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We’re up we’re down we’re up we’re down. The slot machine whirls lemons, cherries and flaming 7’s. All I know is when three "bars" line up horizontally, the quarters that I’ve put in finally come back to me. By 11:30 p.m. I’ve lost $7.25 and I’m just about to give in when Soucy suggests a higher stakes game: "Dollar video poker!!" It’s been a long day, starting in Boulder where I lost my wallet containing $100 bucks, all my credit cards, receipts and a picture of my brother recording with me in Martha’s Vineyard over the Thanksgiving vacation. I had to borrow money from a somewhat reluctant Soucy. Getting on the plane took some convincing and begging but somehow, with much charm and flirtation, Soucy managed to drag his "oversized" acoustic guitar on board the flight; as luck would have it, he even managed to get a seat next to a cute Asian girl who wrote notes to herself all flight, in tiny pink letters. It was sad to have to leave the rest of the band behind in Colorado and scary to imagine playing casinos without the thud and groove of the rhythm section to help us compete with the bells and whistles of winnings and the groans and tears of losing. But this trip it’s got to be Chris Soucy and I solo. So there it is. And here we are. Connecticut. On the plane we ate chicken cordon bleu and chemically-procured chewy chocolate, coconut cookies and in the limo which stretched 1/2 way between the airport and the home(tel) we watched Diane Sawyer, reporting on Alaskan survivors, between the lines of scribble and the sound of angry snow. The casino, when we got there, was gleaming like the inside of a ruby ring and although no one was really moving, save an arm to pull a slot, the circular motion of the room made it appear as though everyone was dancing. The most astringent thing about the place was the warped, vinyl like, carnival mirror, spooky clown, drone. "Flatted 5th inside a dominant 7th chord," said Soucy of the din, "it creates tension, begs for release." I felt as though I were inside a tunnel at rush hour. My body felt full of horns honking and brake lights bleating and gray fumes coughing and bellowing claustrophobic in its own fog. Dollar Poker proved to be a much more skillful game but it was more lucrative too. Not only did I make back my $7.25 but between Chris and I, we made approximately $28 dollars (exciting for us unaccomplished gamblers). With our new cake we bought a couple of Heinekens, which used up most of our earnings, and went to check out the Wolf Den where we’d be playing the next night. But no sooner had we crossed the noisy, gambling, traffic light of a floor, did a security man reprimand us for carrying bottles of beer "you gotta have that in a glass!" He scolded, finger extended, hand on hand cuffs, eye brows bent and flared, which seemed just as much a crime to us as having our drinks in a glass bottle so we laughed about it on the way back to the bar. But Soucy took the reprimand seriously and dampened like a soggy bath mat. No more gambling tonight. Bob our shuttle driver, was 80 and "in serious need of a nose hair trimmer."( Soucy said I could quote him on this.) He asked us if we’d seen the Wolf Den or the 85 foot waterfall or the Planetorium (we assumed he’d meant Planetarium), to which we responded in the negative. "But we won some loot," said Soucy jiggling the oversized coins in his undersized pocket "How much?" Asked Bob hopping for a fabulous tip. "$28 bucks" said Soucy proudly. Bob was unamused. Frank Sinatra swam warmth over the airwaves. It appeared to be his voice which slowly defrosted the Moby reminiscent windows. The difference between my nowhere and somebody else’s everywhere, where the permanent impermanence romantically touches the imagination and writes it down, is my life on the road. Jan. 26th 2001 The Wolf Den, The Mohegan Sun Casino, CT "Ka-ching, Ka-ching, Ka-ching" in the key of C major, rings the round room. People stained in dark eyed disdain stare blankly at their slot machines. The backstage dressing room is nicer than our hotel room and Soucy jokes in opaque, serious tones about spending the night on the velvety couches there. Fruit plate, cheese platter, candles lit in vanilla and gardenia, wine, juice, water and my name inscribed on the gray official plaque outside the door. Carmen, a beautiful woman with black bouncy curls greets us and takes us to sound check. Behind the stage hangs a movie screen which later will project gigantic images of me singing, but for now shows beautiful wolves running and howling. There are animated models of wolves over the entranceways too, which bark and swing their tails. Beyond them is the sea of C. A hum so penetrating, it’s hard to hear anything besides it, even ourselves. I guess Herbie Hancock had been there to