In the Audible Arts Studio, Robert plays my new samisen, using the traditional bachi or plectrum. Click the player below to hear Robert and Sammy going to town.

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A couple of years ago, when I first began hanging out with the Mercer Street irregulars after a magical Clementines gig at The Room Upstairs in Princeton, W.Va., I fell in love. It was an odd love affair. She was ungainly. Thin. With an odd, twangy voice. She was Japanese, which added to her exoticism and allure. I was smitten. I had to have her.

Problem was, she was owned already. Robert Blankenship of the band Option 22, and co-founder of The Room Upstairs, played her all the time. “Robert,” I said. “WHERE did you get that samisen?” For that was her name – samisen (or also shamisen). You can call her ‘Sammy.’ She has three strings that produce a banjo-like twang. Courtesans in old Japanese society used to train on the instrument, as a means of entertaining their clients before the evening’s other entertainment. That was all I knew. I had to know more. I couldn’t wrest  Sammy from Robert’s arms – he had, well, a fixation on her, too. He would lend her to me, but it was a fleeting thing.

Hence, I went to the Man, the man who had made Robert’s Sammy. The Professor, we’ll call him, a fellow of great accomplishment in both making music and making the instruments of music. Plus, The Professor is one of the few mature males  who can get away with wearing a black bowler hat in the year 2010 and not look absolutely ridiculous. But that’s another story. So, I tossed the Prof two sawbucks as a measure of my commitment to the creation of something like Robert’s sammy. He demurred – this would take work. He had Other Things To Do. It Could Take Awhile. I said, Fine. I. Can. Wait. The sawbucks disappeared into his pocket.

Later, hungry for a little sammy action, I cut him a check, a bigger downpayment. This got his attention. He began work, e-mailing me photos of her creation. Then, the day came. He showed up at my house with her. She was done. Initially, I was intimidated. She was so exotic, so strange. I would run my fingers along her as she hung beside my Taylor Guitar on my guitar rack (they needed to get to know one another). Then, one day, I took her up.

There are many ways to love a samisen, literally scores of ways to tune her. I began by creating an octave between the bottom two strings, tuned to an F-sharp, with the top string raised a fourth above that. I am still getting to know how to play my sammy in my completely unlearned, non-traditional fashion. (If you want to hear a rocking, contemporary samisen-powered group, check out the Yoshida Brothers). But now that I have her (well, when I can get her away from Robert, who has a serious crush on her) we have much to learn together. Wish us well. Sammy will be showing up on some tunes we Mercer Street Irregulars are now cooking up. Stay tuned. Sammy is in the stadium.

Let us pause for a moment, those of us of a certain age, and consider. Consider what? How the feck much things have changed. Sometimes actually for the good. Yes, yes, there is much, much change for the worse. Vicious demagogues rule a major American political party. Everywhere you go, an 800-pound gorilla named Wally (last name Mart) squats upon the squashed remnants of main streets where it used to be pleasing to stroll, shop and stop. Crosley Field is no more. Phil Collins is still on the radio.

On the other hand, I just popped into my MacBook Pro a CD by Habib Koite, who I’m to interview for a feature story in advance of his appearance with his band Bamada March 7 at the Clay Center in Charleston, WV. My iTunes program speaks up: “Yo ho, Master,” it says (it understands its role in our relationship). “Would you like, sire, for me to add this CD to my library. You down with that?” (more…)

Here was the deal. In Summer 2008, I took my 18-year-old son, Lucas, to Italy along with his 18-year-old cousin, Neil, to mark their graduation from high school. The destination was Verona, where we went to hear Santana perform in the remarkable Arena di Verona Roman coliseum, along with ten more days spread out among Milan, Venice and Rome. This being their first trip abroad and in honor of their passage into international manhood, I tell them I’ll spring for tattoos for all us on our last full day in Rome. Or we could go see the Sistine Chapel, since we hadn’t yet gotten to it. Guess which they chose.

PS ~ For a full-screen, higher-res (and preferred) version of this and other SoundSlides from that trip, see this.

PSS ~ I would also recommend knowing a bit more Italian than I did before negotiating tattoo prices in Rome. I still haven’t told my wife how much these cost. Even I don’t want to know. But that Fabio (or Claudio) ~ still a great guy.

Neil shows off the goods at a jazz club near the Roman Coliseum. | Summer 2008

In loving memory of my Italian forbears, I offer this YouTube video. I will know I have honored them better when my Italian improves beyond just understanding the curses. (I will admit – I don’t get the cowboy hats.) But that surely is an Italian grandma’s living room. My Italian relatives – translate the rest for us!

I am a snowaholic, I admit it. It’s when the snow is falling thick, I heart it most. Here’s a music video for my fellow snowaholics. This is a video we did at the Charleston Gazette, featuring photos, video and song depicting the very snowy winter of 2009-2010 in and about Charleston, West Virginia. The photos  are by Gazette staffers Chris Dorst, Chip Ellis, Kenny Kemp, Lawrence Pierce, Rusty Marks and myself. I shot all the video except for the opening segment of the Charleston skyline (such as it is). It was shot while I drove along MacCorkle Avenue and multimedia mademoiselle Katherine Gregory pulled passenger-side camera duty. I have vowed never again to drive and shoot. Or shoot and drive. Thank you, Katherine. (I edited out the bump we hit right before the bridge- see if you notice). The soundtrack song is the lovely “Snowdance” from the “Seeing Things” CD by Heidi Muller and Bob Webb.

Take a listen to a newly re-mixed version of the Prologue to “Saint Stephen’s Dream: A Space Opera.” This is also an mp3 file, not an AAC file like the one in the post below (which will be consigned to the dustbin of podcast history after iTunes gets around to adding this mp3 version.)  Feel free to download this. And get yourself over to the iTunes and subcribe for free to receive notice of future podcasts, Web casts and live performances by the WebTheater of WestVirginiaVille (WTW), the producer of “Saint Stephen’s Dream: A Space Opera.” The ending of this new version also includes a brief ad for the WTW, introducing your program host, Peggy Desiree Nash.