Summer is not here, but the bookings for the band have really picked up and Gizzae is nearly booked for the summer.

Here are a couple of new places that they will be playing very soon:

Thursday nights at Meyers Castle - Dyer IN

Sunday 3/1 - Wild Hare
Friday 3/6 - Czars St Joseph MI 9 PM
Saturday 3/7 - Wealthy Theatre - Grand Rapids MI
Sunday 3/8 - Wild Hare
Thursday 3/12 - Northern Michigan University - Marquette MI
Friday 3/13 - Northland College - Ashland WI
Sunday 3/15 - Wild Hare
Friday 3/20 - Bar Blu Joliet, IL 10:00 PM PA
Sunday 3/22 - Wild Hare
Saturday 3/28 - Galway Tribes - Frankfort IL 8:00 PM

Check the site frequently for updates!

Ok - I'm on the computer all the time for my businesses and have a degree in Web Technology, meaning I know when I am being scammed on the internet.  (Not bragging, just telling you I know my stuff)

So, I was floored when I recd an email asking Gizzae to play for a wedding on a Tuesday in South Carolina.  I went through the usual, when, hotels, do we need sound etc.  About 10 emails later and her offer to send me another $5,000 to pay the caterer because she couldn't and when the lady would not give me her phone number and putting the Tuesday wedding together with the terrible English she used in the email, THE LIGHT WENT ON. 

Holy Schnikes, they are getting pretty good at this stuff.  I eventually moved on and all she got was my home address, which is all over the net anyways.  But - for all the people that have succumbed to the Phishers and Scammers, here's a best of Craiglist  (Great site if you have never visited) entry that made me laugh:

Dear Mr. Scammer
I owe you a few apologies:
• I am sorry for responding and saying sure I am happy to engage in a bizarre business deal with you knowing full well it isn't real.
• I am sorry you wasted time to print a horrible fake check.
• I am sorry you spent $4.90 UPS’ing it to me overnight.
• I am sorry for taking a few days to get back to you after I got the check and ask you for your phone number which you can’t give me. I knew that and still I emailed you for the phone number.
• I am sorry that I lied to you and said I could not find a western union office near me, making you look them up, emailing me a list and me telling you those two liquor stores are shut down.
• I am sorry that I lied to you about getting pissed at the western union office because they wanted $1.75 to cut a check and that I said that’s robbery and left in a huff. The truth is I never went there in the first place. Sorry for wasting your time that day.
• I’m sorry I lied the next day after you threaten to call the FBI and local police on me because I cashed your check and would not pay you. I knew you would not, but I wrote you an email begging you not to call the police and that I would pay you tomorrow after I cashed the check.
• I’m sorry that I lied the next day and said the western union office girl was rude to me so I left in anger, again delaying your money by another day.
• Im sorry I lied about sending the money to western union in your name vs the shipper so you could not pick it up. I realize this cost you a day or so.
• I am really sorry that I lied and said that the money order was at your western union, but off by 1 zip code making you drive 30 minutes to find out I am a liar.
• Your last email to me was justified. Obviously from your language you were pissed. The fact that as you "YELLED” and your grasp of the English language seemed to fade away like my Mom’s when she is livid showed me what a bad person I am.
• Your phone call from Africa? was upsetting because as you were trying to explain to me how to go down to western union and pay the $1.75 and you would pick up the fee, I realized how frustrated you were getting. I also lied about being hard of hearing and asking you to yell. Sorry.
All in all, I am sorry for sucking up your bandwidth. I realize that my actions probably sucked up 6-10 hours of your time and kept you from fleecing some gullible person in America.
Please forgive me. Go ahead and send me another forged check and I will send you my cash to your shipper. Please try me again. Even though I lied you to about 15 times I won’t do it again.

Your friendly computer person.
MWH

Yesterday, I took my afternoon shower as I'm always too busy in the morning and found out that my new steam shower drain was never tightened as water poured down my wall into our sitting room below. I thought the dog had an accident, but realized that he probably couldn't have hit the ceiling with his accident unless he had been drinking, which he tends to do on a Tuesday.

That lead to taking apart the steam bath, finding out exactly was wrong and then fixing it.

