MUMBO JUMBO – March 2012
March 2012
ON THE ROAD AGAIN!
February 29 – March 17
February 20, Key West, Florida. You may be thinking you just received a Mumbo Jumbo a couple of weeks ago, and you are correct! That’s because the February newsletter went out a little late and this month’s issue is arriving a little early! I head out on my first tour of the year next week and wanted to get this to you before I hit the road. I’ll be leaving Key West on February 29 and driving all the way to New Hampshire and back, performing in the following states: Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. If you are near any of these places please check the schedule and come on by!
February 29 – Snappers ; Key Largo, FL
March 1 – Manatee Island ; Stuart, FL
March 2 – Buddyroe’s Shrimp Shack ; Mt. Pleasant, SC
March 3 – The Eddy Pub ; Saxapahaw, NC (1:00 pm)
March 3 – Ashland Coffee & Tea ; Ashland, VA (9:30 pm)
March 4 – Ashland Coffee & Tea ; Ashland, VA (11:00 am) with Special Guest, Gary Green
March 4 – Private Event; Adamstown, MD (7:00 pm)
March 6 – The Boatyard Bar & Grill ; Annapolis, MD, with Special Guest, Gary Green
March 7 – The Baja Brothers’ Sandbar Grill; Taunton, MA, with Special Guest Pete Hebert on sax!
March 10 – New England Parrothead Convention ; Manchester, NH (2:00 pm)
March 10 – Lakes Region Casino ; Belmont, NH (7:30 pm)
March 15 – Kingfish Grill at Comachee Cove ; St. Augustine, FL
March 16 – Ace’s ; Bradenton, FL
March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day Cruise with the Sarasota Parrot Head Club!
ON THE WATER AGAIN… SAILING!
In January, Key West hosted its annual sailing regatta sponsored by Quantum Sails. The Smokin’ Tuna Saloon was a hotbed of activity all week, as we are located right around the corner from Kelley’s Bar and Caroline Street, which is closed each year to accommodate the nightly party and product exhibits. Key West Race Week is one of the highlights of the winter and except for one windless day the weather was fantastic!
Because quite a lot of my music is inspired by the ocean and coastal living, I’m often asked if I own a boat, how much time do I get to spend out on the water, and how and when did I learn to sail? I thought I would take a few paragraphs to answer!
Although I have owned five sailboats in my life (plus a leaky old row boat), I don’t currently own one and sadly, I don’t get to spend as much time on the water as I used to. You would think that one who lives BY the water so much of the time in Key West and New England would be ON the water more! I got out sailing more in 2011 than in previous years and hope that trend continues this year.
As far as learning to sail, I think part of my interest as a young boy was genetic. My grandfather on my dad’s side, James Kirby, grew up in a tiny fishing outpost on the east coast of Newfoundland called Blow Me Down, where he fished for a living with hand lines from a dory at the tender age of eight. His fathered fished and worked on a schooner.
My mother’s dad, Vinal Hurd, was a Navy man through and through and served with Admiral Halsey in the South Pacific during World War 11, and in fact skippered Halsey’s launch and remained in the Navy reserve for most of his life. A lifelong car, motorcycle and racing enthusiast, he could be seen in his later years racing his hydroplane up and down the Merrimack River through the middle of Concord, New Hampshire!
What I would give right now to sit with these two men and talk about their life experiences! Unfortunately I think my grandfather’s youth in Newfoundland – particularly in the winter- was pretty tough and my other grandfather didn’t talk to me a whole lot about the war. As is the case with most children, I wasn’t mature or worldly enough to ask. By the time I was, it was too late, which is a great regret of mine because their lives were obviously both difficult and extraordinary!
I do vividly recall grandfather Kirby gazing into the distant past, squinting and smiling and speaking in his Newfoundland dialect, “oh the cod boy, they were so thick you could walk on em!” My navy grandfather, Pappy as we called him, kept a bottle of whiskey under the kitchen sink which he re-visited several times during the day. Other than a few wild stories, I would quietly overhear him telling my dad and uncles about shore leave in the South Pacific, my only glimpse into this era was at Christmas when we would plead with him to don his grass skirt and play the ukulele and sing his songs from Hawaii! There may have been some whiskey involved!
It was only when I was 16 and bought my first motorcycle –a Japanese one –prompting him to shun me for the summer, that I began to fully understand why he didn’t much speak of the war. Actually it was bad enough that he didn’t speak to me, but he wouldn’t even look at me! I couldn’t bare this and cleverly leveraged my parents into letting me upgrade to a British made Triumph motorcycle! He must have heard the throaty sounding Triumph coming down his dead end street one day, because I fondly recall him striding down the steps as I glided up, nodding in approval, and saying, “that’s more like it.” All was well again.
From my first memory I loved boats, even though I grew up about 50 miles from the ocean. However, our house in tiny Penacook, New Hampshire, was within walking distance of the Merrimack River. A three block stroll to the woods, a fairly treacherous hike down a very deep and steep ravine and we were on the shores of “The Cove,” a pond connected to the mighty Merrimack!
At ten or eleven years old we were not allowed there, but after sneaking away a few times we found an old leaky wooden rowboat which we commandeered and began a summer of a secret fishing and exploration on the cove, sometimes briefly venturing under the train tracks into the ominous and often swiftly moving river. To this day, perhaps one of the stupidest things I have ever done in a boat. Not to mention there was a hydro-electric dam downstream a short ways.
After several weeks of this, we were busted by our parents. However, realizing banning the boat was a lost cause, they cut a deal with us. Bring the boat to the house, have a carpenter fix the leaks, paint it and get life jackets and you can keep it in the cove, but never go into the river! My first boat!
