Sander Roscoe Wolff

My father lives in a small town called Ferndale (actually, just outside Ferndale in unincorporated County land). It’s about 30 minutes from the Canadian border, and just North of Bellingham. I lived there, briefly, just after high school, and I am very fond of the place. I’d love to retire there, although I’m not sure how happy my wife would be.

There is a special quality to the light, I think, when the sky is covered with layers of clouds, and the greens of the moss and hemlocks seem to glow from within. The damp seems to seep into everything, and life flourishes in surprising places. Mushrooms of all shapes, colors, and sizes pop up in fields, woods, and through the floor boards. Black and green slug families, large enough to ride, glide in single file across the ground.

Winters tend to be mild, with occasional dustings of snow.

Spring is, perhaps, the most shocking season for one who has lived so long in the unseasonal environment of Southern California. I remember going to bed one night with the world wrapped in the blanket of Winter, the trees bare, the ground brown and tan. Seemingly, the next morning, the entire world had transformed into an explosion of green.

Summer comes, mild at first, then gets surprsingly warm. After the flurry of rebirth, things seem to mellow a bit, enjoying the long, and I mean LONG, days of warm full sun. Berries ripen and, as the days stretch toward fall, it seems almost impossible that this idyllic world will soon fade.

Local artists Shelley Rugg-Thorp and RD “Raindog” Armstrong collaborated to create an art show called Absence/Presence which used passers-by as tracing models, with text written and/or selected by RD. You can read more about it, and see some pictures. I was looking at the pictures, and noticed one of me:

I recorded a

a few days back. It is quite different than my normal stuff, which tends to be in time, carefully arranged, etc… This began as a purely improvised guitar track and, from that I added two more tracks that played with the first.

To me, it evokes a bittersweet feeling that, for some reason, I associated with memories of my late mother.

Anyway, please feel free to leave comments.

Living with a painter is inspiring. Shari’s wonderful gifts as an artist continually amaze and astound me and, watching her work , she makes it look so easy. Well, painting well isn’t easy, but even if my humble talents are less than spectacular, the process is wonderfully enjoyable. A few weeks back I completed an acrylic painting and felt pretty good about it. It isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but its pleasing.

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From Poor Old Joe, there’s

and . Both are written and sung by me, with Brian Nelson on Guitar and Dave Pratt on Drums.

From Blue Dot, there’s

and . Both songs were written by keyboardist Neal Weiner, with Mike Weber on guitar, John Feijoo on drums, and Emily Ensley singing.

I play bass on all the tracks.

Well, I’ve posted some more pix of the guitar project. The first set shows Randy Simon cutting out the body, and doing some work on it. It also shows the body after the edges had been rounded by a router, and the two top cut-outs shaped for ergonomic considerations. The last three pix depict some finish tests.

The second set shows the assembled guitar, the wood still unfinished, and a few details remaining to be addressed. The edges of the neck block (on the back of the body where the ferrules and screws are) needs to be rounded, and a small portion of the body leading to the neck pocket needs rounding also. The string ferrules are not installed, and will be pushed into their holes when finishing is complete.

I’ve had the guitar in this assembled form for a few weeks now and, aside from some very minor issues, I really love the way it feels and sounds.

It has been a long and winding road (as Paul used to say), and although it isn’t quite over yet, I reached an important milestone yesterday. As you may know from previous entries, I’ve been working on the construction of a custom guitar for a good long time. I ordered a beautiful custom neck (24 3/4″ scale ‘LP Conversion’ with flame maple & a pau farro fingerboard, with high-tech Planet Waves tuners & a corion nut) from warmouth, hunted down some curly African mahogany, designed the body shape and had Randy Simon carve it for me, had Seymour Duncan design a custom pickup based on my specs, and handed everything over to Steve Soest for routing, drilling, and assembly.

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I’ve been attending the Agape International Spiritual Center for several years now and have volunteered my humble services, such as they are, to the audio and video teams. For a good long while I was working on Wednesday nights, helping with audio set-up, and assisting the sound engineer who was located on a balcony at the back of the sanctuary. During the service, this consisted of setting up and tearing down mics for soloists, conveying messages via wireless clearcom headset to the engineer, and generally making sure that things ran smoothly. Although I enjoyed this work a great deal, and especially loved the wonderfully talented musical artists, I felt that my absence from our happy home mid-week was at odds with my commitment to being a good husband and step-dad. So, I gave up that aspect of my service.

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A few weeks ago I wandered out of the house for some forgotten reason and, much to my surprise, saw this in the night sky. I realized that it probably wasn’t a jet trail from a plane, mostly because it was so twisty. Also, although it is hard to tell in the pic, and even in real life, the thing was quite vast. At first I thought it was a failed rocket test, and the fuel trail had drifted from the sea over to us. I found out, sometime later, that it was from a spent rocket booster used in launching a satelite. Still, it was quite lovely and breathtaking.

Work It All Out
by Sander Roscoe Wolff ©

This wall seems so high
And it goes on forever.
Can’t get over or, by
Hook or by crook,
Around it.

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