Dwight Raby

Wow, Columbia SC was fun! Thanks to all the girls from ZTA at University of South Carolina what a fun event! Can’t wait to get back see you all soon!

This weekend I got to go on tour. By “on tour” I mean I drove to Lexington, KY for a gig. It was great! Jeff and Frank were previously engaged this weekend so I grabbed local funk legends Kevin Scott and Duane Trucks from The Atlanta Funk Society for the gig. We loaded up the trusty Honda Element and headed up to Kentucky. I actually lived in Kentucky when I was a kid, but I haven’t been back since then.

The venue was Tin Roof Right off of the University of Kentucky campus. There was I time that I was a UK basketball fan because I liked Rick Pitino. Then he spent a few years ruining my real basketball love – the Boston Celtics – so I had to divorce UK because of their prior relationship with him.

The gig itself was a little odd. UK had a huge blood drive that day so not a lot of people were going out. It’s tough to grab a crowd when there’s no crowd. We still had fun though. About 30 minutes before the end of the gig I went ahead and let Duane and Kevin start packing up and I just played solo. About that time everybody started getting into it. I think it was because they had finally gotten enough liquor in them, but I told Duane and Kevin it was probably because they sucked. That’s not true, but it’s fun to say it. I could tell that this place was usually a rocking joint though and I can’t wait to get back!

The best part of the trip was the ride back. I’m not much of a night driver, but Kevin ad Duane are pros. Play with Col. Bruce Hampton for long enough and I think it become second nature. The music vocabulary of these two is kind of insane. I slept mostly but in between road naps I kept hearing different styles of Pandora music from funk to pop to cheesy 80′s ballads. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, thanks guys for a great trip. I’m beat but I loved it can’t wait to do it again!

Like anybody else who makes his/her living in music, I am intrigued at the songwriting process and how it manifests itself differently in different people. There are some people that can just sit down and write a great song on demand. I’ve done that, but I find that the songs I’m most proud of are the ones that fester over time and then magically write themselves. That process seems to be coming to a head today for me. I’ve had 3-4 songs swinging around in my head for months and their starting to crash down on me now. Since I’m heading into the studio pretty soon, that’s good news.

I’m really happy with the two songs I’ve already tracked with Brian Collins – Angel and Off the Ground. Later this month I’m going into Josh Golden’s studio to record some more stuff. I can’t wait to get in there with this new material!

Some of you may know this, but in addition to playing music I also enjoy running and tennis. I’ve been with my mixed doubles ALTA tennis team for a few years and, for some odd reason, have developed a reputation as a bit of a wise-ass.

So, today I was pushed by our captain, so i felt the need to respond in kind. I’m just better at this than she is:

I actually wasn’t feeling it today. But now Russ makes me feel like I
have a reputation to uphold. Soooo……

Of course, I’m kidding about all this, except the part about me being
married and attractive, caring, sensitive, etc. The legs thing is true
too. Meredith and Margaret are cool, it’s just weird with Margaret
partner crushing on me all the time.

Dwight Raby
–
Singer/songwriter, Dog Lover, Mountaineer, Ankle Model, Tantric Yogi, and
USDA Certified Generally Good Guy
www.dwightraby.com – solo website
www.bigdandtherefugees.com – band website
www.bestlegsinthesoutheast.com – modeling website
www.howtomakeyourwomancrytearsofjoy.com – relationship advice website

Had a super-fun gig at RiRa the other night with The Refugees! Got to give away $500 for the best zombie costume and got to screw up the lyrics to the old Cranberries song 3 times. Awesome! Thanks to Kevin and all the staff at RiRa that was the most fun we’ve had in ages.

Incredible weekend of running in Vermont. Went up for the annual 100on100 relay. I thought a play by play beginning with the first leg of the race was in order:

Leg 1 – Sammy goes into the woods on a very short but critical first leg as the only guy on the line who knows that another SLU (Luddington) alum is in this wave and is going to kill everyone. So he hangs back, watches them all try to stay with him, and then watches them come back. Nicely done. Still, he finishes so far behind Ludd that Hetzel asks “Did you fall down?”.

Sing with me! "One of these things is not like the other...."

Leg 2 – Folsom takes the hill down from Trapp like he’s shot from a bullet. He runs the next mile like he’s shot from a bullet. He runs the 3rd mile like he’s shot from a bullet. Fourth mile, eh, not so much. Still comes in with a blazing time.

Leg 3 – We were a little concerned having a former high jumper as our third leg. When he finished, I was pretty sure that I was relegated, yet again, to being the team’s weak link. Hetzel kills it and comes in smiling. I kind of want to kill him, but whatever.

