In the early part of 2018, Jim was secretly sending our Honey and the Badgers’ recordings to the contest organizer of the Battle of the Blues Bands to be held at Famous Dave’s Barbeque at Calhoun Square in South Minneapolis.  He had landed us a spot in the competition, and we rallied to rehearse and perfect our required half hour set list which included one new cover song to be our show piece by LeAnn Rimes.  This was LeAnn’s cover of Sixteen Tons, a very old folk song.  It had a few key changes that stretched our team to do something we had never done before.  Everyone was pulling their weight and the project was coming together nicely.  Honey and the Badgers was the blues roots band that Jim and I helped form with relative-in-law, Dale Overson.  Dale and Jim wrote most of the songs together with others providing input.  Jim created song composition and “the sound” he was reaching for, while Dale with few exceptions was putting together the recorded song tracks.  They worked closely.  The band consisted of me on lead vocals and hand percussion, Jim on harmonica, Dale who shared lead guitar and bass parts with Paul Keller, a multi-instrumentalist, Katherine Bohn on violin and viola with Greg Reeves on drums.  All had their lead vocal songs, except for Greg and Katherine.  Kat had some awesome harmony vocals on Tomorrow Will Be Kinder, a Secret Sister’s song that was part of The Hunger Games soundtrack, along with some polished viola and violin parts.  Greg was a welcomed new addition to the band.  We were all immediately in awe of his ability to play the drum solo on Shakin’ All Over.  Lol!  It’s true.    I really liked Eilen Jewell’s cover of this song originally played by Johnny Kid and the Pirates.  Their original recording reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart in August 1960. It was a fun song to perform.  My medical tests began as our band started to gel and improve with a new, solid drummer. As fate would have it, March 1st was both competition day and the day I was diagnosed with pancreas cancer. The performance never happened.