Ghost of the Midway

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When you walk the line, sometimes it's hard to keep the faith. While there's nothing harder sometimes than fidelity to another person, there's the even more onerous matter of fidelity to oneself. In that integrity of the soul thing, there may be no more dangerous line to walk than the one between cynicism and innocence -- maintaining that tricky balance high above the unaware human condition of knowing how it is while clinging to the sparkle and the aw shucks. If you fall from the precipice, topple off that narrow wire, the hard knowledge of the way it works will plunge a dagger straight into the heart of wonder -- leaving it cold, rigor mortised, legs akimbo in the air on the side of what ought not to be. Riding the double ribbons of tar that is life on the buses, girl companion to the pirates and the gypsies and the dreamers and cowboy singers, your life becomes a series of towns where you are painfully aware of real life as lived by folks who work hard for their money. People come for the music, for the moment where they can share a communion with the makers of song and feel for a bit a little transformed. There's a connection to someone golden, someone who sings a song about life or love or pain that reflects how they feel -- and if that person can feel that way, too, then they're not so alone, so isolated from the human condition; they're elevated by the overlap with one of the shiny people. And that feels good. Comforting. Reassuring. Better. Those people go back to their lives, burnished by the recognition of themselves in someone they think is a star. They have the gentle solace of real life. And when you make the music, you also often have the time to make a life to hold you when you're not living the dream. It's those of us who stowaway in the hold of these ships who get caught in the jaws of the midnight ride, trying to balance the line: highwire chasing and feeling the music and servicing the dream. Because when everybody goes home to what they have, you merely roll over in the cold burned out ashes of what just happened -- like the Little Matchgirl striking her matches to maintain the vision of the Blessed Virgin -- only to realize that the husk is all that holds you. Those are the moments where the faith can get tricky; the realization that the stakes are high and the price you pay may be even higher. And so it was that the bus rolled into Marietta, Georgia for the North Georgia Fair. Hard packed dirt rolling away from where we parked, a double wide trailer the only air conditioned refuge beyond the rolling dorm that was this act's home on the road. Beyond the folding chairs and outlying bleachers that were set-up under a sprawling roof -- a shelter for several thousand no doubt -- the food stands, the rides and the wash of humanity lost in their Saturday afternoon rhythms lay. It is easy to forget that, to miss the way things like this -- things that're faded, even a little tacky -- are a touchpoint for many. You stay huddled with your band of merry men, laughing about things these people will never know or see or understand, insulated from real life with the smug illusions of someone who's been removed from the how it is. You just show no interest and roll over Or you can dive in. It had been a rough night. A matter of an opinion known by many, voiced by me, drawn and quartered by another. All with a smile and laughter and intellectual deconstruction… But enough tension pulled the air that somehow an escape for three days of swimming pools, chocolate cake, coconut oil, shiny haired women talking about art and commerce and politics and shoes was being jettisoned in the name "where do we go from here?" Pulled away from what was supposed to be relaxation to look at the pieces of somebody's dream. To take them down, wipe them off, turn the over, think about what they really mean with another in the name of making them be everything they can. It is focused work, very exacting to do it right… Exhausting really, with a conversation lasting til 6 in the morning, the streaks of sun threatening to pull the night from the sky. Resuscitated a few hours later in the name of getting out of the way of a voice that is truth and real life and bigger want and deeper commitments, not to mention a solid witness to how it is, the not-shiny, the ties that bind and the ways of the world. I needed a break. And in their zeal to take care of me, my bags had gone missing. Later chiding. "The lengths some people will go to to keep me from running off…" They just forgot: there's nowhere I won't go barefoot. So pants legs rolled, eyes cast down to get the feel for the packed earth that was in places muddy from what I didn't want to think about, I started picking my footing and making my way into the flow of humanity. The families spending an afternoon, the baby adolescents somewhere safe enough their parents figured they could have a little freedom and not be in too much danger, the food wagons, the games for cheap prizes, the gravity-defying rides that leave the weakest stomached ones nauseous, the rest exhilarated from goosing their own adrenalin levels. Later still, post-cat-bath in a dress with pink elephants on it, wandering in search of a merry-go-round for big kids, it is one big skip and hop and laugh. These are people who are more than happy with making this their afternoon. People who will go to church tomorrow, hate their job on Monday, try to find ways to be happy in between -- tugged between the selfish side of what they want and the love they get from what they have. Some win that tug of war, others get torn apart by it, but right now, they're in the moment of delicious escape between the cotton candy and the bumper cars where all that matters is now. Some will come for the country music. To hear the songs of love and life, listen to what the singer has to say. They want to exult in emotions of a life more examined than their own, checking the gate and surfing the insight that lets them comprehend their own tides and currents which lift them up and pull them down without ever being more considered than sad or glad or mad. And this singer is good. Abandoned. Adopted. Addicted. Jailed. Redeemed. Grateful. Thrilled. A captive of the human heart, a believer and bleeder for love. He offers them everything that they'd like their life to be… and the ones who show up, breath held, believing like you can only believe in another person, never yourself - especially someone who seems to be touched with magic. It worked, by the way. The show. The people got what they wanted. They saw themselves not only in someone who glows, but found recognition of things they feel without thinking, hopes they carry without even knowing, struggles they engage in never understanding why -- just that they (amongst the most evolved ones, anyway) were raised that way. After the show, the singer signs. It's his chance to see and touch and listen to the people who've seen themselves in him. He wants to look into their eyes and see the relief, the elevation, whatever else they got -- and to remember how much the same everybody is as his star rises. You can watch the arms flung around the next big thing, the bigger smiles when being seen by the one who sang the songs, the flash of cameras, the flourish of the Sharpie marker making its mark on something brought along. You can try to remember that in what could be an assembly line of transformation, each person's moment is uniquely their own -- but that the singer will hear most of what's said as many times as there are people, and get emotional vertigo or even worse, go numb to it. Knowing that, it's usually a good time to creep away. Get your shower, your book, in your bunk and slip into Morpheus' arms long before the movement even begins. Or you can consider your options. Options, baby, options are what it's about. It had been so long since I'd been on a midway at night. You could hear the pumped in music on the bad speakers, the laughter and squeals of people on the rides, see the winking neon stripes against what was a clear sky. Adventurer that I am, I wanted to see the other side of the fair: after the darkness falls. By now, I had shoes -- less of a bad country music cliché for sure, but still with a heart that's open as wide as I can keep it, ready to see this thing for the fullness of the experience. Beyond the makeshift arena, the neon rises up -- blinking in emerald green, lemon chiffon yellow, fire engine red, tangerine, even some perfectly pink poodle fuchsia, making this a whirl of plugged in Technicolor set against the vastness of the night. And it turns on and off, rises and falls, moves with the motion of the rides. Even the snack stands and the carny games take on a different glow -- one that offers some veneer of glamour, of true love or big hope. You look for a moment upon this walk across the hard packed dirt and what before had been merely benign American tradition now glistens with the quick beam of immaculate seduction. This is the intersection of want-to and ought-not… the place where hormones are safe to frolic, fantasies indulged, moments merged without any sense of the seedy. Until you look closer… For the carnys, who looked mostly sad and tired during the day, take on a waft of danger at night. The backdrop of past-sunfall offers just the teeniest bit of sinister to transform their looking at you from hunger for your money to an invitation to things prurient, things you shouldn't want to know -- fires in oil drums, passing a bottle, deeds behind semis that no one believes. These are people who live lives beyond the limit, freed from the rules by the rootlessness of their lives, delivered from the mundanery by the ease of their exit and released from obligation by the very nature of their lives. The carnys. They will be gone. They know it. You know it. It is a void that speaks volumes. So the young boys and girls -- teenagers beginning to explore the blossoming of their deeper feelings, crossing a bridge from naive child to unfurling adulthood -- move a little closer. The arm around the shoulder, the hand held in hand is as much Hansel and Gretel in the forest as it is player on the prowl. What better way to push the sexes together than a harmless menace that would never cross that line -- let alone walk the line. For places like this have lynching mobs as well as teenagers coming into their own. Young people dying to believe, to feel those throbbing things, the rush of the pulse when the pretty girl smiles at them, the moistening below from the proximity of THAT boy. Not that the stakes aren't high, that everyone gets a happy ending at the fair. There are the ones who shall be ignored, not noticed, as alone when they leave as when they arrive; maybe even moreso. Or the ones who get forsaken for something better… But it's worth the risk. It -- like the games of skee ball and shooting out the target -- offers something ephemeral, but in the moment. Indeed, in the moment, heck, for that moment is tantamount to winning the biggest prize of one's life. For that first moment of connection, when the thrill surges through you like 40,000 watts of pure current, you will never feel more alive. Ever. When the eyes close, the lips meet, maybe even part. That first tentative push of a tongue that sends you back, makes you jump, then realizing that rush is delicious, leaning forward for more. A needle threaded with the notion of l-u-v, a place where you can run headlong into the abyss, safe in the knowledge that the other person is feeling it too. One of the last moments of parity and sweetness, before the ground acquisition games begin… the they-want, we-shall-not-surrender turf war of the little girl's body and the burgeoning teenage boy's libido. Though the days of good girl definitions are in many quarters gone. The erosion of the sanctification of moving through the phases of discovery swept away on a tidal wave of sexualized marketing, Britney Spears' navel and a devaluing of a tongue on the clavicle or a hand on the small of the back that truly is the secret handshake that affords access to deeper gardens of pleasure and response. Tromping amongst the laughing people, as the streaks of buzzing colors whirl and swirl and blur around me, eyes open to the possibilities, the innocence is more blinding than the flashing lights. Here for a night, people either check their knowing or else it's the last stop before cashing out in the name of a nameless kinda nihilism that steals the joy and leaves the empty morning after on the nightstand faster than the actual reason for being there. A faded romantic with a heart that's a little worn around the edges, I still believe in the power of wonder. So I go looking for first kisses. It can't be hard to find in this place… and I set my bright eyes searching right by the pony rides -- junior Black Beauties eating moldy hay while waiting for their turn to be hitched to a lazy susan of little kid delight -- under the shadow of some of the more towering rides.. Just above me, the ferris wheel rises into the night. Lifts up, with the trajectory of promise and comes over with the certainty of the night falling at one's feet. Gently descends from a peak that shows these riders everything that the night, the fair, this town holds. Only to rise again. It's a metaphor for life, if you'll see it as such. Or else, it's a moment near the top where you are as alone as you'll ever be, as pure as you can be in the life you've chosen. You can lean over and find a face, pointed to your's, waiting -- and have that moment of lips upon lips, searching for something in the other person, feeling the current of emotional recognition, the thrill of they-like-me-back. You can cap it with reaching for the hand beside your's and squeezing, holding onto innocence and promise and things beyond words. Or you can be consumed in the beaming wonder of a face consumed by the possibilities of the world beneath them. To see one's place in the world from up above can create a whole different kind of fire -- one most moths hurl themselves at. In that moment, the gazer upon the viewer of potential can only softly, gently brush their lips across the cheek of the one seated next to them -- taste the velvet of young skin and notice the pooling of energy in their own skin. If their fellow rider is in the moment, they may or may not wake from their reverie. But either way, the communion is the same. For dreamers and drivers can't help themselves… Show them a window and they have to jump through it, a horizon and they'll need to cross it. The comfort comes from knowing you are the one who showed them the possibilities. Standing by a low, gnarled tree, arms folded, it's a slow night on the Ferris wheel. Only five first kisses registered, three of the tentative lip-to-lip kind that you hope will erupt into the full-on brushfires that are young love seeking to bring about a transformation that can only come in the hands of another. There was one cheek kiss that was rewarded with a turn and wider eyes and the kind of merger that says this is something deeper even than a crush or a phase that won't outlast the coming frost of early fall. And one where the boy will no doubt chase the night, already moving beyond the fingers of the girl who'd spent the whole summer waiting for this moment only to realize that her kiss on his cheek would be all there was that would have any there there. A brave girl, tucking her hair behind her ears as they stood there on the platform after. Disoriented some, not sure what it all meant -- except that empty place inside would remain so. Around her, the carnys barked their games of chance, the ponies slowly plodded around that well-worn circle, the elephant ears were boiled in fat and behind the makeshift arena, a bus idled. Smiling, I remembered the warm breath of a young boy in my ear. I thought about a moist hand barely holding mine the summer I was 13. The way slow dancing was far more intimate than any number of pleasures experienced as an adult woman. The looking into the sky and seeing the stars and having dreams that had nothing to do with the other person's, except the ferocity with which we held them. Those are the moments that ground us when the night gets cold. Turning away from the platform, I laugh. The promise still holds. The dream remains. You just start to know what you know -- and that takes the wonder in its purest forms. But as long as you want to believe in the moment of sparkle, as long as you're willing to see it as something that offers much softness and gentleness and remain devoted to that, the wonder transforms. Just as those young people are getting their first taste of the thrill of connection and finding themselves craving more, transformed by their want, so are those of us who know better transformed when we recognize the sweetness of innocent pleasure. Knowing too much is worse than knowing nothing at all. Under the tin roof, the country singer is still smiling, still signing, still wrapping his arms around those fans. And they're walking away, chattering happily about how this one's real, this one's not just a good singer, but a good friend. Those folks came to believe, too, and they came to believe in someone who believes in them. In life, there are things that can't be faked. Knowing the difference between paste and the real is tricky business. Except in Marietta, Georgia, deep in the heart of Saturday night. There all it takes is an open heart, a big love for all that is before you and the willingness to not drown in one's sense of what matters… It is a lesson more valuable than all the trinkets and oversized bears of the midway. It is a song and a moment and a midnight ride home… All you have to do is remember.
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Delia’s Gone, Johnny Cash

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The phone rang at 5:50. AM. Recovering from a vicious stomach flu that strafed me until my cells all pounded from the screaming pain, unconsciousness would be putting it mildly,. But the Associated Press needed reaction to the news we'd all been dreading, knew was inevitable, yet wishfully denied by virtue of the power of the man, the myth, the music. Johnny Cash had passed away. My world -- a foggy beyond exhaustion dizziness -- needed to be cut through NOW. In the name of deadlines whirring, moments passing and the celebration of the life and songs of one of the greatest icons our country ever produced. Johnny Cash. The man in black. The man who stood for the poor, the overlooked, the cast-off, different, uneducated and any other characteristic that would or could make a human being "less than." Johnny Cash -- as close to the Voice of God as any mortal man can hope to be. Deep. Thunderous. Rich. Solid. Strong. Craggy from a life lived without apology -- complete with immersion in humanity, a witness to pain in its many forms, sowing dignity and care wherever he went. And then there was the music. And not just the obvious hits -- "Big River," "Ring of Fire," "I Walk The Line," "Boy Named Sue," "Folsom Prison Blues" - but the riveting "John Henry," the thumpety thump of racing hearts "Ballad of a Teenage Queen," the hilarious latter day "One Piece At A Time," the carnal meltdown of threatened adultery on top of a marriage born of utter lust sung with June Carter "Jackson" and his haunted recent work with Rick Rubin, from the deep Gothic "Delia's Gone" to his inside out meditation on pain and addiction that is a far more ravaged read of Trent Reznor's "Hurt." One could get lost in the songs, the common poetry and empathy. Except there are calls to make, ducks to put in a row and have dial their respective phones. Hierarchies, even, of who they want and who they don't -- but who are, damnit, absolutely valid. So, at 6:10 in Las Vegas, a cell phone rings and goes to voice mail. Jeff Bates has had a long night and no doubt, as the newest client, has no idea what could be so impossibly important. Figuring Terri Clark is in Switzerland, but there's no way to get her numbers yet; that Kenny Chesney is somewhere in international waters; that Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks have just shifted time zones again and are locked down on their buses, out of safe reach of their cell phones; and John Michael Montgomery is lost somewhere on the back of a farm that barely gets cell service on the best day, there's only one thing to do: leave urgent messages and wait. Pray they'll call back. Oh, and wake up the baby act's manager… Also, to get on the phone to critical print outlets. See how tight those deadlines really are -- and buy time. Buy time and remind them as they're passing on Jeff Bates, the Mississippian man who's a more fitting legacy of Cash's meaning than all the bright shiny bold faced names in the galaxy of hillbilly stars. Born poor. Barely educated, but filling the gaps on his own. The child of a Native American mother who can't even pinpoint a father -- making the mongrel Alabaman a dodgy risk who was ultimately adopted by a sharecropper and his Pentecostal preacher's daughter wife -- he understands every intricacy of being an outsider. "I never really fit in any place/ Because there's always a part of me to hate…" he confesses on the title track to Rainbow Man, a debut album released at the tender age of 39. 39 years old, following a serious crystal meth addiction, a stint in jail for grand theft over $25,000 and drug charges, and four marriages. If he's come to acceptance -- mostly of himself as he is, but also of others -- the hard way, he embraces it with the very same grace that marked Johnny Cash's life. The phone rings back a few minutes later. The deep voice that's equal parts Barry White bottom, Conway Twitty eroticism and Mississippi River gravel asks, "What's wrong?" Then proceeds to talk about his father's love affair with Cash's music -- "the harshest reality I ever heard in songs -- and just like where we were from" -- and the recognition of similar demons. Like a good soldier, he starts making his calls. Ironically the journalists who had to be coerced to deal with this plain dirt person in a world of glitterati and marquis caliber celebrity call back to acknowledge the validity of the slow talking songwriter's witness. Amid the whirl, Ronnie Dunn calls in. Visibly shaken, the man with the most emotive, flexible, strength-in-the-moment voice in modern country music is faltering. His statement is the classicism of modern country royalty… but it's in the head-shakingly confessed outpouring of moments that the power of the passing descends. Janine Dunn, his longtime bride, was a widow when they met. Johnny Cash and June Carter had been in the bridal party of her first wedding, making their relationship with the icons more familial than musical. Their moments were marked with a deeper kind of intimacy -- less the rock & roll totem than the patriarch and matriarch of a very, very grounded family. For Ronnie Dunn, taciturn at best, this was daggers dipped in acid. And then there was his own wife's pain, that need to be strong for someone sustaining an even graver loss. So it went all morning, Air traffic controlling the big interviews. Getting the official statements out. Finding the people where and how you could. Being the bearer of bad news, listening to the jumble of emotions -- the shock, pain, confusion, fear, sadness, terror even -- that made up their response and recognizing Johnny Cash was a man who these artists desperately wanted to pay their respects to. Kenny Chesney, actually sitting in a Waffle House -- back from the islands for 48 hours to attend another funeral, one for one of his bus drivers found dead from congestive heart failure in a hotel room the day he was to close on a house, no next of kin only next of employer -- and trying to make sense of the death. Terri Clark on the side of the stage in Gstaad, Switzerland, pulled from a soundcheck to hear the news and respond -- dazed by both the raggedness of the loss and the time zone cha cha whiplash of international travel. Kix Brooks, back from an early run to the golf course and already aware, able in his lucidity to address the facets of a man who meant much to many in many, many ways. Johnny Cash was like that. In his humility, he inspired all of us to be more, to be better, to have integrity. To hear Johnny Cash, to gaze upon a countenance that was essentially a portrait of the human condition, it was the know peace and pain, torment and release, love and sorrow, but above all, faith. No matter what… No matter how lost or wild… There was always faith to bring him home. It may've faltered. Been battered, tattered, torn and bruised along the way -- but it was a constant undertow to pull his soul back to the shore where it belonged. When I think of Johnny Cash -- beyond torturing my Latina college suitemates with those bumping backbeat heavy early records that were all rockabilly and adrenalin and raising him as the ultimate punk rock symbol back when the Sex Pistols and the Ramones were raging -- I think of a pillar of strength, a mountain of humanity that could weather any storm, survive the pain -- which he most certainly felt -- and maintain his dignity as a man and his artistry in the truest sense. Not that anyone necessarily cares what I think -- a midwifer of dreams, believer in the poetry of the lives lived, survivor of lost nights, broken heels and brokener hearts, I am one more handmaiden to the celestial beings. Taxi dancers who give their souls to the songs must choose wisely for it's an all-consuming high-stakes kind of musical poker… and if you cast your soul capriciously, you come to know the hard way that Johnny Cash is about the only surest bet in town. His memory should be celebrated. His legacy cast in the words of those who survived, whose music thrived because of the songs of Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash and the Carter/Cash Families. There had been no time to breath, to think, to pause this sad day. Churn the phones -- cell and hotel room. Burn the e-mail. Cut and paste and resend. Bob and weave. Create and recreate and try not to remember… until now… on a plane home, still sick from the flu that makes your ribs ache, heading home to my own little bed. When my own father died of a protracted illness that wasted him slowly, stealing his power and his shine, it was those calls from unexpected places that pulled me through. Just the notion that somebody knew, cared, felt it. And so I dialed, only my friend was at the funeral parlor when she answered -- clearly an inopportune time. But the voice of the sad lost little girl that overwhelmed the wet lushness of the woman who testified about "Seven Year Aches," anguished about living ghosts in "A Lover Is Forever" and "Why Don't You Quit Leavin' Me Alone," stood naked and vulnerable in "The Real Me," embraced a gentle tempest in "I Don't Know Why You Don't Want Me" and got all over the musical joy of her father's tale of musical arrival "Tennessee Flat Top Box" was the embodiment of stillness engulfed in sorrow. She had lost her Daddy. It's a pain like no other, never lessened or tempered by the knowledge it was coming. On her Rules of Travel, Rosanne Cash sang a song with her father called "September When It Comes." It was generational. It was inevitable. It captured the horrible recognition of the ravages of times with a bittersweet beauty that transfixes you with its fragility. Both vocalists know what is to come, but they bravely stiffen their lips, resolute in the understanding there is something beyond the known. Perhaps that's the greatest truth of Johnny Cash's resolve. His faith was such that we can almost know by his passing that there must be more beyond the mortal coil. Will The Circle be Unbroken, Volume 2 opens with Johnny Cash singing the Carter Family staple "Life's Railway To Heaven." He is joined by his great love June Carter Cash and her sisters Helen and Anita for as simple a profession of faith as one could hope for. On the wings of blood harmonies, it brings the hereafter here and now -- and sets the listener free with its unnuanced courage of conviction. Whether you believe or not is irrelevant. Listening to "Life's Railway," it is impossible to doubt. It's fitting then that the first guest on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's third installment of their musical, generational and philosophical merger was Johnny Cash. For this outing, Cash asked if he could bring in a song he'd never got around to recording -- "Tears In the Holston River," a song about Mother Maybelle and Sara Carter's passing and funerals. That performance, along with American IV: The Man Comes Around, the single and video for "Hurt," are all nominated for awards at this November's CMA Awards. Even now, his force may flicker, but always shines. Helen Keller once wrote, "It's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness." Johnny Cash lived his life like a blaze of glory -- throwing light into the deepest crevices and recesses of this world, so we could see or be seen, know or be understood. The Dirt Band's boyish guitarist/vocalist Jeff Hanna, a dear friend, has voice that deserves to be heard in the wash of response even if the band couldn't justify keeping a publicist on retainer. Stammering and talking through tears, he spoke of the fellowship Cash brought through moments and music, the shock waves of recognition that rolled through you being in close proximity of a legend who'd been an indelible part of his childhood tempered by the easy way Cash had. But it was Ronnie Dunn whose benediction offered solace amongst the sorrow. In a voice that bore no recognition to the muscular power-tenor that attacks America's concert stages with a fire and ferocity each night, he spun out the truth as he believed it: A man in black stepped through three pearly white gates today Into the waiting arms of his angel June Carter Cash. Mortal man may be saddened, but heaven's singing… The Louvin Brothers have their own anthem of redemption with "The Angels Rejoiced." Though "The Ballad of John R." was never quite so hard-won or stark, the joy of the deliverance was no less great. Recognizing freedom from devastating illness and a reunion with the true love of his life, we should all find joy in the passing of one who truly made a difference. He wasn't afraid to burn, to love, to seek, to live with complete abandon. But also with a strength that made him regal in the hushed way of kings. Tonight, 37,000 feet above America, I can finally inhale. Take it all in. Consider something more than facts, feelings. Reach for a meaning more powerful than stats or Grammys or grand reviews. Up here with eyes on fire from the searing tears that just keep rolling down my face from loss and exhaustion, there is much to remember about living a life of integrity. For honor only comes from honesty. Sacrifice for something greater, something more is the only way. And the joy truly does come from the journey. Stones in the road, absolutely. But laughter and passion burn far more intensely when you give yourself to it. So tonight that is the lesson of passage -- and it is one to be kept close through the mourning. -- Holly Gleason Flight 1970 to Nashville
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This… Is… Radio… Clash

