March 12 - 20, 1999
Wednesday, April 21, 1999
We’re rumbling down some Kansas two-lane heading diagonally, southwest, for Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and home. It’s beautiful, about 70 degrees and pre-rain humid, just before sunset. It’s a lot different from what we ran into when we started this short tour last week.
After about 1400 miles of feeling the temperature drop - a reminder that spring doesn’t come with a guarantee - we pulled into Ames, Iowa, to snow. We were there for a return engagement at The Maintenance Shop. I would think it has to be the coolest campus music bar in the country. If there’s another, I want to play there, too. OK, let me get this right, is it Iowa State or the University of Iowa? It’s the Cyclones, whichever school that is. They’ve got this intimate bar club in the basement of the student union. It’s an amazing place, if only based on who has played there over the years. Name the famous blues artist, and you can bet they played there, the pictures on the wall are testimony - Muddy, Willie Dixon, and a bunch of jazz great, as well as nearly every folk, and a lot of rock and alt acts, over the last 25 years. Big stage. Good audio system.. A staff bent on bringing great music to the students. When I really get thinking about this, I realize that a lot of the acts aren’t those that are on the CD players in the dorm room. The Maintenance Shop sometimes showcases the music that the students’ music is built upon, but is too new to be of interest to academics. In that way, it’s an educational thing, rounding out the experience. If I may ascend the soap box for a minute, let me suggest that this recent music history IS important to offer now because commercial (and, yes, the vast majority of public) radio is so segmented and specialized that there’s almost no other way students are going to hear roots music. They sure don’t play the stuff on Alternative, Urban Dance Mix, Techno, Adult Contemporary, Easy Listening, Light Jazz, New Age format stations.
Time for a funny, I think, story. My stepson, Tim, listens to quite a bit of rap. It’s not the candy-coated suburban stuff, but on the other hand it’s not strictly gangsta hard core, either. What I hear blasting out of his room makes me realize there’s a lot of good music buried under the hip hop slag that dominates MTV and radio. He’s been exposed to, OK, inundated by, all kinds of music since he was a real little kid. He may not admit it readily, but he instantly recognizes everything from David Lindley and Los Lobos to Al Green and most of the other Memphis and Detroit R&B acts. He’s heard his share of Sonny Rollins (No. 1 in my book) and Miles, too. He certainly knows his James Brown. He’s sick of hearing me or his mother point out the old R&B samples in rap hits. Can’t help it, sorry. Anyway, one day I’m playing The Gourds’ CD with a remake of “Gin & Juice” on it - it’s the weirdest twist you could put on a nasty rap number, blue grass - and he comes to my door and says, “Don’t tell me that’s the original....is it?” No, for once, it was someone else borrowing from a rap artist (although I must point out that The Gourds were a hell of a lot more forthcoming about where they got this song than most rappers are about where they lifted their samples).
Anyway, you’ve got to know your music history to understand the new stuff. Bless the Maintenance Shop, and may they be protected from the numb-brained administrators that routinely screw up contemporary arts programs at nearly every university I can name. Don’t get me started on our own University of Arizona.
The show at The Maintenance Shop went well, although we were there on a Thursday night and it was further dampened by an alcohol ban on campus. Seems the annual spring festival got way out of hand a couple years back and the reaction was to ban alcohol, period. The result, I was told by some staff and students, is that students now leave campus for the festival. Kind of amusing, actually, but it puts a damper on trying to get a crowd into a music bar.
We woke to snow falling and on the ground Friday morning and hit the slab for Milwaukee and a first time show at the Milwaukee Irish Cultural Center. Despite being Arizonans, we didn’t freak at the sight of snow and made good time right into sausage city. The venue was a shock. The Milwaukee Irish Cultural Center is a converted gothic-style church, built in the late 1800s. Stunning. There’s a huge (16 foot pipes, I believe) pipe organ. They let Kevin and me play around on it. You should hear the opening to “All Around My Hat” on that thing. It was a very lively room, acoustically, but had no single overwhelming echo, like so many big, stone churches. The room seats several hundred and we had a very respectable showing for a first appearance. Even after finding out that the acoustics were a lot better than I feared, I still thought the church setting might make for a subdued crowd. Not so. Could be the effects of the pub that’s now located in the room behind where the altar used to be. It sounds as though we’ll be going back.
