A TALE OF TWO CITIES

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
too late for some things now, for me, anyway .. .
and it’s only nature’s way.

i have been relatively low volume about the shout
for all things giant sand, these last 2 or 3 decades, which is just my speed .. .
that tucson tends to breed.

it’s a city that wants to be smaller
as opposed to one that wants to be larger.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
october 3 2008 phoenix, almost

sunset now begins the holiest day of the ancient hebrew calendar year of 5769. we should be heading up to phoenix for our show .. . but i cancelled it there.

why ?

it never feels right to cancel, but nothing feels 100% these days. phoenix has had the crinkled rep of being difficult for touring bands to love, and in all the decades decayed we have played there, the attendance has been shy. hard to really ever know why, but conclusions tend to just walk in here without knocking and settle in.

now in the last 10 years or so i have really admired the promoter up there. just the sound of his voice is a relief. the last time we played there, might just be the last we play there. was about 4 years back and the darkest venue i had ever seen. i am pretty sure no one showed up for our show but it’s impossible to tell cause it was so black in there. supposedly i met lonna kelley there.
but, man, it was pitch.

it was one of those shows where ya feel so bad for the promoter trying so hard to make us happy, but at the same time us feeling so uncomfortable that he lost money on the ordeal.

that was the first show on our US tour in 2004.

the next morning we headed to our next gig which was just down the road and further back in time: pappy and harriet’s pioneertown palace up in joshua tree california.

i lived there from the late 80s till the early 90s and it was going to be thick with the best memories of my life.
it just used to be my camelot.

the danes were stoked and the ride through the desert shook off the crust of the black phoenix venue and its deep void. but pioneertown was also stained in the sadness of the great loss of pappy alan back in ‘93.
i loved pappy. he toured and recorded with us when he was 75 back then.
such a stunning human.

but back to the point …
the difficulty of phoenix lies in all the big city tangle attached and the 4 hour drive up and back. it’s absolutely famous for their traffic snarl around here and the extra 5 degrees of heat.

there’s no rivalry between the towns because of the severe slant of lifestyles. big city versus small city.

but we fool ourselves into thinking it’s a small town here. but if you live downtown in the old barrios and bike everywhere, it’s a lie you can believe in.

i remember when i was 19 hitching around the southwest. it was 1975 and i had hitched from berkley california after hitching all the way up there with my buddy keith to ask neil young for a job playing piano.
but that’s another story.

so here i was heading home to tucson and got stuck in phoenix. it took 3 rides just to get from north of town to the south side on baseline. i waited there 8 hours and kept hanging out in the waffle house when i would et tired of the lonesome on ramp.

it was getting so late so i headed out one more time to give it a shot at the on ramp and took out my fiddle to play in the nothingness.

with the first burst of jagged non-notes, the bushes next to me rustled and some big bearded well stained fellow who lived inside that bush erupted on me stating that he had staked his claim there first and foremost.
he was very upset.

i left him to his real estate and wondered if he got stuck hitching there years ago.

that was my first taste of phoenix.

so.
today we were meant to play a sweet place with a wonderful vibe and i could not even muster the get up and go to go and get up there.

they tempted me with the notion that it was the first friday of the month which meant 10,000 people would be down there doing the “art walk” downtown, but that only sounded like more of a nightmare and crippled with traffic.

they said they had 40 pre sales tickets, and i began to just stare off at my kids in the room and figured them into an evening of snuggle instead.

i suppose i had simply gotten about 12 minutes too old for heading up there like this now. something felt wrong about it and i would never know why until it would be too late.

it was the same vibe i had about not doing the “in store” in dallas the other day. everyone connected with the idea explained how it made sense and surely how wonderful it would be.

but the old man that has taken over my body seemed to know better then all that enforced glee. in the end i opted to go with the sweet younger folks who genuinely believed in their own zip and display of certitude.

