JOURNAL
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New Orleans, A Loud Clank - early December '05
We walked down Tchopotoulis Street past Tommy’s restaurant where we had eaten dinner the previous night in the candlelight, amid the perfectly hung Christmas wreathes and the waiters who glanced at each other as they scurried about, as if simply glad to be back among family doing what they do. We savored each perfect bite as if we were taking communion, as if the joy the meal brought to us could drive out the darkness and bring light to the people around us who seemed to be glad to be entertaining visitors again. People like the cab driver from the airport, who’s house in the 9th Ward was twice filled with water and who was waiting to see whether his neighborhood would be rebuilt or bulldozed, waiting to see if his wife would still have a job, deep into his 70’s, waiting to retire. Joy, like ice and clean water after the storm, must be brought into New Orleans. But at Tommy’s restaurant, the only sign that there had been a storm at all was that the chocolate hazelnut cake was being made with almonds. “We just can’t get hazelnuts after the storm. But it’s almost as good with almonds. Still the best dessert on the menu.”
The midday sun warmed our faces as we walked a walked, past fallen light posts, an abandoned, burned out pickup truck. We strolled by parking lots filled with generic white trailers, marked “FEMA” in lackadaisical black marker. Children chased each other between the rows while a disinterested dad hosed off his Jeep. Every block or so, piles of refrigerators, taped shut and with the word “poison” scrawled across the doors, waiting for some undetermined truck on some undetermined day to haul them to some undetermined place. We continued up Canal where the streetcar tracks sat barren and half the traffic lights were dark, past a convenience store with windows broken out and remnants of its merchandise weathered and strewn across the checkered floor. Hurricane Katrina made landfall three and half months before this day. Enough time for these surreal scenes of devastation to have become almost invisible to the locals who were determinedly returning things to normal. And in the French Quarter, things almost seemed that way.
The riverboat pipe organ could be heard, blandly rendering Christmas carols that echoed eerily around Magazine and Royal, Pied Pipering for tourists. And we began to see them, tourists, like us but more so. Retirees. Women with their precisely shaped hair and men in golf shirts fingering car keys, in and out of antique shops, joking politely with each other: “Don’t go anywhere. You’re the one with the checkbook.” We walked up to Bourbon where Mexican workers leaned against walls smoking and staring wide-eyed, taking in every bit. Some colligates with backward baseball caps sipped hurricanes, bouncing along, anticipation of strippers in their eyes. T shirts in shops that read “Katrina gave me a blowjob I’ll never forget”.
We dutifully walked to the Café Du Monde for coffee and beignets. A toddler was perched on a neighboring table in a paper chef’s hat, his navy blue corderoys covered in powdered sugar, chewing gleefully on the fried dough and being photographed from every angle by his excited young dad. We chuckled in their direction and the mom answered “That’ll be our Christmas card this year”.
As we began to make our way back, Charlotte spotted a second line band waiting expectantly by the front door of the St. Louis Cathedral. They had a feathered umbrella and were poised, brandishing tuba, drums and trumpets, prepared to lead a wedding party marching through the streets. We grabbed a bench among the drunks and pigeons and waited with them. One of the drunks at least pretended to think I was Terry Bradshaw and congratulated me for winning 3 superbowls. And when the bride and groom burst through the door, grinning from ear to ear in the glorious sunshine, the band launched in and they all began to march, circling the stoic statue of Jackson and then disappearing down Chartres and around a corner. I let go of a couple of tears that I’d been struggling to contain. This city has a heartbeat, one that beats strongly in its music that cannot be re-created anywhere else.
The night before at the Howlin’ Wolf on South Peters: I went on at 8:30, right before Drivin’ and Cryin’s Kevin Kinney. Kevin and I played our solo acoustic sets (Charlotte sang with me on a few) to a sweet and attentive audience. Cowboy Mouth’s Fred LeBlanc revved up the crowed (particularly those younger than 30) with an energetic, almost operatic, set of his own (Charlotte acutely compared him to Meatloaf). But at around 11pm, George Porter Jr., Russell Batiste, and a few other of the world’s funkiest humans took the stage. I was at the bar when they started. I walked back to where Charlotte and I were sitting and found her gone. Then I looked into the crowd and saw her standing about ten feet from the stage. I wish I had a picture of the look on her face, completely focused on the overwhelming power of this music, lilting from foot to foot with a thousand other people. Indeed, Astonishment was the only appropriate response. That crowd was worked into a churchlike stupor. And when Russell Batiste said “I want ya’ll to scream as loud as you can when we bring the Cissy Strut back to New Orleans”, we all screamed as loud as we could.
