Had a great time at the SandTrap.  I only hope that our fans that braved the elements had as much fun as we did.  Not the most ideal conditions for a night out.  I pray everyone made it home safely.   

 Because we have so many songs that we have played over the years it is always so difficult to figure out what songs to play.  Luckily I am not the poor son of a gun that has this task.  We started passing around a "wish list" of our song repertoire.  We let you help us determine some of the songs we should play.  The band loves doing this.  It makes it fun when you do not know what you will be playing.  We end up playing songs that we haven't played in years.  Makes it so challenging to play music that we haven't worked on for a while.

The dance floor was full during the entire evening at the SandTrap.  Everyone seemed to be having fun.  Hopefully we accomplished our goal to have you enjoy our music as much as we enjoy playing it.  I had a blast!!  I couldn't of had fun without you.  Thank you.

Tom

Wednesday the 22nd of January was the opening of a 5-city tour of the east coast by a 15-piece band comprised of members of Fleet Foxes, Beach House, the Walkmen, Grizzly Bear, Fairport Convention and Lower Den (among others) at the Union Station venue on Spring Garden Street in Philly.

The show was based on a '70's breakthrough album by Gene Clark, an original member of the '60's folk-rock band The Byrds, which also included David Crosby.  Clark's album, called "No Other," has recently been recognized as somewhat of an undiscovered classic.   It featured only 8 songs, representing a wide range of musical styles and an almost orchestrated studio mix.

The all-star band assembled for the tribute tour included a 4-person vocal chorus, 4 different solo vocalists, 2 keyboardists, 3 guitarists, a bassist and drummer.  For one tune, originally recorded with 3 bass guitars overdubbed to create full bass chords, the show included 3 bassists playing the harmonizing parts. 

The show ended with a 2-song encore of Byrds' tunes, including a tremendous cover of Eight Miles High.  The vocal mix blew everyone away!

If you get a chance, give a listen to the LP "No Other" by Gene Clark.  It was recently re-released on CD and is quite a good listen. -- Smoky (yes; the bassist!) 

We played two dates in December -- the Sandtrap in Limerick and a private Christmas Party in Clayton, Delaware.

The 'Trap was awesome, as always; the great food and cheer was all around, and TLE featured a guest vocalist, Samantha Hoffman.  Sam is a friend of keyboardist Eric Stimmler and his family.  He had found out that she could really sing, and asked her to do a couple of songs with us at the Sandtrap.  She was great! - Though her back-up band (yes; THAT back-up band) could have been better...At practice, we had tried one of her tunes in 3 different keys to find the best one for her vocal range.  This, it turned out, ended up causing a bit of confusion 'live'.... interestingly enough, the rhythm-guitarist-who-shall-not-be-named found his missing kaypo  as the song ended.  Oops.  Look for Sam to join us for an encore some time soon -- and at least 4 of us in the back-up band will play in the same key; promise!

The other event was an annual Christmas Party for a Dover, Delaware area Fire company.  This was on December 14th; you may recall this was the day of the ice storm in the Phila-Pottstown area... We navigated our way  S  L  O  W  L  Y  through the building snow, and found that it was raining south of the PA/Delaware line.  What a break!  The party was a blast; lots of dancers and great rock n roll!  We went back to one of our traditions and placed our song list on the tables; guests were asked to request any song from it that they wanted to hear.  (The band has to be quick on our feet to do this, as there are about 120 songs ---- and we don't get to play all of them a lot!)  This went over quite well, and the party - and especially the food - was super. 

The real adventure was the return trip, and what happened to Smoky (the bassist) afterwards.  Heading back north around 1:30 AM, roads were a bit dicey; Buddy did a masterful job of getting us back to Left Edge HQ (Jack's house) safely.  We found that we had to trudge through a half-inch ice blanket on top of about 5" of snow, though, and it took a while to clear the cars of it before we could head home.  I (Smoky) was digging through the ice, trying to locate my PT Cruiser as Buddy, Eric and Tom left.  By this time it was around 4:15 or so...  When I was leaving, I quickly found that the car wanted to follow gravity rather than the direction I pointed it... unfortunately, where I was parked was slanted down INTO Jack's back yard, rather than towards the road.  After several futile attempts to defy gravity and get to Farmington Avenue rather than Jack's picnic pavilion, I/we gave up, and I crashed (in a spare bedroom, rather than into a pole or an abutment, fortunately) at Jack's...  My wife rescued me Sunday morning, and the next day we were able to drag the PT out.   Just another day/night/morning in the life of a rock star.  LOL!

So it is written, so let it be done! - Smoky P

Well it's taken a lot of thinking but our website is starting to come around.  We have a new supplier now.  Our other supplier eliminated our plan because of a server problem.  Oh well.  It's amazing that all of the things I HATED about our old website I now hate because our new website isn't like that.  Our old website used to screw you around constantly.  You wanted to do something, labored hours doing it, then post it and it's either not there or it looks different.  Guess what, our new website is the same way.  Our old website used Microsoft Word.   Our new website isn't compatable with Word.  This, I was told, is why I was having some issues with our new site.  Guess what.  I'm using plain text and I'm still having issues with our new site.  Guess it's destiny.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't have a clue as to what I'm doing.  But I'm trying to learn.  (I have been learning for 13 years now).  I am actually working on another program which allows you to do almost anything with your site.  This is very complicated.  Steep learning curve.  If I ever actually understand the program you should see a brand new version of our site once I publish it.  You will just have to be patient and maybe someday it will happen.  Thanks for hanging in there.