Have steaks, will travel

When our friend Fred helped us set up our sound system a while back he scratched his head as he watched us put it all together. He's a trained engineer but he drifted towards sound reinforcement. He spent years on the road with the country group Little Texas, and many other groups.

When he tired of the road, he went back to school and became a counselor. He works with Jilda at the Drug & Alcohol rehab center.

But he still loves doing sound. He works with us and several other singer/songwriter groups in the area.

But after our last gig, he called the next day to say that he could make our lives considerably easier by building a patch bay for the power cords and audio connections.

When he showed us how the new setup works, I was astounded. We'll reduce our setup and tear down time dramatically.

We asked him what it would cost before he did the work and without hesitation, he said "A Steak."

Today before we headed to his house, we stopped by the local family-owned grocery store and picked up three big ol' steaks before heading to his house.

After the show-and-tell with the sound system, we headed out to Fred's deck to grill some meat.

A few minutes later all you could hear coming from the dining room were grunts.

It was a delightful afternoon and our buddy did a remarkable job simplifying our system. We are eternally grateful for our friend Fred.