Man, I was all over town today on my bike — I live on the eastside, over by the old airport. I went downtown this morning, worked for a few hours, then took off for my second trip this week up to Balcones and 2222, then I biked down to ‘04 to teach a bass lesson, then back across the river… downtown… and finally home.
It was a beast out there — big hot. I told a friend the other day I thought big hot was over for the summer, and that now Austin’d subside to real hot for awhile.
Well, I was wrong. But I’m used to it –I’m glowing a little, I mean it was 102° today, and that sun was on me for a coupla hours, easy, but I feel good: putting my body through all those paces, drinking all that water, working my way through all those cars, it was a workout.
When you’re out there, you realize what heat sinks all our fucking cars really are — as I pass them I feel the emanant glow from each reflective, metalloid, internal-combusted unit out there, and I swear the temperature will go up 5° — 10° with trucks and buses. Get behind a bus? — it bakes you. I kinda like it, it’s like a carbon monoxide sauna, hahaha — not for the squeamish, that’s for sure.
And you’re gliding along, you know, and you get out, as I did today, over Mopac on that big bridge on Koenig — toward’s Russell’s, you know where I’m talking about? – out in the wide open, under that merciless Central American sun, on asphalt, above MORE asphalt, and more cars, and all that heat that concentrates in the city rises up and you think — if thinking’s the word — you think, man, I could just float on this heat, just lay down on it and let it bake all the shit and the crud and the artifice right out of me
Then you hydrate, because guess what, — you’re at that place where you’re gonna start seeing oases any minute.
I’ll bet 7 out of 10 blogs are started for the same reason I started this one, hahaha — a wild stab at the therapeutic, a mad grasp at understanding… as if a blog has some kind of inherent magical properties.
Well, maybe it does.
I quickly discovered a couple of things — I don’t like getting subpsyche — or subcutaneous — personal (so there goes the therapy aspect), and I don’t like keeping it in the narrow range of one topic.
I DO like (love, hate, can’t stop) writing, though, and these pages have served to take care of some of the overflow, but recently I’ve experienced some revelations, and one of them is I want to kick this thing out the door, write in it [more or less]daily, let folks know about it…
painting by Layne Jackson from a photograph by Ralph Hattersley
How I Spent My Summer Vacation Lissa Hattersley’s new record offers a much-needed holiday
First of all, a disclaimer:
I’m the bass player on this album. Lucky guy — I got to play great songs by songwriters that you may not have heard of, record with an amazing assortment of players you may not know about (unless you’re an Austinite, in which case you’re reading the liner notes and thinking wow whatta band) — and luckiest of all, I got to be a part of Lissa Hattersley’s 1st record as a solo artist!
So those are mybona fides – now let me tell you a little bit about this wonderful artist and the great recording she made.
This album is loooooong overdue, if you ask me (and a lot of other people, too), but in a world where solo records get made so soon, so often, I’m just glad she made it. Finally. I’m already bugging her about making another one.
Lissa Hattersley is from upstate New York, a little town called Canandaigua near Rochester. She’s spent most of her life in Austin, Texas and New York City. The way I get it, she wound up in ATX after her brother Cleve got here, but I’m never clear on what exactly he told her that convinced her to head south. But she did, and became an important part of the odd story of how Austin, Texas became one of the world’s musical capitals. When she got here in the early 70s, Lissa, Cleve and wondrous violinist Sweet Mary (and a revolving cast of sidemen and co-conspirators) formed a band called Greezy Wheels. In those heady days, Austin was already distinguished, if that’s the right word, as one of the nation’s counter-cultural centers. The real nexus of the thing was probably Hippie Hollow, but the enduring symbol was the Armadillo World Headquarters. I won’t go into a history lesson now — besides, you can follow the hyperlinks — I mention this by way of telling you Lissa was the vocalist and mandolinist in Greezy Wheels, essentially the Armadillo House Band.