perform recently and got so freaked out by the sound that he refused to play his second set and instead plucked C major progressions from the strings inside his piano. By the time we finish sound check I’m starving. I’d missed breakfast due to a sleepless night of tossing, turning and dreaming about a friend getting mutilated in a moose attack. Then at lunch in the hotel tavern, pink napkins stuffed in water glasses, plastic flowers, 80’s synthesizer music, and slick, stained black carpets, I found it impossible to eat after convincing Soucy that the meat in our "chicken Caesar salads" was not chicken but, in fact cat. As I unwrap dips and veggies and test all the miniature pastries, (yum, cheesecake) Carmen comes out of the dressing room and tells me my skirt is a bit ripped and do I mind if she mends it for me. "Are you kidding? I’d love it! My mom gave me that skirt when I was in high school. It was hers when she was my age and no matter how much I sew it, it keeps coming apart." It’s sort of the velveteen rabbit of skirts, scarred, stretched and repaired with waxless dental floss again and again. The problem is, I keep putting my boot heals through it and it’s so delicate it rips when the wind blows. Carmen had already ironed and hung up the rest of Soucy’s and my wardrobe, which made us feel very loved and very undeserving. Needless to say, we are now huge fans of Carmen. We haven’t done a show, let alone a solo acoustic show, since November and are feeling a little bit intimidated after sound check so we rehearse downstairs in the green room as I dress, undress and dress myself again, before going out and gambling away the $28 dollars we made the night before. The show was really fun. The audience was fantastically tolerant of the noise beyond the wolf-protected archways. The venue was opened to the public and in the center of the casino, stormy like the ceiling of the deepest, angriest, most helpless sea. Jan 29th 2001, Sands Casino, Atlantic City, NJ Sometimes when I’m singing, and the room is really dark, like it was at Sands Casino, and I’m on stage, surrounded by miniature, flickering star-like candles, I feel like I’m suspended, just floating, out there in the universe, in the permanent ink-stained blackness with the other pin pricks of light. Then suddenly, as the song pours out and floods into the audience, I feel as though I’m free-falling past clouds, past birds and buildings, swallowing them up almost, my mouth wide open, my eyes wide shut. The intense weight of my emotion keeps me from flying but also, from drowning in the deep sky. And finally, as the verse collides with the chorus, I fall into a bottomless pool of feathers so fluffy and airy (like the "moon walk" ride at the fair as a child but now in slow m o t I o n) that I can’t help but want to climb the sky again and again and fall back to earth, into my mother's arms. Ah freedom. I slept on the train ride to Atlantic City. I had no choice. Three hours of sleep at the Ramada Inn the night before was a little too little and Todd, who’d come up the night before and offered Soucy and I a lift to AC, had problems (again!) with his Mercedes Benz starting at 6:00am. The train ride wasn’t so bad really. It was the getting on and off again in Phili and then again at some no name, drizzling location with two boxes of CD’s each containing 120 units, not to mention my blue guitar, oversized clothing bag and computer case and Soucy’s bags and guitar. No one wanted to help either, save this kind soul in the Atlantic City station who happened to see (and hear) me drop (and break) a box of 120 CD’s on my way in the station door, who happened to be reading an article about me at the time in a local spread, who happened to have a free hand and didn’t mind walking down a case of CD’s to the 5th stretch limo of the weekend. The limo took us exactly 4 blocks and then it was 3 bucks for the guy who opens the door and $5 to the driver and $4 for the first guy who touches the bags and $5 to the guy who eventually brings them up to the rooms. "Where should I check in?" I asked the chauffeur who pointed to the VIP check-in saying "Anyone who comes in a limo is VIP to us." But the VIP check-in had more people on it than the "I’m just a regular shmo" check-in so I stood in line with the sweat pants and the glitter pins fitting in much more comfortably than with the diamond rings and cufflinks in the VIP queue. Frankly, I doubt whether there are more than 50 regular, non-limo, cars in Atlantic City. An aerial view of this part of New Jersey would reveal a sea of shark-like limos circling around the glittery bait-like buildings with very few small fish cars in sight. We went to the Copa Lounge for sound check at 5:00. The stage was set with palm trees and green backlit lights. I felt tiny on the stage and inappropriately clad in jeans, flannel and a down green vest but the guys on the gig couldn’t have been nicer and more accommodating. We got to do an interview backstage with a couple of great gals from www.lilithschild.com on-line magazine where I feel I may have waxed a little too philosophical. The dressing room was ginormous.