“Standing In The Shadows of a Dream”, Funk Brothers

in
The notes kept showing up in my cue. From people I respected, music lovers and makers whose souls were deep and whose hearts I knew beat with the rhythm of the records that shaped their lives. "You must go see it," they enjoined. "It is something you must witness, understand," they continued. It was a consensus… and so I knew it was something that must be done. Except real life has a way of getting in the way. Whatever it is, something no doubt forgotten by next month. The have-to outweighing the must-be. And so "Standing In The Shadows of Motown" has been in Nashville a few weeks, was most likely fixing to get its ticket out -- and I'd still not dragged myself to a theatre to see Allan Slutsky's witness to the band that put the music in Motor City: the Funk Brothers. Motown was the Sound of (countless generations of) Young America. So much a part of the aural fabric of who we are, it's a given, not even a considered or a recognized… and that's where it becomes doubly invisible. But the men who forged that sound, who were the beat, the notes, the swing… Who were they? And why did nobody care? After all, without the musicians, there is nothing. And not just musicians, either, but great musicians who're all heart and soul and sweat and passion for what they do. People who know a groove, a pocket, a riff, a hook -- those who are that kind of musician. I always joke that when relationships fall apart from neglect, the parties become like furniture to each other. They're there. You know they're there. You live with them and never think about or consider that they're there. It just is. And so it was for the Funk Brothers, the backbone, lifeblood, spark and verve and raison d'etre of the Motown Sound. While there's surprisingly no bitterness in the film -- and you'd think there'd've been ample opportunity for that to creep into this documentary/celebration of these unsung heroes -- the clear-eyed reality of what did (and didn't) happen may make the injustice even more harrowing. In the beginning interview, keyboardist Joe Hunter, who's credited with being the original "glue," talks about the realization that for all the excitement generated by the artists, the records, the song and the sounds of Motown, the musicians were going to be left out of the dream It wasn't a master plan. An evil plot. A nefarious credit shift. Just nobody bothered to make the point of their contribution -- or hold them up for the world to see. And so the Funk Brothers became wallpaper. Just an element, but not a catalyst. Blocks, perhaps, but not the alchemy or combustion. Later in the film, when the assembled band members re-enter Hitsville's Studio A, the cameras capture their memories of what went down, how it was, what it felt like. But there's also a segment where they talk about all the things that got the "credit" for the Motown Sound -- from the artists to the producers, the walls, the wood, even the food. Without missing a beat, one of the Funks laughs and says, "Well, I don't know… I'd like to see you throw some ribs or a hamburger down those four stairs, count out 1, 2, 3, 4 - and see what happens!" Indeed. Or as a recent e-mail suggested -- promising, it seemed, some trick of revelation -- send this to 10 people, hit shift and get the answer to the notion what is it the poor have, the rich don't want, can beat God and is the glory of the devil. Hit shift right now and see what happens. It'll be the same thing. But this isn't about decrying what didn't happen. It's recognizing what did. "Standing In The Shadows of Motown," which has been doing the tour of film festivals around the globe, breaks that reality for sure (it would be remiss if it didn't) on its way to celebrating the vitality of musical spirit, the camaraderie that shone between the notes, the men who brought their best to it every day -- and offered up the licks that kept the world enthralled. "My Girl," "Heard It Through The Grapevine," "Dancing In The Street," "Just My Imagination," "Ball of Confusion," "Heatwave," "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "War," "Mercy Mercy Me," "Shotgun," "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing," "Tears Of A Clown," "Going To A Go-Go," "Shotgun," "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted," Come & Get These Memories," "Tracks of My Tears" and beyond... Those songs. Those sounds. Those moments. No doubt -- even baby-somethings -- have a few of those etched on the soundtrack of their lives, the sonic touchstone to moments that will never be forgotten, those songs that wafting out of a speaker no matter how crackly or distorted melt the now and drop them right where they were. That is the power of music. The power of great songs. But especially the flex that is a performance that hooks you. Latter day Motowners the Dazz Band -- a rarity: a self-contained group that played as well as sang -- won the 1983 Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group for an S&M dance groove called "Let It Whip." Hip programming aside (and it was), there was a moment of unbridled exuberance at the tail end a line of that offered the assurance "no torture trip" that was a rafter-scraping 'woo-OOOOH-ooh." That vocal lick was the product of humanity on the half-shell. An improvised second that gave it flavor. It made it real. It put that groovadelicness into a whole other zone of delectation -- and THAT was what set all those Motown records apart. The human touch. The so-real. The non-negotiability of inspiration in a moment. You don't get that just anywhere. You get it from people who get it. Like the Funk Brothers -- whether you know their names or not. And while it's been lost for generations, "Standing In The Shadows" gives them not just names, but faces, voices, moments. It is the beginning of the due -- and it's a toll we should all toss in, because we'll be far richer than whatever the ticket costs. While none of the biggies appeared -- no Stevie, no Smokey, no Miss Ross -- Martha Reeves threw down hard for her boys. And the downlow contemporaries rolled in to play and frolic with one of those bands that should be put on our shoulders and carried aloft for what they've given with no recognition. Though the bold-faced names were merely the cherry on top or the parsley next to the sizzling chunk o' meat. What mattered was watching the Funk Brothers in their element: that elegance, exultance, shimmer, majesty and raw beauty of grown men doing what they put here to do. Not that the Grammy-winning, platinum-selling-and-beyond marquis-named guests were slouches. But even these face valuers were there to sublimate in the face of something far grander and more important. You had flame-voiced Chaka Khan and ghetto soul man Gerald LeVert, funkateer of the cosmic order Bootsy Collins and musical black melt Meshell Ndegecello, blues-undertoned pop/rock chanteuse Joan Osborn, hip rootser Ben Harper and neosoulsensualizer Montell Jordan all paying homage to the men that made Motown a musical place to be. Yes, Berry Gordy had a vision, many of the artists brought their thing and Holland Dosier Holland and Company had songs…. but without musicians, none of it has wings. If you don't have wings, my friends, you can't fly. That's one of Motown's gifts, it took young dreams, innocent wishes and put them to the sky. You believed you could, because you had a rhythm, a melody, a riff that you could sail heavenward on. When it got hard, this music could soothe the bruise. When you were ready to exhilerate, it could put the spring in your step. You never had to think about it. You just had to reach for your 45s, your radio, your compliations - or even go see your favorite bands. Because everybody covered Motown. Figure the Funk Brothers gave you more #1s than Elvis, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones combined… and rarely did people cop their songs without trying to replicate the stuff that made them stick. So for one night in Motown, the show was about holding these guys aloft. But these men didn't need a star-studded spectacle to find the joy in their playing. No, no -- they'd (even at the height of the Hitsville explosion) were sneaking out to jazz clubs and local joints to work out, to flex what they did, to soar on higher and higher currents of musical collaboration, to see where they could push each other where the stakes were only cocktails and a smokey evening. Often they'd bring the prior night's spoils back to "the snake pit" as they affectionately refered to Studio A. They'd seen something new, something beyond the horizon they'd just discovered and they'd find a way to lay it down between the hooks, elevate the artist of the day -- or inspire one of the greats to something more. There is a story told about Marvin Gaye seeking out bassist James Jameson (the only Funk Brother I'd ever heard of by name -- and my knowledge while not encyclopedic is pretty broad spectrum) from some divey club where the personal-demoned musician had sought refuge, exiled from the Motown machine for his excesses, emotional and otherwise. Playing on his back because he was too everything to sit on a stoor and using his one finger technique that he called "the claw," he laid down the bass part for "What's Goin' On," a state of the troubled nation embroiled in implosion and a plea for understanding amongst people who weren't nearly as different as they'd been conditioned to believe. "What's Goin' On" is one of those songs where are the societal conflicts of the '60s crystallize. And Gaye serves as some soulman St Francis of Assisi trying to sow love and understanding where it was most needed. But the message might've, probably would've been lost without that undulating bassline that penetrated the subconscious long before the message could terrify the polarized masses engaged in a racial, sexual, class war that was never declared officially -- only played out in the streets. It was a place where people saw beyond those things that were dividing the masses. And you could see how profoundly music can serve as a unifier when Ndegecello, a scary bassist who has no fear of any label or oeuvre, gently queries white bassist Bobb Babbitt about how the race thing played out for him in "the pit." Confessing that Martin Luther King's assassination was as painful for him as the rest of the guys, that what Black America was striving for was as real to him, you can see the emotion breaking through on his face. We are one. We can be a nation -- as George Clinton proclaimed -- under a groove. It takes respect. And awareness. And trust. It's a tall order. And it means overcoming much of what we're programmed to believe. Not take people forgranted -- and recognize that much of what makes us react is what we don't even consider. If I seem particularly wound-up, it's perhaps it's because this hits a little close to my bedroom. Just as people don't recognize that a good publicist is never seen or felt -- we hold up those we represent so people can see their grace and their resonance in the world in which they exist -- the studio players who create all of country music exist even more transparently. The studio sausages as they often refer to themselves are hailed as being responsible for more uninspired music than any other bunch of musician. But they're the ones who create what they're asked for, polish what they're given. And if you doubt their hearts and their souls, one needs only slide into a gig by the Players -- as close to what was once hailed as "the A Team" as Music City has right now. Guitar breakthroughist Brett Mason. Rhythm machine/melodist Michael Rhodes on bass. Riveting percision striker Eddie Bayers on drums. Steel recontextualizer Paul Franklin. Touch of silk, funk of ages John Hobbs on keyboards. The people these men have toured with, played with, taught would stagger. And like the Funk Brothers, they make the music that so many claim for their own with no recognition or acclaim -- just that double scale check and the sheer joy of being together (because having rubbed the softball from Hobbs' shoulder blades more nights than I care to think, I know it's not always classic American songs or hits being embroidered). If it seems like empty hype, allow me to tear a page from my own experience. On a plane to a photo shoot, a new client proudly offers to play the record they've just finished. Proffering their Discman, earphones plopped on my head, they hit play -- and all is well, until a few shimmering notes steeped in yearning pour forth. It is the bittersweet sound of being haunted by what was. Reflexively, I tore the headphones off, turned to the client wild-eyed and demanded, "Is that John Hobbs?" to a blank look. "The piano player... Is it Hobbs? On that 'Remember' song..." Kenny Chesney was clearly flummoxed by this obvious upset, caused by the intro to a song on an album that would eventually debut at #1 on the pop charts. He couldn't have known that the pool of regret pourding into his track was the only time I'd understood how utterly alone two people can be in love and in their relationship. Though the intro had been played before the engagement ended, we were both just sort of there, marking time, pinned by inerta. It was an abyss of hollow that neither could own, merely survive. And that is the kind of intersection between real life and commercial music that rarely happens and is shocking when it does. The Players, though, don't strive for that. They're there to do the job, elevate where they can. When they play for themselves, it's in tiny clubs. They may never make another record -- other than a badly funded quicky that merely scratches the surface of what makes them rock. But having been engaged to a man whose touch on the keys made me feel like gossamer wings could sprout from my shoulder blades and let me glide through the heavens, I know the emotions that flow from those fingers. Without that feeling, that ability to translate the pulses and revelations, recognitions and realities that defy words, songs and artists wouldn't matter. It's the artists that make it sizzle, that capture the imagination with their glamour, their sense of connection to our world… They're the ones that do the work and live the dream, becoming the face of whatever recordings they release. Somewhere beyond the dream, though, these faceless -- often nameless -- musicians toil to create the illusion that teaches the world to sing. They don't get to dream. They don't get to sparkle. All they have is the playing. And in darkened theaters around the country right now, the Funk Brothers -- long past their session lives, as Motown shuttered operations literally one day in 72 to head to the City of Angels and recorded no more in Detroit -- get their props. That James Jameson had to scalp a ticket to sit in the balcony at the Motown 25 Special, the one that was a tribute to what Berry Gordy and his stable of artists had built, says it all. Whose dream is it? Or maybe it depends on the dream… For the Brothers Funk, one gets the sense they may still work it out in the obscure little jazz clubs and neighborhood joints that field hot bands. For the Players, who still swing from ecstasy to agony turning out whatever Music Row deems this year's hillbilly hits, it's a mixed bad -- play what the people want to hear, but then every now and then, play what makes them smile. It's a dream without tour busses, huge crowds, major buzz. But the thrill is direct -- from their veins to the fingers and out to a small audience of people digging the nuances. Maybe it's enough. But what they give remains way more than what they take. --Holly Gleason 28 December 2002
Read More

