After I completed my tour of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, my next stop would be at the FAME Studios. FAME is the place that started it all for the music scene in Muscle Shoals. It was started by a man named Rick Hall. He is still active in the day to day operations of …
Author Archives: elvisgumby
Muscle Shoals Trip – Part 1
About 3 years ago when I was traveling to Huntsville, Alabama, I went through Muscle Shoals. If I had ever been through there before, I hadn’t noticed it. I remember hearing about Muscle Shoals and the “Muscle Shoals sound” as it related to some of the music I heard when I was growing up. But …
Communion Bread
There are a variety of ways that churches do communion. I have spent my entire life in the United Methodist church and we typically do communion once a month. In all of the communion services I have participated in, we have always gone to the front of the church to be served. Beyond that, there …
Riding the Train in Denmark
The first train trip I ever took was in Denmark. I flew into Copenhagen and took the train to Odense which is about 2 hours away. I had never been to Denmark before and was on a business trip with a friend. She was travelling there from business in Germany and I was coming directly …
Dessert in Singapore
I have written about my trip to China before. I have talked about Chinese tea and being chased by monkeys. I haven’t mentioned that this two week trip also included a visit to Singapore. When they told me about a visit to Singapore, I didn’t have a good feel for where that was in relationship …
Fruit Drinks
Some time ago, I ran into a friend who was drinking a Minute Maid Orange drink. She mentioned that she was loading up on fruit juice. She actually had two cartons of Minute Maid fruit drinks with her. I asked her to look at the list of ingredients on the label. I explained that the …
Saturday Morning Text
I know better than to do this, but I just can’t help myself. I received a text message from someone I obviously don’t know and I decided to respond like the message was for me. The only deception in my first responses was that I was not the person they thought they were texting. I …
Pete Seeger and the Banjo
When I was a kid, my parents bought me a banjo. I had been playing ukulele for several years and had started playing guitar. But I was strictly a rhythm guitar player. I had no fingerpicking skills. When I started trying to play the banjo, I quickly became frustrated. I never felt comfortable enough with …
5 Albums from My Parent’s Collection
When I was growing up, my parents had a relatively large record collection. I would occasionally look through it to see what kind of things they listened to. Sometimes I would find something worth checking out. There are a handful of albums that I found in my parents’ record collection that had a lasting influence …
Notes on The Belly of the Whale
I have written music off and on throughout my life. Most of the things I did early in my life weren’t work keeping around. There are bits and pieces of this music stored away in drawers at my father’s house but it’s really not worth digging up. Sometime around 1998 or 1999, I started work …