Things just come together like that sometimes: a movement, a band, a place to play. By the time I got here in the late seventies Austin had been permanently altered by a small but incredibly potent group of musicians, artists, and club owners. For me, a young bassist from the wilds of Denton TX, the idea of playing with Lissa or Greezy Wheels was impossibly remote. Greezy Wheels was one of the very first Austin bands to sign with a BIG LABEL, they toured, they held court at Soap Creekand the Armadillo (shoot, they opened for Bruce Springsteen on his first stop in Austin!), they appeared on Austin City Limits– they were the real deal.
The season changed, and with it, Austin, though forever altered, changed, too: the Armadillo became a parking lot, dem ole Greezy Wheels quit turning for a time, and Lissa moved back to NYC.
There she lived, and played, and worked, and made art, and as usual attracted top players to her side for her always too-few gigs. Liss is that kind of musician: players want to play with her, not because it’s steady or cush or remunerative, but because she’s a player, too.
The season changed again, and she came back to Austin, and continued a life of friends and work and art that always somehow made room for her beautiful singing.
Wheels are meant to turn — in time, and from adversity, Greezy Wheels returned, that same family core intact, but with a whole new cast of regulars — including me, this time, in the honored bass chair, backing up Lissa’s fantastic singing, so particular, so intimate.
Playing bass behind Lissa Hattersley’s singing gives me that feeling that brought me to the service of music in the first place. Her phrasing, her intonation, her flexibility, her intent listening–when musicians say this about a singer, it’s meant as the highest compliment:it’s like playing with a horn player, man. What that means is she hears the chords, she knows the notes, she feels the time, and she gets the difference between hip and ouch.
Playing with Lissa is like playing with a horn, man.
The seasons went by in their slow and majestic Texas pace, and — when was it? — a year ago? Lissa told me she wanted to make a record of her own. I immediately offered my services as janitor or brass polisher at the sessions, but, unaccountably, she wanted me to actually play some bass. And she began bouncing ideas for the record off of me, and I watched as she began the always amazing process of creating an album from thin air.
And what an album it is!
I keep calling How I Spent my Summer Vacation a record or an album — by that I mean it in the old school sense of those words: a document conceived and crafted, best taken not just as a collection of songs, but rather a careful collection of compositions, players, and circumstances, all guided with a storyteller’s intent.
Several stories are being told: stories about the progression of relationships (both with others and with one’s self), stories about how sad being alone is, stories about how sad not being alone can be… stories, too, about how exhilarating both states can be — but also, I think, there’s a story woven into the fabric of the recording about Lissa’s own relationship to music, telling us about love and growth and acceptance in an artist’s heart.
Right out the gate there’s trouble: her brother Cleve Hattersley weighs in with his biting and rueful “Love is a Crime Scene”
A crime has been committed here/I know the victim’s name/it’s meeee…
…and then, in Tony Airoldi’s wonderful “Talking in Your Sleep”, we meet a couple that isn’t communicating very well — at least not while they’re awake.
Then Lissa gives us a little break with her own “Reverie”, a gorgeous and impressionistic song that comes to us on the tail of a moonbeam…
…and it’s a good thing she did, too, because now we careen from infatuation (Marc Black’s “Moonstruck Love”, a perfect deer-in-the-headlights-I’m-in-love R&B pop song) to closing time in bars and notquite enough alcohol in Lissa’s own hilarious and funky “There’s No Fool.”
I first heard the great and under-appreciated standard “Shake Down the Stars” lovingly treated by Sarah Vaughan (another musician’s singer), and I was struck by both the desperate loneliness of the lyric and the lush beauty of the composition. On Lissa’s delicately aching version, check out the great solo turns by violinist Sweet Mary Hattersley and guitar great Chris Duarte.
From desperate to defiant, Tex Thomas writes to that part of every musician that’s wild and free, and maybe even a little bit mean, and gets it exactly right: there’s a “Fugitive Animal” in every single one of us… and yep, it’s true, we do takea certain pride in it.
But sometimes even the wild ones get adopted, and Ned Sublette’s beautiful “Nightworker’s Song (Blue Time)”, played in close and moving counterpoint as close as a whisper, is a lovely tribute to small and lasting pleasures.