We Were So Much Younger Then, Steve Earle

in
Steve Earle stands onstage a little older. He's also a little wiser, a little bigger and his hair's a little thinner than when he released his seminal Guitar Town, a chronicle of the beautiful losers who exist just beyond the windshield's blur. But for all the passage of time, his heart remains the same: stout and fierce and willing to tilt against the windmills in the name of respect, passion, power and maybe, just maybe making ends meet without having to sweat the small stuff. In 1969, Tammy Wynette stood onstage at the Ryman Auditorium belting out "I Don't Wanna Play House" - and in the 3rd row of the Confederate Balcony, a kid from Houston sat mesmerized. He'd grow up to have a wild side, to filet moments with precision and pathos, to become the stuff of legend. But that night, he was stunned by a bouffant, a voice with a tear in it and a sense of how the best songs are ripped from lives and moments most would ignore. The child would never be the same. Steve Earle may never have qualified as a bona fide hillbilly star -- a little too rough, a little too quick to extend the middle digit -- even when his debut Guitar Town found quarter on Billboard's Country Album Chart. But he's got the heart of a cowboy, the soul of a biker and the poetry that stands him in good stead with Kristofferson, Cash, Willie and Waylon. An outlaw in what was then a land of back combed chest hair and quiana shirts, Steve Earle was one ole boy you couldn't tame, and theestablishment wasn't sure they'd want any part of it, either. Fifteen years ago, a young girl was played an advance cassette of this album called Guitar Town by an independent publicist looking to make that first turn-it-into-a-national-story connection. The music, lean, muscular, raw and honing in on the jagged fingernails of the blue collar, went straight to the gut -- and the tales were Hemingway-esque valor set against the lost souls of the West and Southeast: losers and drifters and dreamers and never quites mixed with might've beens. And the 31 year old with the shock of hair he'd flick out of his eyes by snapping his head back could tell a story, draw you in, hold you down, smother you with the too realness of it all. Steve Earle was a talker, a pirate, a rogue and a scammer who wanted you to know how it felt to be just beyond the fringe: not quite attached, but close enough to squint and see what was happening where you might wanna be. Steve Earle, simply, was a rebel that made the Music Row movers and shakers cringe. Coming to pick me up a few months before Guitar Town was to be released at a label not his own in a big black late model Caddy with an engine that rumbled like thunder in a wild, wild heart, the receptionist only had one thing to say: "Holly Gleason, Steve Earle is in the lobby, asking for you. Please come and remove him." He wasn't as bad as all that, confessing we should use his name at San Antonio Taco because "they like some of my songs -- and they'll put extra stuff on the tacos without us paying for it." He'd talk of the margins, the wishing, the lean years that were hardly over. And in his tales and his songs and the way he carried himself, he was an everyday hero -- someone who was about the same size as regular life, yearning for something more heroic, settling for getting by. Guitar Town was a masterwork. We knew it was good, but we didn't know that then… I fought to get him into Tower Pulse, where I was freelancing, in what would ultimately be his first national magazine story. There was so much to say; but it didn't occur to us to proclaim, "this is a record that will define a time." Earle likes to refer to it as "the great credibility scare of 86." And it was a time when it seemed the Dwight Yoakams, Patty Lovelesses, Randy Travises and Earles might could rule the world of country music. Lyle Lovett, kd lang, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kevin Welch and the O'Kanes followed shortly -- and George Strait, Ricky Skaggs, Reba McEntire and John Anderson fanned the mainstream flames as well. Well, the brushfire never caught, but Guitar Town stands. A monument to what might've been if a lot of things -- Music Row's stubborn embrace of the homogenized popcountry that radio understood, Earle's romance with heroin, a shifting musical landscape that left him stranded between genres -- were different, it captures the feelings that aren't defining, but set the tone for lives to be survived more than anything. And this night, when Earle took the stage at the Ryman Auditorium to reprise Guitar Town with a large chunk of the band that made it possible, it was a homecoming that never was. You see, Earle wasn't asked to play the Opry when Guitar Town was landing the air traffic controller's son and Townes Van Zandt accolyte in Rolling Stone and Newsweek and The New York Times. Like Hank, Sr., Steve Earle percolated trouble -- and trouble wasn't something they wanted any part of. So all that made this night all the sweeter… Funny thing about music, too, it melts time quicker than battery acid. Hit the notes, toss out the licks -- and everybody's right where they were back when. "Hey, pretty baby, are you ready for me? It's your good rockin daddy down from Tennessee…" With that opening proclamation, Steve Earle tore into a canon that swept up a handful of characters whose lives seemed to mirror our own. Maybe we weren't pumping gas three hours from anywhere, but we know the desolation and the remove that is a life of disconnection, the alienation of passions that don't quite match up with the world one inhabits. Offering the challenge of being armed with "37 dollars and a Jap guitar" -- originally excised to be "cheap guitar" for fear of offending -- "Guitar Town" offered the redemption of a Vitalis and Aqua Velva Romeo, putting the pedal to the metal to bring all 18 wheels of want home to the woman who could match his revved up desires with her own hunger for the wallpaper-scraping they both deserved. "Guitar Town"'s lurid description of a rambler with "A two pack habit and a motel tan" may've been the sexiest physical reality ever flexed in this pre-Mel Gibson realm -- and it holds even in the face of Brad Pitt, John Cusak and Russell Crowe But Guitar Town's lure wasn't merely libidos in a kudzu-like overdrive. "Good Ole Boy (Gettin' Tough)" painted a picture of the quicksand that traps those who make their living with their back and their hands. "I got a job, and it ain't nearly enough, a 20,000 dollar pick up truckBelongs to me and the bank and some funny talking man from I-ran Left the service, got a GI loan, I got married bought myself a home Now I hang around this one horse, do the best I can…"With those low slung swagger chords slicing through the oppressive truths and the backbeat pumping like pistons, it's an indictment in plain language of an all-cotton American Dream that's been put through the dryer enough too many times that it's way too tiny to cover Bubba's beer belly and five and dime dreams. "Good Ole Boy" should've been a defining moment for the Camaro, mullet, black t-shirt and Jim Beam set. Instead, it ended up the rallying cry of intellectual objectors, raging against the Yuppie norm… Just as "Good Ole Boy" was a snapshot of how it was, "Hillbilly Highway" traced three generations of rural diaspora -- Appalachians chasing work and dreams and the illusion of a better life. Acoustic guitar-driven, with a rockabilly-esque backbeat, Earle's wide open twang runs his finger down the family tree -- it's a phenomenon that is both inherent to the hollers and the poor parts of industrial cities. Defiant in its embrace of the process, "Hillbilly Highway" paints the unequivocal path of the only other option… not savory, but not much else either, a promise that really isn't. As the truth settles like a blanket to fend off the chill of reality, there's the intricate acoustic guitar part that falls like a street light's glow that sets the mood for "My Old Friend The Blues." Puddles of steel guitar pool around the chorus, a breaking, quaking recognition of those rare things that remain constant. This is the mournful celebration of the ache which remains no matter what else happens in the souls who lead these lives of unrecognized desperation -- sweating it out in the margins, watching the good life race past and the gaps between haves and nots deepen. So it is with Steve Earle, a man who paints lives in a few verses and a chorus -- and so much more is said between the lines that illuminates that which is too bleak to outright confess. His truth is even greater than the words themselves, like blood on ones hands that never quite gets washed away, some truths stain and define us without ever being spoken. "Fearless Heart" acknowledges the time served, the miles covered, the losses sustained in the name of love -- and even as it's a bruised and battered confession, it is a pledge of fidelity, of ardor, of the willingness to connect. This is a man who'll carry the burden, do whatever needs to be done -- and deliver the object of desire to the other side. If only you'll let go, if only you'll believe. A safe bet? Hardly and definitely. And that's what has always been the yin of Earle's yang. Sure he can be coy and innocent - '"Think It Over," a Ricky Nelsonesque plea with a retro feel to a girl who doesn't see what she's abandoning -- or tender and real life vulnerable -- the conflict of chasing the dream and missing the family that informs the phone call home to talk to his young son which is "Little Rock & Roller" - because they're all colors of the unacknowledged redneck/hillbilly emotional spectrum. To acknowledge the whole is what makes the chomping at the bit, the squinting at the less than promised seem more noble, less victimized. I have a friend who likes to refer to musicians of unprecedented skill, especially guitar players, as witches. Richard Bennett, who co-wrote some of the songs herein and anchored the Guitar Town sessions, is a witch of the first order. With an arsenal that includes an oversized hollow body Gretsch, a white Telecaster, a six-string bass, Bennett scrawls and etches tone and shape and feeling on Earle's Everyman psalms and ravers. Liquid in one place, bottomy in another, it is a muscular thing being done -- and Bennett provides much of the structure. Indeed, John Jarvis' grand piano flourishes, which range from roadhouse to glistening to tender, are the sparkling counterpoint to Bennett's barbed wire. It isn't a flavor one expects, but it elevates the truths to something elegant -- even the most redneck moments. Factor in drummer Harry Stinson's unflagging beat and close-formation harmony parts, and you've got one of those realities where the magic isn't merely chemical or an accident, but truly the result of something akin to the sum of well-chosen elements. By the time "Someday" rolls around -- the ode to a young man anywhere too far from somewhere, who knows there must be more -- this character could be an old friend. His eye on your car, his finger on the pump, he tells himself he can escape -- and believes it even as you disappear beyond the horizon. Sure his brother got out by virtue of athletic prowess, which is not an option here ("My brother went to college 'cause he played football/ But I'm still hanging 'round 'cuz I'm a little bit small") ; so one can only tell themselves the lies that will sustain them until it's too far beyond too late to even consider the mocking refrain of "what if?" "Good Bye's All We Got Left To Say" is a fitting rejoinder to those who would naysay, the faithless love who didn't have the heart to maintain, the reprise of what was an album far more important than any of us could have realized. It's a bitter whatever, but it's delivered from a place of detachment, of knowing Popeye was right in his retort "I yam what I yam" -- and back when, it fit the hotrod boy's secession from Music Row's reindeer games. Throughout the song cycle, Earle offered insights and stories that were both self-deprecating and historical. It was a poignant time for a dreamer who was getting his shot at the brass ring - and the hardcore troubadour had no trouble acknowledging it. With the band, which also included road dog guitarslinger Mike McAdam -- Earle's Sancho Panza in the best sense, synth wonder Steve Nathan, Paul Franklin's last minute substitute steeler Gary Morris and bass player Glen Worf, exiting the stage, the Grammy-winning songwriter and social agitator offered up several breath-taking acoustic moments. Balancing the desperately heartbroken pledge of eternity "Valentine's Day" to a woman who deserves so much more than a wellworn heart with the hair-raising first person portrait of a killer on his way to die "Billy Austin," which begs some powerful questions, Earle offered breadth with his depth and intimacy amongst what had been an overt celebration. For Nashville's movers and shakers were out in full force, littering the balcony, remembering a time when we were all so much more. Hope and dreams were the order once, the blind faith that we could create something new from the ashes of something great… The promise of Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam and all the rest never quite got home to roost. Sure Patty Loveless won her awards and had her hits and Mary Chapin Carpenter charmed with her chiming radio friendly concessions and NPR crossover. But the hardcore hillbilly promise never really managed lift-off. When the band returned to cap the evening's proceedings, it wasn't the dope-growers post-Viet Nam manifesto "Copperhead Road" they dug into. In keeping with the nostalgia that was more electric than much of the right now, Earle and company instead reprised the encore they embraced back when it was all happening -- the Rolling Stones' cautionary song of drug abuse and its aftermath "Dead Flowers." A lumbering hymn to love gone, drugs consumed, life spent and lost, "Dead Flowers" always celebrated the very tightrope that Earle walked throughout all of it. Indeed, it was a highwire of crossed needs that offered no refuge only the promise of a proper memorial when it all became too much. This evening, Earle shone triumphant. A champion of the forgotten, a fighter for unpopular causes, a working musician who tells stories that elevate those who are being captured in the lyric and those who hear the tales, it is that Everyloser who makes him compelling. Sitting with Lee Ann Womack, a client for whom that specification cheapens a friendship forged in music, the stakes and pay-offs became clear. Follow your heart, tell your truth -- the legacy will follow. For her "I Hope You Dance" was a moment, but she recognizes it's the body of work that will define her. Just like Steve Earle and Guitar Town. It set the tone for stories to come, characters to hold close, truths to acknowledge and lines to cross. If Nashville didn't cash the check the renegade writer wrote, on this one night, they had to think about what that nondeposit cost them -- and in a world where what wasn't never registers, that's a pretty strong truth to consider.
Read More

