Volume I, Number 4
In this issue:
Music and dance from the time of the American Revolution will be on the bill on Saturday evening, February 24th, as the Community Music School (aka Shelley Phillips) presents this charming evening using lots of material from two Gourd recordings.
Shelley and Barry along with some of the other usual Gourd suspects including William Coulter, Neal Hellman and Deby Benton Grosjean will perform instrumentals from The World Turned Upside Down. We'll also be celebrating the release of the long-awaited (by us, anyway) World Turned songbook, all of Barry's arrangements -- complete! -- from the album.
The Santa Cruz Shape Note Society, another organization masterminded by B. and S. Phillips, has been meeting every Tuesday for several years in Santa Cruz, and they'll be performing the music of William Billings, which you hear on World Turned and (in instrumental arrangements) Wondrous Love. If you haven't heard real shape-note singing you're missing an extraordinary experience. (You can check our new Favorite Links department to find a link to the excellent Shape Note homepage, with info on groups all over the country.)
The Community Music School's Kid's Celtic Camp (our motto: "you can't start 'em too early") is held each summer for young folk musicians aged 7-12. This year's alumnae include two fiddles, a pennywhistle and five Celtic harps! They'll accompany eight costumed students from a local elementary school in dances popular in early New England.
Barry Phillips has just returned from a trip to Madras, India, where he studied tabla and cello, had other wonderful adventures, and where he was supposed to have played on an album of Indian sacred vocal music featuring Ravi Shankar and produced by George Harrison. Heartbreakingly, schedules got changed, and Barry's ticket said it was time for him to come home, so the production will go on without him...
Todd Phillips just got home from touring the east coast with Tim and Mollie O'Brien, playing to happy audiences at every stop. Todd reports that in all those shows, night after night, Tim and Mollie never missed a note, consummate pros that they are.
Joe Weed is getting rave notices all around the country for his new album The Vultures, a collection of California beach music (e.g., Wipeout) and other favorites from the 50s and 60s featuring all-stars David Grisman, Rob Ickes, Norton Buffalo and the above-mentioned T. Phillips.
Neal Hellman turns off the computer and comes up for air every so often (see his tour dates below) to work in the garden, which will soon be in its glory, and to complete the dulcimer arrangements of Shaker music for his next book.
Martin Simpson has been to England and back on a triumphant tour since you last read of him here in the Gazette. His new blues album, Smoke and Mirrors is also getting some pretty heavy buzz, and he'll be featured on a national tour next fall entitled "Masters of the Slide Guitar," playing alongside fellow Santa Cruzan Bob Brozman, king of the National steel guitar.
William Coulter is again a member of the music department at UC Santa Cruz this year and is preparing a faculty recital for the spring which will feature Shaker material from his Gourd albums Simple Gifts and Tree of Life.
Finally, believe it or not, that alleged third Shaker album really IS nearing completion! Bill and Barry are finishing up in the studio, and within the next few months, Music on the Mountain will be born.
The following is a short excerpt (actually three short excerpts) from Chapter 2 of Danny Carnahan's first musical mystery novel, Death Dances In Jig Time. Danny is currently at work on the second in the series, continuing the adventures of his heroes: Niall Sweeney, an occasionally luckless Irish fiddler and his savvy wife Rose, a literature professor in San Francisco. Death Dances has not yet found a publisher. If you are an agent or know one and like the excerpt, feel free to contact Danny to enquire further about the book and the series. Enjoy!
The smoke hung thick at the far end of the Bag of Nails. There, between the dimly-lit juke box and a precarious sculpture of empty beer kegs stacked against the wall, Sweeney plopped himself heavily onto a folding wooden chair, his fiddle case across his knees. Still angry, he sniffed at the haze.
"What a crock of vicious bullshit," he thought for the umpteenth time. "'Nail in the coffin of Irish culture'! Christ! All I'm doing is playing tunes and enjoying myself. Who cares if I put out a goddam CD? Did I ever set myself up as some sort of fiddle guru? And who cares, anyway? Who reads that rag? Who listens to critics?"
He paused, wondering if he really believed any of that himself. Absently, he pulled three or four hunks of decaying leather off the handle of the fiddle case. He flicked them across the table one by one with his thumb, aiming at the empty pint glass. He let out a breath and slumped his shoulders.
