The Night I Opened for the Boss:  a vivid dream

(Spoken rhythmically, rapidly and excitedly, over music.  Parentheticals, except italicized ones, are read aloud.)

Last night I dreamed I was opening for Bruce Springsteen (Music starts).  It wasn't the E street Band, not some huge stadium or "shed" as they say; it was a modest –sized ampitheater in Cleveland Ohio, 1995.  And I wasn't the opener, exactly – there were like 17 acts on the bill – an autoworkers' benefit, with John Cougar,  Billy Joel, and a new lesbian version of the Blues Brothers.

Actually, I wasn't on the bill at all.  But I knew this guy Garcia who was roadie-ing for Mellencamp. He once bought some weed from a guy that I loaned my car to, and I remembered that they had sort of blown my speakers, so man, I was SO in there, backstage passes and all. 

After the 16^th act, they said the boss was gonna take the stage.  I am one gigantic Bruce fan so I was right there in the wings, as close as I could get, waiting for the man to come on. 

The MC of the show got up there and was killing some time – the sun was going down behind the city, over the Cayahuga, and the clouds were on FIRE, bright orange on blue, you know, all silvery and stuff, you could almost hear them shimmering in ecstatic anticipation.   I overheard someone yell from the direction of Mr Springsteen's dressing room "keep it going for another 10 minutes, he's watching the sunset with Patti!"

The MC looked up at the sky, then over to the side stage, and he was in some kind of a panic, let me tell ya.  His eyes caught Garcia, who kinda shrugged back at him. 

This is when Time stops (music suspends), and Garcia does something that makes me forget those car speakers forever.  Garcia, a GENIUS, grabs me by the arm and walks me out on to that stage, right up to the Boss' microphone.  He turns around to the MC for a few seconds as I stare at the crowd.  Before I know it, the MC steps up, all nervous, and says (big announcer voice) "ladies & gentlemen, isn't it a beautiful sunset?  Please welcome a personal friend of Mr. Springsteen's to sing a song written especially for this occasion!"  The crowd roars.

I stand there for a second, thinking "what am I going to do about a guitar?" and outa nowhere GE smith walks over to save me (you remember GE Smith, don't you?  He was in the Saturday Night Live Band and he played with Hall & Oates, and I think he might have toured with Tina Turner or somebody).  Anyway, GE Smith frickin' hands me a beautiful guitar to play – and it's plugged in and everything! 

I have no idea what song to do, so I figure I'll just start PLAYING, and the guitar will tell me which song to play for 5,000 anxious, drunk Springsteen fans. But this is GE Smith's guitar, and apparently he doesn't talk to it the way I do mine.  AND, it's in open tuning, so what comes out sounds like a six year old picking up his first set of bagpipes. 

The sunset's like half over, and while I'm standing there sweating, tuning the guitar, I try to get the crowd on my side:   "You know, I wrote this song for Bruce Springsteen – it's a tribute,"  --polite clapping--   " … But tonight I'd like to dedicate it to the auto workers."  Big cheers, and slow chant of ambiguous rocking approval from two guys in the far back:   "free Bird"

I hit the opening chord. 

And I start an old song I wrote called  "You can't be Lonely when you're livin in New York City" –

I'm playing the intro, which is kinda plaintive & trancelike, (bliiin, bliiin, bliiin) and I'm about to start on the verse, when lo an behold Billy Joel  jumps up and starts playin piano.  I'm like "bleeen, bleeen, bleeen" and Mr. Piano man himself is playing with me.  Only he's going like BLANG BLANG BLANG and totally overpowing the opening of my song. 

Matter of fact, he throws in some chord changes that aren't even supposed to be there, I mean, this is MY song, and frankly, the stuff he's putting across isn't workin at all.  So I give him the eye, like "don't do that again," and Mr. Tell Her About It looks back at me, misunderstanding my nonverbal reprimand as meaning something like "man, that so totally rocked!"- so as I'm stepping up to sing again, he's like "BLANGETY BING BLANG, BLANGETYYY BLING BANG" all over the ivories, and takes this huge solo in the wrong place.  

