One thing about spending so much time driving from one gig to another is you really start to learn your way around the country, or at least the country as defined by the interstate. One of the tried and true traditions for the Bilge Pumps to give us some cheap entertainment for those late nights on the road is the playing of "claw games". You know what I'm talking about. Those games that charge you anywhere from 25 cents to a buck to operate the overhead claw and often repeatedly fail, causing you to spend $10.00 to grab those cheap stuffed animals you could pick up at Toys R Us for $2.50. Who knows how much money I have spent on these insane games since 1999 on these road trips, but I'm sure it's more than a little. After a while, it becomes an automatic addiction.

You walk thru the door to Joe Bob's Greasy Spoon and Gas Station, spot the claw game to your left and wonder if you can hold off going to the bathroom long enough to get in one try. Since you can't you go ahead and hit the head, grab some overprices Funyuns and a GD liter of cola and plant yourself in front of the game. First step you have to do (typically with the advice of the strung-out-on-monster pirates standing beside you) is to size up the tank of stuffed toys and see if there are any that's don't appear to have been packed in tight by a yeti jumping up and down on them. (On a side note, I think there's a fine artform these "packers" follow to cram everything in tightly and immovably while still giving the impression that the Underdog toy in a dress might conceivably be moved.)

Once you've determined your target(s), you feed in that money to the beast and prepare to move the claw over its intended victim in the 15 seconds alloted you. Beware! Some machines will only let you move in one direction forward or left and won't let you reverse course to fine-tune your adjustment. Leave those machines after your first attempt and don't give them any more money. They're only ripping you off worse. Once your claw is situated (again, often with the help of bleary-eyed, caffeinated, insane pirate friends trying to spot you from the side), you drop that sucker and see if it can snag that prize. More often than not, you get what I call the "jelly claw", where the claw seems to just slide over the toy like syrup without ever having a prayer of catching anything. I know these things are set to only have tension in the claw every so often, the trick is to make sure you're on target for the times it does work. Personally, my favorite times are when you can jam the claw tine into a belt or something on the toy and snag it when the claw doesn't have tension. MY own little way of sticking it to the "man". Uh... I guess the "stuffed animal man".

I've won a ton of goofy little stuffed toys over the years playing these games and previously they went to my wife or ended up toys for my dog, but now I have a baby girl and I must attack these games with a vengeance to win the prize to provide for my girl. Kind of a hunter-gatherer for the new millennium only instead of a bleeding gazelle, I bring back Curious George in a plane or some kind of freaky clown doll right out of "Poltergeist". I know she's just gonna love 'em. Whether she does or not doesn't matter, because at the time, I'm convinced she will. The first claw game I played after she was born, I was holding her in one arm while guiding the claw with the other and snagged a big fuzzy yellow duck the first time out. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is! She played with it (off and on) the rest of the multi-hour car trip. Daddy's mission accomplished. Poor girl's gonna end up with a closet full of these cheap-ass toys. hyuk hyuk.

Where are the best claw games you might ask? Well, I can give you a few right off the top of my head. The Citgo at Hwy 34 & I-20 in Terrell, TX has a good one. The Denny's off Hwy 69 in Muskogee, OK as well. A new favorite, the Station Grill in Lawton, OK has one. The best one of all, though, is the claw game at the Silver's Travel Center on the North side of 328 & I-10 in Breaux Bridge, LA. You guys have a favorite to let us know about?

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

I knew that title would get your attention. This being my first and possibly only blog post I was going to originally make it a rant about Squeegy. We had actually worked it out so that we would rip each other apart on the board but we were too busy (read: lazy) for that. Oh well, the time has passed for that so now I'll just regale you with the tale of how I became a Bilge Pump and why the heck I still do it.

I was born a poor black child - no wait, that was The Jerk. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - crap, Star Wars. It was a dark and stormy night - uh oh, Snoopy. Okay, fine, it all started one fateful day in October of 2005 at my day job where I have the misfortune of working with Maroon. As is our usual way, we were wasting time talking about anything but work. He brought up that Blue was starting to go MIA from some gigs because of other commitments. He asked if I wanted to join the band as a second guitarist to help take up the slack and if Blue decided he was ready to leave that I would be the man. I had played guitar heavily from 1988 until about 1995 and was in a hard rock cover band playing songs by Skid Row, Poison, Motley Crue, Metallica, Dokken, Warrant, Ratt...you get the idea. The playing of music like the Bilge Pumps stuff was never something I had considered and I rarely played on an acoustic guitar unless I was trying to appear sensitive to get a girl to...I digress. I had gotten to a point where I was too busy with my real life to try to become a famous rock guitar player so I moved away from my guitar. I picked it up an hour here or there a few dozen times a year but that was about all.