exhaling in the pummeling rain on a1a

in
spent the tail end of yesterday afternoon playing chicken staring down a phone message from my doctor's office WHY would they be calling on monday when they told me there would be no information until wednesday unless the news was so ragingly, painfully bad that there was no point finishing germination? having finally gotten some sleep all day yesterday i was groggy from something other than the pain medication and i found the fear running through my veins again like a train through the mountains rolling with the momentum of a downhill run, rolling with the power of uphill locomotion my heart racing like a rabbit on the discovery channel, about to be dinner for some fanged beast of prey and knowing the observers weren't going to intercede so i went to the grocery store and there in the publix, between the mojo criollo + the fresh fruit, the crunchy peanut butter and the spanish saffron looking way into the "i don't have a problem" DTs it occurred to me (eek): not calling doesn't outrun the outcome bad news is still bad stuff, even if you refuse to let them tell you pick up the phone, stupid, and dial and so i did... there along the ocean highway with the rain coming down sideways, the malibu flashing and crawling my heart pounding harder than tommy lee in motley crue's most rocking days terrified and driving and holding for dr cooper's nurse the poor nurse forced to tell me to get on a plane because, you know, i must be amputated from the waist up "you're cancer free..." WHAT? "your tests are back... cancer and pre-cancer free" I AM? "yes, you have a pappiloma...and dr cooper can explain that when you come in for your follow-up visit." But...I'm...okay? "perfect." and that's when the crying started. sobbing. bawling. then crying all by itself. in classic holly fashion, though, i also threw up... too much adrenalin with nowhere to go so it created its own exit path and then i cried some more relief. joy. surprise. it was all there. everything i was sure i wouldn't be feeling at the end of the phone call terrified that if i told myself it was nothing, fate would not be amused that i wasn't taking this situation seriously and ZOT the hell out of me terrified enough that i wouldnt consider the possibities for fear of making it real fate being cranky with my lack of faith and ZOTTING the hell out of me so somewhere in a reality akin to a green grape suspended in red jello where denial didn't exactly run rampant, nor fatality frolic like a colt in pastures of green i tried to be stoic, gargle with terror and act as if i don't know how i did really i do know that the people i told made me feel better and everyone who responded to the e-mail were angels with wings on their fingers thank you in ways you can't imagine, for things you wouldn't consider fear of being erased is as bad as the fear of pain i'd like to believe that a bad thing wouldn't make people sidestep me the way we sometimes do street people when we know we can't change their fate people are our greatest strength for just when i was sure i wasn't going to make it to wednesday came this outpouring of strength and hope and love it hopefully wasn't too taxing for you but a huge deal for me and i thank you for it know how powerful little things can be give them whenever you can because my doctor was aggressive about something that was potentially life-threatening -- the very same course of action andre agassi's 30 year old sister took + ended up being positive, but now back in step and shape with a perfect recovery rolling out before her) and know somewhere amongst the packing boxes, i am laughing a laugh of the freaked and now settling that awkward sound that means i have seen experienced something bad but it looks like all is okay because that's where i am this morning painfully grateful both for the results and you and eddie montgomery who let me know to let people reach back a-men and then some it ain't an aerosmith review, but to me -- i PROMISE -- it's every bit as exhilerating! ps: the doctor's office had told me it was tuesday or wednesday because if the results had been dodgy, they'd have wanted to run them twice and because my doctor's speaking at a medical conference and wouldn't have been able to make the double-checked call until then and wisely, he didn't think it was something he should palm off on an assistant talk about sigh and the some -- -- Holly Gleason
Read More

