This Yellow Taxi Cab In Which I Ride

James Frederick + James Frederick's Life = Together Again, sort of. As previously stated in last week's quick post, I have been insanely busy. And then, I became slightly sick and unrested due to the insane busy-ness. Well, I woke up this morning at about 9:30, laid in bed for ten minutes or so, got up, poured some juice, drank all of the juice while reading Neil Gaiman's blog , and smiled to myself because my life seems to have returned to me for the time being, and that is good. All the insane busy-ness started about three weeks ago when Stephanie and I became serious about buying her new car. In the few weeks previous to that (as illustrated on this blog) I had done tons of research in order to prepare for the buying because I know that car dealerships tend to be lying cheating mo-fo's who are out for your money and nothing else. Well, I found a dealership that gave me a quote over the Internet for a good price. We went in. They checked out the trade-in, which rattl...

I have been insanely busy this past week. Today is a little less busy and I find myself with a couple of hours of free time; though, I do not know what to do with myself. I'm so used to having to do things that I've lost the ability to come up with things to do for myself. I've taken lots of camera-phone pictures during the busy week and I plan on posting them with an interestingly devised narrative of the busy-ness. However, I don't think I have time to do that now. (I wasted most of the couple of hours of free time on trying to decide how to spend it). What I do have time to do, is write about Fulton Books , which is a small independent book store in Gloversville and has hosted open mic nights and other musical performances, and is going out of business this coming Friday. (I am trying to bring up the local newspaper's website to post a link to an article about the closing, but www.leaderherald.com is not coming up... ). The owners of the book store also own the a...

I have been incredibly lazy today -- yesterday, too, actually. In fact, now that I reminisce, I recall taking two mid-day naps yesterday. Today, I have not taken a nap; although, I did sleep until 10:15, which is incredibly late for me in my current state of not-being-a-college-student-anymore. Still, I have not done much of anything today except: scan every single job search website for interesting openings, turn the sprinkler on, move the sprinkler to various parts of the lawn (front, back, etc), walk to the store to buy hot dogs to grill for dinner, and play about 12 games of solitaire. I also did a load of laundry and -- oh, wait! -- I did take a nap! Right before lunch. Anyways, I have been putting off blogging about this past Thursday because I have been so incredibly lazy that I have not wanted to even sit and type. Plus, Friday was quite busy (more on that later). Still, here I am. And, so, here I go: I attended open mic, as usual, and I made a friend. I met Amy Antin outside o...

The car shopping saga continues. I received a quote from one of the dealers that I've been emailing (the one that reminded that I had been looking at other cars) and it's a pretty good quote. I think that I prompted him to offer this good quote because I told him in email that we are pre-approved for a loan through our credit union. In fact, I told all the dealerships this. After I received the pretty good quote, I tried another dealer to see if he could beat it. He wouldn't give me a price, but said, "we'll make it worth your while." Which is a load of bogus if you ask me. I told him to give me a number, which is "concrete," where as words can mean different things. Anyways, we are going to go to the place where we got the quote and inform him that he will have to do better because another dealership has stated that they will. So, things are rolling now. I have to thank Gary Moon for his awesome advice on car shopping and haggling with dealers. He s...

I have been behind on some happenings that I would typically have posted about if not for slightly more important things that I chose to post about instead. This should be a quick catch up. First, I have had a couple interesting thoughts lately that I've captured in my pocket journal. Here they are: I want to meet a man named 'Joe' and have dinner over at his house. Then, when people ask me what I did last night, I'll say, 'I ate at Joe's.' I think it would be fun to sit in a public place (a park or busy sidewalk) and read 'Stalking: for Dummies.' Sorry. I do have weird thoughts some times... Any hoo. I had a gig at Jitters Cafe a couple weeks ago. It went well. I sounded great (in my own, and Stephanie's, opinion). There wasn't much of a crowd, but a family of three listened for quite a while. I didn't keep a set list. I often asked Stephanie for suggestions on what to play, which made things fun in a different-than-usual way. I played a...

