Donna and I always enjoy live music. Donna found a place called the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix. We hadn’t heard of this place before, but it’s ranked among the top 20 museums in the country. They have a theater in the museum complex and a full calendar of performances. A blues guitarist named Tinsley Ellis had a concert scheduled Saturday night. Tinsley is from Atlanta, Georgia and has been around the music scene for quite a while. He’s performed with many notable musicians including Warren Haynes, The Allman Brothers Band, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Otis Rush and Buddy Guy. He recorded his first album in 1988.

Donna found tickets online – the concert was nearly sold out. She found four seats and bought the tickets. We invited our friends, Mike and Jodi Hall, to join us. Mike came by our site at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort around 5pm and drove us to his place. Mike and Jodi bought a house in Mesa a couple of miles away from the RV park last year. We enjoyed a cold one and toured their new home. It’s a nice place on a cul-de-sac . Mike has been doing a few upgrades such as a nice tile backsplash in the kitchen and new wood laminate flooring in the bedroom. The backyard features a pool and hot tub and also a koi pond.

While we were checking out the koi pond, a hummingbird appeared. Mike has a feeder in the backyard, but the hummingbird was hovering over the pond. In the rays of the late afternoon sun, we could see gnats buzzing in the air over the pond. The hummingbird would dart from his hover and snatch a gnat out of the air. We watched him do this for several minutes. I knew hummingbirds eat insects, but I’ve never seen one do it before.

The concert was scheduled to start at 7:30pm, so we hit the road around 6:30pm. Phoenix sprawls and the Musical Instrument Museum is on the far north perimeter near the junction of the loop 101 and AZ51. We figured it to be about a 40-minute drive.

The museum is a beautiful, large building with the theater and offices on the first floor. The museum itself is on the second floor and houses over 200 musical instruments. The museum closes at 5pm, so we couldn’t enter – we were just there for the concert in the theater. The theater is a super venue for a concert. It seats 300 people – there isn’t a bad seat in the house. It’s very intimate and acoustically designed. We learned that over 250 concerts were performed there last year and they’re on track to have 260 this year – that’s about five shows per week! Who knew?

Donna, me, Jodi and Mike at the MIM

Tinsley Ellis put on a great performance. He played nearly non-stop for about 90 minutes. He had a variety of guitars – one was especially interesting to me. Back in the 1950s, Ted McCarty was the head of Gibson, the guitar manufacturer. In 1957, he introduced some futuristic models to capture a younger rock and roll market demographic. He introduced the Flying V and the Explorer. At the same time, another model called the Moderne was announced. The Moderne of 1958 is the holy grail for collectors – because no one knows what happened to it. Supposedly a prototype was built, but it wasn’t put into production. In 1982 and 1983, Gibson broke out the blueprints and produced a small number of Moderne guitars. Tinsley Ellis had one – I was told it’s a 1982.

Tinsley’s guitars – Left to right – National Resonator, Fender Stratocaster (blond neck), Gibson ES335, Fender Stratocaster (rosewood fretboard) and Gibson Moderne

We all enjoyed the show. I’d like to come back see the museum sometime – and of course, see another show at the theater. Mike and Jodi dropped us off a little past 10pm.

On Sunday morning, Donna went for a bike ride. She rode 9 miles west to the canal bike trail and then looped south. She stopped at Kokobelli Bagels to meet her friend Jody Owens for coffee and a bagel. They visited for a couple of hours. Donna hadn’t seen Jody since we moved to Detroit in 2009.

I mostly puttered around. The Tinsley Ellis concert inspired me to put new strings on my guitar and practice a bit. I also straightened out a few things in the trailer. We’re down to our last two and half weeks here before we move on.

Last week, I sharpened kitchen knives for Donna. We have a set of J. A. Henckels knives I bought about 15 years ago. While sharpening the chef’s knife, I noticed the blade was nicked and chipped in a few places. I used a medium coarse stone to re-profile it, but I wasn’t entirely happy with the result. If you follow this blog, you probably know I have an affinity for Spyderco locking blade pocket knives. Well, I found out that Spyderco also makes kitchen knives.

I ordered a Spyderco Santoku. A Santoku is a Japanese design utility kitchen knife. Santoku means three virtues – slicing, dicing and mincing. The design incorporates a sheepsfoot-style blade where the backstrap of the blade curves down at the tip. The cutting edge of the blade on the Spyderco Santoku curves upward near the tip more than the traditional Japanese Santoku – this facilitates rocking the knife on a cutting board to dice vegetables or chop herbs.

Spyderco Santoku kitchen knife

The blade is about seven inches long and is made from MBS 26 steel in Seki City, Japan. This is a stainless steel with a high resistance to corrosion and also sharpens easily. It has high toughness which allows the blade to be ground thin – in steel, think of toughness as the opposite of brittle. I think Donna will enjoy using this knife for food preparation.

This morning was windy. I played in the 3.0-3.5 pickleball round robin and the wind was challenging at times. We expect the temperature to reach the mid-70s today and hit the 80s for next week or so. I’ll have to finish checking off my things-to-do list before we head out. We have a general idea of where we’re going. We’re set to be in Austin, Texas by April 19th for the Moto GP race at Circuit of the Americas. But we have no reservations between now and then – or after for that matter!