big awesome thick clouds have been passing through for a couple of days, but no substantial rain yet, only a couple of drops yesterday. the kid at the market, who takes my groceries out to the van (they do this for all shoppers, believe it or not) says, in houston when they say 20% chance of rain, you get rain. here, when they say 60%, you don't. it has to be 120%, he says, or it won't rain. the couple drops i saw sizzled as they hit. most places had watering if they were going to get anything at all; if they had no watering, they were long dead anyway. the drops hit with a sizzle like drops of water on a hot frying pan.

i'd given up on kerrville, got four kids at home, sometimes fighting, a little crazy, didn't seem like we could handle it, but my wife said, go, it'll do you good. so i'm going, tomorrow. leaving here at about 4 30 and getting to kerrville about midnight. i'll play some music with my former band partner, who now has a new partner or two. good musical experience expected. short trip, but a lot of music. i get to see texas, that's a bonus, i cut across it, i can go several different kind of ways, i go, basically, from the brown part to the green part, from the flat part to the hilly part. will keep you posted.

i'm not writing a lot these days. that's 'cause i'm fiddling a lot. let the music speak for you; learn the songs, that's my motto. as a fiddler, i should know the tunes, know how they start, know what key it's in, know how to play it so someone can sing it, and then get it started. i fall way short in all of these. i listen for harmony and try to play harmony. one old guy told me, fiddle can't play when people are singing. i felt like saying, why not? fiddle can even argue with someone who's singing. guess that's what he found offensive, though. gotta play softer, maybe mumble when people are singing. when you mumble, people only hear you when they want to. all other times, they think you're crazy of course. but mumbling is always better than shouting. the old guy was right. if someone's talking, i shouldn't be rude.

played 'so long, it's been good to know ya' at a going-away party. i explained that woody guthrie wrote it, and he was kind of hard on the preachers, who, in this song, take everyone's money and then say 'so long.' i'm actually afraid to play the song around here because everyone takes their religion so seriously, they might not like those words, or they might take it that he's slamming west texas, with its dusty old dust, gettin' in my home, and they might not feel a sense of ownership for a song about leaving the area, giving up on its dust storms.

but the dusty old dust, IS a-gettin in my home, and i've got to be driftin' along, as he would say.