Ladies and Gentlemen - your 2012 100on100 promo photo.

Leg 4 – Major uphill followed by major downhill for Derek. The Dumpster flies and I get the handoff thinking “how the hell is he in better shape now than when we were in college”

Leg 5 – My turn, let the pain begin. The heat’s rising big time. I drop a 7:15 on the mostly downhill first mile and 7:30′s for the next two. Love it! Feeling great. Then from 3-4 the wheels come off. My hips completely lock up on the one semi-major hill in the whole route. Must have hit 9:00 for that mile. Ouch. Major ouch. Titanic Ouch. Recovered and finished up OK, but I have two legs left. Hand off to….

Leg 6 – “Ladies and gentlemen, in his first ever 100on100, I present Coach Mike Howard”. In the words of the immortal Jason Mooney – “WHAMMO!”. This leg is tough with some crazy hills. Howard kills it. The man’s a machine. We’re all awed by the old man.

Leg 7 – Back to Sammy. He averages 6:43′s on a tough leg. Carrying at least 4 pounds of extra weight in sunscreen. Very nice job for the whitest man who’s ever lived.

Leg 8 – Longest leg of the day is Folsom’s 2nd leg. Not super hilly, but 8.3 miles is tough enough without the hills. Folsom hammers out 6:20′s. What a stud! Of course, he’s got to run up Killington later, so no one’s celebrating. We will see the face of death…

Steve Folsom in happier times

Leg 9 – Hetzel gets a short and sweet one. 3.5 miles and he kicks off 6:50′s. The 6’8″ high jumping, underwear modeling, butt sniffing pretty boy can move. We realize at this point that the funky smell in the van is the towel I’ve been sitting on since I finished my first leg. It drowns out all other funk in the van, which is considerable.

No, it's not and earthquake. Dwight's finishing his leg...

Leg 10 – Derek’s on a mission. It’s a fairly easy 4.2 mile leg and he hammers out 6:20′S. I can only imagine what the turnover rate must be on someone his height to get to that pace….

Leg 11 – This is where the piano falls on the Big Dog. I, by the way, am the Big Dog. The Piano fell on me. Actually happy with the first 3 miles or so, but once mile 4 hits, I’m toast, there’s nothing left. The hips have completely locked up. It’s here that we realize we have a competition going with another Master’s team called Rat Pack. Their guy flies by me on this leg. Not good, although I’m actually not too disappointed with my 8:09 pace on this leg. Just not happy with how it came about. Even splits, what’s that? By the way, 90 degrees means the same thing no matter where in America you are.

Leg 12 – Coach Howard, again, murders his leg. He morphs into a 6:20′s machine. We wonder out loud if he’s been juicing. Are those track marks?

Leg 13 – The march up Killington begins with Sammy who just so happens to know that he needs to bank time in the early miles of his leg because the last two are going to suck major funk. Believe me when I say he made this look good…

Leg 14 – Folsom got thrown under the bus here. 4 miles straight up Killington. He still pulls off 7:17 pace. AWESOME! However, the look on his face over the last 200 meters through the parking lot looks like one of the victims in that horror film “The Ring”. Can a man’s mouth really open that wide while his teeth are still clenched? Stretch marks anyone? Hide the children no one should see that!

Leg 15 – Hetzel flies down the backside of Killington. It’s starting to cool off and get darker. We’ve closed the gap on Rat Pack that was created when I bombed my 7 mile leg earlier. Derek is about to make it up.

Leg 16 – Derek is picking people off like he’s going for the record in Duck Hunt. Never seen anything like it. Put’s a big hurt on the Rat Pack guy he was chasing down and I proceed to….

Man, the lights make dwarf tossing so much easier to judge!

Leg 17 – …give it all back. The weak link has struck! Rat Pack’s guy, who I thought I could hold off in the cooler weather, drops me like a stone in the ocean. Funny, that’s about how my legs feel. Same deal as the other legs. I put in 3 solid miles until the hips lock up. Mile 3-4 is torture. I manage to crank the last one in on adrenaline and pride alone, but I leave Howard over 2minutes to make up on Rat Pack in his anchor leg.

Leg 18 – The old man gives it his all, but Rat Pack isn’t going to be caught. Great leg again I can’t tell you how amazed we all were with his performance. Who’d have thought the old guy would be the ringer. It would have been even better if not for the awkwardness of his wife reminding us how hot he looks now that he’s training hard again. TMI anyone???

For hire: Hotty old guy XC coach. Spoken for, but still..

