All the descriptives sounds lesser than the actual — beautiful courtyard surrounded by balcony strutting apartments —
a swimming pool w/ stone sphinxes –the Some Like It Hot trad jazz band —
incredible munchies like scallops wrapped in bacon — pastries — dips — great variety of beverages — wonderful company — amazing!
Great thanks to June & Bill for a grand welcome to the Rockpilers & the fascinating folks –talk ranged from Scruggs-style banjo picking to Hasidic dream interpretations to early surfboard culture in Southern California — whew!
It could not have been better! Lewis Schmidt stepped out of Facebook and set up a great open mic/workshop/party/ROCKPILE celebration at Dr. Bob’s Studio .
We were greeted by a bottle cap alligator, stenciled Americana, and a keg of Miller Lite generously donated by Dave Brinks/Goldmine Saloon. Bill Lavender and Guild guitar led a workshop in the blues. David M held forth on the virtues of firewater, “When I was a poet!”, and Terri turned the podium into a drum kit, setting the record straight with “The Day I Stopped Being Adorable”…did you know that dimples are really cellulite of the face? Family from Alabama, Pacifica and Guerneville, CA showed up.
Laura Mattingly sang about race and becoming. Gregory Corso joined us from the dead and spoke in Italian but nobody understood what he was saying. I heard my father talk about his best friend Chris Dundee, and heard Mohammad Ali say, “It’s okay momma”. A shortwave radio, a 78 rpm record player, 35 mm projector, a tiny ukulele, egg shaker, cabaret and circus music, gave credence to the idea that “all is fair in love and war” whether you be a man or a woman or both at the same time, and other pearls of wisdom.
Oh, Katrina still dumping her cyclonic tears on the gathering, but in that inimitable New Orleans resolve it was just water off the alligator’s back. The Mighty Mississippi keeps rolling and the levees still threaten to break. I hear a party gathering, around a hot jazz band in the Quarter. A Kahlua cake is cooling, gumbo bubbling…sometime soon we will feast on cajun plenty and be reborn in the name of the host.–MR
“Old weird America,” Greil Marcus wrote describing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, groundbreaking anthology of regional musics from the ’20s & ’30s. Now entering the New Weird America driving down California into Arizona & New Mexico; skeleton houses, rusty RVs, & remote outposts on highways surrounded by red rock, mountains, immense sky.
My late wife Tina loved to travel; I was a stay home sort. In the late ’60s we took a road trip across the US en route to NYC en route to UK where we were going to live the life of exiles. I’d set up readings along the way to finance occasional overnighters in Ramada Inns. By the time we got to the East Coast, I was totally antagonistic to the sound of my voice & to the poems I read along the way. We lasted less than 2 months in UK (another story) & ended our exile where it started in Bolinas.
Hours driving through Arizona to Lubbock, TX — the flat vast — new ghost towns boarded up & abandoned — fields & fields of cotton, corn, sunflowers — the usual usual of malls, familiar logo icons everywhere — oil pumps — ranches — cows, horses, sometimes burros in pastures — then small villages almost there surrounded by out-of-business shops — gas station mini-stores where locals hang out & tourists use toilets & maybe buy souvenirs — the unending isolation punctured by new off-freeway clusters of MacDonald’s, Arby’s, Denny’s, Red Lobster, Taco Bell, &tc.
I keep recalling Michel Butor’s book “Mobile,” a road trip across the States told by all the signs along the road & through the towns & cities. Also Kerouac’s “Lonesome Traveller”, impeccable title describing the bottom of the US landscapes, the ruined objects, homeless wanderers, railroad yards, broken-in ghost warehouses, dead smokestacks housing mice, &tc. — Kerouac gets it down better — it’s worth checking out.
