hensley farms

Sad to read today of the passing of Regis Philbin, a real TV icon. I liked Regis in general, but specifically I liked him because one night in 1986, he and his then-broadcast partner, Kathie Lee Gifford, came to see…

On the night we all convened to begin our 2017 tour, the final one, most of the band sat up late at night in the lobby bar of our hotel in Fresno, and talked about the early days, and especially…

In the year 2008 A.D., the Diamondville touring year consisted of 82 shows, exactly the same as the number of games played by an NBA team during a regular, i.e. non-pandemic, season. And our appearances during the 2009 Grammy week…

When I was a mere teen-ager, one of my earliest gigs was a 4th of July party at the Bloomington, Indiana country club. It was an awful evening of loud drunks behaving badly, including an especially abrasive lady whose idea…

Cigarmania hit Diamondville big-time back at the end of the last century. Our vocalist either acquired or  revived a powerful craving for smoking stogies, and some others soon got the bug too. Even I, who had never even indulged in…

Way back on October 20, 2008, as our plane was preparing to land in Tulsa where we were to perform the next night, our stellar trombonist Arturo Velasco shared with us that he was experiencing a toothache. 

Not a little…

Yes, I’ll confess. I was one of those who piled insults on Nashville upon arriving here for the first time in 2001. As the plane was landing, various Touroids cupped their hands over their mouths to simulate an airport speaker…

I’ve taken a little hiatus from posting at a time when humor is too close to physical labor, but today I decided it’s time for me to revisit the Diamondville Chronicles archives and share some with you. It's okay, I…

I'm spending a lot of time right now (and time is what we have plenty of, right?) constructing the tale of my time spent with the people at Mattel. The toy people. That's for my other blog, Tom Sez, the…

The sky at home is a beautiful blue, today. it inexplicably flashed me back to the sight of the drink pictured at left, from back in one of our early UK stops. 

Our hotel in London, in a silly piece…

A few years ago, America was shaken by the shocking revelation that mass-retailer Walmart was selling altered versions of popular recordings without revealing that fact to the purchaser. 

Sometimes the cover was changed, sometimes alternate lyrics were used (or the…

A few years ago, Tonight Show bandleader Questlove sparked a media firestorm after playing “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” while Republican then-presidential candidate Michele Bachmann sauntered onstage on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”? I saw an account which said the Roots drummer…