Two hours into my five-hour drive to Phoenix Arizona, my GPS slowly creeps up to an eight-hour ride. I start freaking because that would make me late for my gig. I can’t really pull over to figure out why or what and there’s no other route I can take. Calling my friend John I cancel our dinner plans. Message Ron and Jen and let them know too.
And then it creeps back down to a normal-ish six-hour drive and I’m in time for dinner. Oh and I had an extra hour before show time because the Facebook event had the 8 pm – Arizona time, telling me it was starting at 7 pm – California time. Sometimes the world is too clever for it’s own good. I have had this issue over and over again with Google or Events or whatever – If I put in a thing starts at 8 pm in Berlin Germany, don’t mess me up by telling me it starts at 11 am. There has to be a way to fix these things because putting in the correct time zone doesn’t seem to always do it.
Whatever.
I’m here, I’m early, I’m eating dinner.
Over at Fiddler’s Dream Coffeehouse, Nia is waiting for me and I love playing here. I’m not talking out of school here when I say that this is not a glamourous gig. It’s a small room, there is no PA system and they don’t allow anything to be amplified and I love LOVE playing here. It is full on busker style, you and your guitar. I love it because I sing differently in this environment. As soon as there is a mic in front of me, there is a disconnect between me and the audience. The immediate-ness and not relying on pedals and cords to work properly is also a plus.
The Odd Birds are playing tonight too. They bought me a hamburger at 5 and Diner pre-gig and shit, we’ve done so many shows together I think we could almost introduce each other’s songs if not play a few entirely. I enjoy their set in this context too as I can really feel their dynamics.
It’s great to see new and old friends here, I get a great intro from Nia and I tell them all how last week when I played “Chasing rock and roll” in Canada I got a great reaction to the line about Blue Rodeo and folks actually “Woo!” for that lyric. Tonight, when I get to the bridge, I pause and everyone Woos like they all love Blue Rodeo - because now, they do.
At the end of the show, I have a quick minute long explanation about why I’m touring with and have a white rose in a vase on stage with me. I explain who the White Rose Society was in Munich in 1945, how they were appealing to fellow German’s humanity and empathy for fellow citizens and pleading with them realize what was going on around them.
Then I close with “Good Trouble” a song I wrote inspired by the words of Rep John Lewis.
After the show we all start talking and sharing – my friend Julie hands out some stickers that have a QR code and links to PlanCPills.org where you can get healthcare medicine mailed to you even if your state does not allow that medicine. There are also some conversations about meeting up at protests and what’s going on in the area.
(Julie is handing out these stickers and she's also sticking them up in restrooms
around the state because this is what it's come to)
I hadn’t planned on my show turning into a mini-meeting for the resistance but I love that it did.
Messaging ahead to my friend Sue, I tell her I will be at her place by midnight. She and her husband have invited me to stay in their guest room in Chandler, Arizona. Sue is a singer/songwriter too. I keep trying to get her out and playing more shows but she’s not a fan of playing solo. (foreshadowing) The house is beautiful; the bed is comfy and I am feeling very spoiled.
(there were seven pillows on my bed in the guest room)
I wake up Saturday to breakfast being made and we hang out, talk music, the world and then Sue and I start working on songs together.
(that's a good looking square/circle breakfast
bonus points for my Yelp review)
Tonight, I’m playing The Chill Room in Tempe. I meet my buddy John there for dinner before the show and it’s great seeing him too. He lives full-time RV in his RV, has been to every national park west of the Mississippi and this is his annual winter in Arizona. He and I have been friends since I worked for him back in 1988 as a teenager making and delivering pizza.
The Chill Room is an interesting place. It is a non-alcoholic bar/restaurant. They do still sell non alcoholic beer and wine as well as their specialty – Kava infused drinks. It’s a thing from Fuji and the root and the extract and it chills you out without side effects. Sal makes me a “shot” of the Kava and it looks like dirty water but tastes fine. They say if you have a couple of these or if you have a specialty cocktail made with this it’s really great for the mind and relaxes and all kinds of good stuff.
I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m knocking it because I’m really not. I get it. It’s good. I feel better. I’m relaxed, although, I was already relaxed as this place really is chill.