Next up is another song from her brother Cleve, this one from the early Greezy songlist. ”Peace in the Valley” offers a quiet and gentle vision, a sort of promise of heaven.
When we return to earth for the closing tune, “Whatever Way You Want It” (penned by the late and lamented Dan del Santo), we get The Professor’s ode to cheerful and earthy acceptance, and we realize we’ve been on a journey, and it’s been a memorable one. The musicians on this record — well, there are highlights everywhere, but just off the top of my head I’d direct you to the dreamily intertwined horns on “Talking in Your Sleep” and listen to Frosty’s drumming, a sly and knowing percussive Greek Chorus throughout — startling, splendid work. For that matter, check out Paul Pearcy’sgroove on “There’s No Fool” — that’s New York funk, Texas style, at once relaxed and precise — there’s no teaching that; it’s a DNA thing. Or check out the 4 bars of trombone madness from Jon Blondell on “Crime Scene”! — or dig John Mills, featured throughout, delivering one great, stirring solo after another, as well as contributing all sorts of cool little ensemble touches. Mills is a miracle, and not just a minor one, either.
Chris Gage not only co-produced, engineered, and mixed the record, but evidence of his stunning musicianship can be found everywhere — piano, guitar (check out his scary dog guitar on “Fugitive”, or his perfect piano dialog with Lissa in “Reverie” – that’s the same musician! Great player, and a joy to work with.
Oh, it goes on and on. It’s a killer record. Lissa would be the first to tell you if it is, it’s because of everybody’s contribution, and that’s true enough, I suppose. But I was there from its first little glimmer, and I can tell you: this is Lissa’s record, through and through. The songs weren’t yet chosen, and she had little or no idea how, when, or with whom, but what she described to me then is what you have in your possession now: a record of songs by writers she loves and wants to honor, played by players she loves playing with — or knew she would love playing with if she could just get up the nerve to call them!
Well, she called, and they came, and we all played, and at last, at long last, it is my great pleasure and honor to present you with Lissa Hattersley’s debut as a solo artist.
Nerdgeek fanboy shameless dweeb alert! My advice: if muso chops worship bores you, if you can hear Jaco’s solo on (Used to be a) Cha Cha for the first time and not pass out, all that follows is gonna be unbelievably tiresome, even by the tiresome standards herin established…
to wit:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome “Return to Forever.”
The funny little man with the toupee and the adenoidal voice stepped aside, the band began to play, and in the summer of 1975 my life was changed, well, forever.
I grew up in Latin America. During my junior year of high school in Lima, my father accepted a transfer to Ahvâz, Iran, after years in Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I., Colombia, Ecuador, y Peru. I think there was a huge salary bump — there should’ve been, Ahvâz was a hellish place, 130° in the summer, a frigid muddy mess in the winter* — but I think it was his incurable wanderlust, which my daughter and I both share, that drove him to accept the transfer. Had we stayed in Peru, I’m sure I would’ve graduated high school there, but with the move the main choices were: the international school in Tehran (this was in the days of the Shah), a European school (I was lobbying heavily for the academy in Cyprus, hahaha), or a school in Texas. The last was arrived upon as the logical choice — inexplicably, my mom wanted me nearby, in Tehran, but by attending school in Texas for a year I’d establish Texas residency and avoid (even back then) more expensive out-of-state tuition costs.
So it was that we found ourselves in Austin, Texas, staying in an apartment on North Lamar Boulevard that summer of ‘75. Not far from the little house where my daughter would later live. And aak after that. Which is across the street from the state agency where I earned my first newspaper credit.
The opportunities for digression are infinite.
My parents were putting one lifetime in storage as they prepared for another, while I applied to a prestigious private boarding school here in Austin (after sailing through all exams and passing muster with my grades and such, I ran into a religious test which I failed miserably, and wound up going to perhaps the most secular school in North America — but I digress). And that’s how I found myself, in the summer of ‘75, discovering America.
