Todd Snider's final show at The Daily Planet

Tim Lybarger from eighteenminutes.com kindly made available a soundboard recording of Todd Snider's final show at The Daily Planet in Memphis, Tennessee. While the exact date isn't known, the sound quality is excellent. Todd is backed by a band called The Bootleggers.

Tim gave me permission to share it through MegaUpload. No membership necessary - just enter the cryptic letters (often takes some head scratching, squinty eyes, and multiple attempts to get it right) and you should be good to go.

I uploaded it just as Tim originally offered it. This means the files are in FLAC format (not MP3), and you'll need to convert them to WAV files to listen or burn to a CD. If you haven't experimented with converting FLAC files, three words for you - Traders Little Helper. Its free just like the show, and its pretty easy to use.

Sample Track - This Land Is Our Land

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Full Download - Todd at MegaUpload

TMC

Daddy on Lightning 100

Off to Vegas for rest of week. Doubtful much blogging will take place from there. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?

So to bide the time until I return here's a couple of vids from Daddy (primarily Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack) from Nashville's Lightning 100 studios. They were sharing two songs from their upcoming 2nd CD to be released on (appropriately) Father's Day 2009.




TMC

A Heinz 57 Wednesday

Another day in a week of supposed 'vacation' days - more just being away from the office than an actual vacation. Yet today I had about as many varied experiences as I've had in a while:

• I attended annual mid-day MTSU Executives in Residence lunch. Got to hear Arthur Laffer speak. He has served as a professor of economics at multiple universities and has served in multiple White House economic roles - most notably as chief economist under President Reagan. Got to meet him after the lunch.
  
• At the same lunch, Charlie Daniels received the Ambassador Joe Rogers Spirit of America award. About 26 years ago, I met Charlie Daniels when I was a college freshman at Tennessee Tech University. He & Hank Williams Jr. toured together. I got to help with show set-up and tear-down. Hank had his share of Jim Beam that night & went beyond his allotted time as the opener. Because Charlie got started late as the headliner, the show ended much, much later than scheduled. We stayed to the end, loaded the trailers as expected, and got to meet Charlie. He thanked us for sticking around and helping. He then asked us how much we were paid. When we said "zero, we're just volunteering", his jaw dropped, he walked away, and then returned with free t-shirts for all of us. Pretty cool to meet him 26 years later in a suit & tie - absent the CDB t-shirt. I reminded them of that show & he smiled wryly and acknowledge "aw yeah, I remember that one."
  
• I received a CD of a 1974 Miles Davis show from Carnegie Hall in NYC in the mail. I immediately dropped it in my truck's CD player as I headed to Wal-Mart after the lunch. Which one of these doesn't belong? Truck, Wal-Mart, Miles Davis?
• At Wal-Mart, I bought 30 bags of mulch. Got 2/3 of it spread this evening and also prepared a bed to put out several hosta plants Thursday.
• While working, I grooved to Tom Freund and Tommy Emmanuel on my iPod. If I had taken the extra time to transfer my new Miles Davis CD, I would have listened to him too.
• As a desk jockey, I'm way out of shape with manual labor. The mulch and bed prep about whipped me. I showered and decided I desperately wanted a large, cold margarita. So off to my favorite Mexican restaurant - Garcia's - for one and an evening meal. The normal family routine is to hit Garcia's on Friday night. The food is great and the service is even better. The trade-off is you don't get to visit much with the servers. Tonight, things were a bit slower. My favorite waiter, Pancho, was able to sit down a few minutes and share what is was like coming from Mexico to the U.S., share his excitement as a new, first-time dad, wrestle with his hopes for his son who has dual citizenship as an American and a Mexican, and introduce me to his native language - Chatino (not Spanish) - a language/dialect spoken by only a few thousands of Mexican people.

So while I'm not spending my 'vacation' on a beach, at a resort, in the mountains, etc., this was as entertaining and eclectic a day as I've had in a while.

Well, since I artist-dropped I might as well share a few tunes...

Tom Freund - Sweet Affection

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Tom Freund - North American Long Weekend

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Tommy Emmanuel - Beatles Medley



The late, great Miles Davis



TMC

Dining in Mobile

First time in Mobile, Alabama this week. Hmm, gotta say there wasn't a lot there to compel me to return.

Having said that, we had a purty good dinner Monday night at Felix's Fish Camp near the U.S.S. Alabama battleship memorial. The service was great as were the seasoned oysters, the brews, and a Greek-style redfish. They had a great singer/geetar-picker who also played harmonica. He played covers, but he played and sang exceptionally well. And the house sound was just right - enough to hear him but not so loud as to drown out dinner conversation.

For Tuesday dinner, we decided to simply go to Baumhowers Wings, a local, recommended sports themed restaurant. I won't call it a "sports bar" because the place was too big and the menu too varied to be considered a bar. I will preface everything else by saving our server was great.

But the reading of the menu and trying to get an interpretation from this nice server made me think we were under a full moon. For example...

• Under the Soup & Salad listing, they had about 10-12 different salads - but no soups. It took 3 of us to finally see the small writing "ask your server about today's soups". So we did...
• We were told the soup choice of the day was ... chili. That's not a soup. Its chili! Then for good measure she added "well, we also have gumbo if you want that." Again, gumbo is not a soup.
• The menu also advertised a "Tuesday special - ask your server". Again, we tried. We really did. "What's the Tuesday special we're supposed to ask you about?" The reply was somewhat predicable. "Well, sometimes we do have Tuesday specials - especially during football season. But not this Tuesday." Now as Forrest Gump said so eloquently "well Jenny, I'm not a smahrt man..." But last I checked (1) it isn't football season and (2) even in football season Tuesday night is not a big football night.
  
• Having learned the Tuesday special...wasn't... I turned my focus to their chicken wings. They offered a wide variety of sauces - including lemon-pepper. At least that's what the menu said. I told her that's what I wanted as my wing sauce. She then told me it wasn't a sauce - just lemon-pepper seasoning ON a sauce. So I had to ask "then why is it included under sauces if its just a seasoning?" She looked at me like I had 3 eyes, avoided answering my question, and instead recommended I get the wings sampler appetizer where I could try 3 different sauces. I asked if I could get lemon-pepper with the sampler & she said yes. So I figured I'd try again. (I was beginning to have fun with this whole deal.) "The lemon pepper is a sauce on the sampler - just not with the regular wings order?" Her reply was "no, its still just a seasoning but you get 2 other sauces to go with it." Its been a full 24 hours after the meal, I've returned home to Tennessee, and and I still have no clue about why a seasoning was listed as a sauce when it wasn't.
• Having said all that - the waitress truly did the best she could I suppose and never lost her sense of humor.
  

TMC