Shinybass journal entry 03-01-16

The unexpected days are the best days.

Good morning. It’s Tuesday, and we haven’t seen each other in a hot minute. The reason? I’ve been soaking, inhaling, experiencing, drinking, immersing, besprinkling my soul, and any other fancy literary term you want to use for ‘taking it all in’. My son Henry has been sick for the past week or so. He managed to catch 3 viruses at once (the overachiever), and since the band has been home for a little stretch, I was able to play Daddy Day Care Extended Remix for the week while Momma brought home the organic tofu.

I had a discussion a couple years ago about this ‘work’ business with one of my editors (yes, I write smart words in other places) about the evil of work. Not that working is evil. God loves a working man. (and bonus points if you can finish the next two statements – leave your guess in the comment section, and the winner gets a random post card from the road). He, a father of two, and me, at the time about to be father of one, discussed how, because of daycare vs cost of living, we spend more time with our co-workers than with our kids. Unless you are in a financial position to just stay home and hang out (Funny – that can either mean extremely wealthy or extremely poor. Discussion for another time…), then you have to go make money, which means you have to not be with your small child. So let me get this straight – we have to leave the house to make money to pay someone else to watch our babies? Check.

So, out of necessity (and a whole lot of want), I took the week off from life and cared for our sick baby. In the span of a week he picked up about 30 more words in his ever-expanding vocabulary, can help sing Strauss’ The Blue Danube, and can howl like Chewbacca (whom he calls ‘BaBa’) on command. At 17 months. Do I have a genius on our hands? Every parent thinks they do until the tests come back. I don’t care either way. He’s a true joy, in every sense of the word. And of course there was some worry over getting committed ‘work’ things finished, however, a week with your child makes you realize just how amazing the whole process can be. Honey, it’s time for 3 or 4 more!

Money sadly fuels the heat pump and keeps the babies warm, so work has to move forward. I shall recap the work, then introduce upcoming events, then we can talk about children again. Our last live shows were in Minnesota and Iowa. Usually hearing those states mentioned in February is about the saddest thing ever, since sub-zero temps and camel-high snow drifts can await, but since we have this environmental weakening happening, it was only in the 40’s in Minnesota, and 50’s in Iowa. Hallelujah.

We played a ballroom-type venue in Medina, MN, with a fine restaurant and a bowling alley downstairs. Yep, a bowling alley. Jeff Brown and I set a land speed record and rolled a full game in just under 15 minutes. When you are bored before soundcheck…The show was a mix of old a new, with a Prince song (Minnesota, get it?) making an appearance, and the capacity crowd pretty raucous.

Iowa is one of those places that has been on the butt end of jokes for a long time. I mean, it’s Iowa. What do we do there? We plow, we drink, then wash, rinse, repeat. That’s about it. There are some nice places in Iowa, and the Quad Cities (again a favorite early SNL target) are a fun place to see, and there is a lot of history and scenery. Our scenery was the river on one side, and the casino on the other. I didn’t see the inside of the casino, but I’m sure it was open. We DID find a vintage car showroom across the street from the venue, so I registered there for Christmas in case any of my ‘not working and taking care of the kids’ rich friends wanna hook a brother up.

For sound check we had the QC Rock Academy join us for a Q&A session. It’s always really hard to tell kids reality of what we do. I made the promise to my Uncle a long time ago to finish college before setting out to find fortune and fame, and I try to instill that in the young ‘uns. Very few of us get to do this for a ‘living’, however, I don’t ever want to stifle someone or tell them it (whatever it is) can’t be done. Everything we want is possible. The most important lesson I can teach is that music is its own reward. There is nothing that touches the soul quite the same way. And it really is fun.

The show at the casino was packed, rocking, and wonderful. Thanks to all the Iowites (Iowons?) Iowan-Kenobi?) for making the weekend a great one. We can’t do this thing without you!

So what’s next? Well, we have a couple of shows lined up this week. We just filmed another episode of ‘Songs From The Cellar’ with John Rich and Tommy Shaw (not at the same time), and with the warmer weather, we’ve got some house cleaning, garage selling (see what I did there?), and Spring just waiting to spring. It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

A special, special prayer goes out to Joey + Rory today. Much love to you and your family in this sad hour, and thank you for sharing such profound love to the world.