Here We Come A Wassailing....

Short Version:

2 years ago, our family walked across the street and Christmas Caroled to our neighbor. One and done.

1 year ago, our good friends, The Corbetts, joined us on vocals and mandolin as we serenaded 7 or 8 homes in the lower part of our neighborhood. We sang a tune or two to each house...many of which were very surprised and blessed by our gift of song.

This year....
14 of us went out to spread some Christmas Cheer to the Michael Lane/Wayne Ave. area of Dudley, MA.

We recently began attending a new church and have quickly become connected with some wonderful families.....families who love The Lord, and love each other...families that want to do right, honor Him, live and learn by His Bible alone, and enjoy time with one another. Tonight pretty much hit all of those points.

It was a great night for caroling....48 degrees...not too cold for folks to hold their doors open to listen to a song or two.
We went out with a pretty basic 3 song setlist:
1. Jingle Bells (we had 4 kids under 5 years old...they had a good time jingling bells and laughing all the way)
2. Hark The Herald Angels Sing: We HAD to add something about Christ in our set. Plus....I always get all rev'd up at the "Join The Triumph Of The Skies" part.
3. We Wish You a Merry Christmas...just a classic wassailing set-ender.

Our first practice was also our first caroling stop...the deck of my parents home....a dress rehearsal, if-you-will.

A little blurred with no flash but....you get the idea.

After that...we hit maybe 12 or 15 houses in our neighborhood. It's kind of funny....When you knock on some one's door unexpectedly in the night and then burst into song on their front lawn....our culture isn't used to that. So, usually, the first song is spent with the homeowners trying to pry family members away from the TV to come and listen and/or keeping their dogs from jumping through the glass storm door and tearing us to shreds. I will say that, by the middle of the second tune...every family we visited was on board and singing along. We even brought one woman to tears. Booya.
here's some random shots of us on the road:






We nominated Timmy Nault as our official caroling photographer...so...while He wasn't in most of our actual caroling shots...we had to pay him his due (complete with his kind-of-creepy, kind-of-cool fur hat):

Trust me...he's cool.

We even had a "Drive-by" caroling occur when a van that was driving down the street stopped to see what was going on...they got jumped with an unexpected "Jingle Bells" before they sped on their way.

Our night ended back at our home with delicious Hot Chocolate, tasty Winter Brews, lots more music, and lots more laughter. Easy....Simple....Perfect.

When I started facilitating drum circles years ago, I read and recited a quote from and African drum instructor, Babatunde Olatunji, who said :
"All people, from all walks of life, all colors, we have things that we can do together, and it's the simplest thing to make music and sing together..."

Add to that Psalm 147:1:
"Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him".

It was wonderful to bless our neighborhood with song this evening. It was even better to honor the Lord through good, happy, pure times of rejoicing this precious season with friends and family.
I am grateful for my friends, old and new, that I shared this night with. I am more grateful to celebrate the season...and to have honored The Lord...the Creator...who clothed Himself in His own creation...who came to us...and came to love, know, teach, guide, and inspire us.
I would love nothing more than to go back in time, to "join the triumph of the skies" and proclaim our Saviour's arrival with the angelic hosts.

Tonight may be as close as I'll ever get.

I'll take it.

Provision Despite Stupidity (a love story)

Promotion comes from the Lord. That's for sure.

This past week, I accepted a management position within the agency that I work for. Starting Monday, for the first time in my life...I will be somebody's "boss". 9 "somebody's", exactly. I am equal parts terrified and ecstatic.
At any rate, it has made me look back on life and where The Lord has taken me from...up through this point. How far he's brought me in the last 15 years. He's grown me in so many ways. he's taught me lifetimes worth of work ethics, responsibility, loyalty. He's given me the gifts of Husbandry and Fatherhood.

He also gave me the gift of a kick ass guitar. As is my usual lead in around these parts....let me explain:

I had started playing in bands shortly after beginning college in 1992. I played bass and electric guitar in several different musical outfits over my 4 years at school....I dug them both....but it wasn't until I graduated that I fell in love with my long term weapon of choice....

The Acoustic Guitar.

