It’s a Monday evening in the middle of summer in Tucson (it lasts, some years, from April well into October) and we’re leaving town only half reluctantly, figuring spontaneous combustion is less of a threat further north.
Our first gig is Wednesday in Bloomington, Illinois, at The Lizard’s Lounge. So, we’re going to have to beat feet at our usual pace, getting close to St. Louis before we can get a motel and drive the last four hours Thursday afternoon. That means, an all-nighter and road food and, worse, a whole lot of Oklahoma. I know there are songs about Oklahoma, but whatever it is that’s so damned wonderful about Oklahoma sure isn’t anywhere near the Interstate and their lousy toll road. Case in point: We stop at the World’s Largest McDonald’s because it’s the only damned place to try to get something to eat without getting off the toll road. I don’t know if it’s the world’s largest, but it sure as hell is the filthiest, most poorly run McDonald’s I’ve ever seen. Usually, I talk myself out of McDonald’s while waiting in line. But, in this case, hunger overcame wisdom. I’ve got a theory that the powers in Oklahoma figure that since most of the people on the Interstates are just passers-by going someplace else, they ought to take as much of their money and make them as miserable as possible. Things are looking slightly better. Haven't had a really nasty police roust lately (one cost us $500 to buy our way out of). And after what seemed like years of pot holes on that miserable toll road, they fixed it up and we no longer have to pay to get pounded. And, looking on the bright side, gas is cheap along the slab in Oklahoma. They make their own here. I hope to see the desirable part of Oklahoma some day, when a booking agent snags us some work here.
At Lizard’s, the Bogside Zukes, a local Irish band, opened. Matt, Bruce and Co. do a lot of traditional Irish material, as well as some Pogues and originals. They’ve got a following, some of whom we converted into dual loyalty as Mollys fans on our last double bill with them last winter.
We brought along my four-track cassette recorder (thanks Brother Sorenson for the generous gift) so we could make “game tapes” on this tour; the new band hadn’t heard itself live and it seemed about time to do some analysis of where we are musically after six months of this configuration. We had a very good night, at least musically, at least that’s the way it seemed to us. I don’t know what the sound was like out front in “the house,” but on stage it was perfect where I was parked. I could hear everything and my bass rig was moaning and snarling the way I like. I was happy and enjoying the set. When I played the tapes back during tear down, there were no surprises. That’s good. You don’t want to hear the playback and find out you sound nothing like you thought you did. After listening to a couple nights worth of tapes we did make a few changes, shortening some instrumental breaks, discussing whether to change the pacing of the sets. I’d be willing to be there were also some changes made based on we heard of our performances. It’s a touchy situation, listening to live recordings and discussing them as a band. Nobody wants to relive their “clams” let alone repeat them for the rest of the band. There’s also the matter of whether one person’s analysis, criticism, agrees with the views of the others. Not everyone hears things the same. Musician’s senses of tempo and pitch are as different as people’s senses of taste and smell. I’ve got a very narrow tolerance for what sounds in pitch to me. There’s not a damned thing I can do about it. A pitch difference that might sound just fine to someone else might stink to me as badly as Limburger cheese. I’m sure there are people who have even less tolerance. I have known people with true perfect pitch (not me - although if I really work on it I can usually restring a bass and tune it to pitch without a reference point, but I'm not sure that's what they're talking about). Pete VanAllen, a bass player I used to play with when I was a guitar and keyboard player in Washington, DC, told the story of such a player. Pete had played with guitar hero Roy Buchanan in one of his first bands. They often toured in piano player Dick Heinze’s old Volvo. Pete said they were driving down a highway one time and saw a state trooper tailing them. Knowing that somebody, ahem, probably had some leafy substance that would get them arrested, and that Dick’s old Volvo had a broken speedometer, he suggested that they slow down. The legend is that Dick said there was nothing to worry about, that they were doing 55 mph. They were doing E flat, and Dick allegedly calmly said he knew from experience (back before the speedo quit) that the engine was humming along at E flat when he was doing the legal.
Listening to the tapes reaffirms my feeling that the new band is progressing, reaching a new level. Although I have thought there was a great level of spontaneity there since the first few times we played together in March, there was no way we could immediately come any where near the level of almost telepathic interplay that we had after thousands of sets with the previous configuration of the band. But I think we’ve just made some sort of move in that direction. I have always found that bands move in stages, reaching plateaus and staying there for a while before moving on, rather than making a steady progress toward some ultimate blend of ensemble togetherness and greater-than-sum-of-the-parts virtuosity. There are points at which a good band becomes so comfortable with its member parts that it’s almost impossible to have a really disastrous “train wreck.” Some bands, I swear, you couldn’t stop even if you pulled the plug.
Anyway, the point is that what sucks and what doesn’t suck is pretty damned subjective, and a pretty damned delicate subject when you’re discussing something as important as personal performances with a bunch of musicians.
Next day we hauled freight for Cleveland and a show at the Beachland Ballroom. Now, talk about your freeways and tollways. The blow of the tolls on the Ohio toll road we were on was softened by their having Starbucks at some of the plazas. Now, that’s civilized travel. Good coffee makes up for a lot of potholes and, maybe, McDonald's. Fortunately, the rest stops that had Starbuck's also had Sbarro pizza (honest to gawd New York class pizza - no conveyor belt cardboard prefab crust).
We played the Beachland just a couple months back and immediately felt at home there, getting the feeling that it was going to turn into a Mollys scene. This time, thanks to some word of mouth by those who saw us last time, and an advance story by Mike San Giacomo of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, we filled the place and had a memorable night. Cleveland, long before the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, was a great music town. And there’s always been a connection between Cleveland and Tucson, with several Tucson musicians being from Cleveland - and a few going back. We looked up Danny Cox and Bill “Dawg” Moore, who had both spent a long time in Tucson. Danny played guitar with one of Marx’s old bands, Los Lasers, before returning to Cleveland several years ago. Bill and his band just released a new CD and we’re talking about doing a double bill with them next time we’re in town.
