This Day in Music – June 11, 1946 – John Lawton formerly of Uriah Heep’s birthday, leads to belated “happy birthdays” for Others!!

I will admit that I was never a big Uriah Heep fan. I knew of them, and I have probably heard some of their music along the way, but none of it has made it into my music library. But I did notice yesterday, as I was looking through the new prog rock releases, that the Heep's new album Outsider, was released. So I wasted time, unless you count the time between 1969 and now as wasted because I have not sought out Uriah Heep, going to Spotify to listen to it. Anyway, I really liked the album and maybe I'll consider a portion of the aforementioned time wasted!

Book 10 of 2014 – Stone Cold – C J Box

Some writers take many pages to hook you and reel you into the story. In the latest Joe Pickett novel, C.J. Box does it in the first paragraph of the book!! When Nate Romanowski pushes a drift boat in to the Bighorn River and sets sail down river toward the mansion of the man he is going to kill!! Now if this is the first book of the series, you may just like Box's descriptive prose, but if you've read a few of the books or in my case all but one of the fourteen books in the series, you said to yourself "Nate is going to murder someone!" Whoa, this is not going to end well! See Nate is the shadowy friend of Joe and his family, and always seems to arrive on the scene when Joe needs him the most, but he is also on the run from the Feds. Can this be why?? So starts Book 10 for 2014, Stone Cold from C J Box....

No Pain, No Gain…..Gaining doesn’t make a run fun – Kenny Wayne Shepherd does though!!

If there's pain, there's gain then I gained a lot from today's run!! It has rained on a of all day today and when I set off on my run, I think the relative humidity was like 150% and the air was completely still and it certainly seemed that it had no desire to get into my lungs! Needless to say it was one of those runs when you just try to trick yourself, well if I only make 3 miles I'll be happy, oh 3 down I can make one more mile, 3.5 only one half mile to go, a snap!! Before you know it you're done, both the four miles and you!! First mile 10:22, acceptable, second mile 10:35 still ok, third mile 11:32 ouch! Fourth mile 12:25 and no I didn't walk any of it! Average pace 11:14 which is I guess ok! You know what they say "At least you did it!" and I'll live to run another day!! ....Now the soundtrack for the run that's a different story........

Listmania – My Top 10 All-Time Favorite Folk Artists…….

I have tried to stay away from lists on this blog. The main reason is that I find it very hard to rank artists. I think that's because my favorite is always the one that I'm listening to at the moment and also that I know I'm going to forget someone. This list actually is a list of the "Roots" of my folk music listening. These are the artists that have been with me for the whole ride, from vinyl to 8 track, cassettes, CD and the iPod. Should there be a woman or two on the list probably maybe Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins Emmylou Harris, probably but these guys are the core!! This is the first hopefully of several posts that will become pages on my site. Let's see there's the top branches, artist that I love from the 80s and 90s and then the leaves from the 2000s! How about songs?? I don't know if I can go there!! Anyway let me know who I forgot and then maybe I need to expand the list!!

Jarekus Singleton – Refuse to Lose….. watch out Blues World here he comes!!

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching the steady rise of Refuse to Lose the new album from Jarekus Singleton up the Roots Music Report's Blues chart, last week and again this week the album is Number 1! Since the Jarekus Singleton Band has only been around since 2009, when Jarekus formed the band, I really don't feel too badly that I haven't found them until now! The downside to that is that i could have been listening to a great band for the last five years!! The blues community has known Jarekus for a while now. According to his website Jarekus and the band have......

2014 Blues from Jarekus Singleton – Refuse to Lose….. watch out Blues World here he comes!!

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching the steady rise of Refuse to Lose the new album from Jarekus Singleton up the Roots Music Report's Blues chart, last week and again this week the album is Number 1! Since the Jarekus Singleton Band has only been around since 2009, when Jarekus formed the band, I really don't feel too badly that I haven't found them until now! The downside to that is that i could have been listening to a great band for the last five years!! The blues community has known Jarekus for a while now. According to his website Jarekus and the band have......

An Evening of Humor with Gabriel Iglesias (with an I not an E) and some music from Joe Crookston! (videos)

So tonight I did something that I rarely do and that is turn on the television and watch something other than sports. Well, I have to say that the reason that the TV was on in the first place was that the Phillies were playing this afternoon and after they lost and moved to like nine games under .500, I needed a laugh so I put on The Daily Show and watched Jon Stewart tear into Oliver North. After the show was over, I kept the TV on and started doing something, oh yeah, I was looking for funny stuff and I watched Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year skit, which always cracks me up!! When the Python skit ended, in its usual blaze of glory, I turned my attention to the Comedy Central Special that was on TV, some very funny fat dude, or should I say "Fluffy Dude" was the headliner Gabriel Iglesias

A Family Video made for My Cousin – Music “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” – The Strawbs – Sandy Denny

Yesterday was not a good day for a variety of reasons and tonight as I sat at the computer I thought I need some laughs! So I went to Youtube with the intent of finding a funny video and when I got there I got distracted - big surprise there! . Because I found one of my first drafts of a video, I was making for my cousin Marti's 60th birthday party. In the video I used a variety of pictures Marti at various ages along with photos of my father and his brothers Arthur, (Marti's father) and Kenny. I'm in several of the pictures with Marti. I used The Strawbs "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" featuring the vocals of Sandy Denny. when I got done this draft my wife thought it was a little too depressing so I changed the final version.

2014 Blues coming July 1st from Blues Guitarist Dave Fields – All In!! (video)

I first discovered Dave Fields' music back in 2010, in the first few months of this blog's existence. The first album of Dave's that I listened to was his début album Times a-Wastin' and well it and it only took the first song "Let's Get Shakin'" for me to know, that I was going to like this guy, and it wasn't long after that I listened to his 2008 release All Wound Up and, well, I loved Dave's guitar playing, vocals and songwriting from the first listens and I've been a fan ever since