Music from the US was hard to come by in Latin America. Most of the music in South American record stores was, naturally enough, South American, and the ratio of genius to crap was about the same as any record store. A little better, maybe. I listened to music acute to quality but indiscriminate to nationality. I’d get glimpses of what was going on in the states, but I lacked that immersion anyone in the US got, so I didn’t know what was going on. We relied on kids visiting the states, or new to living overseas, or embassy kids, who had access to all sorts of yanqui things via their commissaries. We had a fierce craving for American stuff, sometimes silly, sometimes sublime. For example: there was a group of us in Quito obsessed with Dr. Pepper, and when one of us came back with a six pack of the stuff we’d sniff and sip and moan like crazed wine experts. On the sublime side, I remember when a good friend more or less stole his State Department dad’s VW van to scream over to my house just to turn me on to some outrageous drumming by this cat named Frosty on a Lee Michaels album.
All of which is to say, digressionarily, I arrived on this peculiar soil more or less a blank slate. I still remember my first trip to an Austin record store. More like a candy store to me! I probably had 10 bucks in my pocket, so I could only afford 4 records, hahaha, and I still remember what they were: The Restful Mind, a Larry Coryell date with Ralph Towner, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott from the pioneering worldjazz group Oregon (I didn’t know any of those names, much less worldjazz; I liked the cover, and my fevered teenage brain liked the idea of a little stillness), Dizzy Gillespie’s Big 4 (Dizzy, Joe Pass, Ray Brown, and Mickey Roker devouring a bebop set — I grabbed it because I remembered Ray’s name from one of my parents’ Ella Fitzgerald records, and I believed {still do} Ray to be a bassist of Mount Rushmore eminence and the profoundest swing), a Doobie Brothers record because I’d heard them on the radio and the guitarist freaked me out (although I can’t remember the song I heard or the album I bought, I’m sure the guitarist was Skunk Baxter), and
oh, here’s where I prove the truthfulness I’ve dedicated myself to in these writings, hahaha
The Captain and Tennille.
Hey! I missed my enamorata in Peru, and love would keep us together! And they did a Willis Allen Ramsey tune!
about muskrats…
ANYway, hahaha, that’s approximately how wide open I was — a tail-less kite swooping in the strong winds of American culture. A fluttering moth at the bright light of popular music.
a flopping fish at the bottom of the texas bassboat of art
BUT I DIGRESS. One fateful night, as fate would have it, I was watching TV (an opportunity for digression I’ll resist) when a funny little man with a toupee, an adenoidal voice and an oddly wooden aspect looked at me straight through the ether and said,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome “Return to Forever.”
The show was Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, and what followed was the most stunning display of virtuosity and ensemble precision I’d ever seen. The caliber of musicians I’d been exposed to, especially in Lima, was extremely high — Lima was at least as big as LA in those days (I suspect it’s a good bit larger, now), and there were some bad motherfuckers roaming that town, believe me. But what Return to Forever was doing was breathtaking — 4 guys: Chick Corea on a battery of keyboards (synthesizers! wow!), Lenny White playing the drums left-handed with amazing speed and a killin groove, completely locked in with Stanley Clarke, standing next to him redefining the electric bass, somehow simultaneously evoking Larry Graham and John Coltrane, and Al DiMeola, who looked like he was about 16, playing incredibly fast clean lines with Santana-like sustain.
As awe-inspiring as they were individually — and each one of these guys was a world class, cutting-edge player — what stuck me then was the precision of the ensemble. The composition I heard on Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert (I have no idea what song it was) was intricate, textured, challenging — and it ROCKED.
British albums, probably because of the Beatles and The Stones (and maybe because the British weren’t down there murdering and pillaging like the good ole US of A), were much easier to come by in Latin America. I had heard Yes, ELP, King Crimson — and I dug what they were doing, but it was (to my ears) the work of very good rock players mucking about in a classical tradition that I revered. Addicted to Karajan and Solti leading the best classical players in the world, the prog rock thing felt pale and a little silly to me.
