Tuesday October 19th, 1999 @ 8:38 PM
Life on the road is dangerous. Blinddog Smokin’ has sent a half million miles of center stripes to disappearance in our rear view mirror. Living in the Rockies puts us on icy highways, in blinding blizzards, and on snow-covered, hairpin, mountain byways. We drive all night after a gig, sometimes as much as 1200 miles or more to make it home without having to pay for a motel and to have a few more precious hours with loved ones.
In six years, the four of us have had many close calls, and only one accident where a young, pregnant, girl ran a red light and collided with us in an intersection. None of us has ever had so much as a scratch–not until Sunday night.
Andy “Maddog” Miller, our bassist, was heading to Denver late at night to visit his girlfriend who lives there. From what we know at this point, a U-haul truck came up fast behind his little Datsun pickup and passed, then swerved in and cut him off sending him into the ditch. Apparently, he flew from the truck landing hard, breaking his pelvis, parts of his back, and skull.
He lay in the ditch unconscious for a long time. He became semi-conscious a time or two and tried to drag himself to the road, which was dark and deserted at that hour. It was extremely cold. He passed out a final time and when they found him, he had a pillow under his head. It seems that someone must have stopped, attempted to help him, then went to call the police and ambulance.
I was called the following morning by Andy’s sister, Taffy, and told the bad news. You can’t ride half a million miles with someone, with an adventure at every stop and much storytelling in-between, and not get to know someone in a profound way. My heart was beating hard as she filled in the details.
As I write, Andy is in the intensive care unit at the hospital in Longmont, Colorado. They will not let us visit him. They are using morphine to kill the pain and we are waiting for a full report on his condition, especially concerning any internal damage or hemorrhaging. He has been able to speak and he can move his fingers and toes.
Andy was in great shape and it probably saved his life. He is an avid hunter and fisherman and climbs around in the mountains on his days off. This past year he has been training hard with weights and had just gleefully announced that he had set his all-time bench press record.
As you might imagine, we are all deeply saddened by this news and pray that he won’t have permanent damage or disability. We must continue our tours without him, but it won’t be the same, and we will miss his talent, sense of humor, and diligent hard work. He never shirked his responsibilities, was punctual and reliable, and deeply believed in our goals and aspirations.
Andy is an intelligent and tough minded individual who will fight hard for a full recovery, of that I can assure you. He was a scholar in molecular biology in college, and is well read, and conversant in many subjects. Always a quick study, he sacrificed his own band six years ago to join us as a bass player. He had been a lead guitarist, lead vocalist, and frontman before that. In his supportive and less glorious role with Blinddog Smokin’, he has never bitched or whined about anything. He is a guerilla fighter, and a well-seasoned one at that.
Carlzharptalk is read now by people all around the globe and many have never seen Blinddog Smokin’ or met Andy Miller. They only know of us through the adventures in the harptalk. But it doesn’t matter as a road musician makes his music for everybody who appreciates it and lives a brutally hard life of sacrifice to make that happen.
Right now Andy, who has played his heart out to masses of people, is all alone (but for his closest relatives), in much pain, confused, and frightened by his prospects. In one way or another, he has touched most of your lives if even just a little, so if you’d like to return that touch, I will print any e-mail you’d like to send him (even just a short “get well”), and take it to him just as soon as they let us visit him. It may not seem like much, but we all know how important it is to feel like somebody cares when trying to recover from trauma that seems for the moment anyway, bigger than you are.
I will send an update just as soon as we have substantiated word, and will continue with a regular Carlzharptalk, probably next week.
Posted by Carl
Monday September 27th, 1999 @ 8:36 PM
It was the best of gigs, it was the worst of gigs. The great stage glowed
blue and red in the humid blackness of a summer night. Several thousand eyes stared from the dark revealing the reflected floodlights, their desultory blinking giving the scene a firefly effect.
