Lap 2 of the Summer July 1999 Tour -
You know how, even as an adult possibly decades past adolesence, you feel kind of screwed every summer when school lets out because you no longer get the summer off (OK, unless you're a teacher, maybe)? Another good reason to be a musician.
Well, it's summer and we're at Camp Molly. Granted, it's a twisted, rolling, gypsy kind of a summer camp. And the "lodge" has been breaking down quite a bit lately. But, still, we're frying someplace other than in Tucson. (Which raises the question: Is it better to be dry-roasted alive in Tucson or steamed in New York City and DC? I've done both, and I'm not sure. While steaming is generally considered healthier, it's hard to beat that southwestern mesquite flavor.)
After a two-week break from each other we all met up in Western New York - about 15 miles outside Jamestown, near Buffalo, in the far southwestern corner of New York - for the Great Blue Heron Festival last weekend. We didn't arrive together, as Kevin, Catherine and I were using the festival as an end to our private vacations. (Yup, we still enjoy traveling, even after 60,000-65,000 miles of touring a year. We just don't do it together.) Nancy and Gary drove the gear up from Tucson in The Beast, our mature van. (We'll get to dark side of that little gas-fired adventure shortly.)
The Blue Heron Festival is in its eighth year, a cozy little - but growing - hippie gathering on a farm nestled in the woods a few miles from beautiful Lake Chautauqua (spelling? Hell, this is summer. I'm not even going to look it up). Friday afternoon, when I drove in with Dianne (my wife, Nancy's sister, and the band's manager) and our son (Kevin, 13-year-old adventurous, generally cheerful, soon-to-be-eighth grader and budding bass and guitar player), it looked like they could be getting ready for a company picnic (well, maybe if the company was Greatful Dead Inc.). But in a few hours, the place was a sea of moving tie-dye 100 percent cotton and hair. It's the closest thing I've seen in the U.S. to one of the smaller Western Canadian music festivals (unless I include the original Woodstock). Patchouli and hairy armpits rule at the Blue Heron. No international soft drink or condom megacorporate sponsorship. No MTV. The vendors were all mom & pop types; but being that this IS New York and not Northern California, there were sausage and pepper subs as well as the expected veggy fare, as well as booths selling coffee, candles, jewelry, incense, all-cotton and hemp clothing, paraphernalia and the recordings of the groups performing over the three-day Fourth of July festival.
We were scheduled to play the main stage just before the closing act, The Blazers (an electric East LA band) on Friday night. Kevin (the accordion playing one, not my son the cheerful kid) showed up in the afternoon, driving in from Albany after doing a bit of vacationing in the NYC area (Yankees' game and some hanging out with family nearby, I heard). Catherine also showed up in plenty of time, driving in with limell', one of the band's favorite humans and a frequent saviour-collaborator on the technical end (video production and digital art mastering for CDs) of Mollys projects. She's always welcome. Things were looking up. Great weather (although they were sweltering everywhere else on the East Coast, we were getting cooled by nearby Lake Howeveryouspellit. It was a festival. We were going to play high on the bill. I was happy. What's not to love?
We then heard the news (via Kevin and his cell phone) that Nancy and Gary were broken down in southern Ohio, Springfield, to be exact. Turns out that was not even the beginning of their troubles. The Beast had already eaten a fuel pump about 120 miles out of Tucson (fortunately, Kevin bought a spare in Flagstaff one Saturday morning last year while we were hanging out at auto parts stores??? We're gearheads, OK?) and they had overcome that breakdown in Bowie (a not particulary widespot alongside Interstate 10 near the New Mexico border, and not known for having a supply of anything). But no such luck this time. The Beast wasn't moving and they were going to try to rent a van and bring the gear up in that. Well, finding a full-sized van to rent at ANY time is tough. On a huge summer holiday, it's tougher still. But they found a place that rented them a Chevy cargo van and they set off into 250 miles of weekend holiday traffic with just a few hours before stage time. We were supposed to play at 8:30, and by 7:30 I was going around trying to borrow an accordion and acoustic guitar (thank you Jane) and a bass while I got Catherine and Kevin thinking about what songs we could do as a trio. It wasn't what we'd want to do, but we figured it would be better than not playing. Fortunately, about a half hour before we were supposed to go on and despite sitting in a 20-mile traffic jam, Nancy and Gary made it.