I know, I know: 7, you snob ass motherfucker
This …band… of fire-breathing monsters, man, the shit they were playing, the way they were playing it — it felt new to me. In that one song they played (was it Vulcan Worlds? I just can’t remember) I heard cats that could swing, funk, rock, and play blizzards of notes with nuance. Really fucking loud, but nuanced!
Can I digress here, hahaha? Here is a list of the artists on my most worn-out records** next to my turntable, Peru, 1974: Beethoven, Basie, Aretha, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, the soundtracks to Shaft, Superfly, and Enter the Dragon, Ella, Derek and the Dominos, the Beatles, Enrique Lynch y su Orquestra, Al Green, Carol King, Cat Stevens, The Mighty Sparrow, Deep Purple, and Baden Powell.
Whatta freak, hahaha. No wonder I need therapy! Thanks for listening, imaginary virtual shrink dude!
More than anything else, the thing that grabbed me about Return to Forever was this: here was a rhythm section (the band was essentially just that) that could not only play these ferocious amped up compositions, but they could’ve convincingly played with every artist I just mentioned.
And it blew my mind. They showed me what it meant to be an American musician. Who plays like that? — nobody, I know, but inside all those chops here were these jazz-playing monsters that got the whole thing — they acknowledged a much larger tradition, but more than that, they embraced it. Oh, those were different times, ya old fart, you might say, but I know so many young players who take exactly this sort of cross-cultural fluency for granted, and it’s to that generation of players that we owe a huge debt of gratitude. It might sound ridiculous, I know, and maybe Al wouldn’t be the first choice on a Muddy session — but you know what? — he might surprise you.
Tightening the focus a little more, the next brain-exploding thing was Stanley and Lenny: the way this bassist and drummer worked it out. Huge chops, grooves Mariana Trench deep, and able to step up, step forward, take a solo that would seize you by the throat and shake you to your core. Killer keys and guitar not exactly unheard of, but this depth — on electric instruments? — man, it was freakish! Crazy!
I hadn’t been playing for very long, maybe a little more than a year, when I saw RTF. The musician was rising in me, but he hadn’t yet taken over my life. If you’d asked me in the spring of ‘75 what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up,’ I probably would’ve said, “Karate instructor/comic book artist/mountain climber.” I was already, in very limited ways, a pretty semi-okay bass player. My dexterity was very good, and if you showed me a part, even a pretty complex one, I would have it together pretty dang quick. The best thing about me (then and now) was groove. I have a groove.
Give me groove, or give me death, hahaha.
But I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I didn’t know key from adam, all notes were equal entities to me. I don’t think anyone had even shown me the major scale yet. It was like I’d gone straight to Harmolodics without passing through melody or harmony, hahaha.*** For all that, though, I think my ear was good, and my aesthetic true. When I heard — and saw — Return to Forever on the teevee, I was pushed right to the edge of a cliff. I didn’t go over, I didn’t begin my lifelong freefall into musical infinity until early spring of 1976 when I experienced 3 firsts: real, serious French cuisine, LSD, and Stravinsky, hahaha. But that’s digressing forward!
From that strange little TV show, a great exploration ensued. I followed Chick and Lenny to Miles, and Miles will take you everywhere.
But that’s another story, one I look forward to writing. Tonight though, I’m going to go see Return to Forever at the Paramount Theater, on the very first night — the very first performance! — of their world tour! I’ve seen Chick maybe 4 times, Stanley 3 (once with Chick in a later version of RTF), Al once (a double bill with Weather Report!), and it’ll be my first time seeing Lenny, one of my favorite drummers in the world. Just thinking about it makes me want to practice — I remember the first time I tried to learn a Return to Forever song, I tried to work out Dayride, by Stanley Clarke. It all was easy enough, the notes, at least, if not the tone and groove he’s got — til I got to that boppish unison line, oh, I was sweating bullets, hahaha!
…but I digress…
* By way of assuring you I have no anti-Persian bias, I’d like to add my parents once lived in Pasadena, Texas, too, hahaha.
