I thought I would send out a little update for those of you who are interested (for those of you
who aren't, hard as that is to imagine, you can just hit delete). I will continue to do quite a bit of traveling in
2008. I'm headed for Sierra Vista this Thursday, 1/31, for the Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering where I'll be one of the featured performers on the Friday night show. I'll also
be performing in one of the elementary schools on Friday morning and doing the day shows on Saturday. Actually, performing
on Saturday is dependent on Glen's getting me a decent horse to ride this time on Saturday morning as opposed to that candidate
for the glue factory he put me on last November! Assuming I don't get thrown into a cactus, I'll perform Saturday afternoon.
At the end of February, I'll head down to Alpine for the Texas Cowboy Poetry Gathering with my buddy, Sheriff Jim Wilson. I'll be pickin' with him for the day shows and
we'll have a bunch of our really talented performer friends join us on Friday and Saturday night for shows at a couple of
local venues. We had a great time last year at the Bread and Breakfast in Alpine and hope to repeat that this year.
In March, I'm headed for the Rio Grande Valley in South
Texas for a reunion with my old band, the Irish
Texans, for a couple of St. Patrick's Day shows. I'll also be doing a house concert in Corpus Christi
as well as another location yet to be determined. I'm learning Jon Messenger's song about the Irish cowboy to have it
ready for the Irish appearances. Great song, great songwriter!
I've got several things set up for the summer and several more in the works. I'll be performing
May 23-25 at the Riverfest in Farmington, NM with the "semi-retired" Kip Calahan. We'll do shows on Friday and Saturday
and we get a raft trip on the river thrown in for Saturday. We'll have two rafts and I'm going to try to get in the
one Kip's NOT in...she doesn't paddle, she talks non-stop and she rocks the boat (THERE'S a big surprise!). I'm also
hoping to appear at the St. James
Hotel in Cimarron again sometime
this summer. Always a great time at the lovely old, haunted hotel.
I'm trying to do a few more shows locally as well. In addition to my monthly Cervantes appearances, I'll be appearing
at Solid Grounds sometime this Spring (we're still working to pin down
the date). I'll be performing at the Corrales Quilt and Wine Festival on Saturday, May 10 from 3-5 PM. When I first heard about this festival, I thought to myself....quilts and
wine???? Then it hit me. You buy some quilts, you buy some wine. You drink the wine, you get sleepy...voila!!
You have a quilt to lie down on. Perfect!
Sheriff Wilson and I will most likely embark once again on our now "nearly famous" Conquest of the
Southwest tour in Arizona in early October. It's hard to get a hold of the sheriff these days as he's been traveling
a lot with his day job...handgun editor for Shooting Times Magazine...as well as working feverishly on a book that will hopefully
be published in time for all of you to purchase it as a Christmas present for someone you love.
A couple of more things I'm up to that I wanted to tell you about. I just recently agreed
to chair the Western Music Association's (WMA) Youth Program and we (the committee) are firming up plans to get a bunch of
kids to the WMA festival in Albuquerque next November for some great workshops in performance, song and poetry writing, as
well as other great things we haven't yet determined. We're also discussing some really exciting ideas about partnering
with schools and organizations to help kids write songs about the West and hopefully develop this into a CD project.
There are some great people working on the committee with me and we're all excited about the prospects for getting kids involved
in creative projects that will allow them to express themselves.
I took Rick Huff's advice from his Western Air column in the last WMA Western Way Magazine and am
about to enter the 21st century media marketing rat-race by starting my own MySpace site. Contrary to what I had believed,
there are many people over the age of 18 who use MySpace to check out music and discover new artists. It's sort of a
cyberspace "word of mouth" approach that has been very successful for folks who have worked at it. As weird as it seems
to a geezer like myself, it really is a way to personally connect with people and network in a way that was never available
in the past. We'll see how it goes. I'll just have to watch out for those weird sexual predators although they
probably don't much go after old gray-haired guys, so I'll most likely be okay.
I've got a creative project in the works that I'm very excited about and will share more details
about it as things develop. In general, I'm excited about 2008 and looking forward to seeing old friends at many venues
where I've played before as well as making new friends at some new places. I hope you're having a good year so far.
If so, I hope it continues. If not, I hope it gets better. Jim
(UPDATED: 01/30/08)
