A December Letter to Friends

Now that it’s December, the still winter nights are inspiring me to look inward, quietly. I’m hitting pause to acknowledge a few special moments from this year. While snippets of songs and important conversations have paved the way for the muse on this blog for years, the tones are more muted under the influence of winter's hush.

I want to remember:

Realizing I could play the song about the gypsy on my guitar.

Pulling over just to admire a Virginia stream and spotting Tristan’s twig.

Seeing those Blue Ridge Mountains and wondering how the family ever left them for Kentucky.

Rocking on the porch of the inn while trucks and sedans breezed past on the Appalachian Trail.

Turning down that rock road and taking it real slow.

Marking my nearness to the show by the lights on the Austin capitol.

Smiling from overwhelming joy and catching a friend’s wink.

Opening the shade of a westerly window in my boudoir to find a round, morning moon there to greet me.

Watching the sun rise in the east at the breakfast table, sensing all the activity in neighboring Philly and feeling glad to be tucked into a quiet residential enclave.

Acknowledging that even severe pain is fleeting in the grand scheme of things.

Looking at my buzzing cell phone on a Friday night at nine o’clock and knowing that it has to be that gal in the bayou calling just to ask me how life is.

Padding around wooden floors in fringe moccasins, checking on nothing in particular in each room while my family sleeps.

Figuring out it's best to lie in bed at night with an earbud loaded into one ear and a pillow under the other so when the sound gives way to dreamscape I don’t wake with an earbud ache.

Sitting up in bed one night because I finally heard what the music was saying.

Hearing a song and knowing I’m not alone.

The month is waning and I fear the cards will never get sent. I wish you sweet dreams for the long winter’s nap, and some quiet in your December.

-HH

James McMurtry and Walter Benjamin at Threadgill's

The point at which my daughter realizes he is the son of the man who wrote Lonesome Dove came much later than I thought. Her eureka moment occurs while white clouds sail past a gibbous moon that’s casting a light on a gray Texas sky that doesn’t promise not to drench my leather jacket or my daughter’s silken dress. And thank God the truth didn’t crash like a lightning bolt because we were sitting on metal bleachers at Threadgill’s.

An hour had passed since my drummer friend patiently flipped through the pages of the Austin Chronicle with us at the bar in the Saxon Pub, looking at all the shows for the night and making important commentary about their relevance. Jazz at the Elephant Room or authentic Texas songwriter stuff at Threadgill's: Those were our final choices in Don’s opinion, but in my mind there really was no choice.

I was hell-bent on taking my daughter to hear James McMurtry. I even explained to her that he was Larry’s son, but there must have been too much neon shining in her eyes for the message to take seed.

I wasted no time on the ride to Threadgill's. I launched right into my first Janis Joplin song in preparation for all the photos of Janis I knew we’d see at the venue. My daughter didn’t recognize “Bobby McGee.” And not because I don’t sound like Janis, because I do, er, can, with minimal effort, (unfortunately) croon just like her. But it turns out it was “Mercedes Benz” that my daughter recognized. Or maybe she said she did only to keep me from singing more Janis. We’d already passed Peter Pan Golf, and she probably had no idea how much longer she might have to ride in the car with a woman intent on singing Janis until the cows come home.

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz/My friends all drive Porches I must make amends.”

We pull into the parking lot at Threadgill's, and even though the show was on the lawn, I direct my daughter inside to do some sightseeing. And there was Janis, on the wall,singing from about a dozen photos. My daughter takes one look and says, “Oh, she looks as obnoxious as she sounds.” And that just singes a wee bit because I did look up to Janis once upon a time. But as I told this story the next day, my brother-in-law offered that Janis was voted ugliest man at UT. So my daughter’s opinion is not an outlier.

We make a stop in the loo because that’s what girls do, and on the way I point out to my daughter that the man sitting at the bar wearing a black hat is none other than James himself.

Outside there are only a couple spots open on the bleachers. I lead us to a group of men, closer to my age than my daughter’s, that are seated just far enough apart to make it obvious they did not come together. I see no reason for homophobia to keep us from sitting for the show so I ask if we can sit next to one of men, and wouldn’t you know, he scoots a little closer to the nearest man to accommodate some female companionship.

When the band begins to play, I have the unexpected delight of seeing Cornbread on bass. And just as this realization sets in, my daughter reacts to the music by leaning into my ear and saying, “Now I feel like I’m really in Austin!”

James is in the mood to tell stories, and he relates a border crossing story that casts the Canadian border patrol officers in a bad light.

The music continues and James winds the crowd up with “Choctaw Bingo:”

“Strap them kids in and give ‘em a little bit of Vicodin ‘n cherry Coke/We’re going to Oklahoma to see the family reunion for the first time in years/It’s up at Uncle Slaton's cause he’s getting on in years.”

James has got a blonde with her arm in a sling dancing so wildly that you just know she used to strip or the doc has her on Vicodin for the arm.

