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1. Oh yeah, remember how Tin Cat was recording a demo? We have a demo now. The songs are up on our MySpace page. One song each from Dave, Tom, Meredith and me. My contribution is yet another version of my first song, "Losing Streak", but it's pretty different. It's a rock song now. Also Cameron made my accordion sound great on Dave's song "The Lion".

2. I've been booking a series of "acoustic" (or electric but mellow) shows at Barefoot Coffee Roasters. I know too many people who make great music and don't really get it heard enough, for various reasons. So I'm setting up three-band bills with a mix of local and greater-California acts, mostly solo and duo, on Sunday afternoons when the cafe has walk-in traffic and sunshine. A lot of the performers I've booked so far are my friends and bandmates, but I've got some people coming up later in the summer who I've never met before, and they're also great. Anyway, I finally put up a web page about it. The first show is next Sunday (6/19), with Meredith Edgar, Colin Carthen, and Jon Weston coming in from the East Bay.

3. Today I went out to get lunch and run some errands, the first of which was to drop off a CD player at Barefoot (theirs has been flaky, and I had a spare), and some CDs by upcoming acts, so that maybe they can get some play in the cafe before their shows. ("Like putting out pastry samples," Kate aptly analogized.) None of the other errands got run, because I then spent six? seven? hours in the cafe talking about music and philosophy to Dan, Avery, William (aka

monkey587, and was it Will?), and Kate, who has no link here only because as far as I know she is represented by no web page. For someone who rarely talks at length (a taciturn sort of fellow, a few of you will recall), this was extremely disorienting. But not in a bad way.