The Last Drop
Posted on February 1, 2010 with 1 comment
After the rock and roll spectacle was over, a caravan of cars headed single file out of town and turned right up Braintree Hill Road, red taillights disappearing and reappearing in the blowing snow. Not far from here in the craggy hawk haunted hills my old music partner was probably burning the midnight oil with her chocolate brown fiddle, flying through the night on ancient Cape Breton tunes. How many winter nights like this one had I had joined her, settling in next to the wood stove with my guitar, her big old dog at my feet and her husband quietly clanking pots and pans in the kitchen stirring up some dinner for us. Warm memories but life has a way of driving wedges between friends in the oddest way. Here tonight, positioned between the life saving blow of my hard-working car’s right and left heater vents I was again a refugee following new friends to an unknown destination.
The show had included a smoke machine and an army of technicians, ghostly men lit by glowing dials surrounded by towers of gear and the theater itself under renovation - a confounding blend of makeshift ramps and corridors, dimly lit construction zones with what looked like gaping holes in the floor just beyond flimsy surveyors tape barriers. Jimmy had offered me a shot of Scotch in a styrofoam cup and that seemed about right as I fumbled with my cables and guitar picks, trying to assemble a corner of organization around my guitar. There was a set list somewhere, I had seen it flash by earlier, and I was probably going on after the opening set and six songs in. Patrick had appeared with his fiddle and left again, promising to return in time to go on with us assuming his calculations were correct. Then the little detail of a sound check at which I had been unable to hear myself so there was no telling what being on stage later would bring. Perhaps, I would tell myself for the hundredth time, it’s a fool’s errand to gamble with so much unpredictability. But what a lovely exercise in trust.
So much to think about for all of two songs. My time on that big, beautiful Chandler stage had a fuse about as long as a candle’s wick. But in those ten minutes the much improved monitor mix let us know that arrangements we’d so lovingly crafted in the studio were flying free at last in the hall, flying with energy and happiness like birds released, the guitar circling around and around sparkling and deep, the pulse of the banjo and the fiddle dancing, and everything rising out of the darkness, dipped in colored lights. Didn’t matter really now the insecurity about anything not being good enough. More like: here’s the surfboard and oh by the way here’s the wave. What are you going to do? You get on and ride as if your life depended on it. You steal the moment and to hell with the rest. And the best part is, at least with music, most likely someone’s going to come along with you.
Falling into the heavy door after midnight, cousin Steve and I lug our amps across the threshold of a sleeping house, unbundle and uncork a bottle on the floor by the wood stove. “ You didn’t have room to say what you wanted to say, “ I venture, leaning into the warmth and pouring him another glass, “right?” He slowly nods, the small explosions of dry ebony scraps igniting like starbursts. I’m glad to be in the company of a fellow traveler in life who grapples with some of the same issues I do - this music business is way more complicated for some of us, I think to myself. “Look,” he says, “ You have to get out of it something for yourself and make it work for you. Otherwise it’s an exercise in generosity towards others. You and I have done enough of that in our lives without balancing it with what we need.” As he pauses to slice a piece of French Comte cheese for me, the silver whiskered golden retriever laying flat on his side between the stove and the cracker bowl lets out a lengthy, barrel-chested sigh. “He knows we’ve waited a long time,” I say. Steve, who works in a wine shop, raises the bottle to the fire’s light, turning it ever so slowly. “Yes” he says, nimbly twisting the final drop into my empty cup.
The show had included a smoke machine and an army of technicians, ghostly men lit by glowing dials surrounded by towers of gear and the theater itself under renovation - a confounding blend of makeshift ramps and corridors, dimly lit construction zones with what looked like gaping holes in the floor just beyond flimsy surveyors tape barriers. Jimmy had offered me a shot of Scotch in a styrofoam cup and that seemed about right as I fumbled with my cables and guitar picks, trying to assemble a corner of organization around my guitar. There was a set list somewhere, I had seen it flash by earlier, and I was probably going on after the opening set and six songs in. Patrick had appeared with his fiddle and left again, promising to return in time to go on with us assuming his calculations were correct. Then the little detail of a sound check at which I had been unable to hear myself so there was no telling what being on stage later would bring. Perhaps, I would tell myself for the hundredth time, it’s a fool’s errand to gamble with so much unpredictability. But what a lovely exercise in trust.
So much to think about for all of two songs. My time on that big, beautiful Chandler stage had a fuse about as long as a candle’s wick. But in those ten minutes the much improved monitor mix let us know that arrangements we’d so lovingly crafted in the studio were flying free at last in the hall, flying with energy and happiness like birds released, the guitar circling around and around sparkling and deep, the pulse of the banjo and the fiddle dancing, and everything rising out of the darkness, dipped in colored lights. Didn’t matter really now the insecurity about anything not being good enough. More like: here’s the surfboard and oh by the way here’s the wave. What are you going to do? You get on and ride as if your life depended on it. You steal the moment and to hell with the rest. And the best part is, at least with music, most likely someone’s going to come along with you.
Falling into the heavy door after midnight, cousin Steve and I lug our amps across the threshold of a sleeping house, unbundle and uncork a bottle on the floor by the wood stove. “ You didn’t have room to say what you wanted to say, “ I venture, leaning into the warmth and pouring him another glass, “right?” He slowly nods, the small explosions of dry ebony scraps igniting like starbursts. I’m glad to be in the company of a fellow traveler in life who grapples with some of the same issues I do - this music business is way more complicated for some of us, I think to myself. “Look,” he says, “ You have to get out of it something for yourself and make it work for you. Otherwise it’s an exercise in generosity towards others. You and I have done enough of that in our lives without balancing it with what we need.” As he pauses to slice a piece of French Comte cheese for me, the silver whiskered golden retriever laying flat on his side between the stove and the cracker bowl lets out a lengthy, barrel-chested sigh. “He knows we’ve waited a long time,” I say. Steve, who works in a wine shop, raises the bottle to the fire’s light, turning it ever so slowly. “Yes” he says, nimbly twisting the final drop into my empty cup.