Wherein we end the Nights of Grief & Mystery 2019 Tour.

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A packed house. Amongst friends. A good end…or pause, as the case may be.

To my companeros on the road: Adam Bowman, drums; Colleen Hodgson, bass; Lisa Hodgson, keys/vox; Emily Adam and Ana Elia Ramon-Hidalgo AKA “The Choir”; Charlie Scaife, FOH Sound Engineer; Gabe Jenkinson, Justin Bonnet, and Keshira haLev Fife, supreme guides and wranglers on the road and in the venues; and of course Stephen Jenkinson, the “why” of the thing.

One would be hard pressed to find better people with whom to travel a good chunk of the western hemisphere. Thank you for commitment to every Night we played, for your care of the vision, and your patience while being chewed up by the machinery of the tour.

The last thanks (and maybe the most thanks) goes to the least seen: James Nowak, Lead Organizer of NOGM. A mind-numbing mountain of detail, a soul-crushing numbers crunch-fest, an impossible balancing act of pragmatism and dreaming, you were a joy to behold when you crowed with pride at finding mistake after mistake during reconciliations with venues, van rental companies, lighting companies, sound companies, insurance companies, US government agencies, hotel chains (aided immensely by Ana Elia in that task), airlines…the list is endless…and you were an equal joy to behold when a mistake was ours and with humility and grace you owned it and repaired what could be and moved ever forward.

Nothing of what has happened these last 12 months could have happened without you, James. We all are in your debt as much as we were in your care everyday.

With love for you all,
gh

Photo: A. Burashko, from the cheap seats, end of The Night.

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Somewhere in California or Arizona. People of The Tarmac.

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The Black Mamba II, 70’s style.

Four of us drove from Santa Fe to L.A. over two days while the other five flew. A strange snow/ice storm in Flagstaff on Day 1 was the only taxing part of the trip, and this day had us under blue skies mostly, which was a great way to see this desert for my first time. I was happy to not be in airports and planes and in fine company in the van. “People of The Tarmac” is what we called ourselves.

I neglected to gas up in Needles (where we spent the night) and had to find gas between towns. Enter: this gas station. Just off the interstate on the old and famous/infamous Route 66. Paid DOUBLE for the pleasure of filling up here. That would be $6.49 USD/gallon.

This photo made it all worth it, though. It looks like I’ve been painted into the van, 70’s style, minus the scantily clad, sword-wielding, huge-breasted sci-fi woman.

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Vancouver, BC. Crammed in a tiny, gas-guzzling, shitty U-Haul with an uncertain transmission and careening down Interstate 5, I thought, You’re 55, man. What in the hell are you doing?

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A bittersweet reality check.

This image was taken about 24 hours after walking off a stage in Portland (and a sublime Night it was…just the two of us on stage, the first time in a few years). The last US show. The intervening hours went something like this:

Van 1 (The Black Mamba II) returned and a U-Haul picked up in Portland;
The gear moved from one truck to the other;
A 6.5 hour solo drive to Vancouver, BC. (a piece of cake after the 10, 12, and 16 hour odysseys undertaken during the tour);
The rented gear accounted for and returned to the backline place;
Extra stuff packed and shipped;
A hotel found;
Another hour drive to the hotel;
Arif The Concierge employed to bring a couple weeks worth of tour tailings up to the room while the U-Haul is dropped off;
U-Haul dropped off a with minutes to spare;
Cab back to hotel;
Grab a chicken club with side salad from hotel bar;
Eat it in the room;
The remaining gear re-distributed in a delicate operation involving 4 pieces of luggage and a luggage weigh scale, which I won’t fly without;
A mound of travel receipts compiled and recorded and tallied, numbers sent to headquarters.

This image is what the end of that 24 hours looks like.

I admit I reserved these tasks for myself and did much the same at the front and back ends of all the legs of this 2019 tour—which, by the way, is kind of turning into a world tour if things keep going like they have been: 2020 is already starting to shape up into something we hadn’t foreseen. I did so not out of a twisted messianic/masochistic inclination but with good intentions: to pull my weight, to be a team player, to ease the way for the others on the road with me…and because I think I may have a touch of the Control Freak in me. I think I may have inherited my mother’s mild OCD.

This last 24-hour chunk brought with it some clarity, though. A bittersweet reality check: I am no longer 32 years old and can no longer operate as though I am. Crammed in a tiny gas guzzling shitty U-Haul with an uncertain transmission and careening down Interstate 5, I thought, You’re 55, man. What in the hell are you doing? These shitty seats are made for young people moving their lives across the country, excited for what lies ahead. Not old men running on fumes, in over their head, and trying to tie up loose ends to get home for another show. Time to get elegant.

