Big Kitty

I recently watched Werner Herzog’s Aguirre the Wrath of God, a movie I remember renting on VHS when I was in high school, and never finishing. At that time, it didn’t amaze me like it did this time—because of several things I can see now that discouraged me from giving it my full attention then. It would’ve helped me to understand Werner Herzog’s philosophy of making art. He’s one who believes that the contemporary moment is as heroic as any in the past — like when Emerson questions at the beginning of his essay Nature, “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” An original relation, a direct, unmediated engagement with the universe…

When I was growing up I felt a horrible malaise, that everything had already happened and now life was all about looking back at it. For some reason I associated this thought with John F. Kennedy’s assassination. I guess that seemed like the world’s last dramatic event to me. That’s one of those moments when people would talk about what they were doing when it happened, when the world stopped for a moment… (today is September 11, and I suppose that day, 23 years ago, my feeling that nothing happened anymore crumbled with the towers, as I watched a TV on a cart in my 11th grade history class).

I remember hearing Patti Smith expressing the same idea, something like: We today are as capable of miracles as the past. We’re just as able to make great poetry, music, etc… But I can’t find where she said that. Can anybody help me remember where I heard that? Any other people expressing similar ideas? I know there must be a ton.

Werner Herzog has most likely expressed that same idea. At least, it feels evident in Aguirre. If I’d understood that kind of philosophy was behind this movie, when I watched it at the age of 16 or whatever, I would have been riveted. I would have been ravished by that idea at the time. It’s clear how dangerous it was to make this movie : you see fifteen or so people and sometimes horses riding very flimsy rafts on a wild river that looks very dangerous. I don’t think teenager Clark realized how much risk they were taking to make this film. How could writing words & music ever be that risky?

Another aspect that probably bugged me is the fact that the story seems to unfold like kids playing pretend: “Oh no… a flood!” “Whoa! They’re shooting arrows!” This fits in with the boldness of the whole undertaking but also seems to square with a kind of epic storytelling. There’s a childlike quality to it. And how could it be risky to write? Well, outside of taking a pen and pad while walking a tight rope suspended between the twin towers, you could take a typewriter on a bus with a binge-drinking semi-professional soccer team, which is how this film was apparently written (so I read on Wikipedia). Apparently one of the players vomited on some pages of the script — Herzog threw them out the window and kept writing, forgetting what was on them. I’m not saying that’s the best way to write by any means, in an intense burst, but it is a good way to “channel” something other than the typical words that are repeatedly articulated in your thoughts. That layer of thinking tricks me into thinking it represents something more than just the thinnest surface of what’s really going on “inside.”

Yet another thing that would have bugged me is the German language. This adds to the audacity of the film’s indifference to realism: the characters are all Spanish (16th century colonists violently seeking wealth in South America) but they all speak German. If the film were in English, the strangeness of that arrangement wouldn’t be nearly as palpable — because we’re used to seeing English used to portray historical periods in cinema where the language would have been completely different. Most surprisingly, however, I read that the film was actually acted in English and later overdubbed in German — and this was done due to budgetary constraints. The whole film is overdubbed, and Klaus Kinski, who plays the lead role of Aguirre, was overdubbed by a different actor entirely.

It’s striking me now that Mel Gibson’s movies The Passion of the Christ (which I never actually watched) and Apocalypto (which I did, when it came out in the theater…I barely remember the movie, but I do remember feeling very disappointed in it.) make an interesting comparison, since they have a similar gritty, bold & risk-taking feel, but they use languages that at least approached what would have been spoken in, respectively, ancient Palestine (Aramaic?) and the Amazon. That gives them a different sort of philosophy — a kind of faith in cinematic realism, where Herzog is more in line with Bertolt Brecht in his embrace of the artificial. Mel Gibson’s films try to put you in the historical moment, to simulate it — whereas Aguirre is putting you in a dream-vision with roots in a historical moment. Mel Gibson’s movies are bound to fail completely at simulating a historical moment, given that any movie you make is going to be terribly artificial — so just on that basis alone I think Herzog is onto something more interesting in Art Making.

I’ve heard him speaking about his theory of what truth is — something accessible only by a kind of ecstasy… “ecstatic truth” is truth reached outside of facts. I think I understand this, in terms of one of my favorite books, I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, which elaborates a Vedic philosophy that essentially negates all experience as false, meaning truth is only knowable through being. (That’s too brief a description and I’d completely understand your being turned off by it, but I just recommend reading the book).

I may be getting it wrong, but I also feel that getting it wrong is not necessarily getting it wrong, as what matters is the spirit, a kind of heroic effort. I feel like Aguirre is a film where you can feel being, which is an unsolvable mystery, only able to be felt, and that’s the kind of feeling I hope to access through what I do. Now I haven’t mentioned Aguirre’s character, but of course he is a cruel madman. But there’s part of him that resembles an artist: the insane part, determined to do what’s irrational and impractical and bound to come up short (I have to go back to Beckett – you know you’re going to lose before you start, and you try like hell anyway).

My daughter Naoko (ten years old) and I made a band called Zee Sneggs, and we’ve just put our first album up on Bandcamp.

What can I say about this album? We’ve talked about making a band together for about a year. We’d come up with new band names about every day, but nothing seemed to hit the spot until a couple weeks ago when somehow the topic of Snake Eggs came up and we both said “The Sneggs” at the same time. Then we changed “the” to be as if spoken with a French accent. So it’s not intended to be “The Zee Sneggs” but “Zee” means “the.”

We got really into the Cramps, and also Mercyful Fate, and you can hear that influence on a couple of these songs. We wrote most of the lyrics together, sometimes as an exquisite corpse. We wrote a few things together over the summer and then spent 3 days only working on writing and recording. I cried at the end because I didn’t want it to be over. Naoko didn’t cry. She told me to try to appreciate that we’d had a good time together.

I think I was crying because doing this brought back a feeling I had when I first started playing music, just being playful and sometimes earnest.

LISTEN!!

 

 

So you might have thought I died or something. In all truthfulness, I have, many times over. And each time I woke up I’d look around and say, “Where was I?” Not receiving any response, I’d ask again, “Where am I?” But I never heard the answer, because some imperative would impose—say, an approaching deadline for a tax form, or the unexpected failure of the starter of my car—and addressing that issue meant to give up listening and plug my semi-compatible wires into a vast, diesel-scented system of habits and reflexes. I’ve already died again, by this point, without realizing it. It takes a while to realize you’ve died, which is simply another way of saying, it takes a while to come back to life. 

I’ve passed through that cycle countless times since my tour. So many times that the tour days seem completely foreign and even the lyrics to my newest songs, that I knew back & forthwards only three months ago are now hard to remember…

I think I forgot 1) I can write here anytime – it is my website after all ; and 2) I don’t have to labor the structure as if I were in school, and can write conversationally.

