The Middle of May 1999 -
Leaving Tucson today seems wrong. It is beautiful here. Wouldn’t change a thing. It won’t be this nice for much longer; it can’t be more than a few days before the temperature hits 100. My swamp cooler is working like a champ (insert Tim Allen gorilla noise here), my trees are trimmed, the yard is looking sharp, both cars are running and I’m getting in that big ugly yellow van. Then again, we’re going to Colorado, New York, DC and Memphis, and how bad can that be?
Not only are we going to Colorado for two shows, and then on to the East Coast for a bunch more, but we’re going through New Mexico, and that means New Mexican food. New Mexico red and green is at the top of my list (tied for first with Indian). We stop in Albuquerque late in the evening and (because Garcia’s, the Mecca of New Mexican cuisine is closed) hit the Frontier over by the university. Not bad; then again, it’s hard to go wrong in New Mexico, even the food at the airport is worth the trip.
I was more than ready for a break. We had a bad tire on the van. It had been badly scalloped on an earlier tour because of a bad wheel bearing. So, we had the bad tire put on the rear after we got the bearing fixed, thinking it wouldn’t make as much difference back there. Well, it was bad. Riding in the back of the passenger area (my usual hang out) was like sitting on a jack hammer. The vibration was tearing up the van, our gear and the passenger with the bad back. I was ready to get out, all right, I just wasn’t sure I was going to get back in.
A good meal at the Frontier made the next couple hours pass quickly. Maybe that's what they mean by "comfort food?" We holed up in Raton for the night and headed out in the morning for Denver. We were going there for our first show at Swallow Hill, a folk music school with a great concert series. We’ve been wanting to play here for years.
It was a good sign that my cell phone (sorry, if any one needs one, it’s a touring musician, so I finally gave in a couple weeks ago) yelped just as Catherine was looking for an exit off I-25. It was Meredith, from Swallow Hill, and she guided us like an air traffic controller into our digs for the night -a Hyatt. That doesn’t happen more than twice a year, getting a really swank hotel, that is. Things were looking good. These people were, apparently, pros. The line up for the Swallow Hill series is made up of top names in folk, along with the occasional up and comer. It’s in a league with places such as The Towne Crier in Pauling, New York, The Olde Town School in Chicago, The Bottom Line in New York. If you’re ever in Denver, check the schedule at Swallow Hill. It’s a converted church, with a big stage, padded seating, a great sound system, no smoking. They’re musician friendly. (That’s not always the case.)
We checked in and I scoped out the amenities; when you usually stay in dumptels (our lodging usually involves places with numbers in the name - not a good sign) you should take advantage of it. I headed for the fitness room and beat the hell out of a stairclimber and a treadmill for 60 minutes. Staying in shape is hard for anyone, but traveling makes it tougher still. Nancy and Catherine get a good workout on stage, dancing like fiends for a good part of 90 minutes each night. Nancy runs regularly when we’re at home. Catherine, I don’t know how she does it; she has asthma and doesn’t workout. I think it must be sheer willpower that keeps her stamina up for shows. For me, a believer in only moving on stage if it’s to get out of the way of a flying mandolin or guitar, playing is not exercise. I’ll leave the jumping around to the others, I’m driving. I’ve just gotten back into a workout routine (cardio, mostly), having been knocked back a couple years by a traffic accident 18 months ago (a woman in a 750 BMW yapping on a cell phone rear-ended my cheesy little car, seriously screwing up my recently repaired lower back). I’m just getting to the point where I can walk upright most of the time and not grimace every time I pick something up that weighs more than 20 pounds. (Anybody know a good PI lawyer?) Being able to work out again is a real joy, and one of the things I miss most on the road. You can keep the mini-bar and the 32-inch TV and phone in the bathroom, what I want is that fitness room.
We had a really good night, and the crowd - though somewhat reserved in this no-booze setting - was very open to our strange mix of music. I can tell when the audio in the house is good because you can see people’s faces as they react to the lyrics and the more subtle musical details that are often lost in a room with bad acoustics or a lousy audio system.
We’ve been playing a lot lately, doing short tours, a lot of local Arizona bars, parties and a few concerts, as well as recording. We’ve been mixing the new songs Nancy has written for the upcoming CD in with some of our first-string tunes, and a few revived oldies. Musically, and mentally, we’re in pretty good shape to do our best on stage. We’re not burned out from overly long tours and stale material or being cooped in the studio for weeks on end. Still, some nights it doesn’t matter how right things are; some nights things just don’t come together. Some nights it can happen to the whole band, or a couple members. Some nights, it’s just one of us. It may not have anything to do with anything. You may feel fine but play lousy, or be unable to keep a beat or hit a note right on pitch. I’ve heard great pitchers say that on some days, the ball just won’t go where they throw it, won’t break. They get bombed and wind up going back to the dugout. Well, on this night, the rest of the group was fine. Some of them were even hot. But to continue the baseball metaphor, I couldn’t have hit a barn with a baseball bat. No bad notes, just a lack of finesse and the groove was nowhere to be found. It just wasn’t happening for me. But, oddly, I don’t remember ever having much more fun playing than I did that night. The sound was good, I could hear every one else as if I were wearing headphones in a studio, the crowd was tuned in, and we were getting pampered. So, it didn’t much matter. The bass players in the audience didn’t learn anything, but the crowd in general loved it. So did we. There was talk of going back before we even packed up the gear.
A great night and then we get to go back to the Hyatt.
