If you've ever been to a Renaissance Faire you've seen them. They're everywhere. Usually it's just one, but I've seen close to a dozen at one time. They're usually white or brown or black, sometimes red, but they come in blue, green, yellow and rainbow. Most often they hang from a belt, but if you watch they'll appear in a hat or on a stick. They're about 10 to 12 inches long, but I've seen them longer and shorter. Some baby had one the other day. Yes, you've got fox tails. Though never seen in any Renaissance art and never discussed in Renaissance literature, they have begun to multiply at a rate that would shock students of the plague. But where do they come from?

Okay, foxes, obviously, but what I wanted to know was where the style came from of every Tom, Dick and Mary wearing them all over faire. To give credit where due, the first person to bring this conundrum to my attention was our gallant former pilot, Galleon O'Galleon. From his research, done during his recuperation following the Great Monkey Incident, and adding my feeble attempts at scholarly inquiry, I have pieced together the real reason so many Rennies are wearers of the tail. To be sure, there were a number of rabbit trails. (Though very few rabbit tails.)

The most common story at your local faire is that tails were worn for hygienic reasons. The story goes that as Renaissance folk rarely bathed, they were subject to a variety of infestations. Lice, bed bugs, the crabs and all manner of creepy, tiny monsters found the taste of dry, filthy, flakey human flesh a gourmet delight. And while we know the average pub wench enjoys a little nibble now and again, she usually expects that to be from a swarthy pirate, don't ya know. So, the story continues, the tail was tied because for some obscure reason the mini varmints would move, lemming like, to the furry confines of the tail and be disposed of the in the nearest fiery holocaust. Now why the little blighters left a perfectly healthy fold of flesh to migrate to a poofy but dry and desolate tail, no one seems to know. Nor do they recall actually seeing any real documentation to support the story. And why do these bitey-mites not return with a jump as the tail is removed, no one alive today actually knows.

There are other explanations to be sure. And surely that aforementioned plague has given us a great one. We have documentation of Italian doctors wearing grotesque masks with huge hooked noses to filter the vapors as they comforted the dying and the dead. One village believed that their good fortune was due to good humor so they laughed. They laughed day and night without sleep until they passed out from exhaustion. Then they died. And we all learned a little poem in childhood related to the plague. But did you know that "a pocket full of posies" refers to the practice of carrying flowers believing that "the good air" would kill the "bad". Into that mix is also thrown the story that the tail was worn to keep the fleas at bay. The thought being that if the critters stay on the tail, they won't creep onto the human, leaving the dread "ring around the rosies", referring to the circle left around the pustules of a plague victim. Now that thought might work for some hairless youth, but our First Mate, Phil, was hairier than the average fox so he would have been bitten faster than John Crow the cook, can hump the leg of a birthday girl. Oh, yes. No record of that either.

Our next fable of the founding goes back to Celtic times. Yes, those blue splotched berserkers of the Highlands. Roman record does tell us of these fearsome and fearless warriors from the north of Britannia. They were a wild and ferocious conglomeration of clans and tribes who would fight anyone who dared step upon their lands, and each other when no one else was handy. Some of you may have even been told that Hadrian's legions reported that they would pound the drum, scream and run naked at an opposing force, their blue bottoms bouncing like besotted baboons as they ran. Now, that's all well and good. But did they wear the tail? I was told by an ancient Rennie, with teeth the color of the Mississippi , what they did to distinguish themselves when inter-clan fighting broke out. How do they tell Clan Aaargh from Clan Whoopass. Was it long hair flying as they ran blue body paint like Avatar ????, of the relative size of "the little barbarian"? (It was cold in the Highlands.) No, it was the color of your fox tail, I was told. Each clan claimed a different color multiples when clans intermarried. Oh, you laugh. I did too, until he explained that the intermingling of colors eventually led (along with weaving) to the development of the tartan. Not so crazy now, right? And when wearing the tartan "the little barbarian" remained free. Well that's what the old Rennie told me.