In fact, I’ve been sick, with the flu, or something else horrible. Decommissioned for a few days—aching body, alternating between fever and shivers, sweating buckets, coughing up blobs. With sickness, though, comes the benefit of being forced to slow down. The psychological changes allow a different sort of perspective, similar to a small dose of mushrooms. And there’s a closeness to death that makes life seem more precious. Even when healthy, I’m an easy cryer, tearing up every couple of days (almost always when alone, usually a sense of wistfulness, especially when listening to music, watching movies, or reading). When I’m sick, this multiplies by about ten.

So this is the part I really wanted to get to: books, movies, and music that I’ve been into lately.

I’ve had a long-distance relationship with reading in the last few years, meaning “we don’t see each other so often,” mostly because I feel like I’m not “working” while doing it, so I leave books until bed, always surprised at how quickly I’d fall asleep. Drinking at night adds another distance. Reading while drinking is just impossible for me, though I have never ceased to try. This state of affairs led to me not reading much at all, which is the flipside of when I was younger and would spend long stretches of time just reading and feeling a book, in the middle of the day, outside or inside. I loved that and have missed it for years. But I’ve only done it twice, when the book wouldn’t let me do otherwise (Overstory by Richard Powers and Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend). Other than that, I’ve felt obligated to do other things. When people have given me books as gifts, while thanking them, I’ve thought, with considerable sadness, “I’ll never have time to read this.”

This was especially true between 2021 and 2023 when I was doing a master’s thesis on Samuel Beckett. My advisor was Lydie Parisse, a brilliant & eccentric writer and artist whose goal in teaching seemed to be to remain as detached as possible from the whole process and concentrate on her real work, which was writing fiction, theater, and criticism, directing plays, and making visual art. I genuinely liked her a lot, and though at first I think she was skeptical, in the end she seemed to like me too. At the first meeting between Madame Parisse, myself, and the two other students she was mentoring, she told us to read everything ever written by the author we were studying. So for two years I was reading Beckett and little else (I actually had to read novels for other classes, too, much of which I just couldn’t finish in time) I mostly just made it through the “greatest hits” of Beckett (I recommend Molloy). As I was writing the 100+ page essay in French on Beckett, I remember thinking, what is all this work for, when it seems like once it’s written, it will only serve to get a grade, and then very likely never be re-read again? And now, that exact thing has happened. That’s fairly sad, as I could have spent that time working on something that would actually make a difference in the world—some music or anything. But, if you want, go ahead and read my Beckett paper. I’ll put it here for you.

Back when I was on the tour, I was listening to a lot of audiobooks while driving, and I found one with an exciting idea: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. That book critiques the general accepted story of the inevitable progressive development of human society, from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists to capitalists. I love critiques that show that the way the world is assumed to be, is not how it has to be. I guess I’ve always been bewildered to see how people walk around thinking everything is normal—it is in fact, extremely weird. Everything that happens is a one in a billion chance—we’re riding a never ending wave of unlikeliness that is constantly happening, and when we reach our foot out, away from the wave, the wave moves where we step. Well, I’m getting very far away from the subject of this book, which is a critique of received ideas of anthropology, which primarily elevate european views at the expense of indigenous ones, when, in fact, the book argues, much of the innovation in european enlightenment thought—scientific truth’s basis in physical proof, the importance of deliberation to arrive at truth—comes from observation of cultures encountered in colonial projects.

I loved that book so I read (these are all audiobooks, by the way—I listen to them with Libby, the library app. If you’ve never heard of it, see if your library has it) Pirate Enlightenment, and then Bullshit Jobs, both also by David Graeber (writing solo this time). This last one is the most impactful book I’ve read in the last few years. It actually made me feel much better about myself, almost like you would expect a self-help book, though it’s actually a very scathing critique of our current economy and its effects on culture and people. I’ll not explain the whole thing, because it’s a popular book and a lot of people know about it, but  this short essay sets out the basic idea that he went on to expand in the book. One of the ideas that Graeber attacks is a sort of default attribution of moral goodness to working. I’ve wondered about this question for a while: why would someone who stays home, and does, say, nothing at all, in the most extreme version of sloth imaginable, be considered morally inferior to someone who works for an oil company spreading disinformation about climate change in order to maintain their company’s dominance ? The first does no harm by not working, the second works towards planetary death.  How about workers at an advertising firm that work to make people feel unattractive if they don’t purchase some beauty product placebo? How about someone running a chain of payday loan offices? They’re all “hard workers” that make life worse for everybody.

Bullshit Jobs outlines the resentment felt towards those who work jobs that we as a society deem to be “rewarding in themselves.” These would include artistic pursuits, anything with clear ethical goodness (teaching, caregiving, charitable work, etc). This resentment results in relatively lower pay (doctors are an exception) than jobs that have no redeeming value (i.e. corporate lawyer, financial sector), which are rewarded with the highest salaries. Outlining and ridiculing all this resentment made me realize I’ve felt ashamed of things, for years, that I had no need to be ashamed of, that I have no need to feel “less than” for never having built much of a career, and also that I regretted having felt that way, which definitely dampened by artistic pursuits over the years. I also often felt resentment—from the outside, but also a deeply internalized resentment—against myself as one trying to make beauty in the world, and I’m sorry to admit that much of the time I buckled under those feelings.

This is all to say, though, that, after reading Bullshit Jobs, I felt a huge weight lifting off me. I feel much more justified in my own “hates” about the way the world works and more resolute in defying that, in my own way, which is imagination-driven. The final chapter of the book suggested, with some reservation, a policy that could attenuate the situation, which is universal basic income, an idea that now sounds pretty appealing to me—but the more important idea I want to communicate is the power of imagination. This quote was brought up probably more than once in the book: “It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” (this seems to be attributed both to Slavoj Zizek and Fredric Jameson), and that highlights a need for imagination and for art in this world. And yet, it is very hard to be paid for art, so people use most of their energy working and have just a little left over for art. That energy often gets taken up with other things—family, alcohol/drugs, sports, social media, health problems… Most artists are those who come from the well-to-do, who of course are much less likely to want to imagine things differently than they are—so we get a lot of boring stories about people in New York who are studying writing, going out to eat and sleeping around, etc. Haha! I’m showing my grouchiness—but how often do I start to read New Yorker or Harper’s fiction and find another story like that—brilliantly written always but that leaves you with a sick feeling that a person from a wealthy background is trying to show how sick the culture is, in a decadent way, as though the aim is just to sicken and die rather than fight for life. That’s kind of at the heart of what I feel when I sing, because I feel something so beautiful and so strong, and it’s life that bursts through that mire, whether the life is explosive or gentle. To sum up, this has just amplified and made real the desperate need for more art-making all across society.