Preparing to mount the steps was a guitar stud I’ll name Big Bad Blues Bully. Standing legs apart in his worn-at-the-heel snakeskin boots, he tucked in his flowing shirt and put on his game face while venting a stream of macho-babble at his young, disinterested girlfriend.
BBBB was regionally famous. It was no pilgrim who strutted into the spotlight and stung the masses with a piercing note from a Hendrix cover tune. This was my kind of show: big amps, mercurial licks, power chords, throbbing rhythm and a player with balls. Testosteronic, high torque, bombast. Anticipatory shivers swept my skin leaving goose bumps in their wake. The base guitar slammed through my ribcage with reverberation. I dug the power.
When the husky voice honed by years of drugs, booze, and
hard nights filled the summer air, the ladies showed the hint of a collective writhe, let their eyes cross just a little under half lids, blew an
imperceptible moan through pursed lips, and role-played medieval wench in their minds eye. This guy had the goods. I envied him.
Guitar licks blistered our ears for the next hour. Hot, fast, and nasty. But
they were licks we’d heard before: Hendrix licks, Stevie Ray licks, Buddy Guy licks–trite and shopworn. Licks that sounded alike. Licks all at the same volume. Licks we loved from their creators, but that didn’t ring true from the imitator. BBBB or Fourbee, said little if anything to the audience, preferring to let his music speak for him, only it was delivering a boring sermon.
The human mind is entertained by surprises. Predictability creates boredom no
matter how high the energy, the intensity, or the technical skill. We have a
remarkable ability to adapt to any environment once it becomes predictable,
but in the delight of novelty, there is no end. Great entertainers continue
to surprise you with their talent and personality, even if the surprises are
subtle. Fourbee ran out of surprises before he finished his first song.
The two sidemen drooped forlornly behind their wannabe guitar hero going
through the motions, probably wondering what their cut of the festival check
was going to be. I have always thought that the further removed from death an
entertainer is, the more fascinating he becomes. These guys looked like God’s
practice attempts at resurrection, almost alive but definitely cadaverous.
People begin to make bathroom treks. They stood in line at the barbecue tents, the chatter level rose to challenge the music level. When human beings get bored they begin to itch for some reason. I saw much scratching and digging going on. They had come to be fed musically and they were hungry and restless. Had you asked any of them if Fourbee was a good player, they’d have agreed that indeed he was. They would blame their inattention on themselves, pointing out that it was a hot night, or their wife had been galvanized with a PMS attack, or their baby messed his pants and they forgot the diaper bag.
When Fourbee and the Cadavers mercifully put an end to the long string of Hendrix/Stevie covers, the former came up with this great original
salutation: “We love you people. With all our hearts!” That exclamation is always enough to make me want to throw up. What the hell are they talking about? Love is a pretty serious word in my book. This guy loves his guitar and his snakeskin boots, but he couldn’t care less about a mass of faces of whom he really knows very few. There were people in that audience who would disgust a syphilitic mendicant. He didn’t love them and most of all he didn’t love himself.
When he left the stage waving a triumphant hand in the air, he began to curse the people to whom he had just professed his wholehearted love. He cursed the festival promoters and he cursed people I didn’t know. He issued as vile and effusive a barrage of gutter profanity as I have ever heard, and I was three years in the United States Marine Corps. He condemned everything and everyone, mixing religious and sexual profanity with a tone so venomous it would shame any self-respecting viper. Fourbee’s girlfriend nodded in agreement and suggested they leave this ungrateful conglomeration of shit-eating mankind. And he did, forthwith, and in a violent huff.
This technically talented man had obviously put countless years of practice into his instrument, but had neglected his soul. His self-loathing was destroying his music and his happiness. A great body of notes thrown out to our ears without the context of a profound and textured soul, is nothing more than noise in the night. I pitied the man.
I pitied the slender girl singing in the coffeehouse two weeks later. She had no snakeskin boots, just stood barefoot on the floor strumming a twelve string guitar singing through an anemic P.A. to twelve people. Blinddog Smokin’ was the headline attraction at the large nightclub downstairs. We had a couple of hours to burn and nowhere to go, so Jason and I made our entrance into the cozy room that smelled of coffee and fresh baked pastries.