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College radio may be the most subversive place in the world. Alone in the studio, with a couple of turntables, a cart machine, a phone line and an open mic, the moments and the music are exactly what you choose to make them. It is filled with both possibility and community. Send your cry out and see what comes back… For a Midwestern girl, even one with a record collection as vast as mine, the idea that total strangers were going to be influenced by what I played -- well, that was something that made my pulse race. And having driven by Record Revolution in Cleveland Heights all through high school, sneaking in there whenever I could to see what was below the radar of even Kid Leo's breaking afternoon drive show on legendary rocker WMMS, I knew there were records that existed beyond the pale. The first time I heard the Clash, a guy named Tony Christy -- who college dee jayed as Antonachem on WPRK, the teeny Rollins College station -- spun them from a vinyl 45 during the schizophrenic thorazine-needed late night punk programming that was the antidote to the afternoon and early evening's classical offerings. Tony Christy with the 9 p.m. shadow, the olive skin, the eyes that never stopped moving and the intense sense of what mattered, leaning into the mic, barely breathing, uttering after a long rambling free associative ramp up, "This… is… The CLASH!" And what ensued was the jabbing herky jerky profession that "…this IS radio Clash." Over and over. Around that 45 went. I was transfixed. Electrical current ran through me. WHAT was it? How did it get like that? And how did I miss this utterly vital thing… this life force that made me think of how scary Keith Richards seemed, how out of control Keith Moon was? The Sex Pistols were rage to rage. The Clash was a focus to their anger… enragement based on something beyond selfish desire. It was Jackson Browne with a hard-wired, hardcore reflex response. It was vicious. It was white hot -- and there I was in that cobbled together studio, with the lights low, the candles and incense burning, jumping up and down in a little white girl pogo. It wasn't violent. It didn't seem to be the byproduct of electroshock therapy. It was the energy that needed somewhere to go and the balls and heels that knew what to do. If the Clash were pissed off… If they were the Ramones with a political agenda… Then this was what the revolution would sound like, and if Gil Scot Heron was right --and the revolution would not be televised, at least it would chew up the airwaves like silverware in a blender grinding and whirling and shattering the silence with the jarring sounds of metallic fury. But the Clash - like Elvis Costello's "Good Year For The Roses" (country music? Yech) and Prince's "Controversy" (hormonally-adled funk) -- were Tony's, not mine. I could watch him spin breathless, but I could never own that kind of focused rage and intensity. After all, I was "Muffy" in th first degree: a pink button down shirt and a pair of espadrilles, a pony tail secured with a great big bow. Girls like me, even if we slummed in the right record stores, didn't get to buy in, didn't get to belong to that world. We weren't welcome… we were the problem. Until I transferred. And I decided to jettison any sense of what was appropriate. When I hit WVUM -- the Voice of the University of Miami -- I reinvented myself as Angel Dust and I was as downlow and worldly as any female voice that ever worked that mic. Angel knew things -- and to that girl, the Clash was anything but lost! They were Angel's birthright, and she reached for them directly. Sandinista. London Calling. The Clash. They all came with white stickers that threatened in big black Sharpie scratched letters: "Remove from Studio, Prepare To Die" and "Failure To Replace Means Instant Termination." Of course, it did… Otherwise, how would the copies stay in the station. Insurrection at 33 1/3. It was right there at one's finger tips. In a world of Fun Boy 3, Banarama, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, the Smiths, Souixsie Souix & the Banshees, the English Beat and the Pretenders, not to mention Generation X, the Stray Cats, Romeo Void, the Ramones, Charlie Picket + the Eggs, the Replacements and these new guys from Athens R.E.M. (and later fellow Georgians Love Tractor), the Clash stood out. They were integrity that was gritty. They were rancorous with a strong melodic sense. They were backbeats to beat you with, to drive the point home -- and they understood that rock & roll was about abandon, freewheeling and full-tilt. It was a time of much personal and musical stratification -- coming of age in South Florida, where nights were spent straddling the gay dance clubs and a column about dance records for The Weekly News, the first Swatch Watch Fresh Fest Tour with Whodini and Grandmaster Flash, plus Schlitz Malt Liquor tours and profiles for Black Miami Weekly and the country freelancing for a Top 10 daily newspaper you mighta heard of called The Miami Herald. Each world was impossibly singula, rich with stories, ripe with moments that opened whole vistas up. But they were bound together by the glory of music's ability to deliver one's soul to the other side. There was plenty to recommend each flavor… There was even a great deal of overlapping from one to another… Which is the greatest beauty of the beat. Still for the majesty and the spectacle, the moments where the rhythms carry you along, nothing burned as bright or as insistently as the Clash when they were on. Making you think. Making you jump. Making you scream. Making you transcend moments to where there's nothing left. My youth was scattered like so many fragments of broken glass. Bluffing my way backstage for an Elvis Costello and the Attractions show. Waiting and waiting in in the always dark and dank lobby of Cleveland's famed rock and roll hotel Swingos for the U2 interview that kept slipping until it had slipped away. Spending Thanksgiving at the Waldorf Astoria, watching the rockabilly punks surrounding the Stray Cats cast against the opulence -- and marveling at the contrast to the pasty Long Island white boys in the standard Holiday Inn hotel room I'd interviewed them in my field hockey shorts because it'd taken so long to confirm they'd do it, there was no time to change. It was the blazing red burn on Modern English -- who hadn't discovered sunscreen as they hit the beach for Spring Break shows in the name of "I Melt With You," the exhaustion around Annabella Lwin's young eyes, sprawled in a torn up dressing room before bounding onstage to exhort "I Want Candy" with her multi-culti punkish new wavers Bow Wow Wow one more time. It was seeing the Black Flag hand bills on the telephone poles for a 27 Birds show, and the same kick-stepping socio-politcal fire igniting the Dead Kennedys mosh frenzy in a castaway bar on Miami Beach. You could say those were the days. Innocence and kerosene looking for a match. Sid Vicious hadn't died. The rest of the Sex Pistols hadn't sold out. Debbie Harry was still a vinyl clad siren walking the Phil Specter edge of punk -- even as Patti Smith tore poetry by the roots from her desperation and moved ever closer to rock. It was all so RIGHT THERE. But it all started with the Clash. And a timid girl. And a man who smelled of musk and patchouli with a voice that was gravel and uncombed wool and knowing something that "you, little one… will never figure out." I didn't have to, because deep inside, I knew… Today, came the e-mail from London. "Sad mourning…" wrote the friend from the BBC. The one who explained that his pompadour wasn't an Elvis affectation and that his life was littered with all the important Clash shows. He believed from up-close, from the rush and the fury. From across an ocean, how do you tell someone like that, you feel a part of you has been snuffed out as well. An artist you never met, ever saw, only genuflected before those burning records… And yet, those records threw me off a balcony, left me grabbing for a meaning that -- imagine this -- had been deep inside me all along. And that's probably the biggest bitch of it: that part of me's flown up to pink and black heaven, studded and leathered and agitating even as it flies. These are the things we don't even think about missing 'til they're gone… so vital how does something like this even happen? 50? Unimaginable, and yet… but once they are gone, the numbness sets in, and you can only hope the tears will bring a thaw. Til then, it's not a matter of should I stay or should I go -- I'll stake my claim and fight that much harder because of what I was felt in the lost hours. Something lost that shouldn't have been -- and shouldn't ever again. 23 December 2002 Nashville, TN
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A Perfect Day, A More Perfect Night

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It's not even 7:30 in the morning, and the Buddy List and AOL Instant Messenger Traffic is already bling-blinging like J-Lo's parting gifts from P-Diddy. Everyone online already knows that "I Just Wanna Be Mad" -- the first single from Terri Clark's just released Pain To Kill is Top 5, making her the only woman in Billboard's Country Singles Top 10 -- but this is the wake-up where we find out how first week sales of the album hailed by The Miami Herald as "her best work yet" and The Minneapolis Star-Tribune as "a triumphant return to form" fared. Like some small town party-line, everyone's asking everyone every few minutes. At home, Terri Clark is contemplating her place in an increasingly Adult Contemporary/Pop marketplace where glamour is far more important than fiddles and anorexia is a better calling card than songs that speak to the gut of working people. And me, I'm sitting at my computer -- knowing the hours invested, hating that it always comes down to this. Always comes down to how does it open, is the single a hit, how do they look. When you live in the star-making machinery that Joni Mitchell so righteously wrote, impaled and sang about, you can often get crushed between the gears. You can give it your heart, work 'round the clock, pull every favor -- and then something unforeseen falls out of the sky, rendering all that exertion moot. So you sit, and you wait, and you hope, and you dread. You deny, fantasize, get real and wait some more. And then the one you've been waiting for: 33,487 - she's #5. Terri Clark, a girl some people felt had checked out with her introspective singer/songwriter project, was back with her biggest opening week position yet. Nestled between the king of rock & roll Elvis Presley and multi-platinum blond Faith Hill. Weighing in between two heavyweights the week following both the People's Choice Awards (where Faith won big) and the American Music Awards (where husband McGraw did even better), with no TV time, just strong connection and fly-over people to carry her. Here was a hard country girl, built like -- as one New Yorker so aptly put it -- "a real wo-man," singing songs that were almost defiantly country, bulked up yet, but not trying to pass for lite rock or a power ballad. Everyone was IMing Terri, telling her to IM her manager. He couldn't IM her, because her privacy filter was intercepting him… and he couldn't get through on her phone, because she had her mother on waiting for the news. And finally, she IMed him. She heard. She knew. She reacted. "I'm going to faint…" she typed. "No, I'm going to throw up." But a #5 debut… especially for a girl the naysayers in a tough industry in a fallow time would argue was about counted out… was an amazing thing! Not quite a miracle like the sightings of the Blessed Virgin or a blind man regaining sight, but something that restores one's faith in the public's willingness to buy country music. Honest to gawd real bone-deep country, that twangs and has fiddles and steel guitars. The stuff about real life, how it is, how it isn't -- not it ought to be -- like some vein let open with a bit of rusty barbed wire, torn jagged and gushing crimson and pain. There was a shrill sound on the other end of the phone. She was giddy, laughing, crying -- all at once -- flooded with every emotion that has anything to do with joy, relief, gratitude. This was the kind of moment artists who're walking the line between in the game and over hold their breath for, the arrival knocking them down from the depravation of denial, the wishful thinking smothered for fear of the jinx. My fingers just kept clicking over the keyboard -- writing the press release, re-writing sections, moving copy around. Looking for quotes. Looking for just the right words to make people who hadn't heard this music understand why it mattered, why this record was important, what this record said about a woman on the verge, words that weren't mine - but some impartial bystanders. And boy, were they there - People ("a forceful declaration of independence"), USA Today ("an unrepentant honky tonker), The New York Post ("an earthy woman who sings about living life to the max"), The Dallas Morning News ("waves the banner for real women everywhere") and The Washington Post ("a straight shooting lonely heart" and "a tough talking cowgirl keeping it real") - loud, proud and openly defiant to conventional 6-1-5 business. Just that morning Clark's face and guitars had appeared on the opening page of USA Today's web site… the cyber version of a profile hailing the 3-time fan voted Canadian Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year as "the anti-diva." It's some kind of cosmic, karmic alignment when it all goes right: the single is #5, the album is #5 and there's a feature in USA Today and a major review in The Washington Post. ALL the same day…It just doesn't happen like that. We're not even close to open, here at that small freakishly boutique company I run -- and it's already beyond whatever one dares dream for an act trying to punch their way back to the table. After all, Joe's Garage is a place where it's about the music and the story and the reasons for believing. Even with the big clients, there's gotta be a reason to believe -- or there's no reason to be here. And even with all that, there are no guarantees, so you chew your nails, push your cuticles back too hard, scratch your nose and pull your hair… Then sometimes, it works. You don't even wanna believe it's the result of a bunch of people all on the same page, working hard - executing as they're supposed to. It would confound everything that is daily living. Yet… or And so… And there it is. And there it was, too, in USA Today. Considering the course this woman had taken -- inside herself with a fiercely introspective project called Fearless that was the polemic of her rowdy no shame, no gain, you can't get me down cowgrrrrrl-power charged country that had ignited the airwaves on her three previous efforts -- our nation's newspaper recognized that Pain To Kill wasn't a capitulation, but an expansion on both realities. Without blinking, though surely the result of many sleepless night, Terri Clark wove a seamless cloth of soul-searching words and ass-kicking backbeats. And it's not all about shooting out the lights -- none of us have the stamina for that -- but the notion that even a ballad with a backbone can resonate in deeper places if you'll imbue it with some bravery and some insight. There is hard country on Pain To Kill: keening fiddles that bend into each other and steel guitars that collect the notes into buckets of tears and harmonies that are sweetness stretched taut over regret or dignity. And if Terri Clark can plug in, turn up and burn down a whirlwind "I Wanna Do It All," with the hunger for life that most people would find terrifying, she's also able to walk away from something that's close ("I Just Called To Say Good-Bye") with the rhythm of tires circularly swallowing pavement at daybreak and accept that alone can be the better option ("Not A Bad Thing") with grace and tranquility. Pain To Kill is a big girl record. It examines the issues of being more than 20-something with honesty, compassion for self, dignity for everyone involved. It pushes understanding -- even as it refuses to see oneself as diminished. Flourish, damnit, this record says -- through the pain, the disappointment, the getting screwed over. We're put here to thrive, not survive… and as Auntie Mame proclaimed onstage all those years ago, "Life is a banquet and most of you poor so-and-so's are starving to death." Terri Clark refuses to starve. And she also refuses to secede or recede. Yes, she's been hurt, crippled, reduced to quivering tissue and tears. But she knows that to quit trying, to pull up the draw bridges and refuse to come out and play is to begin dying right here, right now. It's not the ache that's gonna get you, she reasons, but the numbness and emotional atrophy that sets in from removing oneself from the rollercoaster that is life. Terri Clark, fresh from a whirlwind 10 days of nonstop promotional activities to set up Pain To Kill, is on the other line -- a little hoarse, but clearly happy. "I can't believe it. I can't believe it," she intones like some mantra doled out by the Maharishi. She didn't give up and she didn't give in… No, the very tall, very solid tomboy dug in, started trying to graft the two things that mattered to her: lyrics that meant something and the will to rock - and she connected. While this was prom day… The one where the results come out…. Terri Clark didn't get to slow down and enjoy it. Oh, no… She had two soundchecks and interviews and stacks of things to sign, people to call, people to see, heck, laundry to do… But by 6 p.m., when the Mirror -- one of those Nashville restaurants that is more for the bohemian crowd -- started to fill with friends and well-wishers, it was clear this was Terri's day. Everyone in attendance, from the head of A&R to the head of programming at Country Music Television to her producer and some of the many writers, was as happy as the artist before them. Treating to the crowd to a few of the songs that brought everyone to that day and celebration, Terri Clark sat on a tall stool, looked out at the crowd and told the story of playing her first industry function. It was a tribute to Merle Haggard and people like Emmylou Harris were onstage playing, but Sony Tree head Donna Hilley believed in getting up the new writers just signed to the hallowed publishing company -- and so the girl who'd spent two years on a stool at Tootsies found herself before this crowd of who's who. "It was the most nerve-wracking thing in the world," she confessed. "And you know… ten years later, looking out at you, I'm still a nervous wreck. The difference is, now the faces are a lot of my friends." She would play a couple more songs for the Invite Only crowd -- clearly shining with her strong, muscular tenor. But it was towards the end of the brief acoustic performance where the real meaning of the day carried. Wiping tears from her eyes, moved in ways one can't describe, Terri Clark collected herself before a business that's not known for its unequivocal support of the fiscally faltering stars. Smiling through the wet, she made one last point, "When I came to this town, I came with a dream… and all these years later, I still believe in the power of a dream and the passion of a song. That's where it begins and ends - and it's what's brought me here, through everything." As powerful as that was - and it was a rare moment of real clarity in a business of façade -- it paled compared to Terri Clark and her band onstage at the place it all-started for the wet-behind-the-ears-teenager-taking -the-bus-to-the-combat-zone-that-was-Lower-Broadway-in-the-90s Tootsies Orchid Lounge. Tootsies, with its long legend of the people who drank their between Grand Ole Opry sets at the Ryman, the losers and dreamers and songwriters with names like Kristofferson who ran tabs and tales on the kindness of the owner Tootsie Bess. But this night -- with a second snow storm blowing in to cripple Music City -- the legend was all Terri Clark's. The story of a girl who believed in a dream and the power of a song, who let it sustain her when many would've flinched at the dip and gone home. Here was a red-blooded woman in a t-shirt and jeans, taking country's legacy back from the phalanx of glamazons in the name of music, bringing it closer to the root of Waylon and Willie than the mainstream's seen in far too long. As the big fat snowflakes spun 'round in the beams being tossed from klieg lights like so much candy sugar sparkling on the night, Terri Clark was flecked with something else that glittered: sweat. Onstage, burning through the songs her fans -- some of whom had brought sleeping bags and had started camping out at 3 p.m. two days prior in the merciless cold -- had come to use to empower their own lives, Terri Clark knew the ultimate release: the force of a song born down hard on and squeezed for every last drop of emotion. It wasn't just her songs, either, taking that serious beating that comes from a no-nonsense working band -- led by a singer who just wants to be one more muscle working with the group rather than bouncing along on top of the collective. Sitting on a stool alone, she re-visited the covers that supported her in that smoke-thickened room -- the Judds and Reba, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn, George Jones and James Taylor's "Bartender Blues" - and grounded the music that defined her sound, that gave her the kick inside. But it was really about a full-immersion "Stay With Me" that made the kohl-eyed beauty every bit the in-command rogue that Rod Stewart was at his peak. It was the grinding commitment of Sippie Wallace's "Love Me Like A Man" that was decimated with a wink and a promise to be the kind of tire-rotating realization most people won't dare dream of, let alone deliver on. There was even a down-in-the-groove workout out on Rufus' "Tell Me Something Good" that turned up the sticky without ever letting go of the wheel. Terri Clark -- who plays her guitar like she means it, who stands and delivers with no fear, who has only herself and her music to bring -- stood on the back stage at Tootsies and gave and gave and gave. At the end of a long day, of too many blessings to consider without buckling under the weight of the gifts, Terri Clark gave it all away - because that's what she does. As one of the people standing in the shadows, midwifing the dream and supporting the process, it was a more perfect night to an already perfect day. We are the ones always coming up short, not quite enough, seeing what could have rather than exulting in what is -- because the stakes are so high, because the dreams are so critical. In my snow boots and my mittens, under a tent that trapped our body heat to make the outdoors patio a little more palatable, the faces before Terri Clark shone with something akin to rapture. They'd come for a release from the frustrations, the tribulations, the stumbles, trips, knots and clots of real life. Terri Clark understood that. And in that one moment, that one place, we all understood how that feels. Union communion whatever. As Clarence Spalding, her hyperintelligent commando manager said with a smile, "Write this all down. Days like this don't happen very often." He was right, of course, and he didn't even know how deep it goes. Somewhere, there is a honky tonk angel with nicotine-stained teeth, big hair and blue eye shadow reaching for a Pabst and nodding knowingly -- right next to a girl in pink and green winking affirmatively.
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Guy Clark Was Right

