The Machine’s Pump | Brave Combo

The Machine’s Pump Volume 23 – #8 – August 2020

Hello friends. 2020, “The Wretched,” is well beyond its halfway point. In November, we citizens of the United States can decide if we want to embrace fear and welcome four more years of chaos and division or try to embrace hope and start to heal a fractured country. I know which one I will choose, because I wake up to a weird, unsettling alien environment every day. Unbelievably, we live in a country whose leader desires the approval of Vladimir “Divide and Conquer” Putin, rather than the population he’s sworn to protect. All Americans would have considered this unthinkable and dangerously crazy at one time; that the “head” of the United States would cozy up to anti-democracy dictators for advice and guidance. But, as it turns out, a lot of folks are just fine with using an obnoxious bully as a weapon against their neighbors. America, and all that makes it unique and special, is falling apart and about 40% of us are cool with continuing in that direction. Too many people are enjoying and encouraging the darkening of their hearts, just like Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s. Humans have a great capacity to rationalize and ignore and to be led by ego. We’re insecure by nature and also profoundly driven by convenience (bad combination, btw). We don’t like to be hassled because our own lives are MOST important. This is understandable, but it’s also a very low bar, and makes it too easy to see someone else as sub-human. It takes a lot more effort to look outside and put the needs of others ahead of our own because we’re constantly being pulled back to a place where it feels way too comfortable being the worst version of ourselves, eventually preferring hate to love. It’s quite easy to gather a tribe around what you dislike. Complaining and bitching are so simple. By the time we’re 5 or 6 years old, we have ‘em both down. You know, it’s ironic that those who fear and detest the “sub-human” often become the definition of sub-human. Is our collective mindset moving toward kill or be killed? Could be. Life, itself, is a slippery slope. When you combine guns with Jesus anything goes. I wonder if hard-core evangelicals ever ponder how much they have in common with the Taliban. Jeez, Devo was so right. Besides, it’s hard work to not settle for being lowest common denominator. Everyone is aware I love my pets but I also know we people gotta constantly work to be more than animals, more than just eat, drink, sleep, poop and pee, if, for no other reason, so we’ll be capable of taking care of animals. Cats and dogs, without responsible human intervention, can wreck a place pretty fast and not give a damn. They don’t know that the order we provide contributes to their chances of being happy and healthy. Or do they? If we put a stack of clean clothes on the bed in our house, guess where the cats want to sleep. Guess who would rather eat every snack out of a completely clean bowl. Guess who, apparently, would prefer to wait until the litter box is 100% clean. Hmm, okay, my point is sorta floating around a little, but I think you get it. I suppose if all efforts to right our ship fail we should, at least, feel privileged to be alive and witness the collapse of the country. Is that a silver lining?

NOT BAD NEWS. Brave Combo will be performing a real-time, live-streaming concert on Friday, September 4 from the beautiful grand stage at The Levitt Pavilion in Arlington, Texas. The show starts at 8:00 pm (CST). So, please tune in and watch us horse around for a couple of hours. The production will be fantastic, so you can stream us to your 80” TV and crank the volume and pretend you’re about a foot in front of us. If you run out and get a fog machine it will be even better. Did you know you can get a decent fog machine and a gallon of the fog juice of your choice for about $100-125? Add a couple of little lasers and a strobe light and you’re in business. Just a suggestion on how to make time at home more fun. I read that people are getting tired of making sour dough bread and visiting by Zooming, but don’t let it get you down. The novelty of staying at home all the time doesn’t have to wear off yet. Work that brain! Think harder. Get creative! Stay strong. Fighting the virus is our generation’s war and it involves literally everyone. That’s a pretty big event and there are ways to be an active participant in whatever the battle might be, like wearing a mask. At the very least it’s real-life entertainment. We can either cower on the sidelines or jump in the fray. We can either sit on the edge of the pool in fear or learn how to swim. The first step is, of course, to tune in on Friday, September 4 at 8:00pm (CST).

MORE NOT BAD NEWS. Okay, our calendar took a bunch of hits, but some festivals and concerts are still going to happen and new dates are actually being added, with all of the safety measures in effect. All shows will be outside. Some will be drive-in wing-dings, some will have squares or circles to stay within and some will require audience members to fly around with jet packs. So, check our itinerary often.

As I write this it’s 95 degrees outside (feels like 103) and very humid. I’m happy to be in my office and not on the way to Walmart. After this I plan to work on a couple of new videos which may upset some fans and make them leave the Brave Combo universe. If that happens, it’s still a free country for a little while, so I certainly respect your decision to bail and wish you the best. It’s unfortunate political differences are as raw and inflamed as they are, but someone in a position of power doesn’t know anything else and keeps stirring the pot. I’ll just leave you with this question and your answer will tell you all you need to know. Are you more MLK or KKK? Happy trails, everyone.

