Progress is always slow when I work on a CD project. This is probably true for most bandleader/composer/poor-deluded-fools-with-a-brilliant-idea. My first CD took four years to complete. My second CD only took two years from conception to the day the brown boxes full of shrink-wrapped lovelies arrived at my doorstep.

But things are moving along with the Manteca Beat project. I think there will be 11 songs on the album, a mix of vocals and instrumentals, representing the classic blues/R&B/souljazz side of my playing. I have some great Austin musicians playing with me and I want to say thanks in advance to everyone who has put their own genius and effort into this project.

It’s going to be a long, hot summer here in central Texas, just like all the others. But working toward this musical goal reminds me why I’m here. At least it takes my mind off the heat!

I’ll try to have samples up soon to listen to. Also, Manteca Beat is starting to perform around the Austin area, so come check us out.
Stay cool!

Is it just me, or does it seem weird that Donald Rumsfeld, one of the most powerful people in the world, responsible for decisions that will cause the death, maiming and misery of tens of thousands of people, always sounds like a boyscout troop leader in his public statements?

He stands at the podium, speaking to the world about his military strategies, the life-and-death decisions that translate into young men and women being put in harm’s way, and out of his mouth pop phrases like “Golly…Gee Whiz… Gosh Darn…Aw Heck,” and so on. What is going on in this man’s head? Is he carefully editing his real-world knowledge, his wide-eyed view of the hell of war, and packaging his words for “family hour”? Or is that the way he really thinks about the world?

It’s hard to imagine a military leader telling his underlings: “Gee whiz, I guess it’s time to start bombing… Aw heck, the situation’s getting a little hairy, we’d better deploy the napalm…Golly, war sure is a messy business.” And yet that’s how Rumsfeld sounds to me; a reluctant father figure, just doing the best he can.

He’d rather be making toys for orphans, shaping wooden dolls on his woodlathe in his well-organized workshop (always wear your safety goggles when you operate the lathe, kids!), but gosh darnit, he has to go fight terrorists, so he rolls up his sleeves, mutters a few tsk, tsk’s when blood gets spattered on his v-necked sweater vest, and doggedly gets on with the job in the best pragmatic old-fashioned Puritan spirit.

Does Rumsfeld have a carefully controlled public persona, Mr. Nice Guy, always calm, polite, reasonable, which hides a snarling, angry, breast-beating wretch underneath? Scary thought. Or is what you see what you get? Is he just a well-mannered 1950s Ozzie/Ward father figure, who is so estranged from his own emotions, his own humanity, that his actions (whatever one might think of them), his hard decisions to send thousands of people to their deaths (I wouldn’t wish that kind of responsibility on my worst enemy) are summed up in his own mind by a philosophical “gee whiz!” Now that’s a really scary thought.