Kurt Winikka

This morning I made a musical offering at the Medicine Wheel 2008 24-hour Vigil.  The vigil began last night at midnight and continues for the 24 hours of Monday December 1st, World AIDS Day. I arrived around 7:00 am, just in time to hear a beautiful chant accompanied by a softly playing accordian and a sort of singing bowl. I pinned up a prayer for my cousin Suzanne Wineck who passed away Sunday morning.

The chant finished around 7:20 and I just sat in that beautiful, meditative space for about 10 minutes. Then I entered the center circle and played “Solitary Grace”, a song I wrote on the loss of my father. In my mind, I dedicated the performance to Suzanne. I bracketed the song with two (instrumental) verses of “In Christ There Is No East or West”. I quietly packed up my guitar and after chatting with a few people, left for work. Anita, Kai and I will try to return this evening.

This is good and important work being done in Boston. I strongly recommend that Bostonians take a little time out of their day and offer a thought, or prayer, or memory in this space for those who struggle with AIDS, friends and families of those lost to AIDS (or cancer, or war), or just for an end to needless suffering.

Peace.

I’ve been in Phoenix this past week and I brought my guitar along. So last night I dropped in on a lovely open stage called “Fiddler’s Dream”. What a great and appreciative community. The open stage is every Thursday night, all acoustic (no PA so I guess you can’t call it an open mike), they limit the number of performers to 20 and allow two songs or 8 minutes. I opened with “Close Your Eyes”. Unfortunately, I haven’t been playing this song much lately and for several moments just blanked on the last verse. Sort of embarassing… Then I did “Ghost of Calumet”, which seemed to be well-received.

It was great meeting such friendly folks and I look forward to playing there again the next time I’m in town. These open mike (open stage) evenings are a real blessing to their community.

I’ll be playing at the Gulu Gulu Cafe in Lynn, MA on Thursday August 28th. This is a cool little bit of Prague in Lynn. Good food and drink (Czech pub fare!) and free wi-fi. No cover! I’ll be playing an assortment of covers and originals from 8:00 until about 10:30 or so.

On September 5th, I’ll be playing at the Hap Tea Bar in Millis, MA, also around 8:00 (until about 10:00). 100 types of tea at this cozy little gem in Millis.

Then on September 22nd, at 7:30, I’ll be featuring (along with Mache Seibel) at the Emerson Umbrella open mike (admission is $5).

Check my schedule page for more details.

“A task always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

I know this from my experiences with software development. And it is absolutely the case when you are self-producing a CD.

Progress is being made, but it’s taking longer than expected. And I was expecting it to take longer than planned. So it’s taking longer than my expected longer-than-expected plan. Still, I have hopes for finishing all tracking and mixing in August.

Tonight I’ll be at the Sweet Bites open mike in Acton. I finished a draft of a song this weekend and I’m thinking about trying it out tonight. This song has been rather strange. Normally I have a concept in mind for a song as I’m writing it. That way, I always know where the song is heading. I have an objective measure of what I’m doing with the song. But this song started as a dream fragment. I woke up with most of the first verse - lyrics and melody both came together. But I had no idea what the song was supposed to be about. That made it difficult to get to the second verse and the refrain. I just couldn’t get myself to dream the rest of the song. I’m still not sure it works, but it sounds pretty so I’ll give it a shot.

Oh, and mark your calendars. I’ll be playing at the Hap Tea Bar in Millis, MA on August 20th (see the schedule).

I played my first public performances of “My Love”, first at Twice Told Tales where I was a guest feature, then at the FCC annual Musicale, and then this last Monday evening at the Emerson Umbrella. Ellen and Jake hosted the last open mike before their summer break and everyone showed up to play. I think it went until about 11:30 pm.

All three performances went quite well. I had worried that the song was too quiet for these venues. I was wrong to worry. In every case the audience quickly became very quiet and was very attentive. Very enjoyable for me. I’m glad I could put that song out there. I think next week will be at the TCAN.

I’ve also gotten back to working on the CD. I’m trying to wrap up the last of my tracks, get some friends in to do their parts, and send off tracks to others for them to complete. I really hope to get all the mixing done by early to mid August.