I'll be honest with you: I've been on the road just about constantly since I last wrote an update. At this moment I don't remember exactly where I ended the last one...so we'll just go from here. As I write tonight (February 25, 2006) I am sitting in my friend Bob Mullins' big motor home, parked right now beside his winter residence in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. Bob and Louise have been kind enough to let me stay in the motor home during most of my time in south Texas this winter. I also camped part of the time next to/with musician friends Harold and Violet Condray, from the beautiful mountains of the Missouri Ozarks.

I'm using my new laptop computer to write this. Finally decided to get one, and it has proved to be an excellent decision, helping me along in a multitude of ways. The laptop is wireless-compatible, which means that anywhere I can find a wireless "hot spot" I can get on the internet. I like to find wi-fi equipped coffee shops where I can sit and drink coffee and do my computer work.

Bob Mullins does the Terry Smith Show booking in south Texas every February. Those bookings are coordinated with the Rio Grande Music Festival here, a major event, which I play and Terry plays too--so there is plenty of fun and plenty of work for us in February! Terry and I will both be in the festival next year, and we already have a number of other bookings for February 2007.

Bob Mullins is also a fine mellow-voiced singer and solid rhythm guitarist. One of the highlights of my stay in south Texas was sitting on the porch of Bob's place with Bob and Louise, making a little music. We played tunes like Waltz Across Texas, That's The Way Love Goes, The Next Voice You Hear, Under the Double Eagle, Wildwood Flower while the sun set and the skeeters came out. E.T., Lefty, Cindy Walker, Hank Snow, Bill Boyd, the Carter Family--on a quiet warm Texas evening. I really love simple pleasures like that. What could be better?

During the festival, counting my own shows and Terry's shows, for which I am the lead guitarist/mandolinist and second singer, I played up to EIGHT shows a day...and enjoyed every one of them. For my own outings ths year I had some great support musicians, including crack steel guitarist Monty Montgomery, and lots of other good folks. I mixed it up a little more than usual this year, doing some fingerpicking guitar tunes and some ragtime piano and some western swing piano in addition to what I usually present at this event. As always, I dearly love to play my instrumentalist part with Terry Smith's show. In my opinion Terry is one of the very best songwriters anywhere, and of course recordings of his music by great stars like Johnny Cash and June Carter, Chris LeDoux, the Oak Ridge Boys, Roy Acuff, Kitty Wells, and on and on prove me right about that. Terry also happens to be one of the most polished and professional entertainers around, so it is a pleasure to share the stage with him. He really knows what he is doing!

If you don't have any Terry Smith CDs, go out and get some. There are eight to choose from, and they are all good.

Terry is also a good friend and a reliable and totally honest guy to work for. That means a lot. He's very modest about his achievements. Our next shows together will be at Papillion, Nebraska, near Omaha, at the end of March, and then a concert at York, Nebraska the next day. After that I head for California and Terry heads back to Nashville. I think. Crazy life we lead on the music road!

For most of the Rio Grande Valley shows this year we were joined onstage by electric guitarist John Duttweiler of Burlington, Iowa; bassist Danny Dee of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa; and Harold Condray, the Missouri flash, on Dobro.

This year I very much enjoyed meeting Kevin Beanland, a hot Nova Scotia picker of French descent (in spite of the English name). Even with the busy schedule we got to jam a little, and Kevin has invited me to his part of the world to visit, make music...and visit the famed Viking ruins not far from where he lives! Those ancient Vikings were the first people from Europe to visit North America. They ranged as far as Oklahoma (by water), where the Heavener runestones record their presence long, long ago. I visited the runestones last summer. Next summer I will get to Nova Scotia!

I had a great Christmas at home this year. I played a Christmas show in St. Petersburg put together by friend Jenny James of Brandon. On that show were longtime good friends Dan and Diana Ost. They invited me to a Christmas Eve celebration at their house. I went and had a wonderful time. We ate and laughed and made music and just had pure fun. I was invited to celebrate with my friends the Watkins clan of New Port Richey, too, and went there also. Both Jamie and Amanda (who let me think of them as "adopted grandkids") were there, along with a host of other friends. (J. and A. are both gorgeous young women now. Seems like just the other day they were teenagers.) Again, food, laughs, and music! As if that were not enough Christmas celebrating, I was also invited to Doug Travers and Ellie Schwartz's house on Christmas. Went there too. Guess what: Food, laughs, music...

Am I not very lucky to have so many good friends? I certainly think so. It is one of the best parts of my blessed life.

