Had a great weekend with Jae at the Homosassa Riverside Resort; played a gig on Saturday night and then spent the rest of the time hanging out and enjoying the local sites and eats. Homosassa Springs is a neat little community and we saw a bit more of it this time around as we were celebrating Jae's birthday. It's sort of like a smaller version of Key West with all kinds of funky little eateries, resorts and campgrounds. One of the establishments, The Seagrass, is interested in booking me for some shows (word got out about my crazy performances over at the Riverside Resort; it didn't take long in a small town) coming up soon, so we'll be looking forward to coming back again soon and making some music and memories.

We're back home after an interesting weekend transportation-wise. Plans had already been set to drop off Rita at Rising Sun Imports in Ocala to have her motor and front end worked on. Thursday night, our other working vehicle started spewing steam through a crack in the radiator, so we had to have that towed Friday morning and picked up a rental car for the trip. Jae's on her way to pick up the Isuzu now, but Rita will be in the shop for another week or so. She had a bent valve, oil leaks in the motor, bad shocks and struts - all to be fixed to the tune of about $2500 to $3000; kind of what we were expecting. Good news is that she will be fixed and road-ready by the time I head for Texas on October 2nd.

I've got another day to get ready for a plane trip to Indiana where I'll be teaching Dulcimer Boot Camp and then serving as part of the Indiana Dulcimer Festival along with Richard Ash, Stephen Seifert and Dave Haas. It's going to be a fabulous four days of fun! I'll also get to talk more shop with Steve Ash regarding my long-planned electric mountain dulcimer. Basically, I've been wanting the dulcimer equivalent of a Gretsch 6120 as played by such musical luminaries as Chet Atkins, Brian Setzer and George Harrison.

The 6120 is known for its butter tone and sustain due in part to its shallowbody construction and also its famous Filtertron pickup configuration. It'll be interesting to see what we come up with as I go for a classic Folkcraft mountain dulcimer look with a sound that is a step not only back into the past but forward into the future of the instrument. I think it will be a hot seller once we're past the research and development phase and get it out to the market.

There's a lot of neat stuff just over the horizon and I'm looking forward to sharing them with you! Keep this page bookmarked and be sure to come and visit often!

Dreamy Weekend To Dream Dulcimer