Aftermath: Hey, Rat Pack. Nice race! You won fair and square. That smell you notice in your van is the towel that I was sitting on all day. Yes, we managed to hide it in your van. Hope it’s a rental, that stench will never come out….

As any runner will tell you, the day after you significantly more or significantly faster than normal you always, ALWAYS have to do a little shake out run so your legs don’t completely lock up. Due to scheduling conflicts and more than a little laziness, I did not follow up Sunday’s ten miler with a little 3 miler on Monday. Today, I went to the River with Jessica to take care of business and paid dearly for not doing it yesterday. The first mile was awful. The second mile was awfuler. The third felt OK.

Still, my legs had the pliability of a Ritz cracker – hard to bend, easy to break. So I had to be a little careful. I’ve been paying attention to my breathing patterns. Inthe second half of the ten miler, I really focused on going four strides in, four strides out as much as possible. Up the steep hills I was 3 in 3 out, which isn’t bad. It’s when I get to 2 in 2 out that I run into trouble. For me, that’s the running equivalent of hyperventilating and I can’t sustain it for long. I get into it on really steep hills, but I just have to be careful.

I’m starting to get a feel for how we are going to record our record, but we haven’t come up with a band name yet. We’l start strategizing this weekend. I’ve got two tunes almost totally done at Brian Collins’ studio, but I want to do a whole record with the guys and plan it out. Just haven’t figured out how to set it up and fund it yet I’ve got some ideas though…

You’ve always got to love you’re first long run after a long time of not doing one. It sticks with you all day. Got up after 5 hours of sleep and lots (LOTS) of beer and Jager last night and decided to put in my first 10 miler since last October. It was hot, sticky, and awful. Always drive about 30 minutes to Kennesaw on Sundays so I can run on the trails up there. The upside is that I don’t have to pound asphalt up there. The downside is that Kennesaw is named for Kennesaw Mountain and there’s relaly no hiding from the hills up there.

It’s pretty much an out and and back to the visitor’s center from where I park. You start out going downhill, but you’ve got to come up the hill again at about mile nine. That sucks, but I made it up. The heat down here is a killer in the summer’s, really makes running and training tough, but I’m getting there. Monster nap int he afternoon.

In other news, I’ve got an idea for a recording that I’m hoping to work out with Jeff and Frank soon. Details to come….

I started working with Brian Collins at Bluelight studio again recently on a couple of new tunes called “Off the Ground” and “Angel”. Finished guitars on “Off the Ground” last week and was really happy with the results. Brian’s awesome to work with. It was my first time cutting lead guitar in the studio so I was a little nervous but it worked out great. We’re going to get at “Angel” next week and then take a look at some other tunes I have the bones of lying around and see if we can make an album out of it. I think we can!

One of the great things about having two dogs is watching the push-pull of who’s calling the shots on a given day.  Daisy and Pumpkin seem to engage in this competition more often than most dogs.  Before I get into a prolonged explanation of this behavior, however, I think some history on both of my dogs is in order.  Today, you get the story of Daisy…

We got Daisy from Fulton County Animal Services about 7 years ago when she was about a year old and she was a mess.  First, let me say that FCAS was maybe the worst place I’ve even been.  I know the staff was doing they’re best, but they were obviously underfunded and were putting down tons of dogs every day.  It was so bad that the local news was doing a story on them and how they had so many dogs scheduled to be euthanized.  It was awful.

Most of the small kennels had 5-6 dogs in them.  Daisy’s kennel was like that.  There was crap all over the floor of the place.  Most of the dogs jumped up on the fence in a way that made it seem as if they were saying “Pick Me, Pick Me” as we walked by.  Daisy was not among them.  She just laid as low as possible in the back corner of the cage.  I’ve never seen a dog as resigned to her fate.  She looked as if she knew she was scheduled to be put down in two days, and she didn’t seem to care.

I went there by myself the first time, and it was the eyes that got me.  She was low, and didn’t move a muscle, but her eyes tracked me.  They were big brown saucers.  It was absolute despair combined with a twinge of hope – “Maybe, just maybe, this guy will take me from this awful place.”  I asked one of the volunteers to let me take her out to the yard with me, and he went in, put the leash on her, and tugged gently – nothing.  She wouldn’t get up.

Now I wanted a dog, and up to this point in my life pretty much every dog I had met loved me.  This was now a challenge.  I was never the type to falsely ascribe human emotions to animals until I met Daisy.  I love dogs, but I was keenly aware that they want food, water, and structure.  I encouraged loving your dogs, but loving them was something you do for yourself, not for the dog.  Daisy was set on proving me wrong from the get-go.  So, I went into the kennel over the strenuous objections of the volunteer, picked Daisy up, and brought her out the the yard.

