Sorry for the length of this and for the cross posting on several tribes, but after many agonizing months, we've made the really hard decision that we're going to be leaving California in the next month or so, probably not to return. If we do return, it won't be for several years...

The short version of the back story is that I was laid off from my engineering tech job last May. We've been living mainly off our savings and stock sales since then, but you can only go so long that way. I've been doing the high tech shuffle here in the "Valley of the Molten Sand" since '82 and I'm simply burned out on it... After this most recent lay off with me at 47 years old, as my mental and physical abilities have changed with age, I've lost my confidence to be employed in the only field I've worked in since entering adulthood. Now, if I even seriously think about re-entering the high tech workforce, I tense up to the point of starting to physically shake and tears start welling up... The few interviews I have forced myself to go on haven't turned out very well since it's pretty hard to sell oneself to a potential employer when one doesn't believe in oneself...

Anyway, as our resources here are starting to dwindle, we've got to do something soon or we'll wind up losing the equity in our house. To that end, we've made the exceedingly tough decision to sell our house here in San Jose and buy a house free-and-clear on more land back east, probably in the Ozark foothills of northern Arkansas. The whole financial equation changes drastically with no mortgage payments...

Now, before any of you get started on ribbing me about Arkansas, let me just say that I don't take it too well... Or, to practice for once I get there, "Ah don't cotton too kindly to folks sayin' thangs 'bout where Ah'm a'going an Ah ain't gonna stand fer it!" (I'm sure it won't take too long for me to get my Southern Drawl back... too bad it comes with all the other southern drawbacks.) I'm also working on getting one of my aunts to legally adopt Sherri... I mean, we're already married, but we'd fit in a smidge better if'n she was my cousin, too...

So, Jingly Bits will no longer be "bringing music to the quieter corners of the shire" at NCRF or any of the smaller circuit faires in California... We'd like to thank Molly for giving us the opportunity to grace the Curtain Call stage at Casa for the last couple of years. It was cool having Martin and the Naughty Minstrels as our warmup band last year... They did a pretty good job, but had a tendancy to lull the audience to sleep and then we'd get to wake them up!

Casa was (and always will be) our home faire. We started participating there as Friends of Faire under REC in 2003 and Arline (recently retired Mistress of the FOF Buttery) told Donnie (GM of Danse Macabre) that there was a new mandolin player in town... Danse Macabre asked me to "audition" and I was told by someone that "it's such an honour to be invited to join Danse Macabre!" (You know who you are and I've been paying for your statement ever since, thank you very much.) My "audition," which was possibly the only one ever given to a musician joining Northern Danse Macabre, consisted of Donnie and Ted asking:

"Can you play an A-minor?"
me: *bling*
D&T: "Can you play an E-minor?"
me: *bling*
D&T: "Can you play a D-minor?"
me: *bling*
D&T: "You're in the band!"

We jazzed up the Bones tunes and hit the streets of Casa hard, with mandolin machine heads pointing to the sky... That was in 2003, and I pushed the Bones to do more shows in 2004. We wound up doing 26 weekends of faire in 2004, mostly as Macabre and with me acting as GM on several occasions. Sherri and I started up Jingly Bits at SLO in 2005 because organizing the Bones to work as many shows as we wanted to was prohibitive. We also wanted to be out on the streets interacting with our patrons more than is customary when one is Dead...

Jingly Bits has been playing the streets and stages of events from Pembrooke, Willits, Calaveras, and Ione, and down to SLO, Visalia, Fresno and Bakersfield ever since. During that time, if we've offended anyone's senses or historical sensibilities and thus made their snobbish teeth itch, I would like to apologize. I won't actually apologize, but really, I'd like to... Personally, I've never been snobbishly period, though I have been periodically snobbish... Even though many of our songs weren't exactly period, (can you say "Flogging Molly?") I think we brought a lot of high energy to all of our performances. I know we put everything we could into them and the folks that did watch us seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Speaking of folks watching us, I'd also like to take a moment to thank all our fans... Oh, the appreciative roar of the crowd and the loving crush of our adoring fans... To all our fans, we're going to miss both of you terribly...

Anyway, no more Jingly Bits at faires in northern California,

BUT!!!

You have ONE LAST chance to catch us before we go. The day after we made the excruciating decision to leave, we were offered a paying pub gig! On St. Patrick's Day, Monday, March 17th, Jingly Bits will be giving their final performance in California. From 6pm until at least 8pm, we will be on the patio of O'Flaherty's Irish Pub in downtown San Jose. It's a pub, after all, so Master Thomas unfortunately can't be there with us, but we would be honored if some of you were to make it to the show to see us off.

It's hard to believe our run as Jingly Bits is over in California, but it is. We WILL be continuing on, and are already gatelisted for a faire in April in Joplin, Missouri. Once we get settled in after the move, there are several other faires within a hundred mile radius... We'll also probably try to work TRF at some point. There are also numerous SCA events in the area... I'm going to be taking some of the techie stuff I can do and apply it to woodworking and making period furniture, games, toys, weapons, and household items that would fit in at ren faires, SCA events and even Civil War re-enactments. (One of my prototype folding chairs and 20 of my lucets were supposed to be with a vendor at the Sonora Celtic Faire this weekend, by the way, but we've not heard how they did or if the vendor even made it there...) When or if we come back to CA, it might very well be as vendors...

Again, sorry this is so long winded, but you'd expect nothing less from me, would you? So, I'll sign off now... It would be far too strange and too painfully strained to hear or read blogs about how great this faire was or how fantastic the after-hours stuff was at that faire or what's planned for the other faire... To that end, I'll be leaving all the NorCal faire related tribes I'm part of and will be deleting most of the faire folks on my friends list. No offense is meant, but it would be too painful to be reminded over and over again of what we had to leave behind... If you notice your friend count dropping by one in the next few days, it was probably me...

Thanks to all that have made this long strange trip as wild a ride as it has been... We'd love to see some of you at O'Flaherty's on St. Patrick's Day. If you can't make, that's fine and understandable and we'll just wish nothing but the best for you as you rot in Hell... If you can make it, that'd be great! (If you do go, park in the garage across San Pedro street from the pub and get the barkeep to validate your ticket...)

Take care and may all your journeys be safe ones, where ever they might take you.

Goodbye, my friends...
cid