"God, I wish Rosie were here. Just my luck to have her poop out tonight. She loves cramming bad writing back down her students' throats. Well, usually. I hope she's mellowed out by the time I get home. Yeah... I'll have her do a big, fat job on Blayney. She should enjoy that."
Around the familiar, stained wooden table littered with glassware, ashtrays and detritus difficult to identify in the low, yellowish light, five musicians labored to be heard over the prevailing din. Sweeney exchanged wordless nods with them one by one; Peter, Marjorie, Rod, Whatsisname the greasy-haired kid who never seemed to talk flailing on the bodhran with his double-ended stick, and John Kilbride.
At best, on crowded nights like this, whoever comprised the band might be able to toss jigs and reels about halfway down the bar, where the tunes would be beaten whimpering and exhausted to the floor. But accordion, guitar, banjo, bodhran and flute weren't working at projecting any farther than the other side of the table tonight. Peter and the rest looked content to work out the tensions of the week playing with each other, really only listening to themselves, ignored by all but the small, shifting gaggle of onlookers who loitered against the kegs or stood waiting for the john.
Sweeney sat listening, tapping his fingers, taking it all in. He felt more sociable now that he'd reminded himself that his literary wife would handle all the barbs from the press.
To his right around the table Peter Cole perched comfortably atop his home-made wooden accordion case tapping out The Bucks of Oranmore. Peter looked up and nodded across at Marjorie.
"Bucks into Barley," thought Sweeney automatically.
The tune came around and Peter leaned into Wind that Shakes the Barley, an old groaner, but still somehow pleasant under the fingers after all this time. Across the table, Rod Hesse relaxed his grip on the guitar neck and reached out to suck on a smoldering cigarette. He watched Peter with his heavily-lidded blue eyes. Sitting next to Rod like a drop-shadow, little Marjorie fudged the first few bars, grimaced through black curls that cascaded down over the shoulders of her thin, black sweater, then dug a series of triplets out of the banjo and rolled along with Peter. The bodhran flopped along companionably like tennis shoes in a dryer. The kid had the drum pulled tightly in against his chest. With his neck craned forward and head down he was oblivious to all but the beat of the music. The room was too noisy for Sweeney to be sure Kilbride was playing the same tune as the rest of them. But it didn't seem to bother the quiet, ruddy Kerryman. The silver-chased end of his ebony flute described circle after circle beyond his right shoulder in time to the music. His eyes, never opened more than a slit, seemed focused off somewhere in the middle distance.
Sweeney looked down and cracked open his case. He tightened his bow a turn or two and traced a figure-eight in the air with the tip. The silver wire wrap had nearly all unraveled itself, battered for years by the same sweaty thumb and forefinger. The bow had molded itself to his own untutored grip to the point that he'd determined never to get it fixed.
He drew the bow down across the green lump of rosin in a slow caress, with an extra little scrub at the tip. He took out his fiddle, leaned back and tipped the empty case up against the juke box. He tried to check the tuning above all the noise, then decided it really didn't matter. Closing his eyes, he listened for where the reel they were now playing cycled back to grab its tail in its mouth. What's it called? Doesn't matter, either. Starts on the high D, and straight down from there. He began to play.
And a large weight lifted itself from Sweeney's heart. The phrases glided down across his strings and lapped against his bow like so many waves on a tethered curragh riding the tide in Dingle Bay. His wrist was at once loose and supple, the bow smoothly licking at the strings, coaxing languid ornaments and bow skips from his fingers as he let the reel carry him off, out of the pub, away from the crowd, far from the annoyances of his job or Michael Blayney. Here, disembodied, an extension of the concentric and overlapping circles and spirals of the music, Niall Sweeney was truly happy.
Tune blended into tune, modulated up, darkened to minor. Guitar, flute, banjo, bodhran and accordion were taken up and set down in an unchoreographed dance. Through it all Sweeney fiddled, feeling invincible and incredibly alive. Every reel seemed to grow from the last as easily and naturally as a wildflower pushing up between the stones of the Burren. Sweeney darted glances around at the other musicians, who were engaged in flying off in their own internal directions while the music proceeded under its own sweet, inexorable momentum.
Finally, in silent agreement that five times through Pigeon on the Gate was plenty, the group came to an unceremonious stop on three slightly different beats. There followed a smattering of applause from along the wall. Sweeney was breathing hard as he laid his fiddle and bow across his knees. Like a long-distance runner, he shook off the perspiration dripping down his temples. As he rolled up his sleeves he squinted through the grotty atmosphere to the clock at the end of the bar. They'd been playing without a pause for forty minutes.