Next morning, I got up early to take the van for a new tire. Discount Tire, an Arizona-based company, is more than a company with which we do business. Turns out that both Kevin and I, couple of gearheads, were longtime Discount Tire fans. It’s a great outfit. They’re honest. It doesn’t take any more than that. It’s rare enough. But they go beyond that. They give you the benefit of the doubt every time. Our van, and most of the band members’ vehicles are running on Discount Tire rubber. I found a store in Denver, fortunately, and got the offending tire replaced. Even though it was not their fault, it was a bad wheel bearing that screwed up the tire, they pro-rated it and saved us a bunch of dough.
Got to watch it. Like Jeff Foxworthy says, “You know you’re a redneck if you’ve ever spent an hour talking about truck tires.” (Then again, he also said, “You know you’re a redneck if none of the tires on your van are the same size.” Not guilty.) I am, however, playing in a band with a person who owns a banjo.
Then I went over to First Bass to find strings for my Zeta Crossover bass (that’s the strange looking thing I play when I’m not playing the guitar bass - a black Music Man Stingray). It needs some strange strings and I can’t find them anywhere except Austin. And, right now, I’m not in Austin. My point is? Well, if you’re a bass player, this is a very cool store. The owner is a funny guy (he understands, I’m absolutely sure he’s had people walk up to him at a show and say, “Can I see your ticket” right after he walked off stage, too). He has all sorts of strange bass stuff in his store.
So, we load up at the Hyatt, knowing we won’t be staying any place like this for a long time again, and head for Pueblo. I haven’t driven much since my back injury, usually just when the others may be not a wise choice for the job after a show, or for the last stretch on the way home, when it won’t matter if I’m all gimped out the next day because I’ll be at home. But, since I’m feeling somewhat better, I drive. Forgot how things looked out this big window. This is a damned big van. You can’t even reach the windshield, not even with my monkey arms, from the driver’s seat. It’s so old (1978) that it has one of those old skinny, hard plastic steering wheels. The seats are shot. They’re mushy overstuffed “captain’s” chairs (I think they were thrown overboard) and offer no support. But this old thing (216,000) still has a lot of power (that 460 V8 has never been rebuilt, and seldom even needed a tune up in the 127,000 or so miles we’ve put on it in the last two years). It’s a relic, though, and it can’t last forever. We seem to be avoiding the discussion of what we’re going to do when the inevitable happens (just how long can you go without rebuilding an automatic transmission and engine? And are you willing to spend thousands on a vehicle that’s not going to be worth as much as the repairs after the job’s done?) These things cross my mind when driving The Beast (actually, it’s The Beast II, as Kevin’s old Dodge was the original Beast).
So, you think I just blast down the road with great bass parts running through my head (“root, five, root, five...”)? Well, not hardly. With the kind of mileage we put on our transportation in this group, the increase in gas mileage from a modern electronic fuel injection system (12-13 mpg vs. the 9 we get from The Beast) would quickly repay part of a newer truck’s cost. (Based on 60,000 miles per year, and nine miles per gallon, we burn 6,666 gallons a year, or, at an average price of $1.20 we spend $8,000 a year on fuel. Last year, with it’s low fuel prices was a windfall for us. But, it could easily go the other way; Clinton bombs the wrong country and we go to rationing. Whereas 11 mpg cuts our consumption down to 5,454 gallons annually, which comes out to $6,545 at $1.20 per gallon. At 12 mpg, we’d use 5,000 gallons, costing us $6,000 at $1.20 per gallon. So, we’d probably save between $1400 and $2000 a year. Plus, at least for the first couple years, our maintenance costs would be lower. It’s a pretty safe bet we’d save at least $1200 for either an engine or transmission rebuild in the next year. There are some less tangible benefits, such as comfort and the odds that we are less likely to miss a gig because it’s less likely that a newer vehicle is going to break down. On the negative side, if we financed the buy, we’d have an increase in insurance costs of $200-$400 a year for comprehensive, maybe. And, of course, the major thing on the negative side is that we’d have a payment; that’s something this band has avoided. We’ve borrowed to finance recording and pressing CDs, but paid them off as quickly as we got some income out of the project. Not being in the hole is a big deal in our business plans.)
Meanwhile, back in southeastern Colorado, The Mollys check into a dive on the frontage road in Pueblo.
I could call title this next part of Notes from the Road “Miguel” (you Greg Brown fans would get it; see: “Mose Allison Played Here”) , but I’ll just say that, despite a full house (actually, an overflow house for the first show, and about 80 percent for the second) and a great night, we probably won’t be back to The Irish Pub in Pueblo, CO. We’ve played the place twice before, to full houses and an absolutely wild response, but let’s just say that the finances for the job were so bad to start that the fabricated bar tab (nobody in the band drank Bacardi Limon, Southern Comfort, nor most of the other stuff on the $160 bar tab - and we’re more than happy to admit what we do drink - certain members, ahem, seem actually proud of it) was the last straw. Nancy came out to the van after we loaded out of the bar with a an $80 hole in our collective, tattered, pocket. That still seemed extreme to us. We chewed upon the matter for a few minutes (figuring $3 to $5 a drink, he was saying we five sucked down somewhere between 30-50 drinks.) I wanted to see the itemized receipt. This seemed like an acceptable idea to the others. I was sent back in to discuss the matter with the proprietor. Those familiar with Mollys protocol will recognize this as very bad sign. Although I think it slightly unfair, I’m not known for gentle negotiations after getting jerked around. I came back with another $20 cash after seeing the itemized bar tab. We’ll be trying to find another place to play for our fans in Pueblo. We love ‘em, but we can’t go on meeting like this.
