That you may have never heard of, but you should.  If you like Chris Knight, Ryan Bingham or anything similar, check this guy out.  Its good, honest songwriting….other songs to check out are Dynamite and Whiskey and Kansas…good stuff thats been around a long time.

So, I packed up the rig and headed north to the epicenter of southern fly fishing media…where it all happens, Southern Culture on the Fly Headquarters.  The guys invited me to come up and hang out in Steve’s art studio to paint.  So, Steve is well-known for huge canvases depicting interesting formations, negative space and a lot of space in between.  I was just as excited to watch Steve paint as I was to paint in his space.  I learned a lot, a very lot.  To be around someone else that paints, but paints in a whole another way, it was very interesting and I couldn’t help but come out a little different painter.  Lately I have been on the pursuit of trying to be a little looser in painting and drawing…the sharpie drawings have definitely lend themselves to being looser and now to transfer that to paint.  Steve’s art, to me, is very loose….they are comfortable, lot of paint dripping, they take on a life, the shapes resemble something, but it takes time for you to figure it out…being different to each viewer.

So…I  immediately stole a little from him.  I began my painting of a Tarpon my friend Nam Bui caught, it was a small Tarpon, but I wanted to paint it huge, on a large canvas.  Steve’s studio space lends itself to painting large, the space is huge and I wanted to give a big painting a go.  I drew out the lines and basic colors and then decided the background was going to be nondescript colors and very loose.  I had fun with it, just letting the paint drip where it wanted to, careless dripping and it turned out very cool looking, I think.  The rest of the painting was a little more challenging.  I am still about to finish it, but also being forced into trying to finish it in a day and a half was a challenge for sure.  I definitely felt like I rushed it a bit, with the layers and the paint not drying enough in some situations.  I want the next one to be even looser, more transparent…I dont want to give away too easily what it will be.  I am leaning towards a Redish or Bonefish..we shall see.  The final painting will be in (www.SouthernCultureOnTheFly.com) on July 8th.  In all I am very excited about this painting and the ones that are yet to come.

Steve’s Artwork (http://www.stevenseinberg.com/)

I am about to start the process of figuring out how to make an album, a rekkid.  I have some idea what it takes, but am about to nail it down.  I am excited about it and think I’m ready for it.  I have about 14 doable songs…a mixture of singer/songwriter stuff and blues, might be a weird mix, but whatever.  Here is another one I am looking forward to messing with.  I believe most of these songs will take on a whole other form when brought to other musicians with different ideas and such, it will be a very cool experience!

This is what I got for now…about to get back to some painting!

If you haven’t checked out Doug Roland and Ryan Rice’s blog of short films and photos, then check it out, lots of good stuff.  (www.LowcountyJournal.com) These guys have come a long way in a year, recording and logging a lot of hours on the water and it shows on the short films they make.  On Memorial Day, yesterday, we got out on the water and went looking for the reds in the grass, outta the grass in the mud…wherever we could find them, and they were in all of the above.  We got into some skinny water, the lowest low of the year…we found out the hard way, or almost the hardest way.  As the water rifled through the creeks, we finally decided to start escaping while we still had water.  Trenching the boat through 100 yards of mud, we finally got to some water that carried us out.  Until then we had fish all around us, almost too many to choose one.  We picked off a couple before we were pushed out.  After the muddy post-holing, we came to the confluence of a couple creeks which held these fish as they were flashing and thrashing glass minnows.  Just watching these fish was entertainment enough as they would turn on their sides showing us the gold.  We caught a couple more then decided to let them have the creek to themselves.  All day today I was wishing I was back there, in that same spot…but what I have come to realize is, everyday is different…the fish are never in quite the same spot, they act different, they eat different, they react different, you are never the same either….your casting sucks today, you left the good fly at home…thats what I love about this interaction, its never the same, thats what makes it amazing!  Cheers to fishing with friends and sharing these amazing days and never forgetting them.

So, as early as I can remember, my Dad was teaching me the 5 B’s of become a great guy, a good person and someone that will have the right priorities in life.

Larry Puckett’s 5 B’s

Baseball, BBQ, Blues, Bass, Babes

Boom….there they are, all ya need…well, Beer was added to it when I was 21, its a mythical add on.

Last Friday night I was back in Atlanta, and in town for the weekend, which was a very hectic weekend.  We got the ol band back together at Five Paces Inn, and it was a great time.  We hadn’t played together in 7 months, and it seemed like we had been playing ever since I left.  I think that has to do with the relaxed feeling and no pressure.  Sometimes when you practice a bunch, there seems to be a lot more tension and pressure.  But, we all came in and just jammed, and it was great.  I brought in a couple originals that I had been working on, ad we all played them together for the first time, and it was amazing to hear my couple songs come to life….it has definitely inspired me to write more, and I am excited about it.  Here is one of those songs….

“Find A Way To Your Heart” – Chris Urquhart(Bass) – Jared Snider(Drums) – Chris Clark(Slide Geetar) – Sandy Chapman(Keys) – Ben Reeves(Acoustic Geetar) – Paul Puckett(Geetar/Vocs)

“A Good Spot” – Oil on Board – 14 x 14

“Robert Johnson and the Most Mythical Bluefish Ever Caught” – Oil on Board – 16 x 16

Finally, I am cashing in on the main reason I moved here, besides the fact Charleston is great already, the Redfish have found their way onto the flats, and showing their asses.  Nothing like seeing these fish in the grass, such a huge difference from anywhere else you may find tailing fish.  There is nothing like seeing a pack of Bonefish on a flat, or a redfish on huge wide open flat in Port Aransas, TX, but being in the grass, waiting, doubting, listening and then all the sudden, like through a beaded door….you get a glimpse of movement…everything changes.  Its that one fish you have been waiting for, he has moved close enough so that you saw him through the dense grass…do you wait longer, will he come closer…should you move up, the window of opportunity is small….second guesses are circulating in your head as often as that little tail is waiving at you.  This was going through my head last week as this fish kept nosing through the grass.  I decided to see how close to me the fish would get, in order to just get some cool photos.  It would tail, move a foot, tail again and proceed in this manner until it was 10 feet away from me.  I was still just banking on gettng some cool photos.  Finally, when it was about that same distance of 10 feet away at my 10 o’clock….I casted it about 3 feet in front of the fish.  It approached in its same progression and dipped down in the area of my fly…I set, it slammed in to 4 th gear, and I got my fly back with the hook bent in a 45 degree angle…oh well.  The story has a lot more mystique sometimes when you lose the fish in that way, and I can blame it on the hook, not myself.  If you haven’t fished for these redfish in the grass, you have to…you just have to.