More of what I get up to when I’m not taking photos, writing and working my day job.
The Harmonistas stopped at Cafecito Organico in Malibu for some refreshments and played around with a riff from our arrangement of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” while we waited. The barista/manager asked us to do the whole thing, but without a guitar we opted for “For the Longest Time,” which we do a capella. This is impromptu and we didn’t have a pitch pipe to start, but we had fun. The barista/manager said we made his day. And he asked for our card for when he gets his music programming going.
Video by our intrepid videographer, Hydra!
Have to say that the soy chai latte at Cafe Organico was amazing and potentially addictive. It’s made with fresh ginger and you can taste and feel it!
The coolest harmony-makers on the planet, in my book: Launice, Louise and Janice. The Harmonistas, tuning up for the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle contest in a little shack on the edge of the festival at Paramount Ranch.
We went to the main stage competition again, and this year we earned an Honorable Mention! Will 2014 be the charm?
Yeah, I was there, too! Thanks to Launice for handling the camera!
Great day of music, plus I got to take this handsome singing cowboy home with me!
Janice’s husband, Andy, packed some lunch to share! How cute is that? In his mandolin case.
Well…. It still plays!
These two were jamming with a near by band. He’s on harmonica and she’s playing spoons. They were terrific!
I didn’t take my good camera. Always a difficult choice, but we were very busy and it’s very dusty out there.
As we sat on the Songmakers stage late in the afternoon, we watched lots of people take photos on this porch. Wish I’d taken more shots of people having fun with this backdrop. It brought out the fun in a lot of folks.
I have to say that there is not much better than cold lemonade to quench one’s thirst after a hot couple of hours of yard work. Made this with fresh fruit from L-Dub’s yard and agave nectar.
Two near-perfect weekends in a row! Last weekend Hydra and I camped with our musician friends all weekend and my singing group, The Harmonistas, performed at Fireside Concerts in Newbury Park, CA that Friday night. A whole weekend of music, food and friendship.
This weekend, The Harmonistas had another gig, in Palmdale, on Saturday night. It was last minute so there was not a lot of time to get the word out, but Butler’s Coffee House’s regular crowd was friendly. Kevin, the music guy, said our act is unique and engaging.
The band members gathered at L-Dub’s house last weekend and at my house this weekend, to rehearse and prepare. Wonderful to have a reason to spend time with these creative women. After the gig we sat around the living room and sang some more, just for fun!
Singing with The Harmonistas feels like drinking good lemonade. Tart, sweet, and good for me.
Last night South Coast rehearsed at our house because band members live in Apple Valley and the San Fernando Valley and we’re just about midpoint between the two. After their rehearsal, which was great to listen in on, we had dinner together. Great evening.
Naw, we didn’t have chicken and waffles, but I think opening our house to them gave me some handy instant karma. I had the sad task of ferrying Kitty to LAX this morning to head home. We started at 5:40, a little later than planned, and made it to to Dinah’s Family Restaurant in an hour and ten minutes!
It was there that we threw caution to the wind and tried chicken and waffles for the first time. It’s a combo I first heard of when Hydra and I came to Los Angeles in 1985, but in which I had never indulged. It was strangely wonderful. Light, crisp waffles. Hot crisp chicken. Mmm.
My foot with the Dinah’s logo embedded in the tile outside the door. I love diners, as you know. If I didn’t live as far away as I do, I’d be a regular here.
We saw police officers–both in uniform and plain clothes (big radio on the table clued me in)–a mildly crazy lady, some business people, retirees, and a whole bunch of super-sized (and very fit) Army guys wearing desert fatigues with guns strapped to their legs…Special Forces???
Look at that beautiful blue sky for that beautiful person to fly away into!
Getting over the hill to work in Burbank took about an hour and a half, but I drove across the city and caught some amazing views of the Hollywood sign and the mountains behind it from Baldwin Hills. More amazing mountain vistas coming down Barham into the Valley.