We’re rolling out of Pueblo (“heading for that eastern seaboard”), hoping we’ll come back under better conditions. We’ve got an exceptionally devoted bunch of fans in Pueblo. This situation must be resolved. Riding back to the motel last night (we had to pay for the rooms ourselves and let, me tell you, it wasn’t a Hyatt) we saw on the marquee of the Holiday Inn that “Ellie Mae Clampett” was playing the lounge. Hmm. Next time, we double bill with Ellie Mae at the Holiday Inn. We learn a polka version of the theme from “The Beverly Hillbillies” and corner all the entertainment action in Pueblo for the night.
Eastern Colorado is rolling prairie dotted with cattle and the occasional ranch. We’re hooking up with Interstate 70 and making for Washington, DC, where we’ll do John Hall’s show on the great WRNR (actually, WRNR is in Annapolis, MD, a little east of DC) Tuesday during afternoon drive time. I remember John from his days at WHFS in Bethesda, MD. It was, I think, the greatest radio station in the country in the 1970s. Half my record collection is a result of having heard music on WHFS and racing to the store to buy what I was hearing. There was nothing too strange for the WHFS DJ s. Now, Damian and John are at WHFS. Now they play a lot of that great old stuff along with a lot of new stuff that will stand the test of time. Commercial radio doesn’t have to suck. (If you’ve got Real Audio on your computer - the basic version is downloadable and free - you can listen to WRNR on the Internet.) We’ll be plugging our upcoming show at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room on the 23rd of May. For now, we’re just making miles across the breadbasket.
Believe it or not, we don’t have a cassette or CD player in the van. Someone forgot to remove the removable face from the CD player when parking the van in an apartment lot and it was hacked out of the dash. You want music, put on your headphones. So, it was something of a surprise when we pulled into a truckstop and saw everyone gathered around a TV blasting the Weather Channel. Something about a storm watch and I-70 closing and reopening just east of where we were. Maybe our luck had finally run out. Usually, the bad weather is in our wake. Now, we’re east of Topeka and, aside from the purple skies and a slightly sinister drizzle, no problem.
I’m about to try some shut eye. Later.
...
We’ve had an adventure since then. The cop at the window variety. Actually, we got stopped nearly as soon as we got into Kansas. A state trooper pulled us over - I think Kevin was driving - for having an anti-sway bar. That’s a new one. No kidding, the guy said he thought he saw something unusual hanging from the bottom of the van. Welcome to the police state. Actually, welcome to 50 of them. Hold it, I haven’t driven through Alaska and I’ve never been stopped in Hawaii. This guy wanted to search the van. Maybe he thought that anti-swap bar was trying to get inside from the floor. Make sure it didn’t get us. Kind of a Sigourney Weaver thing happening, or something. He let us go after determining that our rear suspension wasn’t a giant drug syringe - or something. If you believe that, then my advice is that you be nice to whomever is reading this to you and don’t operate any dangerous machinery.
Coming into St. Louis late, late last night, we got pulled over again. My back was on red alert. There’s one thing you can say for pain: It makes everything perfectly clear and wipes out the cobwebs. I was wide awake in the back and I know Gary was driving straight as an arrow. But the state trooper who pulled us over said we were weaving. Of course, he didn’t write us a ticket, just said, “Hands up everybody,” shined his flashlight in everybody’s eyes, while fondling his gun with the other paw and ordered us all to hand him our driver’s licenses and then wanted to search the van. (The thought always occurs that maybe this is like Simon Says: "Simon didn't say put your hands down to hand me your driver's licenses. Bang!") This one didn’t even have a half-assed excuse. In theory, you can tell them “no.” But, then they’ll trump up some shit or just shoot you on a hunch. The old “furtive motion” thing.
I’ll bet most of you thought you live in a free country. Maybe yours is, but the one with the stripes down the middle often isn’t. We have been stopped dozens of times while touring. Sometimes they’re polite, but not often. They’ve never written us a ticket, so you know it isn’t the old revenue enhancement speed trap that’s motivating the stops. It happens, nine times out of ten, in the early morning hours. Boredom, or doughnut poisoning maybe. Or how about the long hair guys and the dark-skinned woman? Now we’re getting somewhere.
I’m still too pissed off to tell you what the locals did to me in Patagonia, AZ, just two weeks ago. Maybe later.
....
(5.17.99) We made it to the DC area, where we always stay with my brother, Randy, at his place in the Maryland countryside. It’s beautiful. Hidden in the woods. It’s amazingly green here. We’re not playing DC until next week, but since we had two days off before playing in Williamsport, PA, we thought we’d come down here, do an appearance on WRNR (a great commercial station in Annapolis, MD) and hang out at my brother’s place.