This past Thursday, I met with a friend who up until very recently worked at a car dealership. I was hoping he would be the guy who could give us an honest deal on a new car for Stephanie, but, since he doesn't work there any more, I asked him for some inside tips on the best possible pricing I should be able to get. The meeting was very helpful to me, as I was uncertain as to what I should expect for realistic deals. Now I know. Let the negotiating begin. After the meeting (at Uncommon Grounds -- paper cup, in case you were wondering), I attended open mic. I played Wildflowers by Tom Petty again and Road to Nowhere . For Road to Nowhere , Zach Edwards played djimbe and he did a fabulous job. Faith also joined me and did background vocals. I took a picture of the list: Willie debuted a new song that I think is called Janitor . He is a janitor, you see, as well as a song writer. The song was awesome. It had the typically Willie wit and sounded really good. I took a picture: Later o...

I just returned home from test driving a bunch of different cars with Stephanie. Let me tell you, there are a lot of different types of car sales people out there... Anyways, I wanted to continue talking about the Shawn Mullins concert. If you haven't read my last posting, then you should scroll down and read that one first. Then come back and read this one. Go ahead. I'll wait. ----------- Okay. Now that you are back, the concert itself: We entered the Linda and discovered that it is a rather cozy place. The chairs are wide and relatively comfortable. There is plenty of leg room. The ceiling is high and the place is dimly lit. Cozy. There weren't many people seated, which meant that there were plenty of open seats to choose from. We sat a little left of center and two rows back from the stage. The stage set up was simple. There was a microphone stand, two monitors, two guitars, and a stool with a bottle of water and capo on it. Soon, a guy came up and tuned one of the guit...

I stated in that last blogger posting that I was going to write again Sunday evening. It's Sunday morning. I have some time to kill and I've decided to write about the concert that I attended on Friday and how I came to find out about it. The Friday before last, I was on my way home from work listening to 97.7 WEXT when a familiar song called All in My Head came on. I smiled a little because I had just bought the CD that the song came from a few days earlier and I had been listening to it incessantly. The CD is by Shawn Mullins -- who had some national fame in the 90s due to the song Lullaby -- and is excellent (although, I still prefer his previous release 9th Ward Pickin' Parlor because of the song Blue as You , which has the most excellent acoustic guitar tone I have ever heard in a recording -- Tom Petty's Wild Flowers is a close second). I sang along with All in My Head (because it's an awesome song) as I pulled up to a stop light, putting my turn signal o...

This blog posting is a big tease for the blog posting that I will created tomorrow evening. On Thursday, I played at Caffe Lena's open mic (which is pretty routine and doesn't really elicit any tease-esque qualities). On Friday, I met my songwriting idol -- no -- hero. And I saw him perform at the Linda in Albany. I also met his dog, Jack. Earlier tonight (Saturday), I performed at Jitters Cafe and played a new song. Tomorrow, I am going test-driving for cars with Stephanie. How did all of these things turn out? Tune in and find out.

When I was younger -- and I don't mean 5 or 6; more like, 15, 16, 23, etc. -- I played laser tag often enough to say I was an avid player, but not often enough to say I was an obsessive laser tag nerd. Last night, Stephanie's friend Leigha had a birthday party, to which she invited many friends, and we played laser tag. It was wicked fun. There was about 25 of us. Our ages ranged from early twenties to early thirties. We were split evenly into two teams and joined up with some middle school aged girls. I came in first place for my team, but third place over all. Two people on the other team found the bases (which is the way to score major points), but I couldn't find them. I scored most of my points by hiding and picking people off as they walked by. And by shooting the sensor-things that are randomly placed about the arena. The last time I played laser tag, was six years ago. My friends and I had been playing every few months for something different to do. We mostly had fu...

