I’m finally getting around to chopping and screwing some material I recorded on December 12, 2008 in the cabana behind Mike Paul’s house in preparation for a show The Viper with playing with the Paint Branch Ramblers at the Home Grown Coffee House in Accokeek, Maryland later that evening. I also recorded the show. But in a misguided bit of engineering, I pointed the microphone directly at the ceiling and, so, captured a lot of crowd murmuring and vocal reverb and not much else.

In any case, here’s a rehearsal track of my opening song from that set, “The Viper’s Blue Yodel no. 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd” or “A Mole of the Blues”:

(click here to download the mp3)

This is recorded live straight into Audacity using a single microphone for both the vocals and the baritone ukulele.

I’ve been doing versions of this since as early as 1997 or 1998. But in its finished form, I performed first at this same Home Grown Coffee House venue in February of 2007. At that point, my talk of leaving Maryland for Wisconsin and the danger of adjustable rate mortgages was purely speculative. But before all things must pass, all things must also come to pass. And that was the case by December 2008 when this song served as an actual goodbye to living south of the Mason-Dixon line.