The Adventure Continues, The Kindness of Strangers

2/19/10 Main Room of Earth House Collective, Indianapolis, Indiana

play list: If Not for You – Bob Dylan, Lust for Life – Girls, Let it Be – Ike and Tina Turner, My Heart – Neil Young, Downtown – Petula Clark, Strawberry Letter 23- Shuggie Otis

Brad is playing jazz and cleaning the kitchen.  Tim is on his computer watching Saturday Night Lights, my hands are cracking, I’m wearing the same thing I’ve worn for three days, stripe shirt, red had, black jeans, and blue jean vest, flannel jacket.  It’s my new favorite outfit so I don’t mind, but I smell like a carton of Camel Lights and I could use a shower.  Am just woke up and came downstairs.

Three days ago, three days ago I think, ya, we pull up to The Earth House Collective, an old church converted into a non-profit organic art space.  We had a long drive from Nashville and are tired already.  We have to stop at a Guitar Center in a strip mall on 31 North to get drumsticks for Matt and to try to fix Am’s pedals. I am anxious and ready to go and somehow get the good idea to put on the least wintered shoes I own.  We pull up to the church late but it’s laid back and doesn’t matter.  We park the van in the back, turn it off, decide to pull it up front, turn it off, turn it on again.  Nothing.  We can’t get it on so we go play.  It’s a beautiful church space, and sounds great, but there aren’t many folks there to hear it. 

We get done, I’m cranky and Tim goes down to the van to try to start it up again.  He stands out there for a good while, inside, a drunk knocks over a $600 dollar sculpture, and then offers to give the van a jump.  But nothing really works and so we leave it alone and Doug says we can stay at his house. I feel a  bad about crashing there.  A man named Rudy who work’s at Marsh’s down the block has been staying on Doug’s couch and I don’t want the four of us cramping his space.  Doug and Brad and their friends say they’re making Taco’s if we want in, no Burritos they say, and we say yes but I head to the store anyway for my own stuff.  I run into Am halfway there and he walks with me the rest of the day.  Rudy checks us out at the help center because it’s late and the other isles are closed.  It’s around one and he gets off in an hour but we don’t introduce ourselves.  We head back and the guys are cooking meat.  We talk in the kitchen for a while about bands that have been through Indie before they were who they are now.  I stay pretty quiet and prepare a taco for my band mates.  They ask if we want to watch a movie in the sanctuary, we say yes, they choose Clue and we pull all the biggest pillows off the couches in the main room and head upstairs.  I fall asleep early, we’re not really supposed to sleep in here but Doug says if we fall asleep there’s not much he can do, wink, ya know. 

We wake up at 9 when the place opens, I make some toast in the kitchen in the basement, the guy opening gives me a free latte and I call AAA.  Tim comes with me to the mechanic shop.  He hangs out with the mechanic during dialysis.  The guy is apparently in his sixties, looks 42 and served in Vietnam.  So we have a busted fuel pump, and its gonna cost me, and I have to come back in the afternoon. A lady at the shop gives us a ride in her white Navigator and I come back feeling defeated and still tired.  I mess around on the piano a little bit, half learn one of my songs, and walk to get Cajun food for lunch with Am and Tim.  It’s freezing out and these small black sneakers do nothing for me against the snow.  The mechanic calls and tells me there’s even more wrong with the van and that we need parts from the dealer, which won’t get here until tomorrow.  We have a day off today, thank god, but we were headed to Chicago to hang out with David and drop Matt off at the airport and pick up Nate who is replacing him for two days.  Ain’t gonna happen.  We’re stranded at this point, Matt’s changing his flight and I decide to go to the store, make some dinner, make some cookies and make the best of it.  The guys meet me in there and we head back, eat, Matt sleeps on the sofa and we decide he is called the Scoranocle, a combination between an oracle and Scarano, and we ask his advice which always ends in him telling us to leave it alone or bring him food.  Its just more dumb inside jokes, which we’re learning we may have too many of, but people humor us.  Matt heads out and I bring my cookies upstairs to an event happening in the sanctuary. 

