Without a Net

So we named the band "Without a Net" and played at an awards banquet. We played for around 2 hours. It was a blast. No major trainwrecks, but a bunch of minor flubs, including me botching the intro to Shine (Collective Soul). Lots of good feedback, but since I knew most of the people I probably should take it with a grain of salt.


We opened with Hey Jealousy (Gin Blossoms) and rolled into Good (Better than Ezra), all in all we played 23 songs which included American Girl, Kryptonite, Burning for You, All Right Now, Life is a Highway, Pink Houses, Rumbleseat, Sympathy for the Devil, Bitch, Rock Steady, Times Like These, Learn to Fly, Walk Away, Gimme 3 Steps, Mr. Brownstone, Mr. Jones, Get Over It, and a few others.

Me (White Guitar), Rod on Bass, Joe C. on Drums




Steve Rocking Out





Joe (with Tamborine) out on dance floor

From Left Steve (Guitar, Vocals) Joe I. (Vocals) Joe C. (Drums, Vocals) Rod (Bass) Dave (Guitar)

Music Room

My Sanctuary:

Santa was good to me

This was waiting for me under the tree......

The Louder the Better or maybe not

I like my music loud. I like to play my guitar loud. Gotta feel the music, man!!!! Well for the last year or so, after practice my ears ring really loud for about 24 hours. As a matter of I have noticed that my ears ring just about all the time.

So I decided to go to the doctor (man she was hot, I hoped that she would give me a physical but she only looked in my ears), who confirmed that I have some hearing loss due to tinnitus. They asked me if my drummer is to the right of me when we play, which of course he is, because they noticed more hearing loss in the right ear than the left ear. I have been told that I should be wearing earplugs if I mow the lawn, run the snow blower etc. They also said it might not be a bad idea to wear earplugs when I use a hairdryer, although this won't be a long term issue, not because of my ears but because of my hair line. I give myself another 10 years.

Now, this is not all bad news, as it explains why I don't always hear the kids when they are talking to me. But more importantly I now have a built in excuse when I don't want to listen to Momma Musky. I see nothing but upside there.

They took a mold of my ear canal so that I can have some custom ear plugs made for playing with the band. They basically take a big syringe filled with some putty and blast that in your ear, and then you sit there for 10 minutes and let it set. I wish I could explain how it feels, very strange. When they took out the molds it felt like they were sucking my brains out.

I do know some sign language, I can flip somebody off several different ways so if the hearing completely goes, I can still get my point across when driving. So I have that going for me.

The Silverburst

I have been to lazy to post picture of the new Gibson Custom Silverburst that I purchased a few months ago. This is now my favorite, which I play with the band.

Closing out the season

So reading the weather report on November 29th noting that we were supposed to get 4 inches of snow on the 30th, so like any sane 40+ year old I decided to go fishing. I met my buddy DVD at 6:00am to make a run up to Wisconsin to fish a small lake west of Madison. Usually it's a 2.5 hour ride and we figured we would get up there before the snow started falling. Temperature was about 28 degrees when we left.



As we got about 1/2 way there the snow that wasn't supposed to start until after noon started coming down. We were driving DVD's rig with his boat and since I had never driven with him I was interested to see how he would handle the weather. Trailering a boat on slick roads can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, and I was happy to see that DVD was conscious of the conditions and kept us at a safe speed. I have a few buddies that would drive through that kind of crap as if there were no issues. If you have ever fish tailed a boat trailer I can tell you it can be a bit scary.


Anyways, we got to the park at around 10 am and started heading to the landing. As we headed down the final hill the lake was covered with snow. Well, there is only one way to cover a lake with snow and that is to first cover it in Ice. For those of you who don't have a clue, if the ice is to thick a boat has problems floating on the water, it just sort of lies on top. As we geared up, when you see one of the pictures I would like to note I am not color blind, I was happy of two things. one the ice wasn't to think and two it wasn't my boat.



Probably 75% of the lake was iced over, but we dumped in the boat anyway and proceeded to break through about 200 yards of ice to get to some open water and did this a couple of times to get to where we wanted to fish. It snowed most of the day, got windy towards the end and was an absolute disaster on the drive home through a blizzard.

Caught this nice 36" musky. Notice the Christmassy Green and Red jackets.

Me enjoying the snow, wearing just about everything I own. One more layer and I probably wouldn't have been able to put my arms down. Damn there is a lot of grey in the goatee.

A good shot from DVD capturing the snow and the ice. At this point we are about as far away from the landing as you can get. You can see the ice.

All in all it was a great day on the water. Thanks to DVD who does read this blog occasionally, which means I am up to 4 confirmed readers.