I love making entrances. I used to study John Wayne coming through the saloon doors, then stopping to survey his audience. The door of the coffeehouse faced the audience slightly to one side. I sauntered in with a combined J.W. body posture and facial expression that said: “Ain’t I bad?”
No one looked.
I hate that when it happens. Why would these twelve people be more interested in who I sized up as a granola eating-hairy armpit sporting-super maudlin-save the whales-hemp is heaven-gunnysack dress wearing-body odor is beautiful-all mankind is a sisterhood-please don’t judge me while I judge you-self righteous-Joan Baez is God-let’s spraypaint fur coats-pansexual-acid tripping-cappuccino is health food-my mother is a lesbian-let’s all hold hands and save the world–dorky, dirty, dingy, daffy, dipshit like this pathetic and pusillanimous, patron of puerility? Stereotypical folksingers tend to rile me a bit.
I mentioned to Jason that we could still catch the two-dollar movie one block down the street and even though we’d already seen it twice, it would be more to my liking than this slip of a girl and her I-brush-with-a-garlicroot grin. We almost left, then he said, “She’s doing some cool stuff on her guitar, let’s stay a minute?”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he had pulled down his pants and mooned the twelve people. Jason judges guitar playing the way a school marm with a bun judges fourth grade penmanship. So for the first time I really focused on this woman. She was actually a cute little thing, and sanitary. I even begin to suspect that she shaved her armpits and brushed with normal toothpaste. Oh, it was the dreaded folk music alright, but something was shining through.
Jason and I stood cavalierly at the counter remaining aloof. I still pitied this lilting Lilliputian with her wee audience, but I decided to stay and find out what was drawing us to her. A song went by, then two, then more: original songs; philosophical songs–some humorous, some sad, some enlightening, but passionate every one. She was a sprite of sorts–a person who glows, whose aura can be seen even by the pragmatists among us. I will call her the Songbird. With a mutual glance, Jason and I knew to go sit with the twelve and become an official part of her audience.
I sat upright, chin high, and somber. I still had a reputation to uphold. I was too full of machismo to yield my admiration to a nymph folksinger. Jason though, was studying this woman, chin in hands. He openly admired her clever guitar tactics and percussion tricks. I followed his lead, and looking casually over my shoulders in the event somebody cool was watching, I let my body descend into the famous sculpted thinker’s posture.
This lady was a storyteller–creative, ardent, and picturesque. I gave her the supreme salute: I paid attention. I had stayed at first because as the Greeks were fond of saying: she was good to look upon. Then I noticed her vocal style and how she uniquely handled each word, each syllable, crafting her trade with meticulous detail. Along with this was her ability to make her guitar an unobtrusive and integral part of her persona and her stories. One tended not to notice the guitar work, only accept it as part of the whole.
My growing admiration of this effervescent raconteur moved to a higher echelon as I found her to be wise and sophisticated. Her words forced me to examine life, and myself. I sensed her mind behind the music and it was convincing and resolute. I begin to like her. I found myself impaled. I yielded my defenses and let her move me. Her songs had the conviction and passion of someone that has felt and felt deeply, and her experiences were not borrowed.
The greatest connection a poet can have with his audience is on a spiritual plane. Courtship from the bard is a pavane that slowly brings two minds into harmony and the busy, chaotic, nonsense of a whirring individual brain is courted into the beautiful waltz of a shared epiphany. The thoughts are isolated and frozen for examination and the souls of both giver and receiver are lifted and nurtured. This then is performance with purpose. One walks away gratified and delighted.
A vignette portrayed by this songbird will illustrate the concept: She sat in a restaurant in Boston one afternoon and stared through a great picture window at the tranquil winterscape covering a frozen lake across the way. Steam from her coffee shimmered the scene as she beheld the utter peace and unspoken loveliness framed by the window. Slowly her eyes allowed a reflection on the glass to limn into her consciousness. The image was that of her own face, superimposed upon the scene of fantastic tranquility beyond. It was a disturbed visage that looked back at her in counterpoint to the pacific loveliness that served as its backdrop.
