Saturday, October 31, 2015

Big News!



Margie Drees has a new song in Barnagie!

Check out 

The Mystery Of Ida Bales


Great stuff from Margie and

Ma Crow and the Lady Slippers

check 'em out



Man, I love this song and video!



Friday, October 30, 2015

Hello friends!

Lets give Gregg a big howdy to the barn.

Give his songs a listen.



Gregg is a singer-songwriter and guitarist from Western Pennsylvania.  Starting out in garage punk bands and later moving to acoustic Americana-infused music, he hasn't "mellowed" or become sophisticated over the past 20 years.  His songs and style are still simple, sometimes rough-edged, and straight-ahead.  His latest gigs have been as part of The True NYers, an acoustic duo.

Gregg's songs have been featured on local commercial radio and he has played at many top performance venues in the Pittsburgh area.  Gregg likes artists like these a whole lot:  Elmore James, The Ramones, Patsy Cline, Richard Thompson, Robert Pete Williams, The Sex Pistols, Woody Guthrie, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Howlin' Wolf, Gillian Welch, Elvis, Doc Watson, Jonathan Richman, Ali Farka Toure.  He just recently finished a new 15-song CD, which includes several tunes featured here, and expects to release it later in 2015.

Thursday, October 29, 2015


When you dream, dream the unimaginable, breaking all the laws of science, because that's the purpose of dreaming.

Meriam Joseph

Wednesday, October 28, 2015


Gorf Morlix last night at The Folk School Coffee Parlor.

Great show!

Thanks Gorf!

Friend if you don't know about Gorf 

you owe it to yourself to find out........

Tuesday, October 27, 2015



The Future
Billy Collins


When I finally arrive there—
And it will take many days and nights—
I would like to believe others will be waiting
and might even want to know how it was.

So I will reminisce about a particular sky
or a woman in a white bathrobe
or the time I visited a narrow strait
where a famous naval battle had taken place.

Then I will spread out on a table
a large map of my world
and explain to the people of the future
in their pale garments what it was like—

how mountains rose between the valleys
and this was called geography,
how boats loaded with cargo plied the rivers
and this was known as commerce,

how the people from this pink area
crossed over into this light-green area
and set fires and killed whoever they found
and this was called history—

and they will listen, mild-eyed and silent,
as more of them arrive to join the circle,
like ripples moving toward,
not away from, a stone tossed into a pond.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Dorianne Laux's way with words is astounding.
I am drawn to rereading like a moth to a porch light.




Life is Beautiful



                             and remote, and useful, 
if only to itself. Take the fly, angel 
of the ordinary house, laying its bright 
eggs on the trash, pressing each jewel out 
delicately along a crust of buttered toast. 
Bagged, the whole mess travels to the nearest
dump where other flies have gathered, singing 
over stained newsprint and reeking
fruit. Rapt on air they execute an intricate
ballet above the clashing pirouettes
of heavy machinery. They hum with life. 
While inside rumpled sacks pure white 
maggots writhe and spiral from a rip,
a tear-shaped hole that drools and drips 
a living froth onto the buried earth. 
The warm days pass, gulls scree and pitch,
rats manage the crevices, feral cats abandon
their litters for a morsel of torn fur, stranded
dogs roam open fields, sniff the fragrant edges,
a tossed lacework of bones and shredded flesh.
And the maggots tumble at the center, ripening,
husks membrane-thin, embryos darkening
and shifting within, wings curled and wet, 
the open air pungent and ready to receive them 
in their fecund iridescence. And so, of our homely hosts, 
a bag of jewels is born again into the world. Come, lost 
children of the sun-drenched kitchen, your parents 
soundly sleep along the windowsill, content, 
wings at rest, nestled in against the warm glass. 
Everywhere the good life oozes from the useless 
waste we make when we create—our streets teem 
with human young, rafts of pigeons streaming 
over the squirrel-burdened trees. If there is 
a purpose, maybe there are too many of us 
to see it, though we can, from a distance,
hear the dull thrum of generation's industry,
feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing
the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing
like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder.
Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

You lookin' at me?

