Tonight was the last farmers of 2011 in Pendleton. The farmers market has become a real institution over the past few years. There’s a small dedicated group of people who put a lot of time and effort into attracting vendors, musicians, and other folks to keep it fresh and exciting. I usually play there a couple of times every summer, but this year I’ve been playing with a great guy I met at the Pendleton Open Mic named Jared Pennington.

Jared is an outstanding guitarist. We don’t really rehearse at all (at this point), we just get together and play. I play songs I know and he improvises. It’s a lot of fun for me, and he seems to have a decent time as well.

Tonight we were scheduled to play the market, but when we got down there we found that they’d double-booked, and another local musician (J.D. Kindle – who’s album, Campfire Pop Abstraction, is GREAT) thought he was setting up in the same place that Jared and I were. Turns out, they were setting up an end-of-season party a block down with Great Pacific (the local institution for wine, coffee, and decent food) setting up a beer garden. Jared and I setup down there and played from a little after 5:00 to about 8:30, and a had a great time with a lively crowd.

One of the guys in the crowd asked me to play “Pop Goes the World” by Men Without Hats (which was on my playlist). Unfortunately, I hadn’t played it in a LONG time, so it didn’t really come together very well. However, it made me go look up the youtube video that I made of it:

It was a great way to wrap up another season of farmers markets!