Muggsy's Brain

Yesterday Jeff & I had a gig at the St. Cloud Civic Center for an education fund raiser and awards ceremony. We were hired to play from 4:30 - 6:00 PM during the silent auction. Afterward the "regular" auction would begin. Well, either someone forgot to tell the auctioneer or he just decided on his own to start early -- really early, like 4:45. He didn't start selling things right away, he interviewed a few people who were looking at the items for sale and a couple of other people from area schools who had booths set up showing processes that had won them the awards they would be given later. Then he started selling things. We didn't know what to do at first, so we stopped playing and took a small break. The contact for the gig asked us to keep playing so we got up on stage and got back to work. The auctioneer had started the auction so early and the room was so empty that I watched an Adrian Peterson autographed football go for $75. That same football would ...

BWCA Me & Kate DAY ONE - June 24th, 2010 Getting to Ely was the easy part. Even getting the canoe into the water was fairly easy (180 r.) compared to what was to come. Wood Lake has five campsites, all of which were occupied. In an attempt to get us to the portage to Hula Lake I got us turned around and we wound up in the most northeasterly point of the lake, rather than the most northwesterly point. That wasted a good hour or two. The seemingly simple 40 r. portage into Hula Lake was complicated by a sudden and rather intense cloudburst that soaked us to the bone. There are no campsites on Hula, so we headed north to Good Lake in hopes of finding one of the two sites there. We were running out of daylight, we’d run out of fresh water and the second half of the portage (150 r.) turned out to consist mostly of ankle to shin deep mud puddles. It was the worst portage I’ve ever done to date and Kate and I were literally in tears at points. We were very fortunate to find one o...

The time was somewhere in the early 2000s, I'm not sure exactly when, but my band, Collective Unconscious , had a gig at the Norshor Theatre in Duluth, MN. We were led to believe that we would be playing as a part of a big, multi-band music event in the main theater, when we got there we found that was not the case. We wound up in the middle of a community art jamboree that was going on all over the building, there were bands in the main theater, but we weren't one of them. Instead we wound up in the upstairs lobby sharing the stage with several smaller groups, right before us was a blues band. We also got exposed to what I call "teenage girl poetry:" My love is like dry, blowing leaves... UGH! The blues band got done playing and moved their instruments and amps out of the way, fortunately a sound system was provided. Unfortunately it was out of phase with the outlets we had our amps plugged into. Old buildings, like the Norshor, have old wiring and sometim...

My car's transmission has started slipping in and out of consciousness. The other day it suddenly shifted into second while I was going 30 mph. I was only two blocks from my destination so I babied it into the parking lot and turned it off. When I got back it drove and shifted just fine. I added a couple of quarts of transmission fluid because it has had a slow leak since I got it in December of 2007 and I haven't had the time or money to fix it. That usually does the trick. Today I got to work just fine. When I went to run an errand the speedometer read "0" and the car wouldn't shift out of second. Again, I babied it to my destination hoping that maybe things would clear up when the engine got warm. Nope. First gear all the way back to my shop. I decided the best thing to do would be to baby it all the way home and park it in the driveway. It shifted just fine for the first six blocks until I got to a red light, once it turned green I was stuck back in first. I ...

Kate & I were sitting in the living room talking, commenting on how much noise there is in the neighborhood since the college kids moved back into town, when we heard a guy a little too close for comfort yelling, "It's all gonna burn!" We both stood up when we realized that the dude was in my yard, we got to the kitchen when we realized that he was mounting the steps to the back door. Kate got behind me as he started pounding on the screen door, the main door was open, since it was a nice night and I went to close and lock it when dude opened the screen door and started to come into my house! I headed him off and asked him what his problem was. "It's all gonna fuckin' burn," he repeated as he pointed vaguely in the direction of my yard, or the alley, or the garage -- it was hard to tell. I looked out to make sure nothing was on fire. "Why don't you just get out of here?" I suggested. "It's gonna burn, it's all gonna burn!...

A couple of weeks ago I was cooling a batch of Nicaraguan Organic when I heard a loud CLUNK! come from my coffee roaster (the Probat L12 pictured above), I ran into the roasting room from my office to discover that the main drive wheel in the back of the machine, also known as the "idler wheel," had snapped off at its shaft where it connects to the machine's body. I knew what had happened before I looked because it had happened before back when we first moved into our current location about three years ago. A call to Probat down in Tennessee, an overnight package, $180 and a few hours of tricky labor and we were back up and running.  The machine was making a particular rhythmic throbbing sound just before the part snapped, and after the repair it is still making a similar sound. I am waiting -- half- expecting it to snap off again at any second. I am under a kind of stress that I've never been under in over 15 years of coffee roasting, and it's taking a physical...

We were supposed to leave St. Joe at 3:15 PM, that would have gotten us to the Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, MN and set up with plenty of time to spare. George took the Tahoe full of sound gear and offered Jeff and I the chance to drive his Camero -- and who would pass up a chance like that? It took some doing, but we got our gear into the tiny, little trunk and practically non-existent back seat area -- we had to put the top down to get Jeff's bass amp in the the back, but everything fit snugly and we were ready to go. Jeff ran into the coffee shop to get an iced latte for the road, when he got back to the car he was on the phone. "Take everything out of the Camero and put it in my car," he said, "we have to go back to St. Cloud to pick up the lights." So down came the top again, and out came our gear which we quickly loaded into Jeff's mini-station wagon. We drove to the roastery in St. Cloud, where we store most of our gear, picked up the lights and w...