Startled, she realized of a sudden that she was out of sync with nature. Her face did not fit in. The worries and troubles of self-centered materialism and a frenetic society had twisted her spirit and the evidence was in the window.
The Songbird decided right then to change some of her values and ways. As I listened to the story told so well, I had to wonder what my own face would look like against such a window. I felt the torque on my own soul and my heart felt heavy with stress, angst, anxiety, and rage. These qualities should not be in my life. But unless they are exposed, I carry them as my hidden and heavy cross.
The little audience had grown to twenty-five, but I hadn’t seen them come in. I rose to leave as our own gig was to begin shortly. I looked at the Songbird and shook my head in revelation and admiration. I thought of the Big Bad Blues Bully and realized how this diminutive dryad had just kicked his ass and stole his wallet. How very much he could learn from her. How very much had I. As a performer she was bigger than he was in every way except shoe size. She had kept me guessing, delighted me, surprised me, taught me, inspired me, and entertained me profoundly. I caught her eye as I left and nodded my respect. I didn’t really care about my image much at that moment. I was busy digesting food for thought. As I went to perform for my own fans, many times the number of hers, I envied her.
The Big Bad Blues Bully will undoubtedly go on bludgeoning his audiences with mammoth sound, and overwhelm them with volatile licks and a million notes. His angry soul will dictate a self-fulfilling prophecy that makes him feel his glory is being robbed by we foolish and ignorant people who can’t appreciate his great technical skill. We pedestrian slugs who just get in his way. We are ingrates who he unfortunately needs to measure his success. But we won’t give it to him because deep inside we know he is empty and self-loathing.
Perhaps he should sit in a restaurant and look out a great window at a peaceful scene and see his own angry face in polarity– angrier still if he knew that he had his butt kicked by a one-hundred pound girl with a P.A. system smaller than a breadbox. We blues men are supposed to be the left ventricle of pathos. We are supposed to herald it like stentorian trumpeters standing on the great cliffs–and the echo should ring pure and true. Ironically, sometimes we discover the brass for our testicles in a foundry small and feminine.
Posted by Carl
Friday August 20th, 1999 @ 8:35 PM
When it came time to get paid, the promoter told us to come to a restaurant across the street in the morning and he would pay us. He told us how much money they had lost on this convention due to police harassment. We felt a tremble of nausea sweep through us. We asked what time and he said he’d be there at eight, but we could come by any time in the morning. It was three o’clock. My face was sunburned like a freshly spanked behind and I was so tired I felt like letting out a baby’s wahhhhhhhhhhhh! The promoter told us he had reserved the Holiday Express. We drove around until we found it. The night manager told us he’d never heard of any such reservations or us. Now we knew we were getting stiffed.
The convention had filled all the motels. We searched for a room. My head looked like a boppin’ dog on the dash of a redneck teenager’s channeled Chevy. I dreamed that I fell asleep driving then woke up to find out it was true. Finally we found a vacant room. I fell asleep on top of my covers and it seemed like seconds later that the alarm went off at seven-thirty. We intended to be standing at that promoter’s door before everybody else came for his money or he scooped up what he had and ran.
The restaurant was closed. No one was anywhere around. We peeked in the windows and paced the sidewalks. We conjured up evil deeds to exact our revenge. We stood there for an hour, then went up the street to eat breakfast at the diner mentioned in the last Harptalk’s Yondering story.
When we came back, there he was. Should we be diplomatic and coax it out of him, or should we just get mad and beat it out of him? It is easy to picture yourself beating a guy into submission, but when you step out to do it, you start thinking about not being in your hometown and how lots of guys pack a weapon. Your body parts start talking to you. The stomach says “don’t let him gut shoot you, it will take you hours to die.” The groin says, “Remember, you haven’t worn a cup supporter since Little League baseball.” The eyes warn you of pencils, and the teeth remind you how much you like to eat food.