Dick Tierney and Patsy put us up for the night, chauffeured us around and generally treated us wonderfully. We probably ruined their relationship with their neighbors by pulling into their quiet neighborhood at 2am in the ever-more-battle-scarred Beast. (“Well, Martha, it appears the Tierneys aren’t the nice folks we thought they were. You never really know people, do you?”)
When we do shows for groups with an obvious, or stated, interest in Celtic music, Nancy leans heavily on music she has written in that style, as well as some of our covers of traditional Celtic songs and tunes. Invariably, it seems to me, these crowds “get” the connection between Celtic music and the other styles we play - maybe more so than the general folk and roots audiences. Maybe it’s because they’re familiar with the Celtic covers we play, even though we hardly play them in traditional style, and then launch into our more derivative stuff. The connections, particularly between Celtic and bluegrass and country, are self-explanatory when heard side by side.
(An update from the present, back here in my bunk amidships in the Beast: Wooooo! I think we’re following another cattle truck (I hope we’re following a cattle truck.) That’s enough to turn one into a vegetarian. It’s now dark and the scenery is limited to oncoming trucks, the occasional oscillating Cyclops lights from trains on the mainline that parallels this farm-to-market rural road, and little towns in the distance. I remember barreling down this road once a few years ago in the very early morning hours and coming across a derailment. A few feet further off the track and we would have been late for the opening of that tour. Now we’re on a divided four-lane, playing hop scotch with the semis and cutting across Oklahoma. )
Meanwhile, back to the tour notes....
The next day, Saturday, was one of those days you may see disappear from our tour itinerary. Sometimes those are travel days (fat chance) or just empty dates that the agent couldn’t fill. But sometimes they’re private affairs. That was the case last Saturday. We did a wedding for some fans; the groom heard us in Seattle at The Tractor, the bride in NYC at the Bottom Line. They’re both from St. Paul, so we played their reception. It was a ritzy affair at the Minnesota History Center, a beautiful new building near Minnesota’s stunning capitol and the Cathedral of the Catholic Diocese. Sometimes weddings are a trial because the bride and groom have picked a band - that would be us - that they like, but the crowd doesn’t. (“What do you mean you won’t play, “Color My World?”) But this crowd loved us. I don’t recall getting a standing O at many weddings. They stayed to the end and then asked for more. So, we had a hell of a good time, too. Best wishes and thanks to Mike and Lisa. I didn’t feel like I was in that Adam Sandler movie, and I thank them and their friends and family for that.
The wedding gig let us stay in the Twin Cities (I lived in St. Paul until I was 15) and play the next night at the Cedar Cultural Center. It’s a big room with theater style seating, but dancing space off to the sides. The manager and crew treated us wonderfully and the crowd was happy with what they heard of the new material. We used to play an Irish pub in Minneapolis, before we played the Cedar for the first time. I wasn’t sure how the fans from the pub days would take the less Celtic material and feel about a sit down, concert-style venue, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. The only problem was a nasty bass boom problem up on stage. Bass is a lot trickier than the higher frequencies that make up most of the sound you hear from the other instruments and voices. A certain shape room, or even a hollow stage, can magnify certain frequencies. This particular night, no matter what I did, no matter how I turned my cabinet or adjusted the tone controls, I could hear nothing but a nasty booming every time I touched a string. The sound engineer and the fans I talked to said the bass sounded OK out front, but it sure didn’t where I was. It took the fun out of the show for me. That doesn’t happen very often. I love to play. But I sucked like a bucket of ticks that night. Playing when you can’t hear yourself or get the sound you want is like being a mechanic and having to work on Yugos.
Fortunately, we were staying with Donnie Stephanski and he was giving us the royal treatment, as usual, over at his house. I licked my wounds, sat around and had a good time with the crew at the house and headed off to bed. I woke to rapid fire gunshots about 4 am - and laughter mixed with shrieks. Seems certain members of the band decided to go down into the basement (this might have something to do with that being the home of Donnie’s always ready beer keg). Arizona folk don’t get to see many basements. Soon, I later learned, one of them found a paint ball gun and they started shooting at one another. We don’t throw TV sets out motel windows, but this may take the shine off our well-behaved reputation of late.