I had scored an Epiphone Acoustic, a halfway respectable guitar, at a yard sale for a song...maybe 65 or 70 bucks....this was back in 1995 or so. Tobacco sunburst with a florentine cutaway...she was one of the prettiest girls at the dance. It was around 1996 or so when I started venturing out on my own into the "solo acoustic" world of live performance which demanded a just-so combination of decent material, rapier-like wit, and quality sound. I developed the first two very quickly...what I was missing was the tone....for as good as my guitar looked....when she was plugged in, she sounded like a transistor radio tuned between stations....just a mass of buzz and feedback that would have made Thurston Moore jealous and everybody else cringe. I knew that in order to progress....my "road dog" Epiphone would have to be retired. One Saturday, I went on a quest to my local music store.

I was young, dumb, ambitious, and had good credit. This is a bad combination for someone entering a music store with the intention of buying a new guitar. I had no loyalty to any particular brand...I just wanted something that sounded stellar. I had absolutely no knowledge of tonewoods and what type of guitar was ideal for what type of playing style. I waltzed up to customer service and got approved for as much credit as they could give me....then I waltzed over to the acoustic guitar room and bought the most expensive guitar I could afford with the credit I was given. Then I waltzed right out of the store with the guitar that I had just paid almost $1,700 for with absolutely no knowledge of what I had just purchased. It was in the Autumn of 1999.

Unbenounced to me....years after the dust settled on my purchase...years after I had to fight off the creditors threatening to repossess my guitar after not making payments for 6 months (remember....young AND dumb), years after eventually paying it off.....after all this...unbenounced to me...I had bought my dream guitar

A Taylor 514ce
Western Red Cedar top and Tropical American Mahogany sides/back. Indian Rosewood binding. Venetian cutaway. Fishman electronics....this girl sung like an angel.

I've played scores of other guitars over the years...and, call me biased, nothing comes close to touching the tone of this baby. Smooth, honest....bright high end....haunting bass....creamy....she's got it all.

I have played this guitar for every gig I've booked since I bought her....hundreds of gigs....several hundred..clubs, bars, coffeehouses, living rooms, churches, meeting halls, outdoors, at work, campfires, back porches, front porches, ...She's held up like a champ...a true workhorse. I've had to put some work into her....a bridge reglue or two and a partial refret, but other than that...she's held her own like a cagey veteran for over a decade.

Once I had to bring it in for a neck adjustment to a local guitar store. the fellow who served as the guitar tech there is a certified Taylor technician....when I came in to pick up my guitar....he mentioned to me that he was blown away at the tone of this guitar....how it had "blossomed" over time....how it was one of the best sounding Taylors he's every played.
See, quality guitars.....more specifically quality tonewood, "opens up" over time...sort of how a good wine gets better with age....it matures....it "blooms"...the tone grows with the player...it's a very interesting relationship between instrument and musician...coupled with the marriage of tonewood, preference, and playing style...perfect for me...I had an opportunity recently to put this to the test....
Taylor offers guitars in many different tonewoods....huge combinations of tops and sides/backs....each one offering a different tone....some strong and bright...others soft and low...and everything in-between....exotic woods....Koa, Walnut, Rosewood, Ovangkol, Ebony, Cocobolo...the list goes on....anyway....
I was at a Taylor Guitar "roadshow" where they showcased guitars in just about every tonewood combination..maybe 15-20 guitars in all...They had a guitar tech work his way down every guitar...playing the same riffs on each, just so we all could get an idea of the different tones offered by Taylor. I listened...with my eyes closed....and when he was done....my perfect tone...the one ideal for me...was exactly in the guitar I had stupidly, blindly purchased over a decade earlier....
The Taylor 514ce
Western Red Cedar top and Tropical American Mahogany sides/back...

I pick up that guitar just about every day....there's something special about it. Not just that it's a 514ce, but that PARTICULAR 514ce.....I truly believe that The Lord brought me to that guitar....He knew that I wouldn't ever be able to afford another guitar like that...He knew that even though I was as stupid as I was at the time, that this guitar was going to be used in so many places and capacities to give Him Glory...thousands of choruses and hymns have poured out of that soundhole over the years....that guitar has been used to lead hundreds before His Throne in worship...and has also thrummed it's way through some mean Johnny Cash around the campfire....this guitar has opened up the way that few Taylors have....it's been to hell and back and still plays like a champ....it can survive huge temperature and humidity swings and not need to be retuned....it is truly a gift.

