Happy Birthday, Bill!

Well, it's that time of year again, when the bundle of pure energy barely contained in human form has clocked another year on the planet. As far as I can tell, he's only sped up as he gets older.

I like writing birthday posts because I get to think about all the things the birthday person does, all the things he is.

He's strong.

He's sweet.

He's funny.

He's somebody people want to be with. Leading a field trip on Goon Island.

He's ebullient! He's where the party is.

 

He's deadly with a rock. And he's teaching Liam to be, too. 

He's a beer and pub coinnassoower. Never could spell that right, so why start now? 

He says, "Life's too short to drink bad beer." And he's right.

He's music, too, and sometimes most of all. 

He comes by that honestly. 

Lest you think he only plays bass...

OK, that's enough on that one. Don't touch it. Don't even look at it.

He's a good good daddy. 

My birthday wish for you is that you stand up, reach out with that long arm and good glove, and finally catch your dream.  Take that leap that only you can take. Write that book that only you could write.

"Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings."--Andre Gide

I'd say you're well on your way. Happy birthday, Bill Thompson III!

Happy Birthday Bill!

It's a rainy cool night. I'm alone in the volcanic highlands of Costa Rica, missing my family. 

As you read this, it's Bill's birthday, and I'm trying to get home. Planes, trains and automobiles. It feels funny to be gone on his birthday, but some things can't be helped. I'll stagger in sometime tonight, God willing and my car ain't entombed in ice, and I'll try to make it all up to him before I take off for Massachusetts again on Friday. No rest for the wicked.

On Saturday, we were riding along through these beautiful tropical highlands and everybody was looking out the window grooving on the scenery. And I pulled out our Rain Crows CD, Dream of Flying Dream, and put it on the bus sound system. It felt so good to share our homemade music with all these great folks on my Costa Rica trip. And I sat there listening, thinking how lucky I am to have Bill in my life, because without his energy and vision and drive to get things done (the first two are fine, but nothing without the third), we wouldn't have a band or two CD's or any gigs to play or any original music to share. He taught himself how to record and produce music in our basement. And here I am handing out the CD's we made. That's something, and someone, to be thankful for. 

The Rain Crows, present incarnation. From left, Bill, Julie, John Borchard (pedal steel, dobro, guitar), Craig Gibbs (bass, guitar), Wendy Clark (lead vocal, keyboards), Skip Trask (drums). Always and ever missing Jessie Munson, fiddler supreme, Rain Crow for life.

This winter, he's been grilling, building fires in the snow. Because first and foremost, he's a caveman. 

Fire, good.

He dreams of the next place he'll go. Papua New Guinea? Or someplace further flung? Someone will ask him to go to the moon someday, and he'll say yes.

He dreams of summer days, Pirates games with the kids. How fleeting those kid-filled summers have been. Maybe we'll get one more.

He shows people birds. Every day, in some way, he shows people birds. That's a gift he can't help but give.

And speaking of giving, he gave me these two people. We get to launch them out into the little creek which flows into the river of life. And then we will watch them sail out to sea on their own. I can buy him a present, bake him a cake, but that is the greatest gift of all.

Happy birthday, Bill. 

Happy Birthday, Bill!

It's that time again, that cold dank rainy/snowy/precipity time in March when the scent of cooking pork ribs and cake rises up from the Indigo Hill kitchen. It is Bill of the Birds' birfday.

photo by Timothy Ryan, who has an eye.

Thing is, he is in San Diego ogling crested magpie jays and western bluebirds for his birthday, which is today. He's  working a bird festival. I think he's taking a bunch of kids birding today. It's what he was made to do. That's OK. He had enough birthday last year to last him for several.

I thought it would be fun to revisit last year's big party, which was ossum beyond ossum. It's the party he's not having this year.

I had a lot of help in pulling the party off. Wendy Clark and Jen and John Sauter came over and worked decorating magic on the Galley's party space. There were flowers and pictures of Bill everywhere. And the Galley staff was terrific.

I'm so thrilled that Marietta has a wonderful place like The Galley and the Adelphia Music Hall, where The Rain Crows are wont to play.

We wont to play there more.