And the icing on the instant karma cake!? Found a parking spot just a block from work on my first spin around the neighborhood. Almost unheard of at 9:30, due to the great industry insider coffee house, Priscilla’s, on the first floor of my office building.
Want your own instant karma? Check out South Coast’s music and see what happens!
The arrow marks approximate location of Hotel Ines as seen from the plane on our approach.
I was going to be all creative and do themed posts about our recent trip to Puerto Escondido, Mexico, but I have been having a hard time deciding where to start. So I’m going to just back date these posts to the days the photos were taken, and do it chronologically.
My mom, Kitty, has been visiting this little beach town for most of the past 14 years. She has lots of friends down there who also spend a month or more hanging out on the beach, going on excursions, etc. It’s nice to share stuff like that, and it’s a very loose group so there are no obligations. They often meet at the little pavilion just across Calle del Morro from Hotel Ines in this shot to watch the sun go down.
Our room, #5, is tucked away under the stairs, to the left of this shot.
Kitty welcomes us to her place, #24. She met us at the airport. Nice to see a friendly face after a 14 hour red-eye flight!
The view from our room.
First thing on the agenda was a trip into the town to find an inexpensive guitar to play for the week. Paid 500 pesos (about $39.00 US) for this little parlor classical, which is cheaper than checking a guitar or extra bag in one direction on an airline. And a lot less worry! Wouldn’t want one of his good guitars to get the treatment we’ve seen horror stories about online.
On our way back from town, this guy was juggling in the street. The taxi driver said he was from Australia, I think. Taxi rides just about anywhere it town could be had for 25 pesos (about $2.00 USD). Some of the cabs were pretty rickety and the roads were rough, but the rides were short!
Back to the beach and a cerveza at Los Tios, right across from the hotel.
This came with our order of guacamole. We also had fresh fish dinners for our first meal in country.
Charming hand-washing area at Los Tios. It was lovely to sit there till sunset, when we joined the other denizens of Hotel Ines to watch the sun go down in the ocean.
Though we’ve been singing together for about a year and a half, starting out informally at Songmakers’ events, The Harmonistas debuted a half-hour set on Saturday night, to a standing room only crowd at Gelencser House Concerts. We were honored to share the bill with South Coast and Merlin Snider.
Working with these women (left to right: Sundry, Janice, Louise and Launice) is terrific. We all bring talents and ideas to the room, and we have a great time working up arrangements.
I wrote during the past couple of years, but felt blocked when it came to fiction, my first love. After banging my head on my writing desk for a while, I decided to pursue other creative ventures, and this has been one of the most satisfying.
photo by Hydra
The glam shot, taken last summer during a party where we previewed one of our songs, Billy Joel’s For the Longest Time. I get to sing lead while the others whoop it up with terrific syncopated background vocals!
Yep, Cole Porter was a Hoosier! He was born in this house on June 9, 1891. According to the plaque next to the door, “He learned to play the piano and violin in this house, and at age 10 he wrote one of his earliest compositions, ‘Song of the Birds’ for his mother, Kate. Porter went on to write hundreds of classics for the stage, movies, and TV, including ‘Begin the Beguine’ and ‘I Get a Kick Out of You.’”
Today part of this huge house is used as the Cole Porter Inn. I spoke to some people who were checking out, and they said it was terrific.
This town must have been something else in it’s heyday. Get a load of these street names embedded in the sidewalk on the corner where the Cole Porter house sits.
Yes, that’s my hand on the same doorknob that Cole Porter used when he was called in for supper.
One of my favorite traveling companions ever. So easy to stop where we want and skip what we don’t want.
Crumbling old commercial building near the railroad tracks in Peru, IN. This place may be beyond repair. A guy who was sitting in his back yard near here watched me take these and pictures of an old brick house that’s behind this place in a large otherwise empty lot, and then he came over to tell me that a person who owns several houses right there just bought this place and the abandoned house. He also said that Dillinger stayed in one of the houses, presumably before he and his gang robbed the Peru Police Department of its guns.
Kitty knew I’d like this discarded ticket she found in the alley behind the old commercial building.
