you can still grab the Floating CD HERE… it’s a great deal. 16 songs, 6 bucks. Hurry! not many left

smart poetry extraordinary guitar goosebumps

You may know that back in the day I had a cushy construction job building stuff for the U.S. military. I worked for the Marines, the Air Force, the Army and the Navy. I can tell you from first-hand experience, even if you have Secret clearance, it is not a good idea to take things that belong to the government even if you think it's trash.

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I've done some interesting things. I've built some cool shit, in cool places. I have had some great gigs. I have great stories. This adventure from the mid-seventies was nuts. I worked for a general contractor that did only military contracts. We did all kinds of stuff: electrical, cabinets, gas lines, stick framing, vault building, airplane hangar remodeling, that sort of thing. I have a bunch of stories and all my fingers and toes and, after all, isn't that the important stuff? I made a ton of money when a lot of my friends were struggling and I count myself blessed to have had that particular gig come along while we were making babies.

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I wrote the song in the video below the day we learned that Wakitu had cancer. It was the day the world changed, as did my outlook on the future. We are realists. No matter what comes our way we take a moment and say, "Here we are" and take it from there. So we reevaluated what is important and committed to making our remaining time together as delightful as our years together had been. Some goals we pushed up, some goals we pushed back, some we just let go.

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Click here for the lyrics

What would you say to your Dad today if you could?
For fifteen years I have been asking this question on Father's Day at Fark.com. 
I am always amazed at the response. Heartwarming and heartbreaking, it seems cathartic somehow.
Read through the comments and perhaps be moved to share your own. 

As I have for the last several years what I would say to my Dad is:
"I forgive you. How I wish you could have been there to meet your grandkids. You would have been so proud."

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An odd thing happen today. I realized that there is a thing we do that we take for granted and, since the craziness, I haven't been able to do it for a couple of years now. Let me tell you what happened.

I'm moving our studio space from one office around the corner to another. I decided to troll craigslist for storage cabinets for the new space and found some for free not too far away. "Frank" and I communicate a plan and in the morning I load up the trailer and head to Pasadena. A typical uneventful LA traffic morning, slow but going. 

Once I told him I was bringing a trailer he says, "I hate to ask this but could you help me move my new cabinets from a house a few miles away?" He offers gas and lunch and I said sure. We meet for the first time at the other guy's house. He's a wacky collector whose favorite display was his Dukes of Hazzard collectibles cabinet. It was amazing. He had several cool collections and we laughed a lot about our silly obsessions.

Again, uneventful, we roll out and load all of these glass door cabinets, letting the young man do most of the work. Frank helps carry and I wrapped blankets and tied stuff down. Google map to Frank's house takes me the long way but I get there and back that trailer into his driveway like a boss. Seriously, 16ft trailer, no back window, narrow gate into the complex, expensive cars on both sides, neighbors watching and I backed it in and 6 houses down the row. BahBAM!

He opens the garage and I see my cache for the first time and I can't help but notice that they are NOT empty yet. We get the big one ready and unscrew it from the wall and realize it's too heavy so he grabs a neighbor to help. We wrestle that one outside and they start unloading the other one. The neighbor was getting annoyed. He had company on the way and every door opened to more junk. 

I was laughing at them groaning every time they bent over as I grunted to move the big one over so I could strap it down. A young lady hops out of her car and heads to her door just as I'm saying, "three old guys doing work this morning." All I could see was her back but you could tell she was laughing and as she turned she was madly doing that 2-thumb thing on her phone. Texting, no doubt, about how adorable we were.

So, we get it done and the neighbor leaves. Frank and I are putting his new cabinets in the old space and I'm wrapping up. That's when it hit me. I'm standing there by my truck saying good bye and thanks and all that and, of course, he offers to buy me lunch and pay for my gas and I stopped him and said, "I got you, old man."

I told him it has been two years since I got to simply help someone. As caregiver to Wakitu with my own immuno issues we have remained isolated and have pretty much kept to ourselves to stay healthy and I really miss being a neighbor. Helping a guy move, pulling someone off the beach, rescuing a cat in a tree, grabbing the heavy case of water for that lady and taking it to her car, all the silly little things that happened as part of our days.

