The week that was

You know it’s a good party when there’s a line to get in.

One problem with living in Hot Springs is that there’s so much cool stuff going on you often can’t get around to all of it. Which, sometimes, when the stuff is fun and not work, means you Do Not Cook.

And sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with that, either.

This week has been opening week of the Hot Springs Music Festival, which is just absolutely some of the coolest stuff of all the stuff that Hot Springs offers. Musicians come from all over the world and for a solid two weeks, will play a dozen or more chamber performances as well as a half-dozen full orchestral concerts. It’s sensory overload, and it’s marvelous!

It’s also hell on cooking. But there is still good food to be had — including at one of the social events of the season, Flavor of the Park.

Long tables full of yum. And lots of satisfied diners.

Flavor is one of major productions of the Greater Hot Springs Chamber (my own employer). It features goodies from about 20 restaurants, beer and wine from local distributors, and a good time being had by all. We have it down at the Farmers’ Market Pavilion, and for a change, this week it was merely warm, not sufferin’ hot like it was last year.

Sunday music

…And it ain’t church music, neither.

I’ve been out to Dockers Bar & Grill, which fortunately is not far from my house, as I have had several beers. I do, though, want to commend to y’all Heavy Suga and the SweeTones, a blues band fronted by one Heather Crosse, on which there is more stuff here: http://www.myspace.com/heathercrosse

They’re Hot Springs’ entry in the International Blues Challenge in January on Beale Street in Memphis. They likely won’t win it….but they’re pretty respectable.

Different guitar player, as theirs is in for back surgery. But the gal can sing.

Heather is a big, big voice is a little bitty red-headed white gal. She can do some Etta James and some KoKo Taylor; her “You Don’t Move Me No’ Mo’”  is pretty exceptional. She covers everyone from Muddy Waters to Otis Redding. Her harmonica player, Greg Batterton, is an old hand on the blues club circuit, and can do all the classics, and is worth listening to on the harp. Lee Williams, the drummer, out of Clarksdale, Miss., is a good, steady, even-keel drummer, laying down a steady beat.

Filling in at guitar is Daddy Rich, also from Clarksdale, and that white boy is pretty respectable. They need to turn up the amp on his guitar,though.

Heather plays a perfectly serviceable bass; she’s not Carole Kay, yet, but she shows promise of getting there.

Anyway, look for them. they’re worth it.

And you and y’mama ‘n ‘em have a drink and get ready for the work week.

Cooking suspended in favor of music

And stepping back in time.

Ron and Mel, out front, have aged remarkably well given four decades of rocking out....

“We’re comin’ to your town,

We’re gonna party it down,

We’re an American Band!”

Can I get a witness, here? These dudes may be old…but they can still play. Maybe not as long or as hard as they used to, but they can get some 50-somethings stomping and clapping and rocking and singing.

Crowd was small because the weather sucked (flash flood warnings all day and a cold front moved through, 65 degrees this morning, 45 when I was driving home) and it was an outdoor concert. But those who were there had some serious fun.

To purloin a phrase from a post I just put up to an e-mail group I’m in, the last time I saw Grand Funk live I was so trashed I couldn’t walk on cheap booze I wasn’t old enough to buy, not to mention various substances upon which the authorities would have frowned had they discovered them.  Eight of us had crammed into an AMC Gremlin to drive four hours to get to the concert. Tonight, I drank a Diet Coke, drove home in my Toyota Avalon that Child B refers to as my “old lady car,” and poured myself a single-malt Scotch.

And I’ll be singing “C’mon baby, do the locomotion…” for the next six weeks.

Tell y’mama ‘n ‘em to Rock On!

Buy this woman’s CDs

I will, occasionally write about things other than food, when I get inspired.

I’m inspired.

Listening to Acoustic Cafe radio on iTunes radio (the iPod is the finest thing since my Calphalon saute’ pans, y’all; Steve Jobs ROCKS), and this song came on that made me sit up straight and say, “Oh, I LIKE that!”

Cut to the chase: Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem. (Where do these people GET these names?) Kinda folky, kinda jazzy, kinda bluegrassy, kinda bluesy, depending on which cut it is. I bought the album (I”m a child of the 70s. I may have gone to the iPod, but I can’t get away from buying albums. Singles make me feel like I’m 12, plunking down my allowance for 45s at the dime store to take home and play on my record player with the big fat plastic slip-on spindle. I don’t think, by the way, my kids have ever seen a turntable.)

I bought the first album, Big Old Life, for the title cut, which was the one I heard, without ever listening to another tune on it. And then, for good measure, I bought Cocktail Swing.

Best 20 bucks I’ll spend in the next month or so, I’d wager.  You can download her from iTunes or Amazon, or get her CDs from her site direct. Do it.

The problem now becomes which of her tunes to put on the Road Trip playlist on the iPod, which is where the favorite tunes go (and come and go, as they tend to change from day to day; my current favorite Buffett, for example, has been Cuban Crime of Passion for a couple of weeks, but Havana Daydreaming is moving up). For one thing, the RTP is getting too long; I try to keep it at about four hours, which is 75 to 80 songs; it’s currently at 119, and since Daisy Mayhem is new, I’ll stick half a dozen from those two albums on there. So somebody needs to move off.

I love it when people brows through my iPod, look at the RTP, and are intrigued by the mix. It has no rhyme or reason to it; it’s just stuff I like. Artists range from Elmore James to Roseanne Cash to George Gershwin to the Guess Who to Paul Simon to the Mike and Amy Finders Band to Patsy Clineto Dave Brubeck to ZZ Top to….well, you get the idea. Oh, and Chuck Berry. Can’t leave off Chuck Berry.

I guess folksy-acoustic stuff and blues are probably my favorites, if I had to pick, though I’d hate to have to.  And when you get folksy-acoustic-bluesy stuff, like Maria Muldaur or Rani Arbo, well, I’m a happy woman.

There will be a cooking post later on tonight. I warmed up frittata for lunch (it’s good reheated), and am making sweet potato soup for dinner, with cheese toast (gruyere on that good Community Bakery bread). See y’all after dinner. Tell y’mama ‘n ‘em I’ll be back after while.