Well! I'm glad to see the tzble even if no one is evident around it at the moment. I'll just pour myself a mug - thanks for the steaming pot, Jerry - and sit here and wait for someone to pop back in. I have something on my mind.

This Saturday night I have committed to doing a 20 minute set at our first-of-the-season folk club, Gold Street Music.

Since I am an uncomfortable performer I wouldn't have chosen to do it but I'm the booker for the performers and being in the middle of summer there are so many people out of town that I panicked about getting five sets.

In the 'uncomfortable performer' phrase is my problem. I'm not sure where it started but I really do not like to perform. I love to jam and when I'm with friends I love to sing but I don't like to get up on stage. I've done quite a lot of it but almost entirely in support of a lead player or singer. I have never sung on stage. - I take that back- at our local folk festival each year there is a Songwriter's Showcawe and one year my brother was visiting and he really wanted to sing a couple of songs I wrote so I did it. But that was at least 15 years ago and I was most uncomfortable.

Oh. And last year at the first Gold Street Music I joined a Buddy Tabor set and sang Hank William's song 'Dear Brother'...

I know some of the tricks, of course. If I find myself roped into doing something the one thing I make sure of is that the audience does NOT how nervous I am. Worse than performing itself would be the knowledge that people are feeling sorry for me. So on stage my persona is pretty breezy.

This year I will be surrounded by good musicians and that will help. There will be my singing partner playing guitar and singing harmony as well as leading one song, the John and June Carter version of Terry Smith's 'Far Side Banks of Jordan'; there will be her husband on the autoharp; the aforementioned Buddy Tabor doing guitar breaks; and the local city attorney on the mandolin. He is very good.

We'll do 'Will You Meet Me Over Yonder', Far Side Banks, Dear Brother then two mando instrumentals, 'New Camptown Races' and 'Done Gone' back to back and then end with Mudcatter Dan Schatz's lovely 'Daylight's Song.'

It's a good line up and in a jam situation I enjoy it a lot. We are practicing each evening and I like the dense, tight sound we're getting. It's just that I would like to do it for its own sake, not for an audience.

Does anyone have words of encouragement and/or advice? Short of telling me not to do it- I don't really have a choice in that.

Ebbie