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   On the last cruise, we became friends with a fantastic musician named Tim Starnes. He is from Chattanooga, and is a professional musician who sometimes tours with some pretty famous people, and also does studio work.
Here is our picture with him.


Several weeks after the cruise, we were laid over in Nashville, so we went downtown. We first went to Legends Corner where we saw a guy named Thom Shepard perform. He wrote the David Ball song, "Riding With Private Malone" and the Craig Morgan song, "Redneck Yacht Club". We spotted Mark Wills in the back of the room and got our picture taken with him.


   After an hour or so, we decided to walk down Broadway to see what else was going on. We saw several tour buses parked on the street and when we got to them we saw one of those velvet ropes, like they have in Hollywood, going into one of the venues with a long line of people behind it. We didn't bother getting in line because we figured the odds of us getting in were between 0 and 0. But as we walked on down the sidewalk we heard someone yelling "Eddie, Eddie". I thought, "That would be quite a coincidence if we ran into somebody we know here in Nashville". Then we spotted our new buddy from the cruise, Tim, coming down the sidewalk.
   He asked us if we were here for the showcase. I said "What showcase"? He said "Cody and some other country music stars were having a showcase there". Cody McCarver is the keyboard player for the "Confederate Railroad Band" and he has a couple of country hits himself. Then Tim said, "Come on. I'll get you in". It's a good thing nobody in the line behind the velvet rope had a feather, because they could have knocked us over with it as we walked by them and were escorted inside.
   One of the first country stars that we saw was "Cledus T Judd". He was a co-host for the event.


The other co-host was "Mr Belding" (Dennis Haskins) from "Saved By The Bell".


Here is Cody McCarver performing. That's Jimmy Dormire in the background. He's a great guitar player.


Cody spotted us and came over and told us how much he appreciated us coming "all the way to Nashville to be at his showcase". I didn't know what to say at first, but then I thought, no, I'm not going to lie. I said, "Man, we were just walking down the street and Tim ran us down". He looked a little disappointed and I quickly said, "But we're sure glad to be here", so the awkward moment passed quickly. We saw him in Knoxville a few weeks later and he told his buddies that story and we all got a laugh out of it.
   Several other new country stars performed as well.




This is Amanda Hinkel.


And this is Daryle Singletary, who performed several songs.


About half way through the the night, Danny Shirley, Confederate Railroad's lead singer, came strolling in. He came over to where we were and talked to us a bunch. Then Mark Wills came in and he and Danny stood there beside us, talking up a storm. How cool is that?


I didn't have to move to take this picture. This is where we were all standing. Danny did a radio interview during the time he was there and they gave him some very nice T shirts, which he gave to us before he left. It sure is nice to be liked.

Sorry to post such a long blog but nights like this don't happen very often and I wanted to post quite a bit about it. Here is one more picture of our buddy, Tim, playing fiddle on stage. He also played harmonica and lap steel.

Here is a view from the top deck of the ship, just before we left port.

 

 

That night we saw a show in the ships main theater. Here are some pics.

 

 

 

 

The next day we saw an ice carving show on deck.

 

 

Here is the deck.

 

 

We went to the Confederate Railroad  Band's acoustic show. The guy on the left is Rusty Hendrix, their new lead guitar player. He toured with Sammy Kershaw for many years.

 

 

Here is our group with the leader of the band, Danny Shirley.

 

 

Our first stop was in Puerto Rico, near where Christopher Columbus first landed. Here is a statue of him.

 

 

This is the old fort.

 

 

And here is the ship in the dock in Puerto Rico.

 

We are about to arrive at Port Everglades. We are heading out on a Caribbean cruise. It's another Confederate Railroad Band Cruise. We are going with Tracy's daughter, (Brittany) her mom, (Sue) and our friends Sandy and Shyla. We are going to San Juan, St. Thomas, Dominican Republic, and Nassau, Bahamas. Hope to post some blogs and pictures when we get back.

   We had another enjoyable weekend at home this past weekend. Saturday, we got together with the family including our Great-Nieces and Nephews from South Carolina. We played with the horses, played chess and basketball, and fixed homemade pizza for dinner. Here is a picture of our future Rock Star, Great-Nephew, Nolan.

 

 

Sunday, we went to our friends, Sandy and Shila's house and decorated pumpkins. We had the news turned on and they were reporting on all of the negative campaigning, and our pumpkin got a little sick of it.

 

Before we left home yesterday, we stopped by the early polls and voted. Here is the new video from Andy, Opie, and Fonzie.

 

 

   We had an unexpected visitor recently. Most Sundays, when we are home, we have dinner with the family. Most of them still attend the same country church that they grew up in, which is very near our house. We like to have dinner ready and they stop by after church. We all have dinner and great Sunday afternoon conversations together. (By the way, here in the South, many of us call the noon meal "dinner" and the evening meal "supper".) Anyway, a couple of Sundays ago, after everyone had eaten and visited for a couple of hours, people began to leave, and soon only Tracy, her daughter Brittany, and myself were left sitting around with nothing to do. I said, "let's go out to the garage and clean and straighten it up". They agreed and I walked outside first. When I turned around to wait for them I saw this.

My first thought was, I wonder who stuck this rubber snake on the light switch as they were leaving. My second thought was, hey, I'll scare Tracy with this. So I yelled, "Honey, are you about ready to come out"? Well, just about the time she walked out of the door I realised, IT'S A REAL SNAKE! I grabbed her and pulled her away from the door. I know it's just a black snake but they can still bite. I took out my cell phone and snapped this picture. Our little visitor then crawled back down the wall using the edges, of the rocks as little ledges, and was soon back in the woods.

We got to jam with some great musicians this past weekend. Here is our version of the Ventures song, "Wipe Out". Yes, I'm the fat guy on the drums.