Out Here on the Edge of the Desert--
So, I looked through fewer than a dozen scripts for my talk. I had written them for just such an occasion. They were selected excerpts from the book arranged into readings and speeches of different length about different aspects for different audiences.
There was a "day in the life" for an hour and 40 minutes. Too long. You could do it at a bookstore reading if you cracked some jokes here and there. I did it in Dallas a couple of lifetimes ago with a passel of songs. A "highlights" script for an hour and 15 minutes. Better, but not short enough. The "first nine months" of my trek of the eighties at a brisk pace of 33 minutes, and a skipping stone of an account "from the requisite to 2nd Street" at 40. Then there was an eleven minute one I did for Boston kids in a packed middle school gymnasium. Some were a mite too short and others were vivid illustrations, the good stuff of presentations, but drew no conclusions. And a keynote speak should probably have some kind of appropriate resolution for the cover charge. The one I chose was "the first thirty days" -- 44 minutes. And three tunes. FRANKENSTEIN, HARD ROAD, and a new one, DONE THAT, TOO.
The event was the New Jersey Brain Injury Association's 20th annual conference. Held in a Sheraton convention center, it was only a couple of miles from the ocean. We arrived in Newark in the rain, then transferred to an airport shuttle bus to the coast in northern New Jersey. After the drizzly ride we checked into the Sheraton. It rained the rest of that day, but in spite of the steady drenching we later dined with representatives of the Association, Nina and Lisa. The rain came in sheets, and made rivers down the towering glass wall facing onto an almost invisible grey Atlantic Ocean.
The next morning was sunny and dry as the sense of humor of an officer of the law. I combed my hair and spoke for the Conference. There were two signers for the deaf who alternated standing just below left of me on the dais. I'm not sure who had a better show after watching them present my comments complete with appropriate facial contortions in response to my shoreline. You'd have loved it when I fired the hospital. They even signed the lyrics to the songs as they played by. I closed the show with the new song. It's never been recorded, weeks old, and feisty as hell. I could feel this one coming, but everyone wanted to buy the CD that had DONE THAT, TOO on it in the foyer after the talk.
My biggest surprise was to meet a long while internet aquaintance of Sarah's, Peter Gross, as I turned from my seat at the banquet. He introduced the US Congressman from New Jersey from the same stage where I had just spoken. When I met him, with Bethany, Kristin and his son Matt, later for yet one more great seaside dinner after seeing him onstage, it was like I knew him for a year. Only a performer could appreciate the perspective.
And we got on very well indeed as the ebbing sun produced a full double rainbow. It arched out over the Atlantic from horizon to horizon. After the rainbow lit us all up, Matt and I decided we ought to write a piece called "Full Double Rainbow". Stay tuned.
The next morning we got up and breakfasted before we took a cab from the hotel to Long Branch, N.J. Thought I was in an episode of "Gun Smoke". And the cab driver, nice as he could be, sounded to me like he was digging the methadrine. He talked almost continually.
Crawling around between trains with enough luggage, we took a commuter route up the coast into the city at Penn Station. It was bright and the wind was blowing as we cabbed into the city at west 79th overlooking the Museum of Natural History. It was the best to catch up to Wayne Lawrence there. He had a digital recording studio the size of a shoe box on his table and a couple of great mics with windscreens set and ready to go. But we decided on the hip neighborhood bar for a beer and a nacho. A pitcher or two later we went foraging further for wine and ordered a pizza at the pad. We played, ate pizza, and drank wine/beer till we were tired, and finally just wound down from all the getting there going will do to ya.
The next evening we, all three of us, took a downtown subway to the east village and The Living Room. It was a multinational affair with Steve Fullingham from London, Frans Bevers from Holland, and Walter from Brooklyn, who walked over the Brooklyn Bridge from jury duty just to see the show. But that gig was a tough man competition and I should have worn a bathing suit. 84 degrees in the city is uncomfortable most everywhere. It felt like 93 in this curtained little corner storefront where the wind sleeps. The soundman offered that thanx to the band last night, this, that, and that too doesn't work. And only highs come out of there, and only lows come out of there.