I told Maroon that I had not played guitar much in many years and that I was extremely rusty. He said that didn't matter because no one in the band was that good. I still tried to find any excuse I could to get out of saying yes but Maroon can really whine like an annoying girl when he wants something. I said I needed some time to think about it because if I was going to do it I wanted to feel like I could do it right - don't know what I was thinking there. I began mulling it over and even turned to my mom to help me figure out what I should do. I could come up with no legitimate reason to say no. I had worked with Maroon for years and been to several of his parties so I already knew John Crow, Phil and Galleon - at least a little bit.

I told Maroon I would do it so he passed me all the music on mp3 and CD, sheets with lyrics and guitar chords and said tell me when you're ready to come to a rehearsal. I spent a few weeks familiarizing myself with the cacophony of howling cat noises that is The Bilge Pumps and working from recordings of Squeegy's guitar. With my trusty sheets in hand I learned several of the guitar songs and made it to my first rehearsal.

Upon entering Maroon's house for my first official Bilge Pumps rehearsal I was introduced to Harvey. His first words to me were "you're not homophobic are you?" to which I replied no. He said I would be fine. He never asked if I liked being molested by creepy old guys though - now that would have made me run. Blue was busy that evening so he missed rehearsal which left it all on me. Maroon asked what songs I knew and I pulled out my sheets. As we played through the first song (no, I don't remember what it was) everyone seemed moderately impressed that I actually played it well. Granted they didn't say I was the next coming of Squeegy (disgusting thought) but they knew I'd work out at least musically. In my time playing hard rock/hair band stuff, I had developed a decent enough singing voice for that style of music. I had what one friend referred to as a "teen angst" voice where I could sing like Bon Jovi and get a good warbling vibrato going. I never had that much confidence in my voice regardless of the compliments I had received. I felt like my singing was limited to the hair band stuff so I told Maroon I'd be okay playing guitar for them but I was not about to do any singing. To his credit he didn't whine at this point but he did start planning to force me to sing - sneaky S.O.B.

We jump forward to January 28, 2006 and Scarlet's Mid-Winter Festival. I packed up my girlfriend and her son so we could make the drive to OKC to check out what the heck I was joining. No, my dear reader, I had never seen the Bilge Pumps perform live. Check out the pic on the Past Landings page. After sitting through a few songs I felt like I had made a huge mistake but need I remind you that Maroon whines? I thought I'd better at least give it a shot and I would probably suck so much they'd ask me to leave. Boy was I wrong...

February 18, 2006 - my first performance. Naturally I had little pirate garb at the time nor was any of it really good for the flesh ripping cold wind that was blowing around the Strand in Galveston for Mardi Gras. I had bought boots and 2 shirts at Scarlet's. My pants were a gift from John Crow and you will see them from time to time. I was allowed to borrow Maroon's cloak so at least I wasn't a Sharkbait-sicle. I somehow managed to play through the songs with frozen hands using my trusty book of sheets. At this point I had NO stage presence or had really put any thought into my performance beyond guitar playing - at least I had my pirate name. The feedback I received from the guys was that I played well considering and that it was my fault it was so damn cold. Blue missed the joy of this gig so it was all me.

The next 2 gigs Blue joined us so I didn't have to remember everything nor use my sheets as much until he left town and the band for work reasons - oh crap! I decided that if I was going to continue as the sole guitarist for the Bilge Pumps that I needed a little help getting things polished. I begged Maroon to bring in the illustrious Squeegy to help. Luckily he was on a break from touring as Barney so he had an opportunity to sit down with me to show me how he did things. My first thought was "I hate him" because he was a much better guitarist. I realized he was actually a nice guy and more than willing to help me figure out what I needed to know about the songs. I began getting a better handle on the songs even though I still referred to the sheets for many of the songs. Once I got to the point of knowing some of the songs enough to not use the sheets Maroon started to force me to join the singing. I resisted as long as I could but he started saying something about how everyone has to sing. He might have said did you know bees sting - I wasn't really listening.