“Oh, Cumberland”, Matraca Berg

in
There are songs that take you hostage, quietly and without notice. It always starts out with a hush, something that you almost don't notice - until you realize that you're on eternal repeat and the thought of getting off the tape loop is too painful to consider. For me, black Irish girl that I am, those songs tend to be weepers or slow burns. They're songs that with no fan fair climb under your tissue and move through your veins sereptiously. They become a part of your blood and they flow through you as a languorous life force. Sometimes they're songs of desire one wishes to be greater, but more often they're songs of regret, ache, loss - and they evoke a misery that blankets you in the sweetness that was, a simple thing so fulfilling even bathing in the loss is more satisfying than what may lie ahead. And so Matraca Berg gave me a demo of "Oh Cumberland." It is a benediction for a place and a time where it was barely moving, very humid, utterly fine. It is a song about being out there - and wishing for nothing more than the everlasting return to the place one feels most at home. "Oh Cumberland" rises like heat waves on forgotten blacktop under an August sun at the height of the day. Nothing's rolling because there's no energy to apply - and as those national steel guitar licks shimmer like the illusionary oil slicks that dot limitless ribbon that runs towards an endless horizon, her voice rises yearning and plaintive, keening for a vision that is recognized only too late. Too, there is just enough squeeze box to reflect the exhaling of despair for what is now gone, that place that can not be returned to. And while this is an elegy for a place, it is also an elegy for a state of mind, a state of soul - a moment when things were easier, enough was enough and the molasses-paced, sun-soaked laze of whatever offered a refuge that was never seen as that. Refuge from what? Boredom wasn't a word - and that state of suspended engagement, prolonged nothing wasn't a liability or a cause to be railed again. If knowledge meant needing more, then bolting brought unsettled truths - hungers never considered and now utterly consuming. I don't think it's the raging fires that burn us down. That urgency sets off a whole set of triggers and alarms that will ultimately bring rescue. It is the quiet storms that fail to elicit fear that creep up, that lull us into a paralysis of noncomprehension that bring us to our knees. Until it's too late, until we're swallowed whole, we don't even know how faded our heart has become and how far we've drifted from the shore and the core of basic comfort and desire. Yearning may be the most pungent of feelings - that thing from which we will not drop, but suffer in a way that is as complete a companion as our shadow. Though darkness provides a reprieve from our shadows, where it magnifies that which we miss. Indeed, the dark mocks our losses and elevates the anguish and the fever to a holy vigil that drives us to the breaking of the day, exhausted and more uncertain of our ability to get through. If the words make it clear - "lazy old river, not a lick of ambition/ you get to Kentucky, then you roll on home/ if you were a highway, you wouldn't go nowhere and I wouldn't be lost out here, all alone…" -- it is the melody that creeps into the atomic structure and provokes those emotions we keep in check. Restraint is critical to survival in these modern times, a stiff upper lip, a refusal to feel that which is messy - and most days, most moments, we maintain the strain with a stoicism we no longer recognize or need to acknowledge. It's what makes passion so thrilling - and loss devastating. Quietly coaxing the notes from the melody, "Oh Cumberland" rolls along sleepily, a glowing pillow that proffers comfort, but delivers the twinge that haunts long after the song has ended. The best melodies are like that, evoking and grieving and delivering the things we'd sweep by - and creating moments where the truth can be looked at like an eclipse through smoked glass. Of course there's spare beauty - and then there's that connection of singer and song. For Matraca Berg, an award-winning writer who's captured bittersweet moments like the loss of innocence in "Strawberry Wine" and the painful truth of time's ravages in "Back When We Were Beautiful," a declaraction of freedom from archetypes in "That Kind of Girl" and the need to escape the first hand dealt for a dream and a three card draw in "Wrong Side of Memphis," the opportunities to make those larger unions defy her best-defined role - and that also informs her commitment to this song. Matraca Berg is an artist without an audience - a tragedy and a truth that is all of our loss. For when she inhabits a song, it is more than a cloth to be worn, but a glimmer that makes us all wiser, stronger, deeper. Indeed, it lets us dream without fear of disappointment or reprisals - just a weightlessness that lets us drift without time or worry. Barely breathed, tentatively embraced, when the girl who spent her baby years in Nashville's creative center closes her eyes to ponder the reality and the memory of the river that flowed through her life, it is the bruised wings of an angel that can't quite get home. She is a pious keeper of the visions and the sounds of quiet stillness - "I am a faithful son/ No matter where I run/ I hear you calling me" - just as she knows the truth of where she is now: "Fire in the asphalt/ L. A. freeway/ Santa Ana windstorm, come blow me away/ This rearview mirror could use some adjustment/ Some other reflection, some other place…" There is no other place, however, just the sound in her mind. It doesn't mock, doesn't belittle, doesn't even mean to torture. There is rest for a fevered brow, the promise of innocence lost but never quite gone. If she is sadder, but wiser, she still reaches out and back, refusing to relinquish what was in the name of something ultimately less. On those nights when the lost moments circle one's head like a halo of jewels and promises, it is songs like these that serve as a two lane of deliverance. Suggest what was in a way that settles like skin, covering the nerves and the muscles and fibres, they create a return without the angst that distorts a pure longing. Writing about songs that no one has heard, by the way, is the most frustrating of all. Too literal and that which is suggested is smothered; too obtuse and the eventual point of arrival is lost in the flood. Hopefully somewhere between is where you are now… maybe not thinking of this song that you don't know, but one just like it - one that offers you a moment and a journey to a time and a place where you were so much less and so much more. As I e-mailed Matraca, realizing I'd been taken prisoner and left for the heap of melancholy the song had reduced me to, "god, it's made me cry last night and this morning. Don't know what i'm yearning for exactly, but there must be something… "Begs the question, though: do we shed our tears for what we've lost? or what we've become?"
Read More

I Wanna Be Sedated…The Ramones

in
I was a kid in Cleveland, Ohio when the rumbling started three chords, a buzzing sound, a splaaaahhhhh vocal that went everywhere at once ultimately landing nowhere it was pop music perverted revved up on reds, frantically thrashing about being poor, rebellious and judged it wore bangs and a leather jacket it was danger, albeit benign danger, with a beat and it could be found in that ultimate forbidden paradise: record revolution on coventry, where my parents cringed every time the magnet's pull lured me there the place smelled funny, standing there in my knee socks and plaid skirt trying to seem tough enough to not get slagged or slighted for my uniform inhaling the incense and musk and patchouli, hoping not to cough bopping my head back and forth, ponytail slamming in time, maybe cracking my gum and flipping through the record racks as music by the ramones, the buzzcocks, the deadboys and devo blared i was so young they were so young and all that rage felt like euphoria and now the quiet feels like a roar the ramones never became u2 but without them, there'd've been no pistols, no stiff, no punk, no wave -- not even that giant window display of elvis costello in day-glo black lite paint that freaked you in and astounded you with brilliant songwriting certainly there was a sweetness to the ramones' glue-sniffing turbo-prop high jinks that disarmed heck, it even charmed and that was the place where the onramp lifted up and off and took you to a place where it was all loud, euphoric and charged somewhere, i hope joey's got a good seat + a cold beer gabba gabba hey! -- Holly Gleason
Read More

