Does This Band Make Me Look Fat?

New CD available NOW!

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:51:00 +0000

Hi,

I'm here to tell you that there is a new cd available by me, and it's called Songs from Radio Free Song Club 2010, and you can buy it at this link.

It looks like this:

You'll have to trust me on this one, it's pretty good. Some of the songs are REAL good. You can decide for yourself once you buy it.

You can also pick up a copy of 1997's "classic" CD Out of My Way if you, like so many people, don't have a copy of it.

Either CD is priced reasonably at $10.

Thanks for your support, and I hope you like what you hear.

Peter

Christmas report, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:52:00 +0000

This post comes to you over half a year since the last one. Much has changed, mostly for the better.

I have all three of my beautiful children here with me in the house we bought this summer. My Smart Wife is poking around in the kitchen, preparing to cook a roast for the evening meal. There's about five inches of snow on the ground here in Durham. I have been working at a new job at the Durham Performing Arts Center as a ticket salesperson; I'm also able to help with the construction of emails and website entries.

Musically, I've been a little less active than in the past. The dB's album is not finished yet, six years on. We work on it when we can, but everyone has busy schedules. Will and his family have relocated here from Ohio, and that should make forward motion more plausible. Luego continues to record and play, and I'm called upon when I'm able to perform with them. I took on bass guitar duties with a local children's music band, Baron Von Rumblebuss and the Redd Zeppelin. That's been great fun; Smart Wife also constructed a fab outfit for shows.

Most exciting is the continued and thriving existence of the Radio Free Song Club. They've posted nine shows so far, but I've sent in a dozen songs now, each under the monthly deadline. Some of the new songs are just passable, but a few of them are really good, in my humble opinion. My colleagues' tunes are great impetus to create and do it well, never in any competitive sense but only as a personal best/quality control manner. I'm thrilled about RFSC and hope you all have been listening too.

My usual M.O. would be to apologize for not posting more and promise to be better at it; I think I won't do that this time as it seems grossly insincere, having done it many times here. Instead, I will say that I plan on being more organized and more career-focused in the year 2011 and will try to make this hangout a better place for you to see what I actually am doing.

Happy new year to you all!

Alex Chilton

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:58:00 +0000

Alex Chilton died today. His music and production profoundly influenced me and a generation of my peers and their bandmates. I feel fortunate to have known him a little and to have worked with him live and in the studio. Alex knew music inside out. He could sing it, he could play it, he could write it and he could record it. O my soul.

Newsflash and a note about Robin Holcomb

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:41:00 +0000

And the second installment has 'dropped'

Radio Free Song Club

My tune, "Don't Ever Leave", is referred to by me as an 'homage to Robin Holcomb'. If you're not familiar with her vast catalog of wonder, please go to her website and do some exploration. I was fortunate enough to get to record with Robin and her husband and collaborator Wayne Horvitz for her album Rockabye, having been stunned by her 1990 Elektra debut. Her latest album is John Brown's Body. I remain in complete awe of her originality and ability to convey a mood through matching lyric and music. Robin Holcomb is as original a songwriter as they come.

Radio Free Song Club

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:19:00 +0000

has gone live, as they say.

Please listen in to a neat new project that I'm involved with, which features monthly new song contributions from the likes of:

Peter Blegvad
Jody Harris
Victoria Williams
Freedy Johnston
David Schramm
Freakwater (Janet Bean and Catherine Irwin)
Laura Cantrell
Kate Jacobs

and your host
Nicholas Hill

Radio Free Song Club

2010

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 04:36:00 +0000

Happy New Year, and it looks pretty promising:

a.) I enter the new year employed
b.) there's music on the horizon from The dB's, Radio Free Music Club, Luego, the Jakeleg and the kids' shows.
c.) everyone's healthy
d.) nine years sans alcohol
e.) old debts have been squared
f.) my writer's block seems to have abated

Thank you for visiting here. I'm not the most consistent correspondent, but I'm certainly the least dependable and that should count for something. May your own new years be eventful only in good ways and full of love, friendship and great music.

PH

Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:52:00 +0000

We had a nice one in Durham. The children came away from it satisfied and exhausted. Smart Wife made a devastating French onion soup and a small roast beef sandwich which I had when I got home from the airport.

I got to experience "I Wish It Could Be a Wombling Merry Christmas Everyday" by Roy Wood and the Wombles, and I hope you do too.

I got everything I wanted, including hi-hat cymbals, and it was all very chill, with one exception: in the first half hour I was at work, I heard a father loudly berating his daughter for forgetting her book. His voice carried throughout the store, and the sound was harsh and unnerving. They came around the corner and the father announced that his daughter "needed a book." The girl looked like she was in shock but not unused to this. I addressed her, not Dad, and I showed her A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'engle. They bought it and left, and I hope she lost herself in that book when they were on the plane to wherever. Merry Christmas to them both.

The day was tempered with the bad news about the death of Vic Chesnutt. His friend Kristin Hersh has set up a fund for donations to help Vic's family with costs from his recent hospitalization and death.

Now we can not hear "Wonderful Christmastime" again for another eleven months, or "Santa Baby". My Christmas song this year was Darlene Love, and no, I didn't see her on Letterman for the twenty-third year but I wish I had.

Merry Christmas everyone, thanks for reading.

The sky

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:38:00 +0000

Yesterday, I got to work at 7am, as usual, driving through the dark from Durham where I live to the Employee Parking Lot. I worked at Terminal 1 which is on the older side of RDU airport.

There, to meet me, was a beautiful morning sunrise sky, all salmon pink and red and yellow. The east windows are across the hall from the store, a long line of glass panes that let you see a little take off and landing action, but mostly sky. And what a sky to enjoy, a living moving sunburst like on a 1959 Les Paul. For about ten minutes, I went about my business restocking shelves and helping customers, with the morning streaming in at me and a quiet satisfied smile on my face.

I left work at 3:30pm. The sky was already starting to move toward the evening, darkening slightly, a rich deep blue with scant clouds and mostly visible clarity. It took about twenty minutes to drive home from RDU. All through the ride, I was treated to a spectacular batch of broadening colors, culminating in a near sunset as I got off at my exit.

Last night, I took out the garbage in the cold night air. Looking up, I saw my third beautiful sky, with a big bright moon illuminating our porch from a rich blue cosmos. Speckled with a few stars, I admired the night for a couple moments until my lungs couldn't take the cold any more. Then I went inside, satisfied with the free and expansive wonders I got to enjoy for a day.

I wish I'd had a camera for all three of my moments, to help share the beauty with you all, because, as we all know, 'this blog is useless without pictures'.

You'll just have to take my word for it.

The View from the Airport

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Working at my new job is a strange affair.

It's a bookstore in name only; in reality, it's a newsstand that has a larger-than-average selection of books and stuffed animals, magazines and travel games. And no bottles of water, although we do carry water bottles. The first couple of hours' worth of customers basically want newspapers and no conversation. The management wants their adept booksellers to ply them with questions about our coupon club and our book drive, but mostly, the early morning customers are disinterested, anxious for their coffee to kick in and to board their flights on time. I don't blame them.

This experience is completely different from my old bookstore job in New Orleans. The airport store is all about moving the hit titles; we sell a lot of Grisham, Patterson and Cussler mass-market (small) paperbacks, and the Sarah Palin 'autobiography' as I mentioned in an earlier post--we have some customers who like to hide Going Rouge, the rebuttal to the Palin book, from view by putting Going Rogue over it or flipping it around. To protect themselves? I'm starting to think every conservative with a laptop has written a book on how wronged they've been and how bad they've had it. And we carry them all. There's no place for customers to sit and read, although some of the more intrepid ones sit on our stepstools in the mystery and romance ares, sprawling with their baggage and making whole sections of the store impassable to others.

