LISA DENTON: Barry, the other day I watched my phone's autocorrect change the word "dish" to "fish" so that the text message I was about to send read: Do you think you'll make it to the cookout tomorrow, and if so are you bringing a fish?
At least it was only a text message to my niece. As misspellings go, it cod have been worse.
BARRY COURTER: You're krilling me. You can do betta.
At least your autocorrect has a relatively sweet side. Mine is out to get me by either changing what I type to something obscene or to something so incredibly wrong it makes me look like I typed it with my feet.
LISA: Definitely not good. If you can come up with a fix for it, please let minnow.
BARRY: I'm pretty excited about the Roger Alan Wade show Friday night at Songbirds North. That's the museum space. Great songwriter in a great venue. In addition to hearing him play, I'm excited to talk to him about his role in the show WTCI is putting together to preview the Ken Burns "Country Music" documentary due out in September.
James Rogers, Laura Walker, Tom Morley, Angel Snow and the New Dismembered Tennesseans also will be involved. Should be terrific. Songbirds will have Kelly Willis and Bruce Robinson there on Thursday and Angel Snow with Justin Wade Tam of Humming House on Saturday.
LISA: And do you remember when SingSing, the dueling piano bar, was downtown? Rhythm & Brews took over the space in 1999, so it's been a while, but I still remember it fondly. Saturday, there will be something similar, a Dueling Pianos performance in the West Village near the Westin hotel.
Andrew Chauncey and Jack Hitchens will be the two guys with the two pianos. They say there's no set list involved. They just play songs requested by the audience even if they've never played them before. Which could be interesting. I mean, if they don't know a song, I guess they could just play something and say it's a version only they know. After all, Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails both recorded "Hurt."
BARRY: This would be my only possible entry into being a singer/performer. Kind of reminds me of the elementary school kid's answer to "How do you spell 'cat'?
"K-a-t."
"Well, that's wrong."
"Nope, that's how I spell it."
LISA: We have something similar happen in church sometimes. We'll open our hymnals to No. 55, and the piano player is on No. 65. Or maybe No. 188.
BARRY: We had an organist like that. And a choir director who announced one Sunday during the preservice warm-up that she wished the congregation would be quiet and let the choir do it their way. I always thought she kind of missed the reason for the gathering, but what do I know.
LISA: Or the mother who bragged that her son was the only one in the entire marching band in step.
BARRY: I told you that in confidence. I kid - I was never in the band. They work too hard.
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Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.
Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.