** Large, round, black discs made of ‘vinyl’, these objects, placed on a ‘turntable’, or ‘record player’, would produce recorded sound.
*** If you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, I warned you this was geeksville, didn’t I?
Okay, I’m geeking out in a major way. Return to Forever, the ’70’s fusion supergroup with Lenny White, Stanley Clarke, Al DiMeola, and Chick Corea, has reunited for a summer tour that starts right here in Austin, Texas. And I have a ticket! For the first night! Erk! Omigod! Is there any way for a 50 year-old man to squeal with dignity? Kind of a bass baritone rumblesqueal? I didn’t think so, hahaha.
If you’re hip, you’re already cringing — ’70’s? supergroup? reunion tour? jazz? fusion? Return to Forever? jazz rock? Shit, I’m making myself queasy!
I told you I was geeking out.
Check out Stanley at 3:03. I never stood a chance: when I saw these guys play, I was sunk. There was nothing else worth doing in life, only learning how to play mattered.
Austin Live Music Task Force Survey: Services to Musicians Exit this survey >>
1. From what perspective are you completing this survey? Check all that apply.
Musician √ Booking agent Artist management
Producer √ Other
Other (please specify)
bass god
2. What is the zip code where your business has its main work space or studio space?
04, yo.
3. What zip code do you:
live in 04 work in 04 keep office space 04 studio space 04 rehearse 04
4. Do you rent or own your home?
Rent
5. Do you own or rent your studio?
Rent
6. How much do you earn annually from music?
Less than $10,000
$10,000-14,999
$15,000-24,999
$25,000-49,000
$50,000-99,999
$100,000-or over Decline to answer √
7. How much do you earn annually from sources other than music?
Less than $10,000
$10,000-25,000
$26,000-50,000
$51,000-100,000
$101,000-or over
Decline to answer √
8. What is the primary purpose of your work in music?
performing locally/regionally
recording/production
touring
teaching
composition
other
Other (please specify) Make good music
9. What do you do related to music?
I play, I write, I tour, I record, I eat drink sleep and bleed music
10. Does the community offer you the necessary resources to work at, support, and perform and make your music? Why or Why not?
It is not the ‘community’ that enables or hinders me.
11. What 3-5 attributes or strengths of Austin have a positive effect on your music?
Those sunsets when that color happens
That water that rushes out of that fissure at the springs
All those beautiful women
That statue of Stevie
I can take money from D/FW, Houston, and SA without having to live there
12. How many years have you been involved in music professionally in Austin?
1 year or less
2-3 years
4-6 years
7-10 years
11-15 years
16-20 years 21-25 years 26-30 years √ over 30 years
13. What do you see as the Austin music community’s unique 3-5 assets? These could be individual or community strengths, resources, capacities, or organizations.
Look. Music worth hearing exists because it has to. Everybody running around looking for housing or mental healthcare or free tacos because they are musicians is a wanker.
Let’s feed children, okay, how ’bout that?
14. On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with the following community issues that impact our local music community
affordable housing NA low cost health insurance NA low cost health care NA job training NA availability of studio space NA educational loans NA business loans NA legal assistance NA parking/permits NA centralized information NA booking/management/professional services NA
15. Are we missing anything in Question #14 that you are concerned with or you would like to explain further? Please describe.
You’re seeing it, right? Your whole premise is off. Do you think Beethoven or Mick Jagger or Charlie Parker would give a crap about any of that?
16. How often do you use technical assistance or support services from outside organizations or individuals – e.g career and health and social services such as City of Austin, Austin Music Foundation, ACVB and HAAM. never
17. Have you used the services of any of the following in the past year? Please check all that apply. Health Alliance for Austin Musicians
Austin Music Foundation
Musicians Union
Texas Music Office
SIMS Foundation
City of Austin Cultural Arts
ACVB Music Office
Other (please specify)
Lord knows I’ve played enough benefits for them all.