We even had some fans come down from New York, people who heard us at the Great Blue Heron Festival near Jamestown, NY, in early July. Can’t help but be flattered by that.
Doug Brunelle, alternate Molly/No. 1 master of the mixing board, joins us in Western NY, showing his mug out front of The Mohawk in Buffalo. A welcome sight.
Promoter Marty Boratin, who books shows into The Mohawk, took care of us. We stayed at his house, getting fed like royalty. Marty's a hell of a cook, as well as an experienced promoter with an impressive pile of shows under his belt. He put on a great dinner of grilled salmon, a three-rice pilaf with currants and dates over grilled asparagus, a fava bean thing, and some other delicious stuff I'm forgetting - then the next morning a cross between a fritata and migas for breakfast, along with some other goodies. We swined out around a big table in his high-ceilinged dining room. (Which reminded me a lot of my old friend John Long’s place in Armory Park, Tucson. Don't want to think about that too much or I'll get a hangover flashback.)
Oh yeah, and there was the show. We had a hell of a time and a pretty good crowd. Our friends, Red-Headed Stepchild, whom we met at the Great Blue Heron Festival in Jamestown, NY, last month, played first. They saved our butt, hauling in some of their PA gear; the house mixing console was screwed. We didn't start until 1:30 am and played straight through until about 3:45 am. Most of the crowd stayed and we played hot. Strange how they keep those early morning hours in this part of the country and just a couple states away you can't get fast food after 8 PM. Buffalo, as they say, rocks.
From there, it was on to Earlville, NY. We'd never been there and didn't know what to expect. Oddly, not one single New Yorker we spoke to had ever heard of Earlville. We even had trouble finding it on the map. (Kind of wondered if this wasn't some sort of a Twilight Zone thing: Band goes to imaginary town to play mythical old opera house and is never seen again.) Nothing like that happened. We showed up in nearby Hamilton, checked into a beautiful hotel (The Colgate) that was part of the deal, and rested up a bit before heading six miles down the road to Earlville. The old opera house was a beauty, although a dangerous schlep up a steep outdoor two-story flight of metal stairs. Inside, there was a quaint old hall with a live theater style stage, including a steeply forward slanting wooden floor. Last time we played one of those stages we almost lost Kevin to the audience when he lunged forward and his 30-pound accordion almost carried him through the line of mike stands and monitors into the front row of the house. No such problem this night. A good crowd, with a few people coming all the way from Kirkland, NY, where they had seen us at the Kirkland Arts Center a couple of times. Hot response for a non-drinking sit-down crowd. Hope to come back here.
Sunday morning we head for New York City and our show at the Rodeo, our fourth or fifth time there. This was going to be special, however, since we got a large, prominent write up, including a photo, in the Village Voice. The story, a review of our latest and some earlier CDs, was placed at the front of the music section, even before a piece on BB King and Eric Clapton. Little old us, imagine.
I don't care how many times I play NYC, it's always a charge. It's the top of the pile and such a vibrant place that imagination and memory never matches up to the real thing. Kind of the urban version of the Grand Canyon. It's always more than remembered. The weather was even perfect, about 70 degrees with a nice breeze as we walked around and took our time loading in. I even landed a parking space in front of the door. Amazing. A lot of people fear New York/New Yorkers. But, my experience has been that nearly everyone I've dealt with here, as a musician, was helpful and friendly. Lincoln Center, The Bottom Line (OK, I did get a bit of attitude from a stage manager once for a few minutes until we sized each other up) and the Rodeo Bar - and all the other places we've played here.
The Rodeo has been our New York City home of late. No complaints. Good food, good sound system, good job on the advertising for the show. Doug ran the board and we had an exceptionally hot night. The place was nearly full for the first set and a good part of the crowd stayed for the second set, all I could ask for on a Sunday night.
When I see some of the big names playing elsewhere the same night, it makes a crowd like that seem even more impressive. It's not like there's nothing else to do in New York. We left pumped up and goofy, heading for a cheap motel out about 75 miles southwest into New Jersey.
... Williamsport, PA ... The Bullfrog Brewery. The Bullfrog has been a slow build for us. It's a beautiful room, kind of a ferny, oak brew pub with high ceilings, really good food. We've been here three or four times. The reception has been fair to good.
This time, a Monday night, we had a somewhat larger crowd (including some Baltimore friends, Margo and Joe, whom we count among our most loyal fans, and a bunch more of those true Blue Heron Festival fans) than before and a more enthusiastic response. Maybe it's because we just decided to throw ourselves at the audience and quit trying to play to the room. Afterwards, Kevin and I were talking over some of those free brews they cook up in those big copper pots here and decided that sometimes the best thing to do is just to play your ass off and give the crowd some credit for figuring out what they like. With some audiences, that's true. Probably most. In this incarnation of the band, we play off each other more on stage, improvising more than we have in the past, changing the songs more from night to night - and most of the crowds seem to "get it."
...
The next day... After a long drive, we're shacked up on a night off at the biggest dump we've stayed in since...probably since the palace of horrors known as the Admiral Ben Bow in Memphis a couple years back, or at least the "Bloody Shank" in Adelaide last fall. This place, "The Pink Flamingo," we'll call it, is a two-story trailer motel. Yip. They stacked these sagging fire traps one atop the other, seven times two. A regular tornado factory. I wouldn't kid about such a thing. Fourteen units of sloping, sagging, modular housing. Lots of milling about at the other end of the place. Traveling businessmen, no doubt. Pharmaceuticals, perhaps? Possibly the methamphetamine trade? There's not a square corner or plumb line in this whole place. The room Marx and I are sharing has two sagging beds and but one dim light bulb - not a single chair or any other furniture. Just two sagging beds. Let's be fair here. In all fairness I must mention that there's some swell wall art and some fascinating mold patterns on the ripped shower curtain in the flooded bathroom. Can't wait to move on. But, if one can sleep in the van, one can sleep in one of these shipping containers. The only thing I wonder about is whether the thing that bit me in my sleep was a mammal or just a damned hungry or angry insect.