(5.18.99) John Hall, of Hall’s Bar & Grille (3-7 pm weekdays on 103.1 WRNR), invited us to do a live spot on his show. So, we drove over to Annapolis and crowded around a couple of mikes. Had a fine time. I’d forgotten that there were any commercial stations that played something other than the same old/new crap, and DJs who didn’t come out of cans. WRNR has so much personality it makes most public and community radio sound formulaic and staid. They seem to play what they want here. Hall sounds pretty much like he did when I used to hear him on WHFS in Bethesda, MD, in the 1970s. That’s the station where I first heard Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat, Clifton Chenier, most of the blues, zydeco, Cajun, folk, ethnic and strange rock to which I still listen. After WHFS changed hands, some of the DJs moved around, but a couple of them, Damian Einstein and John Hall, settled in to continue playing their kind of music at this little station in Annapolis. Tell you what kind of place it is: When we played Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in DC last time we were in the area, I overheard people in the audience trading tips on rigging antennae to pick up WRNR’s distant, weak signal. There are DC-area residents who wouldn’t move to a different neighborhood if it meant they could no longer pick up WRNR. You can only get it in certain parts of the city. Fortunately, you can get it on Real Audio at their website, so sometimes I can get it when I’m home in Tucson. Anyway, we had a great time on Hall’s Bar & Grille. We played “Kathleen,” “Moon Over the Interstate,” and a new one, “Come on Strong and Run.”
Headed back to Brother Randy’s house for the night after walking Annapolis for a couple of hours.
My brother is a fine bass player, but he doesn’t play much anymore. We played together for years, when we were in our late teens and early 20s. Me on guitar and Randy on the bass, along with a rotating group of drummers, singers and rhythm guitar players. He went on to other things and I moved to Arizona. Now he’s a network cameraman in DC. Some of the musicians in the same circle back in those days are still playing, but not very many. A couple have gone on to big things. The best known of the bunch is Nils Lofgren, who plays with the E Street Band. Wade Matthews, who is a bit younger, is a great bass player. I’ve lost track of him, but heard he’s still playing and in demand. Bill Holland, a singer-songwriter-piano player (too funky to be a pianist) in the Mose Allison style, still plays around the area. There were a lot of others who were fine players, but they decided to do other things. That’s OK. Still, I wonder how much great music is lost because the music business is so vicious. It’s surprising, sometimes, that anyone does it. Then again, there are a couple hours every night where I can’t understand why everybody isn’t doing it.
5.19.99 - It's my daughter's (Jessica) birthday. I'm a heel for not being there. We play a brew pub, The Bullfrog Brewery, in Williamsport, PA. Cool place. Fine beer. Nice people.
Today (5.20.99) we’re heading for NYC and a night at The Rodeo Bar in Manhattan. I don’t even know who we’re playing with there, but I know there’s someone else on the bill. We’ll see. Hell, how bad can it be? It’s New York; everything’s downhill and a breeze once you find a damned parking space.
Been listening to Oscar Lopez and The Gourds on the CD player and typing on the laptop while Gary tries to find a cheap motel within 75 miles of the city. We’ve got a killer couple days coming up. After the escape from New York tonight, we’ll be going non-stop for three or four days. It’s going to be like doing a race in a garbage truck; large cumbersome vehicle with lots of stops and loading and unloading. Let you know how it turns out.
....
5.20.99 - Just got a message from Dianne, (my wife, Nancy's sister, our manager and Mollys fan No. 1) that we got a rave review in the New York Times. We're playing at the Rodeo Bar tonight. That ought to fill the joint up.
We check into a motel in Newburgh, NY, and get ready for what should be our best run on NYC yet. We've done Lincoln Center and the Bottom Line each twice, The Fast Folk Cafe once, and a couple less memorable venues. But this is the first time when we've had a shot at our own crowd. With a great plug like that in the New York Times, and a decent mention in the Village Voice, we might just make some progress here.
...Several hours later...
The Rodeo Bar show was great. We had a near perfect night. The rave review in the New York Times for "Moon Over the Interstate" along with a plug for the show, drew a big crowd for us. We opened for Sleepy LaBeef. (Rhymes with "grief.") The guy has been around playing other people's songs for 30 years or more and torturing musicians in his own pick up bands. Glad I was in the opening act. It didn't ruin our night, fortunately. And we even a bunch of friends there. The Rodeo is a cool venue. It's some New Yorker's idea of a Southwestern saloon. Mexican food, peanut shells and rough wood. A good sound system and a friendly staff. Works for me. By the way, The Gourds must have their names in more bar bathrooms than any band we know. They were here, before us. Maybe Mollys fans carve their names in the womens room walls. I wouldn't know, of course.
Today (May 21), we're in Clinton, NY, up near Utica, at the Kirkland Arts Center's Coffeehouse. It's an old church that operates as an art gallery and music venue. A great sounding room run by some very dedicated and kind people. Ginger, our host here, couldn't make it, unfortunately. We've been traveling around enough that we've made friends in and through the music business all over the country and look forward to seeing them. Most of our contact is by e-mail, phone and through our booking agent. We always look forward to a little face-to-face time around a show. It's a disappointment when it doesn't come off. This is one of those venues where the series director/promoter is known by most of the audience. So, as a surprise, her son taped the show, opening with the whole audience saying, "Hello Ginger." It was a good show, though much more reserved than the night before. We were less rowdy, minus the smoky room and free flowing liquor for the crowd and band. But a full house is hard to beat.
We made it over to Albany after the show to cut some of the driving for the next day's brutal schedule. We were up early (7:30 am is early, especially when you've played the night before and driven 80 miles afterwards). We were off to Tom's River, NJ, on the Atlantic shore, for a lunch concert at the public library. Ouch. There was a crowd of mostly senior citizens in lawn chairs awaiting us. The accordion probably cut some ice with them, but I kind of felt like I was looking at a hanging jury from the defendant's table. They got into it as soon as Nancy called a few of the more Celtic-influenced numbers. By the break, they were ready to snap up a bunch of CDs and talk music with us. We had to bug out quickly to make a show at The Towne Crier in Pawling, New York. It's a very reputable folk and blues club up the Hudson. We cruised in just two hours before the show and had to set up outside in the backyard, quietly carrying our gear in and to the stage already set up so as not to bother the dinner crowd. Last time here we opened for Bonehead, a great band from Maine. This time, we were the one and only. You can't blame anyone else for the crowd when that's the case. The place filled up quickly and I crossed my fingers that they weren't just there for dinner and would still be there when we got on stage. When I came out of the dressing room, I could hardly believe it; we had about 80 percent of the seats sold. This is in a club which features all the biggest names in folk and blues. Nearly everybody except that Dylan guy has played the Towne Crier. We had a wild night. Truthfully, I was getting a bit worried. This tour was going too well to keep it up.
