What I Did With It: A Shug’s Delight: The Album from the 1990s That Made It to the Internet

A Shug’s Delight

Carolina

Rich Man’s Country

Needle in the Rain

The Strike

Waitress In A Smokey Place

One Week in New York

Peltier

Blue Windows

A Man’s Got To

Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey

Hotel Highway

Angeline

Fernandina

Fly, Little Eagle

Song of the Woods

Holy

—————————————–

Composer, Lyricist, Vocalist, Guitarist, Keyboards: James S. Oppenheim.

Recording Engineer, Percussionist, Bassist, Guitarist: David R. Bergstein (DRB Productions).

Recording Location: White Oak, Silver Spring, Maryland.

Copyright Registration Date: August 27, 1990

Technology: TASCAM 4-Track.

–33–

Gig Snaps + Fireworks

I would like to tell you how hungover I am, but cannot, for I am only a little partied out.

🙂

And getting over it with coffee bean from Nicaragua.

However, if I weren’t fighting “Dunlap’s Disease” (as in, “honey, my belly done lapped over my belt!”), this would be fine morning hour for a cold beer.

Gig Snaps –> “If I’m to perform — guitarist, vocalist, singer/songwriter — I may bring a camera; if I bring a camera. what I shoot around the gig goes here” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/23673974@N04/collections/72157626640831218/).

So it goes, but here I may remove the “I may bring a camera” part, for the high-end point-and-shoot Lumix Lx5 fairly assures I will have at least that camera with me.   

Greg Trumpower picking a tune out in the wilting heat of the late Fourth of July afternoon, 2012, Hagerstown, Maryland.

Greg Trumpower has been knockin’ at rockabilly and Americana in music for decades.  Retired from writing mortgages for Wells Fargo, he’s had more time for house, garden, and music (http://www.reverbnation.com/gregtrumpower), and every Fourth of July, he’s hosted a Home Concert and Block Party, now fairly well attended and with a terrific locaton for watching the “North End” Hagerstown Fireworks.

Dave Violet (L) and Greg Trumpower (R) pick one.

Greg’s friend Dave Violet has a fine ear and plays well, but as others of our cohort do between age, economy, and fate, he’s been struggling with health and house and here has borrowed Greg’s old Gibson, a little hard to play, stiff action, so Dave says.  Pay him no mind on that — he’s very smooth and jazzes it up as if the old flat top had been built and setup just for him.

Finale – Fourth of July — Hagerstown, Maryland 2012.

Not bad for a hand-held point-and-shoot!

Well, it’s colorful. 

Technically, hand shake and fire in motion may have conspired for effect. 

It has been very cool working in three arts and along multiple parallel career tracks, but when one gets “inside” the less visible machinery and methods of an avenue of expression, it becomes very difficult managing (alone) each art (or research) system: I’d rather have recorded the fireworks with the D2x on a tripod, but . . . outside . . . public party . . . in town . . . Mustang parked a block away . . . chair and gig bag (day travel base camp) slung over my shoulder and guitar case in hand — one system per mission, please.

Of course, as all in production now — film, music, photography — locations come with their own package of encouragements by way of amenity, convenience, and security, so perhaps I will find my way to another house party but out in the countryside with ample parking and other music-supporting and photography-encouraging features.

We shall see!

In the meantime, enjoy my memory of my town’s fireworks 2012.

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Playin’ Down at the Georgia Boy Cafe

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.