Late fall, early winter, into the holiday season, cooler weather, rains and snows — all that: the very best time for playing and listening to music.

I haven’t wanted to link the avocations, enthusiasms, and vocations, but it should be no secret that I’ve been playing music since I was a little iddle boy and never quite quit playing out — just coming close for ten years while dancing evenings at the Cancun Cantina in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Now moved to Hagerstown on the eastern edge of the state’s panhandle, I’ve gotten into music circles and open mics, and lately: a gig!

I don’t think the meaning of “a gig” changes all that much on the way past 16 to an equally perturbing 60 (wait: I’m not THAT close to that, yet, but four years close — that’s hard to believe).

Musicians know this: you’re as likely to feel as proud of whatever the bar hands you — and whether or not the room was empty or packed — as you have ever felt about earning a buck at anything else.

True?

Good. We understand one another.

Thanks to the two guys who just happened to walk into a restaurant mid-evening and find a guy with a “beautiful voice” playing guitar on a bar stool, a treat, I hope.

And thanks to music buddies David Dishneau and Joe Kuhna — pretty good players and singers themselves — for coming out after an evening jam session for drinks, good sound, and, so I also hope, good company.

Venue: Georgia Boy Cafe, 325 Virginia Avenue, Hagerstown, Maryland. Next appearance: Tuesday, December 13, 2011, from around 7 p.m. to somewhere between 10 and 11, weather (ice free) conditions willing for me and Mustang.