Sure enough, we made it down to DC for the show at Chief Ike's Mambo Room in the Adams Morgan neighborhood on Northwest Washington. We got some press and we had done a live spot on WRNR-FM in nearby Annapolis a few days earlier. But, we had a small crowd and I don't think we were very inspiring, at least not in the first set. We lost some of the crowd at the break. We came back and played like maniacs the second set. Too bad we couldn't have done that right away. Marc Gretschel, a promoter in DC who has stuck with us through thick and thin (a little too much thin for most promoters) said not to worry about it and that he'd have us back. He's definitely one of the good guys, someone who is in it for the long run and with a great feel for the music. He sure isn't getting rich off of it. Somebody clone this man.
DC is a tough place for us and a lot of other groups. I can't figure it; it was a strong place for roots music when I lived there; it's where I first heard Cajun, Zydeco, Celtic and non-English white guy blues. Roots groups that seldom if ever left their home turf played DC, thanks in great part to the old WHFS (probably the greatest radio station in the country in the 1970s) and its support of roots music. It was one of the first places where Little Feat and Bonnie Raitt were hot. I've heard Cajun and Zydeco do really well here. And it's the home of The Nighthawks, one of the oldest and most respected blues bands in the country. But it isn't an easy place for outsiders. For me, having lived there for a long time, it's a real annoyance that we can't build a larger following.
We went back to my brother Randy's house for some free lodging and left Monday evening for a broadcast show at the Exit Inn in Nashville on Tuesday.
Then it's on to Memphis Thursday. There's talk of a little tourism during this slack time. Kevin wants to hit the NASCAR museum in Nashville (last time he and I rode that NASCAR simulator) and then in Nashville I've been putting in requests to do Graceland the last few times we've in the area. Looks like it might happen this time. But first...that radio show in Nashville.
Tuesday night we played Billy Block's Western Beat Roots Revival at the Exit/Inn in Nashville. The review-style show features music of many types, but country is the common language. We're the seasoning tonight, a bit of Celtic/Cajun/Tex-Mex to go with the grits and barbecue. The opening band, which warms up the crowd for the part of the that is broadcast, is downright scary. There's a guy whose name I am damned sure must be "Junior" perched on a stool over in the corner of the stage. He's a Telecaster strangler supreme; it yowls, screams, howls and clanks behind the parade of first class singers and acts. Turns out "Junior" is actually "Red" and he's Merl Haggard's road guitar player. This guy has probably caused either a lot of people to go home and practice, or just cut to the chase and burn their guitars. Anyway, the opening part of the show is a tough act to follow, but everybody goes out of their way to make us welcome. We haven't seen any of the bitchiness that is part of some hot music scenes during any of our stops in Nashville. Everybody here seems to just love playing. Austin has a bit of that, too. When you know damned well that there's probably some unknown picker in the audience who can take your lunch, there's no reason to get too uppity about the state of your chops.
So, we get hauled out of the green room and do our thing. The joint is full, at 8:30 on a Tuesday night? There's even a decent backline, the house gear that makes changing bands on a multiple-act show quicker. It's usually a nightmare, with the worst gear imaginable and in horrible condition at that. But not hear. There's an SWR (my brand) bass cabinet, and a decent amp and even a tuner. The drums are nice and well tuned. There's a great PA system. The drawback is that there's no time to move things around, since the show is being taped for radio broadcast and being carried live on RealAudio on the Internet, so there's not time to move my bass cabinet over to where I usually hang out, in back of Catherine. In nearly 10 years I don't think I've ever played a stage job where I wasn't standing in back of Catherine. Tonight, I got to hang with Kevin, instead. Unlike Catherine, he's as nervous as a cat. I keep reminding him I'm back there. Once the bass starts pinning his shirt to his back, he won't forget, but before the downbeat I'm not so confident. Kevin is a bit shorter than I, but he's solid and packing a 34-pound accordion. I don't want to play football on stage. Playing on his side of the stage turns out to be a lot of fun. We launch into "Kathleen" and follow it up with "Odessa" and a new song for the next CD, "Come on Strong and Run." A bit of Celtic, and a couple of country numbers. Then we find out that we're running out of time. We close with "Pride Over Dollars," that weird tango we do. The crowd makes a lot of appreciative noise, Bill Block says wonderful things about us and we're back in the green room shaking hands and hanging out with the Nashville folks, who are equally enthusiastic. Some of them look familiar. Turns out the guy in wild Hawaiian shirt is Jim Lauderdale, a successful songwriter. Frankly, I thought we sucked. There were some problems. We certainly can, and almost always do, sound a lot better. But, I guess they liked it and most of the band seems to think we did OK. (My two bits worth, if that, is that we should have played "Moon Over the Interstate." I can see/hear some Nashville fringe artist doing that one.) We have a fine time hanging with Jim and his band, and then head out and listen to his set. He's a local hero and getting a lot of adulation. He eats it up and spends a good bit of time chatting up the crowd. He's got a drop dead great band. I fear our set will soon be forgotten. But, it was a good night and we made some new friends and, I hope, some fans.
