Just back from Portland, Oregon via Cambridge, Mass via England, via Scotland and Sweden via Ireland. Whew. First about the Fritz Richmond Tribute in Cambridge on April 16th…..
Jim Kweskin and I contacted a few of the many folks that Fritz played with during the Cambridge heyday and we had a nice turnout…. The Charles River Valley Boys, Keith and Rooney, Maria Muldaur, John Sebastian and, of course with Jim, myself, Maria and Keith we had most of the Kweskin Jug Band.
Before the show, Fritz’s wife, Cynda and I – along with a gaggle of friends - headed over to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery to spread a little Fritz. He’s now sprinkled next to Bucky “Call me Trimtab” Fuller, B.F. Skinner and Winslow Homer. This is all part of Fritz’s ongoing ‘world tour’.
The show was ‘ragged but right’ with great stuff by Jim Rooney and Bill Keith… better than ever… and a real nice a capella tune by John Cooke from the CRVB as highlights (for me at least). On a break, Kweskin showed a 17-minute film collage he and his family put together of Fritz… with still shots and film from family albums, the Newport Festival, Steve Allen Show, Conan O’Brien Show, A Prairie Home Companion, etc. Great memories, but the tears came rollin’ down.
After Cambridge, I headed to the UK and traveled the length and breadth of the place; from Brighton, England to Ullapool, Scotland and Norwich to Belfast. This was my best tour of the UK to date – thanks to the good work of my friend, Kev Brooks. There are also plans afoot to do some recording over there with some of my favorite musicians… we’ll see if that comes through… hope very much that it does.
As is usual, I started things out with a few days at the flat of my old friend, Joe Boyd. He’s been an ex-pat London resident for forty or so years. Joe recently had his first book published – “White Bicycles” – an autobiography (part one) that should be of interest for music buffs. Joe, if you don’t know, produced Fairport Convention, The Incredible String Band, Sandy Denny, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Nick Drake, Maria Muldaur, yours truly…. and on and on.
After a few dates with London as a home base, I worked my way up north to Scotland, eventually taking a train from Edinburgh up to Inverness. There I met up with friends from Washington, DC, Paul and Deborah Richard and Dorothy Jackson. They had driven up from the Richards’ cottage near the Isle of Bute in Colintraive. We drove over hill and dale from Inverness with a stay in a fabulous, posh B&B along the way to Ullapool. After the gig in Ullapool we drove down through the west coast highlands of Scotland back to Colintraive. The weather was sunny and beautiful. Gorse galore.
From Colintraive, with a short drive to Glasgow, I flew over to Sweden for about a week with performances and workshops in Stockholm and Torsby. A wonderful guitarist named Lars (Lasse) Johansson invited me over there. I’m now quite nuts about Sweden. The people there couldn’t have been nicer. And I don’t mean the audiences only… I mean everyone. The ticket lady in the subway was a mensch…. the girl selling the papers… the conductor on the train … very, very nice folks. And yeah, all the women are healthy and good-looking…. but, unfortunately… so are the men!
Torsby is in the west of the country in the Värmland (warm land), and on the way there I stayed in Karlstad at the home of Bert Deivert and his wife Eva and daughter Emmy. Bert’s an upstate New Yorker who’s resided in Sweden for many years and now lives in an “ecological village”… one of a handful I Sweden. While we sat around conserving resources, Eva and Emmy played Swedish fiddle tunes… including polskas – tricky 3/4 time dance tunes. Man, the beat of those things is elusive. Took a while to catch on. Eva also played a nykleharpa, a bowed instrument with push button fretting and sympathetic strings. The Norwegians have their version called the hardanger. The sound is ultra mysterious… with the sympathetic strings giving a natural reverb… an instant romantic film sound.
After playing for the nice folks up in Torsby (a show in an old theatre promoted by Bo Willebrand), I headed back to Stockholm for one more day to catch the sights. It gave me a little more time with Lasse and his sweetheart, Agnes. Lasse and I sat in at a local club where he backed me up while I sang Honeysuckle Rose. I also threw some blues at those folks. Stockholm is one beautiful city. As was the case with Amsterdam, I must return.
The next day I flew back to London for Joe’s book signing party and a few more gigs. This return to England gave me a chance for one of my favorite stops in Hampshire… at the home of Stewart and Lesley Carr. Lesley helped set up a nice gig at The Ashcroft Arts Centre in nearby Fareham, and then I had a day off in the English countryside. Good company, good walks, and fresh lamb kidneys (yummy!)… what more could you want?
