We are staying with daughter Jill in Houston where many are starting the recovery process from Harvey. Jill’s house is on a street that goes down hill in the direction of Lake Houston. During the record setting rains, you could see the water coming up the street. Fortunately, the water stopped at her property edge. What follows are photos of homes that were flooded in her neighborhood.
— kenne
“Texas Flood”
Well there’s floodin’ down in Texas All of the telephone lines are down Well there’s floodin’ down in Texas All of the telephone lines are down And I’ve been tryin’ to call my baby Lord and I can’t get a single sound
Well dark clouds are rollin’ in Man I’m standin’ out in the rain Well dark clouds are rollin’ in Man I’m standin’ out in the rain Yeah flood water keep a rollin’ Man it’s about to drive poor me insane
Well I’m leavin’ you baby Lord and I’m goin’ back home to stay Well I’m leavin’ you baby Lord and I’m goin’ back home to stay Well back home are no floods or tornados Baby and the sun shines every day
When I think “Red Hot Blues,” I think Stevie Ray Vaughn. We were able to see him at The Woodlands Pavilion in the summer of 1990, less than a month before he died in a helicopter crash in southern Wisconsin in route to Chicago. Stevie was the “Prince of the Blues.”
Ray Bonneville at Ken and Mary’s Blues Project, November 18, 2009 — Images and video by kenne
I believe that all the little things in life add up to one’s life. So, it’s important to get them right, otherwise nothing else matters. I’m here to tell you that Ken and Mary Harris have been getting it right for a long time.
They love people and they love the Blues, and for years now have been doing a lot of little things that have been adding up in the form of the “Blues Project.”
Several times a year, Ken and Mary open their home to friends and their guests to experience the best in blues music this side of Texas. Sadly, many have no idea what they are missing, and sometimes it can get lonely in the promise land by yourself.
One of the many musicians who have appeared at Ken and Mary’s Blues Project is Ray Bonneville. Just as Ray may write about a place he has lived, e.g., New Orleans, he is not from there. He is a traveler in other people’s reality, writing stories that serve as a portal to his existence.
“Firefly comin’ this way
a flickering light is to say
time ain’t but this long
here tonight, tomorrow gone.” — from “Goin’ By Feel”
As a fellow traveler in the reality of others, I hope our paths will cross again soon.
On a clear desert night bright stars showcase the sky above — empty martini glass, the Bose sound of SRV guitar licks penetrates the night air, watching Live at Montreux ’85video on my MacBook Air.
— kenne
“SRV” Image by kenne
You know, there is something I’ve learned, all we have, ever, is to give each other our love — if we forget that we lose everything we’ve got.
“In the Land of the Moneygrubbers, the curtain rises on a single speaker, out of nowhere, accompanied by the Abso-Lute.”
On your journey down to New Mexico
you probably passed through the Raton,
moving from the Great Plains
of Hidatsa, Mandan and Shoshone in your old car,
wearing that round, wide-brim, black leather hat
you sometimes wore with aviator sunglasses
before Stevie Ray Vaughn ever wore them, or was even born,
on your way from Black Mountain to the Gran Apacheria
like a sacred white buffalo covered in a cloak of invisibility,
a buckskin Ghost Danced shirt from a Lakota or Cheyenne shaman
painted with the story of your life.
Slinger, I know your aim
was always true, your truth always aimed.
Like the Poet, your Eye and Poetic I,
you know the only good fascist is a dead fascist,
like the evil Q you slew in a Midwest dream
stretching from the 1860s to the 1960s
in a century of constant war.
— from “Gunslinger In New Mexico for Ed Dorn (1929 -1999) by Gary Brower
“Entrapment is this society’s sole activity. . .& only laughter can blow it to rags. But there is no negative pure enough to entrap our expectations . . .”
Images by kenne
Red Hot Blues — Computer Art by kenne
“Psychedelic Outlaw” — Photo-Artistry by kenne