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It's just before the 4th of July and it's late in the Ritz Carlton bar… The plane from West Palm Beach had been tremendously late, so we were trying to figure out how much we should order in lieu of a real dinner. Atlanta, Georgia on a holiday weekend -- a reunion of girlfriends in the name of Kenny Chesney and a wild 4th of July party back in the 6-1-5. Amid the laughter and chicken tenders and shared ironies, we were drowning in common happiness. It doesn't get any better -- and we knew it. Until I saw that face, framed in ebony window-paning colored hair with the lead framed glasses and the rumpled expensive suit. Kyle Young, executive director of the Country Music Foundation, had wandered into the bar, looking for a nightcap with a friend. Kyle Young, the dashing expatriated Mississipian who'd poured tequila into me one CMJ Convention to kill the sting of being dissed through an artist I adored courtesy of a vindictive old boyfriend. Kyle Young, who was as Hemingway meets Fitzgerald at Sam Shephard's motel as anyone I'd ever encountered. He was introduced, swooned over a bit. Big smiles for the common miles and the moments shared. It was one of those encounters that reminds us folks who live in the wind: our kind is never much further than our fingertips… never beyond the sound of a voice or the wink of an eye. Growing up, my father couldn't change planes without someone asking, "Aren't you… John Gleason?" The same thing happened at golf courses, good restaurants, hopsitals and churches. Never mind the state or time of day -- and I marveled at the depth of my father's acquaintances, intimidated by his breadth of human contact. Until that moment. Dissolving into giggles as Kyle walked away, smirking at the cute intellectual boy who shared a history, albeit one based in brevity. Because that is the beauty of life in the wind. Like my girlfriends Kathie and Binny, two hotties who have no interest in that sort of thing. Give them snacks and Starbucks -- and they're sated. Maybe the occasional walk on the backstage side. And don't forget to back up a truckload of laughter. That's what matters to the arbiter of Palm Beach style and the wonderful muralist who tosses off the most spiritually connected watercolors you've ever seen. Kathie is Cinderella, the one who gets us all together then recedes, who laughs with more joy than should be allowed, smiles with a devilish glee. All blond and shiny and stylish in that Lauren Bacall way. Binny is the Alice in Wonderland with the dark hair swept back, a bunny's face and a breathy soul that bleeds poetry. In their eyes, the world is all it can be -- and while they can't physically transform that which is, they can take you for a ride on the possibilities. They, too, have charm bracelets hung with those who've passed through, who have yet to land. They take in the world, bathe in the here and now -- and believe in the magic of common experience. They are generous women who need nothing and take less, leaving laughter and light in their wake. They are the kind of people we all, or most of us, would like to think we are in our best moments. And if you've got friends like Binny and Kathie, you can be in their presence. But the gift that is comrades and confidantes of the sparkling ray of sunlight variety, the ones who turn your dust ball into a dancing bit of golden ether twirling in their beam, doesn't happen once… It's the kind of thing that falls across one's life like logs in the path, if you're paying attention. Precious cargo that we carry with us -- even when they're nowhere to be found. The kind of friends that don't require physical manifestation to have their footprints make a mark that makes a difference, whether we know it or not. Just as it is for us, so, too, it can be for those we encounter along the way. A sobering truth, one that brings the blood to the cheeks like a rush of cherries in the snow or roses across typing paper. Well into my 30s before I experienced the phenomenon, I was riding in the back of a girlfriend from high school's Lincoln, and she was trying to explain to a client about who I was back then. "Oh, Holly… she had a double life," she explained with all the drama implied. "We'd all be splitting a six pack between eight of us, and she'd be there, then she'd be gone. You wouldn't even realize, until you recognized she'd disappeared -- just gone! into the night, to some bar most likely, with some band. We all wondered about what she was doing out there, leading that other life." REALLY? Me? The quiet geeky (okay, preppy) one who lived in her books and her records? Sure, the golf pros got me into bars when I was 13. And by befriending the local musicians who were delighted to have insight into their music from a sober, seemingly knowledgeable (albeit sawed off) source, my girlhood was spent as countless people's nieces, daughters, next door neighbors…all in the name of a guest list and the threat of my telling the band. But for all the ones for whom I was mystery, there were the ones who understood. Not necessarily girls (or boys) who'd partake of the lost hours with me -- for that was a solitary pursuit -- but the ones who got it. Like the darling Carl Byron, as close to a knight as I ever encountered, so committed to my dreams and my stories that I smile just thinking of him. Or my young girlhood friend Lynn, the one who was thigh-to-thigh with me through all the channels of growing up as a private school girl in Cleveland, Ohio. A sister in plaid skirts and knee highs, seeking to figure it out without so much adult insight. We had all the same teachers, ate all the same tastefree lunches and ran up and down the same field in the name of soccer and track and whatever else they were calling physical education. Far headier, though, were the common bonds that created definition for young lives desparate to be defined. We fell in love with horses at the same time -- whether it was pretending on the playground to be Beauty or Flicka or Secretariat or surrendering to the rhythms of the ride at Red Raider Day Camp. We were carted back and forth to Mrs. Batzer's Dancing School, where all the right single sex school kids mingled in the name of what was meant to eventually be heterosexual orientation -- wearing our white gloves and anklets and bruises from the little boys who couldn't master the box step or jitterbug to save themselves. We shared school dances. We talked about the boys and the girls and the couples and the moments of horror that came from the melting of our reserves. Even more importantly, we shared music. The bond that was rock and roll… especially the Knights In Satan's Service. Those demonic masters of the comic reality and booming backbeat. KISS! The band, not the action. Painted faces, leather cod pieces, platforms that defied nosebleeds, puking blood and breathing fire. If they were beyond Ringling Brothers and they served up hackneyed cliches -- "Cold Gin," "Strutter," "Deuce" -- they understood the ultimate youthcentric fantasy manifesto: "Rock & Roll All Night (Party Every Day)." We were there almost at the beginning, primal troglodyte reality that was knuckle dragging rock and roll. We were there at the Richfield Coliseum, in a loge for the tour where the Cat (Peter Criss) strangled out that one ballad "Beth" to imbue a sense of humanity into the debauchery. And there in the next loge was Graham Button, the boy who made my palms sweat, who ran his hands through my hair slow dancing to the very same song, who should've been more aggressive… but was too lost in the mystery to get much beyond the gentle swaying. We saw it all, Lynn and I. We laughed and lapped it up. Until Lynn's mom married a plastic surgeon and moved to Beverly Hills. Even over the miles, the friendship didn't die. There were letters about the Cramps, bars called the Lingerie and wild nights that could've been cut from the Jodie Foster/Cheri Curie teen angst treatise "Foxes." Though the distance was bigger than two kids -- and the connection eventually faded and failed. Young girls pushing out in their own directions. Finding their way no doubt, thriving and seeking their dreams at a breakneck pace, the speed of seeking one's fate. Never to speak again… but never to lose the mark of innocence and passion strewn across freezing Midwestern nights, where the chilled breath and bright eyes took it all in and owned that which excited them. Friendships like that: the ones that won't die just because current of life dictated distant, different places set the tone for what's to come. Being able to sustain without the physical manifestation lets later intensity appear and grow and wave. Kathie was an immediate best friend; Binny the same. That we shared nothing common in our past didn't matter… just as Lynn's physical remove did nothing to lessen how she shapes me. From a distance. In a moment. Passion for people is all the same. They get it or they don't. They get you or they won't. And you laugh and you eat onion rings and you whisper about what you see and you wince for the things that suck. It's pretty basic. The lost girl and the right now and even the passing by person who you know even if you don't immerse in will still define who you are. It's the Kyle Youngs and the Lynn Steingass Mandels, the Kathie Orricos and Binny Jollys, just as it's the Eddie Montgomerys, the James Walter Brown the Thirds, the Alex Bevans, the Emily Woods and the Jack Metzgers. To the reader, names on the paper; to the woman living the life, comfort and joy and jokes and songs and advisement and whatever else was needed in the moment -- including the occasional electric french kiss, hard truth, deep disappointment and tossed off wave. It's the thing about life… which Kathie and Binny and I all acknowledged, rolling north out of Atlanta for Nashville and a barn party in honor of our country's birthday at Ronnie Dunn's ramshackle George O'Keefe construction… even when it doesn't seem profound, it's pretty definitive stuff. The time killed is often the sweetest, the friends who just are, the ones most potent. As Guy Clark once professed, "Old friends, they shine like diamonds…" Guy Clark, so tall and broad and solid. A Texan who can build a mandolin, string a moment, eviscerate an ill-tempered suitor and bathe emotions in the golden glow of illumination. Like the others, they bring their truth, they mix with your moments and they leave you richer than you imagined. Richer than diamonds even, which is what the song is all about. -- Holly Gleason July 20, August 18 Nov. 10, 11,12 Atlanta/Cleveland/LA/Nashville
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The French Inhaler Hastens Down The Wind, Warren Zevon Learns To Let Go

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There's that thing called friend-of-a-friend, where you're "in" even before you know about the other person. And so it was with Warren Zevon, produced by my whole reason for living as a 14-year-old-pink-button-down-sporting-naif in Cleveland, Ohio. Whatever there was about him, I was going to love it. Which shouldn't have been such a leap of faith, as his "Hasten Down The Wind" had been the title track to a Linda Ronstadt album I'd quite liked. Nothing about the complexity and confusion of women had ever revealed itself to me quite so compellingly or completely… and against a mournful melodic current, the images poured out clean and simple. It was almost a haiku without form, grounded by the man who'd withstand the tide in the name of what was slipping through his fingers. Devotion and delicacy. Fragility as something other than frightening. Capriciousness as something understood, accepted. It was Zevon at his best, a man reconciling difficult things with a few lines, a modulation that signals the shift in the blood from ecstasy to quiet agony. Warren Zevon, a filigreed painter of human emotion and nuance. A man unafraid of what wasn't going to happen. A writer with a deft touch at the small details that wrought his lyrics an incisive heaviness that made him the Hemingway of the Southern California singer/songwriter jungle. What wasn't expected was the turgid irony, the bulked-up soldier of fortune flex that came with the more muscular offerings. When Warren Zevon went deep into musk and testosterone, he wasn't kidding around. "Excitable Boy" whimsied through the tale of what would pass as today's average Ritalin-deprived ADD-addled little angel who goes psychotic and no one knows why, while "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner" went wherever men fought wars of conscience merely for the money and the adventure, heartless as much as headless but looking for the thrill. These songs rolled and kicked and burped and swaggered. These were men's songs sung with bravado and glee and zeal. They were delivered with the stench of body odor, rank clothing, wet and tattered, clinging to beat-up forms of men who've done heroic things, perhaps for bad or selfish reasons. And there was always the humor. Don't lose sight of the gag. "Werewolves of London" have the Lon Chaney franchise a walking talking scenario to work out of… and the howling, yowling chorus had every frat boy, beer guzzler and weekend warrior lifting their lungs in the name of their basest core/corps presence. Nowhere, though, did it quite register with the brilliance of the genius quite like "Lawyers, Guns + Money," a hard-boiled ne'er-do-well adventurer's world-weary end-of-the-line call for help that never quite buckled at the pride. And in its head tall urging, there was something about the not-giving-quarter-in-the-face-of-fate dignity that made men proud -- and mostly likely validated everything women hate about them. My empiric evidence came in a '74 fire engine red Mustang on a blue highway somewhere in West Virginia. My father was taking me for some spring training at Pinehurst, one of America's high temples of golf, and I was balancing my interest in the game, with my will to be conversant in what the golf pros liked to talk about. White sneakers propped up on the dash, Rolling Stone splayed across my uplifted thighs, I was reading to my father in a transgenerational bonding ritual that probably spoke far more about my dad's will to connect with this puberty-addled creature who made no sense to him. Until. Until that one page feature on Warren Zevon, the one that included snatches of lyrics from his upcoming Excitable Boy. In an effort to shock -- this wasn't Creem, how bad could it be? -- there was no fear of something scandalous popping up. So there was no pre-reading going on, to sanitize the copy for Daddy's protection. Besides, Jackson Browne wouldn't be associated with anything too racy. That rising and falling cadence of good writing falling from my lips, a smile on my face for a story well told. And then there it was… the lyrics with the no-no word "I'm hiding in Honduras/ I'm a desparate man/ Send laywers, guns and money/ The shit has hit the fan…" There was that pause you could drive a truck through. Not looking up -- even sideways -- to see if the knuckles are so white they're going to pop the steering wheel from its casing. Just the big quiet of the night falling, the wind being driven into and the tires on the tar. It was a gestation pause -- the ones where you know something's being formed, perhaps nothing will be the same again. What's going to happen is a jump ball. But something is… And then it did. My father doubled over in laughter. Big rolling gales of laughter. The kind of deep chested belly laughs that women almost never get to experience. Not impolite, but just so totally utterly consuming -- and then, he snorted. "Who is that guy?" he asked, whipping tears from his cheeks a few minutes later. Dreadful songs from that era played beneath me -- the squirrely "Undercover Angel," the histrionic "Lonely Boy" -- as the lecture ensued. About Jackson Browne, the importance of songwriting, the ability to filet a moment. It was so serious. My father drove on, brows knitted like two wooly bears copulating, chewing his cigar. "Well, he's funny…" was about all my Midwestern Dad could muster. Not for him the emotional depth charges or gentle nudgings of revelation, nor the silliness of "Werewolves." Though the insurance salesman and golf historian eventually made his peace with Zevon's other side. Between "Tenderness On The Block," a song about a young girl finding her way with boys sung from a father's perspective, and "Back Turned Looking Down The Path," about the passage of time, life and learning for those you love, John Gleason came to love the down bed that Zevon made for the sweetest feelings. And me, I remained a sucker for the gentler side that slowly peeled away the layers of what obscured the things that mattered. To me, "Accidentally Like Martyr" or "Abandoned Love" urged us to see people from their insidest places rather than the mask that was shown to the world. There was a recognition like fire, even though it was done in the softest of ways. You could feel the careful acceptance being doled out, the notion that even in the wreckage, there was much grace here -- grace that should outshine whatever was painful. And that may be Warren Zevon's greatest gift: grace over pain, light rather than baseness. Nobody rolled'em like Warren, no doubt. He could smoke and drink and shoot out the lights, find adventure anywhere -- and make you believe that you were as sinister and dangerous as the darkest bounty hunter. Even when you were a mere white collar waging rules-flaunting insurrections merely at the water cooler. That's a gift -- to give adventure back to the domesticated. Jimmy Buffett serves carefree "Ferris Bueller"-esque tropicality to the not as desparate, not as dark with startling aplomb and consistency. He is a franchise of escape. Warren Zevon became something more veiled in danger, longer on subterfuge, yet utterly overt in its attack. Warren Zevon was for Volvo drivers who longed for the unspoken… believed in the unrelenting… wanted the stories to tell of Calcutta and Zimbabwe and anywhere bad things were taking place. The difference is, though, Zevon attracted those who lived those lives -- an aural high 5 to a lifestyle frought with mystery, terror and endorphins. And he'd seen his share of stolen moments on the other side of propriety, the law and/or reason. He wasn't yearning for it… he was steeped in it. And that brutal knowledge probably heightened his sensitivity to the moments of quiet contemplation. It took him to where he could respect these complicated fluttery beings and emotions. He could assess what he was feeling towards his children. And he could find the words within the understanding… words, visions, realizations most of us won't ever even see as the world flies by our windshields. ' Warren Zevon let nothing blur by his passenger seat window -- or blink and miss that final rearview mirror reprise. He took it all in. He digested it. He gave it over. Then he came back with these songs, these varied and various songs. I know where I was when John Lennon was gunned down, when I heard about about Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane, when I got the news that Nicolette Larson had left this world. Heck, I know where I was when Tupac was jumped in a Manhattan recording studio lobby, busted for sexual battery and finally murdered in Vegas. And now I know where I was when I got the e-mail about Warren Zevon. Sitting at my comptuer, writing yet another press release about an accomplishment of one of the clients, people who set standards and seek new levels of excellence every day. It stopped me cold. Right there in my tracks. Made me think about a long ride to North Carolina, about using "Back Turned Looking Down The Path" for tempo -- "I was caught between the years/ Cost me nearly all my tears" is about perfect to swing a golf club to, about seeing the extremes in one unified whole. There was a time when the woman in "Hasten Down The Wind" was all I wanted to be: a confoundment, an object of desire, a kettle of emotions that were fine and elevated and fired by strength and longing. That woman, that creature was so beguiling, so bathed in the light of a fire, eyes glittering with knowledge unspoken… it was something that defied my 13-year old mind, made it hurt wondering who hid the road map. In that moment -- seeing that Warren Zevon had advanced lung cancer, the very thing that killed my dad slowly, definitively and with much suffering, and had opted not to seek further treatment -- something very powerful came to me. All these years later, Warren Zevon knew something about me, about all women really, that we couldn't see. We're all that woman in "Hasten Down The Wind." If we don't worry or second guess and just be… we're all a mystery and a marvel. Somewhere John Gleason takes another bite off a cheap King Edward and smiles. Daddy may've thought he was funny, but he also recognized the ability to see our finest truths in songs like "Tenderness On the Block." As the troubadour terrorist asked in that song's open: "Daddy, where's your pretty little girl tonight? / Trying to run before she can walk, that's right…," it a question that's plagued grown men with little girls for ages. Now, though, I realize that until the girl knows she's that woman, anything can happen. And as a parent who sees what could go wrong, what would be more fearful? At the same time, once the child has locked into that uberknowledge -- what could be more thrilling than to see one's daughter soar? Somewhere John Gleason laughs a bit. It's a long way from a car ride through West Virginia, but for two men who never met, it's the moment where what is is what's known… and what could be more powerful than that?
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“CUTTIN’ HEADS”…and to the chase

