Crossing the Extremities

Isn't there a song entitled "Mama Told Me There Would Be Days Like This"? If not, there should be (Maybe it was just a line in a song). In any event, we just learned that the computer in one of the two studios we use has crashed, cashiering the whole of tomorrow's recording schedule, which had been tagged for violin and accordion tracks. It seems one of the local music stores provided the engineer with the pre-amp he needed to fix the problem, but neglected to include something called a "fire wire" cable (Yikes, that sounds dangerous). But if I cross my fingers and toes, perhaps he'll deliver it tomorrow so it's all fixed in time for the mandolin recording on Sunday.

Then there's the paperwork. I found out today the mechanical rights to songs by Dougie MacLean and Danny O'Keefe ("Caledonia", "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues") are good for Canada only and that I must, if I want the international rights, contact folks in London, U.K. and likely the US - undoubtedly, more money being vacuumed up from my cash-strapped budget. The boys must be paid, though, and so I have been dutifully filling out permission request forms and checking with the agency in Toronto that oversees such things to clear up some of the ambiguities in their data base - like why they have two different registration entries for one song. Answer: "We shouldn't. Sorry". Mercy!

The good news? Ken Hamm's slide guitar pieces arrive on Monday from his home in Forget, Saskatchewan - all very exciting (though I do hope his town's name is not a harbinger of things to come).