Surgery Date Set

The work on my shoulder I mentioned in a previous post has been scheduled for Friday, March 6. Should be a pretty easy procedure and will only require one night in hospital and a couple of weeks of no playing to recuperate.

Atomic Cowboy Tonight

Late notice, I know.

I'll be playing a short set with the Hot Baloney Boys tonight at the Atomic Cowboy, 4140 Manchester in the Grove district between Vandeventer and Kingshighway.

We're supposed to go on about 9:45 and play for twenty minutes or so. But you know how those things go.

Hope to see some folks we know there.

Finally Getting My Shoulder Fixed

As many of you who've been reading this blog know, for about a year now, I've been dealing with an injury to my left shoulder that has made it difficult to impossible for me to play the fiddle. It's been okay, because it's forced me to substitute the mandolin, and the increased practice and playing has made my mandolin playing 1,000% better than it was a year ago. So that's been an okay thing.

But after a year of this nonsense, my physical therapist suggested that the shoulder will not likely get any better without surgical intervention. So, a consult with an orthopedic surgeon was in order. That happened Wednesday and the outcome is that sometime in the next three weeks or so, I'll have a couple of holes cut into the shoulder and some obstructions cleared out of the ball joint. Then two weeks of enforced no playing tunes. After that, I should be just about good as new and able to do all the things I used to with my left arm, like getting a book off a shelf over my head, tucking in my shirt tail, and playing the fiddle.

I can't tell you how I'm looking forward to it.

I'll update my progress in this space. Stay tuned.

A Shameless Dodge

I haven't had time to post much lately. Things have been crazy and I haven't been playing nearly as much as I'd like to. Or working on picking up new tunes, either. So in a shameless attempt to get something up on the blog while not having to think about it too much, here's a video found on YouTube. The tune is "Half Past Four", an Ed Haley tune that I've been carrying around in my head for the last week or so.



Watching the video is also getting me juiced about going to the Clifftop festival this year. And believe me, in these weird days of February, I need the promise of August on a mountaintop in West Virginia.

Anyway, enjoy. It's great stuff.