I barely have gotten to the part I wrote earlier that I was hoping to get to—and the post has gotten a bit long. If you’ve read this far, I couldn’t ask for any more, so I’m just going to very briefly list the things I read/watched/listened to while sick this week. It would be ridiculous to claim it’s very original, I just was inspired by one of the things I read, the Steal like an Artist audio trilogy by Austin Kleon, to do it. This book has a lot of short takes on different ideas about making art, and it’s kind of like a free book shelf, you just take what interests you and leave behind the rest. There was plenty I found helpful in there—including the idea of using the internet to be open about what you’re up to, what you’re reading, etc., as a way of being part of a community. That struck me as a great idea, because I’m always curious about what other people are into and especially artists I like, and so I’m going to start this and hopefully be able to connect with people more through it. It would be great to keep up the bonds of friendship that were rekindled on my tour with some people that I rarely get to see, since I live in rural France…

Murakami Manga Stories – I’d never read Murakami before but Yuri’s dad gave her this book, and when I was feeling very feverish and tired, reading a comic book seemed like the way to go. I read mountains of comics when I was a kid, and a few graphic novels like Watchmen, Maus (this was actually assigned reading) and Jimmy Corrigan in college, but comics are a pleasure I often deny myself. I really really enjoyed this and it made me want to read more of this very well-known author that I’d always avoided, I guess because he seemed “too popular” (I can be stupid like that, usually ends up with me missing out on good things). That is definitely the case with Murakami, because I feel like he’s a kindred spirit. I’m reading The Disappearing Elephant, a short story collection, and also listening to, concurrently, his other short story collection First Person Singular, and his nonfiction collection Novelist as a Vocation. I was especially crazy about the stories “The Second Bakery Attack” and “Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova.”

The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk, which tells the history of the colonization of the Americas with emphasis on indigenous peoples. This is another audiobook—I can’t say I’m remembering all the many details by any stretch, but definitely seeing the grand contours of Indian life in America. It’s around the mid-1700s right now, and I’m very eager to hear about the early 1800s when my ancestors, extremely shamefully fought, Creek/Muscogee indians in South Alabama.

“The Pleasure of a Working Life” by Michael Deagler, Harper’s, June 2024. This is a beautiful story that I loved so much I wrote the author fan mail at the end. I recommend it so much, a really strong vision of an everyday, pass-the-time kind of middle class existence (the lead character is a postal worker).

Dune – I had never read Dune, but I woke up about a month ago, also very sick (I think this is the third time I’ve gotten sick this summer), not having been able to sleep for a runny nose, and I woke up at dawn, took Patti the dog for a walk with my brain in the tremblingest lucidity, and decided, fuck it, I’m gonna find out what Dune’s all about. I started it and was slowly walking around, staring at trees in the gentlest light of morning, and that was a beautiful experience. The book ended up surprising me constantly and I loved being in the huge whirling fantasy-world and got really inspired by the tight-rope walk of heroism that Paul Atreides was doing. I also loved all the built in axioms and lore. Now that I think about it, I was also inspired to read Dune by an article in Harper’s called “The Gods of Logic” that mentioned how Dune’s society is based on an ancient (in the timeline of the novel) rejection of artificial intelligence. Also, when I was little, my older brothers were fans of David Lynch’s Dune (there was a poster on the wall by our Apple IIc computer), and I remember seeing it at way too young of an age and it was, of course, fascinating and scary. I need to rewatch that now, because I’m sure there are some deeply-buried psychological images in there.

I watched The Creeping Terror, which was recommended by Lux Interior in an interview cited in article I read about the Cramps and horror. I checked the trailer out and had to watch the movie. It violates the “scariest monster is the one you never see” rule to the extreme – the monster is right there basking in the light of day within the first five minutes. It’s a flabby, formless, enormous thing. Almost every bit of dialogue in the movie is inaudible and explained by a voiceover saying, “Barney said… and Martin reacted with disbelief.” There are very long dance sequences with very little action. Really muted reactions to horrible screaming deaths. This was a very, very cool movie.

Ikiru – amazing vision of 1950s Tokyo. I cried a few oceans of tears. A good one to watch while sick as those “could it be cancer” thoughts start banging around, and the lead character has stomach cancer. (this is the first thing you know about him, so no spoiler here). Many parallels between this movie and Bullshit Jobs—the main character has worked his whole life in a soulless, bureaucratic position, and when he learns he’ll die soon, he tries to change his life and the way his work functions.

Vivre sa vie, this a Godard film, and it actually made me cry as well. I still haven’t seen lots of Godard movies and feel like I don’t understand him, he’s so loved by academic types and, though I am kind of like that, I also have to say, I can hardly stand a lot of academic writing on literature and stuff—I don’t understand it and don’t understand the point of it. Occasionally it seems to cut to the quick, but often it just seems beyond me, with all the jargon and stuff. But whenever I read quotes by Godard, I think Yes, I’m going to love this guy… I think he’s an intellectual who cuts to the quick, who is human, fleshbound, and I think, after seeing this movie, I could kind of see why, but I don’t think I’m quite smart enough to explain why.

That was a bit long so I’ll stop here. I could add other stuff but we’ll save that for another day. Thank you for being here, and leave a comment if you like. I don’t think anyone has done that so far on this web site.

 

I came to Chattanooga a couple hours before the show and practiced some songs at Stringer’s Ridge, where I used to walk around, exploring, sometimes while speaking into a tape recorder. At they time there weren’t surprisingly well-appointed bathrooms there. I was practicing “Carousel” because it’d been requested back at JJ’s Bohemia on the first night of the tour. The chords are hard to predict on that song, but maybe not as hard as something off Bill Bruford’s album Feels Good To Me. I’m listening to that for the first time right now. Go ahead and listen to it with me. Or, on the other hand, why not listen to something completely different? Because the crazy rhythms, odd musical experiments, virtuosic musicianship, and interesting vintage 70s sounds that you could hear on this album might not be strong enough to draw you away from reading. And, though it’s what I’m listening to right now, it will certainly have a different effect on you than it’s having on me, because two people, experiencing separate spatial and temporal circumstances with different ears and brains, different histories and memories, in which different musical structures have been constructed over a lifetime, will, when listening to the same album, hear two distinct albums. Any sensory experience produced by reproducible media, no matter how supposedly identical it is thought to be – will produce itself differently in each listener. Furthermore, one recording listened to by one and the same person will be heard differently in all subsequent iterations: any given person is as subject to evolutionary flows as a stream of water. Recordings, though reproduced uniformly and identically, only exist in a virtual state beyond which their uniformity does not extend until they are heard by a listener. At the moment of reception, it is recreated heterogenously in each unique and irreproducible physical apparatus, which, additionally, infuses and is infused with its spatio-temporal context. So, even if you were to listen to Bill Bruford’s Feels Good To Me, you wouldn’t be listening to the same album that I was listening to while writing this paragraph. Anyway, it’s taken so long this much that the album is finished, it’s 1 in the morning, I’ve got a silent earbud in each of my ears, I’m falling asleep, and it seems wise to start writing about the Chattanooga shows tomorrow.