That was after I had to cut into the ceiling and soffit to find what I thought was wrong.

Then, it was time for the kids and work would have to wait until they went to bed.

I went back to work around 9:30 and did that until 11:30 and went downstairs to relax for 30-45 minutes before starting all over again.

When I got downstairs, I went to check the thermostat, as I know I turn everything off when I work from home. Well, looks like the water hit that as well and now I need a new thermostat after trying to simply change the batteries, to no avail.

So, now aggravated again, I go for a snack before resting a little and there's the dog looking at me. Well, he must need to go out and in my haste, I knock over the gallon of milk which pours out onto my floor before I have to let the dog out.

This morning, I had a new site go up and realized that something was majorly wrong so I had to again, move my list to the bottom and fix that.

Right about then, the dog needs to go out and I just let him out without a leash. Well, today he decides to really explore and I cannot find him anywhere after putting on the new thermostat.

I find him about a block away and he sees me and takes off to the house and runs right across Stearns Road, which is the busiest road in Bartlett. He made it ok and so I go back to work and check emails, find yours, go to your blog and here I am doing this instead of working!

Point - Lists are great, and I keep one on my office wall every day. BUT - the list had none of the aforementioned problems/tasks on it, but they all took precendence.  Blog notwithstanding.

Things have been beyond insane lately.  For the band and for myself.  Gizzae got the CD out on 5/2!  And with that, the kickoff of summer began.  I know I should be blogging more and also sending out the newsletter, but we've all been swamped and this weekend has already been awesome.

I was fortunate enough to go along this weekend and play with them.  Three days of band life is certainly a vacation of sorts for me.  Not to mention, talking to adults and having some laughs is a nice change from talking about Speed Racer and the Muppets.  Not that there's anything wrong with that. 

Last night 6/26, we played right out the front door of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN.  Rochester is throwing town get-togethers, mini festivals every Thursday and we got invited to come up.  Well....It was fricking awesome!  There were a couple of very talented guitar players there right before us and they got the crowd loosened up for us.  Well, that and the martini booth about 6.3 feet from the stage!  Anyways, we got going for about 45 minutes, woke em all up, and took a short break before we KICKED ASS for the next 90 minutes.  Now, when they love it, we love it, so we were just grooving off of the incredible energy from the crowd.  As you can imagine, there were plenty of people from the clinic, both employees and patients.  Here's where I'm headed - There were obviously people that really needed a little boost from what's happening in their respective lives.  We finished up a couple minutes after we were supposed to. (they said they usually are asked to shut it down by 8:30) Well - Someone said - ENCORE!  And like a California brush fire the crowd roared for us to come back.  And the awesome Heidi said "Play on! "

Ok so, we end for good and the energy is just at peak level.  Smiles all around, grinning, kids wanting autographs, dogs and cats playing together, it's just bedlam.  It was, if not the best, one of the best times I have ever had playing with Gizzae.  It is beyond me to say how that felt to affect people so much for such a short time. 

We met so many incredible people after we got packed up, got a ticket and then scraped the top of the new van.  Somehow, Karma got lost.  After, we did go into the hotel, 6.3 feet the other way from the stage and had some food and drinks courtesy of John and Lori (Laurie).  Thank you both!  They were here from San Diego for some care at the clinic and we just had a fantastic time. 

Tonight we are off to Austin, MN which is 45 minutes (you thought I was going to say 6.3 feet the other way) down the road.  Another rarity - playing so close together with a full day off in a nice hotel.  Ralph went fishing, I went swimming, Rocket and the guys went to Jeri's sisters for some food.  Anyways (I say that a lot) we're closing the Hambone Blues Festival tonight and then off to a Private Party tomorrow.

I want to say THANK YOU to everyone from the Rochester planning committee and to all the wonderful people that came out to see us last night.  I certainly hope that we get to come back to Rochester very soon.   I was touched by it all.

P

For the first time in a long time, I'm proud to say that the CD really is DONE!  Ralph went through hell the last couple of weeks putting it together with Chuck Fletcher (of the Coney Island Fletchers).  I mean, Chuck didn't put him through hell, they went through it together. 