The old store had deep catalog. The new one carries a Raymond Carver biography and no Raymond Carver books themselves. We had a local interest section, but nobody was interested so the titles got remanded to their predestined homes in the fiction alphabet.

The old store had lots of cds and dvds; the new one has Susan Boyle's weepy new album, a couple Christmas titles (Neil D. but not Bob D.), and some popular new action dvd releases in a cardboard dumper bin.

Of the 'make' items we have to concentrate on selling this month, one is a decent novel (The Piano Teacher by Janice Lee, which I'm actually reading during my lunch breaks), one is a weird little guide to the myriad things you forgot after you left school (I Used to Know That) and one is a stuffed panda bear. They are, in that order, progressively harder to shove down the throats of customers. Especially the bear. His name is Beckett. I'm anxious to see if Kafka the Kockroach shows up at the store next year, assuming there's a store next year.

We sell a lot of Malcolm Gladwell's nearly identical looking business books. We don't sell a lot of Chesley Sullenberger's memoir of crashing into the Hudson--big surprise there. All of the Twilight series move a lot of copies. Dan Brown's new hardback sells in quantity, which is good considering how many boxes of them we have in the tiny storeroom.

The Starbuck's next door plays soul music. We have no music playing in our store. I'm constantly leaning out, trying to catch the strains of William DeVaughn or Jackie Wilson, just to keep myself sane.

There's a window in the back of the store, ceiling high, that looks out over a jetway. It's got stripes across it, so it's hard to look through, try as I do. The concept of being tied down to a place that everyone else is leaving or returning to is interesting and a little sad, considering all the travel I've done in my life. I get there and leave by bus and car, not plane. I wonder if I'll ever get to fly away again someday.

Sometimes, mostly Tuesdays, we see color guards marching their slow step through the terminal, soon to be escorting a coffin back from the war. We give the military a ten percent discount on their purchases for their effort.

All in all, I'm glad to have this job. I don't want to lose it. My coworkers are all great, and we're all in the same boat (plane?) It's just weird and lonely there. I get to meet some nice people, and I've gotten some very generous donors to our book drive. But I'm hoping 2010 offers something even better and more creative for me. It would be nice to be a working musician again. Can't say as that looks too promising. But I've got one eye out for the future and progress and hope. And I wish the same for you, my dear readers.

Attention Shoppers!

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:40:00 +0000

Attention shoppers!

I'd like to do my annual drum-beating for Nice Shirt, Kid which is my Smart Wife's printing concern.

Besides her kids' t-shirts and onesies (fiddles and ukes are new)

she has towels and new toddler skirts--very cool repurposed wearables.

Here is where you'll find her: Nice Shirt, Kid on Etsy

(I'd like this stuff even if I didn't love her so much.)

Thanksgiving Day

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:17:00 +0000

It's really coming down outside, at the end of Thanksgiving Day 2009, Durham, NC. The day was lovely, although the two-year-old and I got only as far as the porch briefly. Her brother and mother went for a bike ride while we napped.

My days off from my job are very precious to me, so having a down day with the family was completely in order.

The day started with scrambled eggs, bacon and pancakes, and then the Macy's parade. We started with a parade in Philadelphia but settled for the usual fare which felt very forced and grossly commercial. I was pleased they had a heritage balloon, a replica of Artie the Pirate from 1947--I found this fun story of Artie's handlers, the Crane family.

We did not prepare a Thanksgiving feast this year. Our replacement stove, from the Durham Appliance Thrift store, came yesterday; it's great but we decided when the old one went on the fritz, we'd just have Middle Eastern or Chinese food instead. We drove to a Chinese restaurant out on Sherron Road which I'd called earlier in the afternoon, but they'd closed by the time we got there at suppertime. So we rolled back to Ninth Street and got pizza for the kids and falafel and schwarma sandwiches and ate at home. Grace was very long lists of the many things we were thankful for, and the food tasted especially good after that.

--

Here are a few of mine:

I'm very grateful to have my job. The people with whom I work are intelligent, interesting and diligent. Other than free coffee, those are about the most important things to have at your job.

My music has been very active of late. That feels good to acknowledge.

The family is healthy and happy, housed and schooled and loved and fed.

I am surrounded by friends, physically and electronically. I've mended some fences, and I see more to mend soon.

Sleep, which I used to consider vastly overrated, is a premium, is now a fleeting commodity that I work to find excuses to enjoy.

--

Now I'm hanging out with Smart Wife, watching Paul McCartney rock CitiField like he did Shea Stadium, yawning and getting ready to happily head to bed.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, good night.

My new life

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:10:00 +0000

Again, apologies for the length of time between entries.

I am now employed again, after a year of sitting on my duff, unable to find suitable work in the music business post-Hootie. It's true, I have been playing with Luego, and Chris and I released that album. But as far as income, it hasn't been anything that the family can depend on.

So I now work at *a book store* at the airport.

Those of you who know me, know that I used to work at *another book store* in New Orleans, at one of the large stores. It was a wonderful experience, as jobs go: I met Smart Wife there, made a lot of friends, had two of the best bosses imaginable, got to sledgehammer fixtures to pieces, learned a lot about books, people, shopping habits and what a steady diet of Burger King can do to a person.

This new *book store* experience several years down the line is proving slightly different. It took me a few weeks to get my airport security clearance due to some dodgy paperwork issues from the New Orleans Traffic Court archives they got ahold of. A lawyer friend of a lawyer friend in NO helped sort that one out (thanks, Mark) and I'm now badged--the head of badging repeatedly told me that if I just changed my application to read 'guilty' of the charge in question, he'd have no problem issuing me a badge. I explained that I was not guilty, would not change my application and that we would have to wait for the paperwork. I did not wish to misrepresent the facts in the matter, regardless of whoever's convenience I was hampering (mostly my own), which is not too much to ask.

My hours are usually 7am to 3:30pm, which means I'm up around 5:15 showering and trying to eat breakfast quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping family too much.

I'm now entitled to park in the employee parking lot which is located about as far away from the terminals as possible. You pass a cemetery to get to it, and the bus trip from the lot to the job ads another fifteen to thirty minutes to the commute.

The badge also facilitates going through the TSA security checkpoint. As a badged employee, I slip to the front of the line, barging ahead of frantic travelers late for their flights. I don't have to remove my belt or shoes like anyone else would have to do. I send my lunchbox through the x-ray machine and meet it out the other side. (I sense that my yogurt cup would get taken away by the 'authorities' since it's more than three ounces, so I don't chance taking it through; I miss yogurt for lunch, but the captive audience situation that occurs when you're inside the terminal is just too expensive for my budget. So it's ham sammies and pretzel sticks from home every day.)

The stores are small, and they have hit-driven inventory. Today, for example, the Sarah Palin 'autobiography' goes on sale, and I'm sure we've had many many boxes of the book delivered. We will sell plenty of those to travelers, despite the book's hardcover format (fliers prefer paperbacks, obviously). We sell a lot of John Grisham, James Patterson, Oprah-approved titles, Harvard Business Review tomes, magazines and newspapers. We don't have a very deep selection nor far-ranging, but apparently that's not what The People want, according to the *book store's* braintrust in *another city*. The look-up system for what we have is slow and not very user-friendly compared to *the system* which we had at the New Orleans store.

Our registers are big stodgy dinosaurs with floppy disc drives. The functions they perform are are done in a sluggish, clanky manner, and everything has to be done in a very specific order. They mostly work fine, but sometimes keys get stuck so bad that you have to turn the things off and back on to get them to do their jobs.

The storeroom in Terminal 2 where I mostly work is claustrophobic. It's hard to get to the shelves where the stock is, and then it's hard to see the spine-out titles for all the books on the shelves in front of them. There's no desk for any of the General Manager's work. (Or for me to eat my lunch.) There's a tiny fridge there, but you usually can't get to it, since there are books in front of its door, waiting to be boxed up and returned.