In Praise of Vince Gill

in
March, 1990. Vince Gill's genuflects at California country's high altar: North Hollywood's legendary Palomino Club, where Merle and Buck, Emmylou and Jones all did time from time-to-time. A sleazy, greazy kinda bar -- it's either played as homage to the heritage or for the low-ball guarantee to cover expenses and some West Coast hillbilly cred. For Vince Gill, just off RCA -- then home of superstars Alabama, the Judds, KT Oslin and Sylvia, it was absolutely the latter. The former Pure Prairie Leaguer (the voice of their AC hit "Let Me Love You Tonight") and free agent Cherry Bomb (the band shared by Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell and Albert Lee) was a shoulda that hadn't. After all, he had the voice of an angel, played guitar like the devil, was pretty enough and seemed easygoing. Once the old cigarette smoke and cheap booze was gone, Gill and his crew needed to mount a not-so-new Silver Eagle and ride north to Cal-country's crucible: Bakersfield. For the singer/songwriter, it was a moment when the future was fixin'-to-be-defined. In many ways, it was an all-or-nothing roll, and it was okay by the lanky Okie. Signed by Tony Brown -- an alum of Elvis, Emmylou and the aforementioned Cherry Bombs -- to MCA Records, Gill had finally made the record he'd wanted. And as the white lines fell beneath the wheels, he played that record that was his heart, his soul, his hand on the rock. In the interest of full disclosure, I was on that bus -- a lost acquaintance who fell into his life in the name of golf back when I was a kid and he was a Prairie Leaguer only to have my destiny changed in the name of rock criticism. "Almost Famous"? I lived it -- and if I was the boy writer, he was the inadvertent rock star/catalyst. Time had passed since my senior year of high school and his trajectory was more horizontal; I'd spent four years being the West Coast call for Rolling Stone, Creem, Musician and others. But I missed that hillbilly boy with the blues who could fire'em up and burn an ache to cinders. So the tape played and the moments passed. We listened once, then again. It was a startling record: unburnished heartbreak sung in a sweet tenor haunted with lonely. It evoked the desperation of Merle Haggard, with a bit of Bob Wills' swing, plus the jocular spirit radio like. If it were a different world, I thought, it could work. But the world was brutal. To reinforce that truth, the gig was a bowling alley lounge where the soggy carpet smelt of stale beer, the naugahyde of the bar stools was cracked and peeling, the juke box stopped at '79 and the formica on the tables was chipped like a cheap manicure. Standing beneath a sign that read, "Tonite VINC GI L," the conversation was reinforced by the tableau's bleakness. "I love your writing, but nobody gets it… If they wanted that, it would've happened," I said wincing, guilty, the voice of hard truth. "Maybe that Reba duet (the two-step friendly 'Oklahoma Swing') will work…you know, use her momentum to break. But 'When I Call Your Name'? They hate sad stuff, especially sad stuff that's classic country music. "And that 'Never Knew Lonely'? My god, they want shiny, happy -- not the depths of despair." It's a long story… "When I Call Your Name" topping the country charts. But one of Nashville's finest moments. And it created the dichotomy that defines Vince Gill's legacy. Vince Gill is a good guy, with a rapier wit, no need to suffer in the open or flex his artistry, so it's easy to make him Kenny Rogers. Mr. Middle America with an awards show gig, a set of golf clubs, a willingness to help out and a gift so profound, it's effortless. How good can he be? After all, we like our redneck romeos wild-eyed, swaggering and spitting and looking for trouble. Vince Gill's too tame, too well-spoken the naysayers argue. But that negates the utter naturalness of his affinity for traditional forms. When the Hargus "Pig" Robbins cocktail piano slinks through the ever-after come-on "If You Ever Have Forever In Mind," it's testimony to a lost time when country came out of bars with broken hearts and shattered promises… Ditto the cheaters' waltz "Pocket Full of Gold" that was remorse and recrimination bathed in pedal steel and burnished with high lonesome harmonies. Or the searing "Go Rest High (On That Mountain)" intertwining his battered valentine high tenor with Patty Loveless' raw holler grit and Ricky Skaggs' bluegrass whine that's as mournful an Appalachian elegy as the Carters, the Louvins or the Stanleys ever mustered. Even at his most pop -- the sleek "Whenever You Come Around" or the good-natured purgatory-(maybe) -raisin' romp "One More Last Chance" -- there's still the truth of the moment that demands witness. Real life is like that. It ain't fancy and it isn't always profound. Gill -- who plays Gund Arena with wife Amy Grant as part of their Christmas tour, another move neither Hank Williams Sr. or Jr would make the naysayers can grumble -- understands that. He's so not so full of himself he's going to miss the simple joys that make surviving the valleys or climbing the mountain worth it. Indeed, he don't much care what the critics think. Which is a shame. Because when conventional wisdom misses albums like The Key or High Lonesome Sound, it deprives country's legacy not more watered down pop-lite country crooners, but a writer/artist who enriches the genre with a deep sense of what matters about a musical form that's suffering an identity crisis. Vince Gill is the real deal, a country singer from the inside out. He weeps with the best rather than embracing two dimensional emotions that're pure Hallmark rather than landmark. He offers fans songs to define what they may not have the vocabulary or introspection to explain. -- Holly Gleason
Read More

two hearts beating, one marriage churning

in
What is the sound of marriage hardfought, hardscrabble, hardwon? Is it Yoko Ono's dissonant shrieking? Trent Reznor's most post-ndustrial cacophony? Or the ruminations on various states of love from two unpolished voices merging? The smart money goes on Buddy & Julie Miller, roots singer/songwriters who stand at Emmylou Harris' right hand and provide snapshots of lives lived like papercuts and loves gone like mean ghosts and bad debts, empty yet always dogging you. On their first collaborative record, it's strictly a scraped knuckle affair. For the Millers, though, there is no substitute for organic sounds, flawed moments that are perfect enough and performances shot through with the kinds of truths that cause pause amongst the recnognition of something so quickly, unthinkingly passed by. They sing songs of love enflamed, love long gone, love of God and love of others… and in their hearts, it all comes from a place of much truth and intensity. As the guitars bristle in brittle recognition of want and not want, Julie's little girl voice is brutally encased like spray roses in rusted barbed wire on the spooky "Dirty Water," then pitted against the feral "Wild Thing"-evoking squawl of "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast" and the out-of-control passion that ignites "Little Darlin'"'s Russian roulette take on romance that will not be denied. Buddy's white-washed, split rail tenderness is the perfect foil, caressing the hushed truth beneath the skin of "That's Just How She Cries," then sounding a mournful note on "The River's Gonna Run" as he surrenders to love's Higher Power. On "River," Julie offers a counterpoint vocal that is keening, yet underpins the probing truth being embraced. This is about a love bigger than the both of them -- and it is truly the tie that binds. If there is a central moment to their rainbow coalition of the heart, it turns on this song with Harris' vet Brady Blades offering almost tribally pulsing drums, NRBQ vet Joey Spampinato reinforcing both the melodic thrust and the heartbeat and Buddy's guitars strung like high tension wire on which the vocals may perch as they balance between the power and the peril. Powerful as that is, it's when the two voices intertwine that they mesermize. An Okie dustbowl Everly Brother and Sister, the Millers conjure the aural equivalent of tears on the old-time country waltz "Forever Has Come To An End," where they're joined by Harris for the third harmony part. They then fearlessly rev Dylan's "Wallflower" with a raw charge of pure desire, inject Richard Thompson's "Keep Your Distance" with a dangerous erotic current to be denied -- and close with as good a love eternal moment as has been witnessed in "Holding Up The Sky." With neither bravado nor coy Hallmark curlicues, they offer each other the best they have: "Baby our love was meant to be/ It's from God's hands/ Even when dreams turn to memories." Simple truths, well told and played with basic economy. It should all be so easy. -- Holly Gleason
Read More

i don’t wanna miss a thing…aerosmith live in nashville 9.19

in
When a man gets to be a certain age, you can count on certain things -- the knees, the hair, the hydraulic lift in the pants -- to go. It's not that God is cruel, it's that he believes in leveling the playing field -- and the (in theory) addition of wisdom has to be tempered with other lessenings. Not that you could prove it by Aerosmith's bucking, pawing assault on the senses at AmSouth. Though Steve Tyler, Joe Perry & Co. have snorted, sucked and spun through every excess known to Western (and many Eastern) civilizations over seriously extended periods of their 30 years as rock and roll heroes, there's been no diminishment of powers. Indeed, it's as if they've distilled the knowledge of excess and put it between their ears and legs, in their throats and fingers. Lessening? Not in that painfully taut Perry's 6-pack abs (replacing, no doubt the 24 bottle case previously consumed) which is flexed as he unravels stinging, sinewy guitar lines that entwine around the columns of pain and passion streaming from Toxic Twin Tyler's throat like hissing electricity needing a place to charge. Not the always androgynous Tyler in his shredded red and white striped t-shirt, his pants defying gravity as they clung to those swiveling hips in much the same way the Boston-based yowler's fingers wrap themselves around the mic as he leans into yet another seek-and-destroy vocal performance. For Aerosmith, whose Just Push Play marks a conscious decision to return to the grit and the street -- forsaking Diane Warren's turbo-hit-balladry for a band-driven, hard as diamonds take on no frills yard dog rock, the 2001 tour is about reclaiming the truth of their roots. Largely forsaking the Geffen Permanent Vacation-era hits, which heralded a return to the commercial fore for the AOR jurassics, this was a show keyed to where they sprung from and showcasing Play's leaner, meaner reality. A legitimacy grab can be a dangerous thing, especially when the act in question has drawn out a strong concentration of fans who weren't born when their first album was released. And no doubt, the superficial 'smithheads were lost for much of an evening filled with blues-based powercrunch. But for anyone who would surrender to the pummeling backbeat and take a lesson in dynamics, the sweep would carry them along until the gaps made sense. Resurrecting bawdy jewels such as "Big 10 Inch (Record of Rhythm & Blues)," which was given a randy burlesque patina -- jauntily going barrelhouse as the graphics reinforced the music being whirled out before the capacity crowd -- Aerosmith knew no shame, just torque and release, torque and release, and delicious, near-carnal-crazied laughter. Lick it off your fingers, make THAT sound, feel the moment and let the moment move one's tropic of cancer or capricorn. Defying the gender reality, is this a show that's double X? Or is it XY? Or is it about both inside us? And is it a literal read on the aforementioned? Or is it about a merger of the two chromosome combo-packs for the greater pleasure? If it's Aerosmith, it's both. There were moments, Tyler and Perry -- gaunt cheekbone to gaunt cheekbone at the mic, singer leaning into guitarist as one peeled off another acid-dripping solo --where one could only hold their breath, wondering if they were going to the wall or mattress in some hedonistic merger that would defy homoerotic splendor and dissolve everything we've ever been raised to believe about gender orientation. And that's the beauty of America's hardest working, hardest rocking rock'n'roll band: they blow our minds, our carbons out of our carburetors, our longheld biases with their full-frontal ability to dissolve longheld conceptions about what sex, what rock, what catharsis feels like. It is them and us and a long Freudian tumble without words down a narrow tunnel to a place where there's a cigarette and a wet spot -- and truly nothing more needs to be said. Not that this show was merely about the hurtling towards impromptu musical combustion. With the military precision of high tech, large production grand rock spectacles we as consumers have come to expect, Aerosmith hit their marks -- and used the resistance of "being there" to heighten the tension built. Even what should have been a stiff little moment -- moving the band en masse from the stage, through the crowd to a flyer stage in front of the lawn -- came off as a bit of solidarity with the peeps. Though being surrounded by a phalanx of beef (surely for their safety, but it did create a barrier in the see-me, touch-me, fuck-me, rip-us-to-shreds illusion they conjure), the maneuver didn't detract from the impact of giving it back to the cheap seats. Yes, the filmed vignettes were posturing and unnecessary. But as an entire lawn was lit by extended lighters, swaying gently back and forth during "Dream On," it was all forgivable. "Dream On," with its meandering melody and trippy lyrics started out all those years ago as irony cast as wisdom, but something to (hopefully) be grown into… Today it is a telling truth, a rock and roll survivors pledge and promise. Lost in the build, one can forget it's a song about wisdom, loss, desolation, aging and the price of rock & roll dreams. That there is clarity here may've been lost on the crowd, but the huddled masses yearning to be hurled against the continuum to break on through the other side got the pining and the want, that need to make more out of what's left of the ruins wreaked through excess and unknowing. "Even when light…like dusk to day" Tyler purr/whined, "Everybody's got the dues they like to pay-AY-ay" - as heads bobbed in recognition. It was a truth, one that may not have been recognized as such, but one that is tattooed on the back of the mind of every salient or even blotto concert goer. It is the bottomline -- time passes, we toil, it's all equal in the end. And, wisely and classily, the song was not sent out towards the Trade Center/Pentagon reality. Not that the tragedy was sidestepped in its entirety. Tyler congratulated the crowd for not letting anyone make them victims, for standing up and rocking. His bite-off and spat-out predecessor's taunt "Beyond Beautiful" was all acid and bile for the man whose been replaced - and that malicious napalm wince may've been just as effectively sent into bunkers where the terrorists hide. But this wasn't a show about world crisis or politics, beyond the politics of screaming guitars, stiff members, sticky nethers, kicking out the jams and finding the groove that will lift you up and leave you spent. With emphasis on "the old stuff," this show was a roiling valentine to why this is arguably the greatest rock band ever produced in America. Beyond living the lifestyle beyond the definition, Aerosmith pawed and spat and bucked and kicked their way through ferocious blues and looming heavy Zepplin-esque moments. "Sweet Emotion" is -- and was at AmSouth -- loaded with the threat of something major, something with danger, something dark and foreboding, while "Walk The Way" snapped and popped with the voltage of Sparky waiting his next prey. Even "Draw The Line" with its bass runs and charging guitar bursts found a new vitality. It reminds the faithful to bolt when necessary, but to stand and hold one's own with force and fire. This is a song of us against them -- and it was delivered in a way that broke down the sense of star and crowd. It was a violent thing in Tyler's shrieking, but it was also about empowering people to maintain the strain. Take it any way you can, but get your's while it's there for the getting. And while the street shoots through your veins, offering emotional and kinetic thrust, keep reaching for something more. If it's the trippy psychedelia that marks the brand new "Sunshine" or the circular musical form that is "Jaded," a cautionary tale of being too molded by forces that will shape, then abandon you, you can have more than given if you keep dreaming and stretching. Yes, they did the bloated "Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" -- sending it out to Faith Hill in what was either popcommentary or a reference to "breathe" in the first line -- and "Crying" got the full-on swing-it-around-a-pole vamp, but these moments weren't the soul that fired Aerosmith this night. Near the end of a long drawn out summer tour, the boys were about taking it back. Musically. Spiritually. Attitudinally. For them, it was communion of the street, a sacrament of the scrappy ne'er-do-wells who ever so occasionally as no less than the American poet Tom Petty promised "even the losers get lucky sometimes." For one night, rock and roll surged in the home of country music -- and it was good. Indeed, it was more than good: it was fire and rage and hormones and a man in a feather boa reminding everybody about that most primal tingle, whether the next morning was to bring school, a cubicle or a long day with a blue collar. For the cogs, to forget that and feel the pulse, that is the job of rock'n'roll salvation. For one night only, the reverends Tyler and Perry were putting it down -- and the sold-out masses were picking it up with the kind of fervor usually reserved for snake handling, tongue talking and full-immersion redemption. I'll give you an A-men, but it'll be wearing a short plaid skirt + a pair of four inch platforms beside. -- Holly Gleason
Read More