We hang out with Doug, who looks like our friend and East is East drummer Pete Angevine, and he asks us what we want to do for the night.  He offers that we go to a show being put on my Dodge at My Old Kentucky Blog, who I know and like a lot, and we say ok. Why don’t you play the show, Doug asks, but Matt has to leave at 4 in the morning, so we decline.  He calls Dodge who says I should just pay a solo set.  Around this time Amy, who is lovely, and tired from protesting all day in front of a health insurance office shows up.  Brad is here, and now we’re a proper crew.  I say yes to playing, practice my songs in the women’s room and Doug tries to get us a ride.  Ok, we can use the cook’s car.  A white Dodge 15 passenger from the seventies called the Torpedo.  So I get my guitar and we get in the Torpedo, whose doors I don’t even know how to work, its freezing in there, it has two false starts and Doug isn’t sure how to turn on the dashboard lights.  Give it a little gas, Brad says, and he does and we’re off.  We’re bouncing over every bump, rolling down streets I don’t know, past gingerbread looking houses, long flat streets, perfect rows of lamps and trees, in fog stained windows, through a cracked windshield, past car dealerships and porn shops, fast food joints, a Mexican restaurant.  We’re talking about sexuality and then debating what’d it’d be like having lunch with a member of the KKK, while Tim talks on the phone in the back seat and Brad’s laughing in his row.  We get there and the place is for real, called Locals Only, there’s still smoking in bars in the Midwest, there’s a girl in ripped tights and a white fur hat, there’s dudes playing pool, a sound guy with long hair running around and Amy orders a burger.  I play my set, some of the more somber ones I’ve got, under the stage’s Christmas lights while the bar tender pours $2 beers and male figure skaters compete on the small TV for Olympic Gold.  We hang around for a while, Brad tells us some good jokes and eventually we head home.

In the morning I do some dishes in the side kitchen, make toast for me and Brad while he turns on his music and makes us all coffee.  If ever I was cynical, if every I was skeptical, if ever I was jaded, it seems to have been erased by our stay here.  The generosity of strangers is something of a panacea for ills of the heart.  Its not about what they’re telling you about.  Not really.  I love New York, really, God Bless, but there’s something to be said for the kindness of these strangers.  I mean really something.  If it’s about anything, it’s about this. 

Winter Tour Travelogue Part 2

2/14 on the road to Boone

Trying to read Nietzsche. Its not the easiest thing to do on 5 hours sleep at the City Hotel, now sitting in the van listening to Rolling Thunder Review, on Valentine’s Day, staring at shacks and gas stations on North Carolina back roads.  I don’t have a love or a lover, I think about love.  Trying to block it because I know how those long drives can get.  I think some folks make you feel so much, and that never goes away, at some point you just have to shut it off, or try, unless it comes back to you.  Really comes back.  I wonder how that would go.  I don’t know how to feel that vulnerable right now, I don’t know how I could do it, and yet I could do it, and in a strange way it could make me happy.  Eventually it all evens out.  Things are going so well on this tour.  We play to full rooms every night, the folks buy stuff, we have places to stay, we get fed, we’re happy.  Something feels right.  When I get back I’m going to finish up Yes City.  And then onto the next thing.

2/15 – on the road from Boone to Asheville  . . . 2/16 on the road to Nashville

Amnon points to a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  I think we have a night off tonight unless we can work out some last minute thing, but I‘d welcome the break, we’ll camp out at Michael’s, get showers and make dinner.  Anyway tomorrow is a long drive and a big day in Nashville. 

* * *

We get to Michael’s house, its always so good to see him and I dream of a day I can afford to have a fifth member and get him playing with us.  I make cookies pretty much as soon as we walk in, put them in the oven and take a shower.  I’m still cold though, touring in the winter, man.  It’s amazing how many places you can be in the course of a day or a week, how different they can all be. 

* * *

Last night we played a show in Boone, a Valentine’s Day Ball, and it was full, and people danced and bought records and everyone was happy.  We asked Travis where we could stay and he hooked us up with the Red Snapper kids.  Red Snapper is a band from Boone.  Three sisters, Sarah, the eldest, Hannah and Caitlin, who are both in art school, Sarah’s husband Krosky and Hannah’s boyfriend Brendan.  Their parents are staying over at the house too; they’re in from Winston Salem.  We follow the girls and their dad in a pick up truck after the show a few miles outside of town and drive up the hill past a sign for University Village, which, like everything else, is covered in snow. 