Now it is tomorrow. On April 26th I parked on Cherry Street between 4th and 5th streets in Chattanooga, near the court. There was a big pile of white trash bags whose excess plastic was being buffeted by the wind.

Alan was running the door at Cherry Street and I said “Hey Alan!” just like I had never left Chattanooga. Inside, Joey, who was running sound, was razzing me right from the start, then we pretty soon had a really deep conversation. He also told me a great story about being defended from a security guard by Iggy Pop at a concert of his. He also regaled me with a story of seeing the Cramps in the early 90s.

It was decided that I would play last, after the two rock bands that were sharing the bill, Hunger Anthem from Athens, Georgia and Loud Humans from Atlanta. These are not bands that I know personally, but they asked me to share the bill not long after I had secured the date and I said, “OK.” It turned out well, though it was not very stylistically cohesive. I hope they were OK with how it went, especially Loud Humans who I only ever saw when they were onstage. They were certainly loud! I was having a good time with Bill (Heavy Comforter) and Caroline while they were playing, drawing some pictures and goofing.

What I remember of my show was that – it was probably the best one I did the whole tour. And I forgot to record it. I felt very loose and comfortable. Rolly Lighthouse from Valdosta, Georgia (Al Scorch discovered her birthplace) and Roy Sessick, who we picked up hitchhiking outside of Monteagle, sang their songs (“Angel Horse” and “Healthy & Great”). Matt Downer witnessed a guy walking out of the bar while flipping the bird at Roy Sessick. I felt pretty proud about that. If anyone was there that night and got it on film, would you please send it to me?

I thought Joey really dialed in the sound well, and I enjoyed the heck out of playing all my new songs and Tendernessee. It was the first time I got to play “Chico” – which is a song about a local musician who often played on the street, especially in front of the Ben & Jerry’s by the Tennessee Aquarium. He also played at my Chattanooga wedding and once at a show I put on at JJ’s Bohemia. Still, nobody knew anything definitive about Chico. I wish I could have been closer to him.

At the end of the night, Caroline and Bill helped me carry some things to my rental car, and I gave them a ride back to their car that was parked a couple blocks away. By this time it was around 2 in the morning. I parked by their car and, in order to show off the rented Toyota Corolla’s sound system, I started playing Rust in Peace by Megadeth, and we kept talking until most of the album was done. By the time we parted ways and I started driving back towards the Downers’, where I was going to spend the night, I realized I had to pee so bad I didn’t think I could make it even that far. I thought of a nearby empty lot where I could stop, but then reckoned that it probably had a building on it by now. But, then I spied a row of bushes on an empty street alongside a parking garage and went there, in the mulch. I was sure thankful for that spot!

Next day I cleaned up the rental car and got it ready to return to its owner, who actually came and picked it up at the Downers’ – I appreciated that. Soon, my mom came by in an Uber and we three – me, Mom, and Matt – went to Sluggo’s where we would have our early show. We were going to eat before playing, and we sat at a table on the back deck, since the weather was beautiful. We were chatting so much that I didn’t think of looking at the menu until the server came. I said I’d go last to give me time to look at the menu, and I decided on a Caesar salad with a side of collard greens. A few minutes later, when the food came out, I realized that I had ordered the exact same thing that Matt and Mom had ordered. Ashley Krey came by and sat and talked with my mom and me for a long while, it was so nice to catch up with him. I love his current style!

We had a hard time deciding whether this show should happen in- or outside. As I wrote, it was a beautiful day, and it seemed wrong to go inside. There were security concerns, now that there are more businesses in the area using the road outside of Sluggo’s, so people had to stay out of the traffic. Luckily, it never get that bad while we were playing.

Before many folks arrived, Matt and I got a chance to play a bit of old time fiddle-guitar duo music like we did in the Old Time Travelers. That was fun. I played Matt’s heavily detuned, nylon string guitar so there was a lot less projection than usual. We played “Old Chattanooga” with the lyrics we’ve made up over the years, and tried a little of “Three Little Babies,” a sad, ballad-type song from the John Jacob Niles songbook that we used to play. We considered playing it during the show but ended up not doing it. It got a bit crazy trying to greet so many friends – this has happened several times now, when I’ve come back to Chattanooga to play since moving away in fall of 2015. It feels just like a family reunion.

Matt started off the show with “Wino” by Cast King (I think this was the 1st song). Since we decided at the last minute to move the show outdoors, we weren’t using any amplification. Matt’s detuned guitar and low-register singing were so quiet that I didn’t notice he’d started until he was already a verse or two in to the song. Then I moved up and just hoped people would notice and listen – otherwise it would be totally inaudible. And they did, as they realized that he was playing. I was most surprised when Matt started playing one of my nearly-forgotten songs, “The Ears” from the Face Suite by Dos Bros. I walked up and sang the high harmony, and it was a strange feeling to try to learn a song on-the-fly, when it was a song that I actually made up. It had just been so long that I couldn’t remember some of the words–the last verse in particular. That was a really special moment – and I love singing harmony!

So, this was the 31st and final show of the tour, and since it was mostly for old friends, I wanted to take a simple, campfire approach and to sing more old songs. I asked for a lot of requests and played several songs I had neglected on the tour, like “Apple in a Tree,” “May,” and a few others. I got to see Liz & Adam’s newborn Avery Ann and Mom held her while I was playing. Rolly and Roy weren’t there but I did sing “Angel Horse” for her. I sang up until the time limit, which was the 9PM start of the Saturday Karaoke night at Sluggo’s. And when they say it starts at 9 o’clock, they really mean it! I was trying to stretch my time by playing one extra tune, because I had just played “New Sadnesses” and wanted to end on a happier note, but the first Karaoke tune came on quite punctually. So, “New Sadnesses” was the last song I played on this tour. With the exception of “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra, which I did soon after on the karaoke stage. Bryan Hensley is the emcee and it was a blast to see him again and catch up. I hadn’t seen him in “many’s the long year.” Then Matt sang “Cracklin’ Rosie” and I tried to keep up with him – but I’m sorry to say I didn’t remember the song well enough!

We hung out till midnight at Karaoke with Emalaya and her friend Zoey. I also got to see Terry and Josh Mayfield. I read all the old flyers decorating the wall of the bar and was so amazed that one of them was a Big Kitty flyer that I drew! I felt so, so deeply honored by that. I was also so heartened to see how big of a crowd of people I didn’t know who were coming to party at Sluggo’s! I thought that was great. I heard all the Cranberries hits, some Oasis songs, Toto’s “Africa,” and a whole lot of stuff I didn’t even recognize. Couldn’t imagine a better scene to end this tour.

