1. Take out a second mortgage on my house, and buy a 1937 Gibson Flathead Five-String Banjo.
2. Take out a third mortgage on my house and buy a 1937 Martin Dreadnought Guitar.
3. Sell my house and buy a Feb. 18th, 1924 Gibson F5 Lloyd Loar signed mandolin.
4. Form a CBA Committee and implement a MONTHLY Fathers’ Day Festival at Grass Valley.
5. Enter a fiddle contest and not come in eleventh out of a field of ten.
6. Trade my brand new, sixty foot RV for a one man tent.
7. Find a way to be at all three stages at the same time at the 2017 FDF.
8. Sneak into FDF’s “Kids On Bluegrass” on the main stage at Grass Valley and blend in.
9. Spearhead “Geezers On Bluegrass.”
10. Add an extra hour to the Great 48 in Bakersfield.
11. Have the didgeridoo become accepted as a musical instrument in bluegrass music.
12. Learn to play the fiddle left-handed.
13. Learn to play the fiddle period.
14. Go to more jams besides strawberry.
15. Go to a jam at FDF 2017, play all night and keep playing until the sun comes up, or the paramedics come to get me (whichever comes first).
16. Run for Chairman of the Bored.
17. Talk Lucy Smith into becoming a CBA Welcome Columnist (yes, I know she is over-busy with IBMA).
18. Get Larry Baker to raise the Lazarus Bluegrass Festival (aka Plymouth Bluegrassin” In The Foothills) from the dead.
19. Give up pole vaulting.
20. Renew my license for eccentricity.
21. Stop going to barber shops (in the year 2016 I went to 1,296 barber shops, and not one mandolin was hanging on the wall with a sign, “For Sale”).
22. Write a better Welcome Column next month.
In case you are wondering, am I worried about the trouble I could get into, or the sheer insanity of trying to accomplish the aforementioned? Nope. Nobody keeps their New Year’s resolutions….
