My little brother, the rockstar

My little brother John (at left) is a guitar player. Not just any guitar player. A GREAT guitar player. He picked up a guitar my mom bought for my twin brother Austin (at right) a few years back and has since gotten three more guitars (including his prized Gibson Les Paul.)

Well, Wednesday evening my little brother played out for the second time but the first time with a full band (minus a bass player). He did an outstanding job. He played with local legend "Red Dog" (I don't know his real name, that's just what everyone calls him) along with one of his teachers from high school. To say he impressed would be a bit of an understatement. He got to play on some classic songs, including Lynyrd Skynyrd's "All I Can Do Is Write About It," The Allman Brothers "One Way Out" (which he played lead on) and the song in the video below by The Band called "The Weight." Check it out and feel free to let me (and him) know what you think.

Getting Taterized

Thursday I had the chance to go down to an old stomping ground of sorts. I took a 30 minute trip from my home in Sunny View, NC to Isothermal Community College to see Shelby's own Tater perform live in Studio B at WNCW. In the summer of 2006 I got the chance to intern at WNCW, a dream gig for me since i'm such a big music fan. I know many of the people down at WNCW and i've gotten to see many outstanding artists (Jason Isbell, Trent Summar, Darrell Scott, DesChamps Band, Dixie Hummingbirds just to name a few) in the studio thanks to the kindness of the WNCW staff (Dennis Jones, Kim Clark, Martin Anderson, among others).

In any case, here is a video of Tater (Luke Edwards, Roger Padgett, Phil Simmons & Kelly Hull) performing a song from their new live album "Where the Metal Meets The Grass" called "Anatomy." I shot the video using my personal digital camera and was impressed how well it came out (even if the drums sorta make it hard to hear everyone else).

Long time, no post

Been a little bit since my last post, so I figured I'd throw one up here.

Things have been interesting lately over in little 'ole Polk County, where I make the drive from every day to come here to The Star. Let me sum up things just a bit.

Last Sunday on my way home I passed 6 cop cars with someone arrested and bent over the hood of a car. We NEVER see that many cop cars at that time of night unless something serious happened. So, I kept an ear out to see what had happened. Well the next day as I was making a run to the grocery store I passed a small trailer park less than a quarter mile from my house. It was taped off with Police tape and a firetruck and two cop cars were parked outside. This led to me guessing that the trailer had been a meth lab. My mom didn't think so, but I disagreed and said it probably was. I didn't see any fire damage and saw no reason for the police and firemen to be hanging out there.

A few hours later I get a phone call. Sure enough I was right. It turns out in fact that the 6 cars I saw the previous night were directly related. Apparently the police had gotten a call about three suspicious people walking down the road and when they stopped them that led them to the trailer on our road. Bingo, they found the meth lab. Go figure.

And oh yeah, a local Pastor's home caught on fire last night. I was going to the grocery store to get my mom some milk and I turned around and saw a flame coming up over the trees. The fire apparently started in an upstairs bedroom but was snuffed out pretty quickly once all the firemen got on the scene. Luckily no one got hurt.

News just likes to happen around me. I don't know why.