Thanks for reading my tour diary. I’m glad I made the choice to write this, but also I had to sacrifice the time I probably would’ve spent writing more song/poetry oriented stuff. But I’ve also had a lot of fun with some of this writing. But, I wrote almost all of it in great haste and with regret at not being able to include but the most salient details. So, I hope in the coming days to be able to find the time to go back and add in more things that I remember. If I do manage to get to it, I will go back through and correct any obvious typos and grammar errors but will leave it intact like a historical document, but will add any interesting stuff about that particular time in a separate section underneath the original blog post.

Thanks for being a part of this beautiful experience.

It’s always been hard to find a show in Nashville despite the fact that I have a lot of friends who play music there. It was looking like I would play a house show at my brother Brad’s house, but he just started a new job and was busy with that. Then my buddy Daniel Binkley (and OG Big Kitty band member) found a spot for it at a bar I’d never heard of called Ethel’s Tabernacle, not too far from Brad’s house. He put a ton of effort into setting up this show, trying to work it out at Dee’s and other spots but nothing worked out until Ethel’s.

I knew Ethel’s Tabernacle was a special place when I saw the weedeater lying across the picnic table beside the out-of-commission 70s-era Lincoln sedan up on lifts. The place seems rather recently designed to look like an old dive bar, not in a Disneylandesque gentrification manner but in the purest spirit of crusty weirdness. It’s decorated with a bunch of street signs that, well, aren’t typically used for decoration, like “Bike Lane” or “Pedestrian crossing” signs. There were a few tools, monkey wrenches and a pressure guage, just sitting on the table closest to the entrance, that stayed right there all night long. There was a dusty, ripped-up umbrella with smiley faces on it hanging on the wall with a sign over it that read to the effect of “The creepiest umbrella in the world, discovered in a junkyard.” And many other details that I’ll refrain from, so you have something to look forward to, when you get a chance to see Ethel’s for yourself.

Some friends showed up who had moved to Nashville from Chattanooga, and we chatted while getting ready for Amy Ayler and Van Burchfield to open the show. They played some really quality old-time music, fiddle and guitar which I haven’t heard much of in a while. Amy also sang a couple of songs really well – I very much appreciate how they jumped onto the show.

As for the Big Kitty portion, Rolly Lighthouse opened things up and blew up a balloon which was quickly sucked up into an air duct. She then attempted to throw confetti all around but it stayed in two hand-formed clumps, which made her laugh. Then yours truly emerged from her ashes and sang the songs that have become almost standard from the 28 previous shows on this tour. At the end, feeling like I was noticing that people might be wanting to go, I said I would finish up the set. But there were a few requests – Chuck Draper requested “Tendernessee” which I hadn’t played yet on the tour but remembered without any hiccups! Then “The Boy Who Smelled Real Good” and then I just offered up “Chico,” because I knew that some people there would probably remember the great Joseph “Chico” Woods. It was a spectacular night, truly, that emerged out of seemingly nothing. And so the tour is coming to a close. I rolled into Chattanooga just a few minutes ago, with a lot of emotion, and typed this up, ready to play the last two shows before going back to France.

It was great to get another chance to play in Knoxville after having lost my voice the first time, about a month before. It always feels great to come back to the Pilot Light, one of the greatest places in the world for me, where I had some of my first concert experiences, back when smoking was allowed inside, and when many of the audience members from this night were probably just being born.

Originally, Weird Ian & the Weird Band was supposed to open this show, but Ian was attending a traveling version of the Price is Right. This is of course, about as solid an excuse as you could ever have, and we waited with anticipation to hear the results. Unfortunately, he didn’t come through with any prizes but I am sure that one of these days he will win “big money.”

So I opened the show! And there was a good crowd, with a lot of familiar and some unfamiliar faces. Rolly Lighthouse came out followed by Roy Sessick, who sang “Healthy & Great,” with new words we wrote earlier that day together. Since they were so fresh I wrote notes on his hand so he could remember the verses. While changing between Rolly’s dress and Roy’s outfit, Roy scrambled and put on a suit jacket without a shirt on underneath. Then, when I replaced him, I put the shirt fully on. Does this make sense?

I felt like I sang great and the sound is always really good at the Pilot Light. Somehow I felt a weird emptiness – not necessarily bad, but I felt a strange feeling. An empty feeling. Perhaps a great feeling. I gave out a lot of prizes – a Reese’s Egg, a York Peppermint Patty, and an orange Tootsie Roll pop. All things I accumulated at various gas stations. I finished this set with “Holiday God.” I also forgot to record my set, but William Tuggy Tugwell (of the Weird Band) did record it! What a pal.

Run 40 played some mighty fine songs that really got the crowd going… and most of whom parted at the end of their set leaving us Weird Ian fanatics with a largely empty room all the better to enjoy the show. I should add more detail but lordy I’m beat! Perhaps I’ll come back later and fill it in.

I stayed with Jason again, for the second time on this tour, and happily had a good bit more time to sit around and chat. What a great time. He made me a delicious breakfast sandwich with an english muffin, egg, ham, mushrooms… maybe other things? It was good! The night before I was hungry after the show and stopped by a gas station where I found a Rap Snax (Master P) Ramen Noodle cup. It was pretty good!

Well, this tour is wrapping up and I feel, honestly, quite tired and a bit anxious about all the things required to finish it well. I’m just trying to recognize my feelings. Hi, feelings! How are you? I see… well, I am experiencing you as a part of my existence, so we have some things in common. I suppose I’ll – “See you in Nashville!”

4/22 – 23

Slept so deeply in my brother’s guest bed it was hard to pull myself out. But the sun coming into the 30th floor window was pretty hot. Surprising then how cool it was when we both went outside and had breakfast at Old John’s Cafe (or something…) which we mixed up with Uncle John’s (Band, a song by the Grateful Dead). It was a treat to have poached eggs, potatoes and sourdough toast for breakfast while catching up with Braxton. I slipped one of the two slices of toast into a pocket of my green denim jacket for later.

The ride to Charlottesville, VA from New York was supposed to take about six hours but the traffic en route was relentless, as was my sleepiness. I seem to get more sleepy when listening to the British accent of the reader of my current audiobook, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which is a fascinating and complex book whose objective is reevaluating common notions of human history, especially prehistory – the agricultural revolution in particular, adding complexity and nuance to them with a lot of empirical observation. So to avoid getting too sleepy I occasionally switch over to some music – Yes, Rush, and Metallica on this day. Renting a recently-produced car with a nice sound system has been eye-opening about how records I love can actually sound! There are so many subtleties to this music I haven’t picked up on by listening through the bluetooth speaker that is my best sound producer at home!