After six hours of music, playing and listening, we wandered back to the hotel exhausted, just one minute after the 2am curfew. From the balcony, we watched a few revelers dispersing noisily down the street. A rock thrown at a stop sign in celebration yielded a loud clank that almost woke the city up.
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Recording Blind Spot - Late Winter '03
The grey month. As good a time as any to record or go to Aruba, whichever suits your inclination and checkbook (Aruba might be cheaper). We started my last record (Elsewhere) in summer. But both Farmer records were recorded in the middle of winter. So I'm right at home hibernating with headphones on.
This batch of songs has some dark shades, but I think you'll find plenty of glimmers of hope. More co-writes than usual. More spontaneous. When you hear it, don't worry about me. I'm fine. I just don't typically trust or like music that isn't, in it's bones, the blues. I don't mean slide guitars and 1-4-5 chord progression, but blues in spirit. Don't misunderstand, there's happy stuff happening all the time. I recently got engaged, for example. But why sing about that. Or...how do you do it without sounding self congratulatory and smug. I find doubts, fears, heartaches to be interesting.
The production on this record is very different from anything I've done before. Neilson said it best: "It sounds like a Fellini movie."
So the studio is a bit drafty but I'm willing to overlook this because it also has magical powers. It makes everything sound good. But, I don't want to jinx anything. I only mention it now because we're on the 18th hole with only a 3 foot putt remaining. Neilson reminds me that three foot putts can kill. I played golf quite a bit when I was 15. I'm older than that now. The last time I attempted to play, I almost killed a guy in the next fairway.
I can't say enough about this cast of characters: Neilson Hubbard, Brian Bequette and Kirk Yoquelet. Separated at birth. And Brian Brown got us off on the right foot by putting the right mics in the right corners. Since then it's been falling out of the boat and hitting water. I can't wait to play this record live. I hope I get to do it a lot.
Best wishes,
Mack
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No Subject - June '03
No heavy silence to break, just eggs to go with coffee. It’s the first perfect, dry, sunny day of summer and I’m basking in the glow of a desk lamp and backlit computer screen, listening absently to NPR, and type-typing like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. A friend told me that he likes to sit in movie theaters on the nicest days of the year. Best I can discern, his point is that paradise grows more elusive the more you reach for it... like those little transparent floaters in your field of vision that you can only see when you don't look at them directly. Better to look the other way and hope you fall into paradise like an uncovered manhole.
Just this second, I fell in love with the "in between" music on the radio. A fleeting, fatal affair. That happens to me a lot. I my never know the name of the artist and song. I could log onto the NPR website, do the homework, order the cd, get it home and risk hating it because I forced the relationship. You get the girl and the girl turns out to be a psycho. This time it’s an organ bouncing along to a slowed down ska beat. 30 seconds of it. It stumbled across me. You can make millions these days with the right 30 seconds (not on NPR of course). I’m not out to make millions...or pass judgements on those who are. I'm no hare, but no turtle. I never read War and Peace. I have my own place in the continuum, from which I look that those coming along behind me as if their attention spans have been eaten by Martians . But my Grandfather typed long letters on an iron beast (that now gathers dust on my dresser, just for looking at). I have automatic spelling correction. I could spell better when I was 11. In 1986, I had every note of a certain Violent Femmes record committed to memory. I bet it's still there (going now to record collection to engage in self imposed pop-quiz of note for note recollection. Yep, still there.) Can’t say that for any records I’ve picked up in the last 2 years. (I expect visitors to this site to behave more like I did in 1986.)
I haven't been exactly honest. Let me tell you the truth about today. The afternoon is behaving like it’s going to slip away from me. I play along, smug and demure. I conceal that I’m paying close attention to the clock. But I know exactly how long I have left. I know that today's high is in the lower 80’s, no chance of rain, low humidity. Today is the summer solstice. It will still be light after 8pm. It’s only 2:45. I've dreamed of such a saturday and I've been thinking about the bike ride that I'm about to take through the park since last night. Now I'm on the edge of the shore. I’ve got nothing in sight but paradise, carefully calculated. And any minute now, I will embrace it. What are you staring at? |
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A quote I'm so glad I read in a book:
"We have to limit ourselves to the most important chords, because, as you know, there are so many meaningless chords for guitar that this has to be done...." - Mickey Baker, 1959 |
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