As I got a bit older I started dreaming about sailing and recall reading a series in National Geographic about a young man sailing around the world and showing the photographs to my friends in class. I also recall being mesmerized with the book “Tinkerbelle,” which I read several times, the story of Robert Manry’s 78 day transatlantic crossing in a tiny wooden sailboat.
As I approached 20, having recently fallen off my Triumph 650 after logging tens of thousands of miles across New England and Canada, I decided to make the shift from the open road to the open water. Having never stepped on a sailboat of any kind, I sold the Triumph for around a thousand dollars and immediately purchased a 16 foot fiberglass sailboat and trailer!
I had a friend with a cottage on a nearby lake and my buddy Earl Webb took me out the first couple of times and showed me how to rig the sails and the basic concept of sailing. I had also begun to read every instructional book on sailing I could find. Within a week I was out on the lake by myself with just the mainsail rigged (no jib yet) and book in my lap, testing the various principles and points of sail illustrated on the pages. At first I put the theory to practice in light winds, but as my confidence grew I started to venture out in stronger breezes and within a few weeks felt I knew enough to add the jib to the equation.
A month later I trailered the little boat to a larger lake and now I really had the bug! The next year I traded up to a 21 foot boat, which I put on Lake Winnipesaukee, a 30 mile long body of water, and the following year upgraded to a 23 foot boat, which I eventually put in the ocean and sailed from Rhode Island across open water to Martha’s Vineyard. An ill advised voyage for someone of my experience level, but I made it. No radio and no cell phone!
Soon after this I had the opportunity to sail a 32 footer from New Hampshire all the way to Florida. I was occasionally sailing out of Little Harbor, New Hampshire, on a friend’s boat and Sean McKenna, a college student who was running the marina launch, told me his father Bruce was leaving later in the week to sail the family boat to St. Augustine, so that he could live on it when he returned to Flagler College in the fall. Bruce was looking for another able-bodied person to make the trip. I was able-bodied and 15 years younger than the rest of crew but had little ocean experience and no offshore experience. Of course only a person with no offshore experience would venture 100 miles out to sea in a 32 foot boat with four complete strangers!
I met Bruce on the dock the next night, made note of how small the boat seemed, and told him I would be there the following Wednesday night at 6 pm to shove off. A few nights later I was in the Atlantic Ocean on my way to Florida with four complete strangers, three of whom had little or no sailing experience. Something I would never do today! In fact, Captain Bruce, who had a PHD, was extremely knowledgeable about navigation and shipping, etc., but the three other crew were fairly inexperienced in ocean sailing. Fortunately I was a pretty good helmsman and when the wind picked up and the seas got big, Bruce trusted me to steer the boat while he navigated. On the roughest day I remember steering the boat for 12 hours straight in pretty rough conditions from about 60 miles offshore into Cape Fear, North Carolina. I probably learned as much that day than in the entire previous year.
After two weeks and two brushes with serious storms off of New Jersey and North Carolina, we limped into Florida. That trip was a huge learning experience, and eventually I bought that Ericson 32 and went on to be great friends and sailing buddies with Bruce. We shared many amazing (and sometimes harrowing and hilarious) sailing trips up and down the coast of Maine and out to the Vineyard and Nantucket over the course of 25 years. Almost enough for a book! I’m thinking the title might be “There’s a Fine Line Between Aground and Afloat! “
Sadly, Bruce passed away the day after Christmas, but the times we spent sailing are some of the best memories of my life. Fortunately I’m friends with Bruce’s three sons and his first mate Barbara and I’m sure there will more than a few nights ahead where we can celebrate his life. He will be greatly missed!
On a brighter note, one great highlight of 2011 was attending the Sailing Hall of Fame inaugural induction ceremony in San Diego. My friend, Dick Franyo, President of the National Sailing Hall of Fame (and owner of the Boatyard Bar and Grill in Annapolis) invited me out to the event in October, so I jumped up at the opportunity.
Pretty much all the sailing legends I’ve watched or read about growing up were at the two day event. Dennis Connor, Ted Turner, Hobie Alter, Ted North, Ted Hood, Gary Jobson, Paul Cayard and Buddy Melges to name a few. Even ancestors of Joshua Slocum and Nathanael Herreshoff were there. For those of you not familiar with sailing, Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail around the world alone. It was such a great weekend and I want to thank Dick for inviting me. By the way, I’ll be playing at The Boatyard in Annapolis with Harmonica great Gary Green on March 6. I’m calling it the last party of Key West Race week!!
FOR NEW ENGLANDERS: PLAYING THE LAKES REGION CASINO, March 10 with David Edmisten!
Over the past couple of years I have played several shows at The Lodge at Belmont (about 25 minutes north of Concord) which ha s recently undergone some fantastic changes and renamed The Lakes Region Casino ! The charity gaming facility and entertainment center is managed by one my close friends, Rick Newman.
Many years ago the facility operated as a Dog Track and I have received a couple of e mails that indicate a few folks might still be under the mistaken impression the dog track still exists. One writer was somewhat upset that I (being the writer of “Four Good Dogs”) would perform where dogs were racing!
Actually the Lakes Region Casino has a great 150 seat music club separate from the casino area with a great stage and superb sound and acoustics, and has been hosting a number of musical and comedy events over the past few years.
Check the website for venue information and performance updates. I hope to see you on the road!
As always, thanks for listening!!
Scott
A NOTE FROM TERRY – SUMMER BOOKINGS!
I am starting to put together Scott’s Summer tour. Please
contact me at Terry@scottkirby.com if you would like to bring him to your area.
Here is the general route of the tour:
May -Southeast, Gulf Coast, Texas
June-Texas-Southwest-West
July-Midwest
August- East, East Coast and New England
Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you!
Copyright Scott Kirby 2012. All rights reserved. www.scottkirby.com
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