Live Oak Blues What happens.

Louisville's Own Wax Fang

I became obsessed a while back with local music scenes. My fear was that music was so dispersed (the regrettable side effect from a thoroughly ‘Net-ed culture) that it really didn’t matter where a band was from anymore. I am pleased to report this is not the case. I just wasn’t digging deep enough. Instead of depending on Google, I decided to take it to the denizens themselves…and boy were they excited (seriously).

So this is what I do now. Any time I do one of my radio shows (“Left Of The Dial,” every Sunday from 1 to 3 Eastern on Grow Radio, thanks for asking), I go to forums specific to the city I want to target and ask them who I should showcase. The result has been better than I could have wished. They are only too willing to crow about their local scenes: the bands who have “made it,” the ones they remember fondly, the ones they want to promote. What I’ve found is that each city does, in fact, have a “sound.”

Take this week’s Louisville, for instance. There is a distinct Louisville sound that you could only discern after culling together 25 songs or so from the bands there. I decided to do Louisville at the suggestion of a friend, but I was only too happy because I spent my formative years there, and still have mad love for the city. Tune in Sunday to hear what I’m talking about.

So anyway, I hadn’t been out on the water in weeks because, you see, it’s a tad dry here, and by dry I mean drier than I have ever seen it–so dry, in fact, that the Newnan’s canoes are exposed again (reference for the locals). If I want to do some paddling in actual water, I have to go out to either coast and I just don’t have the time right now. Nevertheless, that did not stop me (nor the hapless motorboat who put in just ahead of me) from giving it a shot right at the main dock at Newnan’s.

Long story short, I was poling through mud the whole time, as was the motorboat. “You scoutin’?” he asked, thereby keeping intact my streak for getting questioned about kayaking simply to kayak. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m scouting for some water.” Thus began our 30-minute discussion on how dry the lake was. What else were we going to do? Well, we also talked about our mutually admired gator-hunting show, “Swamp People.”

In the process, I felt something hop out of the water and down my back. Rather than jump in the water (never a good idea on Newnan’s) to investigate, I let it ride and found the poor l’il fella on your right, much the worse for the long trip back to shore under my prodigious buttocks. He, too, thought he could find water where it wasn’t.

I recently asked an airboater I know if he would be willing to pull me and my kayak at top speed on Newnan’s Lake–a body of water rarely mentioned without the adjective “gator-infested.” I was serious and he played along. “Sure,” he said, “as long as you let me video it.” See, my mind was fixated on the thrill of reaching hull speed in a kayak, and not so much on how this episode must end. Because kayaks don’t really have brakes and the back end of an airboat is more or less wide open…you know, in order to facilitate the kayak-and-sinew-shredding monster propeller in the back.

Turns out I had access to some real-world experience on this experiment from a friend who decided to tow (read: water ski) a canoe behind his boat. As he whipped his buddy back and forth across the wakes, the canoe behind him became airborne, dug nose first into the water, and then launched its occupant 25 feet into the air and into the gator-infested waters of Newnan’s Lake. It did not occur to me to ask him why he or the canoeist decided to do this (it obviously included some planning and ample opportunity for sanity to take hold), because “why” was self-evident. The operative question to me would have been “why not”…without bothering to hang around for the answer.

I have no desire–none–to sky dive or bungee jump or do any of the usual (and comparatively safe) daredevil activities, because I am actually a wimp, who once freaked out while zip-lining. So why the desire to get into situations that are clearly not smart? Is it a death wish? Midlife crisis? The spiking of my fast-depleting stores of testosterone? The answer (and I am not alone, by the way) could be a dissertation. But for the moment, I will chalk it up to over-suburbanization, a species of boredom where instead of yardwork and car washing, I’d rather be climbing a mountain or shooting a rapid or taking some kind of risk I might not come back from.

Many of the important people in my life don’t have names–at least ones that I remember. Such is the case with the guy who saved me from an adolescence of wretched music. He was the friend of a friend, whose name may or may not have been Mark, and he looked like Wooderson from Dazed And Confused, but with black hair. Since it was 1979 or 1980, I must have, no doubt, been going on about Skynyrd or Kiss or Judas Priest, because at some point he said “Here, check this out. You can have it. I have two.” Then he handed me the Ramones Road To Ruin.

"...been a lot cooler if you did."

Within weeks, I had taped “Mark’s” entire cache of music, as mine had been rendered useless. For the next year, I listened to nothing but Pretenders, Clash, Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Jam and all the Ramones I could get my hands on. Some part of my consciousness had been pried open and 30 years later it remains so. Virginia Beach radio was a horrific thing in the 70s and 80s and but for this…this saint, I would have continued to be defined by what it fed me for who knows how many years. So, “Mark,” this one is for you.