There are two stores, one in each terminal. We get waves of customers, as you might imagine, and when a flight is delayed due to weather like we had last week, folks like to come in and kill time in the bookstore. In 2009, *the book store's* employees are expected to greet every customer and do a bunch of 'make' selling, specific items that the braintrust deems important. One that's been falling flat has been "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" (or is it "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"?), a modern revision of the public domain Jane Austen classic that features additional dialogue and plot elements. It's really hard to sell that to people, and I can't imagine what the higher-ups at *the book store* were thinking.

The scuttlebutt is that the chain has only several months before it goes belly-up. It's not hard to see why people think that. Meanwhile, it's a job for me, temporary for the moment. Hopefully, in January, I can be made permanent so that I can get the benefits to kick in; even if *the book store* goes down in flames, Smart Wife is right when she says "it's easier to find a job when you HAVE a job." I am continuously scanning the craigslist ads and keeping my ear to the ground for anything that looks promising.

Think of me when you're rolling over in bed at 6am. I'm probably heading toward the park-and-ride as you shut your eyes and fall back to sleep.

*amended 1/10

Goodness

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:14:00 +0000

This is an interesting week. I'm rehearsing with three groups, playing different instruments for each. And I have two performances on Friday.

Sometimes, I truly feel like a professional musician. (I know, you're saying "yes, Peter, ahem, you ARE one, silly man" but when you live inside of me like I do, it can seem otherwise...)

And I also feel like a professional songwriter ("yes, Peter, ahem...") I just found out that I recouped my publishing advance from twenty-three years ago. It took forever, but now I get to actually see some royalties from my dB's songs when they get used in movies and get played on the radio.

Life is very good right now, despite my continuing unemployment. (Can Powerball be far behind?)

The further adventures of Pete and Pete (and Steve and Scott and Linda)

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:27:00 +0000

Smart wife and I got a babysitter last night and hauled our ordinarily sleepy selves over to Cats Cradle for an evening of music from Steve Wynn, Scott McCaughey, Linda Pitmon and Peter Buck. They're travelling around the country in a Sprinter, playing each other's songs and generally having a great time.

And there's a wealth of material being performed, too. Steve and Scott have vast and deep catalogs from which to draw. There were Young Fresh Fellows and Dream Syndicate classics roaring through the set, along with music from this band's latest CD The Baseball Project: Volume One, Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. I'm not a baseball guy, to say the least (hell, anyone who knows me knows that sports are not very important in my life, outside of Tarheel basketball), but the songs on Volume One are great and enthusiastic paeans to the Great American Pastime. "Ted Fucking Williams" may not get a lot of commercial radio airplay, but it's got a singalong chorus that's a hit in my book.

I got called up during their encore to play on covers of "Teenage Head", "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White" and "Ballad of John and Yoko" on Pete's Eastwood Mosrite-esque electric guitar (he was running bass for most of the night except when he picked up a solid-body Rickenbacker 12-string for songs like "Medicine Show".) It was great fun to play with those folks. Steve, Linda and Peter and I have a lot of history together over the years, and I'm glad I share a little of the modern-day Baseball Project vibe onstage with them.

PS: I borrowed the picture from So It Goes, hope they don't mind but they can let me know if they do, and I'll take it down.

Meet Me at the Station, Don't Be Late

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:56:00 +0000

(No pictures yet, but I'll try to add them if any surface.)

Part of our trip to New Orleans was the aforementioned birthday for the Sweet Sixteener. Another was to perform a show at my old haunt, Carrollton Station, where the Continental Drifters had reconvened several months before.

I assume I don't have to tell my readers that I was a bandmate of the illustrious Susan Cowsill for ten years. We made some great music together, and despite our parting of the ways, we've remained friends. A couple years ago, I wanted to come back to New Orleans to perform Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights album as part of Susan's Covered in Vinyl series, in which she and the band learn an entire album end to end. Unfortunately, my schedule got crazy, and I had to bail on the show and Susan's band.

Fortunately, we were able to snag a Saturday at the Station that had been the property of the talented Kinky Tuscaderos, whose bassist Mary LaSang also plays with Susan in her band as well as the Cowsills.

We had a little confab beforehand so that everyone's minds were put at ease; I had worried that we'd need to learn all the words without cheat sheets (not one of my high suits these days), and Susan was afraid she wasn't going to be "Linda" enough for me. She said, "It's like my brother Bob with the Beatles songs," and I knew what she meant. My reputation for, ahem, authenticity precedes me, I'm afraid. "Persnickety" is what her brother Barry had called me. In the C. Drifters, I was referred to as 'the professor' sometimes (and countless other terms as well), but I let her know that it was about her singing the songs in her style and not trying to replicate what was already there. Heaven knows, I'm not RT on guitar, so anyone expecting that would be better served buying the record instead! And she told me that lyric sheets and chord charts were completely acceptable. You could probably hear our respective sighs of relief as far away as Baton Rouge...

Susan, her husband and former Drifter drummer Russ Broussard, and Mary were already running through some of the songs when we arrived on Friday. Susan and band had just finished learning and performing The Jackson 5's Greatest Hits, which took a lot of work. So for them to jump back in and start up on a new record right afterward showed their tenacity and respect for their craft. I was, to say the least, humbled and impressed.

We got through six of the songs together, me with my borrowed Stratocaster, trying to remember what life with a vibrato bar was like. Mary had to leave and wouldn't be available for a Saturday day-of-show rehearsal, but she'd obviously done her homework so thoroughly I was not sweating it. At least where the bass was concerned....

It's a weird experience, learning a whole album. SOtL has only eight songs (the CD release had "Living in Luxury" on it, but Russ and I had agreed that we should stick with the vinyl release specifically). Some of the gigs Susan and Russ have done with the CIV series have featured albums with a lot more material, so it was like a vacation for them to do this (so they said). Plus with me handling the Richard lead vocals, Susan was off the hook for a bunch of it. We could have had her sing all the songs, I suppose, but it was more fun to split it up; in the Drifters days, we'd done a lot of RT and Fairport and Sandy Denny songs, some of which appeared on our Listen, Listen EP from 2001.

Saturday arrived, and Russ, Susan and I ran through the rest of the album without Mary. We talked about what else to play, and some of the other Drifter/RT choices were suggested. (Mary'd already charted them, naturally.)

We got to Carrollton Station around 9, loaded in, and listened to and enjoyed the Kinky Tuscaderos. Great energy, wonderful harmonies and topnotch songs, including some intriguing covers of Pretenders, Pixies and Paul Revere and the Raiders. I'd worked on guitarist Ruby Rendrag's solo album a few years ago, but I had no idea how superb a performer she was live.

My pedal board decided to die on me, after having worked splendidly at rehearsal that afternoon. Having dumped into a bag all the alternate power sources I could've used, I ended up with my tuner and a Danelectro delay pedal going into my Hot Rod Deluxe. None of that fancy Rotovibe pedal and tremolo I'd practiced with.

Susan gave a short introduction, turned the mic over to me. I asked the assembled to enjoy themselves, and we started up the chug of "Don't Renege on Our Love". I could barely stop smiling, even with the dreadfully aggravated lyrics. Apart from a reaming of the little riff that went into the ending by yours truly, it seemed like the evening was going to be just fine.

Once again, I'll make the broad assumption that most of my readers are familiar with the Shoot Out the Lights album, and if you're not, you definitely want to remedy that situation.

