Sadly, due to a bit of a family emergency, Ten Years Too Late will not be performing at the Vanilla Bean tomorrow.

But, pick up your chins, faithful readers! Don’t change your plans; you should still be at the Vanilla Bean at 8:00 to see the lovely and talented Tracie carrying the torch — er, guitar. She’ll be kickin’ it solo-style while we re-group and plan for our unstoppable 2006 debut.

In our quest to hit every open mic in the tri-state area this year, Ten Years Too Late will be heading to Pomfret, Connecticut this Friday (1/6) to check out the Vanilla Bean Cafe. We are troubadors! The Vanilla Bean has fabulous food and wine, so you could do worse than to take a friend or loved one to dinner there and check out some local talent. Their open mic is the first Friday of every month, with folky concerts on the weekends in between. Lori McKenna, who I just discovered is totally famous now after seeing her with Faith Hill on Oprah over the holidays, is performing there on 1/14. I think my New Year’s resolution every year is going to be to make it on Oprah, even if I too must be painted as a stay-at-home mom or convenience store clerk or person with chronic broken legs or corns so bad that I can hardly walk or other disenfranchised entitity whose dream came true thanks to some big star, just to make my story more Oprah-worthy. [Note: I want my big star savior to be Cher. “See how Cher turned this chronic corn suffering half-breed’s life around…on the next Oprah!”] Anyway, Lori McKenna is awesome. You can (and should!) listen to some of her songs on her website. Faith Hill covered “If You Ask,” the Lori McKenna song that I wanted us to cover. Thanks a lot, Faith Hill. She did a great job, which makes it all the worse. Stupid famous and beautiful Faith Hill.

Before the holidays we played at a private house party for our writing group at Casa de Foley-Fitzpatrick. We served it up holiday style with a couple of covers — most notably John Denver’s “Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” — which I consider to be something of a lost classic. Download it now so you’ll be prepared when next Christmas comes around! We also played a great holiday song that Matt wrote called, “It’s Christmastime (And I Don’t Care).” He really did care, I think, but just likes to talk tough. We also busted out our own lost classic, the co-written “Abilene,” which is something of a rollicking country number. Perhaps one day we will record it and put it up on this site, with the requisite parental advisory warning. We may play it at the Vanilla Bean if there are no children in the audience, or even if there are children in the audience, if by chance we are in the mood to corrupt some little tykes. Mwah ha ha.

Happy New Year and all that stuff!