Fresno Famous

Rogue Festival #8!
That part is very cool.
To be able to say that, I mean.
Someone once told me that most festivals
don't make it past year 5.

The Central Valley in early Spring---
wonderful. It's a perfect time for the Rogue Festival---the weather's a bit back and forth--but that's when Fresno's at it's best.
The air is washed clean. The blossoms are out.
A great way to show off our town to visiting
Rogue Festival peformers.

It's a busy Rogue for me. When I'm not rehearsing for, or performing in The Blake and Baba Show, I'm hosting the proceedings over at Veni Vidi Vici.

And re: Veni Vidi Vici---they've been friends of the Rogue for years and years and years, but THIS year, they've really gone over the top. The help and friendliness of that staff has been wonderful. Big thanks to everyone there!

As far as our show goes, from the point of view of the performers, it's a very complicated show. Our job is to not make it seem so complicated. I'm winging between 4 different instruments: the theremin, the bass, the toy piano and the big-pain-to-amplify little appalachian dulcimer. *Most* of the time it works out. Yesterday afteroon the show rocked----in spite of the fact that it took me half-way through one of the numbers to figure out that the reason the dulcimer sounded so quiet, was that it wasn't plugged in! (doh!) (The transitions are rather dark, and I'm doing a lot of the knob-fiddling etc, by braille.

We've had 2 sell-out shows and one nearly sold-out. From my point of view, the first show went really well, the second was late at night, after a full day of Rogue-ing and I think the band was just a wee bit tired
and we missed a few bits. Sunday afternoon's show was spot on---except for that bit about the un-plugged-in dulcimer!
I look forward to the fun of our last show Sat. at 8:30.

I haven't seen as many shows as I'd like.
There just isn't time. There are a number of shows on my wish list for the second weekend. I'm hoping I can pull it off.

This year I have Robin Trayler as my double at Veni Vidi Vici. His dad, Bill Trayler had performed that duty for the last several years, but he's off in New Zealand! The two have different styles, but Robin is doing a stupendous job.

Well, we all have 2 more days to get our strength back, and then the festival hits big again from Wednesday through Saturday.
I look forward to seeing a lot of you out there Rogue-ing!