now brothers and sisters, let me tell you, only about 12 folks showed up at that “in-store”. plus, they had planned on filming it. now what sense would it make to film an “in-store” audience of 12 ?
to permanently remind us of the folly ?

their explanations were forthcoming about the dallas cowboy game starting at the same exact time and how they were on an unforeseen winning streak, and there was the speculation that the 3 day austin city limits festival might have stole a chunk of folks away too.

but they are not left to live with the bottom line and i don’t wanna remind them what the road to hell is paved with.

i only have so many gigs left in me. it’s not a morbid thought, its just more precise then any younger guestimater.

to extend the amount of miles left in these bones will lie in the prowess of making “decent” choices that rely on the flavor of instinct that the stench of experience serves up as steady foundation.

paper work should ever only be an endearing attempt at facilitating those folks who have a tendency to freak out over a paperless existence. but it should not be there to ride shot gun over the accumulation of acquired knowledge

maybe i have said too much.
but i am not a rogue in this reasoning. i don’t know why so many touring bands have a problem with playing there. could be the city is just not built for it.

they have had a great bevy of escaping bands like lee hazlewood, duane eddy, alice cooper, stevie nicks, meat puppets, gin blossoms, jimmy eat world and lonna kelley.

but tucson always had a different take on things .. .
way more removed and less conventional, eventually more conducive for touring bands to feel at home and home bands to tour eventually.

it is way less ambitious here too and that’s probably the most significant difference. i am the most un-ambitious person i know and have so happily settled in these comfortable confines where laziness is an art and not a problem.

anyhow .. . to conclude, albeit regrettably … . .

i have been playing phoenix for 28 years now, and why there is no substantial following up there is more a matter of criteria for how people want to live their lives then anything else. there is no more time for me to beat my head against the wall in anticipated market gains.

and it’s a lot like LA that way .. same slight audience turn out for us and same traffic load.

its really ok.

had the sadness this morning after my canceling fever.

word spread up there, i hear, when a local record store owner up there, agitated over the audacity of my canceling, retaliated with a statement like: “why does giant sand not want to properly promote their new record here in phoenix ? well, if they don’t care about it then why should we carry their records anymore?”

that phoenix fellow has a point, and it almost makes sense .. .

but only on paper.

the day started out like most, totally different.
i debunked myself, slipped outa the bed clothes and into the street duds, washed up a bit and ventured forth into the blatant sun.

life on a bus is a cross between living in a submarine and a space ship. inside, the curtains are usually drawn shut and the air is on full blast and freezing. the motion of the road has its tilt effect on attempting to stand and the constant hum and vibration offers an eventual soothing lull. having a toilet is convenient. the kitchenette is very handy too. this one had flat screen and stereo, but we tend not to use it much, and instead rather the company of each other tainted with the folly of our work day to tickle the remains of the evening. but there is internet at 65 miles an hour and that tends to be the one addiction that most can’t resist or live without.

it never seems to matter when there is a mix of women and men on board, but its always better to have it that way then not. 12 bunks on this one, all filled with humans except one with juts recycling.

the most important element of bus life is the driver. in this case, earl, with his thick tennessean accent is more then a comfort, he is a source of security for a safe ride into the night and a good chuckler when you get to see him before he heads off to sleep in the morning.

we always travel at night in one of these things when it feels like a submarine, and in the light of day it feels more like the mothership on a new planet.

this will be my last moments in it as the tour ends for us tonight.

the hot texas sun is offering up a touch of home. i walk around aimlessly and settle for coffee. every now and then i find myself gravitating back to the mothership for oxygen and to disappear from the new planet’s inhabitants.

i am going to miss this posse.
they are a stellar mix of humans and i have fallen under their collective spell.

well … the art in these matters is how you let it go and say farewell.

