June 3, 2011
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Painting

I did a major studio clean-up and reorganization recently and have started on a new painting after taking an extended break. Actually, I’m reworking something I started ages ago that was going nowhere fast. Suddenly, fog in my brain around this painting is clear.  Working title: Sunday Afternoon in the Forest of No Return.

Filed under: Art
June 2, 2011
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No baggage required…

Train song #34 is People Get Ready…

Here’s Al Green with Linda Jones and Wanda Neal.

Here’s a much different version I like a lot by Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. It’s from a record they released in the mid-70s that I think was just called Sonny & Brownie. It was quite different than much of their output and featured several guests such as Sugarcane Harris and Arlo Guthrie. I like the nice harmonica train bit Sonny does to introduce the tune.

I can’t resist posting one more…Curtis Mayfield.

June 1, 2011
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Playoff Hockey

Regular readers here in Anchovy Town know I’m no big sports fan. I have to say though that playoff hockey is a lot of fun, and having a Canadian team do well even gives me something to cheer for. Too bad regular season hockey is so dull by comparison. Give me a hand up there on the bandwagon, will you? There, that’s better. Go Canucks.

June 1, 2011
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Leavin’ Memphis Frisco Bound

Train song #35 features the most fantastic Jesse “Lone Cat” Fuller, one-man band, performing Leavin’ Memphis Frisco Bound.

The Lone Cat played 12-string guitar, harmonica, kazoo, high-hat, and an instrument of his own invention called the fotdella. Here’s a description of that instrument from Wikipedia…. “It was a foot-operated percussion bass, consisting of a large upright wood box, shaped like the top of a double bass. Attached to a short neck at the top of this box were six bass strings, stretched over the body. And finally, there was the means to play those strings: six foot pedals, each connected to a padded hammer which struck the string, in a homemade wooden contraption. The six notes of the fotdella allowed him to play a bass line in several keys, though he occasionally would play without it if a song exceeded its limited range. The name was coined by his wife, who took to calling the instrument a “foot-diller” (as in a “killer-diller” instrument played with the foot), which was shortened to fotdella.” Mr. Fuller’s work has been well covered by performers from The Grateful Dead to Eric Clapton to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Bob Dylan.

Jesse Fuller was a remarkable performer. You can find quite a bit of of his material including some excellent film footage on the YouTube and I give it all the Anchovy Stamp of Approval.  Here’s Mr. Fuller’s most well-known tune, the San Francisco Bay Blues just because it is so fantastic….

May 31, 2011
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The Biggest Mushroom Species

Somebody came across this blog after searching “the biggest mushroom species Ontario”. I wonder if that person was looking for the mushrooms the grew the largest or the ones there are most examples of in the province. If the question was meant to be what is the largest, then I guess I have to ask, do you mean the largest organism or the largest fruit? I suspect the honey mushroom (Armillaria mellea) might be the largest organism and perhaps the giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea) the largest fruit. Any other guesses? Now if the question was about the most common fungi in the province, I couldn’t begin to guess. For all I know it could be some kind of resupinate or slime mold. Who knows?

May 30, 2011
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Six Trout Flies

It’s been a while since I did any serious fly tying. That has everything to do with the fact that over the past couple years, I haven’t done nearly as much fly fishing as I used to – and that has a lot to do with having two Newfoundland dogs who love to roam in the woods. At the same time, I started learning about foraging for wild mushrooms and I’ve been taking the dogs out mushroom hunting with me regularly. So far this season, I haven’t been on stream at all.

I expect I’ll get in a couple days on a trout stream after the oyster mushrooms are finished, and then later in June, I’m planning a trip to the Upper Delaware River for several days. The Upper Delaware is a tailwater that straddles New York and Pennsylvania. It holds trout because of two bottom release dams that keep the water temperature cool all year and it has the reputation of being one of the best trout streams in Eastern North America. Why go there when there is pretty good trout fishing in local streams? I suppose because it’s a chance to get away for a few days, visit a place I’m not familar with, learn a little about a new river, and just travel around a bit.

Over the years I’ve tried to take a few days each season to go fishing or camping on my own. Last year, it was a trip with the dogs. I took Memphis and Ellie Mae up to Muskoka for a few days of hiking and mushroom hunting. On a few occasions in past years I’ve taken the long drive to the Upper Michigan Peninsula to camp and fish some streams I know there. I like that UP country quite a bit. And of course I’ve even taken solo road trips across the country too, something I haven’t done in a few years now and I have to admit I miss the long road trip.

So last evening I hunkered down in the studio and started tying up some trout flies. I tied two patterns, both imitating a little yellow mayfly we call a sulphur. One is a soft-hackle pattern and the other is my favourite all-around trout fly, known as The Usual. I tied six flies and was pretty happy with my effort.

May 30, 2011
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By Request

Regular readers know that I listen to a lot of folk music, and by folk music I don’t just mean the “folk music scare” material popularized in the 1960s but a broad selection of folk music from around the world, including the various delightful musical forms that came out of the American south – Cajun and zydeco, blues, soul, conjunto, bluegrass, old time country and so on.  I decided to run a train song of the day in this space because the train is at the heart of so much Americana. As I started posting them, I realized that for each one I posted, I thought of a couple more, and finally I decided to count down a final 50.

Of course, as I compiled my list, I realized that the train song touches on several musical genres, and not just Americana. For instance, there’s the Portuguese party tune Apita O Comboio (The Whistle of the Train), which I think I’ve heard at every Portuguese social event I’ve attended.

That tune is a lot of fun to play on the button accordion as well.

It might be interesting to trace the train song through pop music as too (although I suspect there are loads more car songs in pop music than train songs). I just posted a Warren Zevon tune the other day as some of you will recall. Yesterday, I received a train song of the day request from my friend Tim in sunny Ottawa. We’re talking about a pop tune from the 80s here, an area about which I know very very little. When friends reference their favourite pop tunes from that era, they seem bewildered when, as often as not,  I have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m told there was good music produced in the pop world back then. Where was I?

So, by request (thanks Tim!), here is train song #37, Chris de Burgh performing Spanish Train…