Hank Williams' Coat

Two days off in Cleveland. The skip loaders are still shoveling the snow away. Drifts four feet high on the sidewalks. Our friend Alec Wightman of Columbus got us into the secret vaults at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, where we saw Hank Williams' coat. In the basement, never on display. Inside, the label said: "Fashioned by Nudie of Hollywood." There was a small nude woman on the label. The coat was probably made in 1950. I remember meeting Nudie at a Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers show in L.A. 1967 or 1968. Nudie drove a cadillac which had an interior covered in silver dollars. Huge set of longhorns on the front hood. The same guy who introduced me to Gram Parsons and Nudie, introduced me to the work of Charles Bukowski, who was writing for a newspaper called "Open City." I was the only person alive who had kept all those Open City columns, and Bukowski needed them one day. That's how we got to know each other. Now I'm looking out the window of a Holiday Inn in Cleveland; see two cops riding by on horses. It's a long way from Hollywood, as Steve Young says. And Hank Williams' coat hangs in a basement of the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. Blues in every pocket. Leonard Cohen was just voted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, a class act. Once again he recited "The Tower of Song." "I asked Hank Williams how lonely does it get, but Hank Williams hasn't answered yet...."
Yes, Hank's coat is hanging in a basement in Cleveland. And I'm glad I'm still on the road.

After the Great Blizzard of 08

Guy in a white beard claims the blog lacks blood and guts. Edge! Sordid details! You want Bukowski? He's a doornail now. Dead. I think we agreed to add a few more web blogs to see if we could extend out into whatever cyber-space is... and add a few minds and bodies to the listener base. But it's a pain in the ass and seems bloodless. The bottom line is we believe in the songs. The blog is just a daily excercise in road rage and trail work. Some people enjoy the boring details. Others expect literature and the level of song. The mysterious door to great songs will never be opened in a blog. The word "blog" is ugly. Go ask Alice. Well, what am I thinking, dear reader? Literaure is a dead pony. Bob Dylan killed poetry in America, or at least the need to even look at poetry, and every hack academic lit teacher at every community college knows that. USA Today and The New Yorker etc depend on the hope of new and happening novelists, poets and songwriters - the rickety card table of our culture is a collapsing. The high water mark was Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde".....the great journalists were Grover Lewis, AJ Leibling, and Joseph Mitchell....the great boxer was Muhammad Ali....the great novelists Hemingway, Salinger, Greene....we've been smothered by political correctness (That's why Spaulding Gray jumped into the East River.).
At least the goddamn election is a horse race of the first order.....golf courses should be turned into Buffalo reserves....Insurance salesmen are still pushing the heart attack machine....I won't record another record of new songs until I think I have 12 great ones. (from my own heart view)...songs I want to sing.
Those record exec's who claim downloading destroyed the business also know that most young songwriters cannot come up with enough songs to fill an album...so one-song downloading fits the younger audience. The average NPR and Digital Radio listener still wants to hold an album in his or her hands.....still wants a work of art. We are all praying for that experience. Art! A wall filled with Van Gogh paintings.
Enough ranting....we survived the blizzard of 2008. We have a great tour of the UK solid in October...I want a case of Chalk Hill Chardonnay....can you arrange it? The guy with the white beard? Then I will continue to deliver the rant.....your reporter from Cleveland....in the shadows of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Chicago and The Blizzard of 2008

Fitzgereld's was full Friday night in Chicago. Great show. Great sound system. Thanks plenty to Mary Lou Lowry and a bus load of folks she brought in from the Southern suburbs. Allan Shaw was there, who has a great website for old folk music www.rediscovermusic.com. Stayed in Oak Park across the street from the Hemingway museum, which was dissappointing. He was born right up the street in an old Victorian mansion. Anyone questioning the old man's lasting power as a story teller should re-read "A Moveable Feast" or, the best thing he wrote, the last chapter of "Death in the Afternoon," which speaks about writing and what was left out of the book (which itself is out-dated.) Drove off the next morning into a twelve hour nightmarish dance with "The Blizzard of 2008" which dumped a foot of snow on highway 70. Twelve hours into Columbus, Ohio. Would have been faster with Clydesdale horses pulling the car. Now we're looking out over Columbus, as salt trucks and tractors try to dig the city out. Show last night was cancelled, but it's on tonight in the old German hall. It's a long way from El Paso.

Madison Square Gardens

Cafe Montemarte in Madison. Had to fight off the loud enthusiasm of talking heads and
bad sound system, and come out of this fifteen round gig with a black-eyed triumph.
Some nights one gig can seem like three. The food was great. Madison seems to be a
cultural town. The Capitol is there - looming large over frozen streets and used book
stores. A lot of this sounds like hack writing and whining, but I'm gonna force my way
through to see if I can do a full tour journal. We are filming a bit as well. Three possible
films on the line: tour film, film of Ian Tyson and Tom Russell's workshop at Elko (lots of
great Dylan stories); and the big film on the west - a woman ranching alone in the West -
Claudia Russell. Half way there and need two hundred grand to finish it - if there are twenty
investors out there. Should turn a profit and garner a few awards. Chicago tonight. Columbus, Cleveland, Minnesotta. God's country. Dylan country.

Frozen Milwaukee

Chill-factor minus 50, 31 people snow-sledded into the show. Die-hards and relatives. Received two birthday cakes, and ate Thai food in the dressing room. The hotel walls were full of old 8x10 photos of comedians and transvestite strippers. Some nights life on the road hasn't changed for 100 years. But you've still gotta suck it all up and go down into the well. My cousins showed up, who wrote a book on chickens, and now they've written a book on cheese. Last time through I saw a good Francis Bacon exhibition at the Modern Art museum, I saw who influenced one of my favorite painters, Fritz Scholder. Tonight it's Madison, Wisconsin, which seems to be the hip music city around here. Over and out.

Ann Arbor

Enthusiastic crowd on a Monday night in Ann Arbor. This was voted the "Folk Club of the Year", so I sang them the "Song of the Year." It was freezing weather outside, winter holding on in Michigan. Sold a lot of Charles Bukowski prints. The American political race for once tonight is an interesting horse race. Here we are in frozen Milwaukee with a night off. Looking for a place to have a Martini. Last night I sang the new song "Criminology" about all the times I've had a gun pointed at my head. It went over. Stopped at a Borders and bought an Amy Winehouse CD to check it out, also discovered a Penny Lang record, that Gretchen Peters turned me on too. I think it's called "Sun, Sea, Silence", something like that. But it's got two great covers of Rosalie Sorrells songs on and a cover of Dylans "One Too Many Mornings." Funky production, really worth checking out. She's been around a long time, you can feel the miles in her voice. Over and out.

The Sermon on Mount Olive

March 1. Mt. Olive, Illinois....historic Turner Hall. 340 people packed into a 1943 small town hall. They still use a human "pin boy" to set the bowling pins in a one lane alley where promoter Ed Becker bowled a 300 game 20 years ago.
This gig was something out of a Woody Guthrie song.
Gretchen Peters and Barry Walsh shared the bill and
two or three encores later we stumbled out into the frozen American night. The whole town was drunk and the gig was good. Drove nine hours to Ann Arbor and listened to Bob Dylan, Jim Ringer, Joe Ely and Paul Siebel. There really IS an America out there, and it's in the middle of Illinois.....in the winter. TR