- — - — - - - - -

so.
we have a great sound check. the crew of the venue is on top of everything and the band is smoking hot in the grooves we happen upon. a new version of ‘wolfy’ emerges but i’m gonna save it for a latter day. a powerful thrust of ‘available space’ kicks in too, saving that puppy too.

neko then comes out to go over ‘without a word’. we sound pretty good together i think, and it makes me think of john doe and exene from X, whom i cherish.

then we’re done and attempt to chill before the show time.

by the time our stage time rolls around i am a bit overcome by the voracious vibe of the clotted crowd out yonder. i just don’t have any clue what to play tonight.

so i attempt to play it by the numbers.

i wanna just stay in my slouch jeans and crumpled shirt, but then change 2 minutes before our set into something more suitable for dressing like it matters.

we head out there. the crowd welcomes us. i have never played dallas before. we start with ‘robes of bible black’ and they seem like they are checking us out and deciding which way to lean. a good applause applies itself.

i think maybe i gave ‘em ‘ paradise here abouts’, i don’t remember now, but they seemed to like it too whatever it was. no, it was ‘ballad of the tucson 2’. i wonder why i wanted to play that one. we did it solidly anyway.

then i think i might have played ‘vortexas’ which is tricky because in the middle of it i wonder if they don’t know what it is i am doing lyrically. “what does this guy mean by vor-texas ?” kind of vibe. the response is good again.

there was one heckler in the beginning … someone harmless and just exited about neko … and he was easy to handle … but i didn’t want to engage in my usual slice and dice rebuttal of such toying and instead kept focused on what music to slip into next.

and so we carried on … and then went into a stream of songs from the new record. when we got to ‘can do’ i could feel how tender the 1st line about galveston was being taken in by the collective crowd. that poor city was directly in the path of the hurricane that preceded this tour, and i know full well the effects of a home being lost by hurricane and flood when i was a kid, so i did not want that to be misunderstood either even though it’s just a sweet road song. just happens to start out in galveston and ends up in livingston, montana. but there is another livingston just down the road a spell in texas too .

and then i brought out kelly hogan for ‘stranded pearl’ and she jerked a tear from me anyway as she’s apt to do. then i did up ‘better man then me’ alone with peter and i pushed the temp up a bit as we rocked it as a 2 piece. funnily enough the drum kit that peter is playing is the kit john convertino sold to neko which means it’s the same old kick drum john and i toured with in 1989 as a 2 piece.

then i brought the divine miss case up to the podium and we pummeled through ‘without a word’, except when i got to the line about “your eyes speak to me and your lips are something to see” i went into a whisper vocal and neko looked over at me wondering what was up, and i didn’t rightly know either. so we just hung on to that song like breaking a horse and hit it again with a pulsing chorus that took it home. what’s wrong with me, i will hopefully never know, but at times something takes over from where ever these songs come from.

the crowd adored her coming out like that, and so we began to end the set with the next song and got jon rauhaus and paul rigby from her band up. we flung into ‘loving cup’ and totaled it. right at the end of the song my high E string broke, but it didn’t matter when i kicked on the distortion and amp and clobbered it home like we do. the place erupted in hollerin’ hoots of yippity.

we were done. well done.

it was such a lovely crowd again, but very different then any of the others. there is a sense i get from every crowd and each has its own vitality and origination. hard to document here, but i can feel the flavor of every audience as we commence to playing, and that’s why it never makes sense to have a set list, so as to get inspired accordingly.

so.
done.
so done.
gone is another tour.

me and the boys gathered in the lobby of the theater and toasted the end. a little good tequila was involved. so i went in to catch the full thrust of neko’s set and just plain enjoy it like it was the last time. folks kept coming up saying they never heard of us but were delighted. was a sweetness at this age to hear that stuff.

meanwhile, neko was glorious. her band so fine. kelly’s harmonies spine chingling. i loved it all and started taking a bunch of pictures for the heck of it. then anders notified me about a particular bar in the venue to hang out in and partake my evening’s drink in.

i could see why when i got there, the bartender was a stunning mix of different bloodlines that allowed pleasant ponder, but more effectively was the way she pored a silver patron. she iced it up in a martini shaker and then salt lipped that sucker so it flowed down the gullet like an elixir from the goddesses.

it had a clobbering effect of course. i could see it coming, but allowed myself the rare indulgence of a designated drunk night.

and so the night disappeared into the blurry memory of something resembling a good time. there is sufficient evidence in the new camera to attempt rememberence.

and those pictures show a lot of inter band hugging and mugging wherein also lies the art and allowance of disassociation.

i will miss them so.