"That is one fine tune," said Peter, turning with his lopsided smile, the sweat plastering his close-cropped mousy hair against his high forehead. He reached out and hit Sweeney a cuff on the shoulder. "Glad you came. I can never get these other guys to string a thousand tunes together without stopping when you're not here. I end up playing by myself, which ain't no fun."
He laughed as he extracted himself from his shoulder straps to stretch. Peter was probably forty but didn't look much over twenty-five, at least in this light. In fact, Sweeney could detect no major change in him since they'd first met here in the bar over ten years before. His plaid shirt and work pants hung loosely on a spidery frame. Everything about Peter looked a little too thin, or maybe a little too long, except for his hands. These were square and muscular and were everywhere at once on his accordion. And they knew more tunes than any pair of hands in California.
"Yeah, I think that set did the trick. I feel pretty good now!"
"Did the trick?"
"Yeah, I had to get some bad energy out of my system."
"Oh. Right. Gilmore showed me the review. Pretty intense. And for the Irish-American yet. They always used to be so candy-assed about reviewing Irish records. But then they used to just talk about records from Ireland. I haven't read it in ages. How long has... what's his name?"
"Blayney." Just you wait, Michael Blayney. When Rosie gets finished with you you'll be fishing your teeth out of your typewriter.
"Yeah, Blayney. How long has he been writing for them?"
"I don't know. Six months, maybe. He comes in here on the odd night. Somebody said he was a singer, though he never joined any sessions I've been in. You've seen the guy: thirtyish, pointy beard, always wears a tie, comes on like Casanova with the women when he's had a few." Sweeney couldn't imagine what women could see in the leering likes of Blayney. Well, no accounting for taste.
"Oh, him. Hah! I overheard Marjorie once at the bar up and tell him to stop staring at her tits."
"That'd be him."
"It wasn't really that bad, though, you know."
"What? The review?"
"No. Your CD."
"Gosh, thanks."
"No, you know what I mean. You're no Tommy Peoples or anything, but that doesn't mean you can't make a CD. By the way, how many have you sold?"
"Not counting the ten to my mother? About eighty, I think."
Well, seventy-eight, but you've got to think positive.
# # # # #
His foot was already tapping in time with Peter's lead as the tune came around again. Like a shot, Sweeney was in the thick of it, wrapping phrases around himself and spinning them off into the distance, oblivious to his sur-roundings.
Sweeney's attention was shattered by the sound of one of the folding chairs being kicked with a certain fervor against the juke box. Startled, he stopped and turned as a loud baritone voice demanded, "So, don't you know any Irish music?"
Michael Blayney stared down at Sweeney with his hands in his pockets and as strange an expression on his face as Sweeney had ever seen. It was as if Blayney was trying to determine just what sort of creature was seated before him at the table. His pupils, sharp as pinpoints, bored straight into Sweeney's eyes. His lips twisted into a curious, gloating rictus.
"Okay," thought Sweeney. "I admit it. I never really wanted to talk to Blayney. Please, Lord, make this brief."
"Well, now, don't stop on my account," sneered Blayney as he circled counter-clockwise around the musicians' table, glancing from Sweeney to Marjorie opposite him and back. He moved with a flat-footed, straight-kneed shuffle, strongly indicating that he'd been engaged in some serious drinking. One lock of brown hair trailed uncombed down over his right eyebrow. His white shirt was open at the neck, ever-present tie loosened to the third button under his brown corduroy jacket. From the other side of the table, Sweeney could see the jugular vein pumping furiously under the florid skin.
"I've come in special to hear the highly-touted Friday night Irish session. I've been listenin' for all of half an hour. I'm still waitin' for the Irish music."
His voice held almost palpable derision. The thought flashed through Sweeney's mind that he was right not to take this clown's review personally. It was plain that Blayney had a chip on his shoulder for the whole damn scene. Sweeney had just been an easy, momentary target.
Blayney stood opposite Sweeney and between Marjorie and Peter Cole. Always the nervous sort, Marjorie seemed at the moment ready to explode. As if he could sense her discomfort without even seeing her face, Blayney patted her on the shoulder with a condescending smirk.
"There, there, darlin'," he began.