About 20 years ago, I found myself in a warehouse watching Jonathan Richman do his thing on a large archtop. Since this was 20 years ago, I was drunk and filled with more than my fair share of assholery. During a space between songs, 20-year-ago me yelled “Roadrunner!” in a voice louder than I am capable of these days. The scowls of my fellow audience members indicated that I had done something bad. He did not play “Roadrunner.”

I was, of course, very wrong to do that. The shame I felt after that was sufficient to bring about a rapid change in my attitude toward audience conduct during shows. Cut to last week: me and my partner are sitting in a beautiful theater in Charleston, SC–the very seat of Southern gentility. Some of our favorite musicians are making the magic only they are capable of on stage. Between songs they stop to tune…and then someone in the audience yells the name of one of their songs. After that, the floodgates open. For the rest of the night we were treated to hearing their entire catalog shouted from balcony to orchestra. The musicians did not like this. At all. Such was their professionalism that they did not pack up and leave right there and then.

This loathsome tendency–more often than not fueled by alcohol–did not begin with “Freebird” but it sure was popularized by it. On “One More From The Road,” people heard Lynyrd Skynyrd reward listeners screaming the name of a song by playing it. Thus marked a low point in musician/audience relations. Lest you still operate under the assumption that musicians are flattered that you happen to know the names of their songs, let me disabuse you. They already know you know their songs.  That’s why you paid $45 a ticket to come see them. They aren’t flattered. They hate it. It almost always throws them off and all they can do while you are yelling is to stare at the setlist they meticulously prepared before the show. Please don’t let this happen again.

I took my best kayaking photo on the day I felt least like kayaking. I was down, mired in that spiral of self examination that turns into itself until all solutions have been sealed off. It is a feeling with which I am very familiar. I don’t even know the particulars of that day, only that I had no energy and that something told me to get my boat in the water. Once there, I pulled out the camera, took a few obligatory shots, finished paddling, and went home. The result was the picture to your left. I don’t even remember seeing the clouds or taking the picture.

And that’s why I paddle. Even the shortest trip involves the following: lifting the boat onto the rack, strapping the boat down, driving to the destination, unstrapping the boat, carrying the boat to the shore, pushing off, paddling, pulling the boat back on shore, carrying it to the car, restrapping it, and driving home. By definition, it requires forward movement. During the paddling portion of that ritual, the chances are far better than average that some kind of magic is going to happen: a conversation with a fisherman or a fellow paddler, a flock of ibises drilling into the mud for snails, a manatee buzzing my boat from below, a race with an alligator, a close call with quicksand, or the perfect reflection of clouds in still water.

I won’t pretend that kayaking is a guaranteed mood changer, but I do know that I have discovered far more about myself and the places I go than I thought possible when I bought my boat a little over a year ago. I like that it is deeply scarred now, from oyster beds, rocks, sand, misuse, and that through all that it has kept me afloat and moving forward, paddling even when I don’t want to paddle.

I had been scanning maps of the Gulf for some time, because I had this crazy notion that, like my Native forbears, I could paddle a boat out to the scallop beds and bring those suckers back under my own power. About two miles out into the Gulf it occurred to me that I had seen only oyster shells in the many early-Native shell mounds that line the Crystal River area…and oysters like to stay close to shore. Scallops, apparently, do not. As I discovered, they were many miles past my reach or, to be more exact, I could get out there but could probably not get back with assistance or loss of consciousness.

As made my way past the last island and the folks drinking beer and listening to a Worst-Of-The-Eighties radio station in waist-deep water, and the lightning was striking everywhere but where my boat was, I gave up the fight and realized that I would not be going to the scallop beds on this day. Unless I am mistaken, scallops like at least five feet of grassy water, and I was still running aground even three miles or so from shore.

So, my friends, I did not drown or sunburn, but I did get caught in a thunderstorm as I was busy getting lost on the way back in. And if you see shreds of bright blue plastic floating off the coast of Bear Island, thank the oyster beds that, as I said, love the shallow water. Hats off to the Natives who knew how to keep it close to home.

I have played guitar for more years than many of you have been alive, but have never to my knowledge ever turned in what could be called a “performance.” I’m a dedicated rhythm guitarist and have never had the urge to upgrade to lead. Yet I appreciate, even revere, the gunslinger who can fire off bar after bar of blistering lead, every note landing in the ever-moving sweet spot. Check out Alvin Lee’s otherworldly performance at Woodstock to see what this sounds like at its pinnacle.

But is a Great Guitar Performance restricted to this kind of lead guitar? Nope. Check out Mance Lipscomb or Mississippi John Hurt or John Fahey or Leo Kottke. In fact, the single-note, guitar-face-inducing lead of rock and roll is a fairly recent invention and hells yes there were Guitar Gods before that. For me, a “performance” can either be live or in the studio but must be memorable to the extent that you can mention it to someone else “in the know” and s/he will nod and smile in agreement.  In other words, Great Guitar Performances create their own shorthand.