Classic Midwestern small town alley. Reminds me of the one behind my cousins’ house in Huntington. Love these secret passages and how they give access to garages behind houses, rather than making the garage the main thing you see when you pull up to a home, like they misguidedly started doing in the 1980s.
My foot on a brick sidewalk. There are even streets made of brick that still exist in some small towns around here. My mom and sister helped repair Chauncey Street in Columbia City, IN some years ago.
Another amazing house, visible from the Porter place.
Number Eleven Huntington street, next door to the Cole Porter place. Sadly abandoned. These great old houses in disrepair just break my heart. “Honey, it followed me home. Can we keep it?”
Getting the feel of the room at the lovely and truly interfaith Methodist Church in Ocean Park. This place has such warm and welcoming acoustics. We felt instantly at home. Louise is the music director here on Sunday mornings.
Ready to roll! We joined in the chorus of a capella singing from 9:00-1o:00, then our songs were sprinkled throughout the service.
Louise introduced us to this amazing song that we had so much fun playing with. I just adore the way it mixes a Zen sentiment with a liturgical sounding melody.
The lyrics:
Be like a bird, who, halting in her flight
On a limb too slight, feels it give way beneath her;
Yet sings, sings, knowing she has wings;
Yet sings, sings, knowing she has wings.
I wish I had a recording of us doing it. I like the way our voices weave in and out. Here’s Libana doing it.
Louise in her element.
At Rick’s Tavern on Main for lunch after the performance and a walk through a farmer’s market. The server, who knew Louise, asked what we were up to on this fine day. Since we had the little patio outdoor cafe to ourselves, we did a couple quick songs for her.
Tiny Ninja watched over us as we lunched and talked about what’s next. Looks like we are going to be a part of a couple of multi-act concerts in early 2013. Given how far apart we live and how busy we all are, that sounds about right!
Whoo hoo! The Harmonistas took it on the road! We competed at the 52nd Annual Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest with this Gospel Mash-Up that we arranged ourselves. This is us on the Railroad Stage, in the sing off. There were about 30 contestants in the preliminary competition.
Left to right : Sally Charette, Janice Glencser, Launice Walker and Louise Dobbs. Yeah, our real names.
Here’s my man Hydra performing The Shoals of Herring on the Railroad Stage! So proud of him. Such a manly man song!!
The Harmonistas advanced to the Main Stage with 7 or 8 other groups/singers.
Hanging out in the green room. I honestly felt like this was just a victory lap. We created the mash up on a Saturday afternoon/evening about a month before the contest, spent the night at , tweaked it the next day. We had one more rehearsal a week before the contest. We each live an hour, minimum, from each other’s homes and we are all busy women!
One of my best moments was when the green room manager complimented us on our positive attitudes. He said it would show on stage and people would love it. We did get people moving, and that was great. Also wonderful to see our supportive Songmakers friends in the audience.
We didn’t place in the top three, but we had a terrific day. We were all a little hesitant about competing. But it was good to have a goal and a set of performance criteria to boost our game.
The scene at Songmakers Corner later in the day. Lots of people singing and playing along with the members on stage. This is where Hydra and I learned about Songmakers about 14 years ago!
A Songmaker member, Toni, loaned her dog to an audience member.
There was a solar eclipse late in the afternoon. This shot was taken through a little cardboard and plastic viewer we bought at the festival with my little Nikon S6000. A lot of people didn’t have viewers, so I had a lot of fun sharing mine.
One guy looked and then said, “Oh, so I guess the sky gods aren’t angry with us. I’ll go cut down that kid.” Ha!
This girl was viewing it old school! She had five or six little holes in one piece of a cracker box, projecting the crescents onto the other piece. Those are her proud parents in the background.
Lastly, some of the cool handmade cigar box instruments for sale by one of the many vendors, Bellybox Instruments. They also had a cigar box amp, and all of these have sound pick ups in them!
Wonderful day. Thanks to all the volunteers who make this possible. Especially our friend, Carl Gage!