Rik Emmett Concert

Went to Elgin yesterday to see the Rik Emmett band. Started the evening with dinner from a couple of guys I met through the Rik Emmett network. This was the first time I have seen Rik in a full band format. Man, it was fantastic. He played most of his hits from his Triumph days and a few from various other projects, solo and otherwise. At 55 years old he can still wail on the guitar and it is obvious that he still loves playing and entertaining. I wish I had a tenth the talent he does.

One of the exciting items was his expectation that Triumph would be touring next summer. I never got to see them in their prime but you can rest assured that if they come anywhere near Chicago I will be at a reunion show. There was supposed to be a meet and greet after the show, but it was announced that it was cancelled. Then after most people left it was announced that the band would be coming out at some point but we would most likely have to wait outside. So after waiting for a while we decided to leave as it sounded like there was going to be a long wait. Of course, five minutes after we left the band came out to sign autographs etc. What a bummer, so if I would have hung out for another few minutes I would have been able to meet one of my guitar heros. Oh well it was a great show anyway.

Couple of things that made me laugh at the show:

1) The majority of the crowd was mid 40's to early 50's agewise. It makes me laugh to see people my age or older headbanging and putting up the "heavy metal" salute. Especially when they have less hair than me. I guess there is nothing wrong with reliving your youth....or is there. Some of those things would kill me today.
2) What makes a 40+ woman want to dress like she did 25 years ago, gel up the hair (BIG)and slut themselves up when their ass has grown probably 4 times bigger than it was back in the day (at least 4 times bigger). Worst of all why wear pants that didn't fit 3 asses ago. Yuck.
3) Same women dancing like the blond broad in the prilosec commercial. I have to admit that I am rhythmically challenged when it comes to dancing, but OMG these chicks were a disaster. They are at every Rik Emmett show in the area and it is just bad. Plus they always seem to be sitting in front of me. It's like a train wreck in that it's so disgusting it is hard to look away.
4) Air Guitar. Now I will admit that I have played some air guitar in my time but I don't believe I have done much of it in the last 20 years. But one guy was really rocking out the air guitar and wanted to make sure that everybody was watching him. What made me laugh the most was when he air guitared (or actually air bassed) the bass solo. It was a riot and sort of made me feel sad for him and will certainly make me think before I air guitar ever again. But I have only one rule to air guitaring, at least make it look like you are following the notes in some manner. If the guy on stage is playing at the 18th fret don't be air guitaring near the tuning pegs of your imaginary guitar. And please don't stand in front of me and make sure that I notice you, because all I'm going to do is laugh at you. Actually I'm going to laugh at you no matter where you are.

OK enough is enough.

Fishing Tournament

The last fishing tournament on the Fox Chain was yesterday. Small turnout with only 60 teams. I had fished the lakes the week before and my Drummer had caught a 39 inch musky. So going into the tournament our plan was to hit that spot pretty heavily as we had success in that area in several previous tourneys. We were the 9th boat out and we hit the spot and some ass hole had a duck blind parked right in the middle of it. That was an indicator of the way the rest of the day was going to go. We moved onto another spot where I had a small Musky hit at the side of the boat and I lost it. It wouldn't have been big enough to score points but at least we were having some action. Hit our third spot and raised two other Musky but neither would hit. During that time we learned that two teams had caught fish. Team 8 which is two buddies of mine, JT and DVD scored on their fifth cast with a nice 40 incher and a few minutes later with a 33 incher. Another team of friends TB and VB scored with a 37 incher. Now generally speaking it pisses me off when other teams catch fish, but both these teams are good friends so it wasn't so bad. The team of TB and VB are husband and wife and the joke is that if VB were to fish with any other partner she would win everytime. TB must be kept around as net man since that is all he ever does.

So after seeing a few fish things died, we didn't see anything for about 5 hours. Then it happened. Great lead in eh? You're thinking big musky, epic battle, score a win for the Double D team.....but no......I reached down to pick up a lure off the floor of the boat and wham a shooting pain from the small of my back up through my shoulder blades. The last time I had a pain in my body that was like that was when I was laying on the floor when my older son was about 5 years old and he jumped off the couch and landed with both feet right into my crotch. As a side note Momma Musky has since put the old "twig and berries" into her purse for safe keeping since as she put it, "I'm not capable of taking care of them." Now that I think about it I hope she is keeping good care of them as I haven't seen them in a while.

Anyway, so I'm down on the boat floor trying to get up which I finally did with some effort. I tried to fish, as we still had about 2.5 hours of tourney time left, but couldn't make it so we pulled the plug and called it a day. After suffering for about an hour to get the boat taken care of and walk to the tourney head quarters (the walk normally would take about 5 minutes. It took me about 20 minutes) I passed off my treasurer responsibilities and headed home where I took some muscle relaxers and pain killers and effectively passed out.

Woke up this morning able to move around but everytime I twist the wrong way I get a share pain throughout my back. Man it sucks getting old.