Lizzo is back in the news. Well in my news. Her tour brings her to Seattle next month. November 9 at Climate Pledge Arena. If possible I would love to meet her and tell her about my Glass Flute project. She may already know about this if my friend Carol Lynn who handed Madison’s flute to her on stage happened to mention it. Currently I am attempting to make contact on my own via emails to her booking agent, Instagram message to her directly. I suspect all of these attempts will fail. But if not and she is willing and able, she will go home with one of my wooden flutes. It would be so cool to meet her!
I am not so sure about attending her concert. The arena is big enough to hold the NBA championships. It did so one year while the Seattle Folklife Festival was happening right outside. The final game ended at 2PM on Memorial Day. Usually after 3PM on Monday all of the lookiloos who had been pawing the instruments in the Uncommon Market booths finally come back and make their purchases - which usually results in about 95% of the income made for that 4 day effort (setup was on Friday usually). Instead the brilliant minds running Seattle Center shut us all down at 2PM so that we would be out of the way when the happy or angry crowd left the Arena.
I was selling my flutes out of Mickie Zekley’s Lark in the Morning booth that weekend. My dear friend Jehan Paul was with all of us. Besides being the King of the Flying Monkies (his late father played the Head Monkey on the Wizard of Oz. As in The Little Dog Too!), he is also one of the top accordionists in the world and has more Charisma than all of the Kennedy’s combined. He is also someone who unfortunately suffered from Polio Twice in his youth, and was the only known case of a second infection. He was written up about in paper after paper with his name mentioned and every new doctor would ask incredulously “Are you the Real Jehan Paul?”
Polio is back - and perhaps immunizations will soon be needed even for those of us lucky to avoid it and be vaccinated. Fuck the anti-vaxxers.
JP wasn’t shy about his use of a cane (or the Polio frankly, since the docs had made him famous in the fight against it) while walking and used that as a comic device. He almost hooked my head with his cane at the end of a Lark Talent Show performance in 1985 when my group had gone way beyond our allotted time frame. Listen at this link and the sudden burst of laughter at the end was from him approaching me slowly from behind. This was not pre-planned and I was totally unaware of it! But you can hear JP threatening to use his magnificently-hooked cane during the introduction after I plead for a few more minutes. That was me burping. For comic effect. Eventually I replaced JP as emcee at the talent show.
Listen at https://caseyburnsflutes.com/MOM1.mp3
That was my first year at Lark Camp and so of course I was at peak social awkwardness and unable to know how to respond when he and others pulled pranks on me. Such as when JP accosted me on the steep hill below the dining hall at Camp 1 a he was lugging a heavy accordion up the hill. He said “Casey! Do you know what a Drunk and Crippled accordion player looks like?” Before I could answer there he is sprawled on the ground at my feet moaning and groaning and shaking as if in a spasm and I am standing there totally clueless as far as how to respond to This Force of Nature. Should I run away, or join him on the ground? Instead I stood there standing like an idiot nervously grinning and wondering to myself “What the Fuck?”.
Yet JP persisted. The next day he was accompanied by Charlie Rudd from Arcata who excelled on the Concertina. Same time, same place. Twice the fun! This time both asked “Casey! Do you know what Two drunk and crippled accordion players look like?” followed by the same sprawling collapse and moaning and twerking with the addition of some drooling at the mouth. And me, of course, standing there again like an idiot nervously grinning and wondering to myself “Really? What the Fuck?”.
This changed my orbital trajectory.
It was as if I was hit by a refrigerator-sized object traveling at high veliocity. I avoided that spot at that time of day for the rest of Camp. JP was less feral at his popular Happy Hour he hosted at his truck, parked off the road below. By the end of the week his advances worked and we became good friends and fellow musicians.