Overnight in Shreveport, then next day to New Orleans. To the Maison Dupuy in The French Quarter. Hit the streets — Bourbon Street — cacophony — live & canned music blasting out of saloons & eateries — Larry Flynt’s Barely Legal Club — tourists in all shapes & sizes partying in the neon din — almost everyone holding containers of one kind of booze or another — street hustlers scamming — one lone black hooker in ubiquitous hot pants appears in a doorway & we make eye contact — but the Rockpilers are hungry & in quest of raw oysters on the half-shell which we find at Desire. Terri & I start off w/ a shot of tequila w/ a beer back. She shows me how salt my thumb a forefinger loop, knock a taste back, then suck a splash of lemon. The first dozen oysters are almost inhaled. We vacuumed up 2 more. Then ordered dinner. I had wine w/ a salmon fillet on top of Caesar salad. We wound up weaving through an even louder blast of music on Bourbon St — reminds me of Charles Ives on top of a hill hearing 4 marching bands below playing 4 different marches — then to Fhay’s, an Irish pub catercorner to our hotel — naturally, pints of Guiness & a person at the bar shared a couple of American Spirit cigarettes w/ Terri & I — everyone’s allowed to smoke in saloons & pubs — my clothing smells like a filter tip —
Rehearsal with Blodie and members of Dirty Dozen Brass Band went great yesterday so we “had” to celebrate. First Stop Fahy’s Pub on corner of Burgundy and Toulouse. David and Terri broke out a couple of Nola Brown Ales.
Then we headed over to visit Jerry and Marion, old friends who live in a beautiful Victorian Style house on Barracks St. As we enter the house David was taken by a large painting of a black angel baby in the foyer. In honor of that painting, he had his first Mojito, and second Mojito, Roy Orbison serenading in the background. So David didn’t have to drink alone, Terri had a couple of Abita Ambers. I nursed my customary club soda and cranberry, with a twist of lime. Ah, refreshing!
Then we headed down to Frenchman’s Street for tasty Japanese meal, gypsy jazz sitar, guitar and standup bass accompanied the seared sashimi and skewered eel. David tried out a couple of bottles of saki, maybe three, but they were small, though pricey. Terri again was accommodating, chasing her saki with Orion beer. My water and lemon was divine accompaniment to sun dried fish and horseradish.
Then we ambled down Frenchmen’s Street where Terri and David tried and some more local beers at the Spotted Cat. (Quite a few more beers but whose counting? Not me.) The music was awesome, powerful conga, sassy saxophone, drums all over the place, gorgeous guitar, tasteful bass…we met a couple of New Zealander’s in the crowd who became instant friends. Amy, is a hippy girl who was raised in a bus and whose grandfather has a Marxist radio program back home, and her husband, Sean, is a very sweet guy, a psychologist who I found it easy to confess to. They were on tour of the US, on their way to Nashville today, they promised to join up with us at the New York ROCKPILE gig at the Gershwin Hotel. Terri danced and David tapped his metal sticks on the dance floor mesmerized by Terri’s free form marimba. I thought of my promise to Patricia to bring David back in one piece. So I gave him the once over, he was doing fine, full of high test but straight as an arrow. Lord knows what was going on in his sprightly mind. Another Club soda and tons of second hand smoke, I couldn’t have been happier.
We sat through the second and final performance of this festive and brilliant jazz band, and ambled out onto the street of music, blues across the street, jug band next door, this is Music City, not Nashville (an industry town) and drove over to a smoky local bar on Esplanade, Buffa’s, and began a gestalt session over rare mahi sandwiches, a few more beers, but not me I was drinking coca cola. Alice Cooper on the jukebox, and Alice Cooper kids crowded around the bar. David sang happy blues at the urinal. “I woke up this morning/with a sty in my eye”. This may have not been one of David’s most eloquent compositions. But he made his point.
I was checking my watch now. None of us young but all of us crazy. It’s hard to know when to stop. But it was time… So we headed home. Of course, I drove. Sober as the day I was born, and still got lost in the drunken Quarter streets, crossed Bourbon St. three times, then finally got pulled over by a New Orleans cop for making a U-Turn in the wrong place. He was incredibly sweet. I simply told him I was lost and let him peer into my clear eyes and see that I was simply disoriented not intoxicated. He pointed us in the right direction. Maison Dupuy, it was absolutely time to sleep. It. Off…. –MR
Eight hours on the Hume Highway got us from Mick’s house in The Gong to gray and cloudy Melbourne. We made a dutiful stop at the “Dog on a Tucker Box” statue/tourist trap/restaurant. Perhaps the most underwhelming thing of its kind I have ever seen. And the coffee sucked. The small monument was easily overwhelmed by the wonderful scenery that surrounded it. I was struck once again by how similar the scenery in this part of the world is to that of central and southern California. You can tell that this continent broke off of the North American West Coast and floated away a few billion years ago, All back in the Dreamtime.