Sal is the owner and he’s doing sound. He asks me where I’m from and I tell him SoCal by way of Boston. “There it is.” He says. “I’m from New York.” “You think I couldn’t tell that?” He laughs and tells me he plays guitar in a Boston tribute band. “Do you have lifts in your shoes to play Tom Scholz?” He laughs again. “So it’s on, is it? You’re fucking with me?” And I am. And it is in fact – on.
I’m happy to see familiar faces here again. There’s Patti from last night, some other friends, Thomas and Sue are here, my buddy John and a bunch of folks I don’t know.
Savannah Rae is opening up and she sounds great. I’m sitting at the bar and Sal and I are talking about music and what-not. This is a great room for local music. He introduces me to Walt who is a local legend and does a lot for local musicians including running some open mics. Upon finding this out – words come out that I have never said before; “You’re doing the lord’s work.” What the hell was in that drink?
I get up and have a really enjoyable set. I tell stories, new stories, old stories – I notice a kid in the front table about 10 years old. Before I start “Chasing rock and roll” I usually look around the place and decide whether or not I’m going to sing “shit” or “ship.” I say to him “You’ve heard the word “shit” before, right?” Jesus, what is wrong with me? His parents look slightly mortified but are laughing. The kid nods at me. I then explain to everyone else my thought process here. As I start singing the song – I get to that first chorus and I sort of slur it through “shiiiiiip.” The kid yells out “Just say Shit!” Everyone laughs.
Just as I’m about to start the second verse it occurs to me – I sort of stop strumming and inform everyone that this verse is probably more problematic for a ten-year-old than me saying shit. “We hit Toronto in time for soundcheck, pimps and hookers by the front door…”
Hanging out - I see Peggy and Jime. It's so great to see them out and about. I give them both big hugs even though Peggy just hurt her shoulder. It was about a two hour drive for them to get here from Prescott and I am so thankful.
I have a good set, it sounds really great on stage as well except for some guitar weirdness. At first, I thought Sal put on a hard bit of compression onto my guitar signal as the guitar isn’t ringing out naturally and it’s distracting. Like when I play quiet, not all the notes are ringing out and when I let a chord ring out instead of the sound fading out, it stays the same volume and then just disappears like the volume is shut off. I can’t figure it out. It must be a pedal thing.
The rest of the set all goes well. Sue comes up and joins me on “Dam” and one of my pedals freaks out on me because – of course it does. Towards the end of my set, I explain again how I’m touring and I have this white rose in a vase with me and the story that goes along with that. There’s a couple at the bar that start waving to me and acting excited. I’m in Arizona, so I’m not entirely sure what that’s about. I hope it’s positive.
I finish my set and am talking to folks and that couple comes up to me.
“When you first mentioned the White Rose Society we were like, no, he’s not talking about THAT White Rose Society but then you were. I am a distant relative of Sophie Scholl from the White Rose Society.”
My jaw hit the ground. They take out their phone, showing me pictures and start telling me about their trip to Munich, visiting the White Rose sites and how she told them who she was and being related and how everyone freaked out over her being there.
Eric Douglas takes the stage and owns it like he does. I love his song about eyes of a child and he ends with a perfect song about his travels and how Texas dust has made its way into his soul.
There’s still some time for some jamming after our sets finish and we’re able to convince Ron and Jen in the Odd Birds to share a couple of songs and I get Sue up on stage as well. I tell her that I’m going to accompany her and technically I do but I really don’t play much at all. I’m sneaky that way and wonder if she’ll even notice that she’s performing by herself with me just sitting there.
Then Sal gets up on stage and guitars are being passed around left and right, I challenge him to play some Thin Lizzy and he and I play “Jailbreak” acoustically. It’s my first time ever playing this live and we laugh our way through to the solo.
It’s a great night. We pack up and I head back to Thomas’ and Sue’s place. We’ve opened a nice bottle of wine and Sue says;
“You little stinker. We watched the video on the way home. You weren’t even playing.”
“You didn’t need me to.”
And that’s how I tricked Sue into realizing she could perform solo.
Sunday morning I wake up to the smell of bacon being cooked. It’s an early morning as Glendale is about 45 minutes away and I’m performing at 11:30 am and then running a workshop at 1 pm. Thomas has made me a great homemade egg, cheese and muffin sandwich and it’s the perfect thing to send me on my way.
