RED RIVER DREAMS"

It’s the Fourth of July in Red River, NM.  I awake early around 6:30 to find empty folding chairs already in place lined up along the main drag, claims staked out for the parade. Our hotel balcony at THE LODGE overlooks the street so, I had a bird’s eye view of everything unfolding. By 8 o’clock they began arriving and arriving and arriving. Evidently the fourth of July parade in Red River is a pretty big deal. They came from all over. By parade time there were several thousand lined up along the parade route.  Michael Hearne and I performed on one of the floats representing TEXAS RED’S STEAKHOUSE plus a banner on both sides of the truck hauling the float promoting our show Wednesday night up at Bitter Creek.  Michael and I played while a pair of All-Star dancers from Taos kicked up their heels to the songs.

  

The last time I was in the rodeo parade in Houston, way back in the day, I lip-synced to a pre-recorded version of  my song  “Traveling Texas”. This time Michael and I were performing live… no Milli Vanelli this time. We got through the first song, everything was off to a good start when the generator overloaded from the PA system, and the PA shut down. Well, what can you do?  We became couple of unplugged mariachis for the first half of the parade. We strummed and sang as loud and as hard as we could so the dancers could at least hear us well enough to keep their beat. We were two gypsy song men smiling and waving as we passed by all the smiling faces of all ages in red, white and blue waving back. They were cheering us on.  I saw Uncle Sam in the crowd pointing right at me. We got a make shift partial PA rigged up by the second half to finish up the parade sharing a mic and one guitar line, but we made it work, and it was a unique experience and now a fun memory in the rear view mirror. You know… ‘I love a parade’.

Today it’s a beautiful morning.  It’s good to be out of the Texas heat for a while. There are a lot of Texans up here doing the same thing. I keep hearing quite a few “ Yawl’s all around me. So I’m drinking coffee looking out at a beautiful scene of green covered mountains and brilliant blue sky. We’re heading over to THE OLD THYMER’S for breakfast.It is a lazy morning.  Just the way I like it.

Tonight we play up at Bitter Creek for the annual Chuck Wagon Show. It’s a tradition Michael Martin Murphy began. This year they had Michael Hearne and SXSW on Monday night. I jumped up and sang a few with them. Michael invited me to come up and play on Wednesday. Mike Roberts joins us along with our friend and producer Don Richmond. There will be barbecue and music and dancing to the mountain sunset and the night stars will come out over a pristine little mountain lake.  It’s quite a setting to play music.
I’ll send pics along with this, so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about. Thats what’s shakin for now. I’ll keep you posted on upcoming events.
Stay tuned.
Shake