Ann Arbor, here we come. More later... So, we spent an afternoon in Ann Arbor killing time before the show. Hit a couple of music stores for some replacement parts; We're hard on gear and there's always something that needs fixing or replacing by a week into a trip. With time on our hands away from the Interstate slop troughs we also searched for good coffee and food. Lots of good stuff around Ann Arbor. Only later did I find out that Marx, here for the first time, was expecting some tragic scene of bombed out urban blight. Instead he got a tidy little brick college downtown with shops and restaurants galore. We make up for lost quality coffee time.
The Ark is a great listening room, with stepped theater-style seating for a couple hundred people coming right up to the edge of the low stage on three sides, a top notch PA (run by an audio ace, Mary, who really gives a damn that we sound good in the house and are happy with the monitors on stage), nice dressing rooms. Even a freight elevator for loading in and out. Yup. It has a bar/coffee bar in a separate isolated room with a picture window overlooking the concert area. No tinkling glasses and muttering during the show. We had what the management said was a decent crowd for a Wednesday night in the summer. Did the long (90-minute) single set version of the current song list.
The set list has been growing with a couple of unrecorded news songs ("You're a Stranger" and "Mother Mother," "Lonesome Is") added to a lot of stuff from our most recent CD, "Only A Story" ("Come On Strong," "The Man In Question," "The Powers Brothers") and a few oldies ("Pride Over Dollars," "This Is My Round," "Odessa," "Moon Over the Interstate," "El Bandito/Orange Blossom Special," "Youngest Daughter," "La Llorona," etc.) We've also been doing a song written by Danny and a friend of his, Piggyback Rider, which features an extended acoustic slide guitar solo intro by Danny backed by Marx. It's a real show piece for Danny's slide work. We all come in after the four- or five- minute instrumental section (he does it differently every night). It's got a real Ry Cooder/Jim Keltner feel to it and has been a consistent hit with the crowd.
Summer colds are going around and everybody's been at least a little bit under the weather. So far, it hasn't affected the shows. Sometimes colds raise hell with the song list. There are some songs that are tougher to sing than others. Nancy's been fighting it off. As for the rest of us, the bullfrog chorus, it hasn't been noticeable (nor is it likely that any level of hoarseness who be detectable as out of the ordinary). But it's a damned fine excuse for drinking Jameson and lemon toddies. ("Thank you bartender. It's for my voice, you know. I wouldn't be doing this otherwise. The lemon, at least.")
We're about 50 miles out of Ann Arbor in the general direction of Neenah, Wisconsin, in search of a cheap motel and something resembling food.
Meanwhile, here's the *official two-set list for this tour - (*subject to audibles from the line called by #1, McCallion):
First Set: The Sierra Madre, Odessa, The Man in Question, Don't Come on Strong, Youngest Daughter, Moon Over the Interstate, This Is My Round, On We Go, Piggy Back Rider, El Bandito
Second Set: The Powers Brothers, Strike Me Down, I'm Not as Willing, La Llorona, Old Woman's Lament, Don’t' Wanna Go to Bed, Yer Drunk Again, Will You Forgive Me, Walkin' Down the Road, Pride.
...The Automatic Slim's show was a lot of fun, but shared with a small crowd. They made a lot of noise, favorable, and we had a fine time. Maybe next time we'll be able to put more butts in chairs.
It was a fairly long haul to Kasota, Minnesota for the next show, the new band's first time at the legendary Blue Moon. If you've been reading this stuff for a while you know about the Blue Moon. It was our home on the road, no doubt about it. It was always a welcomed spot on a tour because it was a guaranteed friendly crowd, more like playing at home. We didn't have anything to prove after the first couple times there, so we just played our butts off and had a fine time and nursed the hangovers the next morning over at Scott and Sandi Young's (where we were treated to great company, laundry, e-mail and as many meals as we could squeeze in before moving on to the next show, with Sandi's care package for the road.)
This visit was our first stop at the Moon since it re-opened under new ownership. Joyce, Mollys Fan No. 1, got to meet the new guys. Saw a lot of the friends we've made playing there, the Rock Bend River Festival in St. Peter, just across the river, and the Heritagefest in New Ulm, just a half hour down the road. And Dan "Blue Moon" Stark, the former owner, was there. A welcome sight. Doing well. Looking good. Said he's OK with visiting his old domain. ("Seriously, man. Yeah. Hell, why not?" He's right. Six years, more good times than he says he can count. What's to regret?)
It looked like a full house to us, damned close to the biggest, if not the biggest, crowd we've ever had there.
We had to rise early Saturday and get 480 miles down the road to the next day for Erin Feis, the Irish festival held downtown on the banks of the river. Kevin drove most of the way, eating up the miles and managing to avoid the usual delays encountered for the summerlong Midwest Interstate Orange Barrel Festival.
The festival people put us up in a beautiful old classic hotel, the Pere Marquette, downtown a few blocks from the river. It was classy enough to almost make up for The Palms. Saturday night we closed the show at the main stage. Late Sunday afternoon, the end of the weekend festival, we closed the tent stage. Russ Nixon, the audio guy at the tent did a great job, doing the whole set up and show by himself. Great monitors, and from what the folks out front said, a great job on the house mix. (For the record, we're both a tough band and a dream for a sound engineer. We've got a complicated set up: Four vocals, an amazing pile of acoustic instruments - sometimes three acoustic guitars, or combinations of accordions, tin whistle, harmonica, banjo, bouzouki and hand percussion - as well as two electric basses and a full drum kit, and now, electric guitar. Some are miked, some have special interfaces called DI's to hook them up to the sound system, and some come through amplifiers. On the other hand, we've been told many times that, once things are set up, we handle our own relative volumes so well that the house engineer can pretty much "set it and forget it," except for minor adjustment for changes in instruments, or things such as Nancy using her vocal mike for the tin whistle or harmonica. A good engineer gets to that fine tuning point but never abandons the board, because even when things are apparently running themselves, in a live situation you can bet "shit happens." And it always seem to happen when the engineer slips away for a probably much needed break. Russ was a real trooper, doing a two or three-person job by himself, all day, and then hanging in there for the entire last set. It's people like that that make sure the audience gets all that we have to offer. We appreciate it. Can't say it enough.)
