February 1, 2011 - A short entry from here at DCA. More I hope to follow - including a photo or two of the snow scape that is the East Coast these days (and this before the storm to end all storms gets here tomorrow!) The Salon was a dream - great act after great act, and the good company of my friends Steve and Diane. The audience was amazing, the venue the best and I was invited back by the charming Andrea Clearfield to perform again. It was a magic night followed by drinks among the musicians at Monk's Cafe just down the street. So many things to say about it, but a plane awaits me... In Alaska for a few days before bouncing back and forth between coasts this month....
Harrisburg, PA
January 29, 2011 - I've settled into Harrisburg, PA for the night, Philly tomorrow. Last night I slept in Elkhart Indiana, but not before driving to Goshen and falling back into a dream, a strange trip from two and a half decades ago. It was 1985. September. I was taking a drive-a-way from Anchorage, Alaska to Marlboro College in Vermont. A remembrance of a Mother for her daughter. I hadn't wanted to drive alone, so my brother Nick had connected me up with his friend, John Chandlar. Later simply known as Crystal John.
Crystal John and I went booming down the highway in that Subaru and I learned he was on a quest, into his past, for a Pink Cadillac - the last bit of his Father that remained now sitting in an old garage on the outskirts of Goshen, Indiana. He'd cruised in it in high school and after, and it brought a simpler life back to him. With his Father's death fresh, he needed to see it again. Drive it. Remember.
We drove through the nights from Anchorage, down the isolated beauty of the Alcan - and all along the way we were paced by the distant ring of the Aurora, like a guide or a protector. John claimed it was the quartz crystal that he had that brought the lights out, and he wrapped that crystal in duct tape and stuck it to a stick, creating a magic wand of sorts that he would periodically wave into the air - blessing our trip, marking our way - while space music, the odd tonal sounds of synthesizer music, played in unending loops on the tape deck. The duct tape came in handy. We fixed a broken door handle, and a gear shift with it, and even water hoses in the engine, but John never worried about those things. We had his crystal to lead the way.
We finally stopped one night in Canada - we'd been driving non-stop for two or three days. John wanted a drink, and he was sure that the crystal had told him where to find one. I can't remember the town, or the beer, but I know it was the rest we craved and we slept hard. I remember coffee the next morning - we had to be in Alberta. John lifting up the creamer and showing me that it said "a petroleum product" back when folks in Alberta were still proud of their oil. He poured it into his coffee anyway, smiling and saying, "well, at least its organic..."
On the evening of the fifth or six day (after a brief Minnesota stop to visit relatives - all of whom found John to be a ...treat) we caught the exit into Elkhart off the Indiana Turnpike. He regaled me first with stories of this birthplace of many a saxophone and tales of his time here when he'd been younger. But as we neared Goshen he asked me what day it was. "Friday" I answered. He smiled and looked at me like a teenager might... "The streets will be packed" he said. "Cruising, its all there is to do on a Friday night here." I didn't believe him for a minute. We'd seen no traffic, it was near midnight. But when we hit Goshen, we came to a stop. Lincoln Street - at least I think it was Lincoln Street - was impassable. In the strange courting pattern of youth of a time, big cars, and bravado had turned the main drag into a parking lot - punctured by the flashing red and blue of police cars, the roar of unmuffled engines and the coy shrieks of girls ready for guys on the make.
We slowly worked our way through the pack, and down some side streets, stopping by a modest house of indeterminate age. His Mother met us, and gave us a late night snack. We slept and I remember awakening to the smell of coffee. When I got to the kitchen, John was there. We quickly ate breakfast, and I packed up my few things into the car, and went back in to thank his Mom for the hospitality. John smiled when he saw me then. "Come with me," he said and headed out to the garage. He lifted up the door and there, like a mythic beast, sat a light pink and white Caddy. A beauty by any stretch. Quest complete. "I got a new plan," he said to me. "Gonna take this Caddy and head south. Warmer territory - Arizona or Mexico. Maybe I'll trade it for a Semi - and try running things back and forth between the two." I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by "things", but I had an idea that it might not be all that legal. Still, i wished him well and after a quick goodbye, headed out again, Crystal John and his Mom in my rearview mirror waving farewell.
I never saw Crystal John again, but I got a cryptic note from him some years later - a folded up poster saying simply "Jake for Sherriff" and some photos of the Sandia Mountains shot from a moving car, I'm guessing the cab of a Semi, or an old pink Cadillac. I later used one of those to help create the cover to "Albuquerque Road". And Goshen? I hit it last night, Friday night, at 11 pm, and there was hardly a car to be seen. It had changed, or maybe it had always been like this and that night twenty-five years ago John and that crystal had simply summoned up his 1970's life one last time, just as he remembered.
