Hi All!!

3/14 - Columbus, OH - Columbus Performing Arts Center http://www.sixstring.org CANCELLED. RESCHEDULED FOR THE FALL

3/15 - Ann Arbor, MI - The Ark http://www.theark.org/ (whooo hooo! - lots of Model Airplane people come to this show- come meet them. Some are the origin of Old White Men!!)CANCELLED. RESCHEDULED FOR THE FALL

3/28 - Middleboro, MA - https://studio84houseconcerts.webs.com NOT CANCELLED YET BUT I’M THINKING CANCELLING THIS IS THE BEST BET..

4/3 - Easton, MD - www.avalontheatre.com CANCELLED. RESCHEDULED FOR THE FALL

** 4/4 - NYNY - www.ROCKWOODMUSICHALL.COM ** DUNNO YET. PROBABLY CANCELLED

4/6 - Silver Spring, MD - Institute of Musical Traditions www.imtfolk.org PROBABLY CANCELLED

4/17 - Marblehead, MA - www.meandthee.org - w/The Ellis of Paul!! CANCELLED. RESCHEDULED FOR THE FALL

So there’s all of that above…but don’t fret….. The Vance Acoustic Facebook All Pajama Concert will be tonite Monday 3/16 at 7:30pm EST. On Facebook live tonite. At one of my sites. Probably here: https://www.facebook.com/vancegilbertmusic …. or here: https://www.facebook.com/vancegilbertsongs

**If you want to, you can support an all of a sudden unworking musician and PayPal or Venmo me money for this virtual shindig, and I’ll give like 10% to Club Passim’s Passim Emergency Artist Relief Fund https://www.passim.org/PEARFund/ Pay what you want, or not. I don’t care how much. I saw a donation for $2. Another for $100. Both Lovely. Whatever. I need to sing.

Vancefunder@gmail.com for PayPal, https://venmo.com/vancevancevance for Venmo

Who’s in? PS- I’ll be in pajamas

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Good Good Man - streaming, CD Toddler, all platforms, even from me.
• PayPal to - vancefunder@gmail.com
• check for anything between $10 - $20 and up to Vancefunder P.O. Box 17 Arlington, MA 02476
• **If your name is on the CD, you’re a friend, family member, promoter, radio/podcast personage, cash strapped, or anyone else that thinks they should just have one, send me your address and just ask and I’ll send it.**

-Private/public/houseparty things (HAHAHAHA YEAH RIGHT NOT FOR A WHILE), coaching of songwriting, performance & voice, (SURE - BY SKYPE, FACETIME, OR ZOOM) somewhat available upon request

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NOTES ON THE LAST WEEK’S CRUISE:

The JoCo Cruise is like another world. Quite amazing. Tell you what-if this magnificently race/gender fluidity/politics/social spectrum accepting, creative, so far COVID negative JoCoCruise potential petri dish can remain uninflected as it has so far, I’m all set. Seriously, the Caribbean, and for that moment of time of our docking, Florida, seemed to be some of the lowest risk places on the planet (Just now talked to my doctor and he agrees...)
Now HERE’S a sci-fi novel. Get off the boat as the only well ones on the planet, and find everyone ashore dead and melt-morphed into puddles of quivering, slowly ambulating, unbaked whole wheat loaves. THE WALKING BREAD. Or NIGHT OF THE LIVING BREAD. Depends on your generation.

I had great experiences:

- The Nieuw Amsterdam, whilst not having the greatest of carbon footprints (none of these cruise ships do) it is beyond impressive. I got a tour of the kitchen, laundry, staff mess, engine room, and bridge. No, these ships won’t replace my love for airplanes, but my god what an awesome set of systems and conglomeration of cooperations. Remarkable. And it’s just huge. HUge. HuGe. Unfathomably large. I need to find and build a model of this thing.

- Staff were wondrous. Kind, smiling, helpful. OK, I know for a fact that they loved us on this cruise, have for a decade, as I got to be friendly with one of the chefs, a Ugandan brother from Scotland, and he laid it out like that. I kinda paraphrase:
“People that work this ship LOVE this group, and will work horrible hours and shifts and locations so that they are put aboard with this group. This group of folks don’t tend towards ‘angry, privileged, unfulfillable requests’. Staff are genuinely thrilled to be aboard for you all…"

- All my sets were great. Even when the boat pitched madly and I knew I was playing for people sick as hell, some later admitting hurling into their empty drink glasses, they were great sets. I sold out of CDs in about an hour.

- MYQ Kaplan, Joyelle Johnson and their brilliant comedy. Jim Boggia’s remarkable guitar and ukulele chops. Christian Cassan’s drumming.

- Danielle Davis and the Ladykiller crew of ship organizers that made every single transition we artists made on this ship and off a seamless one

- Jonathan Coulton’s (he’s the JoCo that the cruise is on about) melody writing. He’s as melodic as Irving Berlin. His melodies serve the lyrics in a way like Irving Berlin’s “I Got Lost In His Arms” or Duke Ellington’s/Irving Gordon's/Irving Mills' “Prelude To A Kiss”

- The two Brazilian women who told me I absolutely crushed my phonetic (taped to my guitar) Portugese reading of the late Joao Gilberto’s Corcovado. With them backstage I launched into a version of Mas Que Nada and they danced with each other and cried. OK, I’m making an album of bossanova *and* a country album. Maybe a 2 album set. OK I need to take a minute and breathe...

- Aimee Mann is nice and plays great bass in a mess of styles. We’re friends now, as she loves the bossa nova stuff I did and want’s me to send her stuff on it. Yes. Yes I have Aimee Mann’s email address.

- The kindness. Even though there were a few knee-jerkedly triggered and finding-wildly-nuanced-stuff-to-be-aggravated-about-folks-about, even they were generally kind about what scraped their elbows, and were heard by those that hear.

So check out this story. Jonathan Coulton has a song called Code Monkey that’s quite funny and well-written. It’s about a working stiff programmer with a co-worker crush. Another song, Skullcrusher Mountain, is about a mad scientist trying to impress a love interest at some point in the song by making a gift of a pony with attached monkey heads. Hysterically terrifying. And attendees were referred to as Seamonkeys, a reference to the 2mm brine shrimp hatched in a small aquarium as “pets” for people of my generation.

Well there were Black folks and progressive folks aboard that made it clear that they didn’t favor being called Monkeys. Sigh. I hear that. I'd also say that the Black/Indigenous author that expressed to me in light of this shipboard open listserve discussion how they were “not responsible for teaching White folks what they should have learned” about Black people’s history in their schools puzzled me. Puzzled me because they then went on with someone else for 10 minutes about the difference between Navajo and Pueblo death rituals. That surely earned my furry brow and my need for an explanation of their bifurcated teaching responsibilities. I got a long stare, a nod, and a verbal “touche”. I went on to say that I have become fine with teaching what memes, sayings, and representations cast a pall on the beings of Blackfolk. As if non-blacks got some sort of manual that says how... Pffft. I’ll teach without shaming or rancour. Why not? If we can be helped to get along as a species, sure, I’ll be “the Black friend that knew something about if that is an inappropriate thing…” Maybe I changed that author’s mind?

And to their credit, or maybe to genuflection, depending on where you stand - note I was NOT entirely in favor of disbanding the monkey references - those that organize this shindig dumped the references in the names of stuff they do. I get it. Still, you had some very fine people on both sides.

What? Too soon? Sorry.

Seriously, to get along like that and to have that kind of open discourse, daily, is my dream come true. Just like it was on that boat.

I have an arch-conservative friend that says “The biggest problem this country has with color is that we talk too much about it”. Not on my boat.


xovg