So this drive stretched on and on, until I finally showed up at Dürty Nelly’s in Charlottesville, Virgina where Oil Derek had set up a show. I found a parking spot in a closed chicken restaurant (“We put the cluck in chicken” … or something?), went in the door past the Starship Troopers pinball machine, entered the long wooden hallway with stone fireplace and a painting holding an actual cigarette, saw Derek directly in front of me, and gave him a hug. He had been trying to find my phone number to call me.

The music had already started, Red Knierim was playing. I looked at him and he grinned at me really big – as if to say “it’s really you!” This was one of those moments when I hear someone play on stage and just can’t believe it. “No… this can’t be as good as it is…” until slowly the reality sinks in. “Yes… Red Knierim is the real deal.” He sang in a low baritone reminiscent of Bill Callahan’s but really sang more than he does. His guitar playing is a fingerpicking sturmming style, bluesy with a lot of popping strings. And the lyrics are rhythmic, soulful, down home, wide-eyed, in awe of life… just fuckin’ great. I noticed that a few of the audience members seemed to have big, wide grins like his and, sure enough, his family was there.

Derek asked me if I wanted to jump up next but I was still a bit unsettled from the ride so I asked him if he would. He played through a beautiful Epiphone Casino and sang in his clear higher baritone (I don’t really know how to use these terms) that is so beautiful. He has a beautiful singing voice. And his lyrics deal so much with the natural world and make you feel like you’re in the most mystical solitude overlooking vast expanses. And beautiful fingerpicked guitar. It was such a pleasure to hear him play again.

It turns out that Derek and Red had often hung out at this bar and then at least sometimes gone home and listened to my records. I couldn’t believe it… But I felt pretty nervous playing for this crowd, which was quite different than the one I’d played for at the PIT in New York. But as it turns out, I really play about the same thing and it works, to some degree, everywhere. But I probably wouldn’t venture too far into dressing up in drag and singing harsh unaccompanied stuff like “Holy Acid USA” that, honestly, most people seem to hate, which I write with a smile on my face, loving that fact. Anyway, people mostly seemed to love what I played, which I was grateful for, and I had some interesting meetings afterwards. One was with Tara, who lived in France for one year when she was 9 and now lives with her 93-year-old mother, taking care of her. Her mother is an artist, she says, and she really loves her. She said her French was rusty but wanted to speak and she spoke really well, in the way that you can tell she’s lived with it. She played me a song she wrote on Bill’s guitar called “I love the mailman” which also included a French verse “J’aime le facteur”. She also brought sunflowers to each of us three who sang that night. There was also Johnny, who was also interested in France, because his ancestors were French colonists of New France, which is now Quebec. He also was into unaccompanied singing, and he sang me part of a mining disaster ballad that he said he sang to his daughter when she was a baby. As I remember it, it was the disaster of “Miningtown,” but that seems too close to the word “mining” – maybe someone (Johnny?) can help me remember the actual name of the place where “72 (?) miners uselessly died” due to “unsafe conditions” in the ______ mine.

Around midnight everyone was gone except me, Red, his partner (I need help remembering her name), Coda who was in charge of the show and whose amp (“The Accomplice”) we borrowed, Derek, and two dogs, Elko (Derek’s: “He’s obsessed with me”) and _____ (Red + partner’s). It turns out Red & his partner are really into Cast King and the Saw Mill Man album and we sang some of the songs together. Amazing! It makes sense given how his music sounds.

But I had to hit the road and so I did, because I needed to get to Bristol to play on Kris Truelsen’s radio show. I had to be there by 9:30 AM and it was a 4-hour drive away, so my plan was to drive as long as I could and take naps at rest stops along the way, which I did. This was kind of a magical experience though it got quite cold–in the mid-30s–and I used the towel I borrowed from the Downers as a blanket, and put my jacket over my face to block out the lights. I slept about an hour and got back on the road, driving under the nearly-full moon and listening to one of my all-time favorite albums, Relayer by Yes. This felt just great. Then I got sleepy again and had to pull over at another rest stop to sleep another stretch. When I woke up this time the sun was all the way up. I got back on the road and listened to Yes’s Tormato – also so, so good.

I arrived at the Birthplace of Country Music museum in Bristol, where the radio show is broadcast from, early enough to take another nap in the car, and drink a cup of cold-brew coffee that I had with me. The caffeine, the lack of sleep, and the idea of playing live on the radio made me kind of jittery, but I think it turned out well. It was really fun to see Kris, who I barely know but who I admire a lot, and who was so easy to chat with that the time flew by and I was out of there almost immediately. Now I’m catching up on rest in a motel and getting ready for the Knoxville show tomorrow. I’ll be there tomorrow, with good ol’ Weird Ian.

I haven’t had enough downtime between these last five shows to write an entry after each one, so I combined them into one.

The Kansas City show was very different from the one in Laramie, but just as beautiful – this was a perfectly curated show, though it was curated by providence in a way. Jesse Smith, who I played with in Asheville (and have played several shows with before) just happened to be coming through town, and I got to meet Warren Burns, whose music I’d been haunted by since my friend Greg Harvester connected me with him to set up this show. Interestingly, Warren recorded his album in France! I listened on Bandcamp (link) and was blown away at first by how beautifully clear his voice is. Then as I listened to the lyrics I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into its mystical, smoky web… Both Warren and Jesse write songs with roots in the American folk/country tradition but with a personal, idiosyncratic take on it. And they both do that with disarming beauty. I get a cinematic feeling from their music, maybe a bit of a Cohen brothers feeling. And my music fits into all that pretty well – so though this show was not “curated” at all, it felt like it had been. Three original songwriters working in a long tradition.

Warren played first, backed by Marco on Pedal steel and Brad on bass. I would have felt lucky to be an audience member seeing those two play… and I was, except I had to play after them, so I wasn’t in prime listening mode. I can’t help calculating somewhat what I’m going to play because it’s different every time… this time I decided to forego some of the theatrical elements because the night had been framed as a singer-songwriter night, folks were primed for it, and I thought it would be seamless to continue with that trajectory. At first I thought it was chickening out, but then I realized that it would be even more of a challenge to go against the grain of what I’d been doing the last few days and change it up – even if that means sitting down and playing songs, which seems more chill than putting on a wig and going crazy (to an extent). But what’s easiest, of course, is repeating habits.

After the show, Jessie asked me to take a picture of her in a special room in the back that was wallpapered with stuffed animals. All four walls and the ceiling were covered in stuffed animals, perhaps taken from thrift stores, and dirty as you can imagine. It was a fascinating place of course that made you want to go in. And then you kinda want to leave! But it was great for photos. There was also a 60s- or 70s-era machine that looked like a Star Wars droid with a wide strap that you put on your hips, and when you turn on the machine it vibrates which supposedly induces weight loss.