Kind of recharged our batteries during that two-night stay at Father Marquette's very swanky hotel. Saturday night, after the show and in the spirit of Padre Marquette, a small expeditionary patrol from the band ventured forth to make contact with the locals and investigate the local music scene. Peoria's a 4 am closing time town and a university town. The explorers found some friendly watering holes and reported they felt old compared to the indigenous population of college students. They hung tough, none-the-less, and said they heard a great band - guitar, bass, drums and sax - at a joint across the street. Killer players all. This part of the country has a well-deserved reputation for producing top players (of course they've got a lot to explain, too - Styx?).
Did some laundry Sunday afternoon before the show. The luggage and some of the owners were beginning to take on an odor extreme enough to warrant a laundry party before we got up to Scott 7 Sandi's. Ah, the glamorous life of a touring musician. Sunday afternoon at the Laundromat killing time and watching the bar shirts go round and round. (And learning of the laundry idiosyncrasies of others. Now, why would one wash jeans in cold water and then dry them on the blast furnace setting?)
We're on our way north today, Monday, August 28, for a couple days of r and r at Scott and Sandi's Ranch for Burned Out Musicians before doing a show at Lee's Liquor Bar, an urban road house in Minneapolis with a solid reputation for having good touring acts. It's a new room for us. Hope we live up to the rep.
Meanwhile, the miles continue to beat up our mostly ancient gear (except, cross my fingers, my old bulletproof SWR amp, aging MusicMan Stingray bass and Zeta Crossover upright bass). We've got some other stuff that needs a bit of work, however. It's time for a soldering and guitar set up party. Danny's been working his butt off to play around some problems with his Danelectro electric. And we've got more bad connections than the French telephone system.
...as we roar down the road...
Some days the van is silent for hours, especially weekends when we're putting highway behind us. That's because, as in most businesses, you can't do much business on the weekends. This, damned sure, is a business. (Granted, not a very smart one, but we're trying like hell to make it work.) So, during the week it's sometimes tough to get any sleep because of the ringing phones and computer beeping. We have four cell phones and three lap tops. It's sometimes amusing to see everybody lunging for their phone when one of them rings. Sometimes. So far, Danny "The Luddite" Krieger is the lone hold out on the cell phone. I keep telling people he'll come around when Fender makes a tube-powered cell phone with a dial. He's understudy to Kevin, aka The Master of Space and Time, who is in charge of plotting routes, taking the van to get it fixed, most driving, setting up the PA when we're playing at home and - the part Danny is learning - figuring out how to stuff all our stuff in that little cage in the back of the van. He and Danny do the actual packing of the cargo cage. People we don't even know stand around some nights and laugh watching this process. I call it playing Rubic's Van. We schlep the gear out of the venue, "load out" in roady lingo, and pile it up around the back of the van. Then Danny and Kevin go at it, calling out for individual instruments, and all the other stuff. Over the years, we've come up with some interesting names for certain items, the most colorful saved for the most difficult to pack. i.e. "the gawdamned stool (Marx's huge, ungainly, awkwardly shaped and undisassemblable, drum throne), "der shtool" (my folding perch), "pizzas" (the cymbal case), "ban-ho" (Kevin's banjo, pronounced as if it were a Spanish word, for reasons long forgotten), etc. Used to be, after visiting the famous fish market on Pike Street in Seattle, we took to mimicking the schtick the fish salesmen there did, all repeating in a monotone yell the orders being collected from buyers in the crowd to the guys behind the counter. ("Five poundza tuna." "FIVE POUNDZA TUNA." "Nice bigga salmon." "NICE BIGGA SALMON." "Eight crab legs." "EIGHT CRAB LEGS" and so on. So, Kevin would call for "goddamned stool" and we'd echo "GODDAMNED STOOL.") Guess we'll have to take the new guys to the Pike Street Market next time so they can get a feel for it.
Meanwhile, back to the rolling office...
I got an important call from wife/band manager Dianne late last week, telling me that she had just gotten the final go ahead from an Italian promoter on our upcoming October tour of Italy. I don't know how many 4 am calls she's gotten on that deal. ("Hey, Dianne, one of those Italian guys is on the phone for you.") The Italians love to do business by fax, too. So, the fax machine has been humming at all hours in the back of our bedroom with Italian tour negotiations. Looks like we're going to be doing 11 dates in about as many days, flying into and out of Milan, with the tour to include a show in Rome.
Marx keeps in touch with promoters about details that haven't been worked out - i.e. times for sound checks, confirmation numbers for motels, etc. He spends a lot of time clicking away on his i-Book laptop; but, unlike traditional cube dwellers, he can't hide the fact that most of his computer time is spent playing games - in his case, ruling the world he's created on some Mac role playing game (*he tells me it's not true role playing, and I don't remember what he said it really is). (Hey, let's think about this. World domination by a drummer. Drum solos will replace all guitar solos. The rhythm section shall be recognized, moved from banishment to placement on the front line. And, most of all, no drum jokes shall be uttered.) Marx plugs in and does e-mail and real time chat on AOL as soon as he checks into a motel. (He's a former AOL tech, specializing in helping Macheads.) The e-mail also gets a lot of use in the business communications realm. Dianne, our manager, stays in touch with us by phone and e-mail, forwarding e-mail that comes to our house - er, Mollys World Headquarters - to our individual e-mail accounts. Marx also handles a lot of his work, handling accommodations for upcoming tours, using his desktop (Marx has one foot in each camp, using a PC at home and the Mac on the road.) It's a big job. And an annoying one, in that you can't do it all in one sitting. You have to make phone calls to people who are seldom going to answer their phones, so he leaves messages and hopes they get back to him before we hit the road.