Maybe next week.

Love fall.

Yep.

 Impossible to be in a bad mood when you are surrounded.














Saturday, October 24, 2015






Lunch Pail Dad and a Casserole Mom
Walt Sample

He walked to work along the trout river trail
Bologna and bread in his silver lunch pail
Only rainbows he ever chased swam below the dam
God family country a small town livin’ Dad

She spoke soft words but swung a stiff broom
Patched my play clothes and healed my wounds
But her world never reached beyond the pine valley dawn
God family country a small town livin’ Mom

Lunch pail Dad and a casserole Mom
Lots of love but no dreams beyond
A two story home in a one light town

Didn’t want to leave but I had to find out
What the rest of the world was about
Packed my things and kissed both goodbye

I sailed my thumb over the concrete sea
Turned out the city wasn’t built for me
Went back home and sunk my roots in the trout river sand
God family country a small town livin’ man

Now I’m a lunch pail man with a casserole wife
Lovin’ every minute of my simple life
A one story home in a two light town

Spent a couple years findin’ out
What the rest of the world was about
Came back home and kissed ‘em both hello

Now I’m a lunch pail man with a casserole wife
Lovin’ every minute of my simple life

Now I’m a lunch pail man with a casserole wife
Lovin’ every minute of my simple life 

Friday, October 23, 2015

This works.......................



Nightingale 
Tony Morris 

When our daughter was a baby,
she’d sometimes cry and cry,

raw-throated nightingale heavy
on evening’s shoulders,

no solace in the rocking lullaby,
warm milk, blue velvet blanket,

nor in the whispered words,
the quiet shush we’d loose

while pacing back and forth
across the wooden floors.

Until one night, by chance,
we needed diapers,

and my wife, as tired
as I and needing, if not rest,

at least another’s voice to sooth
the small disquiet in her chest,

lifted Morgan from the crib,
bundled her against the cold,

and together we walked out beneath
the stars that pulsed

against the winter’s crisp
and piled into the car.

And halfway to the store,
heater blowing warm against our feet,

we noticed the muffled
wind that faintly buffeted the glass,

the slapping, even rhythm
of the concrete seams we crossed,

and the silence-but for heavy breathing
coming from the car seat in the back.




Thursday, October 22, 2015

 Thought provoking
 song inspiring
 snap shot
 by Matt Bower.




Wednesday, October 21, 2015



  

Itch And Burn
                             Walt Sample                            

Pristine secret
Bottom deep
Dapper demon
Sound asleep

Cocaine kisses
Wake up ghosts
Winking mistress
Diamond oath

Story untold
Lesson learned
Like poison oak
Itch and burn

Flickering flame
Burns a hole
Love and pain
Cheating smoke

Private prison 
Pine tar stuck
Instinct driven
Vanished trust

Story untold
Lesson learned
Like poison oak
Itch and burn



Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Great article by A.R. Braun

Beginning writers often write description without stopping to think, when they should take their time and let the exposition flow.

Instead of simply writing, “Tim walked toward the door, then stopped. He freaked out at what he saw. He trembled. Then he ran.” …

One could write, “Tim stopped on a dime, his heart climbing into his throat. He trembled as much as a palm tree in a hurricane, and his heart crashed against his ribcage as if wanting out. His soulmate had been reduced to fodder for the worms; he’d never realized how much blood could come out of a human body. To say rivulets of crimson lifejuice flowed across his carpet would’ve been an understatement. Copper-scented blood was everywhere: on the walls, on the ceiling, and it soaked the carpeting through and through. Tim opened his mouth, but only a silent scream, strangled in horror, came out. Instead of rushing the sinewy beast—tall as the ceiling, covered roundabout with hair, possessing snaggle teeth like knives, claws, and veiny, muscle-clad flesh—Tim found himself sprinting toward the backdoor. He’d never been confronted by a monster, and what was left of his sanity now drained from him.”