Song by song:

"Don't Renege"
"Walking on a Wire" handled beautifully by band and Susan, as I'd expected. The vibrato bar note going into the second line of the second verse was really springy, but the solo was good. The very ending was long and elegant.
"A Man in Need" I had a lot of fun singing. Two days later, I'm still singing it. Even without a Watersons to provide background vocal support, Susan and I covered what we could and it was more Delaney & Bonnie than Richard and Linda.
"Just the Motion" was the one I'd always hoped to hear Susan sing, and she did not disappoint. I think the crowd was completely bowled over by it. I know the band was.
"Shoot Out the Lights" was where the string broke on the Strat. Oops. Celebrity guitar tech Bill Davis (founder and guitarist of the legendary Dash Rip Rock) fixed it, but I did the song on my Telecaster/Esquire. It was very powerful, and I tried to evoke some of RT's stuff, but ended up ripping through on my own merits. I think I done purty good. (One person came up at the end of the night and said he didn't know I even played guitar. That's what happens when you don an accordion too long, I guess.)
"Back Street Slide" riotous fun, ala "Matty Groves". Russ is a grad from the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, so the slippery time signatures that come along with music from the Fairport school is no problem for him. Mary and I were counting away alongside him. Once again, Susan and I tried to hit the highlights of the background vocals, and I think we did admirably.
"Did She Jump or Was She Pushed" required my repeated dexterity on a Dm7sus4 chord. I'm not going to make the leap of faith that I have earlier that my readers are intimate with this chord, but I'll tell you it's a stretch to get all your fingers to cooperate and fret it over and over again, and it's a stone drag when you can't get all the notes to sound. Mostly, my digits obeyed me, although I discovered I hadn't retuned my low string to E--I got it there before the first chorus, albeit clumsily. Susan's lead vocal was suitably spooky. We got to do that nice modal (I think it's modal) harmony on the second verse ("she used to live life, she used to live life/with a vengeance".) My solos, again, were attempting to channel RT's originals, but it cross-faded with my own notes as well. Hopefully, the cross-polination worked.
I jumped right into "Wall of Death" as the applause for "Did She Jump" was still going. That one was valedictory as it is ending the record. We had a lot of fun playing it and singing together.

And just like that, eight songs later, it was done. We did some more cool stuff after that, including more tips o' the collective tam-o-shanter to Richard and Linda:
"I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight"
"The Poor Ditching Boy"
"The Rain, the Park and Other Things" (The Cowsills) joined by our friend Paul Sanchez on vocals
"Sit Down, I Think I Love You" (Buffalo Springfield) also with Paul on guitar and vocals
"Nowhere Man" (Beatles) with Bill Davis on guitar and vocals--funny how we all knew what harmony to take
"The Rain Song"
"Someday" which I don't think I'd ever played on guitar before!
"1952 Vincent Black Lightning"/"Matty Groves" with me and Russ
"River of Love" by Susan's late brother Barry, my first contact with their talented musical family

It was a splendid night, with a lot of old friends in attendance. Even the little flubs didn't matter in the long run; we made a game showing and did right by an album that has always meant a lot to us.

***

Thanks to Russ and Mary for holding down the bottom so proficiently. Thanks to the Kinky Tuscaderos for their fine set and allowing us to invade their night. Thanks to Eric at Carrollton Station for agreeing to it as
well. Thanks to Sarah and my kids for being so cool and bearing with me learning and stressing over it. Thanks to Richard and Linda for putting the thing out in the first place, and most of all, thanks to Susan for wanting to do this and making it happen the way it did.

Sixteen

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:25:00 +0000

Yesterday, my daughter turned sixteen years old. Her stepmom and stepsiblings and I piled into the minivan for the long ride from Durham to New Orleans so we could be there for the celebration.

You don't turn sixteen every day.

I can clearly recall my own birthday back in 1972. The night before, I was supposed to rendezvous with my friends at a golf course shelter we would inhabit and drink Mickey's in after midnight, so that we could all trip on some new LSD in town. (Yes, I know... but that was then...) This was to require sneaking out of my parents' house and traveling about half a mile in the newly fallen snow.

So sometime after my parents were fast asleep, I made my way to the shelter and dutifully ate my tab of acid as the snow fell silently. I must have waited for at least two hours, but my friends never showed. Psychedelia aside, I was starting to get really cold. The walk home was a little more difficult, to say the least. The crunch of the snow underfoot was deafeningly loud. I felt like I was on auto-pilot. Trying to creep back inside without waking my mom and dad sounded like a demolition derby. I slipped back in my bed and made patterns with the black and white acoustical tile instead of sleeping.

Still woozy and slightly trippy as daylight broke, I sat with my parents and opened some presents in their bed, trying not to belie my mental state. After breakfast, my dad and I walked across the I-40 bridge to Thruway Shopping Center, where I spent some of my birthday money on the first Blue Oyster Cult album. I listened to that record all day; that night, I finally connected with my pals who were in much better shape than I, and we decided that BOC was excellent.

My daughter's birthday celebration was far more civilized. Her mom had engineered a confusing scenario which involved a scavenger hunt that was scheduled for the next day, basically avoiding much of any acknowledging of the actual birthdate itself. Surreptitiously, she'd arranged for a party bus with sixteen of her closest friends from school to come pick her up at her house, for an evening of deranged teenage fun, which fortunately now doesn't involve LSD or alcohol or snow. They rode to a high school football game and to a local dessert bakery called Sucre for a special cake. From there, a few of her pals (chaperoned by her mom) spent the night at a nice hotel in downtown New Orleans. We haven't seen her yet today, but I bet she had the time of her life and feels utterly overloved.

And even though she didn't get to bed until 6am (just about when her sibs were waking up), I bet she feels better than I did on the day after my sixteenth birthday.

Children of all ages

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:42:00 +0000

I'm the parent of three children, ages 16, 6 and 2. They're at varying and appropriate stages in their social development, it would seem. They are a source of pride in that their upbringing includes manners which get used a lot. "Thank you" has always been a part of their vocabulary--to hear the six-year-old acknowledge a snack feels really great as his dad. My teen is polite too, and people always comment to me on her abundance of grace, charm and ease. (The two-year-old is learning how to use the potty, and that's plenty for her at the moment.)

It's not out of the realm of belief that people reflect their parents' upbringing. And even in cases where the parenting was either neglectful or wanting in quality, people have the ability to see what kind of difference civility makes and try to retrofit it and implement it in their own lives.

But nowadays, civility and manners and tact have taken a back seat to shock value and saying what's on your mind right when you think it. Because heaven knows, that sort of stuff is far more important in 2009 than anything as arcane as behaving in public or thinking before you speak. Trash-talking in sports is celebrated and encouraged; airing complaints in public is also completely accepted. Don't ever hold back your feelings, it would be untrue to yourself.

Yesterday was a banner day for that, with Serena Williams and Kanye West and their bad behavior. I guess we simply have better access to that with communication advancements, assuming stuff like that's always been going on. Now we just get it on live feed on TV, and the world can revel at it. Gee, come to think of it, all of last week was pretty ripe for interruptions and rudeness. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouting at President Obama during his speech to Congress defied decorum handily, and in a place where decorum has always been and always should be paramount.

Yet what I find when I look on the commentary that accompanies news stories about these celebrities is even more shocking. Many people feel that they were well within their rights to yell and threaten, that their behavior was acceptable because they were speaking the truth. Decorum is so 'old school' that it is unimportant. Manners are for the weak and gullible. It's the only way things can get done in 2009. They speak for those who feel the same way but are too restrained to say anything. It's justified because they feel it.

That kind of acquiescence is depressing. Someone's failing here. It's hard to stick this one to their parents, because all three of these folks are adults. And they should know better. And they probably do, but they're forgiven and embraced by so many other people that they get wholly validated for their bad behavior. And if there's any attempt at an apology to the wronged party, it's usually couched in some way that suggests that the feelings expressed are to get people off their backs, rather than that they're actually ashamed of their actions.

I wish parents would keep these shining assclown examples in mind when they're raising their youngsters. They might want to invest in the Munro Leaf volume illustrated above. It's still pertinent, and it's an entertaining way to make your point.

