Take This Child, Lord (Tucson, AZ)
I recently had a dream where I was asked to play second base for the New York Yankees. Just me, in my street clothes, with no particular baseball skill, suddenly asked to jump into the middle of a game and start playing. And instead of saying no I just stalled for a bit, looked for a uniform and a glove, made some weak excuses about what was taking so long, but otherwise prepared myself to go into the game. To play second base. For the New York Yankees.
Perhaps the Dream Messenger was telling me that I need to learn to say no to more things. And perhaps, Dream Messenger, you are right. Perhaps I take on too many things and get overwhelmed and try to keep all plates spinning at all times. Yes, perhaps fifty shows was too much to handle. Invariably some plates would fall to the ground and break. It’s been over a month now since the end of the tour and I can finally think again, so I couldn’t just let the tour diary end at West Texas, getting kicked out of an splintered row boat by a mean old man.
As I said before, the band started the tour as a seven-piece. Then three of us left, and we became a proud and resilient quartet for about a month. And then two more of us left and another one joined, making us a trio for about a week. And then our extra person stayed in Santa Fe and we carried on, me and William, now six weeks into a tour and suddenly a duo. This was difficult for several reasons. First of all Nathan had been our cd salesman, pushing our product on everyone at the shows. He was doing a remarkable job, especially with the “Two cds for twenty dollars” deal, which he managed to push, on more than one occasion, onto people who hadn’t actually seen us play. People who had wandered into the bar after our set was done. I was never privileged to hear those conversations, but I still wonder how he could convince someone to spend twenty dollars on music they had never heard. Nathan is also a thrilling stage performer, often capturing people’s initial attention in places where no one knows us. Losing Scott meant losing a driver and a cook (at one point in Colorado he made us all oatmeal on a butane stove while we were driving down the highway– good oatmeal too, with fruit in it.) He is also a brilliant performer and an outward personality, good at getting a bargain on a bottle of whiskey, or convincing a club owner to give us more money. Another reason why it was hard to be a duo suddenly, was that you would hope after six weeks on the road you would have built up a certain momentum. Since you’re generally tired from all the playing and traveling, you would want to have some sort of built-up act that you could rely on. Things that you know work well onstage. But we’d have to throw most of that out. And me and William are both quiet folks. What were we going to accomplish as a duo?
Our first show as such came in an art gallery in Phoenix. There were about ten people sitting on the floor to listen to us play. I was actually surprised at how much fun it was to play as a duo. The setlist had changed so much throughout the tour– songs that worked as a seven-piece didn’t work as a four-piece, and then some of the material we were doing as a four-piece wouldn’t work as a duo. Some venues had pianos and featured piano songs, other gigs had no pianos. Luckily we were blessed by the Song God with a big repertoire so we could change things when we needed to, but losing certain members of the band meant losing certain songs, in effect doubling the loss. Playing as a duo with William was like connecting with some old friends. “Oh hello there, song that doesn’t work with drums! Welcome back!”
We had been playing for about twenty minutes at the art gallery when we started to hear a horrible moaning coming from the apartments upstairs. It was obviously some animal or human that was really distraught. I truly had never heard anything like it. It was as if all the suffering of the world was gathered together in one primal howl. It was as if someone had just woken up from a ten-year coma and instantly became aware of every horrible thing that had happened while he was asleep and his first utterance was an expression of that pain. The gallery owner went out to check on who or what was making the sound and then walked back in with a solemn face. He walked up to me onstage.
“A man who lives upstairs is crying because his $40,000 dog just got run over by a car.”
“Oh,” I said. “… Should we stop playing?”
“Maybe play one more song,” he said. “For the dog.”
An awkward moment, perhaps, but I happen to have a lot of songs that are appropriate to sing for dead dogs. In fact– and I am not proud to share this with you– I have more songs appropriate for dead dogs than I do for weddings. So I sang a song for the dog:
“You don’t need ornaments,
vestments, sacraments, or armaments.
You’re as pure as the source of the Nile,
so I think I’ll go missing awhile.”
The next night was Tucson, the last night as a duo before Scott and Nathan would come back to join us. Things would get easier for us after Tucson.
We played in a long narrow room with a piano in it. In the audience was an old friend of mine named Lisa, whose van I jumped into about nine years ago to go on my first trip to see New Orleans. We both lived there for a time and I hadn’t really seen her at all since the night my red bicycle was stolen outside her house. She was the one that got me started on the long road of traveling and seeking. I always wondered what she thought of me, like an older sister whose approval you always hope for.
Right before I started the first song on piano, a group of about seven people, all from different countries in Europe, sat down at a table right in front. I was a little worried that they would be loud and disrespectful, but they listened to and enjoyed the whole show. They looked like a little table of United Nations. I asked them why they had all gathered in Tucson, and they said they were there for a conference on Consciousness. “Really?” I asked. “A conference on consciousness?” “Yes,” they said. “A conference on Consciousness.” No more needed to be said, apparently.
Things finally clicked for me and William as a duo. He banged on his upright bass to simulate drums. He sang along loudly on the parts where the whole group is usually singing. I didn’t even know what his singing voice sounded like before, as it was always buried by the louder members of the group. I played more aggressively, made some jokes, tied some bells to my ankle for percussion.
I don’t want to over-romanticize things here. I know that because I’m telling the story, details can get distorted in my favor. However, I also don’t want to understate the fact that, on that night in Tucson, Arizona, I just might have saved the world from destruction, or at least saved it from withering obsolescence. Our United Nations table communicated to their corresponding countries that the United States was in good hands again, finally, with young Jaina playing folk music to 30 people in a bar. Lisa sweetly gave me a hug and told me I was incredible. Disagreeing neighbors everywhere mended their disagreements. The blind could see again. The shy kid asked the girl out on a date. Dead dogs walked again and leaped into their owners’ arms.