* It reminded me of a room that might have been in that house Steve Martin bought in the movie THE JERK after he got rich off his invention: "The Optigrab." It had a grand piano in it (just to give you a gist for the size of it) and I’m not use to such a spacious or gracious or zebra skinned green room - not that I wouldn’t like to get use to such things. The bathroom even had complimentary tooth brushes and bath beads in it. This, my friends, is luxury! Bob, our host, even treated us to dinner at the local steak house, which Soucy took full advantage of by ordering a $40 steak. We were really grateful for all the hospitality. The show was wonderful for me…full of floating and free falls. The audience was great; Pat Hill was there but then disappeared mysteriously with wife Jill Marie. My girlfriend Lorrie Capplan’s brother Wayne was there and Cheryl, a glorious woman we once met in Princeton NJ, gave me a forest green blanket that she’d knit for me. We didn’t gamble that night, mainly because of our losses back at The Mohegan Sun in CT the night before. Bob said he’d treat us to a(nother) limo back to the city (NYC) in the morning and we woke up early to catch some complimentary buffet before heading home. At the buffet counter stood a sign that read "THE EPIC BUFETT," due mainly to the décor, I assume, which emulated different dramatic scenes from epic movies of the past. A woman with a french twist and a bleached out black apron sat us down and bounced us an off white thermos full of staggeringly bad coffee which even cocoa couldn’t save. Exhausted, I looked around the restaurant while Soucy stashed a stack of "not so good" flapjacks down the ol’ cake hole*. The scene felt all static-y, like pins and needles, like the smell of diet coke, like mica, like the metallic taste of electric shock. Not too comfortable. 12 men sat laughing and pointing at waitress’s backsides. A couple of middle aged ladies with fire red hair and painted-on jeans, chewed gum while they ate their crayon yellow scrambled eggs, sticking the wad of gum into their cheek between bites (lotta practice goes into that one). Then Soucy spits out his toast: "Don’t look," he said "but there’s a couple behind you and I’ve never seen anything more disgusting in my life." I knew there was a couple behind me. They’d been talking with such hard edged New York accents I could barely tell what language they meant to insult , but man were they loud and obnoxious and hard to phase out. How could I manage not looking after Soucy said he was experiencing The Most Disgusting Thing he’d ever seen? I mean I’ve lived in a van with this man for 2 years and we’ve seen some nasty stuff. It was practically an invitation to turn around but I was hardly prepared for what I saw. A woman in her early 30s was tearing off little pieces from her sausage, putting them in her mouth, then spitting them across the table and into her gold chain wearing, hairy chest bareing boyfriend’s mouth. That was our cue to exit THE EPIC BUFFETT. The (6th) Stretch limo was white. "Not so into the white limo. Kinda hoping for the black." Said Soucy climbing into the back with me a little after 10. "Getting kinda spoiled there Souc eh?" I said "Besides, what’s it matter to you? You can’t even see the color. You’re on the inside." I pointed out. "Yeah," he said "But other people can see." I just laughed and sighed and eventually slept. Chris couldn’t stand that I was sitting in the most comfy, front facing couch, and slid in beside me so as not to miss out on all the luxury and so we ended up smooshed together on the back seat in the HUGE, comped, s t r e c h e d ride back to New York City. * VOCABULARY: Ginormous: Really REALLY big. Cake Hole: mouth and throat. February 2, 2001, New Hope PA 4:00 wake up call on Martha’s Vineyard from brother Ben who journeys over to my cabin with a cup of chi and a tired, straight, no lipped grin. He waits patiently for me to shower and pack, then takes me in the white Volvo through the blue of the snowy, twisty, Vineyard road, which is more familiar to me than the childhood I spent traveling upon it, to the ferry in Vineyard Haven. The boats in the harbor quake back and forth in the bitter, shivering water. Ben throws my blue guitar case next to my overstuffed black bag on the upper level of the luggage rack. And somehow, this is what winter means to me. It’s the bite in the air that makes me squint and clench my shoulders toward my neck. It’s the blue that covers everything and gets under my feet