Nancy stays in contact with our booking agent about future bookings and the occasional fuzzy detail that needs ironing out on bookings for the current tour. She also handles print interviews and the occasional "phoner" with a radio DJ. Dianne and Nancy check in with one another regularly on details that need to be handled while we're out here burning up the road. On the road, Nancy uses her i-Book for tracking expenses, writing songs and business e-mail.
I use my IBM ThinkPad laptop to keep the website up and write Notes From the Road. (I just got a hell of a deal on a used 385XD - I'm only three years behind state-of-the-art for once - thanks to my friend Tena Moyer, allowing my to replace my old 486 class ThinkPad 701C and its brief Toshiba successor with something a lot faster.) I also maintain a separate mailing list, hoarding names, phone numbers, addresses and e-mail info on our friends and professional contacts. I've got that information hoarding disease common to some computer types. At home, I spend some time maintaining the pile of machines, laptops and desktops, printers and other computer junk we use to do all this work in-house (we're entirely self-contained, except for bookings outside Arizona in the US). I use the computer and e-mail to keep track of radio play. I've got Eudora set up to scan playlists posted by folk DJs to the Internet FOLK-DJ ListServ. It automatically chews the lists, looks for Mollys "hits" on the playlists, and spits out a report to us. I used to use it for making maps of upcoming tours, but Kevin's taken that over. I don't do much else on the computer. The occasional search to protect and keep track of the use of our band name, stuff like that. No game playing (I long ago swore off Minesweeper, and have only lapsed briefly in recent years when I found it necessary to defend my title claim over my son, Kevin, 14). Not much on-line time, other than to upload and download files from the website when I can wangle some phone time in a motel. At home, I make a few cassettes and use an IBM desktop to burn some CDs for sending out to publishers.
Finally, the computer has become little more than a tool for me. I started on computers, spending far too much time using them for freelance work and trying to get the newspaper I worked for to use them productively starting in the early 1980s. (I had, still have, an IBM PCjr and a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 102 portable, as well as a pile of semi-retired PCs.) I spent far too much time gooning on the tube in the 1980s and early 1990s (judging by my radically changing optical prescription) and, by the time the world wide web came around, I was pretty much over being enchanted by computers. My Dad, who was a mainframe computer repair tech (Customer Engineer, in the business jargon of the time) and later a trainer and the head of the regional training section for Control Data from the 1960s through to his retirement, once said, "Uh, what the hell for?" when I, still in my awed-by-PCs phase, asked him if he wanted a desktop that I was going to replace.
That said, I don't think The Mollys could exist in present form without using the technology we employ. Certainly, if we had to go outside for printing and pay old time prices for the publicity we get out of the Internet for almost nothing, we'd go under. It's close enough to the red the way it is.
...Minnesota (I was born here, of course the town where I lived is now underwater).
So, we're back in Minnesota, killing a couple days off in Kasota, again, with our tolerant and generous friends Scott and Sandi. While the rest of the band cooled their heels for a couple days, I went looking for family. Went over to Cannon Falls, a little town a half hour south of St. Paul, where my grandparents on my Mom's side of the family lived and I spent summers as a little kid. Main street safe for kids, old-fashioned ball park, a bakery where they used to give my brother and I sugar cookies when we came in with my grandmother for bread. A couple of very friendly bars where my grandfather hung out on occasion playing Crazy 8 or some other card game. Retired farmers moved to town, mostly. Always had the sneaking hunch I was related to most of the residents one way or another. They treated kids that way, at least. Hung out with my Uncle Don, a retired Army guy who has been all over the world and used to bring us exotic stuff when we were kids (cuckoo clocks from Germany, bullfight posters from Spain). Had a great time. Didn't get to see my Aunt Janet, who is still working (at least a decade past what other folks consider retirement age). Next time. My Uncle Don took me on a tour of the farms where family members on my Mom's side of the family lived long ago, including where he grew up using a team of draft horses to work 280 acres of fertile land, getting the family through the Great Depression. I even saw, for the first time, the farms where my maternal grandparents grew up. The farms are between the little town of Miesville and Cannon Falls, not far from Hastings and the Mississippi River. A shirt tail relative, actually the cousin of my cousins, has been saving pioneer era buildings (and some more recent ones, too, such as an entire red brick church from Hastings) from rot and wrecking ball and hauling them to a site near Miesville, creating a pioneer village. Blacksmiths, all that stuff. If you ever want to show kids (or learn yourself, city kids) where food comes from, make plans to visit the Little Log House in late July (the dates are July 27-29 for 2001). You can learn more by visiting their website at
...Last night we played at Lee's Liquor Bar in Minneapolis. Our first time there. Hope it wasn't our last. It's a very cool place. Great PA, top notch sound man. Big stage. Huge bar, big dance floor. As good a place for the audience as the band. Everything to create an atmosphere to foster a good performance. We played an early show. Not a large crowd, but a wild bunch of new fans by the time it was over. But the big surprise for me was having three of my cousins show up. Karen, Allen and Perry. I'm terrible about asking people to com out when we're coming to town; I hardly ever call ahead, feeling like I'm putting relatives and friends in a tough spot. It's a good thing Kevin isn't like that; some nights, we wouldn't have had any crowd if not for Kevin's cousins.
Headed down to Ames, Iowa, (Iowa State, the Cyclones) for a show at The Maintenance Shop in the Student Union. It's our third time here, the first trip with the new guys. Had a decent, and very appreciative, crowd. And once again, another great venue: Big stage, fine sound system and a fine place to play and be heard in every way. We don't have anything this cool in Tucson, neither commercial nor, certainly, on campus. It's truly hard to believe the M-Shop, being from uptight Arizona (where music is seldom heard on campus and you sure as hell can't get a beer on campus - except when the state government hypocrites up in Phoenix make an exception when they pimp out the football stadium to their pro football team). Here, students can get a beer and hear some great music. The pictures on the wall show a string of talent that's been through the Maintenance Shop since 1974 that would shame almost any night club in the world. Blues greats are particularly well represented, but so is folk, country and alt rock. It's amazing. It looks more like the line up you'd expect to see if the Filmore East hadn't closed. Nice people, too. Eric made sure we were taken care of, and Brian and Adam on the crew did a great job. I didn't think we necessarily had a great night, but someone else in the band may have seen it differently. It's something that still surprises me, but some nights one person will think everything we did was sharp and near perfect, and the next will say we sucked. One of the mysteries of music. Unlike sports, there's no score to settle dispute. It's all very subjective.