So I stop and I say across the stage, "Man, you're making it hard for me to start my song, can you please stop doing that?  I mean stay out until the chorus or something, and you know, get a feel for the piece    …ok?" 

This definitely quiets down the crowd.   

Mr. "Innocent Man" looks down and kind of becomes invisible and cool, while I stand there realizing that I look like one giant glowing asshole, silhouetted by the last rays of the sunset. 

I finally get the song out, and it goes pretty good – there may have been a few converts, even.   And the Boss himself might've caught a little of it from the side of the stage.  I give GE his guitar back, and I mouth "thank you" to Garcia as I leave the stage.  The announcer comes on and says "let's give a big hand to him for playing his heart out under this beautiful sky, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. JOHN BRUNDERSON!" 

I don't correct him.  Instead, I look over at Bruce, hoping he'll give me the "way to go, kid" eye, but he's fussing with Patty's in-ear monitor, and they're like staring at each other, in love, and I think, you know, that really didn't go so bad.

(Sung)  You can't be lonely when you're livin in new york city

You can't sing the blues to me over the phone

Cuz I'm lonely, living in California

And I'll lie to you to bring you home

I got a recent stew of emails asking about that song (apparently it's in rotation on a radio station in California).  I used to play it every show, and told the story behind it.  Since I'm giving it a break for a while, and people still ask for an explanation for the song, here is the full-fledged version.

But first a little musing on "topical" songs... I've written a few and censured myself on several others.  

Picture a slow-moving herd of singer-songwriters (that one with the bushy hair and cowbay shirt is me).   Hear their whining call.   They respond to stimuli with song --they sing of 9/11, for example.   Katrina.   Iraq...  -But wait... they (we) aren't doing that!  Not the successful ones on TV, not even in coffeeshops (generally speaking).  Why not?  Because the industry is intricately tied to public/corporate notions of today's "fair and balanced" social mores.   "It's wartime."  "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" percolates.   Strangely enough, the administration and the media aren't the ones who dulled the teeth of the entertainment industry (much as they would love to do so).  I think the music industry has tucked away its own fangs because it's simply NOT POPULAR to protest. 

There's a good reason that blatant prostheletizing is unpopular.   Who wants to hear a whining pixie/scruffball lecture them that they know better than the talking heads on FOX?  Protest music is singing to the choir, so to speak, right?  Who's going to have their mind changed by a song?

It's not that simple.  Songs trigger the individual and societal subconscious.   They may facilitate solidarity.  They raise questions.  If they're good, they entertain.  "John Hartford" is a song about 9/11 that doesn't mention 9/11 at all.   It was an accident, I promise.   It wasn't meant to have a "message,"  but I guess in retrospect, the message is "don't be paralyzed by fear." 

It was June 2001 when John Hartford died.  For those who don't know his work, he was a warm, deep dry, funny, burl-covered log standing alone in a plastic theme park.  He wrote songs about steamships, his wife's boobs, gently loving thy neighbor, dope-smoking grandmothers, dancing in the bathtub, etc.  He did an astounding one-man show, and he played well with others (he "ripped," in fact).   He was a steamship captain.  During the Vietnam war, he made beautiful albums of thought-provoking, mildly provacative tunes.  His career was diverse and continued through his death (he acheived new heights of popularity for his traditional "Down from the Mountain" and "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack).  I never got to play with him.

In Sept., the world trade center towers fell.  I was travelling in a band, flying back and forth from Portland to wherever the band was (I had to come back every week to attend classes).  A week after the event, I was flying home on an empty plane.  The pilot, from behind his locked door, announced that he would be taking an "unscheduled course change" and that he had procured special permission from ground control to veer from our northbound path and fly east for a few minutes and then west again...