“like a white winged dove”, Stevie Nicks

in
To be a bit of silk on a draft, a pair of wings beating against the air, the centrifugal force of a pirouette, Stevie Nicks in the moment. For it's that feather in the wind that is carried in spite of itself -- and feels the current as it's weightlessly conveyed to another place -- and is transformed in the moment that is what we aspire to when we embrace the leather and lace, sparkles and velvet. Towards the end of her set, Nicks vamped on the friends and lovers she has known -- "poets... priests of nothing... legends." It was a full-throated mantra, an incantation sung over and over, moaned as an answer and a truth of defining how the potency of those who marked her life emerged from the mist. And while for Nicks, those people were most likely bold-faced names, her plea and her definition was the lower case truth of anyone who ever impacted a life -- for everyone who writes their name across one's soul or psyche can most certainly defined as any of the above. And that has always been the beauty of Stephanie Louise Nicks, the Greyhound executive'd daughter and twirling diva with the sparkle in those too big eyes that take everything in. She transforms anyone, anything that crossed her vision into the most charmed and mythical. Stevie Nicks, still the Welsh Witch in black diaphonousness and whirling shawls, has made a life out of gypsy's truth and making magic for suburban dreamers who want something mystical with their muscular guitars and anthemic choruses. The balletomane has fashioned a reality that has nurtured her creative spirit and given quarter to three generations of romantics, and they'd all turned out for Nicks' stand at the Amsouth Pavillion. With the lightning flashing, "Dreams" washed over the crowd as much a cautionary truth about what we get our hearts into and what our hearts lead us towards. Desires and hungers are the things we crave, even as they have the potential to destroy us -- and that is the tightrope to be scaled: the wanting and the needing. Wants and needs have always defined Stevie Nicks' writing, a whirling, churning series of images that always add up to finding, connecting or losing something close to the heart. There may be that patina of enchantment that sparkles across the surface of what Nicks serves up, but there is always that insight into the human heart that connects her to the non-starry-eyed in a way that tells truth far more clearly than even the Patti Smiths or Elvis Costellos -- brilliantly direct writers both. Balancing Fleetwood Mac classics -- "Rhiannon," "Gold Dust Woman" --with early solo material -- "Edge of 17," "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" -- and a healthy sampling of songs from her brand new Trouble In Shangri-La, Nicks wove a spell that was as much about mood as it was music. Not a séance, not a channeling, not even a pajama party with all the lamps drapped in scarves, there was a spirituality conjured that took her fans to a more open place. Whether it was the redneck girl with the tattoo and the name on the back of her belt, the mothers and daughters, the college girlfriends, the yuppie men coming in homage to their once objet du lust, the gentle swaying and lifted lighters were as much a coming together as they were some spasm of catharsis. Nicks was a gentle spirit, one who asked her audience to "know that those lost in the terrible thing are always here with us, but please surrender to the music and let it take you." Knee deep in a funky, funky "Stand Back," Nicks threw down -- her ad hoc wails on the end of the Prince-penned undulator demonstrating that her husky, musky alto is as imbued with blood and sweat and jagged edge as ever. Bringing Sheryl Crow out onstage with her -- the younger star basking in the grace and glow of her hero -- it was like watching a master and favorite pupil pushing, rather than an old-timer leaning on the reflected glory of the now! wow! star for some kind of relevance. At times, gentle and even lulling, there was that hush of not wanting to break the spell. At other times, the frenzy of rock and roll took the pavilion and rolled onto the lawn, jolting the crowd to their feet and drawing out a bit of the kick inside. Nicks moves easily from the rooms of attitudes and emotions, rushing from a hurt to a thrill, a caress to a want, a bitter admonishment to a confession of desire. A rollercoaster of feelings, Nicks did what she did best: connect the dots of the various sentiments that comprise our lives and loves. It can be a fairly messy process, but Nicks wears it well -- and her fans revere her for the bravery and vulnerability that it takes. If the fans weren't so conversant in Shangri-La as a work, the songs were delivered with enough verve to make a case for concert-tour as sales instigator. "Fall From Grace" rocked with the insistence of her most compelling heavy-hitters, while "Too Far From Texas" pined without self-consciousness and the burning "Sorcerer" captured the conflicts of arriving in Shangri-La unsure and looking for the yellow brick road -- excitement, fear, the need to survive and the will to thrive. Crow, dressed in low slung leather pants and a cutaway on the sides top with red roses, delivered a bottomy "My Favorite Mistake" and an accelerated "Every Day Is A Winding Road" that were as loose and as freewheeling as anything done on her own tours. And the pairing of diva and demi-diva on an encore of Tom Petty's "I Need To Know" put the urgency of the female rock and roll existence into brilliant perspective. But it was when Nicks finally finished the evening with the somewhat obscure "Has Anyone Written Anything For You" that the crystaline beauty of what she brings to the table becomes clear. A song of unabashed want -- but the want to give to someone else, to celebrate what makes them special, to fill a need elsewhere -- "Has Anyone…" defines the brightest light in her heaven: for this is a song that demonstrates that it's in giving our grace and beauty away that we gain everything we could ever want. In that moment, in that catch-voiced tug of an offer, a query, a need to shine the light on someone else's magic, the black-draped one shows us where the real connections are. Nicks, who once confessed to "being taken by the wind," is more a sage who's been taken by the songs. Old enough to merely inhabit her place as muse with grace, she is still out there, taking it to the hilt each night. Her songs are her children -- and she forcefully witnesses their truths as much for herself as others. We should all age so passionately. -- Holly Gleason Nashville, Tennessee
Read More