The ‘roo and wombat roadkill were legion, and hard for this Yank to get used to. It seemed like every five miles there was a disemboweled macropod having its entrails picked and pulled by fat black crows and ravens. Good eating for the birds, I guess.
That first night in Melbourne, we stayed with Mick’s old friend Cindy in a bohemian two-bedroom that reminded me of so many apartments I lived in when we all went to college in Boston and nobody went to college anywhere else. Right down to the scattered pools of melted candle wax, and the roommate twisting one up on the sprung and tattered couch. Cindy was sweet and accommodating, and made us welcome after a long journey. A long night of reminiscing and smoking and drinking was clearly in the making, so I grabbed a pillow in the bedroom and made my way to the land of Nod.
Our gig was right downtown at the Paris Cat Jazz Club. A great room in Mebourne’s delightful labyrinth of bustling, restaurant and coffee-bar filled alleyways. There was extremely subtle signage, and a trip through a wooden door downstairs to the club. A real nice jazz-type joint, with grand piano and drums already there. Like they were waiting for us. The place filled up and we did the show. A very good night. Met a guy that had just wandered in after attending the Slayer/Megadeth double bill at Festival Hall. He was flabbergasted at how hard we rocked with just a piano, bass and drums in a little room with no PA to speak of. A very enthusiastic new fan was born. I love shit like this.
Saturday I began the morning listening to the newly remastered “Abbey Road” on my friend John Lattanzio’s $20,000 audiophile speakers. As far as I’m concerned, they were worth every penny. It’s been 25 years since I heard the Beatles for the first time. I never thought I’d experience that electric feeling again in this lifetime.
Mick and Andy and I made the five-hour drive up to Mt. Beauty for the next gig. It was called Ian’s Place and then it was called Arby’s place, and truthfully, we didn’t know what the hell to expect. It turned out to be a former gas station turned into a cool funky ski-lodge. All the work done by Ian…Arby for short, who greeted us at the door. There was a rented PA and no soundman. We set the gear up ourselves and discovered that there were no power cords at all. Showtime was in an hour. Mick called the store where the gear came from – two hours away on twisty mountain roads. After laying down the situation, he was greeted by stunned silence, followed by a long, impressive volley of swearing that almost made the whole thing worthwhile. Ian, in typically resourceful Aussie style, headed across the street to the local pub (and the only pub) and came back bearing aloft double handfuls of power cords. We soundchecked and gobbled dinner. The gig was unexpectedly great. A little like a house concert, but on a larger scale…they came from miles around. After it was over, Ian, Mick, Andy and I stood in the kitchen eating pizza and local homemade sausage and telling road stories. There was no discussion of sitting down to eat. We were male, and there were no women around to make us sit. It was a glorious evening.
After a big Aussie brekky in the mountain air, we headed back to Melbourne. My wife Karen had flown in that morning and set up camp at the swanky Langham Hotel, downtown by the river. After weeks of living low, I felt like an interloper as I checked my grimy bags and my grimy self into the room, where I found my much-missed girl waiting for me. And then, I was an interloper no more… –Bob Malone
In Lubbock, TX at the Marriott Courtyard — ate in some Aussie chain steakhouse whose steaks were rated #1 by Zagat — Michael dug in — I had a salmon fillet — over 6 hours driving out of NM — weary but the flat screen HD TV keeps me in touch w/ the unreal world & eases me into fitful sleep — love to the crew & to you!
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Bleary butt-tired blues — in the Holiday Inn Express in Shreveport, LA — dined on catfish & red beans & rice at Brothers — off tomorrow for almost a week in New Orleans — watch out!