After England, it was off to Ireland for a little sufferin’ with my Luddite promoter friend Larry Roddy. We drove and drove on, up and down on the narrow winding roads o’er the gorse-covered hills with proper stops for bread and soup on our way to wee towns with wee gigs (BTW, gorse = furze = whin). Larry is a constant source of information… birder, historian, music maven, avid reader. On one of our nature forays we discovered a merlin’s (nee pidgeon hawk) pecking post used for tearing the flesh from cute little fresh-killed creatures before delivering the bits to its nearby nest. Sort if a merlin processing plant…. supply depot… very cool.
But Dublin… ah… I don’t know what to say about that place… sorry to report that the Irish are lemmings to the sea when it comes to the corporate version of prosperity. Dublin is jammed up with people on the make. Land prices have risen and driven out the ordinary workin’ class Dubliner… the congestion is unbearable… corruption is everywhere… kinda made me homesick.
So, yes, I headed home to LA for a short break before flying up to the Northwest. Portland was first. I love the place… a workin’ man’s town; a good place to raise a family. In the spring it blooms… with people riding bikes… lots of boat activity… backpacker vibe…very European actually. I shouldn’t be telling you this…. They don’t need anymore people up there.
I went to Seattle after that and played a slick looking nightclub called The Triple Door. The place looked like Paul Anka’s dream come true. I felt like I needed a chorus line; hardly the usual setting for my people, but – nice surprise - they came and we had a real nice evening. The owner and the club staff couldn’t have been nicer.
From Seattle, I drove over to Gig Harbor… around at the bottom of the other side of Puget Sound fro Seattle. It was there that I stayed at Wurlitzer Manor as the guest of Raymond Lavine and Barbara Hammerman. Okay, this was a real shocker. My promoter, Dan Wilson, set it up and he knew I’d flip… and I did. I stayed in a house amongst a complex of buildings on the shores of the Sound. The main house, where I played, had a Wurlitzer Theatre Organ… heck, let me pull some words from their website (wurlitzermanor.com):
The first [meaning, the main house] is a musical home designed to house a theater organ to provide acoustic precision to one of the finest theatre organs built for the silent movie era — the Wurltizer Brooklyn Fox Special. The Wurlitzer Theatre Organ is one of 5 custom built by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company for the Fox movie theaters located in cities in the United States in the 1920’s. This theatre organ’s first home was the Brooklyn Fox Theatre in Brooklyn, New York.
The theatre organ’s playing history was short lived because theatre organs, designed to play music for movies in the silent movie era, were no longer in style when talking pictures became the rage. Theatre organs lost their usefulness to movie theatre and it languished at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre until it was sold and began its new life to play again to children and adults at the Cardinal Music Palace Pizza Company in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Its playing life became renewed again in the mid 1980’s when the theatre organ was purchased from the Cardinal Music Palace and the theatre organ console—refurbished and electronically—installed to continue the theatre organ musical experience at Wurlitzer Manor.
We’re talking 3,000 organ pipes and percussion ranks, hooked into a grand piano and an upright that takes up a space twice the height and size of my little house in LA. They have a crew working to keep the organ in top shape at all times. Garth Hudson needs to see this thing…. He needs to record on that organ…. Who knows?
Barbara is the daughter of Grits Gresham, famed outdoor writer and TV personality… so we had lots to talk about there. I remember Grits Gresham with Curt Gowdy on The American Sportsman. Barbara says that they used to go hunting down near Holly Beach… the ill-fated Holly Beach… where Bobby Charles lost both his homes to hurricane Rita last year.
After Gig Harbor, I drove up to Port Townsend near the top of the Olympic Peninsula; a beautiful, windy town on the water. I played in a church (love church gigs) for a promoter, entrepreneur named Bill Kiely. Bill and I hit it off about the same ol’ subjects… nature, birds, Ireland, music. He has a sweet little female Jack Russell terrier that actually rats. Yes… rats. I’ve known many a rat terrier (type) dog in my time, but they were all fakers when it came to ratting. Not this one… they even rent her out for ratting. She shows up at the back door from time to time with a big, fat rat in her jaws. “Good doggy”.
I went home for a week or so and then flew back up to Portland to play with Jim Kweskin, Paul Delay and The BBQ Orchestra (Fritz’s old local band) at the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival. I hadn’t expected this to be as good as it was… bluesfestaphobia you know. But all went beautifully. I know – and everyone up there in Portland knows - how great Paul Delay can play the harmonica, but I wasn’t prepared for how good the BBQ Orchestra played; my goodness these guys can swing it. With Kweskin at the helm, it was the best jug band experience I’ve had since the ‘60s. The place was packed and the audience was swinging and swaying and singing along. Only one thing was missing… our good old pal Fritz, but we did him proud.
So… home at last for the summer. I’ll be writing some chamber pieces for my rehearsals this fall in Bremen, Germany. And I’ll be putting in a little garden and home improvement time. Have a nice summer everyone, and I’ll be writing more after my fall excursions.
Later on…
Geoff