We pull up to the house and their dad shows us up through the garage.  We ask if our gear is safe in the van, he says ya nothings goin to get ya unless I murder you in the middle of the night.  Pretty much the first thing he says to us since saying nice show.  We follow him in the house with our sleeping bags and guitars.  The house is long and smells like smoke and their mom is already inside rolling cigarettes with a Top roller and stacking them in a blue Zig Zag box. Two pictures of her as a high schooler are on the fridge and one picture of their dad on a day off while he was in the Navy.  We sit in the den, with its big wood paneling, couches, art projects and Polaroids on the walls, old packs of cigarettes and Halloween candy in a purple plastic bowl on the table which by morning finds its way to the floor.  Hannah walks from one end of the house to the other, and smiles at everyone who passes, with genuine kindness. She wears cat eyeglasses, high-waited skirts and looks like she’s from another decade. Brendan her boyfriend, is tall and lanky and reminds me of someone I’d meet if I were at a commune. We talk to Brendan, who sits by the fireplace smoking, and after a while a guy with a mustache comes in and introduces himself.  Hi, I’m Hawk, he says.  Sarah says, ya he’s called Hawk Kelly, doesn’t that sounds like an outlaw? I say yes it does, because it does and because he looks like an outlaw.   Hawk Kelly wears a bandana and suspenders, chain-smokes Marlboro Reds, is 21, looks 28, is the lead singer in a band, and has a tattoo on his forearm that says something I can’t remember.  Maybe its says ‘you can do this.’

After a while their dad comes in and asks if we’re herbalists, we say yes, and he passes the bowl but I decline.  He offers us some Jameson, we sit around for a while, and soon I pass out.  Half asleep I hear the Talking Heads start playing in the other room when the rest of the band and their friends come in.  I’m on a chaise lounge and can’t move.  We all sleep in a room off to the side of the living room with a giant couch and a giant clock and an egg crate as a curtain to another room that goes somewhere else in this endless house.  We get up in the earlier part of the afternoon, their mom makes us coffee and we sit around drinking it and smoking Hawk’s cigarettes but I’m still wiped out.  Kids come in and out of rooms, I’m not sure how many people are in this house or where they’re coming from, curtains and sliding doors separate rooms and everyone seems coupled up or married; partners float in and out.  In the other room their mom is teaching Caitlin’s boyfriend how to roll while Korsky makes toast.  She’s talking about UPS and how they have good employee benefits. I only see Caitlin, the youngest sister, for a minute in the next day when we get up.  She comes in at 3 wearing a white blanket and sits in a chair next to the long window as snow blows across the yard.  She doesn’t say anything but smiles as Hawk grabs her ankle.  I eat some toast before we go, which tastes better than I can remember it tasting in days.  I’m happy to get fresh air as we leave and drive back down the mountain, looking out for a pit-stop at Hannah’s BBQ which we find and I am mistaken, by an older woman leaving the restaurant, for a skier. 

2/17/10

Heading north from Nashville to Indianapolis

Country oldies blast from a busted beige speaker over the Pilot gas station somewhere in Kentucky.  This morning we woke up at Caitlin’s house on 16^th and Holly Street. We left before her to get there last night, too tired to hang around a smoke filled 5 spot.  She gives me the key after the last band’s set and tells us to leave the kitchen door open.  We pull up at an unmarked house.  I’m pretty sure she says it’s the blue house on the corner.  We’re looking for 1800 but we don’t see any numbers.  Matt and Tim, tall and hulking in their blackness in the dark of the street go to the front door to try to jiggle the key.  Am and I watch them, cracking up at our two fake robbers, hoping they get in and hoping they don’t get shot.  They ask me to come up and give it a try.  Nothing, the bottom is locked and the key on the top just twists back and forth.  I remember Cato says ‘leave the kitchen open for me’ so I walk around back, get through the gate and find an already open door.  I walk around front where a can opener replaces a doorknob, and turn it to let the guys in.  Only when Caitlin comes home, with her tall beau from the other band, in her leopard fur coat, ‘I heart country music’ pin and dangly earrings do we know it’s really her house.

