Tony, my erstwhile roommate, drummer and the originator of this blog’s name, picked up his sister Donna from Logan at 5:45 Friday evening. After growing up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Donna and her husband moved out to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she has been for the last God-knows-how-many years. She got on her flight at 1:00 AM but flew first class, a trick she learned from Tony, who just did that when flying out to Fairbanks. Now, Tony is the cheapest guy in the world but when he flew out a few years ago, he got sick out there and had to fly back coach, so this time he said, “I’m gonna fly first class, because if I get sick, I don’t want to have to deal with that.”  When he came back, he raved about it, and Donna had some frequent flyer miles from her husband, so she used them. I want to fly first class now but Tami ain’t buying it. 

We love Donna, so we insisted that Tony bring her through Melrose on the way home. We got a table at a new restaurant called Giacomo’s which is packed every night. A second location to the original in the north end, it is very reasonably priced and has great food. They don’t have stuff like this in Alaska so she was thrilled. We were proud to be able to present Melrose in such a positive way. 

We love Melrose, but Tami has been generally unimpressed with the restaurants here. But, she loves Giacomo’s. However, this always happens to Tami: she orders a beer or something and they inevitably don’t have it. This time she ordered one of the beers they had on the menu, but they had replaced it with Shipwreck Pumpkin. She literally said, Ewww! And the waiter was a little taken aback, I could see. But this whole Pumpkin fall in New England thing doesn’t fly with her. 

Drums

The next morning we took a drum set over to Dewayne, our godson. It was his and his two sisters’ eleventh birthday on September 2nd. I’ve been dowsing them with musical instruments this year. Dewayne has been noodling on the drums in my studio for years, but this the first grown up set that is his. He immediately started playing along with the metronome on his mother’s iPad and was right in the pocket. I see a bright future. 

Matt

Matt hit the big 6-0 (or the big white-white as he calls it because he has synesthesia and sees numbers in colors, both six and zero being white (5 and 9 being beige and purple.))  Matt and I have been playing music together since 1979 when he started a new wave/post punk type band called Special Children at our college, Marlboro. 

We went up to Vermont to celebrate. His wife Annie was also in Special Children and is a sweet woman with a big personality and she and Tami have hit it off well. They live in a house I helped build in 1997, one of the endeavors in my life of which I am most proud. 

I slept until ten this morning, lulled by the rain on the metal roof outside the guest room window. Matt and I played music out on his huge porch with the rain falling on the pine trees and the field behind him. We do a two acoustic guitar/vocal thing which has probably been the apex of my musical life, technically. I honestly think that some of the stuff we do is the most beautiful music I have ever heard. And, yet, we rarely play out, so nobody gets to hear it.  His writing is very personal, honest and intricate. I play my best guitar when I am accompanying him. He brings a perspective to my songs which I would never be able to capture on my own. 

On the way home, driving through Putney, we stopped so Tami could drop off some books at the free library box in town and leave 3.50 at the General Store to reimburse them for hen they sent Tami back her credit card a few weeks ago. We had left it there as a deposit on a coffee pot, but that’s a whole ‘nother story….