The Machine’s Pump Volume 23 – #7 – July 2020

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Now don’t freak out, but it’s gonna be a short newsletter this month. I just don’t have enough time to think about it more than a couple of hours, right now. Sorry. I know all of you live for my words of wisdom and uplifting points-of-view, but you’ll have to fall back on your inner strength for the next 30 days. My “to do” list is way beyond manageable. How can this be? Nothing has happened, gig-wise, for months. I’ve been home every day since, I don’t know, some date in the distant past and, for the most part, it’s been surprisingly okay. But I thought I would have the whole house painted by now. I haven’t even painted the old bench we inherited from our elderly neighbors when they passed away a few years ago. I also thought I could do a simple plumbing job in the main bathroom on one of my “free” days. I envisioned myself setting the day aside, running out to Lowe’s, putting on a mask, buying the exact right piece of pipe, coming back to the house, and installing it well, functionally, and aesthetically. Nothing’s happened. That day seems more unlikely now than it did four months ago. And I would be happy to have a plumber come to the house and fix us up, but the COVID-19 numbers in North Texas will not level off. Until they do, we can live with the ornery sink. I hope you are faring well, wherever you’re spending your days-in-and-days-out.

BIG SHOWS. Partly due to this special situation in which live music finds itself (an almost complete void, world-wide) and partly due to our general growing interest in such things, Brave Combo has some online concerts coming up you don’t want to miss. Check our itinerary often. As we get better at this we might just start live-streaming ourselves going through old BC memorabilia and talking about all the crazy and stupid stuff we’ve experienced over the decades. Or maybe we could show ourselves learning new dances, with masks, 6-feet apart. Or maybe I’ll decide one night to share my favorite quarantine recipe and compose a new song, using the recipe as the lyrics. You like spinach? Brussels Sprouts? Potato chips? Vegan mayonnaise? Turnip pickles (pink ones)? Garlic-free hummus? Bread? Great! Don’t mix these all together. These are just some things I eat. I eat a lot of other food, too. Like veggie corndogs and chik (fake chicken) patties and apples and lettuce and tomatoes and fake bacon and crackers and cookies. A cookie is a good snack or dessert item. I like cookies, if they’re good cookies and if I like them. I won’t eat a bad cookie. I eat different kinds of noodles, often with tofu, which I enjoy either fried or not and, of course, rice and beans and tortillas and salsa. The menu is endless, actually, even if you don’t eat meat. Or maybe I’ll live-stream a walk around Denton’s downtown square at midnight while listening to KUZU-FM (local terrestrial radio station) on a boom box. Would anyone tune in for shenanigans like that? Goofy cooking shows are probably rampantly cliche on the internet, so I probably will not go that direction after all. But I like the idea of walking around the square at the witching hour. You know our Confederate statue, Old Chalky, just packed up and left in the middle of the night recently, leaving behind a massive breath of fresh air where he stood for about 100 years.

Speaking of shows coming up, tune in on Friday, July 31 at 7 pm (CT) / 8 pm (ET) for THE BRAVE COMBO SHOW. It’s being presented by some producers out of Baltimore called Folkal Point through their association and collaboration with the venue An die Musik Live and Instant Seats (instantseats.com). But don’t worry about all that. Just click here and get your ticket. The performance is exclusive to this event. What a strange time we live in.

Our good friend, Tsunekichi (Tsune) Suzuki from the Japanese roots/rock/pop band, Sement Mixers, passed away on July 6. It’s impossible to describe how important this person and his band were to us at one time. I was lucky enough to produce one of their albums and they recorded my song, “A Night On Earth.” Tsune sang the lead vocal. Here are two videos of him performing his song, “Omoide.” One studio and one live. RIP Tsune. Time moves on, it appears.

HEY POLKA FANS! I was recently a guest on Jake Kouwe’s polka radio show, talking about polka (the music and the power). Jake leads the fabulous and fabulously hip Chardon Polka Band from Chardon, Ohio. They play Slovenian (Frank Yankovic, etc.) style and make it all sound fresh and cool, cause they’re all fresh and cool. Anyway, check out all the important things we had to say here.

Okay, as promised, a short newsletter, which, as it turns out, isn’t that short. That wandering food list took up a lot of room, but with very little substance. Anyway, I am going to bail out of this space now and launch myself into another; one full of mystery and sameness. Don’t forget to believe in science and smart people. I wish I had a Ferris Wheel in the back yard. Hooray for online tutorials!