There are other stories, to be sure. Every dealer in fox tails has two or three and stopping the most casual fox tail wearer along the lanes will give you stories of ancient fox tail wearing clans battling eagle feather aficionados for some sacred soil or how wearing of the tail indicated your particular sexual predilection based on the size and coloring much like latex bracelets a few years back. I however have taken the search for fox tail truth like a quest for the Holy Grail from village to city, from castle to farm, from river to cove and have divined the true source of this fashion phenomenon sweeping the faire grounds of the Ren-faire world. Here then is your enlightenment. Other may scoff and many will argue and staunchly defend their well rehearsed fable, but this story's headwaters spring from the very fabric of American entrepreneurship and not from European Renaissance popular custom.

A certain pelt dealer went to his critter-hide wholesaler in need of fur to accent various characters from Royals to barbarians. While he waited for his order of rabbit, squirrel and sheep to be prepared, he noted a large container of tails resting idly in the corner. He asked his dealer the destination of the contents and learned that since jalopies no longer sported fox tails from the radio antenna, and the market was at new lows with the want of "coon-skinned" caps, that the tails were for probable discard. Being the creative sort and not fully beholden to the Ren-faire fashion Nazis that patrol most faires, he made an offer for the lot. He set out for his booth without his cow but with a retired school bus of veritable magic beans. But how, he wondered, was he to get those beans to grow into a financial beanstalk to steal the golden goose. As he pondered his predicament, two charming lasses appeared in his shop and discovered his new found treasure. Flirtatiously, one suggested that a fuzzy tail mayhap be the exclamation point to her own tale or tail as the case may be.

Laughing they started to exit when one merchant was visited by the muse and suggested that they might have a tail each if they sent those who may make inquiry back to his establishment. When they asked the significance of the tail, the first story was born. As tails spread, so did stories. Soon every other citizen of the village was "betailed" and each new vendor tried variations of color, size and, of course, story to enhance their sales. There you have it. 'Twas not fashion, hygiene or valor that drove the tale of tails, but that most historic of American values: greed. So the next foray you make into the world of faire be sure to look about you. You'll see wench tails, knight tails, barbarian tails, Viking tails, ogre tails and even royal tails. Strangely enough, I've ne'er seen a fairy tail.

Time for the second of these tales from the road and since the OU Medieval Fair is coming up, we'll make this edition about our travels back and forth to Norman. Now as anyone who's been in Oklahoma in the Spring can well imagine, a bunch of these stories are about the weather.

One year, ( I want to say it was 2006), I was hauling a bunch of band members in my SUV up I-35. Since there were so many of us, I had to use a present I'd received from my wife, a rooftop luggage bag, to pack everyone's suitcases in since I didn't have enough space in the bag for those and all the band gear. Somewhere around Ardmore, the skies opened up (though they might not have been all the way open. It was night and I couldn't see very well) and a deluge of rain came pouring down, cutting visibility to about 15 feet and slowing the traffic on the highway to a crawl. Then the wind kicked in, using that roof bag as a sail to try and pitch the car back and forth across the highway. By the time we reached the Arbuckle Mountains, the rain had lessened and we continued on our way to my mom's house. Once we reached the house, though, we found that the zipper keeping the bag closed had come opened a bit during the trip and the rain resistant bag had water all pooled in it. To top it off, the plastic lining in the top of the bag had become soaked and beaten by the wind and had cracked and rotted off the fabric, essentially adding gritty black plastic to all our belongings and forever removing "rain resistant" as an adjective when describing the bag. Let's just say my mom's dryer was working OT that night before the festival.

Let's rewind a couple of years to the first year we did Norman, 2000. It was Thursday night and we'd arrived at my mom's house, and instead of eating her out of house and home, we headed into Pauls Valley to grab a bite. Well, it was kind of late, so the only place open was a greasy spoon truck stop diner. We all bellied up to the table and started looking through the menu looking for what to order. Someone said they wanted a grilled cheese. Upon hearing this, Evan leaned over to my wife, Terrie, and asked her what a grilled cheese was. She explained to him it was a grilled cheese sandwich, not just a piece of cheese you put on a grill in a vain attempt to keep it from melting through the grill grates. This, of course, got everyone laughing, and Terrie told the waitress that Evan didn't know what a grilled cheese was. The waitress gave him a double-take and then took our order and walked away, continuing for the next few minutes to give scandalous stares at Evan until he basically shrank into a ball of mortification. Then, she brought out the orders to us. Evan had beans as a side dish to his plate and the waitress told him as she set his order in front of him to not touch the bowl of beans as it was hot. He promptly reached for the bowl to set it off to the side and she slapped his hand before he could grab it, and said "I told you it's hot!". Evan promptly snatched his hand back under the withering stare of the waitress while the rest of us fell off our chairs laughing. I don't believe he even looked hard at his beans for the whole meal. For those that are curious, that's the bases for Kailyn's barmaid joke during the skit before the Derelict on the Greatest Hit Vol. VIII CD.