At the Glendale Folk & Heritage Festival there is a lot of folk. I don’t say that to be glib or funny. This is a “FOLK” festival. Banjos, guitars and a few mandolins. I can hear “Pancho and Lefty” being played in the distance as I park. There will be multiple Johnny Cash and Fleetwood Mac covers heard today.
I mention this because I exist in this folk world for lack of another genre to fit into. Certainly, some of what I do can be considered folk but whenever I see folk being performed it always seems much more subdued than what I’m doing. My buddy Boris told me that I’m like the side dishes at a restaurant. And he wasn’t saying that negatively but more in the way that I fall through the cracks – what I do isn’t the main dish anywhere and probably why I go over better in Europe.
I can’t tell how long he’s been thinking of this analogy and I guess I kind of get it. Always falling through the cracks, to folk to be rock, to rock to be folk, to alt. to be country. It goes on and on and I feel like I know a few other folks that fall through the cracks with me.
The idea of not fitting in follows me around. I get that people like what I do and I’m thankful for that but it is weird to feel like you never fit in. If I played covers, there would be a network for that. Maybe all songwriters feel this way.
My set goes over well. I make note that this is the second show this weekend where someone has been crocheting while listening to me. She holds her blanket in process up in the air when I say this.
“People always ask what kind of music I play, now I know. I play ‘crochet rock’.” People dig the stuff I’m doing. More pedal weirdness of my guitar cutting out. Before I set up today, I thought one of my pedals was glitching and so I took it off my board. The decay/fading out thing isn’t happening now, instead the guitar just stops making sound all together. This is why pedals and things get destroyed. I do one song with the looper and weirdness and it goes over pretty well. It is most definitely “Not Folk” but it is me.
John is sitting with Patti who is wearing one of my shirts with Lena on it. Having folks see me three days in a row is amazing and also makes me not want to repeat myself. There are, of course, some songs that are in all the sets but I mix it up enough so they aren’t hearing only the same songs all three nights.
I do the White Rose explanation and get some nice clapping from folks. I know I’m not campaigning here; I’m just throwing a little bit of history and information into my show. Point folks in the right direction, let them make their own connections. It may not be much or it may be way too much – either way, I’m doing it.
Post show has me selling some CDs and talking to other guitar players. Julie has come over and we’re talking about family stuff and our hometowns and she says;
“Your song ‘around here’ is the perfect song about leaving your hometown. It’s even the perfect length.”
I’m now wishing I played this song today. Julie has been a friend and a fan for a long time and she has always been sparing with her compliments in a way that makes them mean more when you receive them.
Dan Rush takes the stage after me and delivers a great set of tunes. He and I wrote a song together in Idyllwild last year, or wait, that was like four months ago we did that. I was excited because I got the word “bindle” into a song. When we played it for everyone else, we had to explain what a bindle[1] was.
Today I am also running a guitar playing workshop. I’ve never done this before – in public. I’ve certainly been teaching a lot of what I’ll be preaching today in private because there are things that bug me about the way a lot of people accompany themselves on guitar. I have no desire to be obnoxious enough to tell anyone how they should be performing but if folks come to me and ask, I will gladly share some feedback on how to improve their dynamics and teach them inversions, capo use and rhythmic soloing techniques.
My workshop started out with me going over some basics and then I got into inversions of chords and I could see everyone glaze over a little bit so I made it much more interactive and had everyone in the group share something that they play and how and what they could do to spice it up, simplify it or whatever. Most of the folks in the class only played covers and so it’s hard to come up with a new way of playing “Folsom Prison” but I was able to show that guy a way he could break out of the standard form and make it a little more his own. The most challenging was the guy who didn’t have a hand, he had an adapter at the end of his arm that held a guitar pick in place. I was able to show him some new inversions for one of his songs to make the in between bits more exciting.
I think I’d like to do more of these classes. I feel myself branching out a bit more. What I’m envisioning for the future is a combination of regular type shows where I perform, bookstore or library gigs where I talk from my (upcoming) book and play some songs as well as doing some song mentoring/guitar lessons. I like this idea. All three could tour really nicely together with a library gig, a music store lesson and a night time gig all in the same day.
Does anyone else do this or am I on a new lonely island?
[1] A bindle is that stick with a kerchief bundle on the end that you see when little kids would run away from home in the 1950s or in cartoons. Oh, and yes – I know Jen Moraca got the reference too but only because of Steven Universe.
