New York City – “Mama’s Ol’ Stomping Grounds” – The Bottom Line – May 18, 2000

I was so gassed when I went to sleep last night I almost slept through the 3 am fight some noisy couple had outside my door. I was so choofed that when the cleaning lady came in at 8 am I almost let her make the bed with me still in it, and when the drilling and hammering started next door at 9 am, the ear plugs and pillow over the head trick almost worked…..but it didn’t, and I have, once again succeeded in adding another restless night to my score card. But I knew playing New York’s famous Bottom Line with my mama would help me find chutzpah enough to pull through.

When the band pulled into the city, our first stop was a Post Office in Chelsea. Soucy had word that a package from Cuba was waiting for him in New York and though it was harder to find than fur on a rattlesnake, Chris’ curiosity kept us searching for the obscure location. Chris’ package turned out to be nothing more than a letter from an acquaintance he’d met down there, saying “I hope you didn’t have to go through too much trouble to get this letter.”

While we waited for Soucy (in the heat, in the horn-honking traffic of New York) I told the boys I needed to find a bathroom and hopped out of the van. I walked up to 16th and then headed downtown. I couldn’t find a restroom anywhere but I did manage to find a shoe store (my kryptonite). Within 10 minutes I was back in the van with a brand new pair of faux-lizard-skin shoes and had all the boys laughing at me as I modeled them. I still had to pee.

The Bottom Line was just as I’d imagined — dramatic in an understated way. Mom said, when she arrived, that the dressing rooms hadn’t changed a bit since she’d played there with my dad in ’78.

The box of a backstage was linoleum filled with a bulb-lined mirror. A fan rotated in ungraceful, arthritic movements. We were the headlining band in a lineup of four acts playing as part of the “Nightbirds” series. All the bands were led by female vocalists and all of us were sharing a green room the size of a van. The roster included: Denice Franke, Christine Ohlman and “Cecilia,” a band with a really cute celtic fiddle player.

After sound check Mom & I ventured out onto the muggy Greenwich Village streets where people strolled, sipping cool drinks from red straws—kids sat on church stairs smoking weed — bodega owners stood outside their shops staring out of wet, sequined eyes —teens in baggy jeans threw slang at one another like bitter fists.

The rain didn’t start until 7:00 and even then, it wasn’t torrential. The tornado warnings didn’t begin until 8:30 at which point my mother began to get nervous. I tried to point out how much the club resembled a tornado shelter to no avail. She was anxious. By 9:00 the rain was coming down like a Broadway curtain on closing night — heavy, determined, and devastating.

When it rains like that, nobody goes out to see live music. But somehow we managed to get a decent-sized crowd — mostly friends or diehard fans who’d flown in to see us from out of town and couldn’t have foreseen the tempest. For what we lacked in bodies at the front of the stage, we more than made up for in the backstage. The green room was busting with — four bands, 16 guitars, sprawling makeup bags, cables, that freaking wobbly fan, and odd friends of friends who thought they’d just drop back to say “hi.” It was a madhouse — a bouquet of elbows.

Despite the mayhem it produces, The Bottom Line has a strict performance protocol. Each band gets 25 minutes for a first set. As they run their gear off stage, the next band is introduced with zero time to set up or plugging in. Each act, then has to wait until the lineup starts over again to play their second set. It’s lunacy and slightly dangerous (with all those guitars in the dark). t’s hectic as hell but no doubt the audience enjoys the circus of it.

My Mom was such a trooper. I idolize her. She sang backups on “Split Decisions” during our first 25-minute set and then waited, stage left, with me and all the other claustrophobic bands for our second sets to begin. Together we hovered in the dark getting bludgeoned by swinging guitar necks and strangled by flying bass cables. Mama, between songs, in whispered tones that sonded more like lulabies, recounted fantastic tales of the club in its heyday. She is the coolest mom on the face of this earth and after the show, she helped me sell my CDs!

The rain finally quit pounding as the last of the merch got sold, the gear packed and the fan finally died. My mama kissed me goodnight and sailed through the side door with a flourish of her slender fingers. Under a New York street lamp Kenny and I shuved the last of our instruments into the boot. Before I loaded myself into the back seat, Allan Pepper, Bottom Line’s owner (who coincidentally booked my mother when she used to play here in the 70s) pulled me aside and asked, “Will you come back?” and I said, “Allen, it would be an honor.”