One of the most often received comments about my stage presence was that I seemed to be upset. Fanny often gave me grief about not smiling. I began to think about these comments and realized by looking at pictures they were right. I knew it wasn't because I was unhappy it was just that I was concentrating so much on what I needed to do. I had gotten over my stage fright after about 5 or 6 gigs so I figured I would just play to my strengths and thus was born the Sharkbait Simon grumpy bastard school of piracy. I already had a reputation as being grumpy in my daily life so why not in my pirate life too?

Okay, so now you have the long boring story of my beginnings...Here's the quick wrap up because I don't want Maroon to start editing out all my stuff.

Galleon's departure left a lot of songs up in the air as well as hole in the lineup. I volunteered for singing some tunes and Maroon volunteered me for the joy of Harvey dancing all around me like some geriatric stripper. Being grumpy isn't always a good thing when it gets you assignments like that In order to fill the line up back out Maroon wanted to bring back Squeegy. For once in his life Maroon was a decent human being and actually asked my opinion on having Squeegy back. Naturally since I had put an effort into this mess he didn't want me to feel like I was being supplanted (who knew Sharkbait was intelligent?!). I made it clear that I had no issue with the return of Squeegy - like him and we play well together. Besides, he's much more cheerful so I can I stay the grumpy bastard that I am.

He has definitely pushed me to work even harder. I now rarely ever use the sheets since I can rely on him when my memory fails. Granted I was already getting to the point of only using sheets just before I went on stage to jog my memory or on the songs we rarely ever do. He has also pushed me to sing the songs more while I'm playing. It was something I had every intention of doing anyway once I got to the point where playing the songs was second nature. Now that I read this I guess Squeegy hasn't really made me work harder - forget I said anything.

I may smile more and appear to have more fun on stage now than I did in the earlier days but I will always be "by far the grumblingest guitarist to ever join the band". And lucky for me, you all love me for it...(yes, that's the reason I keep doing it)

Well, in a kind of poetic follow up to the last blog I posted about the price of gas, I have some sad news to impart. The Bilge Pumps will not be at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival in 2008. A weird scheduling quirk of the calendar this year is the cause. Since there are 5 weekends in November this year and the LA Ren Fest always starts on the 1st weekend in November, that puts its final weekend as the first weekend in December instead of the second. Since the Bilge Pumps are booked at TRF through the end of November, that would only leave us the last weekend of Louisiana to perform at. Unfortunately, that's the same weekend as Dickens on the Strand which always occurs on the first weekend in December. So, a choice had to be made, Dickens or Louisiana.

It's always tough to make a choice like that. Louisiana has always been good to us, both from a patrons and management standpoint. Last year, when we could only make the final weekend of the festival, Alvon was good to us and gave us the peninsula to play on (luckily there were no weddings that weekend) and we had a good time with everyone. The thing is, Hammond is an 8 hour drive from Dallas/Ft. Worth and Galveston is only 4 1/2 hours away. That makes a big difference when you're talking 3-4 cars hauling us mangy pirates down the concrete seas. We ran the numbers and it's really a no-brainer in terms of cost. The only thing was we REALLY hated to not do Louisiana due to our numerous friends and fans in cajun country.

It was a tough call, but one we had to make. We have many fans and friends in Galveston as well, so it's not like we're doing it all for the $$$ (no, really) and we hope that Alvon will give us a chance to come back in 2009 when the dates line back up again. We apologize to all of our Louisiana fans that we won't be there this year, but we're hoping and planning on it being a temporary thing. Since we began in 2000, Louisiana is the only festival we have performed every year and and we hate to see the tradition die. It's just one of those bad luck things that happens. If you're dying for your Bilge Pumps fix this fall, though, we hope maybe you'll get a chance to come see us at TRF or Dickens and say hi and throw gator meat at us in retribution. Squeegy's can still be alive if you'd like.

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

Thanks to the many, many factors driving up the cost of a gallon of gasoline (and that's about a dozen more blogs worth of topic there), it's getting harder and harder to be a "rennie" these days. For those that don't know, a rennie is someone who makes their living, or a good portion of their living, working the renaissance festival circuit. Now, obviously, this isn't the lifestyle designed for financial riches (few rennies are looking for that) and many rennies were just scraping by about 3 years ago. Then suddenly, the price of gas more then triples and it more and more difficult to get that renmobile (you know what I'm talking about, the station wagon/van that is loaded to the gills with personal stuff and is covered in Wiccan and anti-Bush bumper stickers) from one festival to the next.