Instead of sitting around sweating it out, I had been hanging out with The Blazers, an East LA band I'd seen in Tucson years before. Had a good time with them, including talking to Ruben about their recent European tour (he gave me some contacts) and music in general. (That's another thing I love about festivals: Being able to hear other musicians and hang out with them.) The band's bass player and I got talking about Los Lobos, friends of theirs and my favorite band. (I found someone else who is a big fan of "Colossal Head," the Los Lobos album that only us hard cores seem able to get into. He said it took him many spins to "get it," too.)
Once the rest of the group showed up, a lot of the tension evaporated, although we were still rusty from not having played much lately. To put it mildly, we went over in a large way. The set went by in what seemed like 15 minutes, but I know we played closer to an hour. Maybe more a lot more. Afterwards, Gary started calling it our "Shea Stadium gig," referring to the famous Beatles concert where the screaming was so loud neither the band members nor the crowd could hear the music. Well, it wasn't that loud, but there were points where the applause drowned out the ending of some songs and the beginning of another. Well, I could get used to that.
It was a great surprise in that, although I never get stage fright, I was more concerned than I've been in a long time about remembering the newer songs we've been doing; we hadn't played at all in two weeks and not much in the last month, and we wouldn't have any time to talk things over before we played. There were some rough spots, but no train wrecks and the crowd buzz carried us over what Kevin calls "interuptions in the space-time continuum" - or we in the groove department refer to as a !@#$%^&*(!.
As always, let me digress. Music is a team event; at least that's the best analogy I can use to describe what it's like to play music live as a group. What's really going on isn't always apparent from the audience side of the performance. The lead singer can call the tunes, but once the band is rolling, the rhythm section has the wheel, and for that matter the gas pedal, brakes and the shift lever. They'd better be awake, alert and know the road (hold on, this has swerved into being a driving analogy). Playing bass (and maybe drums?) is like being the catcher (swerve back to baseball. I was usually the catcher in baseball - I think there's a pattern here). From the back, the rhythm section, it sometimes seems as though the lead singer and front line instrument soloists are all pitchers. Now, soloists and singers aren't all the same; I was a lead guitar player for years before playing bass and although I loved to cut loose, I always had my feet in the rhythm section feeling, more than listening, what those guys were doing. Nancy and Catherine are like that; I know they hear everything Gary and I do and that I can send them a cue when there's or uncertainty, or that they'll immediately know it when I'm floundering and return the favor. Kevin, however, is like a kite in a hurricane. When he is really wound up, he's in another world and if we haven't laid down a solid groove before the solo, we could wind up following him instead of holding steady. If I'm the catcher in this analogy, I don't know who the hell the drummer is. I think he might be the batter (this is a really screwed up analogy). (No, that wouldn't work, because then he'd be trying to strike out the singer. Hmmm.) I think we're probably both the catcher. Anyway, playing bass is one of those things like catching: When you're doing it right, nobody notices much, but when you screw up things go to hell in a heartbeat. This is not to whine, it's actually fun having all that control and responsibility. The crowd (hell, most band members in most bands) may not notice what the bass player is doing, but there's no bigger dynamic kick in the pants than the drummer and bass player dropping out and then coming back in. There's a reason for that. So, if somebody's not sure of a chord change or whether we're going to do another verse or do a chorus, it's up to the bass player and, or, the drummer to telegraph the change (one note can put someone back on the track). Drummers can signal whether there's a chorus or verse with a change in their pattern, but drums are not a pitch instrument and it's easier for the bass player to give the musical hints that lead somebody who is unsure back onto the track.
The trouble is, when you haven't played for a while, it's kind of intimidating having that power and responsibility. Sometimes, when you can tell that the musicians up front aren't all "on the same page," you have to choose which one to go with, because everybody is usually going to follow whomever the bass player or drummer decides "to vote for." Pick the wrong one and you wind up going off then end of the pier. This particular night, enthusiasm carried us through the moments of indecision.