- - - - -

i settle in to the boys ride and we scoot off to the hotel. we get there via a large plate of sushi. dallas is happening here at 3 in the morning wherever we are exactly, i don’t know, but it’s tasty. and then finally the bed. we get to stay at the hotel rooms that the bus party leave behind and it’s a pretty good ecosystem that way. and down i go. way down and deep and letting it all go.

- - - - - - - - - - -
next morning arrives hangover free, which is a sign of a professional tequila drinking endeavor. there’s no time for even coffee because of a promised ‘in-store appearance’ at “good records”.

i don’t do in-stores anymore. just don’t see the point of em. they do not make sense to me, but opted to go ahead here because of logistics of linger prior to scheduled departure. when we get there i can see why it’s a good idea to do anything for the struggling indie-record store. it will be a sad day when they have all gone away.

so here we are, in need of coffee, and get offered apologies because of the ‘cowboys’ game that has just started here on a sunday to hopefully seal their winning streak, and the austin city limits festival (that neko has gone off for) that has limited the attendance here.

so it will be an intimate affair. there is always a kind of music that gets played during intimate affairs that never happens when the audience is in abundance. it’s something to look forward to when it applies itself.

the folks there were a fine cross section of humanity. some had come from only having heard us the night before. it was an ok closer to this run. it offered a kind of warm down after a long race. broke the low E string on the last song and that sealed the deal. a woman there named kirsten kinda smiled the smile of a gatekeeper, closing it gently on the end of it all.

we rode off into the sunset with sweet expectations of embrace getting back home. the moon rise sparkled up on the city to remind the sky in my eye how the tour had began.

when i wake up in oklahoma its not so ok.
it’s a sad day. hard to explain why.
could be because you got to have one every now again to balance out the good days. could be because of the strange dream i was wakened up from when my phone rung. its all left me with a sadness. then i left the bus to get some coffee and all that was there was a cracker barrel, which is where my dad used to like to go. so i began missing him, him and his wife having just passed away last december.

it’s just a sad day.

when i enter the restaurant the rest of the bus are all sitting around a huge round table. there is no more room and i saunter off to read the sad newspaper.

it’s just a sad day.

then the others all leave the restaurant and i sit there finishing my sad eggs.

cause its just a sad day.

and then neko come in and startles me by just sitting down and she is a ray of sunshine. so i feel better after we talk about sad things and the way we deal with em.

after all that sad muck, the bus heads out to the venue.

people it is in the middle of nowhere. it’s on the outskirts of town and is the kind of juke joint that the texas playboys must’ve played back in the day.

it’s just a sad joint today.

and robert plant and alison kraus are coincidently playing in town here again with t-bone, but it is 13 miles away.

which is very sad.

- - - - — - — -

well sir,

sadness is just gravity seeping through the buoyancy of existence and doing its dirty work. the gravity of the situation is always daunting that way.

so … we take the stage tonight with another game plan. every night is another game plan. in the band huddle i lay out the plays of the night. ok men, we’re going in and not playing any piano songs cause they are too quiet and vulnerable in a non theater atmosphere, and in a full blown bar, they can get murdered.

and then i lay out the rest of the set of songs, but i have taken to doing it verbally like a coach. not writing set lists, just directions on how to find our way through the set and home again.
ok. good to go. i am ready for it to be a crowd of indifference and encrusted with infinite sadness.

we take the stage in a bound. first thing i do is play the piano. hard. rocking piano.