Then, in the same year, another fun story happened. Well, it was funny only if you're not one of the ones in the story. Patrick (Squeegy) and John (Crack) were heading up on Friday night instead of Thursday due to work and whatnot and they took John's van up to Oklahoma. Well, somewhere through the town of Paoli, John got pulled over for something, speeding, I think, and only then decided to inform Patrick that he had some illegal contraband on his possession. Needless to say, he was arrested, with a petrified Patrick (who was all of 18 and afraid of cops) watching it all happen. John was then jailed in Pauls Valley, with Patrick forced to follow behind the police in John's van to the courthouse and bail him out with over $200 of his own money. This took a few hours and the result was them both rolling into my mom's house late night with John cracking jokes about needing to pop some pills and Patrick silently fuming. To top off Patrick's part in the horrible escapade, he never got paid back for the bail money. The rest of us didn't even know what happened that night until we booted John out of the band a few weeks later and Patrick finally fessed up. Ah, now that's good times.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

Well, we're always regaling ourselves with stories about things that have happened to the Bilge Pumps in the past on our frequent road trips (just ask poor Splice, who has to hear all these stories multiple times every weekend since he's the new guy), so I thought some of these tales of woe and whoa might be fun to share with you all as well. 'Course, that means you'll have to stop us when we start trying to tell these stories to you in person, since you will have already heard them and all. We might not stop, as it's hard to stop a good story, but at least you'll have a reason to get that glassy look in your eyes and we can't be offended.

Since we just finished with Louisiana and it tends to be the longest road trip each year, I figured this first set of tales from the road will be about things that have happened to us going back and from from D/FW to Hammond. This year, the trip back was pretty uneventful, but a couple of interesting things happened on the trip down. As I have documented before, I do love me a good claw game and I had been hyping up the claw game in Breaux Bridge that I always have good luck at to Squeegy and Splice on the way down. So, of course, we had to stop there and I gave it a crack. Pow! Right off the bat, I got me a stuffed monkey for my baby girl (which she loves, BTW. Thereby validating my waste of time/money on these games) which I then proudly waved about for the rest of the gang to see. Well, Sharkbait's wife immediately had to go attack the claw game to try and win something for themselves, but no go. I had done used up the mojo in the box. They were left grasping at air. Mwah ha ha! Of course, my karmic payback was a short time coming as it began to rain on us pretty hard on the way down I-49, though I was sure our gear would be fine on the cargo carrier, as we had wrapped a tarp around our suitcases. Oh no. We got there and saw that water had pooled in the bag under the tarp and soaked mine and Squeegy's bags to where 1/2 our clothes were soaking wet. That meant I was up 'til 3:30 in the morning drying clothes at the truck stop next door while wasting even more money playing claw games whilst I waited. (sigh)

That's just this year, though, Louisiana is generally full of crazy road trip stories. For instance, the mighty crab hats we're all sporting on our Live Crabs DVD we found at a gas station in Natchitoches late one night when we were all highway hypnotized. We thought there could be nothing better to spend our money on than cheap felt crab hats. We were probably right. That's the same gas station where Squeegy and Mop had their infamous run ins with the extremely frozen fudgecicles where Mop got his lips ripped up and Squeegy lost a taste bud off his tongue from the two of them getting frozen to a children's treat. Also, somewhere on that trip is when E showed the band his infamous "bosun dance" that Harvey uses to this day on the last verse of "Johnny Jump Up". Who would have thought that idiotic dance would have such longevity in the show?