Earlier in the night Miss Caitlin Rose plays a gorgeous set, her voice rich and strong; it’s my kind of country.  Am and Tim play pool and we bypass paying for drinks by buying our own bottles of Jack.  You start to feel you’re south when every bar you go to lets you smoke inside.  I forgot how different it is, folks standing around with their Winston’s lit, drinking and listening to countless bands take the 5 spot stage, all equally tight and pro, this is Nashville.  A guy walks in from the back entrance wearing a thick wool cardigan sweater jacket, jeans, cowboy boots and looks real familiar in the dusty smoked, head illuminated by the neon Pabst sign.  Pepi? He asks.  Ya, I say, and he tells me he’s Johnny Corndawg.  I get a flash of him in neon shorts and ragged t –shirt, walking around inside the South Philadelphia Atheneum, the giant warehouse in South Philly where are the neon punk philosophers used to live.  Maybe they weren’t punks, they were a big group of artists, living in this huge space where they used to have shows, give lectures and skate on the indoor ramp they built.  They eventually got kicked out.  I think over 40 people lived there at some point, and when they had no where to go they stayed for as long as they were allowed, maybe a few days, camped out in Rittenhouse Park.  Now I see some of them in whole foods, out at parties, on the street, and last night, there was Johnny Corndawg, who had apparently seen one of my first shows at New Planet, John, Justin and Jesse’s and now Sharon’s place, now Avant Gentleman’s Lounge. 

I remember that show, I think TC, Anthony Campuzano, a great Philly artist friend who used to hang out with me in New York and hit up art shows with me, came and told me to add some delicate elements to my recordings, to which I replied that I already had.  Caitlin also knew someone named April Glaser from Philly which is how I met her, how I ended up in Nashville last night.  It’s funny to think of the early Philly days.  There have been constant reminders of it on this tour, seeing Natalie who also shared a bill with me on some of my first shows, seeing Johnny and knowing how Am was there at the same time, we had a bunch of the same friends, and maybe he came to an early solo show as well but somehow we never met.  I think back hanging outside New Planet, think back hearing about Scott long before we ever met.  I think about all of it.  I remember what it was like then, just like I’ll remember this time.

***

We go to 3 Meat and Biscuit with Caitlin in the morning and she tells us about Nashville and Music Row and an old hotel that’s now condos with a swimming pool in the shape of a guitar where the Stones and anyone else who was anyone else used to stay when they passed through Nashville in the 70’s.  Her mom is a successful songwriter, and her dad’s a successful music guy too.  I can’t imagine coming from a music family.   We eat our grits and eggs and biscuits and get back in the car.  I hope to know in a few days what April looks like in the west coast.  I’m starting to get a sense of myself, and also how others see me, and certain feelings come to the front and other ideas fade away.  It takes a long time and a lot of good work to do what you want to do well, and while it feels like a long way to go, I’m on my path.

East is East Winter Winter Winter Tour Part 1

EAST IS EAST WINTER WINTER WINTER TOUR

2/10/10 – New York, New York

Sitting in a cloud above Broadway and 65th street, well almost, in an apartment my parents rent, DC canceled due to snow and I worry Baltimore may be more of the same.  I moved out of my place and am in between homes.  Camped out on the floor of my old place last night in my sleeping bag but needed a shower so jumped on the A train uptown.  We'll reschedule these lost dates for April when we're more likely to have less chance of Blizzard.  The whole of the eastern seaboard has been hit with snow like they haven’t seen in 90 years.  Luckily we made it to Providence, played a real fun show there, people just started showing up, pouring in in their black ripped tights and short skirts, their art school glances, and hip haircuts, their leather jackets with bows sewn on the back, big scarves, long necklaces, red hair and pink t-shirts, beards, blazers, man they looked great.  And they whooped and danced.  We settled up, got in the van and drove to Nora and Nick’s.  It was a true writer’s house, books everywhere, authors I had never heard of, a typewriter next to a computer at a small desk and big old chairs.  Sometimes I think how amazing that must be to just need a pen and a desk.

Back in NY, we played Death By Audio last night, but then the snow started in. Now everything thing in the city feels like white paralysis, not much happening, something static.  I'm not that far from the Dakota and every time I'm up here I think of John and Yoko and their walks in the parks or them hanging out in the kitchen with Sean.

2/13/10 – Richmond, VA, Matt and Marcus’s kitchen somewhere near Strawberry Street

The last week before leaving tour was good, as far as I can remember it.  Went to see Frank Sherlock and CA Conrad, my poet hero, read at Zinc Bar.  They quoted Ryan Trecartin in their book, its just a genius factory of artists around these days, people really going for it, and it made me excited to be alive in this time, and to know how hard artists are pushing it to have something true to say about this fantastic mess we’re in.  I went to Eddie’s reading with Thusrton Moore at White Columns and missed the whole thing but ran into Jacob and Brooke, folks I knew from Philly days and this girl Julie from SF who lives in NY now.  Chris and Mary met me after, we were all supposed to be on time for it and none of us were, so we headed over to check out that fancy hotel above the highline that’s known for people stripping in it’s windows.  All we managed to do was use the bathroom before we walked to Le Poisson Rouge for a drink. 