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American Boy. American Man. American Fool. John Mellencamp has been each in spades. He plied his AM radio hookcraft in FM’s glory days, though never quite becoming the workingman’s patron saint a la Springsteen, a part of the fabric of our culture. But as the boy’s become a man, he’s also let himself appear vulnerable – and it’s in the chambers of his doubting heart that this American’s connections are strongest. But, in the end, timing is everything, and it’s timing that gets him over once more. For Mellencamp, Cuttin’ Heads (Columbia) started as a personal pondering of social and sexual politics, only to be transformed by 9/11 into a State of the Union address in every sense. Tackling racism, pettiness, anger and the way we treat each other culturally, Mellencamp unflinchingly deconstructs the erosion of r-e-s-p-e-c-t and tries to rebuild it through a series of images that paint America and Americans the way we are. Of course, Mellencamp has never balked at embracing issues – think his populist Scarecrow – but this album shows that he’s also lately been embracing the city street, putting his music where his mouth is, as it were. Those who’ve kept up with his releases know that’s not new, either, but never before have his urbanities been so well integrated into his backroad roots-rock. With a staccato beat and some rough-edged guitar, Mellencamp pitches the bigotry story of "Cuttin’ Heads" against a James Brown-invoking testimonial from Chuck D, who professes street cred ain’t all about the marketing. To further reinforce, Pat Peterson wails "Don’t call me nigger because you know I don’t like it like that." More... As the boy’s become a man, he’s let himself appear vulnerable. Embracing a far more elegant – but no less infectious – hook on "Peaceful World," the Indiana-based songwriter offers an almost prayerlike meditation on how it should be. Casting against the notion of a road trip to leave it all behind, Mellencamp and India.Arie offer a straightforward pledge against racism: "Better get hip to what Martin Luther King had to say … Hatred to each other is not OK ... If you’re not part of the future then get out of the way." This embrace of the hiphopcracy is much more than an aging rocker’s self-conscious grab for relevancy. But it’s also not the whole disc. "Deep Blue Heart" finds Mellencamp returning straight to the country to brood in close harmony with Trisha Yearwood; the song’s about love’s death and the shroud that cloaks its battered remains. Placed amongst the more political content, it almost reads as an elegy for America – or the mourning serves as prelude to the sexual/romantic explorations to follow. Both "Just Like You" and "The Same Way I Do" trace fragile connections, affections he’s afraid will break or evaporate. Yet those affections deliver him from the futility that Cuttin’ Heads rails against. Mellencamp’s voice is split-rail basic, solid, a bit rough, ultimately dependable. It’s what he casts it against that sets apart his gift for the gentle embrace or streetcorner Romeo swagger. It’s cast perfectly in the carnal trilogy that kicks off with the Don Juan self-pity of "Women Seem," falters through "Worn Out Nervous Condition" – which addresses short-circuited attractions, premature climax and the state of exhaustion from wanting-it-to-work – and closes with the tropical undulations of "Shy." In three songs, Mellencamp tackles every stumbling block men face at the onset of the deeper desire – and creates a CliffsNotes for doubt-resolution that could supplant the self-help section of any bookstore. "In Our Lives" ties it up, demystifying the rock star as "one of us." Mellencamp’s defiance of the glam life may not find a parallel in our own, but there’s no question he doubts, struggles, rages and wonders at the same things. It may be why – in addition to hooks that have kept him between our ears whether we wanted "Authority Song" or not – many of us are still listening 16 albums later.
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Close Your Eyes

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"The sun is slowly sinking down… "The moon is rising… "This ole world keeps on turnin' 'round… "And I still love you…" It's a quiet profession. A bit tired, worn but knowing. It's the kind of truth one arrives at by finding out what isn't as much as what it is -- and if it's not shiny and happy and beaming, there's a comfort in that deeper no other options knowledge. Introduced by James Taylor with the simple declaration, "This is a lullaby," "You Can Close Your Eyes" was an accepting benediction of that which hurts. It acknowledges the pain that litters lives and it soothes with gentleness that all harrowed beings deserve. On this evening -- to a sold-out crowd at New York City's Madison Square Garden -- it was also gently rocking the loss of a dear friend to a quiet place. Because, quite simply, people die… sometimes suddenly… sometimes out of time… sometimes not when they're supposed to; though who's to say? This was a night to lull the ache that came from the passing of Tim White, one of the last of the true believers in the world of music journalism. White, a man who was fiercely independent in his thinking, married to the notion of good music and committed to getting it heard in any way he knew how, was the kind of life force one can never imagine extinguished. Yet here we were -- along with Brian Wilson, Roger Waters, Jimmy Buffett, Sheryl Crow, Don Henley, Sting and Taylor -- celebrating the unthinkable in today's world: someone who believed music mattered. And in a taped 10 minute tribute/overview of the beaming journalist's life, White himself told the deepest truth, "A hero is someone who faces insurmountable odds -- and fights anyways." In a world where not making waves is the rule, just letting good enough be more than enough and fine is the cancer that's undermined quality and originality in the name of market share and ease of operation (not to mention maximizing profit margins in a business that still corners on excess mandated by ego), Tim White stood down. The artists appreciated that -- and, hopefully, the attendees were inspired by it. Tim White, you see, was both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. On his own mule, he tilted at the windmills of the music he loved -- regardless of consequences, calling foul where it felt the business was being egregious; aside the Mellencamps, the Marley’s and the Taylor’s, he offered solace, insight, inspiration for staying on the horse. The bow-tied writer with the broad smile and willingness to champion was always passionate about something -- and not afraid to take on the bogus or the undeserving or especially the unfair. And when he suddenly died, it put everything in a pretty harsh light. Because if someone who was all crackling life force could just -- poof! -- be gone, with all that joy, all that appreciation, all that exhilaration, it could happen to any of us. It was a reminder and a caution and a loss... A loss that haunts you in ways you don't even wholly understand. But it's a life to remind us to risk the fury of chasing a dream or the things we love fiercely. In the end, what else is there really? Which begs the dilemma of this incredible night of music and kinship: write an essay about the power of music designed, like Hans Christian Anderson's little match girl's flame, to be held aloft to stay warm and fight back the fear of being alone, or to talk about James Taylor's ability to heal? Because both are valid -- if very different points. Certainly the musicians knew what they lost. Not just in terms of the voice, but the forum. But they performed because they believed in the passion rather than merely stumping for what was, some last hurrah validation grab. And if the fans came solely on marquis drawing power, hopefully they went into the night a little more on fire -- and perhaps ready to make a decision based on what might be rather than what just is. Having lost a lot of friends out of time, the notion of having one's soul torn… that shock of gone when it shouldn't even close to be… the numbing of the incomprehensible… it passes a bit, but never really fades. And that's where the ghosts of what's gone become poltergeists who can mock you if you're not careful. Which is what made James Taylor's "You Can Close Your Eyes" so potent. A lullaby for an ideal gone, a man who shone so others might bask in the light, a faithful believer with a critical eye pushing and encouraging people to be more, better had passed. And in Taylor's elegiac musing of hushed acceptance, there was something to put those challenges to sleep. "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes it's alright," he assured everyone, most of all himself and fellow performers. "I don't know no love songs, but I can't sing the blues anymore…" There it was. So simple. So sweet. So declarative. In this emptiness, there is no spark, but also there are no more tears. The sadness remains; it's what we do with it that matters. In James Taylor's throat -- that voice that's been down quilts, homemade cookies, the first fire of the year and thick corduroys worn with favorite flannel shirts -- it's about the rhythms of sadness that should take us. It's also about comfort sown where confusion, maybe even a little anger, reigns. What is gone is profound, what remains is all there is. Exhaustion permeates, disorientation defines. And in all that… all that… we must find a soft place to fall, to wrap ourselves in that which made the difference and temper the amputation of what is gone with the joy that we experienced it at all. My best friend died of asthmatic arrest 10 years ago. She was 26, and she was gone in less than 5 minutes. There was no more vibrant, more music loving, life-choking human being than Emily, known to those who knew us as Piglet. A trust fund baby, who drove a BMW and was always short of her monthly draw, she knew no fear even when the bank was dry -- and she chased life with that same zeal. I have a close friend now that 'let and I shared. Closer because we both knew her. Closer because I was the one that got the call in response to the tear-stained message from a Brian Wilson recording session (ironically enough) to hear the news, to draw the breath, to blink the jarring understanding of what had happened. We both were bound by that loss. Even as we share the smiles of having known the sparkling Emily Woods. And anyone who ever met Emily through me still talks about her as if she were here. When I have a bad day, it's late so the time zone doesn't work for me, there's no Emily to call, to tell her how mean people are, how petty and venal, how personal agenda undermines the artist's good. To rail against the inertia of it all, I guess, and to hear, "But Holly Geeeeee, that's why you're there…" and then that giggle. Emily knew that some people were born to fight, to thrive, to struggle. She, like Tim White, like me I hope, was a true believer. And the thing about true believers -- again I can only hope -- is that they burn on long after the candle is gone. And if we never ever truly get over those who pass away, it's comforting to know, they never really do. They live on in our hearts, our lives becoming a testimony to what we witnessed amongst the special ones -- and our smiles, our dreams, our tears become the quiet manifestation to the emotion we brought to the plate. Tired, perhaps… Mired in futility, naturally… but euphoric about the possibilities, without a doubt. Even in the darkest hours, lives that have been touched will remain shining witness to that which they saw. And that is the knowledge that offers the deepest solace. That, and the voice of an old friend, who takes the shock off and offers a basic truth. If it's not perfect, not what you want it to be, it's still probably better than it appears - and that is the truth that will lift you up, that will set you on fire again. "Close your eyes, you can close your eyes It's alright I don't know no love songs But I can't sing the blues any more And you can sing this sing… Oh, you can sing this song… When I'm gone." Holly Gleason New York City Nashville 8 October,
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the id, Macy Gray

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Is Macy Gray -- of the helium voice, chocolate mushroom cloud hair and body evoking Michelin's tireman -- a freak or a freak? Is her art about a severe need for a Prozac-heavy cocktail of MAO-inhibitors? (see the wildly percolating "You're Relating To A Psychopath") Or is it more about dropping one's inhibitions and getting as down in it as anyone since Prince Rogers Nelson grappled with libido, fellatio and whatever else kinked his carnality? (see above) With the id, who knows? Gray, who stunned with loose grooved funk and open-truthed manifestos about sexual reality, arrived smearing the lines, pushing the how-it-is of male/female politics and just plain getting bizzy. But is the groove she strikes of the Teddy Pendergrass/Barry White tenor? Or more a self-conscious flashpoint designed to draw in with prurience rather than George Clinton's flex and release, cum and go with a cigarette in one's mouth and an exhale of utter spent-sion on one's lips? Certainly both the psychological and the sexual are here -- and the beats mined are as close to Sly Stone as anyone's gotten since the Family truly defied held constraints of their time and place. Churlish, undulating, Gray's unafraid of boogie oogie oogie disco froth on "Sexual Revolution," just as she's more than happy curling up in a wave of hormones that marks the Angie Stone/Mos Def guesting "Nutmeg Phantasy" that is so fine, slam me against a wall and pick up whatever's left to do it again. But to go straight to the g-spot -- pick your groove, they're all applicable in this case -- Gray seeks to melt the want-to with the bereavement of abandonment, the get-a-clue-boy and the roughness that is implicity in this world. If Marvin Gaye preached a gospel of sexual healing and let's-get-it-on, he also understood sublimating desire (we can't bone ALL the time) to put that tension towards something better. Joined by Slick Rick for "Hey Young World, Part 2," it's meant as street reporting and a little throwdown of the how-it-should-be. The track cooks, but how serious can a mother who left the kids in Dayton and appears obviously stoned, making less than no-sense on awards shows be taken? Maybe we should up the MAO Inhibitor score. Yet Gray, who may not be the world's strongest role model, knows how to get the ladies in lockstep -- or rather lockgrind undulating through "Harry," a song where the stallion in service is good for one thing only, and then truly needs to git on his way. As the horns roll out trills of punctuation, this is Macy Gray on the way sex and climax is for sisters who truly are doing it for themselves. Feeling cheap young man? Well, take what you get and be grateful, because this WO-man has no illusions about needing more than what's between your legs in a turnabout that gives Harry pause for consideration. No doubt she's about hitting then quitting from the hurt of being the one that ain't connecting on "Don't Come Around," the sultry slow freak featuring Gray protégé Sunshine Anderson. Some guy wants to move on and be friends, but our lady of the cosmic bullride ain't havin' it. Pain isn't nothing she's prolonging -- so if you gotta go, to borrow from Dylan, go now. But don't look back and don't remind her what was. Languorous, it steams in that way of low, deep bends and the burlesque roll of the hips around that pole one final time. If the id balances mostly between imperfect ends and couplings hot enough to melt diamonds, Gray hits a high on the hushed "Sweet Baby" featuring nu soul's mother earth Erykah Badu. With a descending melody, this is the one moment of equanimity …of separate and equal and committed. No tug, no pull, no need, no want -- just settled and settling and fine. Sure, Gray is about the loud and the funky. "Oblivion" channels the Family Stone and "Blowin' Up Your Speakers" is anarchy under a groove; it feels good and may be enough. But to dig deep, to connect in a way that sticks, it's the stuff that provokes the mind more than the hips where Gray finds her mettle. That's something to consider more than the initial feel good, oughta should of immediate gratification. Grade: B -- Holly Gleason
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Red Ragtops + Memory Stains

