Live Among the Artworks on a Saturday...

Well, I'm home from Mechanicsburg, and an evening of music, art, talk and the hawking of books and things. Baldrick is stimulating himself by rubbing against my monitor and likely to do a fat-cat tightrope walk between the screen and my keyboard, so things might get a little dodgy here.

Now since I'm no good at uploading videos, and have no idea how to do it, go to my Facebook page to see upstairs in the Sunbury Press Art Gallery:

https://www.facebook.com/tory.gates

Really nice work there. So anyway...what was supposed to happen here? The fellow that runs the gallery for my publisher seemed to think I was just there to do music, and not promote and sign copies of "A Moment in the Sun."

Oh well, these events tend to be small affairs, and I found out who was there: former Lt. Governor Mark Singel, who stepped in for Bob Casey, Senior for a period. He wrote of that experience, and was on hand with a lot of family and fans, very nice man.

I must also mention Joe Harvey, author of "From Blue Ground," a YA historical novel. Looks really interesting. Another really nice guy.

Well, what happens is this: I am no stranger to setting up upstairs in the pulpit (this is a former church, if you watch the video you see that), and the sound is quite good. My new acoustic driver pedal was too much, so I chose not to use it.

And of course most of the night I'm playing to the art, and not the people, though some did appear in and about it.

My set list:

Back Porch

Black Ambition

Beauty Way (Eliza Gilkyson)

The Mystery

(Reading, "A Moment in the Sun...")

Desert Burning

Dark Star

(Reading)

Up We Go (LIGHTS)

He Left Me His Guitar

Then came the intermission, of sorts. Larry Knorr, our intrepid publisher got up to speak, and Gov. Singel also did...his wife spoke first, a lady then belted out "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" (lovely voice and an operatic range, did not get her name), and then the Gov.

He told the story about how the book came about, the period where he stepped in for Casey, and how difficult that was. There was talk about the lack of civility in government, and how political enemies could fight like hell on the floor, and then go out to dinner. Never personal.

That's not coming back, not any time soon.

Mr. Harvey, who I wish we could have gotten to speak more did so, and then the mic passed to me. I'd not planned to.

Daggers.

All these older, cultured, well-heeled people types...

...oh my.

So I talked a bit about "A Moment in the Sun," plugged what I do for the Radio PA Network, they seemed to know about that, which was good, and explained how I'd got here. I was able to tell them rather nicely about my writing, and why I do it.

They got it, and Larry approved of what I said. I wonder how many of those folks thought, "Wow, this biker maniac can speak pretty decently!"

Nah, they were all nice.

Part 2 of the set:

When We Were Stars

(Reading)

Broken Stones (Paul Weller)

Unfinished

(Reading)

Beyond These Walls/Ma Durga

Drifters (Gordon Lightfoot)

Ordinary Girl

The last is a new song, which appears in the upcoming work, "Live from the Cafe."

So in all, an okay night. I've played better, but it's all good.

I do think what I need...is to do more events where my work is the focus.

I need to do more of those, I hate to say it, "Look at Me" type events, where there is attention on what I do. Then I have to put it over.

Updates...October 22nd, I will return to the Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg to do a signing.

The book is there, and I am hopeful "A Moment in the Sun" goes to your hands. If so, please write a review either at Sunbury Press or Amazon...every one of those helps a lot!

And...photo op!