Amplified accordion, long black hair, orange, red, yellow streaked chiffon skirt, black tights with zippers, polka dot socks and red Doc Martens, Terri Carrion joined the Thunderbird Poetry Orkestra last night, her debut in the ROCKPILE performance tour and fun was had by all. And lots of curious sounds from saxophone, glockenspiel, coronet and koto (see the performance schedule for instruments and musicians), and more, the array of percussion exhilarating. I performed “Still Life of The Imagination”, a challenge to deliver a journal piece as song, varying line lengths, improvising line breaks based on music rather than “projective” notation already established on the page, and drive the dynamics in such a way as to keep the audience moving with me through time and the rain of percussion and brass After “Still Life” I followed up and concluded with “Elephant in The Room for David” (for our very own David M), a melodic, lyric, more narrative poem, which opened with the blowing elephant didgeridoo and distant reply of coronet, a considerable change of pace and from “Still Life” and direct transition to David.
David began with introduction to and songs from No Eyes, with cello blues…
Thank you, Mark!
…and followed up with the majestic, hard core and sorrowful “Brother”, a minimal accompaniment from the Orkestra was poignant. As usual, David had the audience under his spell. He concluded with an exuberant and upbeat rendition of “Red Shoes”. I was dancing in my seat on the stage. The Orkestra was right on top of the shifting tones and modes and moods of David’s entire reading. What a pleasure and honor to work with them!
At the end of David’s reading applause broke out and then audience sat still. They didn’t want to leave. (Or maybe they were still waiting for the show to start!!! It’s hard for me to tell sometimes, what people are thinking or mean by what they say or do cause most of the time I’m freaking out about every minor detail as if it were the end of the world). No they didn’t want to leave, and so mingled long after Terri had unplugged her shiny electric accordion and the lights went down on the Outpost Performance Space stage. Gratitude to Jeff Bryan for organizing and Tom Guralnik for his generosity and for hosting this event!
The first of a series of “Shop Talks” from on the road about poetry and music and music and poetry.
Here are the two pages by David Meltzer from Ann Charter’s book
Beat Down to Your Soul: What Was the Beat Generation? (Penguin)
(click each page separately to enlarge)
Looking forward to the crazed collaboration tonight with our friends in Albuquerque!
Yesterday at rehearsal we got a chance to work out the chaos and it should be great!
(ala Harry Partch some have commented)
Loose and noisy and raw and full of sounds never made or heard before!
Steven Reich look out!
The Thunderbird!
Jeff Bryan and his sax.
Mark Weber on Hubcaphone and Leif on…? David soaking it all in.
After too much oversalted and overprocessed food in the suburbs we make it out to downtown for some sushi and much needed saki.
The music was horrible, but the food was great! -Terrii
RAW QUAIL EGG – by Michael
If you’re not here you’re nowhere
Albuquerque, New Mexico, October 12
Never going, never coming back
“This is not that”
Everywhere at once, it gives me a headache
Following the Fall
“My revolution is bigger than yours”—DM
Sushi in every pot!
3rd day in the Quality Inn in Bernalillo, NM. Today we lunched at Flying Star, a cafeteria style eatery serving thoughtful, healthy food — when possible, locally grown produce, meat & poultry — had a glass of organic Chardonnay, felt instantly immortal. Sooner or later in my blabbing blahg, I’ll tirade off into a critique of “green” vocabulary, but now want to try to figure out where we are, i.e., what the text of highway, strip malls, meta malls, uniformity & deformity reads like. Like all of us, alert to subtext. F’rinstance: a billboard looms above the Inn: “Dos Lunas Tequilla” on the top in white florid script on a black page. In more sedate type: “New Mexico . .” More signage along the way that puzzles me endlessly as to how to “read” it. Does Dos Lunas make you see double? As a geezer, I have dim kid memories of driving Route 66 to Los Angeles. I don’t recall the roadside plaques, stacked w/ corporate symbols, before any turn-off in any remote isolate spot along the highway. Everything the same which I suppose brings comfort. But to whom? Yeah, I know the story of the incorporation of USA & then the Globe starting in the 19th century. Yeah, I know about the constant standardization & rationalizing of so-called reality; its reconstruction into the familiar neutral spectacle. Yeah, I’ve read & re-read Debord’s dense masterpiece, “The Society of the Spectacle,” a trash-compacted encyclical in maybe 100 pages of numbered units of critique. Yet the impact of its totality on the American roadscape & TV & cyber inscape has, thanks to the Rockpile tour, become inescapable to me. Old news, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less easy to succumb to, to surrender to. & I don’t & won’t. But I can read it resistantly, as a poet, digging deep into each word, icon, image, as well as trying to understand how folks read & internalize all of it in everyday life. I can also appreciate the remnants of poetry in ad copy & imagery.
