My Crazy 2010

This was Hamfist's performance schedule in 2010, and these are just the shows we posted on the web site:
Jan 21, 2010 Alex's Ashland
Feb 5, 2010 Alex's Ashland
Mar 6, 2010 The Brick Central Point
Apr 16, 2010 Tease Ashland
Apr 24, 2010 Rogue Valley Earth Day Ashland
May 22, 2010 Alex's Ashland
Jun 13, 2010 Britt Pavilion Jacksonville
Jun 17, 2010 Tease Ashland
Jun 29, 2010 OSF Green Show Ashland
Jul 2, 2010 Caldera Tap House Ashland
Jul 17, 2010 Box R Ranch
Aug 7, 2010 Talent City Hall Talent
Aug 19, 2010 Caldera Tap House Ashland
Sep 1, 2010 OSF Green Show Ashland
Sep 3, 2010 Tease Ashland
Sep 18, 2010 Butte Creek Mill Eagle Point
Sep 29, 2010 OSF Green Show Ashland
Oct 16, 2010 Tease Ashland
Nov 5, 2010 Alex's Ashland
Dec 4, 2010 OSF Holiday Craft Fair Ashland

That's 20 shows in one year kids; not quite 2 a month. And, that doesn't count the dozen or so shows I played with the Serenaders and the 3 shows I played with One Night Band. I was a busy woman.

It's impossible for me to express how grateful I am for having music back in my life, how much I love performing. Every show is a gas.

The Serenaders' last show was a holiday party for Dunn House clients and staff. Dunn House supports victims of domestic violence as they transition into new lives. There were at least 50 women and children at the show, including a slew of toddlers. The toddlers loved us. They looked like the dance party at Charlie Brown's Christmas. Each kid has his/her signature move and they rocked the house. I couldn't quit grinning. People from 8 months to 80 years old moving, dancing, bopping, noddding their heads, smiling - that's why I do this. That's what keeps me coming back.

St. Francis's Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Esmeralda's Prayer

God bless all con men and hustlers and pitchmen who hawk their hearts on the street, all two-time losers whore' likely to lose more than once, the courtesan who made the mistake of love, the greatest of lovers crowned with the longest of horns, the poet who wandered far from his heart's green country and possibly will and probably won't be able to find his way back, look down with a smile tonight on the last of the cavilers, the ones wit the rusty armor and soiled white plumes, and visit with understanding and something that's almost tender those fading legends that come and go in this plaza like songs not clearly remembered.

Tennessee Williams

You Wreck Me

I’ll be the boy – in the corduroy pants – you’ll be the girl – at the high school dance…

Thanks Tom. I’ll be your girl at the high school dance anytime. Although, truth be told, my memories of the high school dance are not fond. I was the girl standing in the shadows, waiting in vain for someone, anyone, to ask me out onto the floor. It didn’t take long to realize that the boys in the corduroy pants were never going to ask me to dance. They didn't even see me; well, not until I lost 30 pounds using a combination of speed and cigarettes. That caught their attention, but by then it was too late. I was way too cool for the boys at the school dance. I had discovered the bad boys in the parking lot with their ditch weed and their back seats. Their standards were lower.

I got older, tougher, more reckless, I learned to pick up the signals, how to make the first move, when to walk away. But, that vulnerable little girl with her back pressed to the wall still lies just below the surface. When one of the cool kids freezes me out, it still hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does. It wrecks me baby; it breaks me in two.

The Empress

A rogue wind blasted from the mouth of the Mississippi, filling Jackson Square with sudden turbulence. The trees lifted their branches and shook in the sudden squall, the incipient rain blew sideways and the few foolhardy street vendors hustled to cover their wares. A fortune teller's tarot deck exploded into the air and scattered like leaves on the wind. Cards tumbled across the Square, cartwheeled in the air, flew up onto wrought iron balconies. One slapped face down at my feet and I quickly leaned over and snagged it before the wind flipped it up again.

The wind read my tarot cards and pulled The Empress.

The Empress, the fourth card in the major arcana, is represented by the number three, which Schoolhouse Rock tells us is a magic number(the first card in the major arcana, The Fool, is represented by 0.) She is a great mother archetype, often depicted pregnant, a figure of abundance, fertility, pregnant with promise, ripe with the milk of human kindness. Her law is love; love is her shield and sword. She embodies the paradox that an open heart is the best protection, for when you are armed with love, you have nothing to fear.

I've never been very good at guarding my heart; I leave it open to the slings and arrows, the wind and the rain. Perhaps that open heart is my greatest strength. Perhaps I should stop fighting it and learn to love my touchingly vulnerable, dangerously sensitive, bleeding heart.

N'ohlens

The sidewalks of New Orleans are trying to kill me
Root-buckled, storm-subsided, cantilevered concrete
slabs reduced to rubble,
reaching up to break my ankles and send me flailing.
A city long on charm but short on function,
style over substance and no apology,
they wouldn't have it any other way.

The streets of New Orleans are wet, the air is damp,
the ground and the sky both run with water.
Out in the muddy pastures of the 9th ward
star architects build spec homes for orphans of the storm,
jewel boxes in oblique angles and colors not found in nature,
with large party decks overlooking the levee

Not everyone will come back, and who can blame them?
In a city full of cemeteries, this is hallowed ground
and who among us wants to live side by side with the dead?