We went back to our rooms (upstairs in the hotel on the top floors of the Student Union) and watched the tube for a while. Saw Moby. He talked a good game; I was actually looking forward to hearing him. Kind of a letdown. I just didn't see, hear or feel the passion for music he proclaimed, at least not from the performance. Guess I was hoping for another Beck. Next morning I saw Keanu Reeves, with his band Dogstar, on some morning show while I was packing out of the room. (Son of a bitch has obviously been watching me. He has my "dead guy with a bass" act down cold.)
...Well, I think I can tough it out two more nights, though we'll be at LCM (laundry critical mass) by then (my River Dance outfit - my wise-assed name for my usual black jeans, black T-shirt, black Doc's get up - is about to walk on its own). Time to go home and see the family, visit Nonie (great Louisiana cuisine) and Rosa's (my favored Mexican restaurant in Tucson), learn everything I can about Italy before that October tour, and fix some broken stuff. Meanwhile, I'm going to enjoy the two dates left because it looks like we won't be this way for a long time.
*P.S. My roomie, Marx, says, "Say Hi to everybody, give my love to them and lookout Modesto."(A cryptic reference, relating to a song by the obscure band Jon Wayne - a van favorite of late.)
Time to head for that sound check at the On the Waterfront Festival in downtown Rockford.
...
Done that. Played the festival. Had a big crowd. I thought we played well, actually very well. That's not always the case. I'm pretty critical of our work, even more of my own. But in this case, I was happy. (OK, it was one of those rare nights when I wouldn't have changed a thing I did. Need that once in a while.)
Playing well means different things to different people. Some nights, I may play well or the soloists may be particularly hot, but maybe the band isn't working as well together as we'd like. Another time it might be that none of us even came close to having a really hot night, but the cumulative effect is solid enough to overcome that because we worked together really well. And, I know from years of talking to people in the audience after shows, it's a whole other thing out in the audience. Sometimes the crowd just raves about what we did, and here I was thinking we sucked. Other nights, I'll think we're just killing - and the audience is sitting on its hands. (And, to confuse things even more, some nights the crowd is quiet but afterwards just raves or holds their applause all night and then comes unglued demanding an encore.) Maybe we're both right. After all, I tend to look at things from the perspective of the "back line" - the rhythm section, where we try to keep everybody playing together, with clean starts and stops and steady tempo. On the front line, they operate a whole lot more on the over all feel of the performance. But, in the audience, most people probably don't care about that stuff a whole lot. It's like watching a movie: Some people suspended disbelief as soon as the lights go down and ignore the technical stuff that makes up the show, judging it on total effect. Same thing with a musical performance. They shouldn't be distracted by the mechanics of the show. And that's the way it should be. Trouble is, if things are really off, and we look like we're struggling instead of making it look easy, it may ruin the experience. (The exception for the making it look easy rule is Kevin, who looks like he's giving birth to an elephant even when he's playing a simple part - the audience loves that. It's the classic rock 'n' roll guitar hero approach applied to the most unlikely instrument you could pick.)
Truth is, I seldom have any idea how the audience hears it. I'm ruined for that. We know what goes into the sausage; and once you've been on our side of stage, it's hard to suspend disbelief - even when listening to other bands. I can do it when I hear some performances, though sometimes it takes a while for me to become anything like a normal listener when listening to other bands. I can never do it about us.
Which makes me think that if there were play by plays done of musical performances, you'd get something like this: "Well, Kurt, The Mollys seem to be shit hot on most of their material tonight, playing strongly, and then turning around and struggling a bit on a couple of songs. I wonder what that's all about."
"That's right Bob, but oddly it's not on their new material, which you'd expect to be a bit rougher than the old standards."
"Too true, Kurt. They're deep into this three-week tour and have been playing the hell out of the new material, getting tighter every night. So, this is kind of unexpected."
"Oops, there's another one of those musical hiccups. I think I just detected a bit of misdirection up there. Dan and Marx just gave each other that "deer in the headlights" look. My guess is that although this is one of their older songs, they haven't been playing it on the last two tours and they're tighter on the newer material than on this and a couple of the other former set list staples."
"Yep. The guys in the rhythm section dropped down for just an instant. It appears one of the soloists took two choruses where there's usually just one. I think the rhythm section guys were hedging, trying not to commit - backing off a little toward the end of that first solo section, waiting to see if Nancy was going to come back in with the next verse or if she heard it coming and let the soloists stretch a bit longer. Nice recovery. I'd say Marx gets a save on that play."
"Hey, what the heck. What's that frantic waving?"
"Well, Bob, I'm just guessing, but I'd say Kevin is either trying to get the sound guy to turn up the accordion in his monitor - or he's getting electrocuted. Nope, it's definitely the "more of me" sign to the board."
"You sure about that, Kurt? It looked to me like maybe he was trying to fly - or else doing the old "I Want You To Want Me" gesture. Let's hope not."
"Nope. I don't think so. Hold it. Now Nancy is making the "me, too" nod. There's definitely a monitor problem."
"Ouch. It looks like either Dan or Marx thought she was gesturing to end the song early. They though they were headed to the barn for just an instant. That could have hurt, but they again came back quickly."
"Frankly, it's sometimes hard even for the other band members to tell when Kevin is just doing his normal shaking and quaking or giving a signal that he's coming out of a solo. That guy is all over the place, pulling and pushing on that big 120-bass piano accordion like he's powering the bilge pump in a sinking lifeboat."
"There. Did you see that, Bob? That was an intentional cue. Yet, just a moment before that I would have sworn he was calling for a double steal. That thing he did first, that violent head shake, he was just flipping the hair out of his eyes or shaking off some beads of sweat. That more deliberate single nod while he looked to his right was the cue that he was ready for the chorus."
