April Showers Bring Not Much to Talk About

Well, April Fool's Day has passed with little fanfare. Contrary to what I may have convinced a few people of, I am not moving out of state, nor did I buy a 3 month old goat named Reginald, although now I kinda wish I had (buy the goat, I mean).

I hope your April Fool's Day was how you envisioned it to be. Taping the light switches so they won't turn on and making prank calls to your stock broker are definitely the best ways to usher in a new month.

But now it is May, and it is the time to mature and leave the childish pranks behind (until next year, of course). In case you weren't aware, summer is just around the corner! To folks from my neck of the woods, summer means 90+ degree days and an endless stream of beach pictures invading your social media feeds. This would all be well and good if the California weather didn't decide that high winds might be a nice way to switch things up after the good dousing of rain and hail from a few months ago! The folks out in the eastern half of the country have also been experience a bit of rain so I hear. Fun times!

At long last, we at Wimberley Manor have finally got our garden planted! I'm looking forward to harvest time when I can indulge in some purple hull peas, okra, bell peppers, tomatoes, and corn on the cob! Another sign of summer, and just another way we move on from the childish (but ever hilarious when non-destructive) April Fool's pranks. Just as we will be cultivating nourishing vegetables, in our lives we will be cultivating not-vegetables.

Oh, before I forget, I'm going to be participating in an event next week that will be really different for me. I'll tell you about it in a later post. Stay tuned.

But "that" time of year has come, and I hear your questions. I feel your inquisitive thoughts. "Mark," you say, "will you be doing another tour this year?" My answer is super super simple: "I really hope so, it may or may not definitely or not definitely is maybe almost possible if we can sorta almost take mostly care of a few kinda small but humongous issues that will take little to a ton of time and a Mack Truck load of resources to fix so how does next month maybe or maybe not sound?"

Ok, so actually, I have no answer. If you remember my blogs from last year, you'll know how much difficulty we had getting on the road then. It's even harder this year!  But never fear! Remember my New Years Resolution? No? (Neither did I...I had to go back and check) The long and short of it was dream big to achieve big. So I'm just going to go into the month of May with that mindset regarding a tour.  I'll let you know if anything good happens.

One last thing before I close: We don't actually call our home Wimberley Manor. I just couldn't think of a really cool name that was accurate.....besides "that house I live in".

Gif me a Break.

I would like to point out once and for all that "gif" is pronounced with a hard g sound as in "Graphic Image File.

This may not seem like a huge deal to most, but I confess that when I hear someone pronounce it "jif", a little piece of my soul dies.

To make my point as clear as possible, and at the suggestion of some friends, I did what any other bluegrass musician would've done: I wrote a protest song.

As far as protest songs go, this is my first one. However, I hope that it possibly makes people think and I hope that it really shows the "jif" people the error of their ways.

Please share if you pronounce gif the correct way! The Internet community needs you. Badly.

I misremember too!

Certain newscasters know that to be trusted, one must always tell the truth.  I will not use this space to ridicule, mock, insult, embarrass, or name-call anyone...except me.

We have all had that moment where we desire to bend the truth a wee little bitty bit to make ourselves sound not as idiotic as we think we are.  Really its only for our own egos that we do it.  For example:

"Yeah Big Mon said to me he says: 'Son, you might be the finest picker in bluegrass!' He said that right to me!"

While immediately people will be impressed because it is known far and wide that "Big Mon" was Bill Monroe's nick name, YOU know that you were only talking about your co-worker's janitor who went by Montana Joe and knew nothing about bluegrass nor have the prefix "Big" in front of his nick name.  They can't blame you.  You "misremembered" that the Father of Bluegrass also went by that name.  Lucky coincidence.
Or how about this one:

"I must've been on that swamp for three hours before I finally got a bite.  You talk about a fight, son!  I said to Bubba 'I done landed me a gator!' and Bubba said 'That ain't no gator that's a shark!' I commenced to reeling in the most gigantic silver carp you ever saw!  We must've eaten off of it for ten years!"

This is one commonly told both by you and Bubba because both of you "misremembered" which one of you reeled in that 3-pound-catfish that Bubba said was a carp.  You also only ate off of it for 2 days (Eat it the first day, throw the scraps out for the raccoons the next day).

It's so easy to do.  We all tend to do it the slightest.  However, it is still considered lying. Lying is lying.  I never have approved of lying and I certainly would call someone out if they are lying.  I would tell them to knock it off and don't let it happen again! In fact, that's what was telling my old pal Barack when I was visiting him and Joe last week if I misremember correctly...