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 We just received word that our friend Johnny Collins passed away in Gdansk, Poland where he was performing for their Tall Ship Concert this week. Since the 50's Johnny has been a mainstay on the shanty music scene, performing all over the world with many recordings to his credit. We were very privileged to have performed with him at the Chicago Maritime Festival in 2007 and at the Liereliet Festival in Workum, The Netherlands in 2008. Despite his world-wide renown he was a very warm and approachable person who was quick to share an anecdote, share a song or share a joke. In 2007 we shared a music panel about Pirates and Scoundrels with Johnny. At one point, as we're all given to do, Johnny stopped himself having forgotten lyrics. Gina promptly hung our "Weakest Link" sign on him, which took him aback, then he found enormously amusing. In 2008 at the Liereliet festival his long-time partner Jim Mageean stumbled on some lyrics and Gina promptly hung our "Weakest Link" sign on him! Johnny was delighted at the razz! "Ha! Now HE'S the Weakest Link!" Over the last fifty years Johnny has made many, many friends who all have some story to share about him. He will be much missed.Tags: bounding main, johnny collins, legend, loss, shanty, sorrow
Current Location: Home office
Current Mood:  pensive
Current Music: Bound for the Rio Grande by Johnny Collins
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Some of you know the troubles with the management of this show over the years. Some people feel that the woman that founded this festival and pretty much runs it on her own dime for the last four seasons can be difficult to work with. I've worked with MUCH worse. In any event, citing difficulties working with this person, a bunch of people quit between last season and this one, leaving a lot of gaps in work needed to be done. I stepped in at the 11th hour to get the show in order. We probably did six months of work in one-and-a-half. Bounding Main has lost several gigs over the last few years due to the economy and "big fish in little pond" stupidity. I didn't want to lose another gig - particularly one in our back yard and SO fun. So I seriously revamped the web site, did a bunch of essential marketing things, worked on entertainment and organization and brought some really great people on board to help manage the event. Thank god for Chris Last and Kristen North managing the reenactors and volunteers, respectively. I sent out an broadcast email to all of the area radio stations, offering to give them tickets for two pirate cruises on Friday night aboard the tall ship The Windy. No reply all day today, which leaves tomorrow. Kim should not have waited until a week away from the event to try to give away tickets. Things will be different next year, I assure you. Oh, Jon Baade had a personal loss this week, which put Water Street Bridge out for Saturday, maybe Sunday, too. TJ and Amanda Hull graciously stepped up to perform maritime hornpipes as Ogham for WSB's sets. I'm still waiting to hear from Jon about Sunday but Ogham can take the shows and I have a back up artist in the wings, too. We'll see. While I want this festival to be a smash hit again (year five, after all!) I want to drop the administrative cloak at the end of Friday and just have performance fun with Bounding Main for the rest of the weekend. We're SO looking forward to hanging out with our pals in The Jolly Rogers, too. It is going to be a great weekend, in any case. www.portpiratefestival.com www.deancalin.com Tags: bounding main, jolly rogers, music, pirate, port washington
Current Location: Racine, WI
Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Bounding Main
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A commute that normally runs 35 - 45 minutes, the state line to O'Hare, was 95 minutes on the highway sign this morning. I saw where a white pickup truck had flown off the far right lane into the ditch, ending up facing backward. Another, darker pickup truck was upside down, facing backward in the embankment on the far side of the ditch. A third vehicle of unknown make and model was in the ditch; I saw a cop climbing out of the ditch where the tire tracks indicated its flight off the road. This was all from Highway 20 in Racine to Highway 132 in Gurnee. Yesterday, a woman from Kenosha was killed on this stretch of the highway, amidst several other wrecks.
I called one of my bosses - the one that told me to work remotely yesterday - and checked on HIS progress. At 7:45 he was only halfway to work, having left at 6:30. We thought it would be prudent for me to turn around and remote in again today. He said that the traffic reports indicated that there was a series of roll-overs, crashes and vehicles-leaving-the-road ahead of me.
I pulled off at 132 westbound, viewing the bumper-to-bumper eastbound traffic, drivers all waiting to get ON the expressway. Not wanting to risk taking Hunt Club road (it being smaller and possibly less well maintained than the expressway) I pulled off to one of the several strip malls near Gurnee Mills and set up shop in a Caribou Coffee with its lovely, lovely free Wi-Fi! (Thanks, Caribou Coffee!) As soon as traffic clears a bit I'll get back on the road and head home.
In snowy weather when traffic is slow I will keep my camera handy, but one lack-of-traction-while-braking incident said I needed to keep all faculties involved with driving.
Tags: driving, snow, weather
Current Location: Caribou Coffee, iced in
Current Mood: thoughtful
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 My external hard drive, which held all of My Documents for the last 10 years crashed, hard. I tried the "freeze it and recover data in 20 minute segments" trick and that didn't work. I am SO screwed. If there is a bright side all of my programs are intact, as is my email. I just have to deal with the loss of every graphic project, music project, web design project, personal pictures, writing, etc. for the last 10 years. This WAS my backup drive, but as my MyDocuments grew large on my internal HD, I needed more space, particularly for the video rendering that was required for the promotional videos for Bounding Main. I know I should have installed another external HD as a backup, but in waiting for the prices to go down and freeing up cash after nearly $1,000 in surprise car repairs and all of the other monthly expenses I put it off too long. I will turn the drive over to the computer consultant that works for my employer; hopefully they have something in their bag of tricks that will work. I know there are companies that expressly recover failed hard drives, but I just can't afford that expense on top of everything else. What a freaking catastrophe. Tags: computer failure, crashed hard drive
Current Location: Caribou Coffee, snowed in
Current Mood:  stressed
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capnjake's journal
Previous
Picture a maritime town in the heart of where Green Bay meets Lake Michigan. Sturgeon Bay has a marvelous history, an excellent museum and one of the most fun festivals you'll ever see. Not only will you see various new and classic boats, you will experience a competition where teams assemble boats out of provided materials and endeavor to float and navigate around in them. Thousands of people come out for this competition every year and Bounding Main returns for our third year to provide rich nautical music for the show on Saturday August 1st. (Please note that we will NOT be performing on Sunday.) 
cheerful
mischievous