Oh...¿no sound check? I felt like I was getting away with something.
The Pawless v2 was a miracle, and did just what the Martin tried to do for thirty years. It sounded fine when the system didn't, and it provoked me to bulling my way through a flock of tunes and finish pretty sweaty, but outta there for the restaurant an hour later. Karen Barrett, an old friend from Houston and Rice University, showed us the watering hole a few streets up. Hauling that Leaf case down the main aisle, I seated it in an intentionally tacky, turquoise, pool shaped corner of a Tapis restaurant that had a sound system run by a live disc jockey that was so loud you could not hear the person sitting next to you. It was like dinner with no ears. NY is an ironic town. But I was into it. It's easy to have nothing to say after blowing it out your ass under the corny red stage light.
The next day we cabbed down Broadway to Grand Central. The cab ride arguably is New York City. A fascination, a physical exercise, a competition to see how many Starbuck's and Ray's Pizzas you can count in a dollar's worth of ride. It's a spatial drama between what will and what won't fit in six lanes of traffic going any particular way at any particular moment. Sounds like quantum physics. Looks like quantum physics. But bigger from the backseat.
From the polished stone floor the ceiling in Grand Central Station is painted like northern hemisphere constellations. Bright little pin lights appear where the stars and planets do. But, I didn't find myself looking up much with my load of stuff. If I didn't mention it, it's a hell of a train station in size. If you're there you're prepared to walk a ways. They took out the chairs when I was a kid because people crashed there too much.
Our train left on time with us in it. Up the Hudson we snaked through the city unending. Two floors above the ground in most places after a while, the view was a panorama of water towers, brick, iron, steel, and rust. The further from town the older the town till the town turned back into woods. The river was never moe than a hundred yards away on this route. The Hudson valley is beautiful, and gets more dramatic the further up the waterway you go. More sails of boats, fewer acres of barbed wire and impounded automobiles. Across the river from West Point we exited with our gear at Garrison station. We could see the site of my next show, the roof of the Phillipstown Depot Theatre up in the trees across the tracks.
Andy Revkin pointed it out as he drove us back into the hills. He lives on the old Albany Post Road. It's dirt, and everyone that lives on it likes it just fine. Keeps the speed down. FYI, The Albany Post road going north is the continuation of the Broadway we started out on in the city 40 miles south. And Andy is my excellent accompanist and the opening artist at the playhouse the next day.
After dinner that evening, we actually played both sets once before I fell out. He played mandolin, slide, and guitar. But, when it was over, it was over. I fell out upstairs in an old stone house on the Albany Post road.
The next thing I knew it was time for soundcheck. At 10:30 in the morning. The only good thing about that time of day is that it gets later every minute. Well it did. By 3 pm the show was off and running, Andy was "on", and I got back into comedy. Great theatre seating and lights for the stage area. The worst thing about the sound in the house and the recording was me. So I was digging it. Andy did a cool little opener, and the full house later encored us after our set together.
Andy treated us all, yet again, and took us back to his stone house on the hill for a barbeque. My new buddies, the well spoken Hank Beukema, the other PAWLESS owner upstate, Bill Smithem, and two of his good friends came along. It was a beautiful golden light that day at sunset from his porch, but it was time to head Œem up, move Œem out. We ended up across the Hudson at Bill's. Ever the host, we ate, drank merrily, and bedded down in the Elvis suite.
And finally, the bad part. When the sun came up we were in Bill's car riding to Newark airport. We sauntered around the terminal for a moment, kinda wandering, kinda avoiding the inevitable. Sarah had to take a shuttle train back into the city for a few more days, and I had to board a flight for Charlotte, N.C. on the way back to, at last, putting that luggage down for the final time on this trip in cowboytown. Didn't unpack that bag till Sarah arrived a week later. It was where it landed when I tossed it. That was a tough way to end one.
Now if I had it to do all over again...sure, let's do it
all over again.
Vince
