Wednesday October 16, 2002 [Club Passim, Cambridge MA]:
A benefit is typically only as successful as (A.) It's headliner or (B.)
It's producer. In this case there is no headliner and the producer is
one of those community characters who got an idea in his head.
There's a smaller crowd for a benefit than I'm sure he hoped.
At a benefit with a smaller crowd, there are two kinds of performers. I
watch from the back row as the kind of musician who chooses to point
out the size of the audience crucifies himself by recommending that
"at least you folks are here." There should be a little rule card handed
out to some of these cats before shows. Don't diminish the
accomplishment of an attendant audience.
I'm, again, the only folk singer drinking whiskey in this joint. What
happened to us?
A fellow Dylan listener, Chris Elliott and I talk about the talking blues in the
green room. I tell him I think it's the great unused song-structure of the late 20th/early 21st century. He worries that people will associate the songwriter with Dylan immediately. I think he's right. It's important to not fall into the Dylan-trap. Write about stuff people will recognize and maybe they'll dismiss the similarity (although lately, I've come to think that a contemporary folk audience may not have heard Dylan's talking blues). We hang out after the show and he tells me about his 450 Dylan bootlegs. He says he hasn't had a chance to listen to them all.
Friday October 18, 2002 [Fire & Water Café, Cambridge MA]:
It's a neat night in Noho. I play for a modest room at the very un-rock-n'-roll hour of 7 o'clock. Almost everyone here is a new face, but totally absorbed in whatever it is I do. That's good for me and apparently good for them. The owner comes up on the performance space at the end of my set. I have no idea what he's doing. He tells the room that the Fire & Water is closing soon (at the end of November) and that he wants to get me back one more time before that happens. The place seems to think so too. I slip away and pack up.
In line for food, a woman from the room tells me that she "doesn't get much of that kind of folk" in her world. I ask her what she means. She tells me I'm edgy. I tell her I learned folk music from Dan Bern and mid-1960s Dylan records. She nods and tells me I'm good and drifts back to the room. Later I discover that she's here to see Deb Pasternak.
I talk with a friend and colleague, Joe. We discuss quantity of audience versus quality of audience. Joe's just embarked on a solo career after playing in a duo with a decent draw in these parts. He's experiencing a reset of the quantity of audience equation. He tells me he's changed his value system and it matters more to him that people "get it." I guess that is pretty much something you'd hope for in this gig.
Meanwhile, as someone looks at my CDs the act on after me is announcing that those aren't his CDs, but mine. The person puts the CD down and walks over to the other merchandise table. He proceeds and forgets some more lyrics to his songs.
Saturday October 19, 2002 [Java Hut, Worcester MA]:
The stage is so draped in theatrical cobweb that my head keeps snagging strands and I'm trailing wispy white thread. Same with the machines on the headstock of the guitar. It's a little much, but I do sort of groove on playing under this Canopy of Dracula.
It's a great night in Worcester. A ton of people turn out, and the room is attentive and active with the music all the way through. I'm trying to emphasize some surprises in the song lists right now, because with new cities, I'll want to drive some of the staples home. Later, one of the guys in the audience thanks me for surprising him. I like that. That's when I'm into a show, when the writer is pulling out all the stops and throwing in rare stuff and little diversions into other songs and all that.
I drive to Leominster after this. I half decide to make it back to Boston, to sneak one more night in my own bed but I'm glad I don't. I spend the majority of the next day buying a cel-phone and waiting for the rep to enter the contract.
Sunday October 20, 2002 [Radio Bean Café, Burlington VT]
Well, this is one of those shows that my manager would say forget about it and don't tell your readers about this shit. But the whole point of these tour diaries is to lay it on the line and paint an honest picture of what this touring songwriter sees and feels and, sometimes, endures. Besides, I am my manager, so the motion to surpress is overruled.
It's a nice drive. Just over 3.5 hours from Leominster to Burlington. The sun sets over the Green Mountains and I try to snap a digi-shot from the driver's window. The camera is acting up, so we'll see if it comes through. It's one of those bruise-colored sunsets that lingers until it turns to copper and darkens to nothing.
An old friend, a long time back, warned me about Vermont. She told me that beneath the veneer of of educated hippy there lurks a brutality. Thus far, Burlington drivers suck but that's about it for brutality.
The Radio Bean is incredibly cozy and ultra-hip. It's a backwoods-baroque hippy wine bar a haven for studying students and elitist white people. Beneath the rustic, Janis Joplin frills there's a whiff of J.Crew. Shannon, the bartender/barista is very nice and helpful; but then, she's paid to be that way. Rose Polenzani's in town and she's left me a postcard with a polite hello and promise of a later visit. She's playing a rock club up the street.