At the end of the night I followed Warren’s van back to his house which is an amazing place he fixed up from an old house fallen into disrepair. I was so exhausted when I got there I really felt like I was in a dream. The party was still going on, but Warren was so kind and showed me a quiet room where I could just go to sleep.

I found out that night that my ride to Chicago was going to take me at least 8 hours, instead of the 4 or so that I was expecting… and so I would have to leave as early as I could in the morning. Of course I woke up later than I had expected but I had gotten enough sleep that I wasn’t fighting sleep at least for the first four hours of the drive…. I made it into Chicago as the show was already going on, so I missed the first group, the Montvales, but caught the next one, the HeartShades featuring Reverend Ferdinand who are a funky disco band and the Reverend is a fantastic singer who also offered some inspirational spoken moments including tributes to Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and others. I was so surprised when he talked to me after the show and praised my performance. I felt several rungs down from a full dance band with a such a powerful singer.

It was my old friend Al Scorch’s birthday that night and I had bought him a present of some Arnold Palmer fruit snacks. I delivered them on stage saying “Everyone who knows Al knows he loves … Arnold Palmer, the golfer” which is of course, not true. I don’t believe he harbors any particular passion for that man. After the show we went out to celebrate Al’s birthday with a friend I met for the first time, Dave, and someone we all met for the first time, whose name I never actually learned. We went to a bar near Al’s house at around 2:30 AM. Everyone ordered a beer and the bartender looked at me – I didn’t know what to order, and really didn’t want anything at all, but I asked for a cup of tea. She responded, “You fuckin’ with me??” and went on a little tirade that i was trying desperately to understand. Was she really angry with me for ordering tea? I think she actually was. When I looked around the place a bit more I could see there wasn’t really anything around except bottles of liquor and beer taps. I said, “a coke?” and she poured me one. She couldn’t get over the tea, though, and kept coming back to me to ask me more questions. She actually ended up finding a tea bag and making me a cup of Lipton’s black tea in a beer glass. She hung the tea bag from a black straw balanced over the middle of the glass. She attributed the presence of tea in the bar to an old Polish woman – though I never caught what the relationship between her and the bar was. She also charged nothing for the tea. I wasn’t offended, I just took it in as a part of what I think is a kind of Chicago cultural characteristic. What an amazing city that is – it’s so huge, it’s its own world, with worlds within that world. Al is a scholar of it, he had all kinds of information about his neighborhood and his apartment has a shelf full of books on Chicago history.

Al told me the life story of Jacques Pépin while cooking chicken with mushrooms and onions in the wee hours of the morning. Around 5 I went to sleep on his couch under a couple of heavy duty Hudson Bay blankets.

The next day I woke up around noon, having gone to bed so late. Al left earlier than I did for Bloomington, where we would play the next day, and I arrived after he had already finished his set. My dear friends Emmy and Cole were there, and seemed beaming with happiness. We moved into the performance space, with its square column in the middle of the floor.k The Montvales were playing when I came in – Sally and Molly sing gorgeous harmony over clawhammer banjo and guitar. It turns out Molly went to the same high school I did… and of course that’s a big place name around Maryville. Kay Krull and David _____ played next, I loved the soaring Roy Orbison-feeling vocals.

I was up next, and I went a different route than I had before, based on reading the crowd, who were sitting quietly far away. In the middle of the room there were no chairs, and I took one off the stage and put it directly in front of the stage, just for laughs. By the time I started playing it had been moved away. I started with an a cappela song and changed clothes Mr Rogers-style while singing, taking off my ball cap and green jacket and putting on an old-fashioned country woman’s tunic and a blond wig. I had made a list of songs just a minute before but somehow lost them, so I just played what came to mind. I was really feeling good and being very silly.

It was raining when we went back outside. Emmy and Cole rode back to their place with me \r, both sitting shotgun because the back seat is occupied by two guitars. They showed me their house, which is about as cozy as is humanly achievable. I slept very deeply there in the basement beside Cole’s drums that are so familiar to me.

In the morning Al came by Cole’s and we went for a very pleasant walk with Bruno the dog around two nearby cemeteries. Al and I posed at Hoagy Carmichael’s grave. It was so fun to see Al and Cole that it was hard to leave. As we were leaving we took a couple pictures and I was rather surprised at how much I looked like Mac DeMarco (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) and decided to make a change in style for the show that night.

I made it to Columbus, Ohio around 7:30 and drove past a huge sports stadium. Soon I learned that this is where Ohio State is located. One person would even compare me to Ohio State University after my set, which seems like extremely high praise around here. Back to the drive, I found the venue, the Rambling House, but parking was very limited around there. I had to park a few streets away. When I entered the venue with two guitars, one the instrument I borrowed from William and the other a guitar I’ve been transporting for my brother, I was surprised to find the place already packed with senior folks drinking beer and listening to a black-suited and white-hatted band covering Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work.” I hadn’t had any idea about this show going on just before ours. Naturally this one had to be over before the one I was playing at could start – and this was a pretty bangin’ party, so it took some time to wrap up.

I would be the opener for our show, which would be continued, respectively, by Corey Landis and the Finer Things, Sour Bridges, and Luke Bollheimer. When our show started to gather steam, a man with a pointy goatee introduced himself to me as Pierre. He would be working the door and he asked me if I needed anything. He spoke in a rather brash, accented way – as like a drill sergeant, maybe, but the content of what he said was all very friendly and generous. I put my friend Grady on the list and he introduced me to Caileigh who was taking care of sound.
Grady showed up soon and we had a good time catching up. He manned my merch setup as I got onstage and played. This would have to be a short set and I was happy to have that constraint – I just played songs as well as I could. The atmosphere was much more of a loud, raucous bar than the very quiet shows I had been playing, and I appreciated how loud it was, because I felt I could really strum the guitar like I normally would if I was playing by myself… And as I played the crowd paid more and more attention, talked less and less.

There was a popcorn machine at the bar of this venue and I was pretty tempted by the glow and smell of the freshly popped “giver of life” as Grady called it. I also noticed they made their own Ginger Beer so I ordered those things from Pierre who was working at the bar. I asked him if he spoke French – just going by his name – and he did, with a beautiful American accent (I do too, of course, but not nearly as strong as Pierre’s). His father is French and he’s spent some time there. That was a great surprise.

The rest of this show was great – all the other bands fit more or less into a roots music genre.

