1. Before my mop got too shaggy, I drove to Supercuts in Coeur d'Alene and arrived around 12:30. There was an immediate opening and I was in and out in flash.
I'd told Byrdman I was coming over and as soon as I left Supercuts, we met up at Growler Guys and immediately worked on sorting out the mind boggling, unpredictable world of college basketball.
Because I've been lying low for a while, I've slacked off on my campaign to SAVE THE PORTER.
I got back with it today, though, and ordered a pint of Revision Brewing's solid When the Night Falls porter. Yakking with Byrdman was so fun that I didn't give this beer very careful attention. I do know that I enjoyed it thoroughly. I wasn't in the mood for much bitterness and this porter pleased me with its smoothness and, as I remember, pleasing presence of chocolate (but it might have been coffee!).
Next, I ordered a half pint of a favorite beer from Breakside Brewing, the easy and pleasing Salted Caramel Milk Stout.
Until it closed a few years ago, Byrdman and I enjoyed visiting Downdraft Brewing in Post Falls and yakking with Ginger Cantamessa, the brewery's owner and brewer. As we got to yakkin' with Ginger back then, we realized that she was married to Josh whose dad, Jeff (RIP, 06-29-2017), was my age, well-known to Byrdman, and a lifelong resident and prominent citizen of Wallace. Jeff ran the Thrift Center grocery store in Wallace (later Harvest Foods).
Things didn't work out at Downdraft, but recently Ginger and Josh opened a new brewery in downtown CdA, Black Lodge Brewing located on Third St. between Lakeside and CdA Avenues.
After we finished our beers at Growler Guys, Byrdman suggested we head down to Black Lodge.
We did. The taproom was open. And, great news!, Ginger was pouring beer.
Perfect.
Right now, as they get started, Black Lodge is pouring mostly other brewers' beer until they get their own beer is completely ready to serve. Upon arrival, we learned that Black Lodge was sold out of their own beer -- no problem -- the beers on tap were great offerings.
I was especially happy that Black Lodge was serving one of my favorite wild ales, a throwback to the Belgian Blowouts at Bier Stein in Eugene: the mighty Duchesse de Bourgogne Brouwerij Verhaeghe, a Flemish red-brown ale that I think of as a sour ale, a most delicious beer.
It astonished and delighted me that Black Lodge was pouring this awesome beer.
As we dove into our beers, another customer strolled in, a friendly forthcoming regular whom we soon learned is Ron Moore. We learned before long that Ron and KHS, Class of 71 stalwart, John Eixenberger, are friends and Ron called him to invite him down to Black Lodge because Byrdman was in the house.
John and Byrdman go way back and when John walked in they were very happy to see each other. They talked about a lot of things, including old times in Kellogg -- I especially enjoyed talking about Little League and Babe Ruth baseball and the great days of hoops at the YMCA.
In the midst of yakking with Ginger, Ron, and John -- and making the acquaintance of Fred, a sous chef at Takara -- Ginger cracked open a can of Bombastic Brewing's divine 5th Anniversary Imperial Stout and poured us a taster of it. She also poured us a taster of an old ale (I didn't get the brewer's name) and it was like drinking a great slice of pie, like mince meat, and blissfully reminded me of the Block 15 Figgy Pudding Barleywine I enjoyed in January at Sixteen Tons in Eugene.
This is all to say that Byrdman and I had an awesome time this afternoon at Growler Guys and Black Lodge Brewing. If I lived in CdA, I'd be a regular at Black Lodge. I'm happy to know that two people I like a lot, Darrell Dlouhy at Daft Badger and Ginger Cantamessa at Black Lodge, both own and run breweries and I look forward to going to both places as often as I reasonably can.
2. Not only did I have an awesome time in CdA this afternoon, I had an awesome drive over and back. I drove the Camry. That meant I could listen to an episode of Daniel Mackay's Hard Rain and Slow Trains: Bob Dylan and Fellow Travelers by playing my phone through the car's sound system.
I scrolled back through the Hard Rain archive and decided to start listening to a series of episodes focused on Bob Dylan's fall tour in support of his album, Rough and Rowdy Ways.
On my drive over and back, I listened to the episode, "Pregame". It aired on 10-28-2021, just days before the fall tour began. In this episode, Daniel puts the 2021 into historical context. With this tour, Dylan would be returning to the stage for the first time in 23 months and Dan looked back at other times in his career when Dylan didn't perform on stage for stretches of time. This episode also featured an interview with Jeff Harrison. Jeff talked about what he is looking forward to on this tour and Daniel asked Jeff to remember back to Dylan concerts he has attended over the last nearly 50 years. I thoroughly enjoyed Jeff's contribution to this episode and, later, I also enjoyed Dan's interview with Terry Gans, author of Surviving in a Ruthless World: Bob Dylan's Voyage to Infidels.
So far, every episode of Dan's show has been superb. I know very little about Bob Dylan and I'm enjoying dipping into the Dylan universe and am overjoyed that Dan, and when I see him, Jeff, are serving as my guides.
3. If you follow this blog at all, you know that Thursday is Blissful Thursday for me.
Starting at 8:00 in the evening, KEPW-FM in Eugene (kepw.org) broadcasts Dan's Bob Dylan show for an hour and then broadcasts Jeff's show, Deadish, for two hours.
Tonight, Dan devoted his hour to Dylan's superb song, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again". Dan played different covers of the song, guided us through the composition's nine verses, played two old tunes that Dylan drew upon when writing his song, and played the song as it appears on Dylan's dynamite album, Blonde on Blonde.
All night long, after listening to this show, I had Bob Dylan dreams. My dreams were dominated by titles to some of Bob Dylan's songs. They just kept swimming before my eyes, as if I were being taken through a surrealistic retrospective of his entire career. Tunes played, too, but just fragments. I suppose my dreams were telling me that after decades of paying only casual attention to Bob Dylan that his stuff is starting to find its place inside me.
On his show tonight, Jeff opened by playing the Grateful Dead performing "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" on 12-31-89.
Jeff then continued his focus from a week ago on playing music by Black artists to continue to commemorate Black History Month.
He played a terrific series of Jimi Hendricks songs and, in the last hour, played an uninterrupted set of tracks from West Africa.
Blissful Thursday blissed me out again.
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