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”

Super Sunday at Shakori with Sarah Lee Guthrie and Tift Merritt

What a great day at Shakori Hills in Pittsboro, NC!

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion performed several times this weekend, and I caught up with them at 3:00 p.m. on the Meadow Stage where they played new material from their CD, Bright Examples.

My favorite song from that CD, “Butterflies,” reminds me of a day my daughter and I drove from Austin to San Antonio, when the butterflies had flown up from Mexico. "Butterflies in the road/I think we should go real slow" sounds like Victoria Williams in her Musings of a Creek Dipper days.

I noticed Zeke Hutchins was drumming for Sarah Lee and Johnny, and figured that was because Tift Merritt was playing at 5:00, but it turns out Zeke has toured with Johnnie and Sarah Lee, according to his bio on his wife's website.

Tift’s show featured Dave Wilson from Chatham County Line on guitar and a guest appearance by local Django Haskins for a cover of "Thirteen." I preferred her old reliables "Stray Paper" and "Good Hearted Man," along with the new song "Mixtape" I've played on my guitar all weekend.

So much rock and roll love in a plastic case/
Play it loud then see my face
Tift Merritt, "Mixtape"

Oops!

Oops. A word I expect from Britney Spears. A word that harks back to a song like nails on a chalkboard when it’s stuck in your head. A word I do not expect to come from the bullhorn of a major airline.

Earlier this week I received word from US Airways that they had gifted my account with 1,000 frequent flyer miles. Okay. Nice gesture.

This morning I awoke to find the following e-mail in my box with the subject line, you guessed it,

OOPS!

“Earlier this week, we inadvertently delivered an email message to many of our Dividend Miles members' email accounts. Unfortunately, one of those accounts was yours. Worse, this email incorrectly stated that we posted 1,000 Dividend Miles into your account. This was not accurate and the email message was sent in error. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you and appreciate your understanding.”

My action was to immediately unsubscribe from their mail. Next it was to write this blog. Now it is to make a mental note not to book my next trip to Austin through Charlotte on US Airways.

Bad, US Air! Very, very bad! I am not sure who deserves to be terminated more, the employee that accidentally gifted the miles or the PR person who must have consulted a teenybopper when crafting the unprofessional Grinch Who Stole Christmas e.

Maybe the company plans to streamline operations lingo so that whenever we think of US Airways, we think of the word oops:

“Oops! We lost your bag.”
“Oops! Your flight has been canceled.”
“This is your captain speaking--oops!”


Oops!
…You think I’m in love
That I’m sent from above…
I’m not that innocent.

“Oops, I Did It Again”
--Max Martin

Our House

Back in 1982 Jelly Helm taught me how to make lists in AP Biology at Trinity High School. Not lists of phyla, more like lists of reasons Ms. Herp’s hair was green or reasons it was going to be a great day. Somewhere along the way I think Jelly taught Dave Letterman how to make funny lists, and now everybody is doing it.

Without further ado, here are the Top 10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Move to Carrboro and Buy My House:


1.) You’re a Duke fan and the proximity to UNC would make you sprout Blue Devil horns.

2.) A town with a free transit system is too green for you.

3.) The neighborhood gang is too rough and tumble.

4.) The laughter emanating from Dirty South Improv would make you too joyful.

5.) The local independent music scene would be lost on you.

6.) The tennis bums at Chapel Hill Tennis Club and the canoes at University Lake might tempt you to quit your day job.

7.) Your mother-in-law in Topeka, Kansas, needs you there for dinner every Sunday night.

8.) You plan to home school and don’t need great public schools like Carrboro High School.

9.) You like box stores and the Carrboro Farmer’s Market would insult your sensibilities.

10.) The four seasons and fair weather would destroy all the pleasure of complaining about the weather.

What, you still want to buy my house? Okay, here is the link to the listing.


I remember way back then when everything was true and when/We would have such a very good time such a fine time/ Such a happy time/ And I remember how we’d play simply waste the day away/ Then we’d say nothing would come between us two dreamers
“Our House” by Madness

The Accidental Pilgrim

It’s April, whence the prologue of The Canterbury Tales (CT) sprang, and at the beginning of my trip to Pennsylvania, I considered myself more a traveler than a pilgrim. Enter unexpected magic.

Take this version of The Canterbury Tales, left as offering in a house in Pennsylvania that I trudged through as a potential buyer. I won’t be buying the sweet house, but have a look in case you would. The dear seller left this book among others on the dining table with a note, “Please, take one.” I immediately thought of my friend Susan because I seem to recall how much pleasure she derived from the Tales. Having packed hastily for my trip, I failed to add a book to my suitcase, and so I indulgently claimed this one for my own.

The night I opened the book and began to read these words, the timing was perfect:

Whan that Aprille, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims, I don’t often stay in a hostelrye, and now I realize my folly. At small inns there’s the pleasure of making the acquaintance of fellow travelers. Upon our arrival in Pennsylvania, we entered the Franklin & Marshall guest quarters and were greeted by a New Yorker, recumbent on a sofa, watching an NCAA game. He later shared that his family was giving a lecture on campus about the movie Defiance, which was based on his father’s story.

The next morning, when the person behind door number two rose, we learned that he had slept the whole previous afternoon because he had just arrived from Egypt. He was visiting the college for a high school academic advising office.

The greatest object of curiosity for me in the guest quarters was in the manager’s office—a Fender. I hadn’t brought a guitar with me, and though I was twitching to pick it up, I’ll never touch another man’s guitar without his permission. The morning I left the house, as I exited the door, who should share the doorstep with me but the manager. Our eyes locked as we did the dance of my walking forward while he waited for me to step past him. I saw a kindred spirit in this fellow guitar player. “Did you see how he looked at me?” I asked my husband as I took my place in the passenger seat. He told me he always notices.

The next day at an open house at a day school, the headmaster chatted with me about his hometown in Carolina, his university days at UNC, and his tip for the trip: Visit Wilbur Chocolates.

When we headed home at the end of the week, we averted interstate traffic by finding a road less traveled—29 South. Of all the pilgrimages I’ve ever wanted to take, it is to return to the Virginia home of my family, the Blankenbakers, originally known as the Blankenbuchers. To my astonishment, this trip down 29 South was that very pilgrimage. Our car passed through the county of Madison where the family settled in 1742, past the birthplace of the Revolutionary War soldier Nicholas Blankenbaker (likely a member of the Culpeper Minute Men Battalion), past many roads named Hebron this or Hebron that (the Hebron Register was the source of my genealogical study a couple decades back at the Filson Club in Louisville) and past the town of Nicholas’s muster, Culpeper. Finally 29 South became NC86, and then Old Fayetteville Road, which enters my neighborhood and changes names until it is my street. All these eight years in Carolina I have lived on a direct route to my ancestral homeland in Virginia without ever knowing.

My first week back from this accidental pilgramage, I accompanied my son to his art show. His class exhibited masks, and I took a shining to one and just may make it my new Facebook profile pic because spring has got a hold on me this April. Like the small fowls making melody in the prologue of the CT, I find myself at night with open eye, yet not sleeping as they somehow manage to do, because I’m down with a bad case of pollen fever.

But if this spring finds you “longen” to “goon on pilgramages,” I wish you pleasant company and magic along your way. Upon your return, offer up your acoustic memory, pilgrim.