Marjorie McAulliffe spun about with the speed of a striking rattlesnake and knocked his hand away. "Don't you dare touch me," she spat. The speed of her mood switch startled even Sweeney.
With narrowed eyes, Rod Hesse rose all at once, his guitar still gripped in one large fist, Germanic protectiveness written all over him. Marjorie grabbed his wrist.
"No, Rod, don't. He's not worth it."
At that moment Rod didn't appear to care whether Blayney was worth it or not. Marjorie halted his advance toward the disheveled troublemaker by grabbing him and hauling him, guitar and all, away from the table by his free arm.
Blayney didn't look surprised or even to care.
"Would you like to hear a song? I'll now sing The Plains of Waterloo." He cocked his head back and inhaled deeply.
"If you wanted to sing," Sweeney interrupted in a loud and angry tone, "you could have waited politely like the rest of us instead of being so damned offensive."
Blayney slammed both palms on the table and hunched forward.
"Listen, Mister Among-the-Bloody-Nightingales... I'm warnin' you. You think you're somethin' but I know better. I know who you are. Who you really are. You're bare-ass naked to me, as well you know! I know how you tried to fuck wit' me and you know that I know. So you're not gettin' away wit' it."
More than a little confused at this, Sweeney met his gaze and held it.
"Go home, Blayney. You're drunk. I don't feel up to arguing with a drunk."
"Drunk, am I? You'll never know just how fuckin' saintly inspired I am, drunk or sober! And since it's clear you were never one for takin' hints, I'm givin' it to you plain: Get out and stay out! I'd flap my little arms and fly away as far as possible if I were you! You have my curse if I ever catch sight of you again! I'll pluck those feathers and down you'll come! And you know I can do it!"
He leaned forward menacingly and flicked a back-hand gesture at Sweeney's fiddle. "Back up your fuckin' tree... And take that wormy prop wit' ye!"
Sweeney's brain spun as he tried to figure out what was going on. He looked around thinking, "Where's Gilmore, goddam it? It's his bar... he's supposed to deal with the drunks."
"What the hell are you talking about, Blayney?" said Sweeney, standing up slowly, a momentary flush of anger gaining an edge on his better judgment. "You make even less sense in person than you do in your lousy column. Who the hell are you to tell anybody anything, here or in print?"
Which was apparently the wrong thing to say.
Without a warning Blayney leapt out, tumbling over Peter Cole and toppling him backward off his seat. Peter kicked out helplessly like an over-turned turtle as Blayney scrambled up again, his eyes still on Sweeney and glazed with hatred.
"Jesus Christ!" yelled Peter from the floor.
As he lunged toward Sweeney a lightning glint of metal slipped out of Blayney's coat and bounced with a sharp snap over the accordion onto the floor. With a disbelieving look of horror, Sweeney's eyes swept up from the black-handled switchblade to Blayney's face as he felt his attacker's fingers tighten on his throat. Without thinking, he let his fiddle drop as his hands jerked upwards in defense. He pitched back, his bow tossed clattering against the empty kegs.
His head caught a numbing blow on the corner of the juke box as Blayney's weight carried them both in a thrashing heap to the floor. Table and chairs overturned with a crash. Out of the corner of one eye he saw the polished blade just out of reach. Had Blayney seen it, too? With an explosive movement they both flailed in the direction of the knife. Sweeney found his hand gripping Blayney's right wrist as hard as it could, as he fought to get air. Blayney's mouth snarled wordlessly an inch from Sweeney's eye.
"Help!" he managed to shout, the confused commotion rising all around him. "For God's sake somebody get this lunatic off me!"
Faces and arms flashed around Sweeney, trying to find an opening. He tore at the hand clawing his throat as he desperately fought to roll over. The knife was closer. Blayney pressed down with inhuman strength, as Sweeney began to panic.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sweeney caught a quick movement. From the tumbling forest of legs, a hand snapped down with a beer bottle and delivered a sharp blow to the back of Blayney's head. His attacker's hand relaxed just long enough for Sweeney to squirm out from under him and get one knee on the other's abdomen. He had no idea what to do next.
It was done for him. A huge booted foot smashed down on Blayney's outstretched hand. A matching boot crunched almost simultaneously into Blayney's ribs. There was a yell of pain as the switchblade was knocked sliding away from the fight and across the floor.