Am listening to the local “classical music” radio station like its brother & sister stations throughout the States, it plays “lite”, a movement from a symphony or string quartet prefaced w/ peppy thumbnail sketches on, let’s say, Beethoven’s deafness or Mozart’s precociousness a la People. At the local Walgreen’s bought a copy People’s 35th birthday issue. Need to read it now to discover where US is & who its heroes, heroines are at this moment. More later, David Meltzer
We’re in ABQ Quality Inn now and tired beyond belief. So much catching up and almost no sleep, the sheer energy of trying to hit a pace, drag of the learning curve, altitude change, diet change, and making sure not to let the computer cord hang out the van door.
I caught the Thule roof rack on the ventilation ducts in the parking garage at the Hammer and punched a hole in it. We’re 6 foot 10 inches and the clearance 6 foot 9 inches, that’s what I learned. Then one of the hangers in the van broke when the bellman tried to hang a 40 pound jacket bag from a hook that has a 10 lb capacity. The reason I know it had a 10lb capacity is because that is what it says when you lay down on the back seat and look up at the amputated hook. Then I drove up a hill with the emergency brake on, you could smell rubber wafting in over the chef salad I was eating at a Prescott, AZ Pie and Coffee Shop. No problem I can get this repaired. New pads, no problem. I’ll duct tape the roof rack. While I am at it I’ll repair the side door of the van which I gashed and dented on a fence backing out of a friend’s yard in Placitas, NM. I blame it on the altitude. I see us now driving back into California with the van duct taped together, bumper dragging on the asphalt, smoking tailpipe, and David and Terri in me, crowded in skeleton of a van (kindly loaned to us by Nancy Davis) muscular from our adventure, but with our clothes in shreds.
Okay, enough complaining. We’re fine. Working with the musicians in LA was transformative. Truly transformative. And it took an enormous amount of energy to flex and learn to improvise and collaborate at this level, and I was totally star struck. I mean these musicians are the real deal. And what am I? A poet. . . We only had a day to get the performance together and it all seemed so possible from my desk in Guerneville. But I was terrified halfway through the rehearsal ‘cause nothing seemed to be working out. Lots of talk and I grew dark and brooding. Nothing worked. We couldn’t find a groove. I couldn’t articulate what I wanted clearly and didn’t know what anyone was talking about.
Then David took over and the musicians were working with him okay, of course he is the pro, years of experience and all, and he had already done several gigs with Theo. Theo was able to give the musicians direction as how to approach David. Though I know David was still challenged by the possibilities of a complex collaboration of musical voices, blues and jazz. So it wasn’t until the last ten minutes of the rehearsal I finally saw daylight. Terri encouraged me to go back for another shot. Miracle of miracles we found our way. John B. Williams was able to suggest an approach of essential improvisation. Johnny Lee Schell understood it was tempo that I was looking for first and not so much a particular tune or style of music. Everyone got the groove, the swing, and was there with me, incredibly supportive. I was in heaven. Debra Dobkin throwing bells and shakers at her drums for percussion. Joe was laughing through his saxophone. Theo had it all grounded with beautiful chords. Johnny Lee saw the smile on my face and said, “Have we restored your faith?” “I’m happy,” I said. Totally. I had imagined the worst, a nightmare, standing on the stage of the Hammer, all those people in the audience I bothered about showing up, yelling ROCKPILE every day for 10 months, and me standing there with nothing to show for it, reading rubbish over a garbled noise, inaudible…
Beat, beat, beat, I am beat. Terri is working on the documentation and she hasn’t had a time to breathe either so we have dragged behind on that. Today is the first free day since we hit the road. She is getting her photos, video and audio organized for uploading today and tomorrow. Grateful to catch-up, David too, wholly consumed by it all, his stamina incredible but no time to stop and write. I’ll let him tell his own story. He is one remarkable dude.
