Zither

My friend Zen just came over and dropped off a lovely gift -- a Hungarian zither. He apparently had no idea what to do with it, and neither do I, but I'm excited.

Does anyone out there have any idea how to tune the thing? It's a 16 string zither, which appears, from my research, not to be the most common of zithers.

All help is appreciated.

Sirius.B @ The All Go West Festival

This past Saturday, in West Asheville, about 250 feet from my house, The All Go West Festival took place. This was the second year that it happened, and it was amazing. The weather was perfect, the crowd was immense, the art and music were all top notch.

I was quite busy this year, as Beth and I were selling pottery, and I was also playing music with Sirius.B. (All this on top of having played the night before until 2:15 am...leaving me to sleep about 4.5 hours before going strong all day with set up, selling, playing, breaking down, etc.)

Below are some videos that someone was kind enough to take of much of the music at the festival. He got all of our songs, which is amazing. Enjoy and share!

Moto Carry

Pedro, my loyal steed, has been so kind in his continuing to put up with me loading all sorts of things upon his back. This weekend featured 25 pounds of carrots on one ride, and 200 shotgun shells on another. Thanks Pedro!

Art continued

In response to a reader's question about a recent art acquisition I made, I say the following:

My apologies to James WC Daniel, the amazing artist that sold me the painting of the goldfish shown in a previous post. See his work at www.jwcd3.com

Asheville Bathrooms

This gas station bathroom had an "out of order" sign, though it was merely a ruse. I actually asked if it was really out of order, and they told me it wasn't. A good trick to keep people out.

Even better than the liar sign were these signs.

Mead Bottling

First batch of mead has been bottled (about two weeks ago). Only 50 or so weeks to wait until it's nice and ready for drinking.

All the bottles were collected from a recycling center, thereby making me feel simultaneously wholesome, thrifty, dirty, and conspicuous. As you can see, I bathed them all before using.

Busy

Nose to the grindstone with family, gardening, music, pottery, and work right now, so little going on on the blog front right now.

One note of note: Some members of Sirius.B, after having played a show at the Pisgah brewery, headed to the Orange Peel (a huge and wonderful venue) to catch the end of the Gogol bordello show on Thursday. Not only did we have success in doing so, but afterwards, hanging around the tour bus, playing music for the waiting fans, we were briefly joined in song by Eugene Hutz, the frontman for Gogol Bordello.

Amazing to sing with such a icon.

More soon. Be well.

Art

My most recent art acquisition.