(Back in the van for a moment. What’s the deal with Oklahoma roads? They’ve got better roads than this in Bosnia. I figure it must be a way to torture people for just passing through the state or telling those Oklahoma jokes. A Texan asked me why Texas, as big as it is, doesn’t slide into the Gulf of Mexico? I, unsure whether Texas plate tectonics were as different as Texas politics, said I had no idea. She informed that it was because “Oklahoma sucks.” Now, is that nice? I feel almost compelled to tell some of the Texas jokes I’ve heard in New Mexico and Tennessee. Maybe later. )
Meanwhile, back to the tour...The weather was gloomy in the Twin Cities, but it wasn’t cold. We tend to look out the window and watch The Weather Channel first thing in the morning if we have to drive to our next show. We were kind of apprehensive about being this far north when spring wasn’t yet a done deal. I can remember growing up in Minnesota and seeing snow in May on a couple occasions. We lucked out and headed south to Mankato for our show at the Kato Entertainment Center (which most people still call the Kato Ballroom, a legendary Midwest ballroom that dates back to the 1930s). It was our second trip to the Kato, which took over as our southern Minnesota venue after the beloved Blue Room closed last year. The Blue Moon’s proprietor, and as good a friend as you can get, Dan Stark, kept us coming back even after the Moon closed. This time it wasn’t quite as melancholy as last, which was right after the Moon closed. The Moon crowd, and a bunch of new fans, were there. It was kind of a full circle deal. The first time we played the Moon was three or four years ago after Cheryl Crow decided to extend her tour and play the Fine Line, where we were booked, in Minneapolis. Well, we got thrown out like a bunch of bums at the last minute so they could have Miss Rock Star, and a Tucson friend and fellow ex-Minnesotan, Steve Grams, told me about the Blue Moon. His friend, and now our friend, Ron Arsenault, set the deal up and we had a hell of a run at the Moon. I can’t say I ever once had any regrets about playing there instead of at the Fine Line in the Twin Cities. But, believe it or not, there we are in Mankato on a Monday night and who the hell do you think is playing a big arena show in Mankato? Yup. But she didn’t seem to hurt our crowd and we had a great night.
It’s always a combination party/concert when we play there. We owe those folks. Joyce, Mollys Fan No. 1, was there with her entourage. Ron Arsenault, a fine guitarist and singer, did sound for us, hauling out his new PA. Sandy and ScottYoung put us up at their home in Kasota and spoiled us rotten, as usual. I could smell the BBQ grill from two blocks away as we pulled up. Sure enough, it was Scott. Sandy even packed us a lunch (complete with apple pie) for the road. A stay at Sandy and Scott’s always blows our diets. We mutter about salads and exercise regimes after leaving their place...as soon as we eat that lunch.
We headed for Kansas City and the last night on this mini-tour. The show was at a famous blues venue, the Grand Emporium; nearly every blues great I’ve heard of, and a bunch of lesser knowns that I haven’t, have played the Grand Emporium. Some jazz artists also occasionally play the room (Branford and Wynton Marsalis come to mind) and the occasional rock or Cajun artist, but nobody like us. I think it had to do with an open night and us having semi-local boy Gary Mackender in the band. The publicity they did for the show said, “The Mollys, featuring Gary Mackender.” Gary’s friends turned out and we tortured him all night. After every song, sometimes before too, Nancy or Catherine would say something about the song and then close the comment by adding, “featuring Gary Mackender.”
Had a great time, and not a bad crowd for a Tuesday night on our first time through. Thanks to Gary Mackender’s friends, of course. His brother Greg, a well-known local musician, put us up. He looks at that van out in back of his house like my brother does, with that combination bemused-you-must-be-nuts look.
So, it was an uneventful tour, but not bad. We didn’t have any full houses, but we played some new venues or newer venues, and tried to build up crowds for future visits. Personally, after a couple weeks at home I’m going to be more than ready for some summer festivals and big outdoor shows.