You can figure out, from the serial number, exactly when a Taylor Guitar was made....I know this....

My guitar was built on July 23, 1999. It was the 142nd guitar made that day.....It was built across the country in California....It was purchased in a crappy music shop in New Jersey...and it was destined just for me.

God wouldn't have had it any other way.

I told you......this was a love story.

Voila, A Viola

Well....a fiddle, actually.

Let me explain.

Our family watches very little TV....almost none. We do own a TV set, but we keep it packed away in the garage, only to be brought upstairs and plugged in on the rarest of occasions (although, I must confess that it's been up here a few extra times since the Phillies made the playoffs). We believe in guarding our hearts, and especially in guarding the hearts of our kids, and, let's face it, the TV can let a lot of garbage into a home...but I'll spare you that whole rigmarole and get to what us not watching TV has to do with a fiddle.

On Saturday nights, we gather 'round our computer and watch an episode of Little House on the Prairie before Gavin goes to bed. Gavin loves to see how they did things back then. He also gets to see that how we live at our home is similar, in some ways, to the life of the Ingalls Family; modern conveniences not withstanding: (the planting/gardening/harvesting, building/fixing/using tools, wood chopping/burning, baking/cooking/recipes, family joining together in worship/ Scripture reading/social time, etc. etc.)
He's taken quite a shine to Pa Ingalls. In fact, Gav likes to play Little House and pretend that he's Pa. Sometimes I get to be Mr. Edwards, sometimes I have to be Laura or Mary (depending on which episode we are recreating). Mama is always Mrs. Ingalls, and Ivy's always baby Carrie. One of the things that Gavin likes most about Pa Ingalls is when he plays his fiddle.

Gavin decided one day that he needed a fiddle just like Pa Ingalls. Being the resourceful and creative type that he is, his "fiddle" was a 12 inch long piece of tree bark left over from the wood splitter and his "bow" was a 9 inch twig that he found in the front yard. Now, you could see a kid, in the heat of the moment of creative play necessity grab these items to quickly use as a fiddle for whatever scene he was recreating and then quickly discard after the child's attention was focused elsewhere.

Nope.

Gavin kept that bark and twig for weeks.

And weeks.

"Where's my fiddle, Mama?" he'd ask. Mama would point it out to him, and he'd grab it and pretend to squeak out a verse or two of "Old Dan Tucker". Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE the kids resourcefulness, creativity, and contentment...but at some fatherly, nurturing level, it bummed me out that he was using a freaking piece of bark as a fiddle. So, in true Ingalls spirit, Gavin and I headed down to the workshop yesterday to build him a proper fiddle. Here's what we ended up with 2 hours later:



We sketched out a basic body shape on a piece of paper and transferred it to a 3/4" piece of scrap plywood which we used for the body, bow, and raised bridge...then we cannibalized a bungee cord for the strings, weather stripping for chin padding, and 4eye-bolts for the tuners...sanded it down and threw in some etching with a rotary tool. We used a piece of ribbon for the horse hair of the bow. Please allow me a "Proud Papa" moment and say that Gavin used, at some level, every tool that we used on this project (except the table saw). I love that he loves tools and building, but I love more that he's so content and gets so excited to just be with his family. It's no Stradivarius, but we had an awesome time together in the workshop...and, let me tell you, this kid plays a MEAN plywood fiddle.



Watch out Charlie Daniels

Gavin's First Song

So, I have this second-hand guitar, a total beater, that we have strung and sitting on a stand in the living room. Gavin loves to take it down and strum it. It's a full size guitar, so he basically stands up and plays it like an upright bass most of the time. Or, he'll sit with it on the couch and crank out some noise. Yesterday he wrote he first original composition, complete with chords that we hashed out together. Here it is, chord chart and all:

Animals Go Around Town
words and music by Gavin Leo
composed 7/17/10

D...............A
Animals go around town
D..................A
Animals drive around town
D...........................A
And they pick up a toy dragon
D............................A
And they pick up a toy spinning wheel
D...................................A
And they drive around in a toy pick-up truck
D..............A
Animals go around town
D.................A......D
Animals drive around town


Ladies and gentlemen, your future headliner at the 2021 Newport Folk Festival.



Also, today was Gavin's first ever treat from the ice cream truck:



Cotton Candy Swirl!!!

Ivy just kicked it in the swing....