Of course, not everything on the trips is crazy. Sometimes being stuck in a car for 8 hours can bring out the creative juices in ya. One the way back from a trip in 2000, Squeegy and I came up with our arrangement for "The Flying Cloud" while we made Squint drive (which he hated). Sometime later that year, the over-tired gang of goobers riding in my Durango came up with the concept of the rhyming city names on Donkey riding by making up verses to go along with the crazy creole city names in Louisiana. It took about 100 miles of this crap before we finally looked at each other and decided that we had a winning idea on our hands. Also on the way back from Louisiana came the concept for our Inquisitioner T-Shirt where we kept pitching headlines back and forth for the fake tabloid and I recorded the best of the ideas into my cell phone so I could design the shirt later.

I'm sure I'm missing a ton of good stories from the many thousands of miles we've driven back and forth to cajun country, but I'm sure the guys will remind me of them later and I'll do another Louisiana version of tales from the road.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

OK, we've been letting out the information slowly over the last several days to both fans and friends that we, the Bilge Pumps, will not be back for the full season of the Texas Renaissance Festival in 2010. It's a bummer, I know, but it just comes down to the ole equation of what we get vs what we have to give up. We love the atmosphere at TRF and the people we work with out there, particularly the cast and the Pride of Bedlam crew who have made us feel at home even though we could have easily been viewed as invaders in their space. We have fun performing our shows and doing the evening pub sing and hanging out after hours and talking with our fans after shows. All of that is the good part. That's what we get out of going there. Now on to the bad part, aka what we have to give up to perform there.

The primary bad part is that the band members all have day jobs and must commute from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area to TRF every weekend. (Roughly 7 hours round-trip) and it really wears you down after a while. Currently, we've just finished week 5 of a 10 weekend run this fall and it feels like we've been traveling forever. The time of year TRF happens in is also a factor as we're forced to give up Halloween and Thanksgiving weekends with our families to perform at the festival. Sharkbait Simon's daughter's birthday also happens during the run of TRF. Not to mention OU-Texas weekend (which is an official holiday in Dallas) TRF also has 2 days of kids days that force me and other members of the band to burn vacation days to go perform at.

It's really a cost-benefit thing. The Bilge Pumps don't really make much money at TRF. I'm not talking salary or anything like that. I'm talking about tips and sales and salary combined. Even though it's the largest ren fest in the country, it's below average in profitability for us. It's a combination of travel costs and the small stage we perform on at the festival. When there's only seating for 20 or so people at your stage, you're going to have limited tips and merchandise sales because it's difficult to hold a crowd when they don' t have a place to sit and/or put their stuff down to watch your show. We've been known to have quite large crowds around the Wharfside Gazebo stage at TRF, but when you see the audience from the stage, it's obvious that we can maintain a large crowd, but it's a fluctuating crowd. If people aren't sitting down, they'll only stay for a song or two, then they'll wander off, to be replaced by more people that will stand around for a song or two. When people don't see the whole show, they don't buy or tip much. When we decided to do TRF, the Entertainment Director told us we'd be on the Wharfside Gazebo and we were fine with that, but we told ourselves that we'd give it three years to see if we'd get a crack at a larger stage. If we didn't, then we'd give it up. This year is the 3rd year and there are no signs that we'll be moving to a larger stage. In fact, we were told before the start of the year, there was "not a chance". So there ya go, minds made up for us.

Now don't get us wrong, we hold no hard feelings for the festival. It's just the way it goes. Cause and effect, you know. If we can't make enough to justify the loss of vacations and holidays and kids birthdays and the travel grind of keeping this pack of pirates mobile and together, then we're not going to do it any more. I've spoken with the ED about this and he understands the grind of all of it and seemed receptive to hiring us back for the pirate-themed weekends of the festival in the future. I think we made a good impression with everyone at the festival and we look forward to the chance with working with/near them all again. The ED just needed a music slot filled at the Wharfside Gazebo and he views the Bilge Pumps at a music act more so than a stage act, and in the world of TRF, music acts go on the smaller stages. (Read my earlier blog post for my take on that whole distinction) No hard feelings either way. It's just the way it is.

