Having only played twice today I signed up for a slot at the GD Open Mike. I reprized my race songs Cut Across Shorty and Blue Mule and then finished up with a Cockburn instrumental Creation Dream. I must have been warmed up because I came close to playing as good as I could. It is quite a challenging tune.

Enough for one day.

I put in my two songs worth early on at tonight’s OM. I decided to do Bird of Paradise and Sailing Shoes. Bird of Paradise is a Tony Bird song on my Pearls album so I rushed up stairs to pull it up on my computer and relearn the second verse. I’m glad I did.

It’s been a while since I’ve done the whole thing so it was great to reglue the cracks, seeing how it remains a beautiful song with great lyrics. I introduced it with its South African apartheid roots. I actually did better than I expected.

I followed with Sailing Shoes from Little Feat, a band who continues to amaze me with their music and musicianship. It is an R&B groove that is a gas to play in drop D. Lotsa room, as it is with all Feat songs. I happened to wear my Feats at Five t-shirt, the radio podcast of Feats songs. I actually wrote in and got played a mini-set of two tunes a couple of months ago.

I did my duty and headed upstairs to work on and marvel to some GD archives with Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck. That’s humility for ya.