HI!

Upon receiving Lydia's Facebook message about this business I figured the best way to show I was on-board was to just make a post. I'm not exactly sure what to fill y'all in on, so I suppose I might as well just paint a picture of Ike's summer, then go bug mom and/or Danie and/or Janet to come post here too.

So first thing's first: I love my college and I love living in the Twin Cities. Conversely, I'm not overly enthused with Iowa. Don't get me wrong, I love the family farm, I love being home, I love being able to see the stars and not hear traffic constantly. I even love seeing a handful of my old friends from high school. However, I miss my friends from college (my close friend/former roomate Junior, all my fraternity brothers) considerably more, as well as the city in general. I like having gut-dissolving fast food and convenience stores at my fingertips, I miss Minneapolis clubs, I miss thrift stores, I miss the used book store down the street from my college (they stock comic books!)
So the point is this has been a tough summer for me. I'm not trying to whine, I'm just telling it like it is. The whole idea of coming home this summer was to work and to play with my band--hopefully do lots of gigs. Instead I couldn't work for the first month and a half because it rained so much (for awhile I feared we were going to have to start growing rice) and I was only able to book one show for No Direction. Weaksauce indeed.

Hasn't been all bad though.
We took a trip to Illinois to see the Adams side of the family, and then went back again a couple weeks ago for an art show.
My dad's little sister Kathy is friends with a guy that owns a gallery in Bloomington, Illinois, so she was able to work out a showing for Mom and Dad. The show was called Paper Dreams and featured both flat and 3D watercolors by my dad, and a host of needlepoints by my mom. Music was provided by Uncle George and his band--and I sat in with them. It was chill, bluesy, jazzy atmospheric sort of music so as not to distract from the art. I felt like I was improvising on a Miles Davis record (obviously it wasn't that good, but you know what I mean) and it was a nice change from power chords and distortion. I even got to sneak in some country licks!
The night ended with me going out with some friends from my old Montessori school that came up for the show. That, in my mind, makes for a winning night.

Oh, and that story reminds me--
It's prolly worth mentioning that I have a mohawk now. My buddy Johnny gave it to me on a whim one day about three weeks ago, and I liked it enough I decided to keep it. So for my last story, imagine 3 30-40 something musicians jamming some jazzy stuff on acoustic guitar/thumb piano, congas, and bass, and one young kind on electric guitar playing blues and jazz licks with a big tall mohawk.
I thought that might be a good image to leave you all with. Sorry I'm so long winded!

Peace out,
Ike

P.S.
I apologize for crappy grammar and/or spelling. I'm skipping proofreading to go help my parents make tamales...