I know I've talked to assorted performers/vendors/workers over the last year or so and they're all saying the same thing. They're doing less and less shows and only working the ones that are closer to their home bases (if they have them) because festivals don't/won't pay enough to make it profitable to work there. Those that do continue to work their old circuit tend to multi-task more and more. I've seen many a stage act working as vendor help or working a game booth to bring in some extra $$$ to get by.

What's this mean to me, you might ask? Well, in terms of entertainment (which I know best), it comes down to this: Most festivals will try to keep the entertainment budget down at it's current levels or lower, regardless of the cost of gas. If acts are having to charge more to cover travel expenses, the entertainment director at a show can either give them the extra money and hire less acts, or hire different acts that charge less because they're local or stay long-term. The Bilge Pumps are a bit different than a lot of other acts on the circuit because we all have full-time jobs during the week. We always commute to festivals and stay in hotels and whatnot. We can afford to absorb the extra fuel costs because the ren circuit isn't how we make our living, it's just an expensive hobby. However, some of the other acts out there are getting the squeeze from festivals both big and small because they just can't afford to work there at the price they're being offered. It's not the festival or the act's fault, that's just the way it is. That means you'll start seeing more "home grown" acts appearing on the circuit. That's the term I use for acts just starting up comprised of former workers/cast members that have worked at a certain festival and it's become their home faire and they want to break into the professional entertainment ranks. It happens all the time on the circuit, hell, it's how we got started, but it does mean the visiting patron won't be seeing their favorite acts perform as they'll have been replaced with a burgeoning act that hasn't gotten their shtick together yet. Anyone who watched the Bilge Pumps in our first couple of years knows exactly what I'm talking about.

In the meantime, here's hoping that things start to look up in the trickle-down from the big-business oil world as I wish anyone who wants to live the life of a gypsy, traveling around from festival to festival, the best of luck. It's a brave lifestyle choice that has gotten harder and harder recently. For those of you that go to the festivals and watch the shows and eat the food, feel free to tip your performer or waiter/waitress. In many cases your extra dollar here or there can make a big difference for someone trying to eke out a life. For fat cats like the Bilge Pumps, though, feel free to tip us, too, because we're greedy like that.

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

Notice that's fair without the "e". Don't know why, but I like the fact this festival doesn't use the olde English spelling of the word.

There's a reason why we tend to call this festival our "home fair". It's because of all the fans, friends, and family we have there. Norman was our first "ren faire" to perform at back in 2000 and we always have a blast coming back to the festival and performing in front of the multitude of crazed pumpers and pumpettes that grace our shows. I remember when the festival director first told us back in 2005 that she was going to move us to the back corner of the festival, my initial thought was "crap, now we're going to be lucky to get 15 people to a show", then she told me why she was doing it: to pull people back to that section of the grounds that had been dead since the move to Reaves Park from the Duck Pond. I felt better about it, but was still a bit unsure whether or not we'd be the draw she thought we would. Silly me. Our fans proved my fears to be unfounded as we continually fill the seats and more show after show in the years we've been at that stage. I know that many vendors around that area have told me of their appreciation that us and the chess match are back there, because the amount of people around their shops before and after the shows increases a ton.

This year was doubly special as we were making a return to the festival after taking last year off for the birth of my baby girl and the festival hiring the Jolly Rogers in our place. We were very happy to be back and according to our fans' reactions and welcome backs, they were happy to have us back, too. After missing last year and us no longer performing at Muskogee, it had been a long while for many of the OK fans to get their 'Pumps fix. Couple all this with the fact that we were recording a show to be placed on the new DVD (yes, again), and there was some excitement in the air this year for certain. With the word spreading before the start of the festival and all day Friday, we got a huge crowd on hand for the DVD show Saturday afternoon. At times, the sound guys said the crowd would overpower the mics shouting "MacIntyre" on "Old Dun Cow". Quite the experience, let me tell you. Big bilgy thanks go to our sound guys, Chris and John, and our videographers, John, Josh, Alyssa, Kathy, and to the Tod for the use of his camera.

When you add in the fact that I get to see my family and the whole band gets to see our "extended family" in the form of the Wingnut clan (one of whom was kidnapped by pirates from his school back in 2006), and Celia and Dana's clan (who were kind enough to treat us to a pirate picnic at their house on Friday), no amount of Oklahoma allergy attacks can make us stay away from Norman each April. Though we are still paying for this visit as Squeegy and I are still suffering the after-effects of the sickness. Oh well, you wanna have fun, you gotta pay the price, and the fun is definitely worth it.

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