My apologies to those of you who have tried unsuccessfully to get on my website over the last week. There was a massive server failure in the web-world and Bert, my website guru, worked literally around the clock (many all-nighters) to get everything reconfigured properly. Many kudos to Bert for his persistence and perseverance in getting everything back up and running!!! Unfortunately, some of my recent postings were lost, but rather than just repost my “News” updates, I’m just going to give you a recap of the last month.
Music notes: After a whirlwind summer of playing multiple gigs every week, things have finally slowed way down. The Bass O’Matics went out with a bang at Jake Rooney’s going from Sunday and Monday nights to just Mondays and finally no nights at all. Robertchez played at the Orleans Farmers Market on a gusty but sunny Saturday—always lots of fun! We also did our first gig at the Cape Cod Chat House (see upcoming events). The Chat House is a wonderful venue: completely acoustic with a living room type of atmosphere. The Fringe finished up their summer stint at Matakeese Wharf and I also got to play a couple of gigs with Toast and Jam www.toastandjammusic.com, sitting in for their bass player and my good friend, Laird Boles. Really looking forward to the Ukulele Cabaret this weekend. I’m playing with the Bass O’Matics as well as Fringe, and I get to sit in with Anna Hurst, a wonderfully talented musician and songwriter.
On another note, guilt got the better of me this Summer and I took my dear old Fender Jazz Bass to Fran Ledoux at Bay Fretted Instruments www.bayfret.com . The neck had to be heat set, along with a truss rod adjustment, some minor fret work and repair to a small crack in the finger board. It came back playing better than ever and I was able to use it with both the Bass O’Matics and The Fringe. I bought the bass as a teenager 44 years ago. For a short story about the bass, read An Old Friend Comes Home in the Stories section of my Writing category.
Art notes: This past month Laurie and I got to visit three different art venues. The first was Heritage Gardens in Sandwich www.heritagemuseumandgardens.org, where they had an exhibit of Whimsical Gates, as well as a special Norman Rockwell exhibit: Behind the Easel. The gates were beautiful and made from a wide variety of materials. The Norman Rockwell exhibit was fascinating. I had no idea that he worked almost exclusively from photos. He had his subjects/models professionally photographed along with the “set” of the painting, then combined the two. The coolest part was that Rockwell somehow added the “character” to the subjects, giving life and emotion to faces. As a photographer, I was intrigued by the techniques he used to pose his subjects in a way that would create motion when he re-created them on the canvas. The next place Laurie and I visited was the deCordova Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA www.decordova.org. We spent an afternoon walking around the outdoor sculptures, which always gets my creative juices flowing. Last weekend Laurie and I also got to walk through the American Visionary Art Museum www.avam.org in Baltimore. The museum has a wide variety of creative works that spring more from the imagination that from artistic mastery. Lots of fun and quirky items, but some that were just a little creepy.
Writing notes: In addition to writing the short story abou my bass, I had an article published in the September issue of The Journal of Light Construction www.jlconline.com on how I renovated Laurie’s back porch. The porch and the article turned out nicely!
Sculpture notes: I’ve been a little surprised by the feedback on my sculpture in The Hollow. Many of you commented that your favorite was the stacked wood piece with the large framed triangle in the middle. Those pieces are throwbacks to sculptures I did in the 1980s that I call “displacement sculpture,” with the wood triangle displacing the stacked wood. But while at Heritage Gardens, one of the gates Laurie and I saw was a visual portal instead of the usual physical portal that you walked through. Ironically, the stacked wood pieces are that type of gate offering a framed vision of the world beyond.
That’s it for now! I have an all-day photo shoot in Falmouth tomorrow and will be playing at the Chat House on the way home! Don’t miss the Ukulele Cabaret on Saturday! It’s sure to be fun!!!
Over and out!
Roe
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