Obviously, the difference is staggering.

But how many writers stop and think before pouring out their ideas, which, in and of themselves, may be right on the money?

I prefer to take it a step further. Before writing a rough draft, I draw pictures of the characters. It makes my left brain work with my right brain, forging the tale I’d previously thought myself devoid of conjuring.

Photo by Steven Guzzardi

Monday, October 19, 2015







Listening 
William Stafford


My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound pulled the listening out
into places the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for the family on the wind;
we watched him listen, and his face go keen,
till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father brought in so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for the time when the soft wild night
will reach to us here, from that other place.





Sunday, October 18, 2015

I am into quilting...............................








Sabrina Gschwandtner makes them with old film.

What a great idea!



Saturday, October 17, 2015



                         Behind My Eyes                         
Walt Sample

Behind my eyes
Golden plan
Fairy-tale lives
Hand in hand

Muddy puddles
Paint the way
Cheating footprints
Cloudy clay

Behind my eyes
Golden plan
Fairy-tale lives
Hand in hand

You flew away 
               Like a lead kite                
Shadow iron grey
Ghost in the night

Behind my eyes
Golden plan
Fairy-tale lives
Hand in hand

I might chase you
Beg you back
Or bid adieu
Toss the map 

Behind my eyes
Golden plan
Fairy-tale lives
Hand in hand




Friday, October 16, 2015

Grab a couple 
sharped #2 Dixon Ticonderoga's
a yellow legal pad
your six string buddy
 and write a 2015 version of Moon River.


Thursday, October 15, 2015




On the Shortest Days 
Joyce Sutphen 


At almost four in the afternoon, the
wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.

The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches
on fire in the heavy sky that flickers

with the disappearing sun. I wonder
what I owe the fading day, why I keep

my place at this dark desk by the window
measuring the force of the wind, gauging

how long a certain cloud will hold that pink
edge that even now has slipped into gray?

Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp
in every window and nests of stars

on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills
and people climb, rung by rung, into the night.




Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Can't get enough of I Am Mine by Beta Radio.
My mind wanders to different scenes every listen.
I like that.



I am mine
Beta Radio


"i am mine i am my own"
said the ancients years ago
apples and pears rotten lie
the eulogy itself can write

when i heard the man was dead
i wondered do i have a hero that'll stay?
he said "i am mine and no others"
but i never planned to live that way

cradled hands don't hide your calls
i hear them rolling in the walls
calling out toward the wind
asking how to begin again

if you're strange
then i would love to meet you
i can't go on any other way
been on my own too long to retreat
yeah you're just getting too old to delay
but you say

"soon i will be new
soon soon
soon i will be new
soon"

and if you're strange
then i would love to meet you
i can't go on any other way
been on my own too long to retreat
and you're just getting too old to delay

check it out

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Driving home late last night, this tune massaged me
back to alertness. Big smiles kept me awake.





That Sunday, That Summer
George David Weiss and Joe Sherman

If I had to choose just one day
To last my whole life through
It would surely be that Sunday
The day that I met you

Newborn whippoorwills were calling from the hills
Summer was a coming in but fast
Lots of daffodils were showing off their skills
Nodding all together, I can almost hear them whisper
Go on kiss her; go on and kiss her

If I had to choose one moment
To live within my heart
It would be that tender moment
Recalling how we started

Darling it would be when you smiled at me
That way, that Sunday, that summer

Go on kiss her; go on and kiss her

And if I had to choose just one moment
To live within my heart
It would surely be that moment
Recalling how we started

Darling it would be when you smiled at me
That way, that Sunday, that summer 


Big hit for Nat King Cole-

Sunday, October 11, 2015



 almost empty barn


concern is voiced

went to work

pretty day

shade tree

load 'em up

fill 'er up



last roll

now off to the hairdresser

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