Why??  It was just after dark.  I was sipping coffee.  His announcement frightened me and everyone else on the plane for just a second, until he finished his sentence:  "because I want to show you something."  The song tells most of the rest of the story:  in his 30 years of flying, he claimed, he had never seen a more spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis (northern lights).  By flying East, he allowed the handful of passengers to the left of the aisle to see the amazing glow; by flying west he showed it to those on the right. 

Not a dry eye on the jet.  When we landed, everyone wanted to thank the pilot for his act of heroic normality.  The door was locked, this was the period when pilots were protected by three layers of intense security. 

After a few YEARS of research with Southwest Airlines (conducted by my parents), we found the pilot, Myron Nelson.  He turned out to be a bigger hero than we thought.  He flew to a couple of my shows with his daughter.  He gave me a 1938 lap steel, which I now use in the studio frequently.  He took me flying when I was on tour in Arizona.  

I had been sitting on the empty plane wondering what John Hartford's reaction to 9/11's events would have been.  I was trying to write him an ode of some kind.  I was guessing that he would have pulled his steamship, or tourbus, to a stop for a minute. 

And Myron came over the loudspeakers....  That's the story.

Larry David may have said it best:  "why would you want to have a dog?  It's like having a bum around the house."   This was the sit-com version; the reality of the canine-human bond is much deeper and darker.

I'd add:  "a bum you eventually have to put out of her misery." 

or:  "it's like inviting an innocent being into your home, falling deeply in love with them, all the while fully intending to kill them a little more than a decade later." 

Today I said goodbye to the bravest, most valiant soul I have ever known, the superbly intelligent mutt, Medford.  In order to end her pain, I had to play god for a morning, with the help of an overdose cocktail of sedatives, and a very gentle vet at Dove Lewis.

Until she was about 13, she dove for sunken items in lakes and streams (up to 8 feet deep!).  She fetched hats that fell into ravines.  She consoled.  She sang.  She barked at intruders, until her hearing went.  This may have had something to do with the diving, or amount of loud music to which she was exposed, or maybe just old age.

In 1991, my first tour through Oregon, I saw her in a pile of puppies in front of a Fred Meyer in, you guessed it, Medford.   A year later I got another mutt to keep her company, but she never accepted the animal as kin, rather, just an annoyance.  Stryker, the second dog, not as smart nor sturdy, lived to a ripe old age and met his maker after tweaking his neck to chase a cat under a couch.  Medford never missed him for a second, but rather, soldiered on for another 18 months before her hind quarters simply stopped working.

At age 16, it was difficult to prove her the wonderdog I knew her to be.  She no longer tickled the ivories (yes, she could play the piano on command).  She no longer could distinguish between "squeakie-shoe" and "squeakie-meat" (two almost-identical toys with almost-identical names, yet distinguishable by Medford, on command).  In fact, she couldn't get up without help from behind.  She pooped in her sleep.  She slept in her poop.  She stared blankly into space, and slept deafly through the fireworks that once sent her into a ghandi-esque under-bed protest.

She outlived a marriage, and most of the friendships I've ever had.  Julie was her favorite, and mine too.  Once Julie came into the picture, there was always chicken soup on the kibbles to make them more paletable, and olive oil for the coat. 

Medford has gone on to being one with the universe.  Her body will benefit science, whatever good can come of a lumpy, old, stinky mutt.   I thought it would be easy to put her down.  What was I thinking?  

Thanks for your sympathy.  That's what blogs about dead dogs are for, right?  I put a pic up of Med on my pics page, if you never had the pleasure.

Sunday, 8am.   The Bazaar Cafe, SF, CA. 

A long entry, sorry.

Les, the owner of the Bazaar Cafe is tireless and timeless.  Is it the red wine?  Is it Makiko, woman who quietly, gracefully curates the chaotic gallery of Les' life?  Is it the swarm of musicians who are constantly buzzing around his rare, priceless gem buried here in the outer Richmond District of SF? 