Now, Terri is pasting pictures on the motel room wall. An advertisement from the official Visitor’s Guide and Vacation Planner for Albuquerque. She especially likes one advertisement for a golf and spa resort within the ancient lands of a native American pueblo, that says “Centuries of History Brilliantly Disguised as Fun.” — MR
Day two, Narooma Blues Festival. Up at 7 am to croak out a radio interview by phone. I’ve already done so many of these this month that I honestly can’t remember where or what station he was calling from. It’s good to have publicity, though. I appreciate it, even if I don’t know exactly whom it is I should be appreciating. My voice is shredded. Sleep deprivation, damp cold weather, and a soundman who wouldn’t turn up the monitor have all contributed. There are soundmen, believe it or not, who are quite resentful when you ask them to, well…to do sound.
A little later, Mick and I join my good Aussie friends Gerry and Carmen for brekky (that’s what they call it here). Various folks who saw the show the night before come by to say hi and tell us how much they dug it. We talk and eat for a good long time. It’s raining too hard to explore the town or do much of anything. I head back to the room and fall asleep.
Later on, Mick and the horn section and I go out for the second worst Chinese food I’ve ever eaten. No Asians working at this place…we should have known. The first worst Chinese food I’ve ever eaten, if you’re wondering, was at this joint in Denver where they had a couple of giant Samoans cooking up the grub in the back. The year was 1990, and I was on my way out to L.A. to start my new life on the West Coast. So traumatized by this meal was I that I still remember it vividly after all these years. It was not, as they say, the business.
Backstage, there too early and bored, I flirt mildly with the pretty young thing at the backstage food counter. She is working the concession with her mother and grandmother. The grandmother is the most fun and lively of the three. She comes over to whisper in my ear that her granddaughter likes me, and then flits off like a schoolgirl. I got the feeling grandma wouldn’t have minded a crack at it herself. Mom remained bemused and indifferent. I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. But it mattered not, I am a married man. Just like to check every now and again and see if I’ve still got the goods.
Onstage, getting ready to play, I hear the following exchange:
Mick the Bass Player: “Hey Steve, I’ve got some DW-40 tonight!”
Steve the Guitar Player: “No worries! I brought my gloves!”
I ask if they’d like to share a room for the rest of the tour.
Our tent is packed to capacity as we start the show. Lots of love and energy from the crowd, and the usual festival smattering of neo-hippie chicks with a nice buzz going doing that hippie noodle dance thing. I never get tired of watching this. When blues legend Charlie Musselwhite hits the stage the next tent over, we get quite a few defections from the crowd, but this is to be expected.
Postshow, back at the merch table, I sign CDs for fans and find out we have sold a shockingly good number of discs between our shows last night and tonight. One very friendly couple comes by with a photo they took of me playing at Blues on Broadbeach festival in 2006. They have carried it around for four years waiting to run into me so they can get a autograph on it. My first instinct was to confiscate the thing – I’d lost nearly 30 pounds since this photo was taken. Didn’t need THAT thing floating around, slowing inching it’s way to a nonstop appearance on the internet, where all your fat pictures live on and on. Even after you have dropped those pounds like a bad habit.
Back at the motel, Mick fixes my stuck boot zipper with some WD-40 and a piece of a keyring. It’s like having MacGyver on bass.
Sunday morning we drive the three hours back to Canberra, where we play a 3:00 show for the local blues society. This schedule is punishing, and the rain won’t let up. But tomorrow is a day off.
We stay for the night at Mick’s parent’s house. They are kind, helpful and hospitable. The food is great, the beds are soft. The source of Mick’s many good traits revealed to me at last.
Tuesday is upon us before we know it. It is the night of our show at The Basement, probably the most revered and famous club in Australia. Everything is first-rate – the sound, the staff, the Steinway grand. It is the day after a three-day holiday weekend, and it’s raining. Not a recipe for great attendance, but a nearly full house shows up and we have a very fine show. Such a pleasure to play a place like this. For a crowd like this. With a band like this. On a piano like this. Nothing is getting in the way of us making the best music we can make. This is how it should be every night. I believe that I have clawed my way to within sight of that reality.