Dreaming On…Aerosmith, Andy Parker + the Ghost of Slow Dances Past

in
"Every day, I look in the mirror/ All these lines in my face gettin' clearer/ The past is gone…" It is a benediction, an acceptance, a truth projected forward rather than backwards. It is the opening of Aerosmith's meandering "Dream On," a song that's most likely about regret and reconciling how it was with what it might have been -- and scratching up enough hope to continue. Because no matter what -- life goes on. As has America's greatest rock & roll band. As have their fans. As have the people who have no idea who they are or why they matter. Time rolls forward, sweeping us up -- or if we fight it, in spite of ourselves. But there is no choice, only knowledge accepted or denied. And still it rolls. "Dream On" with its filigreed melody, its melting rhythm, its eroticism that is something far beyond carnal. It was a beacon of things unknown, things murky, things necessary -- even as they terrified the uninitiated. For all the promised mystery, though, it was mostly an as-yet-unlived siren's song for a youth lost to waste and beauty surrendered in the name of ephemerality. The young believed its promises, held their lighters aloft and screamed to join up, hurling their futures at the feet of the wanton rock gawds recklessly treading about upon their innocence like moth-chewed Persian rugs. Standing under the pavllion at what was -- and to me will always be -- Starwood Amphitheatre outside Nashville, Steven Tyler sent out this hymn to the wages paid into the night. Ardor. Ardent. Aching. For the man who defies gender and blurs sexual definition, it was a song about surviving the circus, but also an elegy for a former wife recently passed from cancer of the brain. Cyrinda Fox, a platinum blond child of New York's new wave, a punk princess paramour of New York Doll David Johansen, the inspiration for David Bowie's "Jean Jeanie," was gone. A flicker and out -- and Tyler was holding his voice aloft like so many disposable lighters on the hill of puke and sodden grass, a memory to burn itself into the eternal with no uncertain passion. "Sing women, just for today/ Never tomorrow/ Good lord might take you away…" If Tyler sang for a love that had passed, so many memories can fill each individual's gap. We all have those friends who've gone… the ones you've put your shoulder next to and howled the truth that was defiant and scary and challenged us to live broader, fuller lives. And for me, swept up in the jagged rasp, time cracked open and a too temperate cafeteria, humid from the cranked and pumping Midwestern steam heat, appeared. There was a mountain of down jackets in light and navy blue, emerald green, the occasional olive and khaki and a cherry on top dot of crimson littering a far corner. There were the wooden tables for the proper U. S. boys to have their lunch at each day -- now lining the walls beneath the windows, to maximize floor space, but also to offer a place to perch for those of us not yet dancing. The not yet dancing… in our Shetland sweaters and straight-legged cords, our topsiders and our squeaky clean stick straight hair glistening under the rainbow-gelled overhead lights. Watching the brave and the bold gyrating as white midwestern kids do -- herking and jerking in hunt-and-peck time to Bad Company and Foreigner, Mott the Hoople, AC/DC and T. Rex and being Cleveland, Ohio the Michael Stanley Band's nearly threatening "Let's Get The Show On The Road." The boys, of course, were across this vast expanse of polished wood and churning bodies. They were watching us watching them -- as not quite sure what to do as we were not quite sure what to expect. The joys of single sex education -- you know you're either the quarry or the hunter, but you're still not quite sure what to do when you're in proximity of the other. So you narrow your eyes, run your fingers through that wash of ebony or butter silk, shift from side to side, crack your gum, turn away. It all seems so ridiculous… so silly… so fraught. Until. Until that boy is suddenly standing before you. Unsure. Terrified to speak. Terrified not to. Responding isn't much easier, because… well, what does it mean? What are you supposed to say? And so it was that I'd crawled up on top of a table, feet firmly planted like baby oaks into the bench beneath me. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, chin on hands, guileless smile on face. Even in the 7th grade, I loved to watch, to see the waves of rhythm, feel the sweet energy of kids seeking some kind of solace and connection beyond anything they'd ever found. Lost in the moment, I almost didn't realize there was boy in front of me. Blonde headed, pale skin, middle height. In a pin-striped oxford cloth shirt, tender consternation embroidered on his face… lips knotted in confusion. "Would you, uhm, like to, ah… dance?" he finally pushed out. I tilted my head. Took him in. Realized it was a threshold to cross -- and knew it was a bridge that while I could never cross back over was one I'd been waiting for all night. Joe Perry's serpentine guitar part was twisting around the melody, Tyler'd not yet begin to yowl his paean to the price he'd pay. I lifted an eyebrow, savoring the moment, half smile upon my lips because this was the moment where it was all about to change. Into what, I didn't know… just that it was Andy Parker took my hand, well, my fingers really -- encircling them like fragile bits of china or baby bird bones that he might crush. Almost as if he wasn't sure what little girl digits would feel like, hoping they'd be soft, relieved that they were. Feet just the tiniest bit shuffley, heading to the middle of the semi-crowded clot of barely pubescents, shifting from side to side… "Even as dusk to dawn…" came the confession that wouldn't, couldn't resonate in real time for a bunch of children with shining eyes and faltering courage. Bridge of nose to shoulder, then the puff of cheekbone resting on graceful young boy collarbone, eyes closed as the the eyes of all the little girls not yet chosed singed into my back. The damp palms on the widest part of my shoulder blade, the part my wings would've sprouted from -- not that I wanted to fly away. No, I wanted to be right there, right then, feet barely moving in the smallest slowest circles, a young boy's breath fetid, suppressed, hardly escaping into my ear. It was so intimate, so close, wrapped up in a dancing school boy's arms. Him so tentative, so polite, so not wanting to ruin the moment, not sure what he wanted really. Me, feeling the proximity, the penetrating heat of another -- that sense that whatever was happening wasn't too risque, wasn't too fast, wasn't something to fear. Just relax and feel the jagged edges of Tyler ranting. "Sing women, sing for the years, sing for the light, sing for the tears…" And when the song ended, there was that extended moment of not knowing what to do -- not wanting to let go, not being able to stay engaged. An innocence defined and a want to that's neither seedy nor overwhelming. The end of that first slow dance is a lot like life… heady, yes, but uncertain. You can want. You can maybe even have. But what does it mean? There in the darkness of the University School lower campus dining room, it was about what was to unfold, to happen, to catch you on up and take you away on a current of blood-boiling desire. But it started sweetly, with a boy who was as startled by the pooling of something curious in the tummy, as not aware of the way it would all turn out as I was. Just as suddenly, the heat broke and a bit of sweat rolled down my front. It was sticky under the pavillion, as the tropical storm that was named Lili had rolled through Nashville just that afternoon -- and Music City was more humidor than commodores. Up on the grass, Steven Tyler was giving witness to what dreams can mean, the danger and the delight of the price paid, the reckless pleasure and the white knuckled prayers of the survivors. Somewhere up in heaven, Cyrinda Fox -- long divorced, but still an indelible part of his soul -- smiles with eyes like pinwheels and lips like thick, slick glass. Somewhere Andy Parker has no clue. May not even remember the girl in the yellow monogrammed sweater and pink buttondown shirt. But in that moment, I looked at my friend the gossip columnist, smiled brightly and winked. We didn't know each other until much later in life; but during "Dream On," we recognized the deepest secrets the other held and laughed. The promise of what could be stretched before us somewhere in another long past night. That's the beauty of great rock and roll: there's a transparency that let's us see ourselves. For Aerosmith, hands down America's greatest rock band, it was the mirror calling the evening black. --Holly Gleason 6 October 2002
Read More