He just had the floors redone at the cafe.  Floors I've stomped on countless times, drink in hand, cheering my heroes:  Mario DeSio, Ira Marlowe, Ed Haynes, my friends and musical comrades too numerous to list.  Floors at which I've stared in  moments of doubt & daunt, or just trying to choose the next song. 

I drove past three of my old SF apartments this morning, and I'm caked with stinky, mushy mud of melancholic memories.  Three places, little stucco boxes, that I loved in and wrote songs in, and then for one reason or another, decided to move on and leave behind.  One because the thing with the girl didn't work out the way I planned (oh, the stupid things I've done).  One because a thing with another girl was working out so well that we both decided that a better little box awaited us just a few avenues to the south (again, so stupid - but one learns).  And then the last one, where I lived until I left town for Portland in 1999. 

There's no room in this city.  When they redid the floors at the Bazaar, they had to rent a truck to hold all the furniture during the work, drive the truck away, and back again.  You SF's lack of space most regularly when you're looking for a parking spot (average time before someone leaves and opens up a space is about 20 minutes, I've found).   If you didn't have drums and guitars in your trunk, it would make no sense to have a car here (a good thing to not have, they say).  On a musician's budget, there's especially little room.  The places you can afford to live, eat, play, and walk your dogs has dwindled steadily since I first moved here in 1987.  

One of those places is the Bazaar Cafe.   The Bazaar is the antithesis of typical music venue in SF.  The norm: best summed up by one old soldier who literally bellowed at my band, before soundcheck: "you gotta pull in 200 people tonight or you're not coming back to play here again!"   Here, incredible music happens every night, for 20-40 people.  I've never seen it anything but packed (one folk quartet easily accomplishes this if they each bring a fan and a girlfriend or two).  It's ALL about the music.  There are a few nice house guitars, in case of broken strings, or if an open mic night struggler has a faulty intrument.  A nameless, generous benefactor.  And there's a piano.

Not that the music is ALWAYS good.  But it almost always is.  Not cheesy shit that turns out the yuppies to sit with their heads on each others' shoulders like they're at a summertime Sting concert (Dan Fogelberg opening).  No, real, unique takes on stuff.  Or Les won't have you back.  Amidst all the post-9/11 pomposity and sensitivity, I played a night here with a few other writers.  Ed Haynes sang the best response to 9/11 I've heard yet:  "I've got Anthrax, baby - sleep with me tonight.   I'm a'courtin' at a heightened pace..." and so on. 

In Portland, there's more space.  It takes a long time to find or build a community like the one I left, but now I feel we've done it.  Julie, and all the musicians and friends at Mississippi Studios have filled the huge hole I feel when I think about all my favorite singing/drinking pals from the old haunts.  Ed Haynes moved to Portland, too.   Last night Ed & I did a sort of reunion show at the Bazaar.  Ed shone.  Ira Marlow got up and broke my heart with an old favorite, a tearjerker about youth & hope & etc.  This morning is the afterglow.  My morning drive through the old haunts assures me that I did the right thing.   

Les just walked in and is going on about some local writer I just have to hear, so this blog is over.   He just rifled through five boxes of CDs that nobody but Les cares about.  He has put the CD on the stereo blaringly loud, and half his morning customers just walked out, shaking their heads.  I'm about to get an earful.

The floors at the Bazaar:  they're Redone, not replaced.  I recognize familiar gouges, favorite black, rusty nail holes, places where chairs, or the piano, have been dragged without lifting.  You can't keep redoing the floors forever.  And you shouldn't expect to enjoy a floor without scars as much as one with.  

..Death Valley.  1am. 

Can't sleep.  We're all sick with the flu, in the most beautiful spot I've seen in a long time.  Thanks to Neil's hearty grip on the wheel, we drove straight through from Santa Cruz to Death Valley without stopping (yes, there was music-making at a lovely ex-bank called Cayuga Vault).  When we woke up in heaven, we were all completely paralyzed with the flu. 