The room is in flux up to the point of show. People grabbing take-out coffee and some kind of obsession with hot chocolate by the crunchy girls that come in pairs. The haunting review by a colleague, via Mary: "Radio Bean is kind of lame." I'm thinking it might be a set up. Thinking of Mary, I make a mental note to touch bases with here about Indianapolis details. My radar is blipping about that show, for whatever reason.
This can be the hardest shit, ever. Complete nudity in travel. Exposure to the socio-psyco-economic elements. I'm a writer, on the road without a safety. No fall backs. It's time to play.
It's a rather strange, largely fruitless effort. I play well, and later find out that Shannon made a CD-R of the show. That's something good.
The room is full of that weird vibe I'd previously only known in Northampton. Affected, wealthy people without a shred of hunger. I play my heart out to them and get a few to laugh and watch and tap their feet. Someone, a college guy with one of those scraggily bookish good looks who wear fleece and a scarf and pre-faded work jeans, actually huffs when I send the tip hat out to the room. Nobody donates. Not one of them. They listen and mildly react and contribute no money to the performer's hat. I sell nothing, I make a couple of bucks from Shannon, who puts 5 one-dollar bills in the hat. She's marked each of them with a black Sharpie. They now read things like, "ENJOY BURLINGTON!", and "THANKS JAMES!". I feel sheepish spending them later and try to hand them to clerks writing side down.
I stay to hear the next guy, a Burlington lad recently transplanted to NYC. They watch him and are as appreciative. Some of the people who come in between our sets are his family. He plays a long set of Dylan-esque material and he's even dressed the part with a big shock of curly hair and a hobo's hat right out of 1963. He's technically very proficient. Rose and her ambiguous friend come in and we chat and eat a brownie and I drink some wine. Later, I think about splitting a hotel room with them. I decide to be alone for the night and drive out of Burlington at midnight. I drive until 2.30 and camp in my truck at the junction of 22A and 4, next to the Vermont-New York border. The stop is nice, it has showers. Score one for the home team.
Monday October 21, 2002 [Happy Endings Coffeehouse, Syracuse NY]:
Woke up around 8.30, dozed until 9.30 and then took a shower at this very plush truckers' stop in Fair Haven, Vermont (or close to, anyway). Had to buy a bar of soap, which I left behind. It would have been a mess to keep it in the truck. Don't know if I'd use a bar of left-behind soap but maybe somebody else will. Cleanliness karma.
Arrived in Syracuse at 2.45. It seems that everyone on the road is out of patience with everyone else. Maybe it's this way all the time and I'm just sensitive to it these days.
Found a Kinko's in Dewitt, one town over. Spent a hour answering emails and trying to work on a tour with Michael McDermott in February.
After paying the internet fee at Kinko's I'm pretty much out of in-hand funds. I stop at a gas station and try to withdraw from the ATM. No go. I call the bank and they tell me some funds will clear at midnight. Until then I have a whopping $19. If I can get through tonight, and on to Buffalo, I might be alright.
I've been worried about Syracuse from the beginning. I've never played this town, and I'm starting with the biggest room a 120 seater at $5 at ticket with a theater-style listening room that's removed from the café by heavy oak doors. If I don't draw it's a complete bust. I've worked hard to get radio and newspaper plugs, and have had some modest success in that effort.
Happy Endings is owned by a woman in her sixties, named Shelby. She's super-nice and offers me chicken stew. I don't eat the stew, but I do spend some time putting up flyers. The room made me postcards, which they've distributed over the previous two weeks. They're very snappy postcards. John, her son, looks like Matt Pinfield from MTV. He's one of those upbeat, pro-musician guys and he runs a quick, clean, dead-on sound check that proves them both right; the room sounds wonderful.
Later, in a classic folk-music moment, the surly guy at the café counter answers the phone. It's clearly a call about tonight's show. He starts squinting at the show-board hanging in the café, and then peering at the postcards for my show. Finally, he says, "Yeah he's here tonight." Long pause. "I don't know," he answers the caller. "He's just an artist."
Oh yeah! That's how you sell a show!
In another brilliant moment for our barista, I approach and say hello. I ask him his name. He squints at me and shows me the palms of his hands.
"Why?" he sneers.
I say, "Because I'm the performer here tonight, and I thought I'd say hello to you." He tries to backpedal and pretends nothing happened.
I pat the counter gently and smile. "I'm good, thanks." I say it slowly and walk back into the theater.
