Month: June 2007

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Progress at The Nook

My dad’s bar has come a long way. He has over 70 beers available and 10 beers on draft. He has multiple coolers setup to keep the beer at their preferred temperature, too.
The building is slowly coming a long, too.
The NookThe sign at the street is

being redone, which is badhy needed. The original sign was painted with what looks like a roller. It is hard to paint letters with just a roller. Both sides of the sign don’t even look the same. But, this will all be fixed with the new sign.

With the sign fix on the way, the inside of the building is the process of being painted to tone down the Irish green that is everywhere. The bar had been Patty’s Pub at one time so everything is covered with bright green and the colors of the Irish flag.

They are going the start some radio advertising, too. My dad has not decided the details, but it is in the works.

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Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza 2007

My folks called and indicated they were thinking about heading down to the Cigar Box Guitar Extravaganza at the Flying Monkey Art Center in the old Lowe Mill.  I checked with my pregnant wife and she said go!

We headed down around 7:30 and arrived as John Lowe was playing.  Everything was setup on the east side of the Lowe Mill so, the sun was down behind the building and everyone was sitting on the grassy lawn.  I spied my friend Dave Gallaher and had to give him an update on Karen’s pregnancy.  Dave indicated he would be playing after the next act, Robert Hamilton.  Dave reminded me that his cigar box guitar is a Lowebow made by John Lowe.

John is a one-man-band playing under the name Johnny Lowebow.  He is playing the drums with both feet and sliding on the Lowebow with his left hand while strumming the Lowebow with his right hand, which also is holding a drum stick to play a snare drum while strumming.  I know that sentence was a mouthful, but you had to see him performing.  When he signed my arm band, I asked him if the performance was like exercising.  He said it was a full cardo-workout.

Robert Hamilton, of Low Country Messiahs, came on next accompanied by Shane Speal.  They played a great mix of tunes with both musicians playing cigar box guitars.  I picked up a copy of Low Country Messiahs’ latest album, Biscuit Palace.

Shane Speal is founder and curator of the National Cigar Box Guitar Museum, which he brought some of it to the festival (see the picture above).

Following Robert Hamilton was Huntsville’s own Microwave Dave Gallaher.  Dave started his set with some traditional songs of his before picking up the Lowebow to play “Trail of Tears”.  The crowd has thrilled to hear Dave play.  He has been entertaining Huntsville for many years.  You can check Dave playing with the band The Nukes all around Huntsville and the southeast.
Click the photo for more pictures.

CigarBox Armband

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House Remodeling

We are slowly remodeling our house.  Everything started in our bathrooms by pulling down the wallpaper.

Presently, we are working in the dining room.  We have pulled down the wallpaper and repaired the walls.  (The wallpaper was hung without the walls being prepared correctly.)  As of today, we have painted the walls with “Linen White” and “Earth Tone” from the Behr paint collection.  The trim will be done in “Clamshell” from the same collection.

After the dining room, we need to get back on the baby’s room.  We still are needing to paint the trim in that room.

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Progess on Our House

Dining RoomWe are starting to make progress on our house. The dining room remodeling is starting to show signs of the end.

We have had so many problems with the walls. The original wall paper was not hung correctly. The wall paper pulled a lot of the sheet rook off, which makes the repairs very hard. After many muddings and remuddings, we finally finished prepping the walls for paint.

Today, we started the painting just have some the wall to pull off onto the paint roller. But, we will have to just wait until tomorrow to see how bad the damage it going to be.

Hopefully, it will only require a little repair so we can wrap up the dining room and move onto the next project.

– Brian Allen