There was the night with Ben, went to see some art in Chelsea, Ruby Sterling or Sterling Ruby, don’t know, the show was bad the the book of his other work looked gorgeous.  Got drinks at Trailer Park, went to O’s house and then went all the way uptown to 126^th or something, up to Ben’s studio where he was meeting Anna for practice, but I was falling asleep so I turned around and went back to Brooklyn as soon as I got there.  It felt good though to be in the backseat, cruising up Amsterdam as we waited in the car for O to find his dealer who has sold him oregano or something, earlier in the day.  And Ben’s been such a good friend to me.  We started as something else, but he’s talked me through some weird times.  Its inspiring to hear his take on art, to hear him talk about Trectartin and other artists he feels are going horizontal and vertical.  They got spread, he says, and they got lift.

I go to Chris’s with Am’s the next night, we make dinner and I fall asleep while they watch a movie.  It almost makes me never want to leave.

* * *

I can’t help but feel overwhelmingly grateful for my life.  But it’s strange times indeed, reconciling the good and the bad of this place, global village la dee da.  So much senseless violence, too much too fast, we should be more enraged, I should be more enraged, and yet sometimes its hard to feel it.  And its hard to ignore all the good.  So what do we have then?  I don’t know. 

I pass a field at night, driving South to Richmond. I see billboards illuminated in a field.  Nothing on the wide lawns of grass but bright signs.  Holiday Inn.  Wendy’s.  Funland Somewhere.  The glow of the lights shining on them shows the hilly nature of the terrain and the car tracks of the truck that drives up to the signs to pull down the picture, do maintenance or make a new advertisement.  It’s almost disgusting, but it’s alluring.  Feels like the literal sign of our times, a hybrid between the bad and the beautiful, the sale and the message, man vs the nature of technology and progress vs the nature of nature vs meaning.

Last night we played Richmond, David was amazing in securing us a good guarantee, half off food, a case of PBR and a very comfortable place to stay with his Skyline band mates Matt and Marcus.  Matt went across the street to his girlfriend’s house and I got to stay in a very good bed.  I got up early and went for milk. I type as Amnon calls to the cat in the other room.  Soon the guys will be up and ready for coffee. 

* * *

The day before we rolled up to the Floristree, manipulating our way around huge piles of snow, residue from a storm the likes of which Baltimore has apparently not seen in the last century.  Lesser comes down and shows us to the freight elevator.  Matt and I make a few trips with the gear as Tim and Am park the car.  The elevator gets stuck about three times and makes me panicky but I pretend not to care.  People show up at the show, some having walked many miles simply to fight their cabin fever.  It’s mellower than we’re used to but it’s fun.  Natalie is there, haven’t seen her in 4 years.  I talk to Lesser about poetry, we think the stigma is dying, its cool again man, its cool again, sell some records, and dance for a minute with Tim and Am, who have developed a one leg style for the night. It’s 2:30 in the morning.   Am and I are hungry so we walk a few blocks through the snow to Massey’s.  There’s a guy there who may or may not be blind with a giant digital clock around is next pacing back and forth, horizontally, in the narrow florescent hallway that leads to the register.  There’s a guy with a scar on his face and I don’t know how you get that kind of scar.  The food is greasy but the fries are real good and they put Bay Salt on everything. 

In the morning we wake up, hang out with Keirin and a cat called Weekend, hit up an Italian market and I spill my lunch all over West Franklin street right before we leave.  It takes over 6 hours to get to Virginia when it should have taken three, but we are in good spirits.  The guys unload the gear when we arrive and joke about some bee-bop tune, carrying amps and singing.  We park and walk past the clean Richmond streets, and I say how I want to go into one of the houses, make cookies, sit on their couch and watch TV.  On tour, when we see nice neighborhoods, this is the overwhelming feeling.  It’s all I want to do.  I look at them as we pass the deli and realize that I am happy.  That this is a lucky time in our lives, I get it, where even when it’s a little hard, there’s something about it that’s so easy.