All this evaporates. The show goes very well. Somehow, a few people turn out and I start the show in the café part of the club, leading the audience (for what it is) into the theater. I play a forceful set, leaning into every ounce of melody I can muster. I want these people to have the show of their week, just them and me and the idea that you give 100% no matter what. We have a really intimate time, and the theater seems to love us, allowing for bang, crash and stomp, as well as subtleties and rich, quiet moments that just hang there like planets. I keep it succinct. Just an hour or so, I think. I want it to be perfect, no mess ups, no overextensions to wear us out. I'm playing to wipe out Burlington, and to carve into Syracuse.
After the show, Shelby's all charged up. She tells everyone how many opening slots she's going to give me and how the room will be full for me and how they'll grow me and I'm in total agreement, of course. It's really a songwriter's fantasy, to be adopted after one listen. I take it for what it is; it feels wonderful. I leave recharged and with some funds to fill my Jeep's gas tank too.
Tuesday October 22, 2001 [Coffeebean Café, Buffalo NY]
This one is a reward. It's a reward for tolerating constantly confusing people. The longer you grow, the more people you know, the greater the odds you'll meet someone (or a number of someones) with crippled minds and crippled hearts.
In this business, there are oceans of cripple minds and crippled hearts. I'm trying, always, to not navigate other people's mine fields and psychological mazes. I've chosen the mother of all jobs, my friends.
After an afternoon of freaking out about these matters I get a show to regenerate the damaged tissue. I play the Coffeebean unplugged (it's a small enough listening room and the tile floors send the sound to the ear with a warm, natural reverb). Tonight, I've almost single-handedly filled the performance space.
Oddly, when this happens I just feel relaxed. The arithmetic subsides and fades and what's left is the art. Ideally, this is the way it should happen, I think. I give a gift back to them, for answering an unvoiced appeal they gave me a show that was pure, without intrusion. I've come to know a lot of these people. There's the Koch brothers, who showed up one St. Patrick's day because I was the only overtly Irish name in the club listings. There's Lynsey, who sings along and feeds me with uninterrupted attention. Lizz, a painter with a game plan. There are the regulars I haven't learned everything about, the faces that come back each time who need/want nothing other than the songs. I thank them and they thank me and a few of us drift off into Buffalo for whiskey and the sorting out of the things we see and do.
Friday October 25, 2002 [The Barking Spider, Cleveland OH]:
Long, gray day of rain. I follow the curve of Lake Erie and end the road in Cleveland's university district. The Barking Spider is tucked away behind brick frat houses and wide green lawns. Martin runs the joint, he's a silverback hippy with a giant thirst for the drink he sells. I find him working away at getting a fire going for the evening. This turns out to be the absolute definition of the man. A drink-monster with a caretaker's heart.
I float through the art museum for the afternoon. I start with Warhol and Pollack. My conversation with Elizabeth comes back. I'm searching for male voices in America. I want to hear about this mess we're in without the interruptions of safe language. I want to get the belly full of the mind.
I eat the best meal of the week at this Mexican place that Martin recommends. Piles of hot tostados, green and red salsa, spicy pickled carrots. Soft cheese quesadillas with poblemo peppers and rice and refried beans. A huge mug of sangria. I'm full too quick, though. I haven't eaten this way in too long to even polish off the plate.
The show is one of those moments. The barriers come down. This woman, in business attire, is clearly stirred up and she wants to play harp. I take a chance and let her. Sometimes she's even okay at it. It draws the whole room into a fabric. I try to imagine what they saw this shaved little tornado and the office dress code sidekick. We stand back to back and wail the songs into the darkness. The room fills as I go. Later, the woman tries to get me to agree to marry her sister, who she tells me is a model. I sign her CD.
Another face from Boston in the room. Ben, friend of Gwen, from Brandeis University. Ben watches my show and two full sets of the sloppy Dylan cover band that follows. I ask Ben if he's a Dylan fanatic. He says he never heard much before. I jot down some records for him to check out, horrified that this is his introduction.
Later, staying at Martin's we look at old photos from 1969 when he fled the country for India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. This reminds me of the old guy who used to run Mother Earth's in Albany. There must be thousands of these guys, derelict vessels. They used to run with these big ideals and now they try to keep it alive in tiny taverns in college towns far enough away from the grid to avoid detection. Except Martin is closer to the real deal. He's still marginally in touch with reality and he's a no-bullshit character. I sleep forever on his couch and wake up and eat a sandwich and drive on to Michigan.
Saturday October 26, 2002 [Rubber Soul, Ypsilanti MI]:
The weather breaks by m
