Robert Ross wails at Vivo

If you get a chance, check out Robert Ross at his various locations around the area. Ross has an artful bend to the blues, duets his voice with guitar and harmonica riffs. Ross really made Vivo Bar & Grill at the Maron Hotel jump at a Friday night concert there a few weeks back. Ross also added variety with a skilled player sitting in for some tunes. The guitarist's name was Brian ( possibly a member of the Robert Ross Band). The Vivo hosts an older crowd early and a younger crowd late from the looks of it that night. The Vivo is at 42 Lake Ave East Danbury , CT 06811. There was no cover and the bar keep is friendly.

Concluencia, Feb 5, 2009, 6pm

I will be reading Thursday Feb. 5 for Confluencia at Naugatuck Valley Community College's Playbox Theatre. There are five featured poets and warm up of Jazz.  Should be a good time. Click on the poster for a larger version.

Historic Day!!!!!

Celebrate! Ring the bells! Then stay alert. Who knows what the ousted rascals will do..

Go away Mike Parnell

Stop calling. I am not investing and I don't have any dough. I am not listening to you. It's too late now. Turn off the monthly dial-a-rama and stop usurping the cell minutes on my prepaid tracfone. I'd send back your free book if you guarantee you would stop calling. Although your live sales guys are hard to get rid of on the phone, the auto dial is every bit as irritating.

Ha. I will get a different phone, service and a new number. Good-bye Mike.

We had our 1st haiku slam tonight at wednite poetry. What a fabulousevent!

Haiku night big hit
five seven five syllables
fit, end with a twist

We had our 1st haiku slam tonight at the Wednesday Night Poetry Series. Three little lines can hold so much. So many funny, clever haiku! I couldn't stop laughing and my uncle who always leaves early forgot to go home. And there were also gorgeous haiku followed by a pause then a collective gasp of surprise or awe.

Jerry Brooker and Frank Chambers came out of hiding armed with many haiku and Ernie Daruka, Sandra Mally, James Joseph Buhs, Dan DeRosa, Barb Stout and I all pulled our haiku shorts out of respective dusty notebooks or wrote a bunch of new ones for the occasion. This short form with a twist worked particularly well for James' pun-a-riffic styling. The final bout was between James and Dan. And after a close fight it was Dan who became our first haiku slam champ!

We all had an enlightening and entertaining time. Louise Sieviec surprised us by reading two traditional haiku in the original Japanese during the open myk. Jim Whiteside read a poem he wrote for Terry McLain. Barb Stout read beautiful haiku from a little book of them she had printed up quite a few years back. It was a grand and successful experiment! I suspect this will not be the last haiku night at WNPS.

Circularity 1 - more art made on an iPhone

This pic was made in an iPod app called spin art.

Musical beginnings

As a child, I sang myself to sleep every night. After a round of early flute lessons, (Mrs. Rowe) and school chorus, (Ms Randall) I learned guitar from Albert Tulipani and piano from George Lehman. And from the first, I wrote songs & poems.

I started playing and singing in public when I was a freshman in high school. (Those high school talent shows.) Played a lot during college where I was a music major for three years. Every weekend, I played in little country churches and coffeehouses in proximity to Philadelphia, under the name Misti.

In the 80s I played near here often at a place called the Branchville Junction (which used to be a bar but is now and antique shop), as well as quite a few other places around here including some bars and private parties. For a couple of months at one point I used the name Sneakers Brady.

In my travels, I got double booked, sang though pretzel fights in a college bar etc. Once down in Milford, I had a bar stool kicked out from under me right after the only gig of a band I was in for a while (called the Hammertown Project) Once at the little Branchville Junction, which was usually a quiet spot, a fight broke out - they threw the guy out into the parking log and locked the door until the police came. I just kept singing while people hollered and a chair or two fell over. What the heck...  My very last paid gig before giving it up for a decade was in hotel bar where two guys who were drunk out of their minds and danced together despite the fact that I am not really a dance band! Go figure.

When I lived in North Conway, NH (around 1990), and was working as a reporter there, I used to play my songs at an open mic at a little coffee bar called ZUM ZUM's. This open mic was really open -- to poetry and monologue as well as music.

North Conway was a great trip with musicians like Dickie Tilton and Peter White and poets like Arizona Zipper who read his amazing Haiku off a match-book while Dickie Tildon improvised on the keyboard. There was a fine group of poets there who called themselves the White Mountain Poets. I have some good memories of my time in that place. The photo was taken in North Conway, New Hampshire by a colleague at Jackson Square's USO Night.

Now here it is 2010. Let it be a year of music.