We had just enough time though, before the wretched disease completely threw us on our backs for 48 hours, to see Travis' parents' DATE FARM.  Middle of the desert, these people farm dates.  They are also helping maintain a small stream by pushing for its designation as a Wild & Scenic River, and by simply taking care of it.  Cool folks. 

Dates are a big topic, lots to learn.  The trees are dangerous, have strange, primitive sex lives (aided by humans) and I've learned more about them than I dare relate to you in my delerious, flu-ridden state.   On my pics page, there's one of  Travis showing you some ripe dates, ready to be shaken from the tree.  The old clothes keep the birds away.  Another pic (same place) shows Travis again, in the sorting room.  He grew up here, doing this.  And running around barefoot on the rocky, thorny hills & cliffs. 

After lots of date-talk and delicious date milkshakes, we got a special trip to the hot springs, which are in the middle of a big open plain between two rocky ridges.  We were the only ones there, on a saturday.  In fact, we have yet to see another human being since we left the highway, except Travis' parents and their groovy staff at the ranch.  The path to the hotsprings is marked by a sign that we just couldn't take seriously (see bottom row of pics on my pics page).

"Mud mites?"  yeah, sure!  In a way, I guess we cursed ourselves by so foolheartedly admonishing its warning.  Same as when we said "aw, those 'check engine soon' lights just come on sometimes for no reason!" and kept singing songs of the seventies at the top of our lungs while we were lost in Gilroy.  As you can see, we enjoyed the mudbath/hotsprings without hesitation, and nobody was bitten.  And the van is still going.  ..

But we are super-sick.   Ooh boy, gotta go.

A large pack of coyote visited us around 3am today.  They yipped and hollered and cried.  I am ready for them to visit again - I put two mics out to record them.  If I succeed, I'll put it up as a song tomorrow on my music player thingy.

Exhausted,

Jim

I'm leaving this morning for my first "tour" in some time.  Actually going with a band this time, the incredible Miraflores.  Three of the sweetest, smartest, and most innately talented fellows you'd ever want to share a long vanride with.  We have scheduled 5 days off in Death Valley to work on their new record, and have packed up the mobile recording studio into their van. 

At 8:19am, I'm sitting in the recording studio, full of anticipation for the trip, but have a few appointments to make before I depart:  Lewi Longmire has some last minute edits on his record, Ashleigh Flynn and Hillstomp both have the same.  I have them scheduled for 8am (yes, somebody's late), 8:30am, and 10:30am.  Leaving at noon.

It's all going to be beautiful.  The stupendously sparky and talented Raina Rose is flying in to sing harmonies on this tour.  The lovely and genius Megan Slankard is joining us in the Bay Area.  George Cattermole at the General store will be unable to contain his excitement.  I'll say this and only this:  these gals are WAY better looking than me or my old bandmates.

Here's my problem:  I'm nervous about my dogs.  This has always been a problem with touring - I can only imagine how musicians with human children cope with it.  I'm leaving behind Medford, my 16-year old Chesapeake Bay retriever mix (supposedly she's half doberman).  She may be dead when I return.  We've been wrestling with her mortality for several years; she keeps hitting low points and then bouncing back.  A trip to the beach always seems to reinvigorate her and endow her with all the outward signs of vibrant puppydom.  She dodges the vet's needle once again.

As I'm packing my bags and she's doing her usual clingy thing.  Every time the suitcase comes out of the closet, Medford statically adherres herself to my side, becoming a slowly moving obstacle to my frantic packing and a constant, nagging doubt as to whether I should be travelling at all.  Only now she can barely stand, and is actually whimpering.  Jesus.  I bring her with me to the studios, nudge her up the stairs, and realize I may not see her again. 

Dooley:  her youthful brother, a dumbass, 140 pound lab/great dane mix, is coming with.  He's the king.  Julie would have it no other way.  I will report on our adventures, and with luck, find interesting things to report at this post.

Thanks for listening,
Jim