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Tim McGraw Gets A Little Real With Country Radio There was a time when country music pulled no punches. When it said what was on its mind, blunt as a sledgehammer -- and swung hard as Paul Bunyan with that axe. We're talking Loretta Lynn gettin' reproductive control in "The Pill" and declaring her secession from marital duty on "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)," Conway Twitty just flat-out calling his carnality with "I'd Love To Lay You Down," Johnny Paycheck getting all overt on the big boss man with "Take This Job and Shove it" and Johnny Cash confessing the bottomless senselessness of murder with the admission "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die…" With the exception of Toby Keith's almost burlesque ugly American bravado of "The Red, White + Blue," nobody in country music seems to want to speak up or speak out. Getting real nowadays is about like getting pulled over -- something to be avoided at all costs. Matraca Berg, who won the CMA Song of the Year Award, says that when she said in an interview "Strawberry Wine" was about trading one's hymen for experience, bliss and the transition to womanhood, some stations quit playing the record. She even got mail from people saying they wanted to return the record. Anyone who heard "Strawberry Wine" recognized it as a bittersweet reminiscence of something all young people go through. The experience of losing one's virginity should be something viewed with tenderness -- and in the case of the young girl in Berg's song, a certain hunger for knowledge that exists beyond the classroom: knowledge of emotions, of bodies, of communion of the flesh and the spirit. It was a song that served as a bridge from unknowing child to youth on the path to adulthood. Bittersweet is the color of Tim McGraw's latest single as well. "Red Ragtop," with its loping tempo and backwards view, captures both the heat of young lust and the weight of the consequences. And while it may be hard to believe that the man who gave you "Indian Outlaw" and "a barbecue stain on my white t-shirt" would be the potential ground zero for the return of unflinching content in country music stand poised to bring country music directly into the 21st century. "Red Ragtop" is reportage -- on what happened once and where the singer is now. It is the not-quite-faltering confession of choices made, decisions lived with and the (un) expected denouement of consequences beyond the pale. "Red Ragtop" is a song about the heat of passion leading to the depths of reality -- a 20-year old boy and an 18-year old girl, unmarried, out of work and faced with the dilemma of a child that neither are equipped to handle. "We were young and wild," the singer confesses, "and we decided not to have the child." It is not said with justification -- or any other emotional underpinning. The teller isn't about to dodge responsibility, nor is he going to wallow in pity-me-for-what's-happened bathos. No this is straight-up life, no chaser, the kind of tale that defines us in its just how it is. Whomever this young man is he offers no excuses, no explanations. He just blinks into the light, tells what happened -- copes with whatever might haunt him. And in country music, where losing one's virginity is a scandal, where we don't really drink or fight or much of anything else -- except ache and fall in love for forever, the notion of a song dealing with abortion is unfathomable. Until Tim McGraw went north. With his own band. And made a single that was all about the music and the message. The singer who plays to Middle America's common streak isn't making taking a stand more than likely. His own mother gave birth unwed to the dark-haired renegade artist -- and kept his father's identity from him as much to shield the young boy from abandonment as to protect him from pining for a man who would not be there. If ever there was a candidate for a young woman in a back room termination, it would've been Tim's mom. But she didn't believe that way. That was her option, her belief, her values. And so it is that her son can sing a song about the other option, a song that will make you twinge just a little and dig a little deeper when the topic comes up again. As a Catholic for Choice, I wish I could say I had answers. I'm not sure I'm comfortable dictating how others should live their lives, especially when I can't know their circumstances. Who am I to say? No doubt there must be a cost -- and the ghosts of what might've been certainly die harder than lovers gone or childhood pets that left this world prematurely. I don't want to determine how someone else lives or decide what they can cope with. I'm not even sure we can imagine how it feels until we're standing in their shoes. Even "Red Ragtop" avoids drawing broad spectrum conclusions. With the admission, "Well you do what you do and you pay for your sins/ and there's no such thing as what might've been/ that's a waste of time, drive you out of your mind…," Tim McGraw looks back the wiser on an object in the rearview mirror that was far larger than it appeared. Not one to point fingers, there is very much a sense of what was slipping through theirs. If this was a fate two youngsters couldn't handle, they made the decision they did. Though the girl implored the boy, "please don't stop…loving me," there are some shocks to the system that can't be sustained. Whether it was merely young hormones burning off or the inability to deal with the weight of the situation, eventually the passion broke into pieces and fall apart. It may've been nature's course, but there will always be the stain of shame and guilt and what happened on the memory of that first love. Time heals all. Softens regrets. Offers the solace of the immovability of the things we do in the moment that may not make as much sense in the long run. In the moment, you believe, "No, we did what we did and we tried to forget/ and we swore up and down there would be no regrets" because you must cope, survive, get through it. Everything can be weathered. The question comes down to the damage. Because the options are pretty slim: deal or die. For the two brave hearts of "Red Ragtop," they're not ready to fold… they do the thing they believe they need to and they get on with their lives. Ultimately, they come to realize that the great love may not be definitive. Eventually he realizes, "It was all make believe in the end." It is the truth that paves over what was. The roads diverge, draw up and pull away, head towards other horizons. All that is left is the echo of a decision, an action and the reaction. Looking over his shoulder at a younger boy, the singer confesses the truth only time can allow: "And I can't say where she is today/ I can't remember who I was back then…" It is the admission of someone who's traveled many miles, learned many things, seen even more. It's all pale in the past, so much gone from the recollection. If there's no recognition for the boy parked out in a grove, locked in a fevered embrace, there's still some twinge of want and wonder. With a gracefulness a bit alien to these sorts of truth-telling songs -- something that sidesteps judgement, flat-out avoids grandstanding and haranguing, heavy handed moralizing -- there is that moment when it all comes back in blazes. Sitting at a traffic light, the past is present in spades. Seems a young girl in a Cabriolet pulls up next to him. Her eyes are green and her future is limitless. In that moment, he returns to the true moment of definition -- not in the backseat or the living room where a decision was made or a clinic where a termination took place. That would be the easiest mark of innocence lost. No, no, no… Tim McGraw's narrator survives all that with the resolve of what had to be done. Sitting at that traffic light, there's a moment of pregnant exhale -- and then the boy once again becomes a man, singing, "And I was in an old scene/ I was back in that red ragtop/ on the day she stopped loving me…" It wasn't what happened or what they did. It was the moment when the bond was broken that struck the hardest. In the cold dawn of what wasn't, this is a song about coming of age the hard way. "Red Ragtop" never judges, it merely offers a portrait of something harrowing… something middle America… something that could happen to anyone. In the shudder that is drawn from the admission that try-though-they-might, they couldn't outrun what happened is as cautionary a tale as anything out there. It's about deeper emotional costs than what shows on paper -- and it reminds us all that consequences are often more pervasive than they ever seem. For Tim McGraw to record a song like this is brave. To put it out as a single is either foolhardy or brilliant. For the man who's the proud father of three, it's a song that challenges people to face their own biases, attitudes and truths. With "Red Ragtop," there will no doubt be much conversation stirred. Will there be clarity on the subject? Hardly a consensus perhaps. But any time a life or belief can be examined closely, we're all probably the better for it. The "why" being as important as the "how" if we are to learn to respect each other's differences. At this point, who knows how country radio will respond. They may not even realize yet what the song is about -- and that's okay. Let it find its way and its audience, before the controversy kicks in. Ultimately, it's not for us to judge -- merely to sow compassion on those struggling with the choices they've made. For country radio, the choice is one of the most powerful in ages. Is it censorship to not play this song? Is it suicide to embrace something that in reality is the embodiment of the whole First Amendment truth? And what about a genre of music that never flinched when it came to how it was? Because how it most likely was was this: two kids consumed by the will to feel as much of the other and the throbbing release they found within another(more than not for the first time) didn't understand and got into trouble. Terrified by the responsibility of a child, they took another way out because "I was out of a job and she was in school/ Life was fast and the world was cruel…" They were responding -- with their limited knowledge -- to how the world looked and felt. One never gets the sense that the singer, lost on the scent of what was so strong amongst the carnage of what was, ever felt particularly good about this event. It's more stoic pragmaticism. And that's what -- besides a killer hook and a melody that sweeps you up like a dust bunny -- makes "Red Ragtop" so compelling. In a world where it's about cumulative audience, tune-out is the enemy. Whether "Red Ragtop" holds or repels remains to be seen. But if it can punch through the Hallmark, offer some modicum of measured truth, it's impact is huge. But it needed to be written about before the die were cast: hit or stiff. For then this becomes an essay of praise or damnation, a reaction to what happened -- rather than what was done, created, offered up. For Tim McGraw, who appeared two CMA Awards ago singing a provocative if challenging song about the genre called "Things Change," this may be his biggest gamble yet. If it works, he returns country music to being the unburnished truth genre -- a place where we look at how it is even if it doesn't fit the Norman Rockwell, "Leave It To Beaver" specifications that have defined American family life as we know it. "Red Ragtop" isn't a beachhead, by the way, or a grand gesture. It's a well-written song about something difficult that people face up to everyday. If it doesn't get people pushing the buttons on their car radios, one can only imagine the healing and resolution that lies ahead.
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only daddy that’ll walk the line… waymore’s waygone blues

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Waymore's Now Waygone Blues When the news that Waylon Jennings was gone broke, I was on my back -- pretending like every muscle in my trunk wasn't throbbing from a particularly virulent strain of the flu that'd knocked the life right out of me. Waylon Jennings -- a real true bona fide rebel, a musical gunslinger, a hard-ridin' beater of odds who lived just outside the law. Waylon Jennings, one of the first people to make me think of country music as something dangerous, something hard, something that truly packed the intensity of rock and roll. Someone sent me an e-mail noting that "it seems the candle that burns brightest burns out twice as fast." Maybe. But Waylon Jennings most likely packed just as much, no way more, living in his time on earth than many who attain grand old ages. Fearlessly chasing the night, the songs, the loves, the passions, the wild times, whatever else made sense, Waylon Jennings emerged from the wings of Buddy Holly to become first an edgy mainstream country star -- and then a cornerstone of the "outlaw" movement. But that's history… and while honoring the facts and the wherefroms is important, it sells Waylon Jennings out pretty short. For Waylon Jennings was about the blaze. Whether it was the way they came down hard on the beat as the bass bounced up and down on Rodney Crowell's "Ain't Living Long Like This" or leaned into the thumpety-thump of the back lounge on bad road in his own piano-plunking, rubbery-bass query about the Silver Eagle bus side of life "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way," it was always about the intensity of the truth, the moment, the build-up. Growing up a rock & roll girl in Cleveland, country music was about as appealing as a cold shower. Braying, hick-ish, doubleknit leisure suits and white pleather boots -- oh, yeah, baby! I don't think so. Though there were these golf pros, and they were, well, Southern and they did like country music. And so in the name of trolling bars as a young looking 13- and 14-year old, I feigned interest. And then Waylon Jennings set me free. See, there was a phonky cool bar called Peabody's, which set their bands up in this cavernous basement with an upstairs that let patrons as interested in music as they were the opposite sex play both ends against the middle. One of the regulars was a scrappy local band that went by Deadly Earnest and the Honky Tonk Heros, whose fearless leader understood it wasn't even a hair that separated Waylon from the Stones -- and he would swing from a ripe'n'juicy "It's All Over Now" right into the aforementioned "Ain't Living Long." It was a couple months before I made the connection. Then there, at Record Theatre all the way out Mayfield Road, I saw him finally. Waylon Jennings, soaked in sweat, black leather vest, hand-tooled guitar, peril and perspiration flying from every pore. I knew this was the kinda guy girls like me weren't supposed to bring home. And I liked what I saw in that same fearful-yet-moth-pulled-to-a-flame-way kids do. Waylon Jennings. Even the name was perfect. A randy, rowdy howler committed to bearing witness to his side of the tracks. Wild-eyed, wilder-living, there weren't nothing he was afraid of -- and that fearlessness let him swing full-tilt and hard into shuffles and ballads. When Waylon launched into Neil Young's "Are You Ready For The Country," it was almost a challenge, a line drawn, a gauntlet thrown down. Most importantly, it came off as a query about being man enough to walk the line. And as everyone knows from Waylon's earliest days, he was "The Only Daddy That'll Walk The Line." "Only Daddy," another Deadly Earnest chestnut I cut my teeth on. It's a killer song of fiesty fidelity from a man whose woman ain't quite getting her man his props -- and while many have suited up to lean into this bad boy, ole Waylon had long ago retired the jersey. In his salt-soaked leather lungs, it's a warning and a pledge and a caution and the kind of aggression that makes making up the best part of getting sideways in the first place. Waylon Jennings. Lady killer. Not that I got that. At least not back then. But he was a handsome devil, dripping desperation, black eyes flashing, guitar low slung on his hips -- drawing the gaze right to the heart of the matter. Heck, Waylon remains the only hillbilly singer with his own passage in Pamela Des Barres' golden age groupie memoir I'm With the Band. If you figure Miss Pamela (as she was known during the rein of the GTOs [Frank Zappa's loosely organized band of pretties Girls Together Outrageously]) was a source of solace to Gram Parsons, a consort of Jimmy Page, and a companion to just about every other rock name that mattered, you realize what a long shadow Jennings cast in that world. Not that it was about sex. Coupling was a by-product. Living fast and feeling the depths of the moment were the raison d'etre… and telling those stuck-on-themselves-city-people how it was was a pretty strong back-up. Not much impressed Waylon Jennings, which is probably why when he was on, it was a complete immersion -- and consequently he "never did toe the mark and I never did walk the line" as he sung on the refrain of the aptly-titled "Never Could Toe The Mark." And he wasn't shy about dipping in the barrel of other influences. He'd work Jimmie Rodgers "T. For Texas" into a lather that rivaled Lynyrd Skynyrd's -- and took Albert Collins/(Little) Richard Penniman's "Lucille (You Won't Do Your Daddy's Will)" all the way as both a lament and a frantic frenetic caution. And then there's Okie bluesrat J J Cale who gets the full-on Waylon treatment on his "Clyde" Indeed, the swarthy, solidly built country singer could bring a ballad to a boil, and make his wistful moments the bittersweet wine people steeped in on the lost nights in lonely bars with beer signs as offertory candles and stale cigarettes as their incense lit to the god of broken hearts, unfinished dreams and memories that on their best nights serve to build bridges to whatever future might be carved out. Waylon Jennings, patron saint of the kickers and the losers and the biker angels, looking for something more at the end of the jukebox's rainbow - and most times coming up a little short, but ultimately with dignity in tact. To hear Waylon surrender to the brooders' waltz "Dreaming My Dreams With You," a prayer to what might have been evolves into a strength and a conviction that life will do more than just go on. It's not merely about the pain rolling by, but learning to love the moments for what they were -- even if part of the is is "gone." There's a dignity to his admission "I'd rather believe in love/ I've given away as much as I can/ The things that I'm fondest of…" which elevates the ache into something that can deliver and refit a barren soul looking for hydration. That was one of Waylon's greatest gifts. As bad ass as he was -- take thatKid Rock -- there was a tenderness at the bone. For it's always the toughest guys who're capable of the greatest vulnerability. Let no man mess with the original hardcore hillbilly, not just because they'd be leveled, but because they'd be forced to confront their own emotional stillbornness. And that's a pretty chilling place to be. In songs like Jennings' "Shine" and Jessie Colter - the woman credited with saving Jennings' life -'s "Storms Never Last," it is the deliverance and redemption that leads. Waylon Jennings had seen, done, snorted and drunk it all -- at least six times over. He chased the night, fought the morning, lived in the present and left the past in the dust. When the dust settled, Waylon Jennings realized it wasn't the high-timing that mattered, the painted ladies and snuff queens who would be there. Songs were constant companions, Miss Jessie was a woman who would stand by her man, the road would truly go on forever -- and there was much to be savored. Waylon learned to like vegetables and made friends with an exercycle. He never bought into the Music Row follies -- declining to attend his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame -- and he always found a way to carve out his very own special niche. Today there was another e-mail, remembering a lunch that had been shared at his home outside Nashville -- talking about an insurgent trying to make peace with a quieter, more balanced place in the world. It was a warm, gentle e-mail… one that fit the man he was becoming. Which may be the ultimate act of sedition: finding a way to escape the stereotype and live a life that might seem the antithesis. Of course once you've lived the dream, how many times can one repeat? And what happens whenone realizes that the rock and roll fantasy is an empty shell of not too much of anything but cheap thrills and worn-off lipstick? Twenty some years ago, an underage kid in a pink buttondown sat under a staircase watching a band. She didn't quite understand what she was hearing, just that she liked it -- and she wanted to know more. When Deadly Earnest and his merry men swung into "Bob Wills Is Still The King," it wasn't celebrating a style of music so much as a man who found his own beat... Though I couldn't have understood the lengths Waylon Jennings charged from the gate, he rocked hard -- and that was more than enough. When the clerk finally explained the sweaty man I sought was a country singer, my brow knit. But I didn't care. I'd heard the way it hit the wall, and I wanted to do that, too. Who knew all these years later, I'd be in Nashville, Tennessee, sorting through too many memories, feeling too many different emotions all at once? Crying and smiling at the notion that a man who would supply the narrative for the dreadful "Dukes of Hazard," would also be the one to break down everything I ever thought about country music… things that just seemed sorta backwater and embarrassing. I can't be sure Hank did it that way, but I know for sure Waylon Jennings kept it real, kept it rocking, kept it right where it oughta be. Upstairs, you know he's probably raising hell over the whole chiffon-gown-tilted-halo-and-a-golden-harp thing. Down here, amongst us mere mortals, it's a much simpler deal. We finally, unequivocally have an answer to the song's title. "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand?" Absolutely, positively no. Not even close. As long as people suck longnecks, dance shuffles, shoot out the neon and seek comfort in the dim light of a local tavern, there will always be outlaws. Maybe not as full-tilt and full-throttle, but then again, who knows just how ole Waylon's coming back?
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Celebrity Skinned…Pondering *N Sync

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The Bible says it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. In the fledgling A.D. era, the notion of transitioning from the flashfire of teen superstardom to legitimate artistry was as concrete a concept as skim decaf vanilla lattes. But in today's sagging record business, where teen tonnage is a cornerstone of billing, the need to transition our Backstreet Boys (REHAB!), Britney's and Christina's (Lolita Goes Blaze Starr) into consistent cash flow from a launchpad of proven fickleness -- and what appears to be lagging new breakouts -- is critical. First-week-sales record-holders N Sync turn to music over image to try and pave the way to a legitimacy that will elevate them from more than squeal-inducing pre-puberty poppers, the amyl nitrate of the hormone-rising set. Celebrity, debuting at #1, makes an interesting case for their homesteading land grab toward adult-seeming cred. While walking the line between the normal teen drowning in the- need-for-the-girl and the big gulp of outrage-for-being-played, Justin, JC, Lance, Chris and Joey attempt to grapple with commentary on the behind-the-curtain reality of celebrity and naysayers on the obviously-titled "Celebrity" and "Pop." There will be no mistaking these songs for Dylan, Springsteen or Elvis Costello, but the petulance firing the mondo-heavy-metal-sellers' rebuke to critics begs a question as old as rock'n'roll -- why judge something you don't understand? "Now why you wanna try to classify the type of thing we do/ 'Cause we're just fine doin' what we like/ Can we say the same for you?" -- "Pop" In a recent conference call interview, JC Chavez, Lance Bass and Chris Kirkpatrick attempted to address celebrity as a replacement for art -- and it was a concept that defied them "Celebrity is definitely an artform," allowed Kirkpatrick.. "It's strange. It's weird." It also makes evolving from teen dream with any anonymity awkward. Still 'N Sync understand that the little girls understand. So while they strive for their props and protest they're happy doing what they do -- though hate the suspicion that people dig them for their c-e-l-e-b-r-I-t-y -- they choose to make the lion's share of their stand through the creative process, working with the white hot producers of today. Enlisting Brian McKnight, the Neptunes, Rodney Jerkins, Riprock'n'Alex G and Swedish hotties Kristian Lundin and Jake Schulze and Rami, they help the quints craft their mix of rapid-fire aerobics jams and luxurious, vocally lush ballads. And the beauty of a young fan base remains the lack of musical foreknowledge. 'N Sync is cutting edge with their re-new-ed jack swing balladry that works the silky smooth soul tip (see JC's gorgeous "Selfish" or the Justin's breathless "Gone") and the heavily staccatoed computer-driven funk that recalls video games and the night moves samples of Midnight Star ("No Parking On The Dance Floor"), the Deele ("Body Talk") and even Cleveland's own Dazz Band ("Joystick," "Keep It Live") because their audience doesn't remember. Indeed, the percolating, heavily phased-and-programmed up tempo songs -- the bitter "Tell Me, Tell Me…Baby," the bitter "The Game Is Over" and the bitter "Celebrity" -- all flex and kick and offer the high karate connection that is all that young energy focused on a single point for 3-5 minutes. Coil, recoil. Build, release. Which is what N Sync does so well. They know how to focus and burn a hole into the moment with conviction. While Steven Tyler would never yowl "…'Cause if you were my girlfriend, I'd be your shining star/ The one to show you where you are…," Timberlake sells it with all the drama he has. Good boys gone ardent -- that's what we have here -- and coupled with their one-for-everybody-heartthrob appeal, their willingness to be unabashedly that translates to commited performances. What's next remains to be seen. Can they keep growing as musicians, tempering their songs for an audience growing older, wiser and perhaps more embarrassed by their once-was-fave? Who knows? For now, N Sync remains the safest sex: blanketed in squeals, shrieks and screams, there's nothing real about the promise. There will be no "freakin'," contrary to the boast on "See Right Through You," because not only can't the little girls get to the winsome five -- but N Sync are ultimately lost in the flood of fame and its current of faster, faster where everything becomes disposable and finding something to hold on to other than the centrifugal force of the rush they know isn't the way to survive. -- Holly Gleason
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My Friend Bob

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Children of the night take their own kind of communion at neon-stained altars in the lost hours when everyone else is home. They chase the darkness, search for answers and consider the metaphysics of the human condition in the name of shooting out the lights or drowning the memories.