This whole groove things varies a bit from night to night. Most nights, you couldn't knock Gary and I out of the groove with a truck. But some nights, if we can't hear what the others are doing because of bad monitors, or if one of us is just having an off night, it can get a little scary - errors, or if we're doing the automotive analogy, swerving.
We were buzzing ("like a cheap TV," to quote Bill Kirchen) after our set. I hung around to hear The Blazers. They turned in a smokin' set and won over a group of volunteers backstage who were dancing to the songs which had more of a cumbia feel.
We came back the next day to play a set at the festival's dance tent. I didn't know we could get people so worked up at 2 pm after an all-night party. The tent was overflowing and there were dancers all over. It was screaming nuts, and we played a lot tighter than the night before, so I felt a little more deserving.
The family and I decided to come back and hear the evening main stage show. Friends and DC guys Bill Kirchen and Too Much Fun were playing the next to the last spot Saturday night, just before Donna the Buffalo (a local band with a growing East Coast following). I hadn't seen Bill and Johnny (Jumpin' Johnny Castle - the bass player) since we opened on a show at The Bottom Line a couple years ago. They were pumped up. Johnny is a great bass player I used to see playing with most of the best bands in DC when I lived there in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Bands I wanted to play in. And Bill was with Commander Cody in the Lost Planet Airmen days, and has a great and well-deserved reputation as a guitar ace, singer and band leader since going out on a solo career with Too Much Fun. But they had to take off right after the show and get back to DC in time for a 10 am sound check for the big national Fourth of July show on The Mall tomorrow night. It didn't stop them from burning down the stage at The Blue Heron first. I just respect these guys beyond words because they are as good as they can be in every way. Bill has been living in the DC area for years and has caused almost as many musicians to go home and burn their Telecasters as those other, and sadly now deceased, Telecaster masters - Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton. He's been around the block a few times but he's got the enthusiasm of a 19-year-old when he straps on that Tele and always give it his everything. Same for Johnny; he was THE bass player of choice for many great DC bands, but to see him tear into "Have Love Will Travel" or any of Too Much Fun's material, you'd think he just found out he could play and sing yesterday. And you couldn't find a couple of nicer people. Anyway, they closed the set with Bill's signature piece, "Hot Rod Lincoln." It, alone, is worth the price of admission and a 250 mile drive. He and the band find this groove that makes you hear the guard rails clicking by like a Cadillac mowing down a picket fence - and then he shifts gears and starts into a litany of all the great guitar players who let him pass them in his Hot Rod Lincoln - complete with a dead-on imitation of each one's guitar style: There's Jimi (that's Hendrix, "Purple Haze") "some English guys" (where he launches into the lick from "Sunshine of Your Love"), The Fab Four (a bit of "Day Tripper"), "the not so Fab Four" (a bit of "Last Train to Clarksville" - The Monkeys), all the Kings (Freddy, BB, Albert, Elvis) and a dozen more.
For that matter, it would be worth the price and the drive to hear them do "Rockabilly Funeral." Buy the CDs, but if you ever get a chance, see Too Much Fun live; those spoiled people in DC get to see Bill & band all the time at local venues. Check the listings in City Pages while you're there. The hell with the Washington Monument and those museums. Enough with the dead stuff, go see something live. If you go to DC, sleep in and spend the nights in bars listening to Bill Kirchen & Too Much Fun.
Anyway, I would obviously have been happy to have been at the Blue Heron Festival even if I hadn't been playing. I should mention some of the other bands. There certainly were other acts worth nothing, including Viva Quetzal, a great band out of the Boston area; they're a bunch of hot players and do some deeply rhythmic traditional Latino music, as well as more modern sounding originals. They were a big hit. I didn't get to hear much of The Hix, but I heard some people raving about them, too. What I heard was impressive. It was a pretty eclectic festival, with more traditional acoustic solos and groups interspersed with the semi-electric bands.
I hope we get to come back. That we got to come there in the first place is thanks to a friend and Mollys fan, Diana; if you've ever seen us in Tucson at The Boondocks, you've probably seen Diana dancing - she's a longtime Friend of the Mollys, and we owe her for recommending us very strongly to a friend of hers, David, the director of the Blue Heron Festival.