Next morning (Wednesday, I hope), we get up late, check out of the motel, and head over to downtown Nashville. Nancy and I go over to Jack BBQ and have a great lunch, then go over to Gruen's Guitars to drool on the largest selection of vintage instruments I've seen. I get to play a 1930s National Dobro-style mandolin. I want it, but there's no way. We leave before the credit card comes out. Kevin does a trip to the NASCAR museum and picks up a new tuner at music store. The road work claims a lot of gear and his Sabine tuner crapped out again (defective design, if you ask me). There's nothing scarier than a banjo player without a tuner. I don't know where Gary and Catherine went, but there's an Irish pub on the corner. Hmmm. We meet up and head on to Memphis.
I-40 is a green tunnel of trees with thousands of trucks with cars like bugs in an elephant stampede. It's always like that here. The I-30 I-40 corridor between Dallas and Nashville is a funnel for the nation's goods. It's truck territory. Time to stay alert. Catherine is driving and the rest of us are catching up on sleep lost during our prowling last night after the show.
We pull into Memphis with some time to kill and check into our motel. Any writers looking for a desperate setting should check out this grim renta-hole. Ouugggh. The locks on all of our doors look like they've been popped repeatedly. In my room, there's not a single fixture that isn't broken. There isn't one outlet that doesn't have a broken, or in most cases, missing cover. All the lampshades are gone, even the glass shade for the bathroom light. There are two bed-like objects (hopefully sans cooties) and running water and air conditioning. Some of the holes in the wall tell stories I'm glad I wasn't around to witness. Hmmm. Wonder what that body-size trap door in the ceiling is all about? If you wiggle the cord just right, the TV set works. Interesting brown stains on the walls. This is the kind of joint where I sleep with a chair jammed up against the door and a knife on the bed.
But first, Nancy, Gary and I made a side trip down to Beale Street and ate BBQ, cruised the souvenir shops and gooned on the crowd. A few hour later...Interesting doesn't start to explain this renta-bed joint. It's THE galactic vortex of desperation and grimness. During the period that normally would pass for sleeping hours, Capt. Bligh's Thunderdome Motel & Crackatorium was a jumpin' scene. I expected to see Mel Gibson zoom in with the rest of the characters from Thunderdome. It didn't help that the place was laid out like a maximum security prison, with three stories of rooms facing one another across an open asphalt "yard." In a less grim environment, you'd call it an atrium, but in this case it was more like the Big House, with the open area below a driveway. A car would pull in, and someone would come out of a room, walk up to the car and take some kind of an order, it appeared, do some hand thing, and then the car would leave. Maybe they were paying for handshakes. There was a woman on the second story who was apparently working as a lookout, watching for who knows what...cops? There was other action, too, arguments between residents during which I couldn't understand a word spoken by either of the debaters. The score, as of 5:30 am, when I finally went to sleep, was a draw: Motel Residents a lot of money, the drive by visitors, a lot of satisfaction. No shots fired.
I'm too old for this shit. Next day we checked out and moved up to the Holiday Inn.
That day we also took a group trip to Graceland. I set out on my own, time to be alone after two weeks of enforced, and increasingly testy, company. I wasn't a big Elvis fan. In fact, I traded my first Elvis 45, I think it was "Hound Dog," right after I got it for an R&B single, "When My Blue Moon Turns to Blue Again" (I think). And I was really grossed out by the bulbous 1970s jumpsuit Elvis. Still, I respected him for bridging the gap from country/folk/rock/blues to pop music. Tours (such as the Hearst Mansion) usually leave me feeling like I didn't really get a feel for the person involved. But Graceland made me feel that I had seen a bit of his life. In fairness, I tried to roll the clock back 40 years and put his life in perspective. He came from dirt poor and made his way through the rotten entertainment business to national acceptance in a country dominated by the ignorant, anti-Southern bigotry of the dominant North. I wonder what would have happened if he had lived, overcome his drug dependence, escaped the grasp of Col. Parker and his entourage to collaborate with younger music leaders, such as Dylan, a couple of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Springsteen, Michael Jackson, maybe Stevie Ray, John Hiatt, Los Lobos, and all those yet to come. It could have turned out really ugly and pathetic, or it could have been fascinating. I think he had it in him to do more than he did. As it was, he changed music and youth culture.
Graceland, the house, built as a home for a wealthy family in the 1930s (I think), has surprisingly small rooms. I could picture Elvis, Priscilla and his friends sitting around that ornate table in the dining room. But the garish '70s recreation rooms seemed more like him. The pool room's walls and ceiling were covered in tucked, pleated wildly colored fabric. And the famous Jungle Room is an enclosed porch with a flagstone waterfall and a bunch of seriously ugly furniture. But it had great acoustics and you could see why he recorded there. In general the house, though indulgent and elaborate in many ways, was almost humble by modern standards of wealth. I know people with bigger houses than this (not mine, certainly). It looked like most of what he did was to allow him to enjoy time with others. I felt bad for the guy by the time I left. By the way, I noticed a very strange thing while there. Although it was a mob scene, people (well, by far most of them) were incredibly polite and respectful. There were a lot of people in there 70s, people I would think to old to by Elvis fans. But they were there. So, I must be wrong.