If Willie Nelson wrote "the night life ain't no good life, but it's my life…" as an apology or an explanation, we may never know. But there is a crack in the midnight where truths can crawl out, people can shed their bravado and being vulnerable is a whole other kind of armor.

And so it is that I was in a basement bar, watching a few songwriters with an angle work through a handful of their best - nursing a Jack neat, thinking about the poetry in songs, wondering why the lateness always makes me feel most alive.

The thing about these places of convergence - you're never alone, though are if you want to. Pull up a stool, cast a shadow, hunker down into the rocks and the poison. Fix you stare and determine your arc. But those are the nights I usually stay home, girl alone at her computer, hunting and pecking my way to clarity or celebration.

Still music remains the best bait to lure me from the tower - and there's always too much fun to be had once you're out in it. All those people you forget how much you like, how they share your passion and your vision - and they magnify all the things that are good about you to the point where the things you hate hardly seem to matter.

My friend Bob is just that way. Addicted to music - and only the best stuff: Emmylou, Buddy & Julie Miller, killer jazz, Dylan - and quick to talk about the nuance of a track, the turn of a lyric, the way a melody just melts into itself. Bob is one of the ones who's sick with music.

But his illness has carried him across the country, brought him in contact with everyone from underground jam-rockers Widespread Panic to bluegrass demon Ricky Skaggs. Music has taken him on an adventure where he always falls face down in it and swims all the way across the pool, before returning to give us a full report of what he saw and heard and tasted. If you're gonna be taken by a song, there is no fuller emotional spectrum to experience - something that my friend Bob loves most of all.

Not that he would ever warrant the derisive tag music geek. He is smart and sensitive and passionate about it. He reads and he thinks, and he dreams of what it all might mean. Somewhere in that gumbo that is always simmering, there's a poet whose medium is the way he lives his life.

My friend Bob - always quick with a smile, a kind word, a bit of philosophy or bromide that makes you think. With his dark frames and his silvering hair. With his gentle way of looking at the world. He's evolving at a pace that laps most of us.

And this night, leaning against a bar tossing back a bit of gossip with a couple other pals, Bob turned up. His gospel wasn't necessarily music - though he'd want you to know about Nikka Costa, daughter of Don Costa who was one of Sinatra's key arrangers - but it centered on life's turns and bends and shocking wake-up calls.

A mutual friend had been having health problems. They say doing well. This was a mutual friend who'd been a bumpy ride for both of us, someone whose actions didn't always mirror the love in his heart - but then everyone gets sideways as they make their way up the mountain.

Rather than being resigned, shaking one's head in a "oh, well, whatever" kind of way, my friend Bob bypassed the highroad and went straight to the gates of heaven. "Just goes to show you how petty life is," he shrugged, sipping on a high-powered European beer I'd never heard of. "Put it all aside man, he's a great guy… and a good friend, the rest of it don't matter."

Knowing the story, it mattered. But it don't matter now.

And that's Bob.

Bob, who's probably not getting carded anymore. Bob, whose marriage to an incredibly dynamic crazy amazing woman - like so many - busted up. Bob, who's got a big heart that isn't afraid to open up, a psyche that lets him not only respect women but appreciate that which makes them women.

Sure, Bob's charming. Got that in spades. But he's not charming in the predatory lounge lizard sweet-word-panty-removal-system so prevalent amongst the club crawlers and lost angels. No, he just digs people - and people dig Bob.

Chicks, especially, dig Bob. Because he's not a hustler. Quick to tell you the dress is working or the shoes rock. Always ready to listen and willing to share what's on his mind. Bob is the kinda guy every girl dreams of - and has turned into catnip for the 20-something set.

Girls who've never had a man really listen, hear what they're saying and open windows to whole other perspectives they might never have considered otherwise. Girls who maybe have never experienced someone who can talk about Freud as easily as football, who seeks adventure for the sake of the learning curve not the mere thrill, who's probably a lot more concerned about their arrival than his. Girls who've never had a man appreciate the singular things about them.

Shaking his head over his beer, Bob almost blushes. And he'll admit that there are certain aerobic benefits - the kind of benefits a committed practitioner of yoga is supremely poised to appreciate - of having girls that age attracted to you. But there's always a catch to the seeming perfection.

"They just haven't figured it out yet," he confesses. "There's so much angst and drama. The worrying about , well, who they're gonna be."

This is a man who recognizes the truth. He doesn't wanna seem mean, he just doesn't wanna get all caught up in that, either. Because Bob has done the time and he knows who he is.

My friend Bob flaunts every conventional wisdom about men of a certain age. He's not looking for some young girl to validate his eternal youth, plump his flagging libido nor is he chasing what he's already had because it's frivilous and familiar. Bob, also, doesn't drive a Corvette or back comb his chest hair…

He's an anomaly: a man looking for a real live grown-up woman. Someone who's lived and loved and learned about the things that matter. Someone who's an equal and a peer. Someone who can inspire new levels of discovery and awareness.

In a world where Kenny Chesney's upcoming album contains a song he wrote for his mother called "Dreams," inspired by a late night phone call following the break-up with her boyfriend which contained the heartbreaking confession, "It seems all the men my age want someone younger…," men who are entering their grown-up, and even what should be their distinguished years, want anything but women their age. Except for Bob.

Bob is the kind of man who's not afraid of a few lines, a bit of gray. He's the kind of guy who recognizes that a woman who's led and lived her life, as opposed to having it either before her - or else something that just kinda passed her by is the most erotic creature there is. And he's gonna find that woman, wherever she is.

A lesson to all those unhappy middle-agers and beyond, who lead lonely lives of disconnection in the name of "she's so hot." Bob understands the value in knowing, and while he appreciates the sparkle of the transitory he also recognized he wants something that's gonna last as opposed to inevitably unravel.

Because he's willing to look beyond the surface, he has no trouble seeing inside people's hearts. That's where the magic lies. And that's where Bob wants to start - with the magic. He knows there may be mis-starts, balking beginnings, faltering stumbled, maybe even some dents in his already well-worn heart, but that's okay. Because if you don't fall, you don't get hurt… but you don't get to fly, either.

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seeing with your heart rather than conventional wisdom, kenny chesney, back where he comes from

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Ten minutes before two as New Year's Eve surrenders to 2002, and the Waffle House is jumping. There's a place at the counter, because they take care of the regulars, especially regulars flying solo on this, their most hectic of nights. And sitting at the formica in my party clothes with a Coke and a waffle, there isn't a better place to close out a year of tumult and revelation. It was a year of realizing you should never be too fast to count anything out. We shouldn't be so quick to know we know… Because sometimes it can all turn upside down before you even know what the hell happened. Which is how I came to spend my birthday, New Year's Eve, with one Kenny Chesney, a country act I'd've never believed I'd be aligned with under any circumstance. The irony, though, is sometimes our biases can rob us of something really wonderful without our ever realizing it. Filing under the "pass my muff, hell just froze over…" tab is my most recent client -- the aforementioned emergent country force Kenny Chesney, of the back-to-back two-million sellers, the 11,000 in attendence at Nashville's Gaylord Center for New Year's Eve, the frightening "Sexy Tractors" and "Having You From Hellos." Kenny Chesney, a mainstream country artist I couldn't have been more certain was a major part of the problem. Kenny Chesney, the kind of broadband hillbilly star who was the cancer that would sell what little was left of Nashville's soul to the superchain radio stations and laugh all the way to the bank. Kenny Chesney, from Luttrell, Tennessee, who didn't long to be a country singer 'til college -- and who's taken the long road with little respect in the name of a dream and something he probably didn't even dare embrace because he was a little too small, a little too average, a little too much like every other guy from where he comes from. While the Nashville industry is out looking for brand new mysteries, deeper truths and old standards, Kenny Chesney was holding up a mirror to his audience: real kids and regular people -- folks the 6-1-5 doesn't really even know anymore with their research and their focus groups, but would never take the time to break bread or toss back a couple cold ones with. Kenny Chesney knows those people. He is them. He knows the fear of asking the popular girl out, the quickening of the pulse when you take the plunge or kiss or fall in love for the first time, the rush of suiting up for Friday night football even when you're the world's slowest starting receiver. The young man in the cowboy hat knows how it feels, how it thrills, how it can hurt -- and he has no pretensions about who he is. In fact, he likes who he is just fine -- and so do all the other people who look and live just like him. He was able to weave that truth with some frothy hooks and give people a soundtrack to ordinary lives. And for that, the fans have rewarded him in ways that defy the conventional wisdom down on Music Row. He can now headline. He runs three buses. He has a home behind a gate where the-tour-of-the-stars- homes buses pull up on a regular. But mostly, when he flashes that smile that is pure good and good ole boy, they see themselves celebrated by one of their own. Standing at the jukebox, figuring to drop the quarter in my pocket into the machine and play "You Had Me From Hello," the song that provided my first Chesney humiliation, a young kid 19 or 20 walked up. "You go to the show?" he asked "Show…" "The Kenny Chesney show down at the arena…" "Oh, yeah," I say, shifting my weight. Looking into this face that's so wide-open, so filled with hope and happiness, aglow in the beam that is New Year's Eve, a bunch of unruly dark hair pushed under a ball cap, shirt tail hanging out and just a bit too much girth to probably get any of the really pretty girls, there was a connection he was trying to make. "How was it?" "Real good. You go?" "No, but my friends did." There were six kids squeezed into a booth meant for four, with a chair on the end for my new friend. They were all American-looking kids, shining faces, freshly scrubbed, pupils just the tiniest bit dilated from celebrating the end of the year. "Uhm, did you go backstage?" What an odd question, I couldn't help thinking. "Yes, why would you ask?" "Well, I saw your pass said ALL ACCESS…" In my exhaustion, I'd forgotten to take my laminate off. And there it was big as Dallas, hanging off my coat. Smiling the wan smile of the busted, I nodded. "How come you got to go backstage?" You'd've thought it was Valhalla. But for the people who don't understand that backstage is mostly a drab concrete warren for the functionaries, there is a sense that it's the return of Sodom and Gomorrah. Partypartyparty at a level mere mortals could not comprehend -- a bacchanal of every excess known to man. A veritable flesh buffet of willing groupies, a bevy of babes and famous people wiggling about in demi-clad states ingesting champagne, cocaine and whatever else suits them. I hate being the pin in the bubble. "I work with Kenny…" "You… work with him? You KNOW him?! What do you do…" It's a question you get, though not normally with quite this degree of enthusiasm. I explain my function. He yells to his friends, "She KNOWS him." And then he invites me to come talk to his friends." "He rocked, man. He just rules…" So it went for a bit, the big throwdown. A bunch of sparkling-eyed merry young adults who can still throw it all to the wind with complete abandon. They were so classically all the things this country wants to believe it's young people are, it was hard to believe. And they were so excited about their big new year's eve. "Where were you sitting?" I ask, knowing proximity can be a factor. "Third tier, man, and there were these old people who were telling us to be quiet." With that, they all started laughing. They'd come to have a good time, to party, to ring in the new year with their main man -- and no one, gray haired or otherwise, was going to stop them. And rocking the cheap seats isn't an easy thing to do. It was one of those moments where you don't even think about what to do. "You guys wanna talk to him?" I ask, reaching for my cell phone. "Really…" uttered in sextuple tones of wonder." "Well, let's see if we can find him. He may not have his cell on -- and he may not be home yet, either. He was actually pretty sick yesterday, so he may just have decided to sleep on his bus." "Hell, yeah, we wanna talk to him." "Okay then, let's see how we do." It was New Year's morning. Of course there was no answer anywhere. But that didn't mean we didn't leave a message. I passed my phone over to the one who seemed the most eager, another young guy in ball cap and let him ramble. His friends all muttered their approval -- and he rapped for a good 60 seconds. My first call of New Year's Day was my mother seeing how my night was. My second call was Kenny Chesney, laughing, saying he heard the message, wondered what was going on, heard the phrase "we're at the Waffle House" -- and knew. "Only you," he laughed, "only you would put some fans on the phone in the middle of the night… and let'em leave me a message." "Because only you, Kenny Chesney, would appreciate something like that." There was a pause. Then the man Country Weekly called "country's hottest bachelor" laughed. "Yeah, I guess you're right," he conceded. Kenny Chesney understands how it feels to be looking into the lights. Ten years ago, he had a big New Year's gig -- thrilled to be working on such a major night in Nashville, the city of dreams. He played the Turf, a rough bar on the worst block of what was Music City's seediest strip of low-rent, low-class honky tonks or losers lounges. He played for four hours that night to a crowd that at it's greatest number was 10. You'd have to add a few zeros for this year's attendance. Because Kenny Chesney, who came to Nashville as everyboy and knew there was no way he could compete with Alan Jackson's looks or Garth Brooks' charisma or Vince Gill's voice, writing and guitar-slinging. So Kenny Chesney decided to tell the truth about what he'd lived and what he'd learned. Most of us don't get to lead profound lives -- and many people would rather have a frothy ditty to make them forget the day. Kenny Chesney wasn't above making those people, his people feel good -- which has been the secret of his success. And if people don't "get" it, well, they don't get that audience, either. As someone who tries to get out there and watch the world going by, staying in touch is hard… but you do the best you can. Even still someone who sings songs about tractors, who makes videos with dancing merbabes, who has never cared about courting the industry can amount to something. That's where you have to remember to not know. Because there are plenty of artists who will let you down and break your heart, who will be selfish and self-centered and vain and petty, who you come to realize abuse those around them because of their gift -- and that's heartbreaking in its own way. Then there are the people you write off from the distance, who might actually have something to offer. Yes, many of them are petulant and uncultured. But there are several who'd shock you with their commitment, their dignity, the willingness to lay it down for their people. And the largest truth may just be this: the people who love Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams (people like me) would find another place to go for their emotional recalibrating because we are seekers and introspectives and dreamers. For the people who love Kenny Chesney, they may not have someone else to voice their triumphs, their glories, their tragedies. Kenny Chesney's world is blue collar basic. It's Firebirds or pick-ups, a couple of six-packs, college football, believing in Saturday night and picking up that certain girl -- or finding that just right boy. For those folks a song like "Fall In Love" is everything they could hope for -- and "Back Where I Come From" is a rallying cry that defines the very core of what has shaped each and everyone of them. "Back Where I Come From" was never a single -- and it looks all the negative clichés about being backwater right in the face. It embraces them gently, smiles and sets them aside in the name of all the things that come from those places that make each of these kids not give a damn about that other level of cool so many seek. These people -- like Kenny Chesney -- are living their lives, not worrying about the rest of it. And for me, a girl who was certain she was going to pass on this client, that's a pretty good lesson learned. Indeed, signing Kenny Chesney came down to two truths: he wasn't afraid to do the work and he wasn't concerned about what people thought as long as he was connecting with his fans. When you look into the faces of those fans, indeed if you'd seen that table of kids at the Waffle House, you'd understand what touching people really means. And once you've seen that, how can it be about anything but getting out there and making it happen in a way that lifts people up. Indeed.
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passing through b/w a cab rolls through philadelphia…George Harrison

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passing through b/w a cab rolls through philadelphia the road... it's a blur and the sound of tires on the highway but life goes on beyond the suspended time and dates of the tour and so i am in philadelphia, where lee ann womack kicked off her christmas tour with no less than the duke ellington riding shotgun it is morning, too early not yet light but i am concerned about security and making sure i make my flight not even certain when i stepped out of my hotel i'd find a cab because there was just no traffic fate smiled a car pulled up... and i visited with a philly native who'd turned his life over to maharj ji the same indian guru that jimmy dale gilmore follows when he found out i was in "the music business," he turned around "i have some sad news...." he began, tentatively "george harrison died in the middle of the night." now i believe the world is divided into two camps beatles people and stones people and in the interest of fair play and full disclosure i'm probably the latter but that doesn't mean this won't go down in my mind's eye in the pantheon of where-i-was-when-i-heard along with on my tummy, doing my alegbra in the pepto-pink bedroom when 'mms broke in with the news that lynyrd skynyrd's plane had gone down on my bed, wrestling with chinese history in the lemon and lime bedroom of boynton beach, florida when my father came in with the "this has just been on television... they've gunned down one of your generation's heros" struggling back to consciousness in a soon-to-be-boyfriend's place when, upon picking up 19 messages all expressing their grief and concern -- and finally getting cnn on, i learned that my dear sam kinison was gone and now, george harrison the quiet one the spiritual one the mystical one the wilbury, damn it 57 -- and it's all over what of those left behind the people for whom"something" was a song hummed almost without KNOWING those of us who know harrison in only iconic terms or the personal refractions that come from seeing him through the facets of our own life experience... it begs taking that moment to ask "what does this man? this music? this cultural phenomenon meant to me?" i remember a friend bringing "eleanor rigby" down the street so i could hear it on my parents hi-fi remember watching that little green apple spin, almost hypnotizing me remember the notion that a frothy little hook could contain a pretty dark story and i remember thinking, "THIS is the enemy?" for while i'd missed "the ed sullivan show," the cultural war was on hair was getting long, patchouli was being worn, baths were being skipped and the status quo was being topped it was a scary time for middle america -- and while the stones were much darker, much more satanic -- it was the sweet-faced beatles formerly of the matching suits and "yeah yeah"s who were supposed to hold the line of common human decency only "LOOK at them..." they betrayed the grown masses, who wanted things to stay constant but they opened up a whole new world, a whole new perspective and if all the changes wrought weren't perfect, they brought us tolerance and exploration... not that i understood it on that level i just knew my baby sitters were getting progressively groovier and when you're a good girl in shaker heights, ohio, the peasant blouses, bell bottom corduroys, long straight hair were intriguing and music seemed to be the instrument and inspiration for it all indeed, catalyzing what would become a movement that WOULD ultimately set me free WOULD ultimately bring me here to the back of a cab in philadelphia where the streets fall away as the airport comes closer so i can go home and meet with more people, churn more moments, make more arguments, offer more counterpoints knowing, though, that it will all be gone and then what? will any of my clients impact lives the way george harrison did? who's to say... and perhaps on a smaller scale, they already have maybe they won't change the world but last night, there were several young girls dressed up for a big night out seeing the duke ellington orchestra, seeing lee ann in the name of "i hope you dance" -- and they may look deeper, farther, beyond because of a song it's a limited world you come in you go out hopefully, you live it with a passion and you experience it fully what you believe is what guides you what you leave behind is the lives that you've changed for better or worse in a year of the unthinkable (9/11, anyone?) and the personal (finally looking at my father's grave), i roll towards the holidays with clarity live now live out loud make a difference for whomever you can i don't know if george harrison were that over about it all but he was a quiet witness to that truth he knew that talking and doing were not the same and that may be why, keith richards girl that i am, i am sitting quiet and black irish mourning a man who's gone too soon, but according to the plan personal passages tied up in people we'll never know it's one of the things that drives us...and it's certainly something that shaped me think about that as the beatles music becomes the new aor white noise and remember what made them great beyond the hooks help those who don't get it get there celebrate the poetry and dignity and passion he embodied don't forget that it's all happening... right now... no matter wherever you are 11/30 -- Holly Gleason
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Waving Good-Bye To A Friend, Learning The Here Is Stronger Than The Gone

