Aaron Traffas

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We’re spreading Kansas country music throughout every part of the state within the next month or two.

Friday, Texas music stuperstar Trevor Burgess and I will be playing a song swap at Bobby T’s in Manhattan.

Harbour Lights in Lawrence asked me to play a show there on Sunday, to which I happily agreed.

We’re heading west to Hays for a band show at the newly remodeled Rail next Friday.

I’m headed to the biggest, baddest, Buster’s show alliteration has ever described. It’s spring break and Easter Saturday all rolled into one, and if everyone coming home wasn’t enough, everyone will be looking for something to do after Church is dismissed. Well, we manufactured a solution, folks, with a party at Buster’s.

Trevor and I have a mini-tour set up for the ides of April, so that will be oodles of fun as well.

Hope to see a bunch of familiar faces at the upcoming shows.

You’ll hear from me.

PHP / XHTML

Sorry about the record-setting, no-log-writing week. I’ve been absorbed in writing a new website for the Purple Wave. Not that anyone cares, but it’ll have a bigger, badder PHP engine and should validate as XHTML strict. I just love screwing over users with obsolete, non-CSS browsers. Actually, the site will remain completely usable, it just won’t look pretty if someone’s using an obsolete browser.

Trevor and I will be playing a show at Bobby T’s on Friday, so plan on that one. Then I head to Topeka to play computer games for money. I’m looking forward to going in to the LAN party, being the oldest one there and the only one in cowboy boots with a spit cup.

Norton

Had a great time in Norton last night. I was pretty sick so I was drinking water. It’s crazy some of the stuff that drunk people do. Some dude tried to get into a fight with Jim. We went over to Wayne’s friend’s house for after hours. Thanks to everyone who showed up.

Sold out

Thanks to Pat, the owner of Longhorn’s, for letting me in anyway to an already sold out show. Thanks to Randy Rogers for giving me the last word on “The Weight”. It was good to see Josh Quillin again, as well as many other familiar faces.

Till the wheels fall off

We just got done with the auction. It’s 10:00p and looks like I’ll make the Wade Bowen / Randy Rogers show tonight down at ‘horn’s.

CAL-O

We’re now 3-3-0 in CAL-O, for those of you keeping score. We’re on a winning streak now that CAL has weeded out the hackers.

I’m departing for Hays in a few hours to meet with Jim and John to see how much hair we can pull out.

Also, sometime between now and Monday, if you haven’t yet read the article at www.gyphillpremiere.com, you should. They did well.

Power failure

Thanks to everyone who came out to the shows Friday and last night. We’ll be heading back to the Rail in March and we locked in a song swap with Trevor Burgess at Buster’s for April 16.

I don’t know why I’m so happy with my show last night at Buster’s. I had severe technical problems including a blown power amplifier and broken ear monitors and a blown channel in my light rig, not to mention the hecklers. It’s been a while since I’ve had hecklers. This girl kept yelling for “something upbeat” and after playing some bluegrass and some fast Boland and Bowen and still not getting through to her, I realized she wanted something she knew, regardless of the speed of the song. I guess her requests for Chesney and Keith should have clued me in. It’s really been a long time since I’ve had requests for new pop country. I guess I’d just assumed that everyone knew the ropes. If it had been any other establishment, I’d have played “That Ain’t Country” and probably gotten her thrown out of the bar. Or I’d have been thrown out. Either way, one of us would have been out in the rain. Speaking of which, we had a nice little rain storm last night. I don’t know if it caused the power outage, but something did. I was doing the encore at about 12:30am and was right in the middle of the reprise version of Copperhead Road when everything went dead. There wasn’t a light on anywhere in the whole town of Sun City, KS. I could tell by looking both ways outside of Busters because I could see the whole town from there. I thought about unplugging and going out and standing on the center table and playing the rest of the song acoustically, but then analyzed how dumb and Garth Brooks-like that would have been.

We’re playing in Norton this Saturday for the American Legion Valentines Day dance. Bring a friend who doesn’t want to hear Chesney.

Two shows this weekend

It seems that I’m getting very familiar with I70. I’ll be heading to Hays on Friday for the fourth time in three weeks, this time to play a show with Jimmy Billinger. It’s been a while since we’ve played a duo show, so it should be a good time. We’re playing at what used to be called the Brass Rail and I hear they’ve done some remodeling and now call it just the Rail. They must have taken all the brass out. Perhaps they’ve painted it. We’ll have to see.

Saturday brings another Buster’s show. It’s short notice, so you should be able to find a seat. We also booked a show for the last weekend of spring break, which also happens to be Easter weekend. I’m sure everyone will be looking for something to do after church.

Don’t forget about what could be the last Pearl Grey show in Norton on 12 February. It’s a public V-Day dance, so everyone is invited. If you come, understand that you’ll be required to fill out a non-disclosure form. We don’t want anyone to know about the pop country that we’ll be playing.

Also, everyone should buy a copy of the next Gyp Hill Premiere. (For those of you who subscribe to the email update, spare me your spelling suggestions. I realized I spelled it wrongly immediately after I clicked send.) I just found out they’ll be doing a write up on me in it. Perhaps I shouldn’t recommend it until I read it, but I’m sure they’ll do a good job.

That’s enough for now. You’ll hear from me.