"Say, Kurt, the monitors just went completely dead. Did you see the looks on their faces? Nancy looked like she just swallowed her harmonica. But they kept on playing. You can bet there'll be a short conference with the sound man after this set. There's nothing scarier than being an acoustic musician on stage in front of a electric bass and trap kit rhythm section and losing your monitors."
"Hey, what's this? Dan looks like he just sat on a tack. What's the deal with that?"
"Bob, my guess is he forgot to bring his D-tuner back up to normal pitch position after that last song. He went for a low F# and got an E instead."
"So, that wasn't jazz?"
"No. Definitely not. But if that's what it takes to shake him out of his normal comatose pose he ought to do it more often."
"Hey, now Danny Krieger is grinning madly. He just snuck in that "Jon Wayne lick." It's an inside band joke, slipping that "duh-duh dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh, dah-duh-duh" descending bend lick in as often as possible."
"Speaking of inside band jokes, I heard Krieger bought a gizmo called The Secret Farter, a remote control gadget that makes vulgar noises, and that he's been getting everybody in the band every chance he gets."
...
John, the stage manager, (he worked our stage at the festival last year, too) and Margaret, our contact from the festival, took great care of us. They even had a camper parked behind the stage with cold drinks and meat locker air conditioning. John and his guys, a union crew no less, cheerfully moved all the gear on and off the stage. Two nights in a row getting all that help moving gear, it's enough to make one feel appreciated. I could get spoiled like this.
The On the Waterfront Festival takes over downtown Rockford, lining its streets with every kind of vendor imaginable, several stages for different music genres (we were on the ethnic stage) and thousands of people strolling between stages and food choices. We had a big crowd and they locked into what we were doing almost immediately. Played one long set, probably 90 minutes, and then watched the crew load the gear off the stage. Just across the bridge from where we were playing, REO Speedwagon and some other fairly big names were playing the rock 'n' roll stage, so we had competition. Makes me appreciate the crowd all the more.
........
The last night of a tour is usually a good, and often an exceptional, show. Last night at The Abbey Pub in Chicago certainly was. There was kind of a party atmosphere to it, with friends from Minnesota, Tucson, Michigan and other parts of Illinois surprising us by joining the Chicago crowd. We did two long sets, with a lot of visiting and hanging out with people we knew before and after the show. It's gotten to the point, now that we've played the Abbey five or six times, that we pretty much know everyone there. Some of them also come to the shows at Fitzgerald's, nearby in Berwyn. The result is more like a party than a typical tour date show, a lot like what happens when we play at home.
Still, there was some edge to this show because a lot of the crowd hadn't heard Danny and Marx, and I was wondering how they'd take to the new guys. If anyone was unhappy with what we're doing now, I didn't hear about it. (And there are plenty of fans who let me know if they don't like something. There have been a couple in recent months. One was particularly memorable: I got acosted by a longtime Mollys fan, and a confessed Celtic traditionalist, during our first show with the new lineup in Tucson. He let me know he found the addition of electric guitar an abomination. He was emphatic, adamant, that he didn't like the new line up nor the new material (the increasingly country direction Nancy's songwriting has taken). Of course, he was already less than pleased with the band having drums and electric bass, but had tolerated that. My point is, it's not naive to think that people would speak up if they were displased, at least some would. You can't make everybody happy. I'd rather have people say something than just disappear. I should mention that not everyone in the band feels like that. I only speak for myself. You've read the disclaimer.)
Anyway, in Chicago - a place that has been one of our strongest fan bases for quite a while - we got some very positive critiques.
Carolyn Andre, a longtime friend of the band, gave an emphatic thumbs up to the new line up and material. She probably hears more folk/roots music than anyone I know, other than possibly a couple of promoters. I respect her opinion. I told her that I was a bit frustrated by our inability to get a review of one of our live shows in a national publication. It's hard to gripe because we've gotten a lot of national press, both profiles of the band and almost unanimously rave reviews for our recordings. But, I've always thought live shows were our greatest strength and have hoped someone would do justice to our live performance. Admittedly, it's a risky deal, since there are occasionally nights when I wouldn't want to have someone chronicling the performance. But, honestly, most nights we do a strong show. Nancy's lyrics are always there, and most nights the band operating at a level of intensity that surprises people. When there are so many bands that can't, even on their best nights, come close to matching their recordings, I'd sure like to take my chances in getting a live critique for this band.
Carolyn, I think it was Carolyn, asked why I thought that we hadn't had much luck in getting live reviews. I think there are two or three things going on. One, only a couple of magazines (No Depression being the most notable) do a substantial number of live reviews. Maybe our number hasn't come up with them. They've certainly treated our recordings favorably. Rolling Stone, which still does some live reviews, seems to have turned its back almost completely on folk and roots music. (Although readers may have forgotten that in recent years, it wasn't always like that.) National, regional and local newspapers either do no live reviews, or only "waste" their manpower on big name acts - and classical groups doing mainly two century old non-improvisational rote music. (I know from working at a newspaper for years that reviews are considered a pain in the neck. An editor's got to have someone working nights to write the review. They have to file the story in the early hours of the morning, and that means there's got to be an editor to review it if it's to run the next day while it's still timely. And, while it may be worth all that (holding a space open for a late review) for a big arena show seen by 20,000 people, there probably aren't a handful of readers who will have been at a club or performing arts center show for a folk/roots act. Garth, yes. Obscure folk/roots types, I don't think so. (I should note here that the "news" in newspapers is, for the most part, not going to be found in entertainment coverage. I think it's a mistake, in that many readers would like to hear about something they didn't know about already, even in the entertainment section. Maybe next time around they'd go hear some group they read about last time around.) Next time around in the same city, if there are more people there it's because of word of mouth and, or, radio. Oddly enough, weekly alternative papers are almost without exception devoid of live reviews. If they (who specialize in arts coverage) don't do it, I guess it's no surprise that hardly anyone else is doing it, either. There is news value in live performance reviews. People are griping, for good reason, about the ticket prices for the big time large venue shows ($50 and up for almost any group with a name). Why not review a Dave Alvin, Richard Thompson, or even better, a Bill Kirchen or Mollys show and send the readers out next time to hear and see a memorable show in an intimate setting for a fraction of the price they'd pay to hear one of those black hats with the sweatproof band in a can?