Graceful, is what I probably meant. I had more than my share of clunky, graceless moments on tour (just ask those that were in the van when I hit a parked car after the concert in L.A.). I’ve been trying to attend to these tours in a more graceful fashion. I do believe I’ve been getting better at it since we began over 4 years ago, but I’m aiming at a version…a vision…of myself: something like Gene Kelly tiptoeing amidst puddles, or Fred Astaire putting fires out, nimble and graceful.

A man can dream.

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Portland, OR, wherein I contemplate the price of “a beautiful drive”.

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How to love a place.

One of our hosts here in Portland, OR, calls this “Tank City” and it is the reason they will be moving soon. It is directly across the river, just waiting for an earthquake to have it’s way with whatever mystery is contained in those tanks.

Beautiful shot, though, right?

No, of course it isn’t.

We’ve covered over 4000 miles on this leg, through the Rockies, along the ocean, through the Mojave dessert, through wind storms and snow storms and rain, under blue skies and by the cover of night, under full moons and through inky dark air. All of it “beautiful” except for the tortured sections of that very ground that allowed for our travel and participation in the concerts: the asphalt, the pipelines, the power generation stations and their feeder lines strung up on towers as far as the eye could see, the gas stations, the lakes of California forlornly and shockingly low still allowing recreational boating and surrounded by drought afflicted hills covered with dried trees, planted firewood now, just waiting for a spark. Begging for it, maybe, to put them out of their misery.

Yeah…I understand better now: if you really love a place on this planet, the best way to love it is by staying away.

That we–the band and I–are complicit in this is not lost on me. I don’t know what to do about that. Is it enough that The Nights  are my shot at redemption? Probably not.

I’m guessing I will have a lot to answer to when the time comes. Meanwhile, there is a crow yelling at me from the tree I’m sitting under. I’ll try to explain myself, beginning with him…or her.

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Santa Fe, NM, wherein I finally play solo trumpet in front of people. Only took 23 years.

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The Terrified Trumpeteer.

When I was 32 years old, I came across a wrecked trumpet in a shed. I wrestled a decent note from it and slowly fell in love with the idea of being able to play it. I always thought trumpet was cool…cooler than me, cooler than guitar…and I wanted to be cool. I though maybe learning how to play would help my musicality as I’d always been afraid of playing single note lines on the guitar and the trumpet is notoriously single note-ey. I quickly learned it was a crummy horn and bought a student model. I carried the horn everywhere with me in the car, playing when I could, and made a deal with myself that I’d play in front of people by the time I was 35. Then 40. Then 45. Then 50. I snuck it on a few recordings, into a few shows in places I could hide it.

Last night in Santa Fe, we decided to add a piece of SJ’s at the top of the Night and I came up with the foolish idea I would open the piece with solo horn. This was before we knew the house was standing room only I. A rather large theatre. In the dressing room, I explained my idea to SJ and attempted to play what I had in mind, bleating and squeaking all over the place, a comical sound. We broke up laughing and I said, “Maybe this is a bad idea…”

After the laughter died down, Stephen said, “No man, I think it’s great! It’s brave.”

I counted my blessings to be working with a man that valued that kind of bravery at the risk of a very awkward couple of minutes in front of a packed house and the derailment of a good story the trumpet was trying to set up. Yes, I counted my blessings and privately to rued the day I ever thought I could play in front of people. When you get nervous singing, you can still breathe through it. When you get nervous playing guitar, you can still breathe through it. When you get nervous playing trumpet, well…you are too busy breathing through the trumpet and there is no place to calm your breath. To boot, your nervousness shows up in your lips (embouchure, it is called) and your lips are doing almost all the work. Trumpet is risky business.

This photo was snapped by drummer Adam Bowman minutes before going on stage. What you see here is a terrified non-trumpet playing man going over in his mind how he will communicate to Stephen on stage he is bailing from playing trumpet.

In the end, I didn’t bail. It wasn’t perfect (like it is when I play alone in the car or studio) but it was brave, I guess. Maybe next time it’ll be perfect. If there is a next time.

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Denver, CO: wherein I find shelter from the shitstorm when I meet McKaylee, The Strong Trouperette.

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The Strong Trouperette.

