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 16th 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.
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