While you can't police your kids when they become adults, you can do your best while they're in your care to inform them that manners and thoughtfulness are always the preferred way. We have the six-year-old count to ten when he's mad, so that he doesn't say something he'll regret later. Would that Kanye West could muster up that kind of preventative measure so the rest of us don't have to cringe at his constant public rudeness.

Tuesday

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:56:00 +0000

I've been worried lately because I didn't pre-order the Beatles mono box set that's coming out on Tuesday like all the smart kids did months ago. My friend from New Orleans, Joe Adragna, equipped me with mp3s of mono mixes, and that's kept me going and my appetite whetted for months now. But my family has also developed a ravenous taste for the Beatles and would love to be able to simply slip a disc into the player rather than trying to weed through Daddy's iTunes to try to figure out where "Taxman" is (the six-year-old's favorite song, along with "I'm a Loser").

So that just means that I'll be standing at the front door of my local cd store Tuesday morning, like so many folk will be doing that day, in hopes that the people who pre-ordered the mono box will a.) have already found it elsewhere or b.) have forgotten to come and pick it up. The chance of that happening, of course is almost nil. So I may be empty-handed upon my return home.

Meanwhile, thanks to the generosity of some of my dear friends, I do have advance copies of both the Big Star and the Chris Bell remasters.

Anyone who knows me even slightly is aware that this canon of work is probably the basis of most of my songwriting and my audio qualifications. I've had Big Star albums since they were in vinyl, those thick cardboard sleeves in which Ardent proudly housed them all those years ago. They have always sounded great to these ears, even when I was trotting around a cassette of the Chris Bell mixes that a Memphis friend slipped me--obviously not the highest of -fi, but that was part of the mystique at that point, like some unearthed treasure.

Well, here's everything in its most pristine state and replete with bonus tracks and alternate mixes. I'm a wowed state. The shocking brightness of stuff like Radio City sounds, of course, completely natural to me now (what wouldn't, after thirty-five years of constant play?), but the intense clarity of the instruments is very exciting and powerful in a new way.

Four cds of Big Star. Two cds of Chris Bell. An embarrassment of riches. So much to work through and enjoy anew.

My recommendation for those of you still unfamiliar with Big Star and Chris Bell: if your local store is sold out of Beatles, go home, wait a week, grab these two packages up and settle in for some high quality songs, performances and production.

Then you and I will pick up the mono box later on, after the initial tsunami has subsided.

Summer vacation?

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:54:00 +0000

Naw, not so much. Probably the world's crummiest blogger, knowing there's no excuse like no excuse to keep from writing.

Plus I'm back on Facebook, and that's a big ol' time vampire... if you need to know my status updates....

Actually, I did have a nice summer. I put out a cool album with Chris, do you have it yet? We did some shows, played on the radio a couple times too. (There are more coming up, so if you've missed us so far, you still have more chances to miss us down the line.) Some rock gigs with Luego around town. I started my kids' shows again at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham. Finally got my father's ashes interred in the cemetery in Hudson, NY. Got to play with my little kids a lot. Some of this stuff is unfamiliar to me, having been a touring summer dad for many years.

I have good news, though. Thanks to the nice people at Arbor Ridge, I am about to launch my for real website at www.peterholsapple.com in about a week. It looks beautiful, is completely navigable, will be mostly staffed by myself and is bound to get spammed hard very soon after 'going live'. Don't try to go there now, it'll just take you back here again.

But now that I have your attention, watch this space for details!

XO
PH

Kicksville 66, a place you must visit

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Kicksville 66 is Miriam Linna's new blog. Miriam, one of my first New York pals along with her co-conspirator Billy Miller, runs the empire known as Norton Records for many years. It is a mighty place, full of the most crazed rock and roll music ever invented and committed to tape (much involving Miriam and Billy's band, the A-Bones); this blog, however, starts years before, when Miriam came to NY from Kent, Ohio in 1976 to play drums for the Cramps. It is the kind of first-person account that blogs should be: expertly written with energy and wit, and recalled intimately and comprehensively (and with pictures). It is a story set in the beginnings of the New York music scene that I, like Miriam, followed from afar via magazines and records, and that the dB's became part of a year or two later. I'm so excited this exists, and each new entry will be savored like an issue of Kicks Magazine always has been.

New Orleans trip, Pt. 4 - one vignette I forgot

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:57:00 +0000

After we demolished the insides of Mark's house and shed, we left the detritus on the sidewalk of St. Bernard Avenue to be picked up at some point. Among the storm-ravaged stuff were old amps, Drifters' cds and Mark's backup Fender Precision Bass. (Mark had evacuated with only his main bass, the old Precision with what I believe is an anodized pickguard.) The backup bass was in pieces and had been submerged in the toxicity for quite a while.

At some point, Robert went by the remains of the house and grabbed what was left of the backup bass and took it back to Memphis where he and his family had settled after the storm. I don't think Mark gave the bass a thought, knowing how everything else in his home and utility space had been decimated.

Earlier this year, when Chris and I played at Folk Alliance, we stayed with the Mache family in their comfortable digs. Robert said "Peter, I have to show you something." He pulled out a Fender Precision bass and asked me if I recognized it. It DID look familiar, but I wasn't sure why. Its finish was, for want of a better word, rotten; the headstock's varnish had pocked into a weird kind of hoary skin, very different from what it had looked like before Katrina.

He explained that he'd rescued the bass in pieces from Mark's house, put it back together, cleaned it up and got it working again, and he planned to present it to Mark when we did the Drifters' gig at Carrollton Station. I was very moved by this act of love on his part, and I couldn't wait to see how it would happen.

Well, it happened like this. Robert, at the Station, showed Susan the restored bass and asked her when she thought he should present it to Mark. Susan, wiping away tears, said he should wait until after the show. But Robert decided the time to do it was right before we played.

Consequently, you had a stage full of Drifters, all knowing the story of the bass and its return to its owner, all choking back emotion knowing we had a set to play. In the center of it all was Mark, reunited with his old Fender, completely beside himself with joy and crying, and he told the assembled onlookers the story of the bass' resurrection. I think everyone at Carrollton Station who learned the story of the bass was similarly overwhelmed.

Just another happy ending that week....

(Mark Walton, Robert Mache, Susan Cowsill and the bass in question.)

New Orleans trip, Pt. 3

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:22:00 +0000

Friday comes right after Thursday; I think they move it closer in New Orleans to squeeze every ounce of weekend out of visitors. I woke up with barely a voice left from rocking the Circle Bar and then visiting with old friends there. Gee, good work, I only have the main show I came down for left to do...

Carrollton Station is my old haunt in New Orleans. It's a former workingman's bar, located kitty-cornered from a 'car barn' for the St. Charles streetcar line. I played every Sunday there for years, inviting visiting and local songwriters to join me on stage. It was there that I was serenaded for my birthday one year by Graham Parker and Bob Andrews AND Pat McLaughlin. The huge wooden sign on stage with the streetcar on it had fallen on my daughter's rental violin once and shattered it; I was pleased to note that it was now permanently secured on the back wall. I'd spent many nights there, starting years before I moved to New Orleans, so coming back was a trip to familiar circumstances.

We had decided on a noon soundcheck so that those who wanted to get over to Jazzfest would have the maximum amount of time to spend there. Equipment got set up as it trickled in once the extra PA gear was in place. Eric, the proprietor, had gotten a huge police barricade and was going to use it to protect rented floor monitors from overeager patrons who would ordinarily rest their beers on them. The problem was that the barricade, if set in front of the low stage at Carrollton Station, was as high as the performers' thighs; they looked adjustable but they had only one height. I'm not sure how, but we talked Eric out of using the barricade, and it spent the whole day and night out on the back patio of the club.

(from the monitor board, looking across)

For soundcheck we were joined by by our opening act, A Fragile Tomorrow, who had driven down from New York to play with us. The band are friends of mine from Hootie days; three brothers and a friend who write and play thoughtful and intelligent rock music. Susan and I guested on their last album (via the miracle of internet technology and their producer Malcolm Burn), and they completely flabbergasted Don Dixon when he heard them.