I'm one of those guys with all the cool tools and ropes and chains and a big truck or two. I have trailers and rigging and a big box truck. I miss getting that call "Hey DanGrigor, what are you up to? I got this crazy thing involving a sketchy road trip in a hoopty car, a couple of chainsaws and chicken salad sammies in the sun. You in?" I miss that. "Shit yeah. Lemme grab my guitar, I'll be there in ten! 

Silly me, of all the things, I miss helping people shlep shit. Go figure.
Now who can I call to help unload these things?

Memorial Day. What should be, and still is somehow, a solemn day has always been a start of summer thing for me. As a kid we would be going to Granny's for the summer. Upstate, by the lake, in the forest, we spent all our summers there. Later in life, after kids and BBQs in the backyard and some of the best first-wife potato salad ever, the beginning of summer evolved. It became a musical thing and a way to celebrate the memories of our fallen forefathers as well as the start of summer with our family of musical friends at The Magic House.

This year I will add to the memorial list of soldiers, the friends who graced our stage. We lost a few of them to Covid last year. Several of our people, sadly, are no longer with us. Their voices and their magic captured on video from the big stage. I watched them all today. I can't describe the sorrow.

JAM at the CAM we called it and every summer holiday weekend was an event at our house. 20 years of 4th of Julys, Labor days and Memorial days. 3 day weekends of music, food, laughter and really good friends. Our family of mutually musical and crazy people, where I could count on some chaos.

They all started out the same, me in shorts, barefoot in the sunshine doing yard work and setting up the stage. Mostly by myself. I enjoyed it. That is really how this all started. A good excuse to get the yard cleaned up, the music equipment all out of the trailer so we could organize and put it away ready for summer when the weekend was over. Usually after a gig the stuff just gets loaded up, thrown in, in a hurry at two in the morning or whatever. Getting it organized early in the summer meant the best outcome at the end of the summer.

Once the lawn was mowed and the edges weed whipped it was time to set up the stage. Hundreds of trips up and down that hill. Hauling gear and setting up the stage, the big screen, all the speakers, the generator, firing it all up for the first time and putting preholiday rock on for the neighbors who were also out mowing the lawn and whatnot getting ready for their families and friends to arrive. That whole neighborhood listened to really good music, whether they liked it or not.

We had traditions, things we did every year, otter pops, a communal bottle of jack, toasts to the fallen, things like that. Bands would debut new songs for the summer and I'd get to pick out odd band members who maybe didn't know each other or have ever played together and put them up on the stage. They would all get up there and play a set of whatever they could muster together. Real Life Jams, in the moment, for the fun of it, for hours. It was awesome. Mostly really great music and great energy, the crowd seemed to like it every time. There were a few other things I could count on: friends from out of town, an odd assortment of lost and found items, folks sleeping in odd places, lots of warm beer and great leftovers. 

Most of those traditions are over now and we'll make new ones. I have a few holdovers, otter pops and leg cramps from three days of jogging up and down that hill. I ran my old tractor today and that clutch is so stiff I have calf cramps now. Like old times. That isn't what prompted this post though.
If you know me at all you know I never wear shoes and part of the reason why I can tough it out out there is that the old place had a pea gravel driveway. Walking barefoot there for nearly 30 years has given me leather feet. Then we moved and now my new place has provided a tradition I did not expect. The new place has gravel too, but it snows here and it is one inch or better riprap for traction up the steep driveway. A totally new walking barefoot experience. When we first moved in I was pussy footin' it around here like a normie. Now, years later, I am running around barefoot on the riprap as if it was gravel.

Wouldn't you know it though, one more holiday tradition that happened nearly every year at nearly every event happened today. I broke a toe. In an odd way, sitting here with the frozen peas and a pillow, it is a fond memory of broken toes and cramps gone by. Weekends full of memories and friends, some of whom are no longer with us. Though this is Memorial Day and I remember our Veterans, today I'll remember my musical family and our missing members. They're singing with the choir now and I will miss their smiles and purple otter pop tongues.

If you know me at all you know that my truck is like a beloved pet to me. Like a big ol' pack dog really. I feed it and pet it and make a place for it to sleep. I literally scratch him up under the dash and say "Who's a good boy?" after a particularly hairy incident, of which there have been many. His name is Bob. He's a huge 4x4 Chevy Silverado with a 4" lift and bigass tires that'll tear up your yard. He's a good boy. Bob is at the vet and needs major surgery and I'm on pins and needles while we wait for a good word.