Some of the Mollys camped out at the festival, and some of us - who believe in not mixing sleeping on the ground with playing music - chose a motel in nearby Lakewood. The next day, Sunday, Kevin and Catherine took off in their little rental cars, bound for some airport, and my wife and son did the same, leaving me with Nancy and Gary to return the rental van in Southern Ohio and then head for Chicago.
I guess I was ready for confinement, having had plenty of fun with the family over the previous two weeks of roaming the East Coast. We started out by flying into Boston (for the first part of the trip, stepson Tim was with us), went to a game at Fenway (my first time there - and I've got to say it was a disappointment to find that this legendary baseball shrine doesn't serve anything but light - gag - beer), went on a whale watch (saw dozens of whales, including mothers and calves that came right up next to the boat) and walked the Freedom Trail, toured the USS Constitution, rode the subway to the art museum over by Northeastern University and hung out eating and gawking. Pretty much repeated that after train ride down to NYC. Shacked up in a motel near Times Square, took the subway to Coney Island (talk about seedy atmosphere), saw Les Miserables (OK, I know, but it was a great performance and production), went to The Iridium to hear Mose Allison (I've seen Mose before and this wasn't a good night nor did he seem to care), heard some world beat bands in Central Park, ate Indian, Italian and Chinese/Vietnamese/Korean, walked and gawked, saw a guy get mugged by a gang in a Greenwich park, watched the Knicks-Spurs final on TV a block from Madison Square Garden (hey, I was rooting for Sean Elliot and Steve Kerr but almost felt bad about the Knicks losing), watched the kids buy $10 "Oakleys" from street vendors, got a rental car, stuffed it into the Holland tunnel and headed for DC.
In DC, we hung out at my brother, Randy's, house. He's a videographer (that's a TV cameraman, though he also does audio, lighting and microwave/satellite uplink). He was busy shooting tape of important "guys in suits" for the evening news, so we didn't see much of him. In fact, I was a real slug and didn't look up any of my friends. We did go down to the Smithsonian and look at some stuff, tried Ethiopian food at a Georgetown restaurant (very nice people, but I think I'll pack a lunch if I'm playing in Addis Abbaba. They have this strange bread-like stuff - actually it's more like damp, used cheap carpet pad in appearance, texture and (I imagine) taste. No utensils. You have to pick up everything with this carpet pad. No lack of compassion, sincerely, but you know, maybe the next time you hear about a famine in Ethiopia you ought to consider that possibly those people are actually on a hunger strike; I think they should hold out for Indian.)
(PS. I'm writing this a couple days later but I thought you ought to be in on this. We're rolling down I-76 in western Nebraska or Eastern Colorado. We just passed a state trooper writing someone a ticket on the shoulder. When we went by, he turned around to watch us, turing his back on the driver he had stopped. I told Catherine, "We're going to see him again." Sure enough. We probably got that driver out of a ticket. Two or three miles down the road he pulls up behind us, hangs there a while and then passes and pulls in front of us and slows down, way below the speed limit, as if to make us pass him. Will this be unwarranted traffic stop/harrassment party number 23? (or whatever the number is)? Finally, after a dozen other cars pass, so does Catherine. Now we wait as he continues to dog us. Guess the computer must be slow.)
(A few minutes later...Hey, we took an exit to head up toward Greeley and Loveland and we lost him while he was over in the left lane. It could have been grief, as the van is registered in Kevin's name and he's not traveling with us on this tour. "So, where is this Mr. Schramm?" I can just see it.)
After the DC hang, the family drove up to New York for the festival, which is where I left you as we headed out to return the rental van and Chicago.
The repairs to The Beast and the rental van took a huge bite out of our profit from the festival. (Yup, like they said, "It's as easy as fishin' you can be a musician....") But, what are you going to do? (Well, if we were in another business, there'd probably be a special deduction, a tax break and maybe even a subsidy to support this kind of struggling free enterprise.)
So, we roll on into Chicago, unload our gear at The Abbey pub (where it will be safer than in the van overnight) and check into a slimey with no air conditioning. Uggh. The Windy City is the Hot Sticky City. The van breaks down again, so we have to pass on our plans to kill our off day by going down to the Art Institute. I'm reading "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" by P Saramago. I haven't forgotten the abuse I got from a pack of evil nuns as a kid in parochial school so this book is just my style of Catholicism - cynical. I like this guy's version of the Life of Christ. Great book. That's how I spent my off day in Chicago.
