White Snow at the Black Sea

There was snow in the mountains as I came into Romania. I was up for about 30 hours so when I reached bed slept like the dead for about 16 hours. When I pulled open the drapes of my hotel in Constanti the Black Sea was laying at my feet. The day was gray and the sea was charcoal color but it was the sea, beautiful and so close. It had been a year since I last saw snow and 3 years since I last saw an ocean so it was a good day.

  So far I’ve played 3 dates this tour. The first was a classic rock bar and it went well. At 9 PM there was no one. I looked away and by 10 PM when I went on it was full. The audience was fun and the night passed well. The second was in Bucharest at a book store, the exact opposite of the first. I sat and played unplugged to a room full of people, most original stuff but, as always, some covers because people, even literary people, like to hear something they know once in a while. The third gig was in Lugoj at a bar. It was also good. Not much to say except the owner, Florin, made everything very easy and fun and if  he reads this I thank him, as well as all the club owners on this tour, for their understanding that touring can be difficult under the best of circumstances and all help is appreciated.

In the midst of all this I managed a new song. It sort of fell on my head and was one of those 30 minute wonders. 99% was written in my head as I rode a city bus. I wrote it down, refined the choras a bit in my hotel and it was complete. I performed it the next night and it felt like it had been part of the show forever. That’s a good sign. It’s called “If You Don’t Want Me” and will be on the new CD, no question. I seem to have a pattern now of squeezing them out about 1 every few weeks on average. I can live with this.

So now there are a few more dates on this tour then I am home in Germany for the first gig with Rusty Boots. I’m just playing bass with them and singing a few as they already have their band and I am the new guy. This is nice though. I can kick back with the excellent drummer and have fun not worrying about anything except finding good grooves. Life is too fucking good? Quite possibly, yes.

Spaghetti Day and Manifest Destiny

Every day is spaghetti day at La Mohr. 7 days a week for 3.90 Euro you can by any one of 4 varieties of spaghetti. Add a beer and you still get a good meal, including tip for one of the flirtatious waitresses for 7 Euro. My alternative is a curried chicken with rice from the Asian restaurant around the corner, same price, no flirty waitress. There are other alternatives obviously. If spending more bought a better meal I would go there but it doesn’t. It reminds me of something the bartender at the Hubba Hubba said. I will let the name of this bar in the red light district pass by without comment. He said the difference between a 50 Euro girl and a 100 Euro girl is 50 Euro and better marketing. He would know. I don’t think 1 Euro espresso is their primary source of income. This little joke came as he figured out I was probably only going to be an espresso customer. In a kilometer circle around my apartment I am at home. Why am I here? I don’t know. Nuremberg is not exciting. It’s not Berlin, Munich or even Hamburg. I don’t remember ever deciding this is where I choose to live but here I am. It’s my manifest destiny, like me appearing at both the Asian restaurant and La Mohr regularly. In Nashville back in the USA I worked with some brilliant musicians. One in particular attended an expensive university and received what should have been an expensive degree in marketing. He paid little to go to school on what was called by some a PK scholarship. PK stands for Preacher’s Kid. Belmont University is a religious University with serious academic credentials. It’s not one of those silly evangelistic universities when you major in the Old Testament, right wing dogma and narrow mindedness. Chris’s problem was a nice but dominating girlfriend who had no interest in being the wife of a musician, no matter how successful, when she could be the wife of a marketing executive. Pressure was also coming less overtly from his parents who wanted him to do well in life and, while they supported his musical life, believed the career he’d prepared for and degreed in was a better choice to support their future grandkids. Chris told me on a long drive back to Nashville one night he’d interviewed for a real job the day before. A career job. Big money and big responsibilities. He said the radio was playing softly as he spoke with the man interviewing him. What distracted him was the guitar solo on the song playing and how beautiful it was. When he should have been discussing his possible new job he was analyzing what scale and what effects the guitarist had possibly used to get that sound. Chris laughed and we changed the subject to his upcoming marriage. He’s far too good to spend is life being a brilliant musician weekends at the local bar and a mediocre marketing executive 5 days a week, at least in my opinion. I doubt in the short run he managed to stand up to the people who loved him and wanted the “best” for him. We lost touch when I started to tour more. Did his manifest destiny ever kick in and save him from a comfortable, secure life? Did he finally end up on big stages amazing audiences the way he amazed me? Who knows? I think that’s what happened though. Manifest destiny is like an erection. It has a mind of it’s own and generally prevails, for better or worse.

Berlin, 2 A.M.

I’ll work backwards. It’s early Sunday morning after a gig in the center of Berlin’s night life. It was good. They were dancing, singing, even demanded an encore. It worked. After getting paid I went to my favorite Berlin all night Asian place and had my usual Duck curry with vegetables and rice. In a few hours I will start the trip home to Nürnberg.