Well, the W.C. Handy Blues Awards ceremony is tonight in Memphis, so we may be playing to an empty house. A lot of big names in blues are in town. We may have the blues in a few hours. We'll see.
After that, we haul butt across country to Farmington, NM (look it up, it's in the northwestern corner of New Mexico, not far from Durango, Colorado. Nice town, but about as far from a big city as you can get in the Lower 48.) We're doing a festival and a bar gig there. Then it's home.
...En route to Albuquerque (bouncing along the decrepit I-40, a poster route for The Nation's Crumbling Infrastructure). I'll catch you up on the Memphis gig...
Well, between W.C. Handy and Junior Brown, there wasn't much of a crowd left to form a Mollys audience. But we were shit hot. Probably the best show of the tour, at least in terms of spontaneity. I hope I can do some of the stuff I did last night again. We had so damned much fun. And the two dozen fans there were huge in spirit. The staff was so into the show that it was hard to tell who was working and who was partying. At one point, I looked up to see a conga line of employees behind the bar. Being at the The Hi Tone, I am now convinced, is being in on the formation of something great. There is a feel to that place seldom found elsewhere; it reminds me more of an emerging music scene than the usual music-sells-booze=money proposition. In part, it may be due to being in Memphis, which for me is the musical capital of the world (Hey, why is all the emphasis on Sun Studios, and nearly no mention made of Stax/Volt, which to me was the label for the most important music in my background? More of the musical influences that move me the most were on Stax/Volt - OK, that and Atlantic). But, it's also that this place is run by an unusual bunch of people, of an age group I wouldn't expect to have so much interest and depth of understanding in roots-based music. They're very soulful. Whether that translates to financial success has nothing to do with it, except in terms of how long they can do this wonderful thing they're doing. If you ever go to Memphis, sure, go to Beale Street and Graceland to pay tribute to the past, but the right now and what's to come should take you over to the Hi Tone. If it were stock we're talking about, this would be insider trading. In these times of franchised blues bars (McBlues) and narrow niche venues, the Hi Tone is damned surprise. The place sure brought out the best in us. I can't remember the band packing out of a club where we played for such a small crowd but felt so high.
It's Friday and we're making for Albuquerque. We're going to catch a few hours' sleep and then set out in early morning for Farmington, NM, and two days' worth of shows up there. We've got an in-store (a little show at a Hastings CD shop) in the afternoon, with a club job that night and the festival the next day.
I just finished "Herzog" by Saul Bellow. It's something I've meant to read since I was in high school (along with a lot of other things). It was a struggle. Talk about disgressing. And then, after 150 pages of not being sure I was getting it (I was spending more time reading back to clear things up than forward) I got sucked in and couldn't do anything else. Luckily (and this is a first) we had a long drive. Old Herzog certainly can't be accused of leading the unexamined life. I often wonder what other people are thinking. Asking certainly doesn't help. Nobody, well hardly anybody from whom one want a truthful answer, answers that one honestly - I hope. Either that, or the ones I'm querying aren't thinking about the same kinds of that as I am. But Herzog, well, he's a good companion for someone cooped up in, say, an old van for long periods of time with a group of people who aren't saying jack.
I know I've described the layout of this van before, but for sake of explanation, there are these two fat, overstuffed (wobbling) captain's chairs (can you really have more than one captain?) with a padded carpeted butt-ugly orange shag carpeted space just behind (aft, for you nautical types). Upon that, two of us are usually sacked out across the width of the van, feet dangling in the stepwell for the side sliding door, heads pointing to the driver's side (uh, port). Just behind that is my usual hangout, the couch/berth, a thinly padded (threadbare tan herringbone corduroy) thing that runs the width of the van (about an inch longer than my six-foot-one self). The back of the couch is up against the bulkhead (here we go with the salty architecture lingo again), a 3/4 inch piece of plywood that is the front wall of the cargo compartment. It keeps my bass amp and the drums and the guitars and the luggage and the CD boxes from sliding forward and crushing us when in the event of a sudden stop. The ceiling and those captain's chairs are covered in the same fabric as the couch. The walls are paneled in your basic VFW/bingo hall wood paneling. All we need is a Hamm's Beer sign and a couple of mounted heads. There are aircraft-style reading lights in a few places. My area, the domain of Mr. Gadget, has a DC-AC inverter so I can run my laptop, charge PCS cell phone batteries, power my CD player and do other geek accouterments. Home sweet home. We don't have oxygen masks but we do have a bottle of Citrus Magic "Dissolves Odors ...Naturally!" We're packed to the gunwhales (ibid) for this trip, as we're out for more than two weeks and that means more clothes; besides, Mr. Booking Agent (ahem) told some East Coast promoter that we'd bring our own PA system. So, we've been hauling several hundred pounds of PA gear around with us for 7,000 miles. Aarrgghh! (ibid).
Which brings me to an observation I thought might be worth sharing. I see most of the country stretched out on my back looking up through a right side window. Usually, I can't see anything but sky and the occasional semi. It's kind of like flying, being in this padded, tubular vehicle seeing nothing sky out the window. Well, a really scary, old airplane. It certainly isn't Elvis' Lisa Marie (his fly-to-Denver for a peanutbutter and banana sandwich airliner). But, it's an interesting way to travel. My trashed back needs a lot of vertical time. But at night, I like to sit up write while looking through that picture window-sized windshield. When Catherine (she is, as you probably know, not very tall) is driving, the effect is of being in a runaway vehicle because you can't seen any evidence of her from behind the seat.
