January

Sam Shaber will appear at Eddie's Attic in Decatur on January 20th, with Life in General (Eddie's Attic,  515 N. McDonough St. 8:00 PM  http://www.eddiesattic.com 404-377-4976)

Happy New Year! It's that time again - time to sit back, put your phone on "do not disturb" (or hell, just unplug the damn thing,) lock your office door, pull the blinds, sit the kids in front of a Rugrats video, and read the compelling inner-workings of my mind. Thank god this only happens once a month, eh?

I'm writing to you from a tiny little internet cafe/coffee shop in Manhattan attached to a hair salon. Yes, you heard right. Not sure which part of this lovely establishment came first although I must admit the luxury of drinking a cappuccino while waiting for hair dye to set is something I look forward to in my semiannual visits to the Fabulous Flo on Staten Island. (Flo makes my hair GLOW folks - she is the queen... Go Flo...) Few people would be worth schlepping to Staten Island for, but Flo is the woman.

But alas, Flo is not here in this little corner on 13th Street. And neither is anyone else for that matter - the woman playing computer games on the terminal in the window when I walked in turned out to also be the employee and whipped me up my steamed milk with Amaretto very agreeably before charging me $3.25 for it and sitting back down. And we have WKTU on the radio in here which for those of you who don't know is the big dance station in NYC. IN fact it was also the big dance station when I got my first clock radio at age 6 and became addicted to the dark, sexy sounds of disco - but I've already covered that recently, I believe.

So I'm sipping my steamed milk and I'm thinking, Whoa. $3.25 for some milk and flavor. What is that? I could eat a whole meal in my apartment for free and listen to any music I want to and even get to sit in a more comfortable chair than this weird low flat bench thing I'm on in here. I could pad around in my slippers and turn the tv on and off and practice the new song I wrote this morning and even clean up my desk and Tilex the bathroom and change the bedsheets and dusbust the hallway and...

OH I see. So that's why it's worth $3.25 to sit in this hair/coffee shop listening to Beyonce. Because I CAN'T do anything else but accomplish the task at hand. Also there is something to be said for getting out in the world. I find that being on the road so much means than when I come home, I literally plant myself at home for days. All I do is change pajamas from time to time to keep things interesting. But why live in a city if you're going to hibernate? You should go out, see a show, meet some people, type a letter in a hair salon - enlarge your world.

Plus I don't have bottles of Amaretto syrup and a milk steamer in my house and I have to say it is one of the great luxuries of life to drink this stuff. I mean really - a tall glass of hot sweet milk - there is nothing chic or impressive about that, so I can't possibly be furthering my social reputation by drinking it, and it certainly isn't doing my body any good.

Plus it's a guilty pleasure because it was introduced to me by an ex-boyfriend. I didn't get much else out of the relationship but I did get a discovery of steamed milk drinks. Very different from another ex who taught me how to coil a guitar cable properly. Not quite as luxurious a gift, but helpful nevertheless. (However, he also insisted that pepper is a healthier flavor equivalent for salt. He almost had me on that one too, but luckily I got away just in time...) Hard to say whether these little discoveries made the relationships worthwhile, but there you go.

SO December was quite a month - from New York to Seattle and back again with many many stops in between. And everywhere we went, Christmas bells were ringing, carols playing, lights flashing, and what are these huge blow-up snowmen all about? They light up too! I guess it's not a New York City thing because I had never seen so many of them before - blowing dangerously in the wind as though they might let go and fly up in to the night sky at any moment, only to land on some poor unsuspecting dolphin in some far away ocean. Killed by Frosty. That would be so tragic.

I did manage to do some Christmas shopping along the way - got some great snowman earmuffs in Helena, MT for my mom - the carrot noses stick straight out to the sides like Rosie the maid from the Jetsons (just to give you a visual.) So if you ever see a small woman with bright white hair and little orange felt antennae sticking out her ears, you can say Hi Sam's Mom!

I got a great suede jacket for $10 in a thrift store in San Francisco for George - THAT is a good day folks. Plus it's a very cool thrift store called Out of the Closet benefiting AIDS causes. FIND them and SHOP there when in the Bay Area - there are a few of them. Genius.  And my sister got signed CDs from Ellis who I did an amazing show with in St. Paul and from Trina Hamlin who I didn't actually play with, but did meet for a somewhat bizarre lunch of African food in Minneapolis one day.  Yet another trip to the Twin Cities without running into Prince. How many times... My cousins got some little stuffed animals from a gas station in Ohio and of course we mustn't forget the talking Gorilla from Phoenix - again for George.

The problem with sending George all these little knick knacks from the road - funny to me at the time - is that then of course I come home and there they are - adding to the already high piles in our apartment. But we have little pathways dug out for me to pad along in my slippers during the hibernation period so we work through it.

SO - I have some shows! Yes - just to cut right to the point, right? Nothing extraneous here folks. OK, so much of January will be spent heading down south on the east coast - with fun shows in Greensboro, Charlottesville, Cary, Danville, Charlotte, my fave haunt Eddie's Attic in Decatur, and kicking the trip off with a great show at Jammin Java in Vienna, VA - my first return to the DC area since the successful Dan Bern show at Wolftrap in October - call for reservations for this show! I also have an exciting week of shows with my Trio coming up at the end of the month - this includes the amazing David Patterson on electric guitar (Shawn Mullins) and Richard Gates on bass (Patty Larkin, Suzanne Vega, Paula Cole, among others.) We will be a groovin', 3-part harmony singin', amazin' experience so I hope you can join us in NYC, Boston, Burlington, or Troy for that show.

And the month kicks off this week - Friday in fact - at very cool The Space in Hamden, CT. Come drink 10,000 kinds of tea, check out the strange and wonderful tchatzki's (sp?) on the walls, and maybe hear me play a song with a Scottish accent... if you're good... And many many thanks to everyone who made the December tour so wonderful - thanks to Liz, Travis, Nicole, Keke, Erin and all the volunteers who hung posters and brought out the peeps! We survived North Dakota and Idaho and New Mexico and had a wonderful time. And now it's time to pack up the iBook, put the milk glass in the dish bin, and head home to send this off to you. Hope to see you out there!

-Sam & Co.

www.samshaber.com
www.smgrecords.com