Kevin and Catherine showed up and we played The Abbey Pub Tuesday night. We didn't expect much, this being a Tuesday night and, worse yet, the night after a four-day weekend. But the joint was packed and we had a great night. We had a bunch of new people in the crowd, as well as the crew that has grown over our eight performances in Chicago over the last three years. This is getting to be a great town for us.
Sue Kessel, one of our Chicago guardian angels, showed up and hung out, introducing us to people and catching up on our exploits and letting us know what's been going on there. She's deeply involved in the Chicago music scene and another of our radio connections, working at Northwestern University's radio station as a producer. Radio, invariably, has a lot to do with it when we are able to build a strong following. Chicago is no exception, in great part due to Sue and, over at WFMT, Rich Warren, host of the syndicated "Midnight Special." There are a bunch of other Chicago-area radio people who have also helped us. We know that packing The Abbey Pub, a big room, on a Tuesday night isn't just a matter of getting a booking having someone put our name on the marquee.
I'm also aware that getting those people to keep coming back isn't just a matter of giving them a good performance. The Abbey has a good sound system and a great engineer, Joe, who made sure what we did was heard. Speaking of good sound...we ran into Bonnie, the former owner of Maggie McGee's, a club we used to play in Nashville. That was another club that gave the crowd great sound. Bonnie had a rough time there, with a tornado ripping the roof off the joint, knocking out the air conditioning for all of last summer and killing off the crowds. She closed a few months ago and returned to Chicago after her Nashville experience. It's not only singing cowboys who leave Nashville broke and busted. Good to see her.
Right now we're in Greeley, Colorado, headed for a show tonight at Foote Lagoon in Loveland, followed by a show the next night at the Gold Hill Inn in Boulder, and our fourth or fifth appearance over at the Casa in Paonia. This should be a good run. And just a few months ago we finally made a breakthrough in Denver by getting a good crowd and having a great night at Swallow Hill. Now, if we could get a return date at the Silverton Festival and get into Telluride... There's always something to work toward.
Turns out threatening weather didn't dampen the crowd's enthusiasm at Foote Lagoon in Loveland. But, personally, I think we sucked worse than we have in a long, long, time. In addition to the intermittent rain (just what I want to do, stand on an island in an artificial pond holding an electric instrument in the rain while looking for lightning) there were major audio problems. But, we got a warm reception. The audience was very generous. I'm glad they were able to overlook the rough spots. It was a bad night, musically. None of us was "on," as far as I could hear. I know I played like I had 10 thumbs and couldn't walk and chew gum. Gary, who had been dog sick for three days with a nasty case of food poisoning ("Pull the van over, Gary's got to get out NOW!"), did all he could do. Considering how he felt, he did a remarkable job. But, I guess the thing to remember for me is that even when the execution isn't great, Nancy's songs still are memorable. The songs are the most important part of what we do. Still, I apologize. Did I stink.
We moved on to Boulder the next morning to do an interview with our friend and DJ Merideth on WGNU-FM, part of Colorado's public radio system heard all over the state. Then it was on up into the mountains to Gold Hill, a little town outside of Boulder and a gig at the old Gold Hill Inn. An amazingly funky old place with a history of good music and great food. A lot of famous folks have come here to eat, hang out and stay next door at the Bluebird.
Brian, the proprietor, and I were talking at the bar after we set up in this rustic old front room. Wood, wood, wood (good for sound) and a lot of old photographs, a giant hearth and something to catch your eye no matter where you looked. He told me that a guy who used to be their head chef was now a fairly well known chef in Tucson. Turns out he was talking about Janos Wilder, then known just as John Wilder. Janos cooked at the Gold Hill Inn in the late 1970s. He's been the best known chef and restauranteur in Tucson since the early 1980s. I had the good fortune (hey, sometimes great food isn't cheap) to eat at Janos' in downtown twice during the years it was open. (Back before the art museum Janos out of the historic house that the city gave to the Tucsom Museum of Art. Janos just relocated up to the Catalina Foothills. I haven't been there, but it's probably top notch.)