Lincoln, Nebraska
January 27, 2011 - Lincoln, Nebraska tonight. Talks with friends as day gave way to night. Talks with myself, once night had fallen.
Wyoming set in the heart of the Rockies, but flat as the Great Plains toward which the road flowed, pouring me into the endless windswept landscape of Nebraska. I listened to music by Philip Glass on Nebraska Public Radio as the sun set over Kearny. He was a cab driver, even after he premiered his first major works. An artist who actually was a "hack", funny. Art doesn't pay that well, and it never hurts to keep a foot on a paycheck to keep the house from blowing away...
Two sunsets. One from Nevada a week ago as I came into Reno, but the top one from tonight in Nebraska while talking to my friend Tim Marino...
Rock Springs, Wyoming
January 26, 2011 - Rock Springs, Wyoming for the night. Wind howling so loud it drowns out the TV, and the doors are rattling as winter threatens to break in and bury me in drifts. Heading East to Philadelphia and thinking about the gigs I need to set up in Minnesota in April and the work before me... I drove in silence most of today, thinking of words my Mom has given me yesterday and years ago. Words that echo in the heart of all of us - about loss and love and possibility. Perhaps the song will emerge, though I'm never sure. She writes about the rhythm of the road - that's where I get this wanderlust. Years of youthful traipsing across the country in the back of a Buick or Ford station wagon (or a Plymouth or a VW Bug). Knowing that the fries tasted the same no matter where you went and that a pool was a summer necessity for parental sanity on the road.
I'm following a path tonight and I wonder where it will find me tomorrow. Rehearsing words I'd wish I'd known at every loose end of life, practicing for everything yet to come. We practice for 90 years more or less, until perhaps we get it right.
Carson City, Nevada
January 25, 2011 - Lovely time visiting my Mother in Carson City, Nevada. Also had a chance to see an old friend, Laura Mathews (McNeil). Time to catch up on life, reflect on the passage of the past few years and months, have fun hanging out with my Mom and her friends Mark, Susan, Jo and Mark and Susan's Nephew and Niece (and her beau). The trip across country was crazy. With tractor trailers strewn about the highway and temperatures dipping so low that even Alaska looked comfortable... Songs eluded me, but not contemplation - the soil from where songs are grown. Where seeds first find root. And so it has been this trip.
I do often wonder how things change, how they emerge. One day a thing is one way and then, when you look again, its something new. A line around the eye, a feeling, the worn step once sharp, the weathered wood, once fresh. A memory that might have bitten, softening. And closeness lost or distance covered. What we cherish now, something we did not imagine or perhaps even know two years before. And so we discover the real mystery of life: that we live in the present and not the past, that we are in a constant state of renewal, that we cannot know our future except to know that it is a consequence of how we choose to live our present and that, in the end, we have choice - the ability to choose which path we will walk upon. Nothing is preordained, nor inevitable.
I set out tomorrow for Philadelphia and join a private show at the Salon on the 30th, then see Keith Liles again on the 31st before returning to Anchorage for a few days. I leave the comfort of Carson City and dive back into Winter. I hunger for Spring.
Nenad Bach, Croatian
January 17, 2011 - Croton-on-Hudson at the Home of Nenad Bach, Croatian musician and activist. Hosted here by his charming wife Vera and daughter Lea. It was a long two days these last - I popped up to Bearsville to appear in the filming of Marc Black's "No Fracking Way" video (the use of water to push natural gas that ineviatably harms the drinking water of a community) after a great dinner with David and Jeanne and an all night drive from DC (and a roadside sleep in Pennsylvania). Old haunts in this New York journey. Tonight its to the Cornelia Street Cafe to hear Keith K. P. Lilesread as part of his New York Quarterly poetry success. After that? Its off west to vist my Mother and other friends before returning to play in Philadelphia (and for another Liles reading) at the end of the month... The journey continues.
Staunton, Virginia
January 13, 2011 - A night of live music here in Staunton, Virginia after picking up my oft-injured guitar. A movie and a night walking. The last few nights were magical in New York - the snow on Tuesday night coating the ground as I talked into the night at St. Dymphna's with friends. An evening catching up in DC and now here, with the news of the quiet demise of my old cat - Kitten (with a French accent), or Buddy, he'll be missed.
There's much to reflect upon, but no more for now...
My friend Mark Stadsklev
December 27, 2010 - Just was sent an e mail from my friend Mark Stadsklev with this post of the eclipse which uses as background music "Twinkle" from my first CD "Such a World". Thanks Mark! It works well with the photo montage... Quite a lovely Holiday so far - hanging out in Alaska with friends, getting ready for the show in two days, plotting the next few months... More on that soon. Looking for ideas and gigs, so feel free to e mail me!