Sue recently pointed out that our approach to route-finding often places a much higher priority on visiting different places to do interesting things with great people than it does on efficiency or saving time or following a direct route. These priorities brought us not only to Cincinnati, but also to the two Ohio towns in the title of this post.
I want to point out that I am writing perhaps three posts in one right now. The two visits in this post sandwiched the visit in the previous post and the A/C saga spans all three of those, as well as the one before that. In the past, we’ve tried to remain chronologically consistent in our posts, but this shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Still, please pay attention!
By the time we arrived in Hamilton, ON two weeks ago (the first major stop on our trip) it was clear that the A/C in the motorhome (the one on the engine that blows air out the dash while we’re driving, not the one on the roof), which we’d fixed two years ago in Labrador and recharged again before we left, has a worse leak than we’d optimistically imagined. The A/C was doing nothing for us as the outside temperatures moved up through the 90s and, according to the sensationalist mainstream press, we were poised to suffer the Great Northeastern Heat Dome Crisis of the Summer of 2025 out on the road with a broken A/C.
Ashtabula
Ok, let’s move on. I know Mike from the Blues Guitar Unleashed online forum, where we’re both active members. (He’s known there as Braylon Jennings, and I am dvs.) Mike and I also met and played together in real life (IRL) at a BGU member jam in Grand Rapids not quite two years ago, so he knows Sue, and we’re all going to the jam near Denver coming up in October. On the side, Mike and I have been talking about and practicing a couple of songs to collaborate on if the jam schedule allows.
Mike lives in Kingsville Township, just east of Ashtabula, OH, a city on Lake Erie just west of the Pennsylvania border (although his mailing address is Conneaut, which is, if anything, even more fun to say out loud than Ashtabula). (You should look it up.) I asked him if he was going to be around while we were going to be passing by, and he not only said yes, he invited us to stop in and even to stay a while. So, we did.
Before we arrived, though, I’d already asked Mike if he knew of an auto repair shop that might have a look at our A/C. He called his own mechanic, who was booked up but passed on a couple of contacts to call, which I did. They, too, were booked, or couldn’t fit the motorhome into their shop, but everyone who couldn’t take me on recommended someone else to try, and I quickly found Cliff Emus in Conneaut who said he could find a couple of hours on the day we were arriving at Mike’s to do some diagnosis and a recharge. He wouldn’t have time in his schedule to do a repair, but he was confident that he could figure out what was wrong and get us going again until we could get it fixed properly. Good enough!
When we got to Mike’s house, we met Mike’s wife Connie for the first time (she wasn’t at the Grand Rapids Jam) and I have to say we all hit it off well. In fact, we can’t wait to see her again – and we will because she is coming to Denver with Mike.
Of course, jamming was on the agenda. (Do I really need to say that?) We did our load-in from the motorhome. Mike and I went out to drop the motorhome off with Cliff, and Mike brought me back to the house. We played through a whole mess of songs in Mike and Connie’s backyard (for our electric set) until it was time to retrieve the rig from Cliff, then we moved inside for more chatting and visiting, and a quick acoustic set after dinner.
The next morning, we really got down to business with the acoustic songs. Mike had told me about an open mic he at played regularly at a pub & restaurant in Ashtabula called Dublin Down. It wasn’t hard for him to convince us to go with him. (In truth, it would have been hard to keep us away.) There would be a drum set there that Sue could play, and we had found at least three or four songs that we thought would work, including two we’re hoping to do together in Colorado.
Once we were satisfied with our preparation, we took a break from playing. Mike and Connie brought us on a lakeside tour of the area including downtown Ashtabula, covered bridges, drawbridges, beaches, parks, and a selection of historic industrial sites from the glory days of the Great Lakes shipping center.