Sweeney jumped up shaking uncontrollably. Hands began brushing him off and smoothing his jacket as he watched Joe Gilmore reach down and haul the wincing, mostly-limp Michael Blayney roughly to his feet.
"Where's my fiddle?" asked Sweeney. Marjorie McAulliffe pressed some-thing cold to his temple.
"Ow! Christ!" he jerked around to see her with a look of real concern and a wet towel in her hand. It was stained red. Looking down, Sweeney saw that blood had spattered all down his jacket.
"Here. Let me," she said and placed the cloth back to Sweeney's throbbing head. "Are you all right? I don't think the cut's too bad."
"Yeah. Thanks." He took the cloth in his own hand and looked around. In the middle of the room Joe Gilmore, a large man with a mop of prematurely grey hair and a face that looked as if it had been carved from granite had Blayney by the collar and one arm. Curious strangers gathered close, trying to see.
"What happened?"
"What are they gonna do with him?"
"Wuzzy tryin' ta do?"
"I'll have whatever he wuz drinkin'!"
"What happened??"
"You say he had a gun?"
"Somebody call the cops!"
"Shut up!" Gilmore roared over the crowd, silencing those nearest to him while the excited buzz continued unabated back to the pool table. "Everybody just shut up and calm down! Everything's under control. Just sit down and mind your own business." He dragged Blayney, stumbling and inarticulate, out of sight along the bar and out toward the street.
"My fiddle," thought Sweeney and fumbled around the overturned chairs as somebody righted the table. There it was, lying somehow unscathed in the far corner. He picked it up gingerly, fearing the worst, but it was hardly out of tune. A nervous smile flitted across his face and disappeared as he noticed the irregular razors of glass jammed into one f-hole and a half-moon gouge below the instrument's waist.
"This yours, Niall?" said a voice. John Kilbride, crouching on the littered floor, handed Sweeney his bow. It had been splintered in half, a sad, useless tangle of horsehair and once-delicate wood. Behind Kilbride, Annie hurriedly swept shards of glass into a pile.
His adrenaline faded. Sweeney sat shakily to keep from falling over.
# # # # #
Clement Street passed unseen as a morose Sweeney plodded his way the several blocks back to the car. What the hell had happened tonight? He felt in his coat pocket for the copy of the review Vin had given him. It was still there. Rosie would want to know what started it all, as if he could explain even with audio-visual aids.
Sweeney fished through his pockets for his keys as he got to the car. He walked around to the passenger side to toss the fiddle case in with the CDs. He turned the key and grasped the handle. There was something wet and sticky on his hand. He looked at his palm. It seemed to be covered in chocolate syrup under the yellow-grey light of the street lamp. There was more on the door handle.
He stepped back to get a closer look and nearly lost his balance, slipping abruptly on the slick cement. He righted himself again and checked to see what he'd stepped in. A dark pool of liquid traversed the sidewalk in a foot-wide swath, over the kerb and into the gutter. Numbly, Sweeney's head turned to follow the liquid from the car and toward the row of Art Deco houses. The car was parked directly in front of a round-arched passageway, sheltering a round-arched door.
He looked down. There, half-hidden in shadow away from the street-lamp's cone was Michael Blayney. His eyes and mouth were open in a silent cry, his body sprawled down the three low steps leading up to the glass-linteled door. A gaping wound slashed across his abdomen. A coil of intestine emptied over his lap and hung to his knees. Blayney's coat was open to reveal shreds of once-white shirt now hanging red and glistening.
Sweeney looked from Blayney's stark white face to the viscous reddish- brown pool. He wondered why he didn't want to throw up. He looked away and closed his eyes, suddenly unable to keep his hands from shaking. He stepped back, turned, and took a few paces toward the corner. Breaking into a run, he stopped again and turned, absolutely at a loss.
Just down the street a middle-aged woman hurried out of the greyness holding her collar closed to the fog and walking a large German shepherd on a lead. Sweeney stood there watching as she drew nearer. Suddenly she stopped. With a muffled cry, her hand went to her mouth. Her dog sniffed at the blood. She looked up into Sweeney's face and screamed.
#####
By Neal Hellman (The Dulcimer Guy)
You've gotta love the folk life. To be a touring folk musician is not only to love -- and endure -- the journey itself, but also the people who are there to assist you on that rambling road of music, adventure and fun. This particular tale is about my journey from Little Rock to Mountain View, Arkansas a number of years ago, and it's based largely on actual events.
