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Come on out to the Union and see Great Buncha Guys this weekend (October 16 and 17).

There will be great music and the food at the Union is scrumptious!  We have a few new songs and one of them is me playing the William Tell Overture (that’s the theme from the Lone Ranger for the less cultured!)

We are hoping to start at 8:30, but I think we are scheduled for 9:00.  As always, we tend to pack the place, so you might want to get there a little early.

If you stop by to listen, please make sure you say “hi!”

It is confirmed!  Set your calendars for July 23, 24, and 25.   Great Buncha Guys will be playing at the Union Cabaret and Grill in Kalamazoo, MI.   I play acoustic guitar and harmonica in this band with some of the area’s finest musicians.  We have a very eclectic mix of songs in our set list.  We play jazz, rock, ballads, pop, and even a little country.  You’ll hear songs from such diverse artists as the Eagles, Miles Davis, Bonnie Raitt, the Pretenders, Eva Cassidy, James Taylor, Steely Dan, and Edgar Winter.  There is bound to be something that you will like.

The Union is a great place to eat.  Honestly, I think it really is some of the best food available around Kalamazoo.

So grab a friend and come on down have a great time with a Great Buncha Guys.  We start playing at 8:00 on Thursday, 8:30 on Friday and Saturday.  You might want to make a reservation or get there early:  We tend to pack the place!  You can let us know if you are coming or not by visiting us on facebook.

If you want to tell others about the gig, download and print this one-page poster (PDF) and be sure to post it where you work and play!

I think that God is constantly trying talk to us.  I think that He wants to guide us.  The tough part is finding time alone where life is quiet enough to hear him.  One of the more successful ways for me to do that is to go fly a kite. I really enjoy flying kites.  The kites I fly are “stunt kites” which basically means that they have two lines instead of one.  That means that you can make them do loop-de-loops, dives, and all kinds of fun maneuvers.  The bottom line is that you have a lot more control over the kite. And — I’ll admit it — I have control issues.    Today, I had the day to myself and nobody to remind me of all my responsibilities and grown-up issues.  So I took the time to go fly my kite.  And I think God used that time to talk to me…

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If you have not had a chance to see Great Buncha Guys in person, here’s the next best thing. Tim Brown was there when we were at the Union in February, 2009.  He has uploaded a couple of videos to YouTube from our last show.  These are from the Friday night show. Thanks Tim!

This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oany-5ZyHrQ) is “Back on the Chain Gang”, a song by the Pretenders.  

This one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-XRzqcSa84) is “Burning Down the House”, a song originally done by the Talking Heads.  Our version is much more like Bonnie Raitt’s cover of that tune.

Both songs feature Deb Brown and Shelagh Brown on vocals.  

Enjoy!

Well, I can honestly say that I never saw this one coming.   I’m on facebook now.  I have always avoided the social networking sites because I thought that they were a waste of time (and…well… they are).   I do have a MySpace page but I pretty much ignore it.  I only wanted it because, if MySpace ever became cool, I wanted to snag the page name “myspace.com/dickdonohue” (yea, it’s an ego thing).    There are a lot of really ugly MySpace pages and that didn’t help the coolness factor.  But now, with 90,000 sex offenders getting kicked off, it doesn’t appear that most people will be viewing MySpace  as a cool place any time soon. Just to be clear:  I’m saying that hanging out where sex offenders hang out is not cool.  I’m not saying that now that all the sex offenders have left, the place has no appeal! 

But facebook has really surprised me.  It started when a friend created a facebook group for the band I’m in (Great Buncha Guys).  Then one of the other guys in the band invited me to join facebook.   So I figured I would create an account and it would be just another social networking site to ignore.   For the next 2-3 days my email was flooded!  I’ve hooked up with old high school and college friends, friends from church and all over.  I admit that it has been fun to go back and reconnect with some folks.

For me, facebook has proven to be an interesting adventure in social science.  And it has me fascinated.  I’ve been spending a lot of time on facebook lately.  (I’m sure that it is an unhealthy amount of time.)  Here are some observations that I have found particularly interesting: continue reading…