“He’s got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow/ Still makes whiskey cause he still knows how/He plays at Choctaw bingo every Friday night /You know he had to leave Texas but he won’t say why.”

The men sitting around us begin to critique the dancer's technique, and my daughter shoots a movie of the gyrations with her new camera.

“He cooks that crystal meth because the shine won’t sell.”

I look back at the crowd to see all eyes are on the dancer, none on the band. James doesn’t seem to mind cause he’s watching her, too. He just keeps playing his guitar and spinning the yarn.

Back home in Pennsylvania, I have a couple books on my shelf  written by James’s dad that are memoirs of sorts. On the first page of one book, Larry states that he is sitting in the Dairy Queen in Archer City, reading an essay by Walter Benjamin on the “examination . . . of the growing obsolescence of what might be called practical memory and the consequent diminution of the power of oral narrative in our lives.” But as I sit and listen to James, it strikes me that his songs are living proof storytelling will not die in the hands of our generation of Texas songwriters.

I comment to my daughter that the songs are not just hooks, but real craft, and mention the McMurtry family proclivity for storytelling. Her eyes get real big and she says, “You mean this is Larry McMurtry’s son?”

I suppress a giggle.

James starts another song, and I look over at my daughter. She’s intently listening to James sing his tribute to “Levelland.” Levelland sounds a lot like Archer City, Larry's town. Archer City is the place my daughter calls “that godforesaken, cricket-infested town” because she does remember the day her mama drove her two hours off course from Amarillo to Fort Worth just to have Larry sign a copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, only that day my she was a little girl in ponytails. But on this night of acoustic memories with Larry's son, my daughter shines brighter than the neon light.

Never on a Sunday?

Two Sundays of great music have left me as giddy as a schoolgirl. Last Sunday I hit the jackpot at the Saxon Pub in Austin, slipping into a Resentments show on a Sunday when Scrappy Jud Newcomb was in Austin and Malford Milligan was sitting in with the band. Scrappy played my favorite song, “Damaged Goods,” first song, and the show only got better as the band (Bruce Hughes, Jeff Plankenhorn and Jon Greene) drove us down a “misty avenue” of bluesy rock enchantment.

Yesterday in an Amish furniture store, not a record store, I saw a posting for Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison’s Sunday night show. Tonight, in Long's Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Kelly and Bruce took me back to my Mucky Duck days with songs like “Wrapped” and “Heaven's Just a Sin Away.” The best part of the show: The feeling that I had to buy new music after hearing new songs. (That’s a feeling that I don’t have too often anymore.) Their songs also brought back a few acoustic memories.

-Bruce once told my daughter, Ella, in Cactus Records, that she was the prettiest little girl in Houston.

-Ella thought Kelly was singing about some kind of cinnamon pastry in “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away.” ("Mom, what's a cinnaway?")

-When Kelly played her song about an old boyfriend tonight, I recalled she once sympathized with me during the early show at the Duck and played a song for my old boyfriend during her second show that same night when he was there and I had vacated the premises for the nuclear winter of a relationship gone sour.

Now I have Bruce's new CD, You and Me, that I'll be listening to for a long time, along with the acoustic memories of two consecutive Sunday nights of musical bliss.

What’s it going to take to get you off my mind?/

Summer, summer’s almost over/

Taking you right back to the world you left behind/

I’m still hanging on hoping you might show/

I don’t wanna stop and I can’t let go.

-Bruce Robison and Miles Zuniga, “Dreamin”

It's a Cinderella Story

Around the time the tales of the brothers Grimm came into my life, a song by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane began to enchant me.

Over Bridge of Sighs/To rest my eyes in shades of green/
Under Dreaming Spires/
To Itchycoo Park that’s where I’ve been

The only spires in my world were near the horses at Churchill Downs, and I didn’t get the reference to Oxford. Each day in ’68 I set foot in Mercy Kindergarten, and even first grade loomed far away in the distance. Before my mother drove me to school, she would hold me on her lap and scratch my back. We called those five minutes our “Itchycoo Park” in honor of the Small Faces song we often heard in the car.

Years ago when I met Ian McLagan (Mac) in Austin, I felt like a dream came true. And then several years later when he chose to record “Itchycoo Park” for Spiritual Boy, I was so pleased.

Two Sundays ago I made my neighbor's day when I took her to Raleigh to meet Mac. She’d been to his shows in England in the 60s. Julie was a teenager when I was sitting on Mother’s lap when Mac was first cast into stardom.

And for our night together in the Pour House, he told us the story of walking away from a band with a faulty van and sitting down in the talent office where he was selected to play the organ for Small Faces for thirty pounds a week.

If that’s not Cinderella story enough for you, here’s the new chapter. Those of us who are Mac’s Facebook friends know he wears the silver bracelet a fan gave him years ago. He’s looking for the lady who gave him the gift. My friend Julie told Mac she was the one. He told her she has to know how it’s inscribed. She said, “I know what it says. It says, ‘Will you marry me, Ian?’” Evidently, the shoe didn’t fit.