18. What role should government play in supporting Austin’s music industry? Take care of humans, the species we musicians are a part of
19. Do you have any ideas for ways to improve the vitality of live music in Austin?
That’s the musician’s job, hahaha
20. What do you consider to be the 3 most pressing issues facing the music community of Austin?
The glut of musicians and organizations devoted to their own endless navel gazing
21. Do you have health insurance? no
22. Please indicate your current career status. Check all that apply.
I work full-time as a musician √ I work full-time in a non music job √ I have one or more part-time or occasional jobs in music (including seasonal). √ I have one or more part-time or occasional jobs (non music) √ I am unemployed √ I am a student √ I volunteer in music √ Other (please specify)
music all the time — I’ve got my bass in my lap right now, and it’s pulling me away…
23. What percentage of your income is derived from your music?
less than 10%
11%-25%
26%-50%
51%-75%
76%-100%
0% to 100%, hahaha
24. What percentage of your music income comes from outside Austin?
Less than 10%
11%-25%
26%-50%
51%-75%
76%-100%
0% to 100%
25. What, if any, facility needs do you have that are not currently being met?
I need the island of Tobago
26. What prevents you from securing the facility needs you require?
Tobagonians
27. What question should we have asked and how would you have answered it? Q. Do you think musicians are more important than plumbers? A. Depends
Posted in Exposition on April 22, 2008 by sevenstrings
Alright, lemme try to be completely clear. The subject of drugs is of course incredibly complex. I’m not here to condone their use. I emphatically condemn their abuse, lawful or unlawful, convenience store or pharmacy, street corner or Bolivia.
Alcohol has killed more of my friends than all the illegal ones combined. Tobacco killed my father and probably contributed to my mother’s death as well. Other people I love have been addicted to heroin or cocaine, suffered horribly and inflicted horrible suffering on those who love them. Some of them have died from overdose. Some have been murdered. One committed murder. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.
Drugs suck.
Except when they don’t.
This post is about one tiny skirmish in the war on drugs. As in most wars, one side claimed victory, but everybody lost.
you might see me tonight with an illegal smile
it don’t cost very much, but it lasts a long while
won’t you please tell the man I didn’t kill anyone
I’m just tryin’ to have me some fun
– John Prine
twenty years ago…
We were a six-piece rock band. We’d gathered at our drummer’s house for a rehearsal, but he was late, so we went up on the deck he’d built high above the carport behind his house, and fired one up. It was particularly good weed; in addition to being a superb drummer, Nimble was a gifted farmer, and he kept us in the big big, as we affectionately called it.
We’d barely smoked a third of the joint and were already high when we heard the sound of slamming car doors. Then a half dozen officers of the law came spilling around the back corner of the house, dressed in black, caps on backwards, wearing bulletproof vests, brandishing shotguns and automatic weapons: drug paraphernalia. Most of the cops were D.E.A.; a couple had the insignia of the local constabulary.
Stoned as we were, we just leaned on the railing of the deck, 15 or 20 feet above them, gazing down as they boiled around like angry ants. But not one of them thought to look up. Finally, a little embarrassed on their behalf, I put the joint into a slat in the woodwork and gently cleared my throat, hoping to let them know we were there without provoking a hail of bullets. Of course they freaked out anyway, and began screaming, “Freeze, motherfuckers,” and, “Get down, or we’ll kill you,” and, “Get those hands up,” and all the other clichéd commands men with guns and televisions are given to spouting. They dashed up the stairs, jammed gun barrels in our faces, and slapped the cuffs on us. Thus fettered, they led us to the empty hot tub Nimble had installed between the high deck and the back door of his house, and sat us down there so they could keep an eye on us. While one local cop watched us, ready to blast hippie musician scum with his tenner, or elevener, whatever the hell it was, the rest began to tear our friend’s house apart.
Nimble had a little farm out in the country, and on that farm he grew some ganj, E I E I O. A neighbor had guessed what was going on and alerted the authorities. They’d slapped a tail on Nimble, whose paranoia had lapsed after years of selling his cash crop to many local luminaries, among them several, um, high state officials. But the ongoing war on drugs was in full swing, and the D.E.A., in conjunction with local authorities, had landed on our drummer with their innumerable feet.
