 7...
Then Friday evening it's the final TGIF party for the season, at The Hub, 4th & Main, right here in Sparkle City, we play 5:45-9pm. It's really been fun at these monthly parties to reconnect with a lot of longtime (notice I didn't say-old) Cedarfallopians. (some of them actually remember the Circle Bar) (and some are like me, we know we were at The Circle Bar, but we just don't remember the details...) I really appreciate The Reverb and The Hub for hosting these TGIF parties the last 7 months. We're hoping to start them up again in October after the summer festival season. Heath and Al are bothing making the trip to Cedar Falls, giving us a no horn sound one night and a horn section sound the next. Same songs WAY different sounds!...
Please make plans to help us celebrate Jackie & Tim Trpkosh's Anniversary at The Dry Dock in Shueyville, (suburban Cedar Rapids) next Friday night, May 9, 8:00 p.m.- midnight. It's open to the public, NO cover charge. The Trpkosh's have picked up on a new kind of party idea that longtime Blue Band followers have recently established. Often folks are interested in having us help celebrate events, but find our fee a little out of their budget or they just don't have the garage or deck space to have a 6 piece band. Lately, people (the Shaws in Marshalltown and the Hollidays in Cedar Rapids this past year) have partnered with a nightclub, opening the celebration to the club's clientel, and splitting the cost of the band with the club. It's a cool way to throw a party that you don't have to clean up after! We don't get many chances to play in the Cedar Rapids area, so stop out and congratulate Jackie & Tim and don't hesitate to BRING CAKE!...
Saturday May 10 we return to The Sundown in Williamsburg, a place I've played for about 30 years, going back to the days of The Little Red Rooster Band (talk about not being able to remember the details...) The food is good and the vibe is always encouraging. We play 8:30-12:30...
Phil Maass has really put alot of time and expertise into the New Year's recordings in the last week. His recording and editing skills are absolutely amazing and he and I have come up with a really nice 65 minute capsule of the night. This will be a Homemade Hot Fudge release, tentatively titled New Year's Eve Pimento, we should have some for sale within the next two weeks, some selected songs will be posted on our website and the My Space page (I have to admit, I NEVER go to that My Space thing, do you?)...
And longtime Blue Band illustrator Steve Campbell (the guy who invented Big Blue, the devilishly looking Blue Note that can be found on logos and album/cd covers the past 22 years) has consented to try to come up with yet another logo for this year. We're trying to think up some theme ideas. Got any? So far, all we can think of is the $4.999 A Gallon Tour...
So, you've made it this far just so you can find out the answer to the often asked question: "Bob, what's a rock star on your level do when you have a weekend off?" First off, "often" is pure hyperbole. I don't seem to do ANYTHING often any more (except nap) and next, the real key phrase there is "on your level". Last weekend was extremely rare for me. We had no Blue Band gigs and I had all my radio shows on tape, so the possiblities were endless. On the spur of the moment, I thought about visiting my last remaining blood relatives in Chicago, my mother's twin siblings Dolores and Donald. They recently celebrated their 80th birthday and I was unable to attend the celebration. However, my Uncle Wallace, Dolores' husband, was starting some radiation treatments at the end of the week, making it a bad time to visit. This actually turned out to be a (kind of) blessing in disguise. Last Thursday night (the night I had planned to leave for Chicago) we got almost 5" of rain overnight here in Sparkle Town. I never saw it rain so hard for so long in my life. Because I live a subterranean life style, I pretty much live on the basement floor of my house. Friday morning I rolled out of bed and: PLOTCH. Uh-oh...I looked out in the hallway: about 3" of water lapping against the wall (this was not at all what I had in mind for a home swimming pool) So Friday of my "rock star weekend" I bonded with my wet-vac and removed five 16-gallon barrells of water. Unfortunately, the record snow falls of this winter had already saturated the ground and I'm convinced that some of those barrells of water just found their way back into my living quarters. The sump pump empties into my front yard. That yard was already pooling from the rain, so the pump was spewing water into the yard, which had no where to go, so consequently recycled itself threw the pump many times. Couple that water with carpeting that should have been removed two dogs ago (and I haven't even had a dog for 4 years!) and you have got yerself one nauseating smell right there in the "rock star palace". I spent all day Saturday trying to get the carpets dry enough to remove. It finally dawned on me Sunday morning that I should get some drainage tubing to add to the sump pump pipe in order to carry that water to the street instead of my front yard (I might be old, but at least I'm slow) ALL of that tubing in the metro area was sold out. None at Menards, Lowes, Home Depot, or Ace Hardware. I took some comfort that obviously MANY other people were having the same trouble I was! (misery loves company) Finally, I cobbled together a few sections of drain pipe from my gutter to get the water to start to flow out of the yard. I celebrated by pausing for dinner. When I went back downstairs, the water was back to standing an inch! WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON HERE?? would have been a much tamer thing to say than what I really yelled. 45 minutes later, I found a small piece of debris that had lodged itself in a way that made the sump pump not automatically turn on. The water was right back where it was when I woke up Friday morning. And if you thought the carpet was awful smelling on Saturday...I finally did get it dry enough to get most of the really bad carpeting out on Monday. When I finally got that hallway carpeting out, I realized that I think the previous owner had plastered the original drain and carpeted over it! Duh! No wonder that's the spot that always gets wet! (wet spot?!) So that was a long story to tell you what rock stars "on my level" do with their very seldom weekends off. I'm just thankful that I didn't go to Chicago Thursday and come home to all of that Sunday night!...
See ya on the Blue Highway, treat your wet-vac with respect (there's some joke about sucking there, but I don't know what it is) don't let yer zydeco tie get rusty, don't forget that CAKE is a good reward for removing stinky carpet, and remember we love you! Bob Dorr & The Blue Band
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