and fingernails. It’s chapped hands and lips and thoughts. It’s the hissing of evergreens in the midst of a snowstorm. It’s the too early part of morning and the can’t get out of bed and the goulish vapor that coffee makes and the smell of flapjacks with syrup that dad bakes that finally lures me down the slate stairs which threaten to buckle and brake. It’s the good byes from trains and boats, which whale and grumble and churn and bolt. It’s the taste of tinsel and the sound of hearts breaking themselves into the stained glass sea. "Gu bye brother luv." I say reaching up to hive Ben a hug. "Bye Sista Slege." He hollers as I board the ferry. Thus begins the day that never ends. 7:00 car ride to Providence Amtrak station 9:58 Train to Trenton NJ and at 3:00 Rick picks me up and brings me to "The Lambertville Inn." Which couldn’t be a nicer, homier place to stay but for one thing: There’s only one room and in that one room, there’s only one bed. Not that I haven’t had to sleep in the same bed with Soucy before, but it’s not my favorite thing in the world (no offense Soustopher, you know I love ya.) But we both grumble in our sleep. We both toss and turn and hog the sheets and the last time we ended up in the same bed it was because the girl he was digging on ended up digging on me..oops Souce!…Not the most comfortable situation. But the groovy folks that booked us for the gig end up working it out so that Chris, in the end, gets his own room.  The Show was cool. It was in a high school…Oops, rhyming again. We
opened up for John Sebastian of "The Lovin Spoonful" Who, coincidentally, my
father had opened up for in the early 70’s in a room called The Night Owl
down in Greenwich Village. Our dressing room (a converted classroom) was
guarded by the coolest high school kids I’ve ever met. They helped carry our
gear. They guarded our backstage door…from what, I’m not sure…but we never
got shot or killed in any way so I guess they did a hell of a good job. One
of them was in a band called "Urban Funk Monkeys" and he slipped me a disk to
listen to. Not bad Sam.
White tinker bell lights hung from rafters. Snow blew from white shutters and the wind whipped and stung as we walked around the quaint town of New Hope. We ended up at John & Peter’s, a local club with cubby like rooms and duck your head, bent ceilings. Young handsome women and men wearing Peruvian wool sweaters and the stench of marijuana sat around the joint, slung over chairs like dirty laundry. Smoke, like clouds, gathered around the ceilings and swayed to and fro as the crowded room ebbed and flowed and gathered ‘round a brightly lit stage. A large, white-bearded man named Mt John was playing a set with a crouched up lead guitarist ripping out some brassy licks. He was the crudest SOB I’ve ever heard in my life. But the audience seemed to love him. All of his songs were sing alongs which went something like "Oh S___, Double F____-ing S______" and "I’d like to F_____ a Moose." to which the audience responded with enthusiastic hoots and hollers and laughter and applause. It was a pretty wild night with a pretty wild crowd. Whenever it seemed like he was losing his audience, Mt John (who by the way was playing a church gig the next day) would throw a couple more cuss words in there to keep the crowds attention (which worked!!) By 4:00 I was at Karla’s eating a veggie omelet with a side of hash browns. I didn’t make it home ‘til 5:00 that made the 8:00 wake up call all the more hard to bear. And wasn’t I just here? And where is my wallet? And "Could you possibly call me back in 5 minutes?" I said desperately to the automatic wake up voice before realizing it was a recording. Ouch! Arleen Shank, our booking agent’s rad mom picked us up in the lobby and drove us to the Philadelphia airport; neither Soucy nor I could remember if our fight was out of there. "Homeward bound" I said, perching a blue plastic pillow between my head and the plane’s oval window. To which Soucy responded: "Home, where my thoughts are na na. Home, where my de do de da. Home, Where my la la waiting silently for me." It was a nice song ‘til it got all stuck up in our heads and neither one of us could stop singing it and then it became funny for a while but by the time we’d reached Denver, both the utterance of the word "home" and the Simon & Garfunkel melody (which neither of us could really remember the lyrics to) we’re followed by the universal sign for "I’m going to strangle you if you don’t stop singing that song." None the less….Good to be home… "Na na na na la la da da da hm hm." February 24, 2001 - The Company Theater, Norwell, MA The hallway in the Holiday Inn is unheated and our rooms were at the end of that hall. I followed Joel’s bright red wool hunting jacket down the dark corridor, my neck tucked deep into my cashmere smothered shoulders, my