On the way back to Mick’s house in The Gong, we are starving. Hoping for an open kebab stand, we reach the last outpost of Sydney without seeing one. Desperate for sustenance, we pull into Mc Donald’s. I have a strict Only-Twice-a-Year policy about eating Mickey D’s. This will be my second and final transgression for 2009, and I am famished enough to deem it acceptable. Mick hasn’t eaten at a McDonald’s in fifteen years! He is already traumatized by what is about to happen. We order, and as we sit in the deserted late-night eatery, surrounded by plastic clown statues, which Mick is also having a hard time with, a man comes in with a mop and a rolling tub of water. He unceremoniously dumps the water all over the floor in front of us and starts to briskly spread it around. Soon, small breakers of soapy brown water are lapping against our shoes. It’s high tide at McDonald’s. Mick is appalled:
“Is this normal?” he asks the woman at the counter.
“No, we usually have security,” she says.
What is that supposed to mean? Security for the likes of us, or for the occasional rouge worker, heedlessly splashing water all over the customers?
I guess we’ll never know, we took the remainders of our burgers and got the hell out.
Today, we bask in the glow of the previous night’s performance, feed parrots and lorikeets out on the porch, and head back up to Sydney to visit our good friend Alison Penney.
Prescott, AZ exhausted. Jumped in the van the morning after the Hammer show and we were still too slow getting started so ended up in the mountains in the dark at 10pm talking about ‘in time” and “out of time” and shifting chords and what are we going to do in Albuquerque and New Orleans and about sitar in New York, the humble origins of the hubcappaphone…
My head is killing me. It’s 10 am… Oh yeah, the Hammer show was beyond belief, I can’t say enough how inspiring it was to work with these musicians. Bliss, total bliss!! And the audience dug it big time. A standing ovation!!! Yay, ROCKPILE!! And what a treat to see so many good friends in the audience. Surprise visit from Randy Cauthen, a facebook friend, showed up and introduced himself, a real good guy teaches at CSU-Dominguez. Karen Ivanis, Patricia Donnelly and Joe DaRocha came down from Bay Area, for moral support and to join the festivities. And lots of local buddies made us feel at home. A good turn out indeed. But god am I exhausted, can’t unplug my brain. One night I sleep like death and the next night it’s buzzes and jolts and mind movies out of control. Breathe, breathe. “Stop telling me what to do!!” Touchy, touchy. I pity David and Terri for having to be within a mile of my insanity. But the show was great. We’re looking for a video clip from Troy Christian, who filmed the whole deal, and a sound tape from the Hammer for posting on the blog. Hope to have it posted in the next couple of days. Hey, You ought to have seen David swing (I was going to say “rock” but I am trying to be musically accurate). And Terri don’t forget I love you. Oh my head is killing me. Help, help. I can’t stop going and I don’t want to stop–MR
It was really amazing to sit and watch all these great musicians. I felt totally honored to be there. And Rooster the Dog, was totally sweet and furry.
Working it out with John B. Williams, Joe Sublett, Theo Saunders, and David Meltzer
Johnny Lee Schell joins in to work it out some more with Michael.
David takes notes while Michael and the amazing percussionist Debra Dobkin find the groove.
Debra Dobkin is amazing. She plays with every inch of her body and soul and is truly unique. I am her newest, biggest fan!
David in the studio, loving every minute.
Troy Christian is a sweetheart and filmed the rehearsal and performance.
Can’t wait to see all the footage!
The green room spread at the Billy Wilder Theater.
David and Joe Sublett(sax player) before the performance.
Johnny Lee Schell and Michael
Johnny Lee is a true gentleman and a kind and open spirit. They just don’t make them like they use to!
The show was awesome last night! Everyone is high and happy about it.
Unfortunately, I got a big, fancy camera for this trip and had some major technical difficulties taking pictures of the performance. I just don’t know how to adjust for lighting etc…still learning…Boo hoo. So I mostly took bad pictures of the show. Hoping to get some video footage soon to share with you all.
Right now packing up and getting ready for the drive to Prescott, AZ, our stop on the way to Albuquerque. Looking forward to the desert and the open space. Terri