the crowd yelps at the end of it and sizzles the sensibilities. i grab a guitar then and am already in love with this crowd. i think i outfoxed that sadness demon when he thought i really wasn’t gonna play piano and then confused the hell out of him by doing just that.

cause now he is running just behind and having a tough time catching up. we lean into ‘out there’, which has such a fine lope to its strum tonight and folks respond so well to it. the odd clinking and spoink effects of my magic blue and gold pedals seem to reward the effort.

onward to ‘robes of bible black’. why not? it turns into a storm chaser and folks are wriggling and smiling and then hoopin’ and hollerin’.

next up, i don’t remember. coulda been ‘paradise here abouts’. just can’t remember. i know i meant to do ‘the ballad of the tucson 2’, but don’t think we did. anyhow, the crowd was just so wonderful.

oklahoma was making very much sense to me. felt like we could have a real conversation.

so i played em a quiet piano song. the one about ‘vortexas’. and they seemed tickled as the keys.

then we belted out ‘increment of love’ and ‘can do’. and funny enough, out of all the songs, it seemed ‘can do’ got the lightest applause, whereas everywhere else we played it in this country, it got the biggest cheer.

but i think it was a severe compliment, because it sounded too real for them. the kind of country song they have been pelted with since birth and could use a break from right about now. the notion of that just made me so proud of my boys here from the deep south of scandonavia that they made it sound that real.
they done good. real good.

then we brought out the delightful miss Kelly Hogan to sing the duet on ‘stranded pearl’. sheer sweetness peppered with distortion.

then we pummeled through the new one, just me and peter, on ‘a better man then me’. folks went wild for peter’s drums on that one. he is a professor, you know, of drums, back in denmark.

and finally we brought up jon rauhouse and paul rigby for the noodle fest finale ‘loving cup’. it roared and so did the crowd. we left em happy and drenched, and so were we.

severe yippity was in the house.

well, john convertino’s niece was there somewhere and i had not seen her since she was knee high, but sadly we did not locate each other.

so then we were off after taking in some of neko’s set, i informed the boys we were back on the guest list of the plant/kraus shindig and why not make a run to see it again no matter how far it was from nowhere.

so we did.

apparently they were playing at the zoo.
off we rode into the night with the light of the GPS device guiding our way.

we got there late and right on time for the last song.

but it was sweet delight none the less. robert plant had suggested they set up this show to help out the hurricane ike victims in houston where they were supposed to play. they set up this gig with only a week’s
notice and 5,000 folks showed up here for it, bless him.

when you get to be my age, the planet gets a whole lot darker and colder from the grand lack of elders that have left this existence for the next. we stumble on slowly becoming the next in line for younger folks to lean on us the same way. but the ache in our eye is from so many we cherished being gone now and never getting enough of that pathfinder advice or warmth of close proximity.

for a few moments there when robert came out to greet us, that feeling of grace filled me. he gave me a bear hug that had both rainer and pappy in it. i can only ever talk to the man for so long before the dylan effect begins to kick in. but he is a source of sage advice and warmth that this world could use every drop of.

ok. well.
we talked a bit and bid safe travels and it was off into the night a whole lot less sadder then the day originally was laden.

when i got back to the bus, i was crumpled from it all.
how hard we are on ourselves sometimes and how much this world delivers upon us too. everyone was just hanging out outside the bus taking in the splendor of each other’s company, neko on the phone checking in on her sick dog back home, her band enjoying the lull and fetchings of a sweet oklahoma midnight. the danes stained with smiles. the high lonesome of the western night & me quietly noting the tour is ending tomorrow.

up in the mother ship we clustered then.
diesel engines toiling.
a short single malt to end the day.
and in need of a 2 day shower and semi brain baked from this life, i tucked into the coffin like bed and closed the curtain. the rolling bus rocking this boy to sleep and delivering another morning.

sleep is transportation too.