The evening prior, Friday, I played in a more sedate pub. It was ok but they were a hard audience to work with. And last night was bad in another way. I will explain. The problem has it’s roots the previous night. Instead of getting to bed earlier than usual so I could start for Berlin I went to bed later than usual and started the trip to Berlin after a few hours sleep. I arrived tired. I checked into my hotel determined to get some sleep so I could function that evening. I succeeded beyond my expectations. In short, I overslept. I threw my clothes on and walked quickly for the subway. I was on the subway at Potsdammer Platz when I realized I didn’t have my gig bag full of nessessary things like microphones and cables. Did I leave it on the bench at my original station where it was almost surely gone by now or the hotel where I could simply go back and get it? I tried to come up with a plan B where I could get through the evening without these things and buy a new mic plus nessessary cables for the gig tomorrow night during the day. It wasn’t at the station when I got back. That meant it was either stolen or back in the hotel room. It was in the hotel room. My heart slowed down when I opened the door and saw it on my unmade bed where I’d left it. I grabbed it and hurried back to the subway station. It was 2 stops then a change of subway lines to get to the gig. On the train my mobile phone rang. The pub owner was wondering where I was. I assured him all was ok and I would be there soon. Turns out I was wrong. When I left the first subway train to connect to the second I discovered I couldn’t find the second train. After some crazy rushing around I discovered you had to leave the underground, walk half a block and then go downstairs again to catch the second train. I finally found it. By now I should have been sound checked and ready to play, I arrived at the right station. I exited the station at the wrong exit and was lost. I couldn’t find the street the pub was on. Finally someone helped me and I found the street. Then I went a couple blocks in the wrong direction because there were no street numbers on the buildings to figure out whether to go right or left at the corner. I chose right. I should have chosen left. I walked a long way before discovering this. I turned around and walked in the right direction. I arrived at the pub at about the moment I thought I should be starting my first set. Turns out I wasn’t supposed to start for a half hour. I drank a beer, sound checked and played. All turned out ok but it wasn’t a great night. I’m not sure how much of this was me and how much was them. Either way it ended ok and that is the point.

So now I’m killing time in Berlin waiting for my 5 A.M. train home, belly full of duck curry and some Euros in my pocket. What doesn’t kill you makes you strong is what I’m told. I don’t want to get any stronger.

Ships in the night

I live in my own skin so I’m not privy to the inner life of others. About once in every long while, maybe a year, I cross the path of someone I believe with absolute certainty I could make happy and be happy with. I suspect this happens to everybody. As life twists and spins I am suddenly looking at this woman and she is looking at me with the same certainty. She’s perfect. My every nerve ending is reaching for her. Generally one or both of us are in a relationship we want to keep so it goes no further or for one reason or another it simply isn’t going to happen. Life gets in the way. If I’m happy in a relationship I avoid this innocent woman’s siren call for me to mess my life up again. The worst (best?) was in Oregon when my daughter was about 4. This woman was a friend of my drummer’s wife. I was living in a town where most of the musicians met each other in constantly shifting bands and formed a loose society of friends and acquaintances. We would cross paths at the grocery store, parties and gigs. She taught at my daughter’s preschool, not my daughter’s class thank God. I contrived to walk past her classroom door every morning after dropping my daughter off for a second of eye contact. We never spoke. For a year or so we circled each other but never spoke. My wife and I separated. A few weeks later I was waiting in a bus shelter trying to keep out of the Oregon rain. She pulled her car up at the curb in front of me and opened the door. We looked at each other. I got up and into her car. She pulled back into traffic. No one spoke until she said without taking her eyes from the road “Where to?” I said “Just drive.” We ended up at a rest stop along the freeway just North of town. We sat at a picnic table under a big tree and talked. The rain stopped. The sky cleared. The sun went down and the stars came out. And we talked. We talked about everything we wanted to talk about all those times we couldn’t. It came out like a flood when the dam breaks. It turns out she noticed I usually passed her classroom door about the same time each morning and tried to be at the head of the room each morning so she could catch my eye. The upshot of it all was that she was moving to Canada the next day. There was no question of me leaving my daughter to follow her. The next day I drove her to the airport. I stood at the window watching her plane rise and disappear into the clouds. There hasn’t been anything like such a spectacular near miss since then. The encounters still occur semi-regularly. They’re still powerful but I know how to handle them now. At this point I’m drawn to grown women with a real life she’s put together with a lot of effort. Sometimes she has children, a career, a home, frequently a relationship that may not sparkle anymore but is stable, an underestimated virtue. For far too long I was unfaithful to some good women taking these attractions to their illogical conclusion. Now when it occurs we smile at each other with a mingling of mutual attraction and nervousness, avoid being alone together then go our separate ways as soon as possible. If I’m in a relationship I am extra solicitous to her that night to remind myself that I am happy. Staring at the ceiling before going to sleep I admit my mind wanders. I wonder if she’s doing the same thing in another bed across town. Then I kiss the sleeping woman next to me who mumbles something that might be “I love you” before going to sleep myself. Growing up is a long, painful, ongoing process but it’s worth it.