Miranda joined us, having left school early. Robert's daughter Vivian came with him, and the two of them palled around the empty bar.

We got monitor levels, everything seemed to be working and we tried a couple songs before breaking. Susan had an appointment to meet someone at the Fairgrounds, and many of us were starved so a crew went to Liuzza's for lunch.

I tried to spend the next few hours silent or at least quiet. Silence is hard for me, being an inveterate chatterer; many of the people I've admired the most in this life are the ones who are the quietest. I always feel like an alarm going off around people like that. So in my effort to preserve my voice until the show, I napped for a couple hours, since that's one of the rare times in a day that I'm not jabbering.

I dropped Mark and Dana off and sought a parking space near the Station. Rich had let me print up set lists on his printer, and Robert, Mark and Vicki did a little red-penciling to shore up some 'mid-tempo gluts' that Drifter sets have historically been prone to wallowing in.

A Fragile Tomorrow got the show going, and they played great. If you get a moment and give a listen to the music on their myspace page, you'll understand why I enjoy them so much. Crowning moment for me was Sean Kelly telling his li'l bro' Brendon "you know what to do" and then the young lead guitarist swung his Gibson Melody Maker behind his head and began choking out the Hendrix riffery. Then he picked the strings with his teeth (we had a short discussion about orthodontistry after the set, but I doubt it'll dissuade this guitar hero in the making). I couldn't find my accordion when they called me, Susan and Russ up on stage, but Susan located it and we went up a song later to reprise our roles on "Zydeco Girl" (a song Sean wrote about Susan). To me, the most exciting thing to discover about this cool band was Sean Kelly's showmanship and easy control of the stage and his band. I hope for great things for these guys; they deserve it.

(L to R: Brendon Kelly, Sean Kelly, Shaun Rhoades from A Fragile Tomorrow)

Then it was time for us to get motorvatin' up to the stage.

Without the anxious/sleepy monitor guy we had at the Threadheads 'patry' riding herd over us, we got everything together in a comparatively short amount of time. Then we assembled offstage and came on, one by one, to a roar of applause. It felt great to be back.

I can only say that the gig we did a couple days prior was greatly outshined by the length and strength of the Continental Drifters at Carrollton Station. We had rehearsed about fifty songs, made two sets of about fifteen each with the plan to do more if time and interest on the audience's part warranted it.

Here are the sets:

1. A Song for You - by Gram Parsons, the first song most of us recorded together
2. Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway
3. Drifters - not a dry eye onstage or in the audience, I think
4 Mixed Messages
5 Spring Day in Ohio
6 Don't Do What I Did (featuring Miranda on tambourine)
7 Watermark
8 You're Gonna Need Somebody - Robert's big turn at the mic on a Richard Thompson song
9 Way of the World
10 Heart/Home
11 Someday
12 Daddy Just Wants It to Rain
13 Get Over It
14 Highway of the Saints - Drifters' founding drummer Carlo Nuccio joined us for this one on guitar and vocal
15 The Mississippi - Carlo switched to drums for a song he wrote with Ray Ganucheau

Carrollton Station audience before set one

After a short break we returned with:

1 The Rain Song
2 Some of Shelly's Blues - Mike Nesmith cover from our first album
3 Live on Love
4 I Want to Learn to Waltz With You
5 Look at All the Things - Crazy Horse cover, in honor of Neil's turn at Jazzfest that weekend
6 Na Na
7 Invisible Boyfriend
8 Cousin
9 Anything - me, Robert and Vicki - the 'pee break' song of yore for the rest of the band
10 Farmer's Daughter - Beach Boys/F. Mac fave of ours
10 Tomorrow's Gonna Be - Susan on bass, Mark on guitar and vocal, another big fave
11 Peaceful Waking
12 Who We Are, Where We Live
13 Meet on the Ledge - our take on the Fairport Convention song, great inspired harmonies

and then we came back for an encore with:

14 Dedicated to the One I Love - Drifters do Mamas and Papas
15 Tighter Tighter - the Alive 'n' Kickin' hit

And then it was over.

I think we played really well and sang our collective asses off. We actually had a lot of fun playing, which, as Alex Rawls noted in his review, had been notably absent around the time of Better Day. I guess we followed the advice in Mark's song, and we got over 'it'.

Lots of sweet compliments from old friends who'd traveled a long way to come see us specifically. I was left reminded that the Continental Drifters meant (and apparently still mean) a lot to people. I discovered that Miranda had left with the Kellys for Cafe Du Monde in the middle of the second set. It was great that they all enjoyed each other's company so much, BFFs I believe is the term used in today's nomenclature.

My task now was to gather up my gear and pack the van for the ride back to NC. I was going to have to miss Susan, Russ and Vicki take on Sgt. Pepper the next night, but Smart Wife had one of her biggest craft shows on Sunday and I needed to get back as soon as I could. It took no time to get myself ready to leave.

I said my goodbyes, thanks and see you soons to all the Drifters I could find (Russ was getting paid, so I had to miss him). It was sweet and a little sad, as I might have stuck around, hanging out 'til the bar sent us packing, just like in the old days. But it was also good for me to go, as I don't feel as comfortable in a bar anymore.

My reflections on this whole rigmarole could be condensed to this thought: even if the Continental Drifters never play another note together on again, we showed that we COULD do it this time after eight years of disquiet and sadness and bitter feelings finally gave way to love and peace and friendship again. It's hard to hold grudges and dislike for so long, especially with such great music at stake, and it felt like a giant albatross had finally been set free. I'm glad we did these shows, I'm proud of what we accomplished both onstage and in our respective hearts, and I thank Mark Walton, Robert Mache, Vicki Peterson-Cowsill, Susan Cowsill, Russ Broussard and Carlo Nuccio for making this wonderful band happen again so sweetly.

*****

Roll credits....

Thanks to the folks who posted the videos, and I hope you don't mind me linking to them.
Thanks to the Fra-gi-lays for making the trek to NOLA to play with us.
Thanks to Rich for his hospitality and stewardship.
Thanks to DC, Lee and Joe for rocking me at the Circle Bar (and Joe, thanks for all the Beatles in mono).
Thanks to Eric at the Station for having us back.
Thanks to Ace, Pete and Jeff for making us sound so good.
Thanks to the Bluebird for all the fine breakfasts over the years.
Thanks to Sarah, Webb and Maggie Jane for the week away from home.
Thanks to Miranda for keeping me apprised of Nick Jonas' whereabouts and making me smile.
Thanks to the little Town & Country that got me there and back.
And thanks to you for reading this blog.

Fade to real life....

New Orleans trip, Pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:07:00 +0000

As it was when I lived there (although for different reasons) the time I spent in New Orleans last week is starting to blur around the edges a little. So I'll try to compile what all I did when I was there in something of a digest form until I get to Thursday and Friday.

1. Drove out to Mark Walton's house to find that the house was no longer there, the house we'd gutted a couple years before. I don't know why, since Mark had been looking for someone to mow the lot for him, but I guess the fact that the house was demolished had escaped me. So I pulled up on St. Bernard Avenue to where the driveway used to be. I got out, looked for anything I recognized, saw nothing and began to cry. Sometimes it's those final moments that drive it all home to you--so many rehearsals, band dinners, birthday parties for the boys, the trike I ran over while unloading gear, Mark's hard work on renovating the living room, kitchen and family room... all consigned to memory.

2. Drove by places I used to live in Lakeview. There's a house rebuilt on the site of 769 Filmore where Susan, Miranda and I lived. It's pretty true to the neighborhood style, a little higher thankfully. I hope the good vibes from all the music and fun that happened there seeps up through the new floorboards a little. The lot on Catina Street where I had lived in one side of a duplex is vacant. It's been gone for a long time, so I was used to seeing that.

