It's that time of year, folks, when The Rough & Tumble is poor and too tired to play shows. Don't worry, this happens every year. And every year we get through it a little better than we did the year before, but come November, we find ourselves with only enough energy to sit on a couch in the evenings with a book or a Netflix and not step foot outside the door. This is not an ideal frame of mind when you're a teeny tiny traveling folk band and your whole job is basically stepping foot outside your door. Don't worry too much about us, we've only got a few shows left in the year before we make for Florida like the snowbirds we secretly are. And they're actually going to be good shows so if we've gotta leave the camper, it would be for these shows.
But we got bills to pay and bread to make and truthfully tonight we're eating yellowed kale and wilted broccoli, so this is the time of year when we have no other option than to start pawning our stuff. We're only kind of joking about that. As many of you know we've got a whole online store brimming to the top with CD's, T-Shirts, Kazoos and so many more things that were practically made to stuff in a stocking! We even have a few Cook and Coloring Books left that need to be gone before the end of the year. Repeat: THEY NEED TO BE GONE BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR. So, to sweeten the deal, we're going to throw in a free Puddle sticker if you order anything from our store now through the end of the year. Tis the season for The R&T swag.
In honor of this time of year, this week on Double Americana we're pulling out the old Elizabeth Cotten song, "Shake Sugaree," a song about pawning everything you've got just to pay rent. It's a really fun song and if you've never heard Elizabeth Cotten perform it, do yourself a favor and go listen to it. It's a song about having a hand of bad luck and while we feel incredibly lucky (in fact that yellowed kale and wilted broccoli has been divinely incorporated into a buffalo tofu scramble over rice) it's sometimes fun to sing your bad fortune away before the new year comes. At least as far away as our voices will carry.
So get on over to the store and get on out to a show this month!