He wasn’t just late for rehearsal — he was busted.
Seven hundred lovely, centerfold quality marijuana plants had been found, and Nimble was looking at a stretch at the Hard Rock. Federal.
We sat in the empty hot tub on that late summer afternoon, hands cuffed tightly behind our backs, the mosquitoes enjoying delicious band tartar, watching and listening to our friend’s house get trashed. Mattresses were ripped open, holes were smashed in the walls and floors with sledgehammers, and, oddly, every dish in the kitchen was broken.
Are drugs often hidden inside of saucers?
These warriors were convinced they’d busted not just a pot grower, but a major drug dealer. They were sure they’d find guns, huge sums of money, stashes of cocaine or heroin, maybe even a few bodies. After awhile it seemed like they weren’t searching anymore, just tearing shit up for the sheer joy of it. At one point one of the Federal boys came out and triumphantly held a handful of white powder under our noses, saying, “What do you suppose this is?”
“Talcum powder,” we replied instantly, feeling badly for the poor misguided son of a bitch. Cocaine is some awful shit, a soul-killing scourge, and we detested it.
We were a very good band. Exploring the not-so-obvious connections between roots rock, country, New Orleans funk, Tejano, and psychedelia, it seemed to us that taking psychoactive substances might help illuminate our path. There was a communal, almost devotional aspect to our drug use. Above all a musician should be soulful, so when the cop displayed the white powder in an obvious (and soulless) effort to rattle us, hate and contempt for us oozing from his every pore, more than anything, we were saddened.
His ploy a failure, he tossed it in the air and went back to ripping the house apart.
Feathers from Nimble’s slashed pillows floated by us like snowflakes. Talcum powder and sheetrock dust hung in the air like cocaine.
After an hour and a half of being eaten by mosquitoes and taunted by cops, melting in the motionless August heat, our arms had gone completely numb. A couple of us needed to pee. We still hadn’t been charged with anything, and we’d begun to bond with the local cop assigned to guarding us. After all, he was an Austinite, just like us, and we’re almost a species, we Central Texans. By then the house was in total shambles. They hadn’t found anything, it was clear they weren’t going to, and we were obviously peaceful, so he took it upon himself to release us one at a time to relieve ourselves. Mercifully, after we’d done our business, he handcuffed our wrists together less tightly in front of our bodies.
One of the guitarists in the group, I’ll call him Duck, asked if he could play a cheap guitar that was lying in Nimble’s bedroom just off the deck. Lord knows the world loves a guitar player; the cop went and fetched it. Hands bound close together, Duck looked as though he was playing a ukulele. He started banging out a cool rhythm chop that we immediately recognized, and, laughing, we burst into singing “The Midnight Special.” Immediately, one of the D.E.A. guys came running out, purple with righteous musician-hating anger, and snatched the guitar away, cursing us. But the spell was broken: the tyrant was revealed as a buffoon, and we weren’t afraid.
Not long afterwards, having found nothing illicit, they reluctantly released us and left. Oh, they were pissed. But they had an evil pothead in custody, and that would just have to do.
It was well after dark. The cops had left a hurricane of destruction behind them. Our friend’s home had been devastated by shock troops, and he was a prisoner in a dirty, pointless war.
Completely freaked out, we lingered for awhile, trying to process the grim turn in our fortunes. Then, one by one, the band went their separate ways. I stayed behind, tried to clean up a little and secure the house.
Then I remembered. I walked back up to the deck, and as the night breeze lifted, I pulled that roach out of the woodwork, lit it up, and let the sweet, heavy smoke fill my lungs.
Let the midnight special, shine her light on me
Let the midnight special, shine her ever-loving light on me
Posted in Exposition on April 14, 2008 by sevenstrings
Some of my friends have scratched their heads at my comparison of Lincoln and Obama. Some of them have scratched their heads because their heads itched, too, but that’s another post.
Here’s an interesting piece from the NYRB, check it out.