We tried diplomacy. He just shrugged and went about his business like we were vacationing under some palm trees with a tray of Mint Juleps and a copy of Leisure World. The anger rekindled and I started talking back to my body parts, “Listen up you cravenly conglomeration of wiseguys, we’re goin’ in, all of ya’, gird up for battle.”
Just then, the promoter very calmly said, “Well, fellas, let’s go over to the whore house and get paid.”
We shuffled off behind him down the infamous *”Venus Alley” the avenue of yesteryear’s soiled doves. Big question marks resided over our heads as life was taking a puzzling turn. We entered the front door of a building constructed in 1890 for the express purpose of being a whorehouse. It wasn’t closed until 1982 making it the longest running whorehouse in America. The Dumas Brothel.
We were ushered to a second floor suite where we were greeted by Norma Jean, a real life madam who looks the part. She sat at a computer surrounded by a collection of pornographic dolls that she made for both a business and a hobby. Graphic pornographic!
“How much do I owe you fellas”, she asked smiling?
“Eight hundred dollars,” we said. Our demand sounding more like a suggestion in her charismatic presence.
Now we have been conned and lied to and stiffed by important businessmen in our career, many times. We’ve learned how to spot it coming. We’ve learned how to stay assertive and to ferret out whatever we can salvage. We’ve learned how to collect. But now we faced a pro, someone who had to collect herself over the years, from the tough, the talented, and the troubled. A woman who could cause more grief among men than all their wives put together.
But that’s the twist to the story. She viewed us as the man with no legs had, who knew what it was like to be vulnerable and outcast. She was probably the one person above all who would make sure we got money we had been promised. It was while she was counting out our money that I realized whores are people too. She may be beyond reclamation by the righteous in our churches, she may be despised by the virtuous of our bourgeoisie, and snubbed by the aristocracy, but she was good to her word even though society had managed to damage her convention and finances.
I guess each human being breaks down into character categories, in some we are strong and in some we are weak. I’ll take a person who’s word is good over someone squeaky clean on the surface, but whose highly developed rationalization and self-deception allows him to justify cheating a poor band out of its money. With the former we can step out on faith, but with the latter we can only look over our shoulder. Norma Jean has taken money for physical favors, but treachery is a whoring of the soul. I have seen a lot of soul whores in this business.
She gave us a tour of the whorehouse. It is being refurbished top to bottom. Artists are contributing their work; writers their words, photographers their vision. The top floor of suites and four poster beds was for the elite whores, young and pretty and sensually powerful. Those with thickening bottoms, crows feet, and hard habits went to the first floor, and those with no youthful vestiges or virtues resided in the basement. The frills were gone and desperation hung in the dankness.
Tunnels ran under the entire City of Butte and the aforementioned bourgeoisie could slip through the dark to enter the Dumas Brothel, dally with the bawdy girls who they condemned on Sunday, then steal away back to their office to maintain their proper image.
Norma Jean was a gracious host, an intelligent woman of forceful character; an author of several books, and a human being with vision and dreams, desiring to eventually restore all the historical buildings of downtown Butte, Montana.
I don’t know whether or not she has a chance. Certainly she bucks the odds. My purpose here is not to moralize, or condone her, or condemn her, but only to unveil still another glimpse of this volatile mixture of good and evil we call mankind and deduce from it that I’d prefer to have the world peopled more with those old farmers who found us in a blizzard, and the Mexicans overjoyed to be in America, and the man with no legs who was unafraid of four disheveled men on a roadside, and a whore who kept her word.
As for the masses of self-absorbed who pass us by when we break down, perhaps they could learn that the lessor among us sometimes have more to offer, simply because they will.
Carl
*Look for a song from Blinddog Smokin’ about a lonely whore relegated to the room looking out at Venus Alley on our next CD due out this December.
Posted by Carl