Home

Well we got 2008 started right with 2 weeks of gigs that took us from KC to Vegas and back through Mississippi. The last 2 days of the tour, we were the guests of SHB family member Kempf Poole and his family. This is an amazing family! They opened their home to me and the guys as well as to my Uncle Wayne (the legendary Uncle Wayne!) and Bobby Inman. When I say they opened their home to us, I mean they made us feel absolutely warm and welcome. Kempf's wife Sandra is an incredible cook and, for a guitar player that usually eats about one meal a day on the road, it was like a weekend of Thanksgiving dinners every 3 hours! Not only were we served a multi-course breakfast and an amazing dinner that even had Richard loving cheese grits for the first time in his life, but Kempf also had to hip me to some ribs from a local joint that are now in my top 5 (pending a thorough and stringent consistency test). On top of all of that, we played two nights at Schimmels, the best restaurant in Jackson. The owner Jay, a truly class act, made the best shrimp and grits I've had and the bread pudding was to good to even talk about (I'm drooling on the keyboard as I type this!) All this and sweet potato pie lets me know that trips to Jackson will have to be limited to once a year or else I'll be buying all my clothes in the real fat guitar player section of Sears!
The show Saturday night at the Subway Lounge as awesome! We had a lot of fun and I hope the audience did too. One thing I need to address, for those in attendance, was a derogatory comment I made about Kenny Chesney. Often times when I'm onstage, I'll say something completely outrageous just to get a laugh from the audience. I mean no harm when I say these things, it's just jokes...however...I meant what I said about Kenny Chesney. I do not like him Sam I am! I will not like him on a train, I will not like him on a plane. I do not like the way he sings, I do not like him...anything! Listen to Jimmy Buffet, he first and better! Listen to George Jones, he's way better! Listen to a dentist's drill, it's better! My favorite Kenny Chesney CD is any one that's still in the wrapper, That way it can't hurt anyone! If Satan has a jukebox, I bet it's full of Kenny Chesney. Not that Satan likes him either, it's just good to torture souls with! I shouldn't be so hard on really short people, but as my daughter used to say, "me no yiking him!" I actually hope that Kenny makes tons of money this year...and retires to an island far away. Like maybe where Lost is supposed to take place! Not Hawaii, where they actually film, but somewhere in Micronesia where he can play his ukulele in peace and torment only the cannibals that inhabit the island! Sure, someday I might change my mind and learn to like him, then again, I might learn to like skin rashes and the sound of fingernails on chalkboards.