The Ozark Folk Center is a wonderful organization that sponsors weekends of traditional music and instruction. Unfortunately the Center is in Mountain View, a three hour drive from the airport in Little Rock, up those very windy highways, #65 and #9. But of course, like good hosts, the Center arranged a ride for me.
Now the good people of Arkansas -- especially the ones far away from a large city -- know never to waste a long trip to town. And picking up a dulcimer teacher and performer is a worthy errand -- especially when combined with one truly vital to my new friend and driver.
As I deplaned (don't you love that word)? in Little Rock, I was met by a salt-of-the-earth, bubba kind of guy, who was very glad to see me.
"Wow, am I ever glad your plane was on time," my host bellowed. "If it were any later the feed store would have been closed!"
"So if you don't mind," he continued, "We're to make a short stop before we get on our way."
What thrifty and industrious people, I thought to myself. Why waste fossil fuel, when you can do business and support the arts in one journey down from the Ozarks and make the most out of a trip to town?
It was only when he pulled up to the large piles of chicken manure that I started to feel -- well, er, puzzled.
"Ya don't mind giving me a hand with the bags, do ya?"
Hey, I'm a folkie! I believe in the folks who are believing in me. As I helped him pile the plastic bags of chicken manure, I started to feel a very positive kind of feeling. Yes, I was truly adding more to Stone County than just my dulcimer expertise.
"This is good manure ... real good" my host exclaimed. "I know the owner and he assured me this was the best this year."
I started to visualize all the wonderful tomatoes and carrots emerging out of the soon-to-be rich Arkansas soil -- and I was part of that process. I did notice that a number of the bags were ripped, and the stuff was, needless to say, ripe. Also the back window on the pickup was, well, basically defunct; and as anyone who ever had a nasal passage could testify, the "aroma" of the decomposing chicken excreta was wafting into the passenger compartment.
We started our northern journey up highway 65.
I should add that the ripped bags were emitting a certain type of gas, and it was at this very moment that I wished I listened in Chemistry instead of day dreaming, for here was a practical application if I ever inhaled one.
"Gee," I said as we were a few miles past Conway, weaving north on 65, "do you think it's ok that there's some form of gas billowing in from the rear and surrounding our bodies?"
"Let me tell you, son, that is some fine manure. I'm enjoying the smell myself," answered my host.
Perhaps this is an opportune point in my narrative to inform you, dear reader, that this pickup truck was not the best farm vehicle that Mountain View had to offer the great state of Arkansas. It seemed to have a certain sway ... lilting a little right, tilting a little left ... no dashboard lights ... a gas gauge that went from full to empty ... flickering headlights ... I'm sure you get the picture. There was a hole by my right foot about 3 inches in diameter. This defect worked to my advantage, however, because the air coming up from the hole pushed the manure gas away from my vital breathing organs.
So we continued to continue up the now very dark Arkansas highway. Noticing that my face was turning a light shade of blue, my host informed me I was in for a big treat. His old army buddy Tom had just opened a Chinese & American restaurant in Bee Branch -- you know, Bee Branch, just north of Damascus and south of Choctaw. I was immediately suspicious!
Now don't get me wrong. I know the late Spiro Agnew called my generation "effete young snobs" but I'm just a regular guy. I am a proud graduate of Lynchburg College (motto: "Christian Education: The hope of the free world"). I've hoed tobacco in Bedford County, Virginia and one time I and a number of my compadres were arrested for fishing naked. We were charged with trespassing, lewd and indecent behavior, disturbing the peace and fishing without a license. I protested the last charge because how could I have a fishing license if I was naked?
But I digress. I just mention these events so you would know I wasn't some uptight highbrow kind of guy. Though somehow a Chinese & American restaurant in Bee Branch Arkansas -- well, you know, it just doesn't compute. Perhaps a chicken fried steak, black eyed peas, collard greens and mashed potatoes -- now that is palate-appropriate fare for Bee Branch.
One also has to really wonder just what is 'Chinese & American' food? Does it mean I can have a milk shake with my moo shoo pork or do I just order a moo-shoo-shake? I had the feeling I was getting into what the road gourmet might call a CGE (challenging gastronomic experience). However, with the manure gas ever so steaming and the hole in the floor sending ice cold bursts of wind and moisture up my leg, the thought of any break was most welcome.