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We were having such a lovely day. We packed up good stuff and jumped in Mama's truck, cranked up the air and some tunes and headed north. On this trip my phone was set to "avoid highways" and, without peeking, we followed it, turn by turn, over the mountains and through the woods and on thru the desert. My GPS consistently showed us to arrive, surprisingly, within 10 minutes of the trip with all the traffic on the freeway.

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You don't plant a tree to sit in its shade.
You plant a tree for the shade you've sat in. ~ Dan Grigor

If you have been  following our story you know that we were blessed with 17 Christmas trees in pots. We have been dying to get them in the ground before we lost any and today was the day.

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Have you ever lived somewhere for 30 years? We nearly made it. Maybe a month or two. The Magic House we call it. It really was a special place. 100 yards from the west side of the lake, facing east into the sunrise. That yard was a lot of work but we enjoyed it in so many ways. Family, friends, foes, highlights lowlights - I could type for days and not get in all the good stories. Peoples' lives were literally changed here. 2020, we're all grown-ups now, seems a good time to go. 

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Hey you guys, here's a great story about how we got our Christmas tree(s) this year. Also a story of something that has been happening for years and it is such a cool thing I just have to tell you about it.

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As long as you're here... here's a song to click on. Thanks for listening.

https://soundcloud.com/dan-grigor/sblendid

OK, we have a new thing. We packed all our dishes into the big, black Anvil wardrobe-trunk slash roadcase, as one does, so they don't break. We decided to just pack ALL the dishes, take 'em to Roscoe and split them up there. We need some at the apartment and we need to get rid of a lot of them. So we have the trunk empty again, I am unpacking them into a sort of linen closet in the hall. One we've already decided won't make it through the remodel.

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We had a delightful day. We saw that it might rain and I wanted to go up and make sure we didn't have any leaks so we spent the night at our new tiny home. Also... PUDDLE STOMPING! We got there late and camped out in the empty space. The couch is there and some chairs and we took up some food and champagne. We had ordered a new firepit since we had a tree take revenge on our last one and fall on it. It arrived just in time so we had that with us and some firewood. 

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You know that stupid sliding numbers puzzle that drove you nuts until you just threw it at the wall?

That 4-by-4 grid, with 15 numbered slidey thingies, you had to random scramble the numbers, then rearrange them into order by sliding them around fruitlessly until you have it all right or until you have it all right except the 9 is where the 7 should be. That's when you throw it in a fit of adolescent rage, right?

Fun fact: the first one of these diabolical puzzles was invented by an upstate New York postmaster named Noyes Chapman, who came up with the idea during the 1870s. Friggin' postal workers amirite?! "Going postal" as a phrase was invented shortly thereafter.

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Well, I have to say, yesterday was an interesting day. We drove up the hill and checked out what may be our new place for a while. We’re calling it Roscoe. It is 20 minutes up the hill from our abandoned antique store lot which we call the Mullet. When we build there it will be business in the front, party in the back.

Roscoe checks out and we measure for the needed improvements. I’ll need to check with building and planning but I bet our plan is good and I know my building is good. We found a big property with a little house by a seasonal creek above Lake Isabella in the shadow of Split Mountain.

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I have. I was a landscaper for a while in San Diego, years ago. I loved it. Out in the sunshine, feet in the dirt, free avocados, working in back yards, often with an ocean view. It was hard work but it paid well and I had three babies.

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I talked to my middlest son on the phone after a recent gig of his. He told me a story about "one of those moments." I've tried hard to teach them to enjoy the moments.

There are those moments in my mind of him as a baby, him being born, him climbing a tree, first day of school, first guitar, first band all that stuff. Then there are the moments we share as performers. Bad gigs, good gigs it doesn't matter. We can relate. Venue owners and band mates and promotion and gigging provide us hours of conversation.

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Click here for the lyrics

What would you say to your Dad today if you could?
For thirteen years I have been asking this question on Father's Day at Fark.com. 
For thirteen years I read the threads and cried and laughed and cried again.
For thirteen years I told you this was cathartic, heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.
For thirteen years I tried to come to grips with my own story and move past the pain and use Father's Day as a way to turn what was really bad into something that is really good. You be the judge.

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