I thought I had taken some pictures with my camera phone in the last week or so that would be worth posting. But, when I downloaded them to my computer, most of them were pictures of me in my car making funny faces to occupy myself when I was waiting for Stephanie on Thursday. She was late because she had to take a detour. A furniture store was burning to the ground on the road that she normally takes. We almost bought a bed from that furniture store. Anyways, there were also some pictures of white tulips that someone had brought to Lena's. There was also a picture of the list: It was a longer list than usual for open mic. We ('we' being various people that commented on the long list and packed house and engaged in general discussions about it adding insight when appropriate) surmised that because of Good Friday, there was no school and, thus, people could stay out later. It truly was a packed house. I don't think there was an empty seat. Gary Moon hosted. I played thir...

I had a brief moment of something close to, but not quite panic last night when I went to retrieve my coat from a bedroom full of coats and found that my coat no longer held my little black pocket journal in its inside pocket. I searched under the bed and other areas of the floor nearby to no avail. I didn't panic fully because: a) it's just a pocket journal and I can buy a new one b) it's not like I have secrets in my journal that I don't want others read c) there was a strong possibility that I had left the journal in my car or at home, and d) all of the above. "D" is the correct choice (although, while there really aren't "secrets" in my journal, I would prefer that others don't read it without my expressed consent). As it turned out, my journal was in my car and I let out a little sigh of relief that no one had in fact read it. The previously mentioned bedroom full of coats was attached to a house that was the location of a gathering of m...

I have a few minutes while I wait for a CD to copy; I might as well blog for a bit. Stephanie got a part in a musical and she bought the CD of the original cast recordings so that she can practice. I don't think I could handle hearing showtunes played on the house CD player; so, I offerend to rip the CD and put the MP3s on her MP3 player. That way, I can't hear the show tunes when she is listening to them. Can you sense the gigantic smile that I'm wearing? My computer is in the process of the ripping... ----- This past Thursday at open mic I played the unnamed cover song and Road to Nowhere . For some reason I was quite nervous while playing the cover song (probably because I forgot a line the week before). Even so, I received some nice compliments regarding my performance. I'm also adding some other covers to my repetoire: Wildflowers and Won't Back Down by Tom Petty to name a few. I still won't name the super, wicked, awesome cover though :) ------ Computer ...

Life. I could go on for hours about it. I often do. I'm going to try to be short this time. You see, there really aren't a lot of things in life (maybe a shopping bag full or one of those hand baskets -- grocery store metaphor*) that truly and consistently make dealing with all the other junk managable: pick-me-ups, if you will. You know what I'm talking about. Life: it's mostly bills and stressful working conditions; it's the death of people that you like and always getting checked out by that trashy, jerry springer show candidate cashier; it's... (wait, I said I was going to be short)... And, then there are pick-me-ups: watching Scrubs reruns after work; seeing that cashier getting bitched out by a customer that is actually more trashy than she is. One such pick-me-up that I have is my credit card. Actually, it's not-so-much the card itself, but the rewards that it gives. You see, my credit card (besides having one of the lowest APRs that I have ever seen...

A co-worker of mine suggested to me recently that I look into playing at a coffee shop/cafe that she had visited. She didn't know the name, but she knew the street it was on. I googled around and found out that she was referring to Samuel's Cafe. Which is really funny because I had actually sent their myspace page a friend request. Having never been to Samuel's, I didn't ask for a gig straight away. I like to start out as friends and build the relationship from there. But, hearing a good review of the place from my co-worker prompted me to ask. So, I'm excited to report that I am getting booked for one of two open dates in June. I'll post it on the dates page of my site and the myspace page as soon as I know which day I'm booked for. ---- Last night I attended Lena's. I received an email earlier in the day from a still-sick Kate Blain, who was set to host, asking me or Willie to take over for her (she didn't want to cough a lot into the mic). Thus, I...