life is a cabaret…life in a moment, eternity in a song

in
When you put Paul Williams and Jimmy Webb in a room, you basically have the collective soundtrack of the late '60s and '70s in pop music. What they didn't write -- as writers creating for others, as opposed to the work of writer/artists -- isn't worth having. And generations of Americans, indeed citizens from farflung points of the world, have their lives and defining moments tied up in songs like "We've Only Just Begun" and "MacArthur Park" and "Evergreen" and "Wichita Lineman." How does one argue with a line like, "I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time"? And the two catalogues are filled with these sorts of revelatory moments, sparkling like diamonds piled on deep green velvet. So it is that Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams came together to trade songs and quips and repartee for New York's well-heeled café society. These are people who don't want to go to deep, but would like to remember and be entertained, jogged into moments and reminded of who they were when -- perhaps-- they were younger and freer and bolder. It is an incredibly specific audience one plays for in a place like Feinsteins, with its dark wood paneling, fine table cloths and $10 orders of green beans. And they do insist on being entertained, a job the quite glib Paul Williams was custom molded for. Self-deprecating, insightful in way that has enough training wheels attached so everyone gets the inside jokes or dirt and ingratiating in that backstage pass for the sponsor, so they can tell their friends how hip they are -- friends who have no idea what hip is, so take it on faith that their rock and roll friends are about more than diamonds and Royces! For a lover of songs as small pillows of life, though, it creates a certain frustration. The songs are there. They are played and they are sung. They are recognized and they are responded to. But rarely do they get excavated, examined for the depths of truth they reveal. And in a strange twist of fate, there's no blame to place. These artists know their room -- and they deliver what is expected. Transcendence would be lost on this crowd in their furs and their jewels and their bespoke suits, so why venture the terrain and embarrass the paying customers with too much truth, rambunctious emotions, lost moments and memories that are fading or maybe far too vivid? But that's not to say these two couldn't get there from here. For even in the jivest supperclub set, there's always room for that moment. Maybe it's for the artist, maybe the song demands it, perhaps it's an accident. But when the connection happens, it jolts through you like a bolt of electric current and heads straight to the floor. After much jocularity, and Williams' gracious citing of the Grammy earned by said composition, Webb was left to his own devices to play -- in that gorgeous cascading way of his, both hands spiraling notes around the other, washing us out on waves of melody -- "The Highwayman." The song stood as the title track for country music's Mount Rushmore -- Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash --'s summit meeting on vinyl. "The Highwayman" was a fitting elegy for each of their larger-than-life personas, a celebration of the legend living at its fullest potential -- with just enough swashbuckling to lend an aura of mystery and danger and musk and lace cuffs and a place beyond the rules. It was also a song of the spirit, a song that promised that the rake and rambler's essence never dies -- only the mortal coil is finite -- and it will be reborn into the heart of some other thrillseeker who will also know no sense of boundaries. Johnny Cash as the voice of God. Kris Kristofferson as the William Blake Buddha. Willie Nelson as the mystic sage. Waylon Jennings as a pirate who would rape your daughter and steal your jewels and tattoo his name across her heart evermore. Each brought volumes to verses that were already beyond fraught with meaning. In a few lines, Jimmy Webb painted pictures, delivered glorious novels, cast nets and brought home lives lived to capacity, moments savored, moments conquered, glories had and exploded. For what made "The Highwayman" more than just one more rah-rah outlaw anthem was the fact that it embraced the whole truth -- that there is a cost to these lives, a back end which eventually arrives. And it is in the destruction of the gallant maverick that the soul moves to its next plateau, its next Himalayan plateau where the air is rare and the view is staggering and the wind whips through one's hair with a briskness that is stirring. For it's tremendous risk and full-blown adventure where dreams are created, realized, broken and remembered. It is the intersection of desire and delivery -- and it is the pasture where the highwayman, the space traveler, the pirate, the damn builder, the explorer and yes, perhaps even the rock songwriter can graze and frolic and race the wind to wherever. Death. Rebirth. Reincarnation. If the devil's hand is aces and eights, then the highwayman's numerology is eight on its side. Inifinity and infinte. It's all the promise the soul chasing the dawn needs. For when this ride is over, all that's required -- beyond memories that matter -- is a fresh horse that's high spirited and ready to run. Like all of Webb's songs, the agility with which he captures whole lives is breathtaking. But "The Highwayman" celebrates a promise seldom articulated: if one's spirit isn't broken, it will come back with gusto and panache. In the four kings, it is a song delivered as a solid contract, a recognition of something intrinsic, taken on faith and recited for the lesser beings. It is compelling in that pater noster way. In Webb's mouth and at his fingertips -- gentle, caressing, articulate digits that cloak the words with mood and magic -- "The Highwayman" is reincarnated yet again. It is not as an absolute irrevocable, but more the tender witness of someone who's done the miles and knows empirically, so there is no need to scowl or growl or even settle one's shadow across the moment. From the moment he made his first declaration, this was an old soul, telling its story. Or rather stories. There was no braggadocio involved, no finger-waggling about the lives that've been led. It's more a dignified witness to adventures that've been had, dangers shrugged off and walked through a life of, well, broken lightbulbs and spires of fire. Jimmy Webb knows no fear, only faith there will be more. It is all glorious. It is all the same. It is all experience that elevates the adrenals, brings the drama and celebrates the mettle. For him, "The Highwayman" is almost a truth beyond conscious consideration -- and his exhaled delivery, attenuating a word here, quickening the pace there, is human and engaging. Done deliberately? Hard to say. But in his humanity, he becomes a mirror. We could be these things, too. We could have adventures. Fly. Sail. Climb. Go fast. Leap into the brink. Dance over the abyss. We can do what we wish -- try to catch the wind in our outstretched hand. When that is over, we can rest easy, softly, peacefully in the notion that there will be another ride. And another. And another. And… For inside even the meekest librarian, there is a marauder waiting to plunder the moors or a desperado under the eaves, waiting for the fingernail moon to rise and send a silver sliver of light to guide him on. We dream boldly -- we live cautiously. When Jimmy Webb wraps "The Highwayman" in his flesh and blood and life and voice, he's giving us the promise it can be our's too. Somewhere between, there is a place we can let down our hair, toss back our heads, dig in our heels and know that no matter what happens, there will be another dance. All we have to do is believe and stay connected, not let go. For that's what a highwayman does: he hangs on to his soul, even as the gallows beckon. The adventurer is not afraid of the consequences, so much as he is of what he might miss. The average is a Hell here on earth -- and it's something to remember, something to guide us on when the safety of the known, the comfort of the obvious beckons. Ride. Squeal. Savor. Whether a drop of rain, a swashbuckler or a dam builder, there is continuity and connection. Life in a moment, eternity in a song, Jimmy Webb at the piano -- and then…
"The Highwayman" I am a highwayman Along the coach roads I did ride With a sword and pistol by my side Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade Many a solider left his life blood on my blade The bastards hung me in the spring of '25 But I am still alive I was a sailor, I was born upon the tide And with the sea I did abide I sailed a schooner around the horn to Mexico I went aloft and unfurled the main sail in the blow And when the yards broke off, they say that I got killed But I am living still Perhaps I always will I was a dam builder Across the river deep and wide Where steel and water did collide A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado I slipped and fell into wet concrete below They buried me in that gray tomb that knows no sound But I am still around Seems like it all goes round and round and round Around and around Knowing here we go… I'll fly a starship Across the universe divide And when I reach the other side I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can Perhaps I may become a highwayman again Or 'll simply be a single drop of rain For some things will remain And I'll be back again, I'll be back again Yes, I will Though knowing here we go But we'll all be back again -- Jimmy Webb
Read More

driving + crying… two lanes running through my heart 9/11

in
hard to believe i'd ever not just jump on a plane and maybe out of respect for those who NEED to get places quickly i opted to drive up to cleveland for a couple items of business this weekend 8, almost nine hours in a car...and yet in light of what's befallen our country, it was the best thing i could have ever done we live these go-go fast paced lives, racing and jumping and twisting to fit it all in, hit the mark, make our number and the pressure builds and the pressure drains us of the basics like how beautiful our country truly is rolling out of nashville on the three lanes of I-65 north it was green and rolling, as the nation fell beneath my tires relinquishing the ground that is all of our's to cherish, to savor, to embrace the hills were reaching up toward the horizon, but they were also beckoning me to come forward and really consider this land… kentucky was those stone faces, blown apart to make way for concrete ribbons all the jagged edges, the piles of slate extending different lengths like shelving built to last forever, holding the tales of all who'd ever traveled through there and the lushness of it all the pine needles scraping out against the blue the thick, forest and emerald green of oaks and maples and every other tree rich with sap, bobbling on the breeze, tranquil, yet strong at rest because it's the posture that best suits sun dappled fridays those trees lining the hillside, rising and falling with the topography but always reaching to the heavens with a faith that defies gravity even as there is nothing more firmly rooted in the rich kentucky soil and there was louisville in all its preserved glory exactly as it was, even as it grows more modern every day reminding me that the past is the key to the future and forgetting what we were and are negates the fertile lives we've led that brought us here... for the birthright and the experience accrued is a gift kentucky, with it's white fences and its horsey allusions (even their highway signs) offered that sense of the land as emerging power... as the ground moving and swelling... as something that is a force of its own ohio offered its fecundity as a broad gift once cincinnati with its skyline and its stadium and its merging lanes fell away and the two lane each way (no superhighway for my home state) pulled away from the bottom bookend of the buckeye state, ohio's vast expanses spread themselves endlessly before like the sun dying -- spilling melted crimson lipstick beyond the eye's view -- on the ocean in key west... behind barbed wire or split rail fences, the fields are ready for the harvest the corn probably taller than i am... brown with its tassles swinging in the wind green fields with yellow flowers on the tips, some crop i probably should know hayfields half-mowed, with the big rolls of winter-food for livestock left in the midst of the newly shorn green fields where they promise both a future filled with more waving grasses to be brought in and the knowledge that winter will not starve the cattle or the sheep or the horses or whatever else they'll feed it to there were the paint peeling barns in reds and whites with tar black roofs the aging witnessing the time already committed to a way of life that keeps our country strong -- and reminds us, too, that farm aid's message (keep family farmers on the farm) is as much about protecting a way of life that was the backbone of this country you could see flags on the mailboxes, where the access roads abutted 71 and those mailboxes all sported those tiny flags in tangible demonstration of their commitment to the greater way of life... and the houses and the fields and the equipment and the crops are all part of this amazing multi-layered truth that is this country... that is the unseen things that are the fiber of our being sure, the roads were scarred and patched. the ride was bumpy and hot and i think i got sunburned on my face while driving but it was also breath-taking, to come over a hill and see an amazing valley to look down from a bridge and see the water flowing forward, not concerned about who did it or what does it mean just moving forward in tranquility, the power coiled in the current + the faith lodged in something higher yet more basic i drove because i was afraid to fly i arrived a rich woman, reacquainted with the majesty that is this land to see trees creating a canopy for travel to watch tobacco leaves bend and wave and sigh to know that there is richness in the soil that will feed us forever if cared for what more could be want from our nation? it is a gorgeous, beautiful, inspiring place in its raw forms it is worth seeing to remember where it all starts from if you're feeling weak or small or scared or impotent get in your car get out of town drive 'til you come to a much less cultivated or urban place and just feast on what you see... it will take you to a place where you heart soars, your eyes tear and your soul is fed in ways that it desparately needs right now i promise because i could feel much of my terror and sadness falling away... a tranquility and a joy replacing it just when i needed it most and was sure it was to temporal to even try to chase sure i wept a few tears, but they were tears of recognition with jimmy webb's "wish you were here" and "just like always" playing as the miles fell away with the sun-dappled afternoon and those tears set me free for whatever it's worth it's not giving blood, but if what you can do is remind yourself how vast and beautiful it is what better gift for yourself and your fellow travellers? indeed and may st christopher go with you! xoxox holly g cleveland, ohio by way of nashville, tennessee 18 sept 2001
Read More