I figured that once outside and in a place she could walk on grass and smell something besides other dog feces, she’d open up a little bit.  So I put her on the ground, with the leash on, just to see what would happen.  On cue, she laid down, got as low as possible, and started tracking me with those big saucer-plate eyes.  This was going to be tough.  Exactly at that moment, as I’m sitting on the ground with her, a huge man with a TV camera comes up to me and an impossibly thin woman with a microphone labeled “CBS Atlanta News” comes up and asks if I’m taking her home.

Being married, it’s not really my decision to take a dog home (who at this time was referred to as Ms. Howell for reasons passing understanding).  I have to clear something this important with my wife.  So I go home with a picture of Daisy and show it to Jessica.  I can tell she’s a little reluctant to bring a dog into our busy lives, but she’s definitely a dog lover so she comes to look at Daisy the next day.  The routine was the same, I had to go in and pick her up off the floor.  We brought her out to the yard and she laid down.  Ears were scratched.  Tears were shed.  Forms were filled out.  In three days, Daisy was coming home with us.  She just needed to get her shots and get fixed first.

Jessica, to this day, claims that she saw Daisy’s tail wag just a little when I picked her up that day.

I was determined that Daisy adjust to our way of life, not the other way around, so there were not to be any major changes to our condo before she came into our lives.  We had some large throw pillows that we never used and were sufficient for a dog bed.  I also wasn’t a huge believer in crates.  Daisy was going to be a regular dog and walk around the condo on here own.  I would come to second-guess that decision.  Dogs need food, water and regular walks.  After you’ve provided those things you can pet, play with, and cuddle with them all you want.  Responsibility breeds fun, not vice versa.

The day finally came, and I picked Daisy up and put her in the back seat of the car.  She stayed low, acutely aware of her surroundings but simply focused on surviving whatever this ordeal was to bring.  The first instinct of a dog owner who has a dog this skittish is to assume it has been abused at some point, and we thought the same thing.  I’m not sure how accurate that is.  Humans can have wide ranging personalities whether they are abused or not.  Still, something was wrong with this dog.  She was just different.

Once we got her home, she seemed entirely uninterested in our small, 900sf condo.  She went to the darkest corner she could find, laid down, and didn’t move.  We put out water and food, still nothing.  It wasn’t until the next day that she would eat, and even then only a few nibbles out of our hand, she wouldn’t go near a bowl.  Walks, at the beginning, were tough.  She’d either stop completely or pull in every different direction.  Over the course of about a month, she got better.

I made a point of having her interact with other dogs on a daily basis.  There were lots of opportunities.  Our condo complex is very dog-friendly and has a yard where people often let them off leash to play.  I brought Daisy up there after work every day, but kept her on the leash for a long time.  Finally, the other dog-owners convinced me to let her off.  When I did, it was mayhem.

The turning point, in our minds, came when I went to my cousin’s wedding in Raleigh, NC.  It was winter and it had snowed in Raleigh, leaving a few inches on the ground.  Snow in Raleigh is still something of a novelty, although not so much as it is in Atlanta.  During the ceremony, we had to leave Daisy in my uncle’s garage with my cousin’s 110 pound slobber factory named Hershey.  Daisy had spent plenty of time around other dogs so I wasn’t worried.  Hershey, for his part, couldn’t intentionally hurt a fly.

We went to the wedding and came back to the house only to find that the two Houdini’s had managed to get the side door to the garage open.  Based on the dog tracks in the snow, there was much fun to be had in the sleepy suburban neighborhood.  I was worried.  Daisy had gotten better, but she hadn’t yet displayed the attachment to us that you’d expect from a dog.  Part of me thought that she’d have no problems taking off and finding her way alone on the streets of Cary, NC.  I was despondent.

Then, after about 3-4 calls of “Daisy” which certainly woke up more than a few of the neighbors, our little 30 pound golden retriever mix comes bounding out of the woods behind the house wearing a grin from ear to ear.  She ran right up to me a did the inaugural performance of what we now refer to as “The Daisy Dance”.  Front paws in the air, big grin, and tail wagging so hard that her whole body shimmies like a sidewinder in the Arizona desert.

That was when I knew not only that we had her, but that all the playing, cuddling, scratching and petting wasn’t just for us, it was for her too.  After about a year of getting it all together, we now have perhaps the most loyal, loving, sweet dog ever.  I wasn’t sure we’d ever get there, but we did.

Moral of the story, love works!