I just spent the last four hours of my pathetic existence wrapped in a fuzzy -- and shedding -- blanket on my couch watching a Dirty Jobs marathon on the Discovery Channel. I got up about fifteen minutes ago because the episode that was starting was one that I had already seen... thrice. Am I lazy? Do I secretly love the dry wit of Mike Rowe ? Am I addicted to Discovery Channel? The answer to such questions is a resounding "yes, yes, and hell's yes." But, the reality of the current couch dwelling experience is that I am freezing here in my house. We keep the thermostat at 68 degrees, but I'm skinny and freeze easily. Still, I forced myself to get up and do something (thanks in part to the Discovery Channel's policy on repeating its shows incessantly). Of course, I went straight for my guitar. Yesterday, I started working on a killer new cover song. It's going to be soooo cool! I can't wait to get it down, so I can start playing it out. I just need to wor...

I had a blast at the concert last night. (btw: I spelled 'Morissette' right. English Teacher; mmmm-hmmmm.) I love concerts. Which is mostly why I wanted to play guitar in the first place. I wanted to be one of the people on that stage with the lights and the cheering crowd singing along. Being a local-level folk musician is a lot like being a rock star in absolutely no possible way. I could list all the differences, but I came here to blog about the concert, not my ineptitude at being a rock star. Sooo... Mute Math was the opening band. They are a poppy rockish (I'm terrible at labels) foursome from New Orleans. They rocked out. They have a song called Typical , which I've heard on 102.7 and happens to be pretty good. I might have bought a CD at the concert except for that they were 20 dollars and that is about twice as much as a CD full of music is worth (and is a completely different debate for a completely different time). Here are some pictures: The second is tough ...

I'm leaving to see Matchbox Twenty and Alanis Morissette (not enough time to look up the correct spelling of her name) and Mute Math in Albany. I'm leaving in... oh... five minutes. Stephanie has to get something done first and then we are set to go. We hope to get some quick shopping done first and then have enough time to hang around the Times Union Center with the intent of meeting one or more of the members of the aforementioned bands before the show. It's happened before. We met Rob Thomas. Jewel said "hi guys" to us. I've also met the band Tonic and the two guitarists from Matchbox Twenty a very long time ago. I've met some other lesser known musicans too, but I can't really remember them all. I'm going to sneak a camera in (though, our seats aren't great). Even so, tomorrow, I hope to have a great blogging to do about tonight. Wish me luck.

I haven't blogged in forever! Well, over a week anyway... I've tried to sit down and do this a couple of times, but I just didn't have the energy. Well, I'm energized now (a little). I played at MochaBlend on Saturday (which is the biggest music related news this blog has seen in some time). The crowd was sparse, but for a cafe gig it was appropriate. It was snowy out and the roads were nasty, so the fact that there was a crowd at all was fantastic! Also, they listened! Yay! And I played quite well. Overall, I am very pleased with my performance. I didn't do a set list, but I later jotted down most of the songs that I played in something that is close to the order in which they were played. Here they are: Road to Nowhere Jessie Passenger Until I fall Away Rainbow Connection Sink or Swim Frozen Ring of Fire Behold! The Knight Falling Slowly Endless Walking; Standing Still Red Shift Phila St. Serenade House of the Rising Sun Crayons ... I think I forgot one or two... ...

Erghhh... I hate practicing with my sound system at home. There isn't a room in my house that's big enough to require the use a sound system. Which makes me sound like crap, which makes me hate music. So, that's where I am right now. I'm ready to quit music forever. I probably won't... but I'm ready to. Anyways, I didn't blog about Lena's last Thursday because Saturday, my usual time for journaling, was a busy day and I didn't get to it. Sunday was equally as busy. As was, Monday and Tuesday. So, here is a quick blog about what I can remember happening on Thursday through now. At Lena's I played Walking; Standing Still and What's Up by the Four Non-Blondes. People sang along. It was fun. I sounded like crap. For some reason I had high anxiety and was feeling whatever the opposite of wanting to be around people feels like. I hid in the back room for much of the night. I didn't take any pictures. I don't remember what anyone else play...