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One gets to an age where certain friendships glow like slow embers - charcoals that're just a little bit golden, throwing comforting warmth and unspoken understanding. Those companions who follow us from youth or college forward through life, the ones who know even before the story is rolled out are the greatest treasure we amass. New friends are thrilling. Colleagues inspiring. Compadres quick to help you shoot out the lights. But old friends as the Texas expatriate poet Guy Clark has always sung "shine like diamonds." The first time I heard Guy Clark sing "Old Friends," it was in Dublin. At a Thanksgiving dinner table surrounded by his peers - John Prine and Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Marty Stuart, Kieran Kane and Jamie O'Hara (then working as a spare Appalachian duo called the O'Kanes), Rosie Flores and Flaco Jimenez. It was a benediction for the collected and divergent roads these storytellers and gypsies had traveled, and it was sung to Bonnie Garner, who'd managed Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris amongst so many. At the time I marveled at the intensity of what was unspoken. To have friendships that deep, that strong, that defied time and miles and moments… it was something a young woman couldn't know empirically, but would have to take on faith. Blind faith…something I once wrote "keeps you believing whenever things get too rough, but when you live in the street and all your dreams shatter, is blind faith really enough?" Watching them, though, a-glow from the conversation, the Guinness, the fellowship, there was something so comforting about it all, there seemed no safer harbor. With the softness and familiarity of awell-worn flannel shirt, the shadows whose friendship ran deeper than veins of iron ore were the most intoxicating thing of all. What you don't know when you're young and washed in promise, though, is the fires that forge those friendships can sometimes be too intense to withstand. On one's way to adulthood or knowing or just the passage of enough years and shared memories to transcend the basic plane, there are casualties - of misunderstandings, selfishness, cross-purposes, bad timing or merely outgrowing each other. The weeding process, though painful, is an attrition of the heart. You genuflect before what you believe to be common passions or singular moments - and you believe that they do, too. It is plaited with laughter and tears, lost nights and early mornings, standing by and standing beside and standing up for. And as time passes, you need less to feel more. It is a given. It is a gift. You take the memories with you and you smile at the little triggers life litters across your path. There may be estrangements, but they pass. The friendship is larger than both of you - and time will flow across the wounds and ultimately draw you back together. Every now and then, though, a friendship falls on the rocks. Shattered by doubts or recriminations or outside influences, especially outside influences, there is nothing left but tattered memories and jagged pieces of feelings; it's an ache like a broken rib or the slicing pain of a papercut on the tip of one's finger. In the wake and the wreckage of what was, the abandoned looks around, blinks, wonders what the hell happened. It is a bitter mixture of betrayal and sadness and an emptiness where this faith and friendship had lived quietly for years and years and years. Trying to rub the sand or dust from one's eyes, mistakenly believing it will offer some kind of clarity, some sense of what was done wrong, only makes the tired eyes redder - and leaves nothing but more confusion in its trail. The older one gets, the less it happens. And it's a strange thing with the passage of years: a numbness sets in to offset the loss once you've been to this rodeo a few times. The memories go into softer focus, the feelings mute - and while whatever was precious remains so, there is no pain for what was gone. If someone had told me that this year, perhaps I'd have wrinkled my nose, rolled my eyes and offered an "oh, yeah…" in dubious Minnie Mouse tones. How do you survive the loss of someone whose been there since almost before you can remember? who embodied St. Francis' prayer, especially sowing the gentlest forms of love and kindness to a kid looking for answers and dreams? But you do. You realize how ephemeral it all is. It makes you that much more fierce about telling the people in your life, the ones who choose to be here, the ones who refuse to relinquish the joy and the faith, that you love them, that you miss them, that they matter. There are certain truths to living in the wind and falling through space - which is a job requirement for the way I chose to make my way in this world - and one is that you're always gone, always moving on to the next mountain or moment. It gives you a richness of friendships, but it makes roots something that must anchor in the air. So you tell the people in your life. You invoke the things that make them special, remind them they're precious, leave nothing understood. And you find out people like knowing their place in your world, seeing that sparkle when they view their reflection refracted in your eyes. You stop taking the people who've been there always, or even for however long, for granted. You let 'em know. Celebrate that which is here. It may be gone tomorrow. Whether it's fate's hand, human caprice or petty jealousy. lost a friend like that this year. A quarter century washed away over insecurity, a small light held for poetry and melody snuffed out in the name of terror over a loss of something they believed to be greater. What can be greater than old friends I do not know… But this year I learned, while you mourn those friends who should always be there to hear how rich they make you, the insight they give you, the wisdom and the laughter they bring you, they are gone. Loss is part of life, no doubt. The greater truth, though, is choice - and that which remains. Don't waste time on those who have left by their decision. Invest your heart, your emotions, your sparkle and your passion on those who continue, companions of what it is to come. The friends who bring you diamonds with a few quick words on a stolen late night call or evoke a cheap bottle of something in a couple dashed off lines in cyberspace are the ones who are here - even when their somewhere else, a million miles from your conscious. Postcards from the edge it isn't. But don't think those postcards don't get sent from wherever with nothing much to say, except "I love you." Because old friends shine like diamonds and rubies and saphires - and a candle in the window when you're trying to get home. 29 December 2001
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Viva Las Vegas

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It's 4:30 in the morning, and I'm in a hotel room 37 floors above the ground. Thirty-seven floors into the sky, with the promise and the jagged crash laid out before me like the busted dreams of everyone whose ship missed the shore and ended up in shards on the rocks. But from up here, it just looks like a rolling carpet of rhinestones against midnight blue velvet --churning and undulating away from me, away from my fingers and into an ever after that is suspended between how it is and how it might be. Las Vegas. The Radio Music Awards. Lee Ann Womack -- of the 11 weeks at #1 on the Adult Contemporary and 6 weeks on top of the Country Radio charts, of the Grammy, Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music Awards for Song and Single of the Year for "I Hope You Dance" -- to be dressed pretty and sent out to present an award for Top 40 Act of the Year. Lee Ann Womack who proffers potential and the capacity to make it everything one can wish for, who believes in the quality of the music and the power of song. And so I am here, and I am awake, and I am thinking about all that I saw as I swam upstream in a river of whatever you want. Viva Las Vegas and a black velvet Elvis and billboards that make the kinda now and the once were larger than life once again, in a state of suspended superstardom that's never real, but yet indisputable. Great restaurants serving food beyond many of the consumers' palates. High end retailers taking the money of those who don't understand the value of the price, merely the sizzle of the name. And the mid-to-low-end sellers who give people a little more than they could normally buy into, but they get a reprieve from their grooved-in price point from a good couple hands of black jack or one lucky pull on a slot machine. This is the short-term, nominal pay-off on the no impact American Dream -- the I-want-and-it-should-be-mine, which has most likely supplanted the work-hard-for-what-you-want mandate that once drove this nation. Now we're a land of lotteries and scams and quick fixes. It's about Aqua Net and SUVs, Versace fantasies and the promise of notoriety. When N Sync named their latest recording Celebrity, it had the opportunity to be a commentary on fame from the tongues of five Fabians currently being consumed and defined by it. Talented young men? Perhaps. But that's not where they derived their voltage and their value. For we've become a nation where fame has surpassed art, celebrity is the new medium of defining expression -- and we're not sure what to make of insight into the human experience or emotional content. Now it's sizzle and rage and shock. We're about being hot or how it looks. And for every Bob Dylan or Rodney Crowell or Lucinda Williams, or even Lee Ann Womack and Patty Loveless -- two women with their hearts in their throats, the true center must be massaged with some sense of flash, some promise of momentum. <p>It's odd what we've come to value. If Madonna celebrated sexual liberation for us girls and the genius of changing the personna, what does Britney Spears represent? Lolita with a low IQ and the willingness to strip and flip and dance for us? Is she all promise AND an empty, non-threatening delivery? If Madonna reputedly cruised the seedy neighborhoods looking for Latino boys to rough ride the ridge with, would Britney -- America's turbo-virgin --ever do that? If one was a wildcat -- capable of more sexual bravado and libido and teeth gnashing arrival, is the other more of a tame housecat capable of all the machinations but none of the thrilling terror of beyond this one explosive moment? No danger, just a beautiful stranger in a nude bejeweled body suit who will come and writhe and cum and leave without a whimper. There is no fall-out from Britney Spears, just as there's no pushing the flesh or the envelope. This is a two-dimensional automaton of sexual iconography that won't scare, won't impose, won't intimidate. She will be a "Tiny Dancer," a pocket princess to take out and put away on one's whim who's happy enough to be there -- and that is exactly what we've become: a nation of "do ME, baby, then fade to nothing, not even black." <p>It makes me think of Buck Owens and Gram Parson and Emmylou Harris -- hillbilly idols who understood that emptiness isn't nondairy whipped topping that froths and giggles and tricks you into thinking it's lots of fun. For them, emptiness is the echo of regret, the knowledge of what shouldn't have happened, the ghosts of every bad decision and sideways reality that chase you through the lost hours, the buzzing glow of motel lights and the barely humming white noise that is the fringe where the disenfranchised move like the waking dead in the lost hours. "Sin City" is the anti-"Viva Las Vegas." With it's keening melody and plangent harmonies, it turpentines the illusion, leaving a rough streaky truth that is anything but flashy veneer. It is splinters and age and a brittle wood that threatens to bust apart if roughly handled. It is neon that's blinding and neon that's zzzz-zzz'ing out. It's show girls in their sequins and feathered head dresses turning into baggy eyed, aching feet women who just look tired and need to figure out how to fill the gap between child support and what they need now that the BIG STAR ship hasn't come in. Here everything can be had for a price here. Thick steaks. Prettier women than you'll ever find back home, who want to run their fingers through your hair and call you "Big Daddy" and make you feel like John Holmes on holiday. Gold watches. Diamond rings. Italian suits and custom leather. Fine shoes. Every kind of fur. Suites that're larger than most houses. Whatever one desires, it can be created. It can -- as long as the winnings hold out -- be tangible and real. Except, of course, love and happiness -- which come from within and can't be brokered at a baccarat table or through the rounds of a keno girl. Which make them so precious, they flicker beyond the pale, spectres that may not be real -- so why put one's faith there? <p>After all, for a moment or string of moments, Vegas' promise and occasional delivery is more than plenty. More than you'll get back home. And they keep coming back on the promise of what might be. But this town ain't built on winners…and the dreams are even less than the dimestore baubles another generation embraced, long before "Dynasty" and "Dallas" showed us how the other half lived and upped the aspirations of the M-Generation, a generation where material replaces spiritual and what we have substitutes for what we need. Unless you're one of the lucky ones, the ones who surf the moment and blink as the human tide rushes past. Last night, it was a merging of three pretty dominant divergent worlds, creating a surreality that would've made Fellini proud. For not only is Las Vegas a place where a faded someone like Wayne Newton is a big draw and a powerful presence, an electrifying constellation holding down the mainroom and the incoming horde, but it's a place where the bulked-up steroid-thickened Mister and Miss Universe candidates bench their competitive edge as the Pro Bull Riders reach for their 8 seconds of glory and the rockers and the poppers and the gold-roped hip-hoppers wait for word of just who the Radio Music Awards deems the best of the year. They're all out there, these icons in their respective worlds and aspirants stretching for their own grasp of the brass ring, mingling and drinking and playing a little five card stud -- taking in the pleasures and promises. These people have other mandates, but why miss the glory of Vegas? Why lose sight of what makes this town a destination? And they're here with their bravado and their entourages -- relatively pumped up companions, girls in roper boots with heart-shaped asses and little kids in matching cowboy hats or stringy handlers dripping black, squawking into cell phones about limo calls and missing shoes. <p>Does a bull rider have a crew? Does a weight lifter need an posse? And what about Bob and Myrna from Kansas City in their flannel shirt and her over-processed bubble perm? Maybe they're just having a little fun. Not seeking the big cash-out. Catch a show -- "THAT Clint Black. Now THERE'S a star!" -- eat some shrimp, toss back a couple watered down drinks comped from your run at the $5 table. Tell a few tall tales and to the folks back home, you're a high roller. Because compared to the fuzzy gray of back home, this is technicolor. Oz, or at least ahhhhs, to the flatness of Kansas. Oooooh, Las Vegas. It's written in flashing lights, outlined in maribou and set against jet black velvet for maximum pop. Back home, pop is something sitting in your refrigerator waiting to be sucked down -- and if you don't look too close, Vegas isn't a pop, but more a BANG! waiting to suck you in and perhaps suck you dry, strangling you with your own dream of being a big guy for a moment. But, oh, until it does. . . <p>Buck Owens understood that when he wrote the bittersweet "Big In Vegas," a song about hope derailed and hope redefined and accepting what was left on the table. It may be his saddest melody, but it was also one of his truest moments. For while Buck was the happy guy in the Hee Haw overalls, mocking his pain with the superstar pay-out of "Act Naturally," he also defined the California country insurgence with Merle Haggard and Buck's personal Sancho Panza guitarist Don Rich. Vegas for so many is the end of the line … the last, perhaps only, place to feel more than alive. As the movie of Mikal Gilmore's book Shot Through The Heart, about the final days with Gary Gilmore, the brother he barely knew who became the first American to be executed under the reinstatement of capital punishment in the U. S., playing on the t. v. and still no threat of dawn, I think and I type -- just like so many nights. <p>Somewhere in this same hotel, Lee Ann Womack sleeps. Last Sunday, she sang "I Hope You Dance" and "The Preacher (Won't Have To Lie)" for Nashville's concert to raise the spirits of a country demoralized by Sept. 11 and some money to aid the clean-up. They were simple, true wishes -- and they spoke volumes about the little things that truly define us. Or do they? As someone who's always believed in music's power to inspire and elevate, who was heartened by the crossover success of a song about "still feeling small when you stand beside the ocean" and who wants to think when people are ready, they will hear, I'd like to believe there's still room and validity for this other kind of truer truth at our cheaper, faster, harder, now NOW table. <p>Walking through the corridors of Bellagio's shopping concourse and Caesar's Palace's Forum shops, I'm not so sure. Though surely we've not come to believe that a painted sky that never dims is truer than the stars and the sun and the moon. As long as we can walk outside and look up, we can know the difference -- and maybe that's what we need to cling to so we don't get -- as the prophet Springsteen once wrote -- "lost in the flood." I don't know, but as there's still no threat of dawn -- here where we sleep off the losses both fiscal and emotional -- I may as well step outside and look at what's left of the night. Maybe I'll catch a falling star... -- Holly Gleason
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Eddie Montgomery Made Me Cry