I will be investigating this phenomenon in a series of radio shows on “Left Of The Dial” on Grow Radio (Mondays from 3 to 5 Eastern). I have enlisted the help and knowledge of many music friends to pull this off and have come up with a solid first show.  Tune in or listen to the podcast and I would appreciate any other suggestions you may have.  Cheers.

13 is a brutal age no matter what, but even more so if you were 13 in 1976 and had to spend two weeks at a Boy Scout Summer Camp. The good stuff: I learned that I could swim a mile in rough water, rescue a grown man from drowning, sail, use an outhouse without falling in, and other survival skills such as avoiding a swarm of hornets by outrunning the fattest kid in my group. Similarly, I also learned that I could survive as a congenital wiseass by hanging out with an even worse wiseass.

We called him Bilbo and he was my best friend at the time. Somehow I had convinced him to come with me to summer camp, as I correctly doubted my ability to make new friends while I was there. Bilbo had what could be politely called a “distrust of authority” that took the form of a habitual, dismissive laugh along with the complete inability to restrain himself from shouting “bullshit” at the slightest provocation. The counselors did not like Bilbo, and their shocked reactions to his outbursts turned to thin-lipped glares as the weeks went on.

On the last night of camp, I awoke to group laughter and someone jarring my cot. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that our tent had transformed from a two-person tent to a three-, four-, five-, six-, seven-person tent. Bilbo was still on his cot, but for reasons my sleepy brain couldn’t work out, he was naked and face down, lashed to the frame with thin, cotton rope–the same kind of rope on which we had mastered the bowline and sheepshank. He was covered, inexplicably, in shaving cream, toilet paper, and urine. Whatever cobwebs I still struggled through disappeared with the twack of a canoe paddle on Bilbo’s bare ass.

At once, the misshapen, acne-ravaged face of a counselor we called Pugsly filled my view. “This is funny as hell,  right?” My sense of self-preservation, already at full throttle, recognized this as the password request that it was. “Yes,” I heard myself say, “this is funny as hell.” This night, my ass would remain free of urine, shaving cream, and canoe paddles, Bilbo be damned. As they filed away and Bilbo’s sobs began in earnest, I stole away to the Scoutmaster’s tent and woke him to tell him what happened. Any sense of justice and authority I harbored in the wake of this trauma vanished as he said “Bilbo’s an asshole”…and then went back to sleep.Thus at 13, I learned the lesson we all must: no one is actually driving this bus we’re on. Get used to it and count yourself lucky simply to survive.

Bilbo and I never discussed this incident again, but I always wondered if he had the same night terrors that I did for the next few years. I don’t regret my decision not to take on five counselors (Eagle Scouts among them) armed with paddles, but I have struggled with what I’d be willing to sacrifice in similar situations. I’d like to think that I am no longer the coward I once was at 13, but who knows?

…But I have a few things I need to tell you. To be sure, you have in instances beyond counting left me emotionally wrung out, have dragged me into the dark rooms of my heart I would have preferred to leave unvisited. With your naked voice and rickety upright you have forced me, during the space of a song, to sit still in the raw stuff of grief and beautiful tragedy. That is a powerful engine you’ve got there, Tom Waits…so, I hate to come off as bitchy, but please consider these suggestions:

Enough With The Pots And Pans Already–This was a brilliant slap in the face on Swordfishtrombones (1983), but now it has become kinda schticky. I get your fascination with the jarring tones of industry and the whole Anything Can Become An Instrument thing, but (and I hate to admit this) I hit the Next button the second I hear the first pipe banging. I happen to think you are a more important artist than Kurt Weill, so no more tribute is necessary at this juncture.

Use Marc Ribot Sparingly—Ribot is an exotic spice that can overpower a dish and transform it. His trademark electric sound (distinct from his jazz sound, folk sound, Cuban sound, and manifold other sounds) is so associated with your music that one wonders if he should share songwriting credits (I for one think he should). His solo on “Hang Down Your Head” is so note perfectly appropriate that I would be upset if I heard him change a note of it in live performance. For me, this is his song. You are famously generous with your credits, but you don’t want half your live catalog to disappear if something, God forbid, happens to Marc.

Your Voice Should Never, Ever Be Masked–Regardless of what others may think, your distinctive voice is actually quite varied. From the heaving husk of “Waltzing Matilda” to the wailing of “Cold Cold Ground” to the barking litany of “Step Right Up,” you have more arrows in your quiver than the rest of the Island Records catalog combined. So why the dependence on the heavily gated and masking vocal effects on “Make It Rain,” “Jockey Full Of Bourbon,” and “Please Wake Me Up,” to name but a very few? As with the pots and pans, a little is okay, but I hate hearing you do this so much.

I don’t pretend that taking my suggestions will make you any more The Great Tom Waits than you already are, but as with anyone I love, I felt the need to at least tell you this before it all ends. I realize I should have brought this up in the late 80s, but I’ve had a lot on my plate. I know you’ll understand.