Just thought I'd check in and see what folks have been up to. It's been a blur here in SF.

My countryesque band, Gayle Lynn and the Hired Hands, just got a two gig tour of San Francisco, including sneaking my electric guitar into what was supposed to be an all-acoustic show at the Bazaar Cafe, in Seacliff, and a nice little set at the El Rio in the Mission District, which was a benefit for the Avon walk for breast cancer. I got away with the stealth electric thing because Les, the owner, a man of taste and sensitivity, was impressed by the minisculitiy (is that a word, Diane?) of my little 5-watt tube amp.

My jazzesque operation, Annie Z and the Best She Could Do, played the same club last week in a completely acoustic fashion, with our bassist playing his new Tacoma bass guitar unamplified. It went surprisingly well, although the recording didn't come out quite like we'd hoped. Bad balance. TOO acoustic. I figure that we need 7 inputs to the board. to make it work. Two vocals, all three instruments, and a stereo pair in the house for ambience. We need to hire our own geek.

Both of these are what I call Bowling Night Bands. We don't do it for the money. We do it because not doing it leaves a hole in our lives. Annie is a schoolteacher and mother of two, Scott, the bassist, works for Ideo, a design firm, and I supply culture-hungry Marinites with fine musical instruments.

The other regular musical outlet in my life is a monthly get-together in Berkeley, called the Singthing, where about 20 or 30 of us have a potluck and sing everything we can remember. It usually takes about 5 hours. There's a core group of 3 guitars - David Gans, who hosts "Dead to the World" on PRI, and a Grateful Dead channel on Sirius, Eric Rawlins, an Appalachian music fan and singer/songwriter, and me. Eric is the meat and potatoes, David adds the spicing, and I'm... well, I guess I'm sort of a vegetable. And then there's a rotating pool of fiddles mandolins, banjos and other guitarists. A lot of pros and semi-pros show up, like Mike Stadler, Henry Kaiser, Tom Rozzum and Laurie Lewis. We've been doing this for over ten years and it's the social center of a lot of our lives. Some beautiful stuff happens at these things.

Life isn't entirely sunny. I came home from a rehearsal the other night, moved one load of equipment upstairs, and got a phone call. After dealing with the call, I went senior and forgot that I hadn't finished bringing in all my stuff. The next morning, I found that someone had broken into my car and run with my beautiful old '73 Gibson RB250 banjo. You know how these things go. It's in another state by now, and I'm going to need to buy a banjo, since I use it to teach. But I'll never be able to afford a sweetie like the one that got away. I'm being pretty buddhist about it, but I can't help feeling stupid.

Just so as not to end on a downer, here's a peppy little earworm that was sent to me by my friend Ed Ward, in Berlin. There's a kid's show on TV over there, called "Schnappi, das Kleine Krokodil", and the theme to the show was one of those out of nowhere hits that went straight to the top of the charts and drove people nuts for a month or two. It was HUGE over there. If you listen to the production, it's ludicrously low-budget, and may even have been a bedroom deal. Coupla synth tracks and a kid's voice. Don't blame me if you find yourself singing in German when you're out walking. Well, go ahead. Blame me. I'm still trying to figure out how to get even with Ed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3FG4EOgyU

Can't get the damned thing out of your head, can you?