So, we haven't been stopped by the cops since those first two rousts that first night of the tour in Kansas. Wonder if we'll make it home without another run in? After those stops, it got so everyone in the van would wake up and prairie dog everytime the van slowed down.
OK, I promised I'd tell the Patagonia story when I was in a better mood. So, a few weeks ago, we were playing down in Patagonia, AZ, a little oldtime Arizona town in the high country about 50 miles south of Tucson, in the foothilles of the Santa Rita Mountains just 20 or 30 miles north of the Mexican border. The Beast, for the first time, died on the road, on the way into town. Actually, it was still running, but one fan belt broke and it took out two auxiliary belts and we couldn't get the work done. We'd have to leave it and get the parts and come back the following day. So, after the show, the band had to mooch rides home to Tucson. I had my old Aerostar van; my wife had coe down with me and we had my gear. So, we took Kevin and Nancy with us. Gary and Catherine got rides with someone else. We're leaving town about midnight. Knowing what a speedtrap Patagonia is (after years of riding motorcycles down there on Sunday mornings with my friends) I was safely under the speed limit. I pulled around a couple of parked cop cars with lights flashing at some traffic stop outside of town, and accelerated up to the limit. Sure enough, I get pulled over a mile or so outside of town. I had nothing to worry about. I was stone sober and I hadn't done a thing wrong. I dig out the driver's license, registration and proof of insurance and hand it to the cop. I don't even look at him. He's giving me the opening to kiss his ass, but I'm not taking it. I just give him what he asks for and don't say a word. He asks me what my problem is. I tell him I don't think I have one. There was some other prompting from him, obviously he wants to chat, and I tell him I wasn't doing anything wrong, so, no, I'm not pleased to be here. All in a very flat tone of voice. This seems to annoy him greatly. He stucks bugging me about drinking. I tell him I haven't been. So, he marches off, and everyone in the van starts begging me to kiss his ass. No can do, I say. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'll have a lot lower stress if I don't grovel. No reason to crawl. So, we're left sitting there for about 10 minutes, then he and his partner come up and start shining flashlights in everyone's eyes. Then no. 1 wants everyone's licences. There is no reason for this. He can't give one later when I ask. Then a highway patrol car pulls up. He leaves (DPS usually is above this type of hick town crap, fortunately). Then a Santa Cruz County Sheriff's deputy, whom they've called, shows up. It's obvious to me he's a DUI expert and they're hoping he's going to get 'em a customer. After he comes up and talks to me I'm pretty damned sure he goes back and tells Opie and Festus that the driver is sober, he's just annoyed. But they must have persisted, so they do the step outside shit and make me stand in the dark, with one foot on the slanted gravel soft shoulder and one on the flat paved shoulder, tip my head back and do the follow-the-flashlight-with-your-eyes-without-moving-your-head thing. The deputy does this for a few minutes and gives up. Despite the fact that my back is killing me from being in this position and doing it off balance in the dark, I'm fine. (By the way, I once saw a really sharp defense attorney get an arresting cop to demonstrate for teh jury how he did a field sobriety test. The cop explained it first, and then the attorney asked for, and got, permission to have the cop demonstrate. You should have seen the sweat. You should have heard the laughs when, eyes closed, he stuck his finger in, instead of on, his nose.) Then he, who has been civil up to now, starts in on me about my attitude. I tell him that I've been polite and answered all questions and supplied all documents and haven't done a thing wrong and that I'm just annoyed with being harrassed for no good reason. He doesn't deny this, but gives me some speech about how Opie and Festus here are just keeping the state safe from fiends and that I should be willing to be grateful for their devoting so much of their time to trying to find out if there's a reason I should go to jail and pay the state some money. I acknowledge hearing this and don't agree or disagree. This isn't good enough for him, he's hoping that he'll push the right button and they'll get a chance to bust my skull and arrest me, but I'm enjoying not giving it to him. So, he does it a few more times, as if I'm not gettng his message. I assure him, again, that I heard the speech, and I'm not going to argue about it with him. Finally, they let me/us go.
To put this in perspective, I used to be a newspaper cop beat reporter. I worked in the main police station in Tucson for over a year and covered law enforcement as a reporter and photographer for several years. I always got along with the vast majority of the law enforcement guys I covered. Some of them were friends. I still have some friends on the force. Being on the other side of the fence and getting treated like this really sucks, but it's also an eye-opener. I'm finding those stories about police harrassment (profiling) in New Jersey, Florida, New York and other places the media considers worth covering (don't forget US Customs strip searching people for no reason other than race or other physical characteristics) increasingly easy to believe. For me it's just an annoyance, a hell of a large annoyance. But I can see where it could be a lot worse for other people with more pigment or different accidents. or even how we could accidentally all wind up in a real bad way some night. I know the media doesn't have much credibility these days, with me either, but I'd certainly suggest keeping an open mind when you hear those stories.
Back to something more pleasant than my civil liberties: We had a wild time at Clancy's Pub in Famington, NM, playing for a new audience, and a few friends we made playing in Durango, Colorado a few years back and who drove all the way down to Farmington to hear us. The crowd at the Riverwalk Festival the next day took some winning over, but they came around and they were revved up by the time we finished our second set there on the banks of the Animas River. The snow-capped 14K Rockies to the north in Colorado, the raging Animas in the background behind the stage, and a crowd of friendly people out front. Off to a great summer.
But first. Drive home through the beautiful, otherwordly Four Corners area, through the White Moutains of Arizona, through the Salt River Canyon. Home. Safe.