This has to have been almost 20 years ago now, it was a whole career ago for me and I was still driving a delivery van for the St. Cloud Times so I'd have to put it in the early 90s, I got a call from a friend of mine asking if I wanted to play a "pick up" gig in Montevideo, MN backing up Bob Hope. Who wouldn't say yes to that? A whole bunch of us from St. Cloud piled into a van and drove there for an afternoon rehearsal led by Mr. Hope's musical director named Jeff. We only saw Mr. hope for a few moments at the end of the rehearsal to run a gag he'd do during the song Buttons and Bows. As Music Director Jeff explained it, the gag went like this: the band would kick into Buttons & Bows and vamp the first four measures while Bob would talk to the audience, Bob would then cut off the band, tell a joke and count the band off again. This would happen as many times as Bob saw fit, and then he'd continue with the song. Near the end of the song there wa...

I understand the concept behind "the show must go on," people have taken time out of their busy schedules to see you and paid good money at the door, it is your job as an entertainer to do everything you can to see that you're holding up your end of the bargain and put on the best show you can. And then there's today. The first winter storm of the season is rolling across Minnesota today. Two days ago the weather service said that the worst of it would be north and west of St. Cloud or the Twin Cities, yesterday it was updated to include St. Cloud. We're talking 6-10 inches of snow, wind chills of 20 to 30 below zero, and the National Weather Service suggesting that you travel only in the case of an emergency. 'Tis the season, and people want to hear their cheesy Xmas songs and so I have to endanger my life driving to Minneapolis today so that they can hear me sing "Dig That Crazy Santa Claus." Then I have to drive back because I can't skip ...

At the end of the week I didn't have much coffee sitting around the shop. I had the usual leftovers from the previous week's roasts, but less than I typically would. Saturday morning I got a call from Jule's Bistro begging for coffee to be delivered that day! I went to my shop and fortunately had just what they needed with nothing left in my shop but a bit of Ethiopian Yergacheffe and some decafs. Sunday I met the Vorks for lunch and brought Ken 2 lbs. of the Ethiopian I had, leaving only a little over a pound. Jeff and Stacie apparently came in either late Sunday or early this morning and took the last of it. So I got here this morning and didn't have any coffee to brew unless I wanted to drink decaf, which I didn't. I called Stacie and she brought me a cup from the Local Blend while she did other errands. Yes, we have no coffee -- until I roast more.

We had one of those huge-ass long gigs yesterday. We were scheduled to start with a couple of sets of jazz outdoors at 5 pm and finish with three sets of variety/rock ending at midnight. The gig was, as far as we knew, scheduled to take place at Cragun's Resort on Gull Lake. We got there with plenty of time to set up and get things ready. I went in and talked to a young woman at the front desk, I asked her if there was a wedding or some sort of event scheduled and she directed me to the North Beach. The beach? Where the heck are you supposed to set up and rock band on a beach? Sand and musical equipment are not a good combination as we've found out in the past, the infamous End of Summer gig at the Pioneer Place didn't do anything good for any of our stuff. But ours is not to question why, so off we went to the beach. An employee suggested that we set up right by the beach on a patch of lawn. The wedding party was going to end with a bonfire and that would be the be...

I usually keep a journal on my vacations, here's what I wrote about my most recent: • June 10, 2008 A new vacation! This time with Kate. We're on our way -- we actually got on the road before noon, 11:53 am, to be precise. We still have to make a beer stop, but we'll do that in Sauk Centre, then it's off to Glacial Lakes State Park near Starbuck , MN (I wonder if there's a Starbucks in Starbuck?). • Later The campground is deserted save the two of us. When we got here they were just finishing up mowing all the grass, that, coupled with the towering oaks that surround us, makes for one of the prettiest campgrounds I've ever been to. It looks more like a well-groomed city park than a state campground. We did a couple of miles today after we set up camp. The park is mostly prairie, which isn't really what I wanted, I prefer hiking in the woods, it's cooler there. Prairie hiking has its charms though, hot as it can get. We hiked to the highest point...

The variety band I play guitar in had a wedding gig at the Calhoun Beach Club in Minneapolis. The last time I played there was when I was in a college jazz combo back in the 1980s. It was a very nice reception, beautifully decorated with hundreds of votive candles. We even had some crashers from another reception in the same building, I guess they got tired of the DJ. The bride & groom let us quit about 15 minutes early and even tipped us. "Cool," I thought, "I'll get home earlier than I thought," which was great because my girlfriend was waiting for me back at my house and since our time together is somewhat rare, every minute is valued. Jeff drove, "I'm pretty sure there's an exit for Excelsior on highway 100, so if we head west we should get there." So off we went. Apparently he got a little confused because we got to France Avenue and he said, "I'm sure there's an exit for France on 100," and he turned left. I'm ...