I’m recently back from a tour of the Midwest, New England, the UK, and Germany with a short stop in Fort Worth and Oklahoma City on my way back home to Los Angeles…. a real good trip with many new friends to remember fondly. It was an extra bonus to return to the USA just as the elections were producing some hope for the Republic.
The tour began with a flight to Minneapolis and environs…. a generally enlightened area I’d say. Spider John Koerner and Tony Glover and I had a good one at The Cedar Cultural Center. John was John…. Mr. Funky Chunky Rhythm Man…. always my favorite back in the Cambridge days. He was walking with a cane, getting ready to have his second hip replaced… that makes two… his limit. I showed some concern with a bit of commiseration, but he said, “Hey, life, what else are you gonna do.” Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Koerner. Tony sat in and played a little harmonica with me and the evening was cool.
I also visited Iowa on this trip, with a stop at CSPS in Cedar Rapids where I played for John Herbert and Mel Andringa and the nice folks they attract to their performance space. CSPS stands for Cesko-Slovanska Podporujici Spolku by the way. It was originally a Czechoslavakian meeting hall. These guys prove that good taste, hard work, volunteers (and luck) can create a nice place for folks to come together to escape cable TV and have a little wholesome enjoyment. If you ever go to Cedar Rapids you’ll probably smell the General Mills cereal factory. Ask a local and they’ll tell you which brand they’re cooking up that day. There are five or six of them and everyone knows the aroma…. “Sniff, sniff… smells like they’re making Cheerios again today Frank.”
The surprise stop in Iowa was Fairfield, a sleepy little farm town down near the Missouri border…. sleepy, at least, until the Maharishi Vedic University came to town. As I understand it, the locals resisted this influx for a long time, but as the Fairfield economy began to boom, they acquiesced. Steve and Meret Jacomini came out there a few years back and, like many others, decided to stay in Fairfield and make a life. They started the Café Paradiso, a coffee house and gathering place for hipsters from all over the world. They couldn’t have been any nicer to this guy. I hope to return for the welcoming vibe… it’s one of those places.
It was nice to get back to The Old Town School in Chicago this trip. It had been six years since my last gig. For those of you who don’t know about the place, it’s one of the oldest folk clubs in the country… along with McCabes in Santa Monica, CA and Lena’s in Saratoga, NY…. all nearly fifty years in business. I played The Old Town School years ago with Amos Garrett. We drew flies… very poor turnout… discouraging. But we were heartened when Steve Goodman came into the place playing a guitar and singing, “There’s no business like show business…. when there’s no business.” That guy was the best.
The last time I played Old Town was with good old Dave Van Ronk. Sold out… great night. This time I played with Eric Bibb, one of my favorites on the folk circuit who I’ve played with in California and Germany. He was in good form…. great form actually. He did a version of “Ain’t No More Cane on the Brazos” that knocked me out. I had no idea he could hear, much less use, those hip New York chords… “The Shit” as we call it. Well he put “The Shit” right in the Brazos. I hope he makes an album of this type of material. He can handle it.
I made it to Toronto this fall where I hadn’t played in 28 years. My old friend Richard Flohil set me up at a club called Hugh’s Room….. a very nice scene. I had a long taxi ride to the gig from my posh hotel (this happens from time to time - the posh hotel part that is) which included an attempt by the cabbie to convert me to Islam. I held out. Ironically, the only bad thing about the trip to Toronto was returning to the USA with my rental car. The border guard was – how should I say – an asshole. He spent 20 minutes looking me up in a computer then another 20 minutes rifling through my car. There was a long line behind me of scared little old ladies probably returning to the USA from visiting their sweet little grandchildren.
I spent a little time in Birmingham, MI after a gig at The Creole Gallery in Lansing and then flew to Boston to play The Me & Thee coffeehouse in Marblehead. Then down to Saratoga, NY… Lena’s (love that place) and one more gig in New Jersey before heading to the UK from JFK.
The stop in the UK was mainly designed for jet lag decompression before heading to Germany. But I did have a very nice gig and extracurricular activities in Wales. I played in the town of Tregaron at The Cambria Arts Centre. Andrew, Ron and Hillary set up a very nice night for me. It was in a bar area of a hotel, but all were quiet as mice. I love that.
I’m a sucker for Wales because everyone there looks like my mother. She was a Jones…. the most common name in Wales, although they have no “J” in their language. Those vicious conquering Brits took care of that… back in the days after the Norman Invasion. It turns out that my people - the Welsh - did not have surnames. They would simply go as, e.g. Gouth (or some such name) ap (son of) sion (John). The Brits said, “Okay, then, that’s Gouth Jones…. Next!” Sort of like Benjamin Kubelsky becoming Jack Benny… but not really.
After Tregaron, I spent a couple of days in the town of Llanon, Ceredigion, Wales with Rose Sillars (she of The Incredible String Band as Rose Simpson) and her companion Gary Easton. This was one of those sweet times… walks, history chit chats, everything else chit chats, and all those yummy countryside edibles like local honey, preserves, bread. On the second day we spent a very cozy evening at the farmhouse of Phillip and Hilary Thornely, with more good conversation and a delicious dinner. (I learned so much. I wish I could remember what it was.) These people live in the middle of nowhere raising sheep. Good idea. Thank goodness they let me in on the fact that New Zealand lamb is inferior to Welsh lamb. I feel safer for knowing.