3. I shopped at the new Borders' location on St. Charles Avenue. The bookstore occupies the former Bultman Funeral Home, vaguely apropos for the present state of the printed word--DVDs and CDs were all fifty percent off chain-wide, to make room for more important items like stationery and coffee mugs. The last time I'd been in the building was for Grandma Clements' eventful funeral a while before the storm. It was a little disquieting to the soul to see a Borders there, but the coffee was hot, and I'm loathe to pass up half-off compact discs (even though I didn't buy any).

Bultman Funeral Home, on its way to becoming a Borders store, 2008.

4. Four mornings I ate at the Bluebird Cafe on Prytania Street, for many years the best place in town for breakfast. The first morning there, I was informed by a huge sign in the window that the Bluebird was closing permanently at the end of May. We have a pair of Bluebird mugs at home, but I'd considered buying some of the nice, bright prints on the wall that they sell. I ate migas most mornings, since the Bluebird is the only place outside of Austin I've ever been that had that yummy egg dish. This restaurant will be sorely missed, and people will have to figure out how to make their own migas in New Orleans now, I guess.

5. I had two lunches at Liuzza's on Bienville and Telemachus, home of the Bushwhacker (a ice cream and booze combination that's lethal when consumed in quantity, served in a giant frosted goblet--it was a tasty fave back in my drinking days.) I asked the bartender if they made a non-alcoholic version, and she smiled sadly and said "that's impossible". So I had a Barq's Root Beer in the mug instead. The food was just as wonderful as it always has been. One day I opted for a shrimp po-boy and the next a plate of beans and rice with smoked sausage. Both days I had their shrimp and artichoke soup, something I'd never tried when I lived in New Orleans and regret having taken so long in experiencing.

Liuzza's facade

6. Mark and I closed the Drifters' bank account. We realized when we got to the bank that it had changed names two or three times since we left. The nice teller went to speak with her supervisor about closing the account, and we parked ourselves in front of the coffeemaker. The problem, it appeared, was that there was no record of our signatures on the account; the signature card, like so much else, had gone down in Katrina. You forget how the aftermath of the storm still affects many sides of life down there. Finally, she unearthed a photo copy of a check written in 2003 that had Mark's signature on it, gave us our money and sent us on our way.

7. I met up with the father and son who were doing the lot cleanup in St. Bernard for us. Nice folks, and the son said his dad had just bought a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder so that they could possibly transfer a bunch of tapes to digital. The tapes were of his grandfather's jazz band in the French Quarter, probably recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. I begged him to get the tapes baked and transferred professionally if possible. He didn't know about tape-baking, so he was happy to get the advice. They got the yard levelled and cleared, and they sent some pictures to prove it was done.
BeforeAfter

8. I got to hang out with Rich Siegel and Bill Davis a bunch, as Rich was my host for the week. Rich runs La Crepe Nanou, one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans. Bill has been cooking there of late, but he's probably best known as the leader of Dash Rip Rock, a crazed three-piece hyperrock band who are celebrating twenty-five years of their special kind of musical terrorism. Dash used to open up for the dB's toward the end of our existence, back when their drummer was the inimitable Fred LeBlanc (drummer and leader of Cowboy Mouth). Bill had also spent time teaching high school but told me that it was taking its toll on him, thanks to disinterested students mostly. He discovered he had a knack for cooking, and Rich, being one of his best pals, set him to work in the Nanou kitchen where he had been having a ball. Rich is one of the people in New Orleans that I miss the most; he is a bon vivant of the finest kind. His generosity and support over the years has kept many of us fed, housed and working.

Inside La Crepe Nanou

9. I was able to spend a lot of hang time with my daughter Miranda who is now fifteen. She has kept me up to date on the doings of the Jonas Brothers and her possible future as Mrs. Nick Jonas, and she wants a car to go along with her learner's permit. It was delightful to be in her company. She's turning into a fantastic person as she gets older, not that she wasn't a superb child as well, but you know what I mean. I'm proud to be her daddy.

10. I tried to soak in all the changes that were happening. Renovations, rebuilds, new businesses, old ones closing. New houses and abandoned ones. I didn't make it out to where Bruning's Restaurant used to stand, but I'm guessing there's still nothing happening there. Landry's on Harrison is still closed. There is progress in town, but you have to look for it to see it clearly.

******
(1032 St. Charles Avenue at Lee Circle. The Circle Bar, through the archway. I lived in the apartment on the top floor, the three shaded windows you see on the right, for a year. The best Mardi Gras location EVER.)

I rehearsed on Tuesday night with my pick-up band at DC Harbold's comic emporium on Oak Street, just down the way from the Maple Leaf Bar. DC is a busy fellow; he is in about half a dozen bands and he runs his business and somewhere in there has time to be married as well.

I'd contacted DC (or David, as I've known him for years) when I booked a Circle Bar gig for Thursday. It had come to my realization that in all the time we'd know each other, we'd never actually played together. So he recommended his drummer, Joe Adragna, for the gig. I said fine, then he recommended another friend he played with, Lee Barbier, as second guitarist. Lee had expressed to DC that he knew all my stuff and would love to get the opportunity to play with me. I had visions of what little money was to be made at the Circle Bar being divided by four, but I figured it would probably end up sounding more fun and chaotic with more people in the roux, so it was a 'yea' vote on Lee also.

We plowed through a bunch of songs, some of mine ("Neverland", "Black & White, "Amplifier" and a couple others) and some hastily-chosen covers (like "James" by the Bangles and "Land of 1000 Dances" by Chris Kenner). Everything got run through at least once, and I was trying to keep in the front of my mind that I should not blow out my voice before the big Drifters' show on Friday.

Fat lot of good that did.

Thursday, I went in to the Circle Bar, started with an acoustic set then switched to the combo. The Little PA That Couldn't was straining under the agonizing power of my voice to get over the din of the amps, and I guess it did somewhat. We were loud (Lee much louder than I, with his Twin Reverb--I had my groovy Omnisonic volume governor attached to the Hot Rod Deluxe, though I needn't have done that for this show) and sloppy and fun as hell.

I made them learn "Learning the Game" by Buddy Holly as we played it, and the guys responded in kind. We got endings right, mostly, and there was some absolute mayhem between the guitars.

The nice, intimate crowd at the Circle Bar did not seem intimidated by the volume or lack of subtlety. So we played for over an hour (I think) and kept everyone singing along, especially when "Land of 1000 Dances" made a surprise re-entry later in the set. Na na-na-na-na etc. I left the show croaking, but determined to repair my voice for the next night with hours of sleep (!) and herbal tea (not).

Here's a video of "Neverland" from the show. Some happy faces to be seen throughout, not just in the crowd either!

Lee, Joe and DC asked if I'd consider playing with them again, to let them be my New Orleans 'house band' and I said absolutely. With a little more rehearsal we could conquer the world and not just the Circle Bar.

Pt. 3 just ahead... sleep schedule slowly resuming normal hours, decompression nearly complete.

New Orleans trip, Pt. 1

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:35:00 +0000

Carrollton Station, Friday May 1 (which will be discussed later, I just liked the photo)

********

Quite a week in New Orleans to relate.

One of the hardest losses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was that of a network of my good friends, many of who were in the Continental Drifters' circle.

The band had ground to a halt after 9/11 put the kibosh on another European tour, this one in support of Better Day and the Fairport ep. Vicki had moved back to Los Angeles, but the rest of us were still in New Orleans. There was some rancor among the ranks, absolutely. I put my cds of the band away, and I started a little mid-life crisis, MC-5-esque combo called the People's Revolutionary Army of St. Bernard for yucks and therapy. Susan and Russ got her solo career underway and recorded an album. Robert was playing with anybody and everybody, idle hands, you know.... and we saw each other, and we interacted with each other, just not with instruments in our hands and not all the time.