Now, I've heard about a petition going around from fans of ours at TRF trying to get us a bigger stage so that we'll stay and I want to throw in the bands' two cents worth on what's been said. No, the Bilge Pumps are not behind this petition. Some of our fans asked us why we weren't coming back and we told them the whole story you've read above and they decided to act on their own. No, the Bilge Pumps are not threatening to quit as a tactic to get the ED to give us a bigger stage in the future. We're ready to come back and play on pirate's weekends and have fun annoying the local fauna in the future. No, we're not needing a bigger stage to be able to provide for our families. As I mentioned before, we all have 9-5 jobs during the week and do not do the Bilge Pumps thing to support ourselves in the slightest. Though we do make jokes about how our kids will starve to death without your tips, it's not really true. Some of you are shocked right now, I know. That being said, we go through quite a bit to put on this show and we don't do it for free, either. Thanks very much to our fans at TRF that care enough to get riled up when they hear that we're not going to be back full time next year. We're very glad we have had that kind of positive impact on your lives. Please don't be negative with the festival or the ED. For though I might not agree with him that we fit well on the stage we're on, I do agree that it's his right to decide where we perform to best suit his show, just as it's our right to call it quits if it doesn't fit us. We gave it a crack and it didn't work out.

To everyone at TRF, we love you guys. Hope to see you lots the rest of this season and in the future. Who knows what strange things might happen? Next time we perform there, we might be on a stage that seats 500... or not.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

It's been a busy summer. Not for the band, obviously as we haven't done a show since Scarborough last May, but for me personally which is why it's been so long since I've had a blog posting. However, one of the side effects of this off-summer for the band is that we've been back loading and have a heavy schedule coming up this fall. We're talking 12 out of 13 weekends we're going to be doing a show and only one of them will be local. That's going to rack up the miles on the ole vehicles for sure. It's like we're going to be one of those acts that travels around the renfaire circuit, except that we have to go back to work every Monday after driving back home Sunday night. We might just sleep through Christmas this time around.

However, there will be a new twist to our schedule this year as we'll be performing at a new pirate festival this fall called the Surfside Beach Pirate Festival in Surfside Beach, TX (about 30 min from Galveston). It's a first year show and as I have said before, first year shows can be notoriously hit or miss, but I have hopes that this one will turn out well. (And no, I'm not affiliated with the management of this show at all) For one thing, they already have multiple sponsors, which is more than most start up festivals have. They also have a built-in infrastructure for doing shows as they do a large St. Patty's Day festival every year. It's also going to be right on the beach in front of a restaurant called Pirate's Alley. What more could you ask for?

I always tend to like festivals where we can set up a booth (aka The Bilge Pumps Pirate Goods... and Bait! shop) It gives us a place to display our wares so that people can sample our ever-growing collection of Bilgy swag. Things like our buttons and guitar picks and patches and whatnot tend to sell much better when there's a table to show 'em off to everyone. It also gives us a home base to stash our gear between shows. If any of you have watched us truck around our huge amount of show junk between stages, you'll know what a blessing that can be. This year will be extra fun as our beloved Fanny the Flagmaker will be setting up her first ever costuming booth right next to ours. She's going to call it Liberty Cuffs Clothing Shoppe. (It's some type of Navy thing. You have to be on dramamine to understand.) She's been furiously making shirts, pants, sashes and more to get some stock ready for the show. She's made me 4 shirts and a coat over the past few years, so I know from experience she makes good stuff. After all's said and done, the Bilge Pumps family will have our own little wing of the festival. (And one day... the world!) So... not only do we get the added bonus of being able to hang out in style between shows while making a little money, but we get to do it on a beach. Now that's nice.

By the way, if anyone reading this has any piratey goods to sell and wants to set up a booth a the festival, hit their website linked above and click on the vendor app. They're waiving the fee for this year since it's a first year show, so it might be a good time to break in. Even if you don't want to set up shop, be sure and come anyway as people dressed up as pirates get in free. Hopefully, we'll see a bunch of you there, and if we do, be sure to bring a chair and sit down and visit.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon