New Hope, PA – “Bye Sister Sledge” – February 2, 2001
There’s a 4:00am wake-up call on Martha’s Vineyard from my brother Ben, who journeys over to my cabin in the woods with a cup of chai and a tired, no-lipped grin. He waits patiently for me to shower and pack, then takes me in the white Volvo through the blue, snowy, Vineyard roads that lead down to the ferry. These twisty roads are more familiar to me than the childhood I spent traveling them.
The boats in the harbor tremble to and fro in the bitter, shivering water. Ben throws my blue guitar case on the upper level of the luggage rack. This is the brand of winter I identify with. It’s not a soft quiet snow, or a decorated Christmas tree. It’s a 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 fingernails. It’s chapped hands and lips and frayed thoughts. It’s hissing evergreens buckled into their roots in a windstorm. It’s the ghoulish vapor that quiet coffee makes, the smell of flapjacks that dad bakes. It’s the goodbyes hollered from loved ones at the mouths of trains and boats over the wail and grumble and churn and bolt.
“Gu bye brother luv,” I say reaching up to give Ben a hug.
“Bye Sista Slege,” He hollers across the parking lot as I board the ferry.
Thus begins a day that threatens never to end.
When the ferry pulls into Woods Hole I take a car to the Amtrak station in Providence, a 9:58 Train to Trenton NJ, and at 3:00 PM, a car picks me up and drives me to “The Lambertville Inn.” The Lambertville Inn is in New Hope, PA, and 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 and, when I arrive, I find one Christopher Daniel Soucy looking very uncomfortable sitting on the edge of that one bed. It’s not as if we haven’t had to sleep in the same bed before. Over the first year of touring I recall sleeping head to foot at least one time with each band mates. But it’s not my favorite thing in the world (no offense Soustopher, you know I love ya.)
“Darnit,” says the promoter when I get him on the phone after the 3rd try, “we thought you guys were a couple,” “Duo, not couple,” I correct. “Shoot, the hotel is all booked up at the moment,” he apologizes and Soucy and I go out for dinner resigned to our sleeping arrangements. Luckily, the Inn had a last minute cancelation and Chris, wound up in his own room.
The Show was cool. It was in a high school. We opened up for John Sebastian of “The Lovin Spoonful” (Who, coincidentally, my father once opened for in the early 70’s). Our dressing room–a converted classroom, was guarded by some of the kids. They who carried our gear and stood outside our “backstage” door, protecting us, 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.
and Todd Rotondi (right)
Photo credit: Gene O’Brien
After signing some CDs and taking some pictures, we went on the town with some friends who’d come up from NYC to see the show.
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 a local club called John & Peters. The place was stuffed to the gills with handsome women and men wearing Peruvian wool sweaters, slung over chairs like dirty laundry. We didn’t make it home ‘til 5:00 am (I told you it was a long day). The wake-up call came with a ring so loud it tripped me out of my dreams. “Could you possibly call me back in 5 minutes?” I said desperately to the automated wake-up voice before realizing it was a recording.
Ouch!
On our ride to the Philadelphia airport, Soucy and I reflected on how quick, easy and lucrative to our mini-tour had been. But something had been missing from it—something important. When we climb into Moby as a band in Colorado and make our way to the crusts of the nation, there is a commearadery forged between us. When forced to sleep in one bed, laugh at the same billboards, help each other through a hard time, subsist on gas station food, load in each other’s instruments, pick out each other’s stage cloths—that’s when the real music happens as far as I’m concerned. We are bonded as a band under the pressures of the road. While the limos, separate rooms and plane rides were luxurious, I missed the struggle and connection that comes with less. It’s interesting, I thought as I took a seat next to Soucy on the plane, that what makes the road hard is what makes it good.
“Homeward bound,” I said, perching a blue pillow between my head and the plane’s oval window. To which Soucy responded with Simon & Garfunkel’s,
“Home, where my thoughts are na na.
Home, where my de do de da.
Home, Where my la las waiting silently for me.”
I laughed but then the tune got stuck in my head and any time either one of us mentioned the word “home” we’d break into song. Unfortunately, neither of us could remember the lyrics and were forced to do “na na’s” and “do de’s” in place of lost words. By the time we reached Denver, the utterance of the word “home” was banned and if one of us slipped up and said it, it was followed by the universal, fist shaking sign for “I’m going to strangle you if you we don’t stop singing that song.”
None the less….It’s good to be home…“Na na na na la la de do da hm hm…”