hands white and clenched up in balls, clutching my heavy blue guitar case. Was I getting that cold that everyone’s been getting? Snow, which sounded like hail, hit the thin metal roofing and bounced down onto the rental cars below. Ah home. Room #245 with a view of the parking lot all quietly hushing the snow, past the ambivalent security lights. Ah home, with the heater that blares and smells like sock. Ah home, with the complimentary shampoo, conditioner and, if you're lucky, hand and body lotion. Ah home, under the brown and red floral printed polyester throw, in-between sheets so bleached you wonder why you bothered to wash your face in the first place. Ah home,…. In my dreams. "Mercury’s in retrograde," the woman behind the ticket counter said in a potent Boston slur, as I gathered up my luggage. Somehow that was her explanation for why the ferry should be pulling out of port with out me at 7am on a Saturday. Overheated already, due to the fact that I had to wear all of the clothes I couldn’t fit back into my hulking bag, I ran toward the ferry, making it up the plank and on to the boat just as the whistle was sounding. Now to figure out: where the hell is Norwell? Frankly I was too tired to be bothered then and there in the marmalade of the rising sun, hot cocoa in hand, huddled up in my purple scarf my breath billowing white in the salty air. I’m always trying to squeeze the last drops out of Martha’s Vineyard (home). That’s why I wasn’t in Norwell last night helping Soucy find his lost luggage at 2am (another victim of the inopportune planetary positioning of Mercury) and why I narrowly made the boat back to the main land. When I got into Woods Hole I called my friend Joel in Boston, who was planning on coming to the show later, to ask him: "how does one get to Norwell?" Seeing how tired and pathetically lost I sounded, he offered to rent a car and come pick me up on the Cape. Now that’s a GREAT man!! He showed up an hour later in a golden Mercury 4 door Sedan which marginally played one AM station intermixed with some Spanish and crackling snow filtered 80’s music which we somehow ended up singing along to and grooving on. We drank Tangerine Screams and blue Gatorade, bought at a Tedetski’s near the Lobster Barn rotary. When we got to Norwell we ate at a fantastic little breakfast joint called Strawberry Fair near Queen Ann’s Corner where the owners had tickets to the show and treated us to french toast and chicken noodle soup. The Company Theater was beautiful and dramatic with high ceilings backstage and bare bulb mirror lights enabling heavy pancake makeuping for theatrical performances. The cement walkway to the stage was long and narrow, and as we journeyed though it for sound check we took turns shouting (in tribute to Spinal Tap) "HELLO CLEVELAND." Brian on sound, Frank on lights and Chris #3 to take care of us back stage….Excellent and thank you! Somehow on the way back to the dressing room I got lost (as one should, when paying tribute to Spinal Tap) and ended up in a room full of stage clothes. Alone with glittery, sequin, theater costumes I felt like a kid in a candy store. Props made of paper maché, and silk flowers with plastic stems stood taught in corners along with the must and the dust and the butterflies left over from yesteryear’s performances. I couldn’t help but be drawn to the "La Cage au Folles" rack and before I knew it I was in a mother-of-pearl sequin gown with a padded chest the size of Dolly Partons, standing in my brown muddy boots in front of a full length mirror. It was just too shiny not to try on, and giggling like a school girl I ran down the echoing cement Spinal Tap hallway and back into our dressing area to show Chris what mischief I had gotten myself into. But unfortunately he was already in an interview with Channel 7 news. The Reporter and the cameraman, Michelle and Joe, must have been very surprised to see me in a men’s sequin dress. But if they were, they didn’t say so, and though I wanted to, I didn’t wear it for the interview. The theater rubbed off on me, that or the gigantic slice of vegetarian lasagna I ate right before going on. I felt energetic, dramatic, expressive, and a little silly(er than usual). My Aunt Maggie came, with my cousin Alexandra and sat with Joel and Mark Lewis, Soucy’s friend from Santa Fe who makes real good cinnamon toast. Our friends Denise, Stephanie and Shawna showed up and hung with us after the show backstage with George Howard (who is cool) before we decided to go to The Ground Round and have a glass of beverage and just way too too many "Outrageous Nachos." Freezing rain was forecast for the morning but started just after we left the Ground Round and I prayed it wouldn’t cause Mercury to go any further into retrograde leaving us inevitably stranded in Boston. It didn’t. |