So after all the questions like "When?" "When?" When?", Ralph said it's done. And now we need artwork.  So then I said, Who's doing that?  Ralph said "You are".  So then, I said "Of course I am, let's go!"

It took many years to get this one done, but I had 2 days of real production time since I was laid up last week with a minor ailment.  Well, I'm not one to back down from a challenge and considering how much work went into the CD, I figured it's time to "man up".  Ralph, Ruph (the resident artist), Mike Hughes (Of the Hattenfield Hughes), Jeff Kirsten (Of the Kingston Kirstens) all had some great ideas.  Ruph's paintings made it easier and Ralph and I sat down and just went through the layout page by page. 

It's done,  it's done,  it's done!!!

Everything is at the printers right now and Ralph is bird-dogging the release to try and bring up a slew of CD's to Marquette at the beginning of May. In any event, CD's will be here for the summer.  We also have some new shirts, hats are coming and also digital downloads will be available shortly. 

In the interim, here's the cover and also the back.  I'll leave the rest a mystery.

WHEW! And that's from everyone.  And to all the people that helped, thank you from everyone in the band.

Respect

 

Well, I guess it has been another month since I've posted anything and for that I have an excuse.  I'm afraid to say anything about the CD until it's really done.  And since it has been "done" for over a year and a half now, I'm definitely losing my blog credibility :O)

In all seriousness, we are so damn close.  MAY 1 is the deadline to have physical, tangible CD's in our collective mitts.  In order to make this deadline, I doubted Ralph and told him there is NO WAY he can do that!  Which, of course, is the oldest motivational method known to man. 

Now, Ralph knew I was screwing with him, but the point was made.  You can't rush creativity, but you can work through production issues such as design, titles, legalities, UPC codes, credits, and all the things that you don't want to hold up your music production.  The CD leaves for mastering today and we should have it back in one week.  Then off to production and we should have CD's by May 1st.  Am I betting on it?  HELL NO - But, it's with a sense of humor that this and most of anything I write should be taken.  So besides the obvious, what else did Gizzae gain by going through this second CD?

Well, for one thing, technology has changed quite a bit in the last 10 years.  Everyone of the guys now has the tools to record ideas and also work alongside so many of the brethren that want professional quality recordings with professional musicians backing them up.  Rocket, Ralph and Clem all spend countless hours working with recording music, and not just their own. 

And now to something totally unrelated - I love white baseball hats.  I'm working on designing a line of reggae hats and I've always appreciated the nice clean look of a white hat.  So - I did what I normally do and that was look at starting another web site and/or look for a domain name.  Now, if you do not know me, I'm am rarely serious and have a sense of humor about everything.  With that caveat, I was cracking up (no pun) at my search.  I was looking for whitehats.com or something like that.  Well, my own search found that the name was taken but here were a few options for me to look at:



Well, CrackerHatsLive.com is not exactly what I meant when I was looking for White Hats!!  Snowy hats, well, I understand that, but CRACKERHATS?  Not only is that word nearly extinct, but how the hell can a search produce such a word?  I'm amazed and I thought I would show you all as well.  Crazy.

Stay tuned as Summer is almost here and we all know that in Chicago, there is no such thing as spring.  Winter and Construction are the two seasons, but for me, it's winter and REGGAE!

First off Happy New Year!

It's been more than a little nutty due to the holidays, but they are here and gone and we are already booking up for summer.  Right now, it feels like summer, or at least spring. 68 degrees in January in CHICAGO is insane.  Of course, everyone is so ill from whatever the hell is going around that we can hardly enjoy it.  Shameful and ironic.

We are going to be at The Alley again in Highwood Friday, the 25th of January.  You should check it out!  Pretty cool place with real dudes loading the pins on the bowling alley and a nice big dance floor.

We are also going to be at the famous Durty Nellies on Friday, January 18th.  These are both really cool places and since we are in the burbs, we get to see some old friends.

Well, I've been not so active on the blog, but only because there is so little interaction. I'm hoping we get some more participation, but thank you for reading anyways!

Hopefully, it won't be 3 months before I post again.  And now I'm off to do the newsletter.

Sign up here!