I was able to spend a little more time at home than I expected, this winter. In January I was scheduled to play with some folks at the SPGMA convention in Nashville and then stay on in Music City to make a CD with them. I was really looking forward to playng with another musician involved, the great fiddler Buddy Spicher, of whose music I have been a fan long and long. Buddy and I had met before up and down the music road, but we had not had the chance to play together. The whole project collapsed when the band that wanted to hire me for that project broke up! Bummer!!

My mother always said there is good in any situation, if we'll just find it. That certainly was true of the cancellation of my Nashville music plans for January. In addition to being able to get all sorts of things done around the house, I got to play in my yard (I love to mess with my shrubs, flowers, etcetera), make big old pots of beans, ride my bike in the early mornings, and all that good stuff. In addition I STARTED LEARNING TO SAIL!! Yes!! I've have always wanted to try to sail. Mutual friends have introduced me to a great guy, Tim Ruman, who is a veteran sailor and who has access to a big sailboat moored at Davis Island, Florida. Tim is also a natural teacher who has been patient enough to take me on as a bungling beginning apprentice crew member. I'm finding that I dearly love sailing. It is very intense fun, and there has just been nothing else like it in my life. I love my music, and I love the music road, but I must tell you that when I drove away from the opportunity to do more sailing this year, it was a **wrench**. I'll get back to it! I'm be making another music tour down in New Zealand in April, and, if things go well, in Samoa and Fiji as well (and California too). When I get back from the South Pacific I'll ride the California Zephyr east back to Nebraska. This journey is said to be the most scenic rail trip in the United States, over the Sierra Nevada range and the Rockies. I'm looking forward to it BIG time.

Okay, back to music. Outward bound from home I drove to the Crystal River, Florida, area for a visit with friends Jim and Nadia Davis (Jim is my bass player of choice in Florida), and then on to Bob and Mary Z. Cox's place in Tallahassee, for an evening of visiting and music. Mary makes miracles happen with both old-time banjo and lap dulcimer, and Bob is a very fine guitarist. Don't miss their tasty CDs! For the past couple of years Mary Z. has taught old-time banjo at my fall Sunshine State Acoustic Music Camp.

Leaving Florida heading west on I-10 (which I've done a **lot**), I went on to Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana, for visits with longtime friends in both towns. Visited the old towns of Breau Bridge and St. Martinville along the way. If you get to south Louisiana--Cajun country--don't miss those places. When I was through there earlier, last November, I played a fantastic **huge** birthday party for my friend Wayne Boudreau, who is a mighty guitar picker, and a group of other Cajun musicians. Wonderful guys, all. The harmonica player was 80 years old, played fantastically, and stood up all through the gig to do it! Wonderful party. "Let the Good Times Roll" is the Cajun motto, and they know how to live up to it!

Next stop was San Marcos, Texas, near which lovely town not far from Austin lives my good friend Dave Seeman. Dave is one of the Austin scene's master musicians, and he is able to play both hot bluegrass and a wide range of other music on his banjo. Dave is also a deeply thoughtful, widely read conversationalist. He's a really valuable human being. We talk long into the nights in Dave's quiet house in the countryside near Martindale, Texas. No-one could be more quintessentially Texas than long lanky Dave, with his handlebar mustache and quiet wit. Another of my great friends.

I guested with a band, the Manchaca All-Stars (of which group Dave is a member), in a great, **great** Texas dance hall in the town of Manchaca, Texas (just "Man-chak" to area folks) where catfish was frying and good times were overflowing in every direction. Did some Lefty tunes, a Cindy Walker classic, and so on. Had 'em up and dancing.

In one of those neat "small world" incidents, I mentioned to band member Ben Buchanan that I'll be heading down to New Zealand in April. It turned out that Ben was leaving for New Zealand himself the very next morning!

Also had fun making music with some very fine pickers at Artz Rib House in Austin. A talented lady made line drawings of us as we played. I looked for her later, thinking I might get one of them, but she had gone. Later the same day ate red beans and listened to the Swing Kings doing the real thing at Artz.

What a great town is Austin, Texas. Don't miss Austin. You can hear good music in Austin 24/7.

Leaving Austin, I headed south, south, south, into the Rio Grande Valley for all of the work I've just completed. Great trip so far.

More to come, folks. Stay tuned!

I continue to enjoy writing these updates. I've heard from many of you that you like to read them--and that makes me happy.

I'd like to hear from you, so please, dear friends, seriously--send me a few lines of e-mail to let me know how you're doing. I really do want to hear from you!

Choose to be happy!

Charley Groth rainbowpr@juno.com