So back to the Seattle Center. With JP it was always an endless stream of jokes and bad puns including the time he drove me and all of my stuff from Eugene to Mendocino in the summer of 1986. It was no different at Folklife. So at 2 PM some official from the city government is shutting the market down and herding people away from our booths with the aide of a few assistants with 24’ of rope stretched between them saying”Walk this way! Walk this way! Walk this way!”
JP quipped poignantly, but with his usual sardonic grin, as we were all grumbling about being shut down early: “I wish I could walk that way!”
The lovely pic above is of him playing at our wedding in 1988. Nancy and I got married on the Mendocino Headlands with Rod Cameron presiding as minister (we bought his ULC Ministery License for this purpose) followed by a musical reception at Crown Hall.
Back to Lizzo. Although Nancy and I safely attended two indoor concerts together at DjangoFest and escaped unscathed, I am less sure about a large venue such as that arena. Especially since indications are that we are at the beginnings of winter surge and there is a new Covid variant on the loose. If a meetup can happen, I have request maybe attending the concert as part of her back stage entourage. Also, the tickets start at $110. Way beyond my current budget! So if this happens I’ll report about this here.
Other stuff. I took a break from Dall-E when I got close to running out of credits and was otherwise occupied. I decided to “outpaint” some additional fauna accompanying the “two-headed coyote” and here are two results. I’ve posted these on Facebook, complaining about a careless neighbor to our immediate north leaving her gates open and letting her animals out. Of course my actually very thoughtful and wonderful neighbor Jenny to the north is enjoying this “punishment”.
While I listen to the NASA press conference about the DART Impact Results I will try adding a bunch of Mustelids (Otters, Ferrets, Skunks and Wolverines) to the back yard menagerie. A few scientists on TikTok were saying that the impact caused a 1% change in the orbit - about 10 minutes different. This we can save Humanity from Asteroid Impacts if we work hard at it. If we could only save the Planet from the likes of Putin and Trump, not to mention the Energy Industry and the ravages of Capitalism and Greed…
Galapagos Tortoises are a menace and are very hard to chase out of one’s back yard! That hippo ate all of my pepper plants. Emus are weird.
I am learning how to hold the new Accordina in a relaxed manner. Also the idea of making some of these is now back on the table. Before the major impediment was sourcing the reeds. These need to be resistant to moisture so simply repurposing accordion reeds would not work. I began to think about older Melodicas and it turns out that some from the 1950s such as the Hohner Professional 36 used individual reeds. Then I discovered one from Italy supposedly called the Clavietta.
It turns out that the Claviettas from the 1950s were made in Borel’s workshop using many of his same design concepts as on his Accordinas. The Accordinas had bronze-bladed reeds and were never meant as a performing instrument. Apparently they felt differently about the Claviettas and thus the same reed designs feature more robust stainless steel -bladed reeds. The scale is shorter at 34 notes instead of 44. Fortunately most of the missing notes are on the rather painful top end that I hardly use. The scale starts one whole note higher (G). I found one for $87.50 that should be here this week. If these reeds work that will be a steal. Hand-made reeds from the reed makers run around 25-50 Eu
In this video the sounds of these different melodicas with the removable individual reeds are compared. These days most melodicas are built with the reeds all mounted on one plate, as is done on harmonicas.
The concept of using these reeds to make a custom instrument has been proven. The tone quality is very similar to the Accordina.
So here are various angles of me holding this instrument. The only thing I need is a safety strap so that I don’t drop it onto the floor. And maybe a slightly longer mouthpiece which I can design and 3D print (the same kind of plastic is used for dental fillings).
Get your Booster Shot and your Flu Shot as soon as you can. Winter is coming. I got mine and it knocked me in my butt with fever for a few days. It also triggered my episodic hypersomnia a few weeks earlier than expected. DjangoFest got me out of it. I am now in the thick of my hypomania, feeling verbose - and getting much done including some flute making. If the usual 8 weeks wavelength reasserts itself, this sleepiness will happen right at about the time Lizzo is in town. Yeah! Like I’ll be able to sleep through that!