I headed back to London in time to catch the Velazquez show at The National Gallery. I was lucky to get in…. had to pull some strings… yeah, I’m connected in art world if you didn’t know…. a real bigwig. Anyway, the show was incredible…. Velazquez was a daring master…. way ahead of his time with the brave brush strokes (first half of the 17th century) Perhaps, the only limits on this guy were his subject matter… the court of Philip IV of Spain, his patron. But it kept him in three squares so you can’t blame him. There was a particularly riveting portrait of a dwarf (The Dwarf Francisco Lezcano, Called "El Nino de Vallecas) in the show that reminded me of Diane Arbus and something she said about dwarfs…. how they could look right at you… how there were no defenses… as they had nothing to hide… the worst having already befallen them. There was also a very famous nude in the show (Venus at Her Mirrror) which the NY Times reviewer of the show called the sexiest painting of all time. No disagreement here. I had an urge to reach right into the painting with my hand and…. (sorry)
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/velazquez/
After an afternoon back in the UK, doing the Richard Harding Radio Show in Manchester, I was off to Germany…. this time down to southern parts including some nice gigs in Bavaria. I also performed on German Radio… Frankfurt Radio Hessischer Rundfunk with Volker Rebel and Munich Radio Bayerrischer Rundfunk with Karl Bruckmaier. These guys knew their stuff. I love doing radio in Germany because you get to hear what you just said in German as they translate for the audience…. and, as I said, they know their stuff.
I had a very special gig in Munich at a record store called Optimal Records, owned by Christos Davidopoulos. This fellow came to Munich from Greece quite a few years ago and his store has become a meeting place for music nuts. Christos also produces CD compilation albums on a label called Trikont including a 2-CD set, “Rembetika (Songs of the Greek Underground 1925-1947)” and a terrific Hank Williams CD called “No More Darkness”. Rembetika – Hank Williams… of course.
The gig was a love in. Karl Bruckmaier (DJ) was there with his wife Isabella; my friend Karl-Ludwig Reichert showed up (he’s got a crazy Bavarian rock-protest band); and Christos’s crew, including his young assistant, Jasmine (what a doll) were all smiles and very nice to this old boy.
I made it to an interesting museum the next day called the Lenbach House which has a permanent collection of Kandinksy, Klee and artists of The Blue Rider school. The museum is housed in a beautiful ‘Tuscan’ villa built for Munich artist, Franz von Lenbach, in the late 19th century.
I had no idea about Munich. I can’t wait to get back.
Still in Bavaria, we (meaning me and my driver and travel companion Gerrit Brockman [from Tradition & Moderne Records]) headed to Niederstetten to play for Norbert Bach (my first of three Norberts on this trip… go figure) and then over to Obing near Lake Chiemsee to play at “Zur Post” for John and Rita Gonzalves.
Okay… this was different. John is from Mountain View, California. He’s been in Bavaria for 25 years or so…. a big, burly guy, with a big burly beard and a big burly voice. John has become Bavarian. He IS Bavarian. He speaks Bavarian, he looks Bavarian, he grunts Bavarian. When I spoke with him, I figured he’d loosen up and talk my language… but it was difficult for him to do this. “Yes” for him was “ya”. He was nice enough, but he had crossed over… and he had a tough time trying to communicate with me…. me, a guy who lives in California. I guess I wouldn’t expect Jack Elliot to act like a New Yorker, and this guy makes Jack’s transition look mild by comparison. John’s wife, Rita, was German and so sweet you could understand why John has made the cultural transformation.
After Obing, we headed down the road to a gig in Augsburg… a gig in a bookstore…. (odd locations for some of these Bavarian gigs.) I had a little time before the performance so I took a walk around the altstadt (old town). After a while I sat down for a minute to rest my tootsies. Across the cobblestone path I saw a house with a sign on it that said, “Holbein”. Could it be? Yes it could… It was the Holbein family home… or at least it was the reconstructed Holbein family home. The Allies blew the original to smithereens in 1944. But this was the place…. where Hans Holbein grew up. A friendly docent in the house (which is now a gallery) pointed me to the Augsburg, Dom St. Maria where there are four beautiful, large Holbeins. They were breathtaking.
The next day we headed north to Bremen where I had one more gig to play and a rehearsal of my new chamber works. I’ll be recording in Germany next fall for a new album. The works to date include two Tennessee Williams poems set to music, arrangements of two blues pieces… one by Blind Lemon Jefferson, the other by J.B. Lenoir… and two original compositions. The group I’m using thus far consists of clarinet, bassoon, French horn, violin and cello…. members of the Bremen Chamber Orchestra. There’s no telling where this will end up musically except to say it will be recorded next fall.
I flew out of Bremen the day after rehearsal and headed for Texas where I stayed with my old friends Jim and Susan Colegrove (Jim was in a Woodstock band called Hungry Chuck and also played with Ian and Sylvia’s Speckled Bird). They both work in the Ft. Worth Museum of Modern Art, so what do you think I did on my day off in Ft. Worth? Yep. I also walked over to the biggest little museum in America, The Kimbell Art Museum. They are very lucky to have these two great museums right next store to each other…. these two great buildings… the Kimbell is a Louis Kahn creation and the Museum of Modern Art was designed by Tadao Ando.
From Ft. Worth I just had to go to Oklahoma City before heading home to LA. Why do I do this? The first time I was there they had just had their biggest tornado ever. The next time I played there was an ice storm. And this time… sunny and beautiful!! Ah!! And I had a nice bunch of folks to play for. Time to head home.
So, I’m here in LA and will spend the winter writing, going to the gym, working on the house, and taking occasional quick trips to play…. for example this weekend to Albuquerque for a performance at The Outpost Performance Space. Later to San Diego, Maui, the Bay Area, Northern California, Oregon…
I’ll let you know if anything interesting pops up. In the Spring it’ll be back to the East Coast, the UK and Germany.
Take care and keep the body moving.
Geoff