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The voice on the other end of the phone was thick. It was a mixture of a long afternoon of imbibing low rent liquor, watching the future melt into a promise of violence and upholding values few people ever truly inhabit, but mindlessly invoke to justify macho knee-jerk posturing and, well, the comradeship of the road. Behind the voice, the screen was a parade of talking heads tracking and trafficking the action, the fall-out and the impact of the US military strike against the Taliban, who'd blown-up America's blind faith in our safety being a God-given right. And the call to which the larger-than-life hillbilly singer was grappling was pretty standard issue in the world of the neo-famous. There was a request -- from the Associated Press' broadcast division for country music's names and faces to react and respond to our nation's actions. Eddie Montgomery, half of Montgomery Gentry -- the Lexington, Kentucky-based twosome that upended Brooks & Dunn's longest-winning streak in the history of the Country Music Association's annual Awards when they dark horsed their way into the 2000 Duo of the Year crown, was a logical voice to enlist. The last of the full-grown men in country music, he and his partner Troy Gentry sang about tattoos and scars, lost afternoons and shattered hearts, antique values and veterans who've grown battered by their forgotten role in the world. So one would think a jingoistic request to rah-rah the fighting men would be just the sort of siren song a good ole boy would live for. Bring it on, he'd beller from his bar-stool, let's whip the troops into a frenzy, create a nationalistic battle cry and show those freedom-hating so-and-sos the glory of God and ole glory. But Eddie Montgomery's having none of it at this moment. "What's the doctor saying?" he asks, voice thicker with worry than Beam-infused braggadocio. "When will you know something?" I, too, am on a barstool. Though my drink is water -- my doctor suggesting staying away from the hard stuff as the stitches inside me grapht a new seam to hold me together -- and my request is standard operating procedure as a publicist and apologist for some of the people whose music will no doubt become the soundtrack for the impending engagement. Indeed, Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance" has been embraced as a song of healing and hope, a remembrance of what this way of life we fought for is made of -- and Brooks & Dunn's "Only In America," sung by vocal flamethrower Ronnie Dunn and written by Louisiana dervish Kix Brooks about the perils and promise of the American Dream, has turned into a self-esteem-steeped call to pride for country music fans that has more verve, more twist, more adrenaline-steeping pump than any latter-day USA-All-The-Way anthem out there. No, not for us the maudlin or the mawkish. We are the proud, the brave, the free. We want to be empowered and emboldened. We want to fly high and show the enemy who's the boss. But right now, my throat is tight. My client isn't so sure about jumping on the phone to tout his point-of-view. What he -- in all his imposing 6' 5" blackclad glory -- wants to know is what the doctor has to say. And as a tear rolls down my cheek, I have to confess that I don't know, won't know 'til midweek because of the legal holiday and the time it takes cells to germinate and generate in a petri dish in a sterile environment somewhere. Even worse, I have to confess that I'm afraid. Afraid of what I don't know -- since I am smart enough to know that whatever is is already. And there is no magic door or wand that can pass over me, taking it all back -- spinning the room, spinning the ugly reality through some fairy dust centrifugal forcefield through a time/space/gravity vortex and into the never was. No, I am afraid. And just as I can hear the Beam and Coors Lite in the client's lazy vowels, he can hear the tentative response, the not sure how much to tell, the not aware of what the most in-control person he knows is giving away in the pauses. "You know, baby doll, it's gonna be fine," he says with a split rail tone that is as solid as the 220 acres of hay he's just baled back home. "You're one of God's angels, and he's not ready to take you from us just yet." "Okay…" comes through the tightness and tentativeness, trying to sound appreciative, trying to ratify the faith that's being served. "No, no," he says. He feels the lack of faith, the tripping over one's confidence. "I mean it, you're one of God's angels here on earth. There ain't nothing wrong with you…just a little scare. There's too much for you to do, to give for this to be anything bad. I promise you: it's gonna be alright." Bad things don't happen to people like me. It's the lie we serve ourselves to fuse the teflon with the kryptonite, just as we don't look down or close our eyes when we must get through. We're pillars more than people, propping up, taking care of others. You need faith? I'll give you mine, You need vision? Look through my eyes. You need passion? I burn so other's can feel the fire and blaze in a way that draws moths to their flame. It is my gift. I am a woman who'd write"midwifing people's dreams" on the Occupation portion of applications. Though the straight world much prefers "Media Relations and Artist Development," as dubious and obscure an explanation as the aforementioned phrase. Having built a life knowing how to deal with anything -- malicious ex-husbands, tawdry inferences, partycentric lifestyles, life-shattering illnesses and a general lack of respect -- and corner with the fastest and bestest, there's a confidence that meets each morning. Bring it on. I am ready. I will make it happen, make it shine, make it sing. I believe in the power of music to imbue life with deeper meaning, to create context for my own unruly emotions, to inspire us all to be more, to reach higher, to believe in what can be rather than whatever mundane "is" may be this moment. Transformation and wings, joy and ache and surviving the devastation. The sketched lines of what we've been and what we wish to be… it's all there, if we'll just allow it to lift us up. Except right now. My resolve falters. I feel a fear that I can't walk through, can't talk through, can't quantify into something more manageable. There was a lump, missed because of thirty pounds of mental bondage and ice cream. Found in my yearly exam. Mammogrammed and ultra-sounded and appearing to be routinely out-of-order…. until the follow-up surgeon bypassed the needle core sample and went straight to the surgical biopsy. Not only straight to it, but straight to it less than 40 hours later. Suddenly the girl who handles everything wasn't so handled or heeled. Having picked up my "films" for the surgical consultation, the resolve had started oozing away -- and knowing a 6 a. m. check-in for a 7:30 cutting was imminent, I tried everything at my disposal. "As if" was enlisted and engaged. A black tie Hall of Fame induction dinner -- wearing floorlength black lace Chanel flapperish body-skimming lusciousness and punk funk hair in a confection of fashion and youthfusion -- where many's moment of glory was marred by timing seemed the perfect denial. Look as beautiful as one can, make the small talk about the big issues, sweep the room and ratify each other's glorious spot in the orbit of the right-now-country-kingdom, while being dwarfed by the accomplishments of the Delmore Brothers, Sam Phillips, Bill Anderson, Waylon Jennings, the Everlys, Don Gibson and the Louvins (among others) -- names that the young'uns and many of the midlevels couldn't explain with a sixshooter to the temple. Pretend it's just another glory night. Smile the smile. Push the food around the plate. Nod with recognition. Smile the smile. Sweep the doubts away. Bask in the plushness of Raul Malo's velour and cohiba voice as he works through a sampling of the inductees best known work. Find an escape. Perhaps have a meaningful exchange amongst the rubble of cocktail talk -- and keep smiling the smile. Smile that smile through the tears as the make-up comes off, the hair comes down and the fear wells back up. Breast cancer is more than pink ribbons and races for the cure. It is 192,000 new invasive cases this year. It is ads that are even found in Gentleman's Quarterly, invoking the real truth of the second most common form of cancer found in women in this country: daughters, sisters, mothers, friends, wives, grandmothers, fighters, survivors victors. But, me? It is a sqeaky voice that asks that question. One that knows the truth is larger than any spin that can be created, any reality that could be shaded. And the fear isn't the fear of failing the client, the song or the dream…. it is the bigger fear: leaving before whatever I've been sent here to do is done. It's not so much mortality -- though come on, who wants to be sick? Let alone sick in a way that could be fatal? -- than it is knowing how much time has been squandered, how little has been accomplished. We are put here to touch people's lives, to inspire, to comfort, to find our way and show others their's. What if I don't? As someone who works incessantly, who fights for the dreams of others, is it vanity or a personal quest? I'd like to think it's the former. And as Buddy and Julie Miller, paint-peeling ache intertwined with broken winged whisper, intertwine on "How She Cries" from their self-titled Hightone release, I ponder the point of it all. I am a true believer. I have to believe in whatever this is. But through the tears and the shaking and the pain and bandages of where they "got it," I'm not strong enough to get there on my own. In these lost hours, in a small apartment over an Italian restaurant on South County Road, I think about an overgrown cowboy and his simple assurance, about a hillbilly guitar slinger who talked me to sleep, about a good friend who shared a glass of cote du Rhone, an old beau who flew down to help pack an apartment so I could embark on what should be the next chapter, a babe-ular girl singer who sent flowers and prayers, a couple long distance calls from back home just to see how the baby rock critic was holding and e-mail to the doctor from a woman no less than TIME proclaimed, "sings the truth and serves it up raw." They say that you don't always get what you want, but sometimes you just might get what you need. As morning streaks across the Atlantic, with the tentative reach and brush of gray with perhaps a hint of warmth shot through, I believe that to be true. We may not always understand the difference between want and need -- just as fear and doubt sometimes blur into each other as a muddy confusion. But in this desolate moment, I see the difference: friends who reach out when you're too paralyzed to let them know you're in bigger need than you ever thought possible. The trouble with fear: you're afraid to voice it. If you tell, it will be become reality. So you suffer in silence. Or let a very few people know. And it grows inside you like a man-eating plant. In the immortal words of Emory Gordy, Junior: "Let your friends do the worrying. You should laugh and enjoy the drugs." It's not really that easy. Just like trusting that your friends can be what you need when it's all vastness and darkness and doubt. The irony, of course, is that they will be far more then you could ever need -- if you'll just let them. Tom Petty knew the waiting was the hardest part. What he missed were the everyday angels that carried you when you couldn't carry yourself. Maybe the answers aren't what you want, but what you learn is a gift that just may sustain no matter what. In a bleak whirl of doubt and heavy sighs, I'll take it.
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“Run” Strait Desire, No Chaser, George Strait

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Every now and then, full immersion therapy comes via the radio. A song wells up, wafts out and takes you hostage in a way very few things can. Welling up, you don't even notice it, the melody drifting through your synapses, evoking things you've never considered cognitively -- maybe not subconsciously, either. But then, BLAM! There it is. Whatever it is. Just running down your face or through your veins or beating with your heart. Nuance, gossamer moments you can almost see through -- except there's a brick wall finality, a chill to knowing something that had always alluded you. And so it was that this basic rich male voice somehow started digging into my mind. Didn't notice it exactly, didn't melt or pull over -- just felt a dawning awareness of the solidity of a man, a real man, a grown man who knew what he wanted. Desire and yearning, controlled and yet -- utterly immediately necessary. George Strait has always been an artist you can count on. Smart songs. Well-crafted singles. Songs destined for dance floors and wedding chapels. He is the standard setter for what Nashville is capable of. Maybe that distorts the expectations. Maybe -- because it's all so good -- it perverts his ability to connect with us. "Oh, yes…" we acknowledge as the latest hit single comes on the radio, "another great record from George Strait." Take the brown eyed handsome man for granted without taking anything from him. We know the greatness, why should, why would anything stand out? And there I was on the Florida Turnpike somewhere between Miami and West Palm Beach, listening to this gentle plea to get back. Didn't recognize the voice at first, which probably made me lean in a little closer, listen a little deeper, allow myself to be swept up. It was a yearning request from a broken heart, but it was made with a lot of dignity. It was plain spoken, but regal. It was about holding one's head up -- and if not admitting whatever bad thing had come between the two people in question, there was a nakedness to the want that was stunning. A couple quiet acoustic guitar parts, little puddles of steel pooling like unacknowledged tears around the critical parts with just enough salt to burn the pain into the arrangement. The beat, laying back just a little bit, like a heart that's trying its best to maintain the rhythm -- but not sure it's up to the challenge in this hollow empty state trying to be rectified. And there's the piano, notes rolling back and forth -- not echoing the beloved's movements, so much as the desired travel plan our singer has concocted. Quietly elegant. The thing George Strait has always done best. It makes the girls weak in the knees because he posses the ultimate self-knowledge: he knows the most manly thing one can be is honorable and honest. So with grace, he confesses his need. It is not an obsession. It is not demanding. It is not overbearing. Nor is it about possession. "Run" is a song that is designed to let the girl know he wants her back as quickly and as powerfully as a country song has ever pledged its desire. And that twinge of want -- though no doubt fired by some modicum of lust -- is about seeing a greater need than perhaps had been previously considered. This is not the song of a silver-tongued devil, let me point out. This is a song that could fall from the lips of any man, any man anywhere who realized that he needed a woman back. He could be a doctor or a lineman, a rodeo rider or a computer programmer, an analyst or an accountant or a mechanic. The notion that "there's a plane or a bus out of Dallas, I hope you're on it/ There's a train moving fast down the tracks, I hope you caught it…" is as direct a request as can be made. It's in the leanness of the sentiment where George Strait's silent romantic streak catches fire. Cheap poetry and divinity aren't the weapons he brings to the table -- and Texans have spent years embracing his knotty pine truths, the confessions that build solid lives out of normal places. George Strait is handsome in that classically chiseled, gorgeous man way. One could argue that it's the package that gets this potency across the plate. Except that I was on a burned out two lane, watching not much pass beyond the windows, even less fall beneath the tires. In that void, there was a voice, a melody that was as bittersweet as anything I'd heard, a voice that seemed so solid, so resolved, yet so… well, a little bit beat-up, tired even, but holding its head high. Perhaps not as sleek as what we've come to expect from ole Strait -- and that's what opened the windows of appreciation up wide and full. Valentine's Day's coming. There was a relationship walked away from. This wasn't necessarily the sentiment being sought from the former paramour… more the sad reminder of why the good-bye. Because the notion someone could have this sort of desire speaks volumes about what we should strive for in our most profound intimacies. That they were willing to not go for the grand gesture, the big flex, the check too big to ever cash -- that it would be about loneliness and need and her, well, who wouldn't want that? Indeed, that's been an ingredient in George Strait's ability to bewitch women. He understands what they need. Sometimes it's that perfect smile, a little glimmer, a song to kick up one's ropers, too. But other times it's simple appreciation of what was or is. Where some men fall prey to sizzle, tight dresses, low cut blouses, too much make-up -- and heaven knows, George Strait ain't dead -- it always seemed there was something a little deeper about his appreciation of the fairer sex. Not for him the painted harlot, more the woman in the cotton dress or blue jeans, the hair pulled back in a pony tail, the eyes shining with an appreciation for what life has to offer. It would seem to most women, George Strait is a man who would appreciate them as they are. Who would celebrate their inherent beauty, recognize their passions for the world as it falls around them, respect the emotions they bring to the lives they touch -- and in those moments, a far greater value becomes attached to the object of desire. It's not about what gravity does to a woman's body, the way time steals hair color, adds lines around the eyes and lips. It's not about flash or dazzle, but what's inside. Leveling the playing field, embracing the deeper truths, owning that desire can burn longer and more intensely when drawing on embers that're a slow burn, George Strait shows men how to set women aflame -- and brings the women to their knees from a truer kind of want. And there's also no li'l gal superiority trip at work. It's about needing to be the best option for the woman as well. Taking a breath, he confesses with a hush and the slightest drawl, " cuz I swear out there ain't where you ought to be/ So catch a ride, catch a cab, don't you know I miss you bad/ But don't you walk to me/ baby, run…" The laconic pace of delivery tells the story. George Strait standing tall, offering all he's got: the pledge of need. He's not one for flowery promises, he gives something far more important -- the moment where the rubber meets the road, the willingness to acknowledge that which really matters and the hope that she's going to hear it, hear the completeness of his desire and respond in kind.
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Me and Romeo Ain’t Never Been Friends, Gerald LeVert

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Truth comes from funny places. Joy even more so. Late night urban radio and songs long forgotten in the glow of the dial in the dashboard. From that very rolling or parked perch, slices of dated production emerge in waves and sheets of what was the right-then, sounding like what-was, but still managing to hit a nerve, connect with a timeless emotional reality, be it pain or lust or love. The shafts of synth -- all satiny smooth and shimmering with a cool remove --percolate as the guitar serpentines its way through the vocal breaks and the beat benches the whole damn thing. At its best, new jack swing or rhythm and blues or just plain black music gets it done, moves you along the conveyor belt of moments - and gives you something solid to grip in your sonic time travel. Gerald LeVert's "Casanova" is one of those songs. It is a feel good record that turned 1987 inside out, that bounced its way into the smile-inducing pledge of eternal commitment, total appreciation and the implied promise of getting the girl just exactly where she wants to be every single time… Gerald LeVert -- progeny of soul royalty the O'Jays -- has a voice that is an emotionally conductive instrument. Wincing, ardent, pushed to the brink, but trying to convince a girl that he's the regular Joe who will be more than she could ever hope for, he brings the bravado and the vulnerability of the unknowing teetering on the brink of what might not be to the table hard -- and closes with the raw want of one who can't even contemplate the possibility of denial. Produced by Reggie Calloway -- known for his Midnight Star, Deele and Shalamar records -- "Casanova" is as wonderful a slice of good clean erotic roll-out as has ever been lobbed. When a boy will come on this straightforward with a beat that sweeps left, then right, when there's this much innocence basting a willingness to "get down on my knees for you, baby," it's the nexus between Prince's naughty-by-nature funk and Motown's brown-eyed soul. But as strong as the record is, it's actually the song that puts an arrow through the heart. Cupid in a pair of Timbalands and baggy low riders, this is serious business -- with the protagonist going straight for his own jugular. Yes, he pledges the thrills of a lifetime, but he's also quick to tell the truth -- a truth that's about stretching paychecks, nothing going on but the rent, trying to carve out a place in the world, looking for someone to recognize how special they are, to make them feel a little bit better about the day-to-day, 9-to-5 drudgery of real life. Is the truth an anti-truth? Something so completely devoid of glamour there's nothing appealing. Or is a simple honest man bringing it all to the plate, pledging whatever he's got totally to the object of his desire the sexiest thing of all? Who's to say, except the unseen paramour du jour or pour la vie. "Casanova" is an exhortation for an invitation, a slow burn for permission from a man who recognizes the clumsiness of the working stiff looking for his place in the sun -- and a girl who probably resides just outside his grasp. But if the match is struck, what flame will endure? burn higher? hotter? Which is the trick of the tail. Or the definition-defying notion of bring on the heat. For in the mix, the hunger is both libidinous and validation. One tempts the other, the other promises the rest. And in a rare moment of revelation, the crowning realization is this -- utter satisfaction isn't merely about the boot-knocking, but the higher power that is being loved by someone who has knocked one off their feet. And the device… THE DEVICE! Sheer genius: pitting the boy, the man, the hiphopster, gangbanger, prep or striver next door against the great heartthrobs and romantic foils of our time. Without a flinch or a blink, the song opens with the compare and contrast Blue Book busting confession, "I ain't much on Casanova, me and Romeo ain't never been friends…" In close form harmony, LeVert's nougat and satin sheets harmonies sweep straight into the next line with an ease that promises a second nature reaction, a reflex response to this full immersion reality he's trying to create for himself "Can't you see how much I really love you/ Gonna sing it to you time and time again…" There's a churchy style confession delivered in scatty conversational tone. He ain't slick, this boy. Heck, he ain't a boy, he's a man who knows his limitations -- and he can only offer his whole self in exchange for her heart. But his whole includes a vulnerability that smacks of unscarred youth that will admit both want and need…and in the most plain spoken terms, he lays it all out.
"Every time I wanna see you, I can't find the words to tell you so But I love, I love, I love you baby -- And I just got to let you know How much I need you, Show you what you mean to me each day baby So let me hold you, keep you safe and warm I'll be your sweetheart baby…"
Indeed, the men of LeVert are just getting started pledging their everything to the woman who makes it all too real, all too technicolor, all the throbbing and churning yearning welling up inside. While the come on is about making it forever, getting the papers and wanting her "to be my wife," it hits a little deeper and fleshier:
"I wanna hug and squeeze you, too, I wanna make sweet love to you Wanna be there when you're feeling low Never wanna let you go I'm just a man baby…"
So how does a 15-year old aural valentine end up on the radar? Well, it stems from a discussion in a bar -- where all the most important things end up getting churned in the fading hours of the day -- about the absence of the intersection of sex and real love in contemporary music. Either it's wicked nasty or a so-pure-it-puckers true love that's beyond virginal. Sure, Britney and Backstreet and N Sync work from the carnal bridge, but their sexuality is an empty promise -- a touchless man's bluff. For while they writhe and grind, it's motion without meaning. Even their ardent passions are more popsicles, hand-holding and two-dimensions -- because there's not been enough life lived to really know the battering that forces this sort of need to go subterranean. Being that the discussion came down in Nashville, someone cracked that the last time someone in country music got laid, let alone laid in a context that had sweetness or a twinge of meaning, it was "Strawberry Wine," a song about a young girl falling in love and making love for the first time. That song is 7 years old. And if country music once was a randy place to be, it has been sanitized for your protection and left with that little paper strip promising hygenics over the various smiling head covers littering Wal-Marts and Targets coast-to-coast. In the other genres, the trouble is the hardcore sexuality and utter misogyny that permeates rock and rap and metal. The ultimate skin covered receptacle, much of what is sought is about empty release -- and not the bigger, more fulfilling connections. And so it was that I argued for LeVert and "Casanova." Not just because of the lushness of a world class trio in harmonic phase -- or the sweetness of Gerald LeVert's muscular honey-dripping voice sweeping down, then quickly pulling up to scrape the rafters. No, the idea someone would humble themselves for love, for sex, for marriage -- and that they're willing to go long on the truth in the bargain… well, aside from promising the longform joyride eternally, that's some pretty strong and torrid stuff. Granted LeVert knew too well the confectionary aspect of what they do. Those big thick beats that are all rubber and featherbeds and rebounding for the three-pointer -- and the cotton candy melody rushes the blood to the head. But the case gets made beyond the smooth soul of the hit. Take an obscure rock/pop group called the Ghost Poets and put the song in their hands. They bring in acoustic guitars. Slow down the tempo. Heat up a drum machine. Cascade piano runs across the melody. And they deliver the vocals with a breathiness that suggests being so overwhelmed by the desire they're driven to the point of, well, perhaps confusion. In their hands, it's almost a sad song, an apology for what can't be delivered. If LeVert were set to bring it all back home and then some, the Ghost Poets offer a cherishment that will eternally elevate the object of desire to a treasure, a pinnacle of appreciation that will never again be recognized. "I may not be," they seem to say, "but no one else will see you as I do, either…" And yes, like LeVert -- though the lyric is suitably tamed down for a more AOR/AC axis -- they are promising a serious ride through the good groove. Smartly, the Poets have a woman wailing in the background as an aural touchstone. Satisfaction guaranteed is more than implied. These white boys aren't taking any chances. The commonality of real world hook-ups remains being able to see the sparkle in someone else -- and being able to transcend the mere mortality, the sheer humanity, the everyday humdrum fade-to-gray reality that faces us all. How can I show you how special I am, except by recognizing how special you are? By telling you in the straightest language I've got -- and by coming straight out about just what I wanna do in the name of the greater love. What's sexier than someone willing to stand naked in the boldest sense? Clothes never really made the man -- or the woman. But that brave soul who will own who they really are, without artifice, without defenses, without excuses, and say "Take me as I am. It's all I've got, but it's your's…," well that is truly the completest commitment. From there, anything else can be resolved -- or created. Satisfaction guaranteed. No wonder LeVert called their "Casanova"-containing recording The Big Throwdown. -- Holly Gleason
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