Grady and I made it back to his place around 2 AM, knowing we’d be waking up in 4.5 hours because his son Gus had a soccer game to get to in the morning. I had only seen Gus once, on my last long tour in 2017 or so, when he was a newborn. Now he’s a playful little kid with a very cute nearly 2-year-old sister Oona. He had her climbing all over him and cracking up, before he started playing some Castlevania-type video games (something from my generation, that I understand!). Grady made some biscuits and eggs in the kitchen. I was pretty mpressed that he cooked so much given how busy the guy is, while Courtney and I caught up and called Yuri on a video chat.

They were on the way to the soccer game in a flash and I was sitting in my car in front of their house typing Philadelphia into Google maps. But Grady had told me there was a good thrift store nearby and I was looking for a different hat, since I wanted to change up my style. And I went to this great thriftstore and found a pretty much perfect hat, a wide-brimmed black felt hat in not horrible condition, just a few cat hairs here and there. I bought this and got on the way to Philadelphia, a drive which took me 10 hours or so, because I had to stop and nap a bit.

I’ve spent perhaps two hours in Philadelphia in my life and was really excited to see what it was like. I’m still here and haven’t been disappointed. It’s as gritty and grimy as one could hope for, a wonderland of cracked sidewalks and broken chainlink fences.

The show here was really great – so enjoyable. It was really well-attended, a DIY venue called God’s Auto Body Shop. When I got there, though, I could see no evidence of any show going on – though I knew it had to have started by then. Fortunately some other folks came around looking for the place and trying to get in – and we figured out that the entrance was in the back of the building, around a construction site.

I would play last on this bill, after Soph, who played some really nice countrified slow-tempo folk music, then Astrals who did a cool countrym 60s pop and surf kind of music, then Nobody Jones who played a really different but also great country style. When I played, I didn’t know what to do exactly, I guess I felt very tired. But I also was very inspired because I had just met someone who told me an incredible story. They had found my music on a Big Thief playlist this week and got really into it, listening to all my albums, and they had mentioned it to someone at the show, not knowing that I was there! Then they found out that I happened to be playing the show they were already at! Holy shit! Anyway, I played a few songs in my sorta-slick western getup, and folks seemed into it. Then, about four songs in, I pretended to receive a call from my mom saying I had to let my cousin Rolly Lighthouse sing a song. I went backstage and changed clothes as quick as I could, then came back onstage and sang my song “What is the truth?” – and at the end of the song I got cut off. Someone came up and said I had to stop playing, because they had a curfew. I was totally shocked. Nobody told me I was going to have to stop so soon,.. so I thought I must have done something wrong, by singing this rather abrasive song in drag. I was scared to go talk to people, but as it turns out, it was really just the curfew and at least some people seemed to have liked the few songs I played. I do wish I’d have known beforehand how short I was supposed to play, but I suppose it was just the loose organization of the DIY space.
I’m finally caught up. I’ve been so busy the last few days I’ve barely had a chance to write. I wish the quality were better and that I had more time to give to these descriptions.

I rolled in into Laramie exhausted from the drive. It was a chilly night, and this town, where I’d never been before, has wide boulevards, western wear shops, saloon, and some nice old western architecture.Alex, who is with the local DIY outfit the Green House Collective had sent me a message saying he was at the venue and the door was open. But when I got there the door was locked, and I sent him a message saying as much. He emerged out of another door right beside the one I’d been trying to open… ah! that door…

The real door to the “Lair” opens onto a descending staircase lined with flyers from previous shows. A band called “The Pentagram String Band” caught my eye. The show space was nice and roomy, with a tiled mirrored wall, a large stage, even a nice creepy doll standing up in a dark corner (see pictures). As I explored the venue I discovered more and more space, including a big back room with couches and a futon.

I brought in my things and set them aside when a man in a ski mask came up and introduced himself. “Oh, I recognize you!” I joked, but he took me seriously and said he remembered me too… haha, oh no, I was only joking… This was Warren K, who would be opening up the show. Soon Corned Beef came in – William and ______ (I remember William’s name because he won the day’s Reese’s egg mentalism competition.) who would be DJing as the third and final act of the night. We were talking a bit and one audience member, Ella, came in. Alex said he thought he would get the show started at 8:45. I checked my phone, and it was 8:44. Wow, this would be the smallest audience yet – one!

Warren K went ahead and turned his beats on. His computer was sitting on a card table, each of whose legs was duct taped to a cinderblock to give it extra height. He rapped in a raspy, menacing voice, and Alex, Corned Beef, and Ella were dancing a little bit. I danced a little bit too to give what little energy I had. But I realized that it felt pretty good dancing after doing so much driving lately. I let my dancing brain take over, which does not know any actual steps but follows impulses that come from Who knows where… and Warren K seemed amused by whatever I was doing!

I decided that when I went onstage I would not give any less energy to the performance even though there was only one person in the audience. In fact, I would take it up a notch. I have an I Ching app on my phone and it landed on “Innocence” which advises to show joy and openness. OK, I felt like I could do that. And though I felt “heavy tired” when I pulled into town, I felt like I had plenty of energy now. Rolly Lighthouse opened the show in a more rapid-fire style than usual, with plenty of “Woo!”, high kicking, hands raised to sky, and spinning around. Then Big Kitty came out and sang his songs – and during this time the audience tripled in size, to arrive at the number of 3 – which is a pretty dramatic change. Tom, who also works with the Green House Collective, also showed up. I must say, that despite the small crowd, the atmosphere and the vibe was excellent. Everybody there was in a good, easygoing mood and wanting to have fun. They all listened to every word I was singing and they seemed to really dig it. I finished with a karaoke version of “Holiday God” and a flashy, clumsy dance like I used to do in Buck Dancing competitions (2nd place 2011 Calhoun, Georgia International String Band Convention).

And last of all came Corned Beef who did a joint DJ set, mixing up a bunch of dance music. Everybody danced, and I danced wilder than before, really enjoying the opportunity to shake the stiffness out of my bones.

At the end of the night, Tom invited me to stay on the futon in the back of the venue, but I decided to keep driving a bit, since Kansas City, the next stop on the tour, was a 10-hour drive away. So I drove off into the Wyoming night, which was actually getting colder and snowing, listening to Philip K. Dick’s short story “Minority Report” until I stopped at a rest stop in Ogallala, Nebraska to sleep for a few hours. I was back on the road by 7 am. Feeling surprisingly fresh (at least at first), I listened to the end of Geddy Lee’s autobiography, My Effin’ Life, which I suppose would make any Rush fan misty-eyed. As I drove into Kansas City for the first time, I talked to Naoko and Yuri who were just going to bed. I told Naoko about the huge meteorological and geographic changes I’d gone through in just a few short hours – snow in Wyoming, rainstorms in Nebraska, high winds in Iowa, and finally puffy clouds and blue skies in Missouri. She had just watched Woody Woodpecker and did a pretty good impression of his laugh.