Of Notes and Blogs

Black Mountain, NC  (home)

In an unforeseen fit of motivation, I find that I’m finally joining the new millennium and starting an honest-to-goodness blog. Not that I’m a luddite.  Actually, it could be argued that I was a proto-blogger: blogging before we had even made up the word.  I started writing “Notes From the Road” in about 1995 on my own web site. Actually, they’re all still archived there back to Thanksgiving of 1997. The oldest one I’ve still got starts out like this:

Nov. 25, 1997

Q: What do you call a touring guitar player with his finger in a huge bandage?

A: Most people call me David

It’s November twenty-fifth, and I’m typing slowly, as there is a big white bandage on the middle finger of my left hand. I’m thirty-one shows, one beard, three oil changes, fifteen states, two flat tires, seven weeks, two stitches and many a song into my tour. Hoping to have the bandage off and be able to play by Friday, which is my next scheduled show. Between now and then lie two days of driving and Thanksgiving.      

I had cut my finger while cleverly trying to use my Swiss Army Knife as a screwdriver (the blade, not the screwdriver part.  I know, I know…).   

At any rate,  the Notes From the Road were long, and only updated every couple of months, sometimes longer.  When I sat down to write one, I inevitably had far too much to say to fit it all in.  I stuck with that format, though, for lo these fourteen years or so, because, well, I had always done it that way and I knew how.

Meanwhile the rest of the world had figured out that blogging is a much better way to achieve the same thing (i.e. keeping in touch and sharing ideas and news).  Now I’m finally catching up, thanks to the encouragement of my good friend and uber-blogger Christine Kane, and the excellent example of my sister Kathy, who recently started blogging, and even my cool theologian Dad.

Blogs are better for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that readers (as in you) can comment on them and we can have a conversation. They’re also better because they’re shorter and can just contain one little tidbit of news, which is much less intimidating than a long piece.

So all that to say thanks for checking in. Please feel free to subscribe so we can keep in touch, and I’ll look forward to the ongoing conversation. 

By the way, if you were to visit the old Notes From the Road you would see a great picture of Dan the Tan Van at the top of the page. Dan was my dependable road companion for many years and many, many miles. He left last week to start his retirement off the coast of Maine. My next blog will fill in the details on Dan. Thanks for checking in. Stay tuned!