Anyway, The Gold Hill Inn restaurant serves three or four dishes in a modified fixed price (bargain priced, I should add) style. And, unlike some places where they feed the band leftovers under the back porch, Brian sat us all down to a big table in the dining room and treated us to a great five or six-course meal (let's see, there was that little stuffed cucumber thing, soup, salad, the main course - in my case tournedo of flank steak and rataouille - desert, coffee and cheese and fruit. If you ever get the chance, show up for dinner at the Gold Hill Inn. We were knocked out. The meal was first rate, but the atmosphere was not stuffy. No sneering waiters or reverant hush. This is a place for a good time. Little did we know how good.
After dinner, we crawled away from the table and tried to regain our energy for playing in the front bar room. I took a short walk up the canyon (Gold Hill is already at 8,000 feet, and going up was a work out). The town is lined with scenic old buildings and the mixed pine/aspen forest comes right up to the road. Took some pictures. Made my way back down to my room next door at the Bluebird and dressed for the show (in my case, that usually means a different, cleaner, pair of black jeans and black shirt.
This night immediately turned out to be the opposite of last night. Gary and I locked in immediately; we could hear everyone in the band as if we were wearing headphones in the recording studio. We have been starting off with "Kathleen," one of Nancy's older songs, for a long time. We know it as well as we know our own hands and it's a safe, but rousing, way to start a set. Usually, we take it easy in the first set, sticking with the tried and true. But with things going nearly perfectly, Nancy called a couple of the newer songs and we had great luck with them. It was shaping up to be one of those nights you remember, and the crowd seemed to know it. Sometimes when the first set goes too well, it's almost a drawback because it's hard to build on it in the second set. But after the break, we plowed right back into it and things got even better. We had what I'd call a 95 percent night, maybe a better. Part of it was that the crowd was so open to whatever we wanted to do. Sometimes, when playing a place for the first time, we get a lot of people who have preconceptions about what we're going to play - they often come out thinking we're an Irish band, what I unkindly call a "green beer band" or that we're going to have some strange mix of Irish and Mexican music on each song. It's understandable, a result of the way we are promoted and written about. It's tough to explain in a few words how we draw from those different styles. And usually, there's a blurb in an ad about us being "Celtic and Tex-Mex," which isn't strictly true; sure, we draw from those styles, but hardly anything we do is completely true to any single genre. Anyway, knowing that some people out there may be expecting us to sound like a combination of The Chieftains and The Texas Tornadoes, we sometimes play it a bit safe. No need this night. We did the Celtic and Latino influenced stuff, as well as the Cajun, Eastern European, country and even our warped takes on bluegrass ("Orange Blossom Special" and "Beautiful Blue Eyes.") We did the new songs, "Come On Strong," "Come On Strong (and Run)," a real slow country song Nancy just wrote. They loved it all. So, faced with open minds and such a warm reception, we capped it off with a tango ("Pride Over Dollars.") For an encore we dug out an oldy, "La Llorona," a Mexican polka.
This morning before we left, I went over to the general store for coffee. I overheard some people talking about us. I guess we'll be back. Apparently they had as much fun as we did.
Tomorrow we head for our last date before heading home, The Casa in Paonia, our oldest Colorado stronghold, over there on the western slope, south of Carbondale and I-70.
Life is good. We are very happy.
As I write this, we're getting ready to play The Casa in Paonia and I'm trying to jack a phone line here at the motel. If you read it, I guess it worked. It's been a good tour (except for the van) and there's more to come, after a couple days at home. Next week, the German polkafest down there in New Ulm, Minnesota, near where my mother and that side of the family lived. We'll check in from there. The big question: Will Kevin find a pair of lederhosen (sp?) that fit? Bettet yet, will he have the guts to wear them?
...Paonia. Well, we weren't as hot as last night, but we were good enough to make the crowd happy and do a two-song encore (we keep the encores rowdy and familiar, doing "La Llorona" and "Finnigan's Wake.") We saw some old friends from earlier shows here - Raz, John, CJ and a bunch of other folks who we always count on seeing here.
Home (for two days).