I am on a journey of music and mojo. Of theatre and haggis. Of life. I can feel it in my bones, in my skin, in my soul. I don't dream so much as have visions. I don't walk so much as float through fields of energy.
I am sitting in Brooklyn right now. Got in last night around 2 am after driving down from Newport. We were there for the folk fest. 3 days of music and feeling like a hippie. Being a hippie. And the best kind of hippie. Not the weird, stupid, bullshit version of hippies as portrayed on shitty tv shows and old movies. I mean feeling connected and kind and happy with everyone as you dance along.
Being a hippie is all about trust. Both in yourself and in everyone around you. Newport Folk has been around forever. Or at least longer than me. And anything older than you is ancient and forever. It's where Dylan went electric. Where Joni came back last year. And where I went this year wide open for anything and everything.
It did not disappoint. First up, caught a little MDou Moctar. A magician on the guitar. A mystic. A revelation.
It was insane. There are 3 big stages at Newport. And a couple little ones. And everyone everywhere is happy to be there and for the most part cool. So we wander through the notes and chords, catching My Morning Jacket and Caamp, Goose and SistaStrings.
Then someone gets sick, and at the last minute, James Taylor walks out to do an impromptu set. At first I thought it would be okay, hearing JT. Like mellow, old timey music or something. I had his greatest hits on a cassette when I first moved to NYC after college. Back when I was on the starvation/walking diet and the world was brand new exciting and crazy and I wrote in my journal every day and listened to that album oh so much. And so James Taylor comes out and starts playing Something in the Way She Moves, and I start to cry as that time fills my soul and I am 24 and I am 57 at the same time. It's funny how much those songs have been a part of my life. Fire and Rain. Good Night Sweet Baby James. And everyone in the audience seemed to feel the same. Like something holy was happening, something real and fine.
So good. And on it went. The Heavy Heavy. Nickel Creek. Maggie Rogers & My Morning Jacket doing a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Say That You Love Me". Chance Emerson, young dude who grew up in Taiwan and Hong Kong and plays some sweet tunes. Jobi Riccio. The Backseat Lovers! The Hold Steady. And for those who don't realize it, we are all The Hold Steady. Jason Isbell. Angel Olson. Jon Batiste and Friends.
Now that was something else. He said, many times, that the show was not a concert.
I was a spiritual practice.
I believe that to be so. I know it is. Same goes for theatre, Lana Del Rey, writing, The Earls of Leicester, gardening, Madison Cunningham, Remi Wolf, taking long walks, The Black Opry Revue, writing in my journal, moving to NYC, Los Lobos & Neko Case, Gregory Alan Isakov, moving to Denver, Billy Strings who I am fairly certain has a little door to the cosmos in his mind lets the spirits in who guide his playing.
All of it if a spiritual practice.
So. I walked and rocked and swayed and swung, and now I am gearing up to journey on to Edinburgh Scotland to present a show I directed and act in a the largest theatre festival in the world.
Ever have one of those songs stick in your head but you only remember a tiny part of it? Happens to me all the time. And then I'll ask anyone and everyone: Do you know that songs that goes doo ba da do da da do da da-aa-ah?
And whomever I've asked will look at me like they think I just farted.
It's pretty much been that way my whole life.
A prime example. Fire on High by Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO. It's this instrumental song that you'd hear on FM radio back in the day. It's sort of scary and awesome and not one you find on a lot of top 40 stations, but I always thought it was cool. It wasn't one of my favorite songs. Not one I'd put on a mix tape or anything. Just a song that lodged itself in my brain long ago, to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, waiting to come back to the forefront of my mind and drive me to distraction.
That song came out in the other world known as the 1970s. Land of Happy Days, Viet Nam, Watergate, and leisure suits. A world I navigated on my bike and/or skateboard, traversing the streets of San Jose, obsessed with comic books, KISS, and after the Ralph Bashki animated version of it came out, the Lord of the Rings. I can recall hearing that song in my friend Chris Carver's family's garage. It had this backward tracking section that made you think maybe the devil could hear your thoughts while you listened to it.
If there was such a thing as the devil. And ever since The Excorcist came out, we were all pretty sure there was.
So, the song was part of the fabric of my childhood.
Cut to many years later. I'm in NYC. I haven't thought of that song since forever. I'm a starving artist, waiting tables at Bryant Park Grill behind the main branch of the New York Library, doing theatre down town, struggling to make ends meet, having the time of my life.
And that song pops into my head. Well, not the whole song. Just this one section where the orchestra goes: DUN DUN.... DUUUUUUUNNNNNN.
I start asking people if they know it.
And I get the "did you fart?" look everytime.
Years go by. I'll be at a party. I'll meet someone who seems knowledgeable all things music. I'll ask the question. I'll get the standard response.
Now, I was still drinking back then, so maybe my question was asked a bit more off key than I'd like, and a tad more garbled. At any rate, no one had a clue.
Was I mad? Had I invented this fake memory of this song with backwards tracks and a section that goes DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNNNN?
Years go by. I'm driving a rental car back to NYC after going to a wedding up in Connecticut. It's summer, and some radio station is playing all things seventies. And the song comes on the radio. The song! Now this is before cell phones, and there wasn't a note pad in the car, and I was on a bridge over the Harlem River in very heavy traffic. And worse, the song was in a long set of songs with no interruptions. I waited and waited, praying to the radio gods that they'd say who it was.
And they did! Finally, after what felt like hours.
Fire on High! I said it out loud, over and over, making sure I'd remember. My girlfriend at the time, who was in the car with me, did not find this amusing, and told me so in no uncertain terms.
So I stopped the car, opened the trunk, pulled out my backpack which had a notepad in it, and wrote the name of the song down.
The cars behind me didn't appreciate this.
I didn't care. I had found the Great Lost Song of the 1970s. I had found a dimensional door to the Carver's garage, to bell bottom jeans and AC/DC before Bon Scott died. To a piece of me.
I collect those pieces, work them into my various projects, shows I direct, roles I perform, scripts I write.
It informs who I am.
A deranged seeker of lost moments, an Indiana Jones of my own soul.
I'm taking a new show, Eigg the Musical, to the Edinburgh Fringe. I'll be writing another blog on that next, but wanted to let you all know we have an Indiegogo campaign, raising funds to feed the actors, cover expenses, and all that. More info here: https://igg.me/at/eiggmusical/x/3385268#/