And then suddenly, only Russ and Susan lived in New Orleans.

The rest of us had blown to the four winds. Not only was there no Continental Drifters any more, but some of us were learning how to live elsewhere after years in New Orleans, which is not as easy as you might think. The lessons that I got schooled on in NO were about freedom, especially of the personal kind, where you can be who you are and not have to slink around if you're different from the norm (learned a LOT about that during the six months in Jim Thorpe, PA). Before I moved from LA to LA, as the song goes, I was a lot more uptight, self-conscious and worried about the very things I couldn't change. Thirteen years in NO left me confident, dried out and mostly happy about living life as it came at me. That I took with me to NC. Every so often, I'll hear myself saying something maybe a little too extreme for the playgroup parents, much less their kids, and then I have to laugh and realize it's the big easiness of what I said, how I meant it and how it was received in such a different way outside New Orleans.

After the storm, my sweet friends in Hootie and the Blowfish and their crew came to New Orleans and did work for Habitat for Humanity, building a house in the Ninth Ward. But before they got a chance to build something new, they joined up with Craig Klein's Arabi Wrecking Krewe and cleared out Mark Walton's house in Lakeview. I blogged about that a while back. Susan and Russ worked side by side with us, pulling out sludge and dead furniture and boxes of Drifter merchandise and memorabilia that was stored in our old rehearsal space in the back.

Then, on New Year's Eve day 2006-7, five of six Drifters happened to be sharing a table at a restaurant in the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, the first time anything like that had happened in at least five years. It was brief, but it was very nice to see it happen.

Cut to Autumn 2008 when Chris Joseph from Threadheads gets the darned fool idea to try to reunite the Continental Drifters for the fifth annual Threadhead Patry during Jazzfest in 2009. Everyone is contacted and emails are exchanged, and voilà! everyone's onboard! (Could it have been that no one asked before?)

I drove down from Durham Saturday, starting around 5:30am. Immersing myself in Drifters' music as I had been for weeks prior, I felt that I had the reins again. Better Day had been the problematic album for me; the interpersonal issues that had encompassed the band were still very fresh in the laser etching, to my ears. And as much as I'd thought we'd made a great record at the time, it was so hard to listen to eight years later. I originally asked that we not do any of my songs from Better Day, but I relented after relentlessly playing the album in the van. It was far better than I'd expected, and I got it all down pat.

My minivan, a snazzy silver Chrysler Town and Country we'd bought to replace the late Eurovan, was a steady ride down. On the way in from the East, I stopped and checked our lot in St. Bernard. It was still there, somewhat overgrown. Another task to get done while I'm there. I had meant to bring my scythe, but it got left at the shed door--probably better anyway, since I'm not a thresher, am susceptible to throwing my shoulder out of whack, and the grass had gotten to the professional care level of 'high'.

I arrived in Susan and Russ' place in Algiers to empty it of gear. I brought the Plush for a bass amp for Mark, my keyboard 'rig', electric and acoustic guitars for my Circle Bar gig, amps and my ukulele (because you never know when you'll need one). I had promised to pick Mark up from the former Moisant Field, today named Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport at 11:15pm when I would certainly be running on fumes at best. So I killed some time after visiting with the Broussards before I could find our host. It being Jazzfest, I was not worried when I couldn't reach him, it would only be a matter of time before he showed.

From the airport, Mark and I went to Carrollton Station where Susan was doing a show that night (her band features NO guitar legend Jimmy Robinson and bass stalwart Pete Winkler). She brought Mark up to play on "Mississippi", a Drifters' tune. Once we all heard him play those swooping notes on his entry into the first line of the first verse, there was collective sigh that said "he's back!" I joined them for "A Song For You", the first song Susan and I recorded together. It was heartening to hear us remember the first two songs we tried together as well as we did. We saw Tom Bennett and his wife Julie, the former owners of the Station, and a host of other old friends. It seemed prudent to schedule practice for afternoon, as these Station shows tend to run a little on the late side.

We rehearsed about fifty songs over two days in Susan and Russ' front room. Vicki brought her Bangles-signature model Daisy Rock guitar, with its sweet li'l mini-humbuckers. She was accompanied for her trip from out west by her husband, Susan's brother John Cowsill (drummer for the Beach Boys and all-around funny fellow.) Robert has modified his Frankentele so many times that only the smudges on the finish are original, I think; looked like a Strat pickup at the neck and my favorite DeArmond in the middle position. He was, as always, very loud and very good, although I did have to tell him to turn down at one point, his amp pointed straight at me.

We tried to winnow the list down, to make practice easier. I had almost forgotten what the traditional form of Drifter conversation was, talking loud and over everyone else until you got heard or felt that were. We were back and deep into it on the front porch of the Broussard manse, talking and voting on songs. Trying to stay focused on each song long enough to hear out six points of view. My new tack on that is to clam up unless there's something I desperately need to impart, saves wear and tear on the voice and psyche.

Susan and Russ also had to rehearse their Covered in Viny l show on Saturday. They had decided to perform Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety, which is no small feat. How they managed to get everything together amazes me, considering the tasks at hand. So we decided that the rehearsals before the Threadhead show would be our only ones for Carrollton Station as well.

Tuesday morning found me driving to Metairie to John Gro s' house to retrieve his electric piano and stand after I'd picked up the equipment in Algiers and brought it to 920 Frenchmen where the party was getting staged. John's an old friend and a monster piano player (he leads the popular Papa Grows Funk band), and it was very kind to offer the use of his gear for the week.

Threadheads Patry, 4/28/09 (Nicolas Broussard in Trinity shirt)

After Paul Sanchez's Rolling Road Show was done with their rich and sprawling set (including an interesting version of the Cowsills' hit "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" that was interrupted in the middle long enough for me to grab Sonia Tetlow's Epiphone Casino and finish the song with the band) we started moving our gear onstage.

The guy who was running monitors was most aggravated by what he seemed to think was the Drifters dawdling. His comments ran along the lines of "is this y'all's first show" but never went quite that far. He also could not figure out why my NORD Electro was buzzing through the monitors; eventually, after changing every cord I had, the buzz was so awful that I had him shut off my monitor and I strained to hear the front wedges instead--it never occurred to him or me to switch channels on his mixing board, and apparently Pete Winkler, who ran front-of-house sound, said it was fine in the main speakers. The monitor engineer, later in our set, took a short catnap on the faders during the course of several songs; I guess we just pooped him out.

We took the stage, eager faces smiled in anticipation. The drums and guitars of "Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway" started us powerfully, then the bass and organ charged in and we were on our way. It sounded just great.

I managed to forget the words to "Highway of the Saints", the Pat McLaughlin song we covered on our first album; it's been a staple in Drifters sets since before this lineup came to be. Robert stopped the song and made me start over. It was worth it. When Susan had a memory stall later on, she pointed at me and cried out "HE got a do-over, I get one too!" and I said that I backed her up on that one.

The 'hits' came one after the other, all our favorite songs. We played a ninety minute set that touched on all phases of the band's recorded output. It sounded competent and confident. The singing, despite my worries, was spot-on, so far as I could tell. The audience ate it up, and we were done before we knew it.

The rest of the day was driving gear and people around and trying to fit in a nap and get over a fear of spending money on a ticket to the Ponderosa Stomp to see Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney of the original Flamin' Groovies reunited and backed by my old pals the A-Bones. I was also going to go back to the airport to get Mark's wife Dana at around midnight. The best laid plans went a-gley, Mark took my van with my blessing, and I was asleep by 10:30 Tuesday night, still vibrating from the good Continental Drifters show that finally happened again.

Pt. 2 to follow shortly... if I can get caught up on my sleep....

Continental Drifters @ Threadhead Patry Tuesday 4/28/09

noreply@blogger.com (halfpear) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:56:00 +0000

The Rain Song
Way Of The World
You're Gonna Need Somebody