Blues at Trail's End in Oregon City

July 19th was the second anniversary for the Ward Stroud band hosting the Sunday Night Blues Jam at the Trail's End Saloon in Oregon City, Oregon. He invited some great people to come sit in and the place was packed. I'm embarrassed I don't have all the names here, but I'll try and get the missing ones next time we get to see them.

Yes, you aren't seeing things, that is Ward on the didgeridoo...something you have to hear to believe ...and then probably hear it again used to give a Blues song something no one probably tried before.

That's Vince Adame on the drums behind Ward.

It also happened to be Darlene's birthday and she joined the band in their rendition of the Bobby Bare song "Marie Laveau"

James Miller on Bass.

Frank "Paris Slim" Goldwasser and James F. Miller, these guys were amazing.

Frank Goldwasser

Robbie Laws is one of the 2009 Inductees into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Both Brian and I have read this book, in fact we've read everything that Chris Moore has written and loved them all. This is one we have on CD and over the course of several road trips -not in the Mercury or Chevy, but in a car with a CD player and where we can hear without shouting ... we've laughed our way through many hours of road time. Today we heard the last couple CD's of the book and had totally forgotten the more than wonderful description of this car.

Please enjoy:


"The 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham was the perfect show-off of death machines. It consisted of nearly three tons of steel stamped into a massively mawed, high-tailed beast, lined with enough chrome to build a Terminator and still have parts left over, most of it in long, sharp strips that peeled off on impact and became lethal scythes to flay away pedestrian flesh. Under the four headlights it sported two chrome bumper bullets that looked like unexploded torpedoes or triple-G-cup Madonna death boobs. It had a non collapsible steering column that would impale the driver upon any serious impact, electric windows that could pinch off a kid's head, no seat belts, and a 325 horsepower V8 with such appallingly bad fuel efficiency that you could hear it trying to slurp liquefied dinosaurs out of the ground when it passed. It had a top speed of a hundred and ten miles an hour, mushy, bargelike suspension that could in no way stabilize the car at that speed, and undersized power brakes that wouldn't stop it either. The fins jutting from the back were so high and sharp that the car was a lethal threat to pedestrians even when parked, and the whole package sat on tall, whitewall tires that looked, and generally handled, like over sized powdered doughnuts. Detroit couldn't have achieved more deadly finned ostentatia if they'd covered a killer whale in rhinestones. It was a masterpiece. "