…steadily, though not as quickly as I prefer. The group was even better at the private date in Woodbridge NJ (which took place in a Knights of Columbus hall with, believe it or not, great acoustics!). There was no way to get the Tascam up and running as we were on a stage facing the audience. We almost didn’t need amplification…. I did play the Hagstrom Viking and fell in love with it once again. (I guess my mid-life crisis with guitars is better than a crisis with fashion models and I’m sure my wife agrees….)

I am in the planning stages of putting together instructional videos — armed with my trusty Kodak Zi8 I am actually trying to plan these things out and have my son do the behind/next-to the camera work. I will send out email blasts (If you’re not on the list go to http://MattRichardsMusic.net and sign up!).

I’m not a great fan of Verizon — while there are the political reasons (they did allow the Bush adm to access private phone records at their leisure) their service is pretty miserable. We’ve had intermittent service since we moved in July. You pick up the phone and more than 75% of thee time it’s static in the receiver. After no fewer than six calls and ‘on-site’ service they determined the problem was in an old line about one block away and switched the wires over to another relay. In the meantime I’ve had some up-and-down time with the DSL and a number of emails have been tucked away by when they couldn’t be sent. Of course, I just discovered them and now have to re-send and apologize with the ‘Verizon excuse’. (Interestingly, one of the parties who received a follow-up told me he had no internet service due to phone line problems with the big V and my apologetic email was the first he’d gotten in two days!)

The next major question: Steel strings or nylon?

I’ll be back with more…..