Thursday January 27th, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL/Milwaukee, WI Coming back from a road trip of any kind always means one thing - catching up. It’s all I can do to make sure I stay on top of emails, phone calls, snail mail, bills, maintenance of my car, banking, laundry and who knows what else? It often gets away from me, but I try to keep as much of it under control as I can. Today I tried to focus on the main objectives. Tomorrow is the big ‘Schlitz Happened!’ show in South Milwaukee. I’m excited about the show part, but that’s not all that needs to be done. I need to get the word out as best as I can with the limited budget I have, and I’m still basically a one man band. Other people have helped promote and send out flyers, but in the end this was me. It was an education. I have a Schlitz Happened Facebook page with 931 friends, so hopefully that will get a few walkups. OnMilwaukee.com gave me a very nice splash as did a few other websites. I don’t want to call in too many favors just yet, but I do want to make it a nice full house if I can, as that always makes a better show. I’ve done what I can, now it’s show time. Quite a few people are going to help out, and I appreciate every one of them. My friend and web person Shelley will work my merchandise table, and I picked up and paid for my official tour shirts today which look absolutely fantastic. They have all sorts of old school Milwaukee references on them that will resonate with anyone who lived there back then. I had 29 calls to return, was 238 emails behind and also had a dinner date with some old friends from Milwaukee Tim and Lynn Willmes. Tim and I met doing sports card shows a long time ago, and he and Lynn have been great supporters over the years. They come to a show when they can, and they’re coming tomorrow and bringing friends. I appreciate that. They’ve wanted to take me out to dinner for a while now, and that’s super nice of them. I haven’t had time, but I didn’t want to blow them off, so tonight was the night. They had wanted to do it tomorrow, but that would be too hectic, especially before a show. Today’s much better, so I drove up and we had a wonderful relaxed meal. It was delicious as well. It’s fun to have dinner with friends, but that takes time out of my work day too. I have a ton of other things to get to, but the first order of business is Schlitz. I’ll have a lot of long time friends like Tim and Lynn coming, and I want to not only make sure I do a hot show but also make sure I get to personally say hello and thank each one of them for coming. I never want to ‘big time’ anyone, and I sure don’t think I’m too good to say hello to the people who come, but there are so many details I have to take care of onstage and off that it’s all more than a little bit overwhelming. If I ignore even one person I’ll feel horrible. This is grass roots show business from the ground up. Literally. This whole thing came from a single idea, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. I’ve only done it a precious few times, but things are coming together quite nicely. I’ve got t-shirts now, and a website on the way, along with a poster. The best thing of all is it’s been a blast to put it all together.
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