Well.

As of today, April 18, 2013, sixstr stories is three years old.

The twos proved to be not so terrible after all: in the past year this blog was host to more than 3000 visitors/viewings, accepted over 40 comments and raucously woo-hooed! when each new folk signed on and joined the ranks of “followers.”

On behalf of everyone… um, “everyone?”… ok: me… here at sixstr stories, I thank you, one and all!

In preparation for the birthday celebrations, I recently did some “house cleaning” on the blog.

First of all, I went through the archives and made sure that each post was correctly categorized. I retitled one category: the posts once listed as “Uncategorized” are now being identified as “Random Topics.” (Does Rolling Stone magazine still have its “Random Notes” section?)

Then I set up a “widget” (that’s a WordPress term) so that you can now search the archives by category! Simply click on one of the seven category titles in the list at the top right hand corner of the home page and you will be sent to a page containing titles of, the opening sentence from and links to each post in that category. Way cool.

For instance, if you click on the category “EFS Music,” you will find all of the 25 posts that contain audio links to exclusive recordings of (who else?) me, singing and playing original songs and fingerpicking a few acoustic guitar instrumentals. Under the categories of “On This Day In Music History” and “This Historic Day In Music,” you’ll find a combined total of 93 posts, each one celebrating the anniversary of a significant musical event in the histories of Folk, Jazz, Blues, Country or Rock.

Also, in an attempt to spiffy things up a bit (and since I finally figured out how to actually do it), I have been including more photographic images in the posts. So far, I’ve done magazine & songbook covers and sheet music to go along with the embeded video links that I’ve been incorporating for a while. (Speaking of the video links, if you’re browsing through the archives and should find a post with a blank video screen or one that says “This video has been removed,” please leave a comment to let me know. I recently had to re-embed a video with Lead Belly singing “Goodnight, Irene”.)

So, what does the future hold for sixstr stories?

More of the same!

Specifically, I’m planning on expanding the “Wrestling With An Angel” series, finding more anniversaries and birthdays to celebrate and continuing to add recordings from the vaults of EFS Music.

And finally, as sixstr stories ventures forth into its fourth year, I have one last bit of information from the “site stats” page to share.

The next post will be my 201st.

Once more, many thanks. I hope you come back again soon and often in the months ahead. I’ll continue to do my best to make it worth the trip.

“Good music doesn’t get old.”