#259

Hello, all.
I hope you had a good Christmas.
We had a fine time, but we're back to work now. You'll find us on our website, and etsy.
We made a few home-made presents for family this year, as you might expect. Jo's brother, Andrew, asked me several weeks ago if I wanted to help him record the Beatles' song "When I'm 64" for my in-laws. His step-dad, Steve, just turned 64 this year, and Andrew sang it at their wedding years ago, so it has some significance to them. It's not my favorite Beatles song, being more of a John guy myself, but I think we made it work. We passed the 16 track recorder around so that Steve's sister, Kate Power, and her husband, Steve Einhorn, could sing and play a bit of banjo and guitar on it as well. We even talked Jo and our daughter, Kaity, into singing a few lines in the last verse. Our son wouldn't sing, but we put the squeeze on him tight enough to get a few whistles out of him for the song. So if you're interested in hearing it, you can download it using this link. If you click on it and it doesn't download, try right clicking on it, then choosing "save target as."

When we played it for them on Christmas, we were hoping they'd recognize the singing voices as their family, but they thought it was the Beatles until they heard some of the lyrics changed. We got rid of "Vera, Chuck, and Dave" and replaced it with their grandkids, "Jimmy and Kaity Rae." Once they realized what they were listening to, they were brought to tears. Score!

Here are the credits, in order of appearance:

Bass and lead guitar-Dylan Curry
Drums, vocals, and guitar-Andrew James
Banjo and vocals- Kate Power
Guitar, vocals, and "mouth trombone"-Steve Einhorn
Vocals-Kaity Curry
Vocals-Jo James
Whistling-Jimmy Curry
Vocals-Yellena James

Hope you enjoy it. . .
-Dylan

#258

Hello, everyone.
This is a newsletter first. . .
No links in this email to our art.
Why, you ask?
Because I'm hiding them until after Christmas,
and I'm not even going to give you hot and cold clues.
We are thankful to be booked up until after Christmas production-wise.
Thank you very much to everyone that kept us so busy
this year. We appreciate your support.

So without any art to sell, what do I write?
I sat down to write some silly parody of
The Night Before Christmas.
What came out instead sounded more like
The Raven and was kind of. . .stupid.
But friends, I'll tell you plainly,
I am not above being stupid.
So please enjoy. . .
. . .a piece of work too dumb to destroy. . .

"A Magicless Christmas"

Once upon a merry Cringle
As I sat there eating Pringles
With twinkling stars upon my set
It was David Letterman
And David Arquette

When the ceiling did open
And down came a ladder
And I jumped up and was like,
"What's the matter?"

Then from the attic
Who should appear?
But six white rats
With etsy beards

They winked at me once
Which was a bit off-putting
Then they scampered away
Like they found some pudding

Another glorious Christmas ends
Good night
God's speed
Good luck
Amen

-Dylan