Anyway, you've got to have goals, otherwise it's just doing more of the same. Last night would have been a fine night for someone to try to capture what we could do for their readers. A great night to end a mostly fine tour.
Thanks to everyone who showed up over the last three weeks and 6,000 miles - especially those who dragged some friends along.
Please spread the word,
dan s
Extra Bonus: Road Food & Toilet Reviews
So, Dan, you ask, what’s really pissing you off? Yes, let’s start with that. Well, since you asked. Love’s, the truck stop chain, is probably the best reason, other than love of family, I can think of for staying home. What makes these places doubly annoying (“annoying” really doesn’t even touch my feelings for some of these glowing roadside menaces) is that they spend a money and hot air on putting apparently sincere yellow “service cards” in their Black Hole of Calcutta motif rest rooms so you can let them know how they’re doing in terms of cleanliness. I’d rather use a porta crapper on the last day of a Florida festival in late July than some Love’s rest rooms.
Trouble is, one doesn’t have much choice - especially when traveling the western Interstates at night. Some of the other truck stops aren’t much better, but there are just so many Love’s and they seem to be driving out the competition. Most of them start out nice, but it doesn’t last long. Those yellow “How Are We Doing?” cards just make it worse.
They could at least change the name to something more appropriate, maybe “Barrel’s” (as in, “we’ve got you over the barrel”) or “Luck’s” (as in, “You’re Out of Luck”) or maybe “Lot’s” (as in, “you’re better off doing it in the parking lot behind a truck.”)
Oddly enough, one of the best truck stop chains is Sheetz; Funny name, rife with potential for abuse, but really decent places. Clean, with edible food. Mostly found in Mid-America. There’s also a nice chain in the Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas area with a giant coffee pot for a logo. Can’t remember the name. But I look for the giant coffee pot on a pole.
It seems the facilities - ahem - are worst along the southern and southwestern routes. Even the gas stations, including Texaco stations (which damned near built their reputation on clean rest rooms - remember the friendly guy in the gleaming white uniform? "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star" but maybe you ought to get a tetanus shot before you use the john) are filthy in parts of Texas. I’ve seen one in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that was so bad people were peeing outside in broad daylight rather than going inside. I’ll bet somebody had checked off that damned inspection sheet inside, though. (“Hey, Buddy Joe, it’s your turn to do the bathroom cleaning and inspection. Take the gas mask and go in men’s room and sign the Restroom Inspection Checklist.”)
Of course the Eastern Seaboard is no walk through the daisies, either. A lot of places you can’t even get to use a bathroom at night in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast sections of the slab. There’s just some terrified looking money grabber guy behind bulletproof glass who’ll say “duh” in any of several foreign languages when you ask to use the John.
We took “the new guys” to the “World’s Largest Truck Stop” - the one on I-80 in Iowa - last week at the end of the tour. It’s a real grin. Kind of a trucker’s mall. No kidding, they’ve got a dentist, masseuse, barber, a truck accessory shop the size of Manny, Mo & Jack’s with nearly any part, chromed of course, you could want for any late model truck. And, they’ve got more trinkets and gizmos than ... than ... beats me. Enough Harley Davidson stuff to fill a normal sized truck stop. Lousy franchise fast food, for the most part. Reasonably clean. All under one roof. Amusing joint.
After this, you want to talk about eating? Well, the good old Triple T in Tucson is one of the best, although we don’t have much use for it, being that we’re either just leaving home or just getting there and the last thing we want to see is a damned truck stop - even a good one. I know the food is way above average because I used to have to eat there once in a while I was a newspaper reporter. The strawberry pie is very good, and massive. But, you probably won’t have any room for it after the chicken fried side of beef or the quarter acre-sized order of biscuits and gravy.
And, while I’m looking on the bright side, there are some tollway service plazas in Indiana, or was it Ohio?, that have Starbuck’s and Sbarro Italian pasta and pizza franchises. Clean rest rooms, too.
Chains don’t have to be bad. There are those Mobil stations with the great French breads and pastries, good coffee and clean facilities. I forget the name.
And, strictly for the side-splitting joy we get imagining what the hell they were thinking when they named these joints, we relish spotting Cum ‘n’ Go gas stops in the upper Midwest (Southern Minnesota?)
I’ve already berated the World’s Largest (and filthiest, and poorly run) McDonald’s on the Oklahoma toll road. And I’m sure there are a couple other culinary horror stories I could come back to later.
But, looking for something nice to say, I’ll have to mention this great Mom ‘n’ Pop gas stop on the back road into Greeley, Colorado (I think it’s right there where US 34 branches off from I-76). They have great home-style Mexican food. Trouble is, just a few miles after leaving this place, you have to drive by one of the foulest smelling corridors in the country - the line of feed lots that ring Greeley. Talk about knockin’ a buzzard of a gut wagon. Clear your sinuses.
Now, in partial defense of the proprietors of filthy facilities I’ve got to say that I suspect some truckers may have - uh, how to put this? - deep-rooted problems which manifest themselves in outrageous bathroom behavior. I won’t even go into some of the stuff I’ve seen written on the walls of truck stop men’s rooms, nor some of the evidence of acts actually committed. Much of the suggested behavior is, I’m assuming, anatomically impossible. It's damned sure illegal. Too much time alone in the Freightliner makes Roy a sick boy. Apparently. None the less, there’s little the Peterbilt pilots can do that couldn’t be cleaned up with a power sprayer and a few gallons of bleach.
Hey, you aren't going to get this kind of accurate, down and dirty straight poop from those travel features in glossy tourist handbooks, newspaper travel sections or Gee Whiz cable TV travel shows, are you? You've got to come slumming here at Tales from the Crapper.