Mac shared more about his life and gave us an intimate accounting of the stories behind songs like “Glad and Sorry” and “Debris.” He rocked my world with “I Will Follow.” When he talked of missing Austin before singing “Been a Long Time,” I felt a pang to be back in the Texas capital myself. The recent show at the Pour House in the capital of North Carolina was the first time I saw Mac without all his Bumps backing him like I’m used to seeing at the Lucky Lounge in Austin. I did enjoy meeting the newest Bump bass player, Jon Notarthomas.

Now I’m ready to order Mac’s book, All the Rage. Until then, I count myself lucky to know such a charming, genuinely nice (and need I say talented) man.

Got nothing in common with this crowd/
I feel like a spaceman on solid ground/
I’ll have another drink and then I’ll blow/
I left my heart here long ago.

“Been a Long Time”
-Ian McLagan

Two Dollar Rapture

The rapture never came but the Two Dollar Pistols were reincarnated last night. The alt-country group, who disbanded in ’08, played to a packed crowd at the Farmer’s Market in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. At the edge of the baptismal waters of the Haw River, I heard them for the first time.

I thought I had gone to sleep and awakened in the mid-90’s in Houston, Texas, where a band by the name of the Hollisters provided countless hours of listening pleasure, playing songs from their album Land of Rhythm and Pleasure. You may already be familiar with the bass stylings of Denny “Cletus” Blakely from the Hollisters if you have the Webb Wilder CD It Came from Nashville in your collection.

Despite their name, last night the Pistols provided a subdued form of showmanship, discharging a steady stream of rockabilly tunes while John Howie and Scott McCall shared the spotlight with vocals and electric guitar, respectively.

Their original tunes catalog scenes from lost loves, a theme which carried over into a Chuck Berry cover of “Nadine.”

As I listened to John Howie's vocals, I kept thinking how pretty he'd sound in a duet with the likes of Kelly Willis. After doing a little research this morning, I learned he's already teamed up with Tift Merritt.



Here’s hoping there’s a future for the resurrected Two Dollar Pistols in our post-apocalyptic world.

I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back/
And started walkin’ toward a coffee colored Cadillac /
I was pushin’ through the crowd tryna get to where she’s at/
And I was campaign shouting like a southern diplomat
Chuck Berry, “Nadine”

On the Last Day

Spent a dreamy Heather morning in the North Carolina Botanical Garden, just in case it is judgment day. I strolled among the southern lady ferns, where

I found my lost acoustic dreams

I found a reminder that it could be worse

I found inspiration in the Paul Green cabin

I found somebody to love

Finally, I came to rest on a wooden bench and listened to a song about one who flies to heaven only to choose to come back to Earth for a loved one.

“Drifting I turned on upstream/
Bound for my forgiver/
In the giving of my eyes to see your face/
Sound did silence me/
Leaving no trace/
I beg to leave to hear your wonderous stories/
Beg to hear your wonderous stories."

Jon Anderson, “Wonderous Stories”

Yes, I'll Take Mine with Cilantro

The band Yes seems to be just as polarizing among music lovers as cilantro is among foodies.

Of all the things my daughter learned to like her freshman year of college, I am happiest that she reports deepening feelings toward guacamole. Upon my arrival in Austin, I like to whip up a big bowl of guac. And now that bowl will need to be bigger.

But how do I turn her on to Yes? Is Yes a band you either like or don’t like, or is it a band you might grow to love due to circumstantial associations? Probably the former.

I fell in love with the band in the seventies because having an older sister meant easy access to all things Close to the Edge. The appeal for me was the steel guitar, the voice, and the magical lyrics, in that order. (I’ve always been a lyrics girl.)

In the evenings I’d sit on my canopy bed in my second story room in Highview, hooked up to the turntable by headphones, and watch the sun set and the lights come on in downtown Louisville while listening to heady music like Pink Floyd and Yes.

Yes in the round in 1978 was my first concert. I was dating a football player, and he merely tolerated the band for my sake.

For reasons I can’t explain, years and decades went by that I didn’t listen to Yes anymore.

Yesterday, a friend posted a Yes video to his Facebook page for Rick Wakeman’s birthday. I started thinking about Yes again, and I had to find another video.

Watching a 2004 video of “Going for the One” from Lugano definitely got to me. The steel guitar intro still makes my heart race. As I heard the words again, I recalled that even my father liked the song because of the “thoroughbred racing chaser.”

In the 2004 video, Jon Anderson delivers the message so passionately, and Steve Howe is transported by the Fender steel. The appeal for me is still the steel guitar, the voice, and the magical lyrics.

And as I look at my novel manuscript to prepare it for an agent, I see the steel guitar, the voice, and the magical lyrics. Yes, I see it’s all still there.


Now the verses I’ve sang don’t add much weight/
To the story in my head so I’m thinking I should go write a punch line/
But they’re so hard to find in my cosmic mind so I think I’ll take a look outside the window/ When I think about you, I don’t feel low.
-Jon Anderson, “Going for the One”