JimJim & the FatBoys Reunion

Jim Pierce, Jim Babcock, Jeff Lilley, Steve Eulberg=JimJim & the FatBoys

It started with us camping together at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.

First Steve ventured down for a day.  (and was terrified of jamming)

Then Jim Pierce and Steve went for the Festival.  (and first were terrified, and then overcame their terror of jamming...but it took a few years for the fear to subside)

Then Jeff joined Jim and Steve at the Festival.  (and they started jamming right away!)

Then Jim Babcock joined the other three at the Festival...  (and they became a destination location for other jammers to join)

And then, when Jeff celebrated his Ordination anniversary and the others were invited to surprise him and play for worship....

They realized that they were jamming for the first time:
1.  Indoors
2.  Away from Winfield.

And they concluded that they needed to make a recording!  (you see the natural progression here, right?)

So in 2001 they gathered in Fort Collins, Colorado to record Bottle Up & Go at Kiva Studio with Russ Hopkins as the engineer.

They also played on stage when Jeff and Jim's Winfield Song (What the Hell?) won in the new song contest.

And they played gigs for the Hollis Renewal Center in Bonner Springs, Kansas, and private parties other events as they were able, since Steve moved to Colorado and Jeff moved to Hawaii!

They were invited to a reunion concert to help celebration the 30th Anniversary of the Hollis Renewal Center so they got together for a weekend of Barbecue and other tasty eats and sips, and provided music, even composing a commercial to help celebrate the valuable service that Hollis provides for people in the Kansas City area.

House Concert in Toronto

(Here is one from the photo archives!)  

Back in March of 2017, Lynn Westerhout hosted a house concert and a day of workshops at BEDLAM (her home in NW Toronto.)

This was our first time to meet in person but what fun connection we had.

Tam Kearney Dulcimer that was loaned to me.

With host, Lynn Westerhout

Her partner, now deceased, was Tam Kearney, maker of mountain dulcimers, and I was able to play two of them in the concert!  Tam was also co-founder of Toronto's Fiddler's Green (folk music group that was inspirational for the local folk scene in the 1970s and 1980s.


I also borrowed Kathy Reid Naiman's hammered dulcimer and my son, Zach's, guitar.

House Concert Set up

Kathy and I have connected through the Children's Music Network(CMN) and she had attended one of my Music Together Classes after we both participated in the annual CMN gathering in Los Gatos, CA in October of 2016.

Lynn and I connected through our mutual friend, Ken Whiteley, who produced my a piece of it all recording in 2007 and with whom I did a studio concert at his Roxton Road Studio on this tour.

Happy Crowd!

The crowd came from Toronto, from Guelph and other parts of Ontario.  I love the personal interactions that result in such close-up-and-personal settings.

I also love how these kinds of musical sharings expose young people to different genres and historical eras of folk music and inspire them to play what and how they play.

(My conversation with the youth in the audience on this school night revealed this result again.)

And, of course, the fellowship of this one-time gathering of this community is cemented by food!  Tasty, healthy warming the heart, body and soul!

The other benefit:  Great eats and drinks to facilitate community!

In Ken's rear studio on Sunday afternoon, we had a standing room only crowd and Ken and I traded songs back and forth, and we played on each other's tunes, including a rocking piano and Hammond B4 duet with the audience singing in full-throated harmony!

The roof may not have lifted but the spirits of all in attendance were soaring!

Ken Whiteley

My Review of a Great Book!

Buy this book!

"Creating transforms the lens through which I see the world"

Lisa Sniderman's new book shines a light in the darkness of deep disruption:  a body that is afflicted with a puzzling condition that tries to coax the mind and soul into the pit of despair and isolation.  

An award-winning singer-songwriter who built a following with her art and her persona Aoede (the muse), Lisa found this character inspired her to recreate her life and career after surviving a debilitating illness.  "Creating transforms the lens through which I see the world," she writes.  

Lisa quotes the African proverb: "When the music changes, so does the dance."  And then she describes quite honestly and clearly the new moves and steps that she has taken in the new dance which have helped her not only to heal, but to thrive and inspire others to heal and thrive.  While this dance is intensely personal, it is not a solo, and Lisa celebrates the web of relationships that all the dancers and music makers have contributed and shared to carry her through and forward.

As a fellow musician, and a cancer survivor myself, I find many connections from her story to my own transformation and survival.  Creating has been the light to my path as I go forward with eagerness and hope.  

It is tempting, in the post-critical status after an illness or medical episode, to slide into rhythms that cause us to become distant from our own experience.  Reading this book sent me digging through my own journals and poring over 5 years of Caring Bridge posts to recall all the hands of hope that lifted me up and set me back on my feet, with some new rhythms in my step.  

I am grateful for these reminders and am excited about what is coming next, thanks to the light that this book shines in my own darkness.