I got a big blowup picture of Dave Tipling's shot of Bill, doin' what he likes to do best--lifting a pint at an English pub.

the RealBillies came over from Athens to play, and they were ridiculously great. There were all these Telecasters going full tilt 

and the beautiful voice of Mimi Hart rang out through the room

and then the beautiful voice of Elsa Thompson did, too.

I think she had as good a time as Bill did.

Bill's best music friend John Kogge came and they played together which was terrific. They played together in the Cenozoic Age.

The music flowed and flowed. Kids danced and danced.

Black Bart showed up in costume. Anybody recognize this specimen (the big male)?

Phoebe got hijacked by Vinnie, with Oona and Erin looking on. I love the Eew face!!

The cake was over the top CakeBoss redonk. Todd Horvath of Bittersweet's Chocolate and Pastry in Canton, Ohio made a mocha cake with coconut cream filling and a fondant icing that was a perfect replica of Bill's new Samik hollowbody. The strap is chocolate. Everything edible. And so delicious.

Bill loved his party, seeing all his friends from near and far. I think the best birthday present, though, was the newly-pressed copies of The Rain Crows' CD, "Looks Like Rain." Hard to believe our CD will be a year old today, too!

We've told "Looks Like Rain" that she will soon have a little brother or sister. "Dream of Flying Dream" is well on its way to being realized. And with all that's happened in this year, that is cause for celebration.

Celebration of the drive and vision of a very special man. A great father and husband, an imbiber of life, and an exemplary human being. He moves through the world, hair on fire, leaping to the next square, then the next...

Happy birthday, Bill!! Where'd you get the little monkey?

Pirates, if you could see your way clear to not breaking his heart this year....

that'd be greaaaaat.

Happy Birthday, Bill Thompson III!

He has the most marvelous eyes, crowned by strong dark brows. Perhaps not many people notice them, hidden as they are behind glasses, but I do. They speak of determination. Sometimes I think of Bill as pure determination, barely contained in flesh and bone. I look at the odds he’s faced and the things he’s accomplished and it’s clear to me that the first metaphor I came up with when I met him-- a human locomotive—is still the most accurate. You stand back and wave as he rumbles by. Or if you’re going along for the ride, you hang on real tight.

Seamus Waxwing, falling asleep in Daddy's warm hand

That such an imposing man should love birds, the most airily delicate of creatures, is part of his appeal. It’s the love of birds we share, and a mutual tendency to put that love into words, that threw me onto his train, a rather unlikely stowaway in his fast-paced life.

And then there was music. Birds may have started it, but music sealed the deal between us. He grew up immersed in it, just one in a series of great legacies from Bill and Elsa. 

That's enough on that one. Don't even look at it.

  Music's coming out of him in waves now, unleashed by a perfect cyclone of creative collaborators (Thank you, Rain Crows!!), new recording technology and years of pent-up desire.

Guitarzan, laying down one of approximately 71,000 guitar tracks for The Rain Crows' "Looks Like Rain" for David Traugh's discerning ear.

He's worked very hard and incredibly fast to realize this passion, and as you read this we just got eight big boxes full of our new CD to show for it. Sixteen songs, all original, in an album from a band that played its first barely-rehearsed gig in September 2010. We recorded rough tracks in a Lakeside hotel barely a year ago, and worked to refine them before going into the studio in December 2011. Determination. A product to show for it.  Far and away the best birthday present a guy could give himself!

cover photo by Michael Northrup; design by Joe Parisi 

All that, and a wonderful dad to Phoebe and Liam. It seems they got the best parts of him-creativity and music and art and humor and a dash of athleticism, too.  In an ideal world, we'd all be at Pirates' Spring Training in Bradenton, FL right now, but there's lots of fun and work to do here. We'll look forward to a besbol summer.

I am humbled and grateful to still be riding Bill Thompson’s train, to be here to keep shoveling coal into the firebox. I’m not sure what his next destination will be, but you can bet I’ll be hanging on for the ride.

photo by Mitch Casey

Photo by David Tipling

Thank goodness for beer. It mellows him out. A bit.

Happy birthday, Bill. Best guy I know.

Happy Birthday, Bill!

It has been a long winter. Beautiful, if somewhat harsh.



It seems fitting that you should have been born on the brink of spring.



Like springtime, you bring fun


music

dance


joy

and love.


Soon it will be time to take to the woods again


to look for the riches hidden all around us.

Remember us in all your travels


and hurry home


to find what waits for you here.