Screwed Sometimes Addendum: Later that same day…

More gods throwing more marbles on the ground…almost literally. Charlie twists his knee getting out of the van at the venue; the van at the venue is parked a considerable distance from the venue itself; word from the venue is we can’t bring our truck up to the load-in door; local sound crew/gear and band  loading in at same time, not quite enough people to ease the burden of moving a mountain of gear; I’m not sure whether to be angry or grateful when I see McKaylee—the slight 11 year-old daughter of our Denver host—rolling massive, heavy amp racks and speaker stacks up a frustrating incline on a pedestrian-only walkway; the wrangling knee braces and ice, food, lighting, electricity, another @#%!! follow spot that needed pampering; and lastly, due to a glitch at the home office, our greenroom was more of a greenhouse, surrounded as it was by windows onto a part of the lobby and the aforementioned pedestrian walkway. All this—plus the previous 24 hours—in the face of the full house the Denver team manifested, much to our good fortune, and a testament to their hard work.

It seems that this dark Road Diary is a litany of challenges. Maybe the Dark Road is lined with challenges, or paved with them. It certainly seems to be that way. Still, that’s just one side of the endeavour…the challenges often pop up in the mechanics of the  proceedings. Even in the SNAFU’d course of the day, this can happen:

Upon seeing McKaylee trying to carry a big side table for the stage plus 2 paper bags full of greenroom stuff, I intercept her and finally introduce myself.

ME: Hey. I’m Gregory. What’s your name?

MCKAYLEE: McKaylee.

ME : It’s nice to meet you, McKaylee.

MCKAYLEE: It’s nice to meet you, too, Gregory.

Just those words of welcome, her young voice embroidered with kindness and respect—It’s nice to meet you, too, Gregory—was like coming across a calm eddy in a torrent of adult-onset bullshit. 

We redistribute her armload of stuff, put one of the bags and the table atop the last rolling amp rack, and begin the ascent to the venue door. Obviously, cups are falling, the table is falling, the drawer from the table is falling, and eventually I’m swearing.

ME: Sorry for swearing so much, I said.  I shouldn’t be swearing.

MCKAYLEE: It’s ok. I hang out with the Grade Eights. They always swear.

Great, I think to myself. I have the temperament of an American schoolchild when I’m under pressure.

I didn’t get to hang out much with McKaylee after that, but I did see her flit about sporting a tour tee shirt. I hope she keeps it for a long time, along with the memory of that day she helped a band stand on its feet and deliver what it had promised to her hometown after a long and trying day. 

Our brief meeting sliced open a vein of yearning to hear the voices of my own kids. I’ll be calling them as soon as the van stops rolling. Somewhere in New Mexico, I think.

gh

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Salt Lake City, UT, and Denver, CO: wherein we undertake repairs to the van, a show that day, a night drive through the mountains, more driving through a windstorm the next day, a storm of a different sort at the venue etc etc etc…

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Screwed Sometimes.

Imagine that you are travelling through the world, that you are floored with good intent, that you are proceeding as you imagine your ancestors might have done before the times of indenture and servitude, obeying the nap of the world, certain that real tinkers and gypsies would recognize you at once from across the fields and claim you as their errant kin, faithful to the fluster and wild sorrow of your days, faithful to the star chart conjured and cast on the wind blown night of your birth.

These days, that would make of you, among a fistful of other things, a – forgive this technical term from the road warrior lexicon – shit magnet. Do something that raises neither the hackles nor the ire of the regime, you’ll probably cruise through unscathed, no harm meant, no harm done. But call your outfit, oh, Night of Grief andMystery, and a couple of likelihoods might gather. 

You might be haunted across three states by a slow leak in a tire, be unnerved by it enough to go to three fix-it places on gig day and flirt with load-in disaster, only to be thwarted by the service sector and then be taken into the slip stream of human kindness by Andy, who does the job for free because you’re so far from home and because the necessary paperwork for it would mess with his joy at getting off work at noon, who with a princely flourish presents you with the culprit, the sheared-off business end of a wood screw.

Or you might pull into a service centre to give the band a pee stop and seek shelter from 60 MPH winds that are prompting the automated road signs to warn you off the road for the next 65 miles for fear of being blown over, and bring your choice of nutritionally questionable snacks to the counter for payment, where Flo is waiting to serve you in a head scarf and a breathing mask, both signs of someone with a wickedly compromised immune system courtesy of chemo or radiation, who in her irrepressible lilt asks where you’re heading (Denver) and why (a show) and for what kind of show (music) and what kind of music (hard to describe, as usual) and is it Dick Clark music or Johnny Cash music? That’s when it hits you that Flo has figured it out from the likely cliff edge of her life, that this gig is a kind of Man-in-Black thing that you can dance to.

SJ

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