Then it was back to the house to grab our guitars and drumsticks, and on to the Dublin Down for dinner and Open Mic Night. We ended up doing three songs with the three of us (Mike, me and Sue), then Sue and I played two songs from our repertoire. What a great time we had! There was a close group of friendly regulars, both players and listeners, who were very welcoming to outsiders like us – though I’m sure that coming in with Mike and Connie gave us a leg up right from the start.
The next morning, we said goodbye to Mike and Connie (we also said thank you, we love you, and we’ll see you in Colorado!) and we set off on our way to Cincinnati (and that is where the sequence of posts diverges from the sequence of events as well as where the sequence of events takes its own excursion from logical efficiency, so pay close attention.)
Ostrander
Also in Ohio, between Delaware and Marysville, about a three-hour drive southwest of Ashtabula and two hours northeast from Cincinnati, is a small town called Ostrander. In this town, atop a hill above the Scioto River, lives my friend and fellow guitar-playing BGU forum denizen Brian, known on the forum as Ted_Zeppelin. We met Brian for the first time IRL at the same Grand Rapids jam where we met Mike, and we were together again a year ago at the BGU jam in Albuquerque.
As we were identifying the different places to do interesting things with great people for this early part of our journey (aka planning), and Ohio began to look like a clear winner, I touched base with Brian (as I did with Mike). Once again, schedules aligned, Brian invited us to stop by and offered us space in his driveway for as long as we liked, and the die was cast.
Sort of an Interlude
Interestingly – I might even say astonishingly – as we made these contacts and arrangements it turned out that Mike and Connie would be free during the week after we left Hamilton but busy on the weekend, Honghong’s schedule was only open on the weekend, and Brian and his wife Julie had their grandchildren visiting for the whole week while we were up at Mike’s but were open to anything the following week. Feeling like we had just won a game of 3-D chess, we fit all these pieces together, and that’s how we found ourselves zigzagging back and forth across Ohio on our way to Colorado.
As we left Mike and Connie on our way to see Honghong, I had time to do some calling around to auto repair shops near Brian and Julie’s with enough lead time to have a fair chance of finding someone with time to do the repair. I found a garage in Delaware that gave us an appointment on the morning before we were due at Brian’s. They had the job done in a few hours, and the A/C saga reached its end. Cool! (Pun absolutely intended.)
Back to Ostrander
We’d not met Julie before, either, and everything I said earlier about meeting Connie I would just repeat here (except it would be about Julie), including the part about how we can’t wait to see her again (except I’d say she’s coming to the Colorado jam with Brian, of course, and not Mike).
Brian’s studio is an excellent place to play. It has enough space to set up Sue’s drum kit and great acoustics for playing and recording, and it’s well isolated from the rest of the house so getting loud is not a problem. It is also a fascinating place to just sit and look around! Brian’s collection of recordings, gear, and guitar-related artwork and memorabilia is mesmerizing.
We brought in my guitar and Sue’s drums, set up and went right to work. After warming up with a few blues standards, we focused on three specific songs. The first of these was Traffic’s Dear Mister Fantasy. Last year in Albuquerque a few people, including me and Brian, tried playing this onstage. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was my idea, inspired by something awesome Brian had posted on the BGU forum, and it didn’t go well at the jam. I couldn’t find the right note to start singing and the song structure isn’t totally straightforward to play before you’ve done it a few times, so we had a bit of a train wreck. It’s a really fun song for guitarists, though, so Brian, Sue and I worked on it again until we could get through it reliably – just in case we have a chance to redeem ourselves in Denver. Two other songs we worked on were CCR’s cover of I Put A Spell On You and Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride. No recordings or videos of these, because we don’t want to tip our hands before the jam. 😉
Our visit with Brian and Julie was very fun, very rewarding, very relaxing, and very laid back. I felt like we were welcomed as temporary neighbors, which was very cool. Each day we all took care of what we needed to do ourselves or on our own, then got together for music for a few hours, then take a break, then back together for more music, or for dinner out and a walk downtown, or just hanging out and chatting. Wonderful!
More Ashtabula pix here, Ostrander pix here.