As we departed the truck I noticed the light was out on the T of Tom's so the neon sign read " om's Chinese & American Food." Sounds rather Zen I thought. Anyhow the key word here was food, and I was hungry.
Tom was most glad to see us. He had his wife Zena bring us out two Bud tallboys right away, and on the house! Tom was a rather tall and hairy chap -- a great guy, one those good old boys who could somehow always keep a toothpick in his mouth and carry on with all his life functions at the same time.
I was a little concerned about his tobacco chewing habit; after all, would you order mandarin lemon chicken from some one named Tom in Bee Branch, Arkansas, who chewed on the job? The lighting was, well, you know, kind of eerie, and there was a rather large truck driver at the next table either passed out, or (God forbid) passed on, from one of Tom's Chinese and/or American creations. My confidence soared as I noticed he was breathing, and that when his head hit the sharp corner of the table, he groaned.
Zena also doubled as the waitress. What a classic: big hair, cigarette dangling out of her mouth -- truly a liberated human being. I really don't know how much detail I should go into about our supper. I do know there was something still alive in my wonton soup. It was small and it was green -- sort of a mini-Loch Ness monster type of thing. Or perhaps it was just the neon lights that made me think that a living object was swimming through the wontons. It was also those neon lights that made our sweet & sour (unidentifiable object) take on a kind of funny magenta hue.
It is at times like these that your long time touring folk artist may ponder the possibility of a change in life style. Perhaps I could use that teaching credential I have in American History, or maybe get my old job back at The Renaissance Faire. Do really important, successful people get in situations like this? Thoughts such as these occur late at night in Chinese & American restaurants in Bee Branch, Arkansas.
The fortune cookies were not bad at all and the second round of beers was just fabulous. To top it all, it was Tom's treat! (I did wonder if it would beTom's treat if I needed a trip to the local emergency room to extract that small green object that was now swimming through my lower intestine.)
Well, we all shook hands, slapped backs, and my host and I proceeded back to the truck which was now clearly under the control of what can only be described as an alien life form which had evolved out of the gas from that fine, fine bunch of chicken manure.
"Not to worry," said my host. "Just open the doors a while let it air out."
As I opened my creaky truck door and watched the gas fill the night air I flashed back to a really bad sci-fi movie called The Crawling Eye. It was was one of those great low-budget B movies that so thrilled me as a youth. I started to wonder if Tom, Zena and my host were from another planet and the chicken manure and the Chinese & American food were all just ploys to put me under their spell. The pick up would then be beamed up by the Chicken Fried Mother ship and I would be made into whatever they put in that sweet & sour dish. How could this ever happen to a Mountain Dulcimer guy on his way to the Ozark folk Center? Am I really that significant, to involve three aliens?
Of course not. Perhaps it was a combination of the methane gas and my dinner at Tom's that was causing me to doubt my very reality. These things do happen on the road and they happen all the time.
As we proceeded north on Highway 9, pushing through Shirley and Rushing, I had a spiritual thought. How the forces that be in the universe call on special people to experience strange and unusual journeys in life, I meditated, and how fortunate I am to be one of the chosen.
Oh yes. We did arrive in one piece at the folk center and had a wonderful time. And I'm eagerly looking forward to my next visit to Mountain View (see below).
Here's Neal Hellman's musical whereabouts for the forseeable future...
April 26, 27, 28
Ozark Folk Life Center
Mountain View, Arkansas
Contact: Elliot Hancock -- (501) 269-3851
May 10, 11, 12
Glen Rose Music Festival
Glen Rose, Texas
Contact: Dana Hamilton -- (817) 275-3872
July 28 - August 2
Augusta Heritage Center - Dulcimer Week
Davis & Elkins College
Elkins, West Virginia
Contact: Margo Blevin -- (304) 637-1245
Read back copies of the Gourd Gazette:
Vol. I, No. 3 - has reviews of Pavane and Celtic Crossing from Dirty Linen Magazine and a review of the Simple Gifts songbook from The Shaker Messenger.
Vol. I, No. 2 - includes Danny Carhahan's amazing tales of Madagascar and Neal Hellman's review of Martin Simpson live at the Fillmore.
Vol. I, No. 1 - includes Neal Hellman's elegiac baseball poem Autumnal Lament.
Email us at Gourd:
neal@gourd.comReturn to Gourd Music Home Page.
Last update: February 19, 1996.