Tennessee Road Trip, pt. XII (Coda)

I'm writing from the Nashville airport. In two hours I'm flying home, leaving the van behind me at the garage in Lebanon for a replacement of a timing belt, a water pump (that they didn't discover had gone bad until this morning, so the part will have to be ordered) and potentially a new motor. The nice folks at the garage had never heard of thesamba.com as a parts source for VW stuff, so I told him about the $800 motor I found there, and how that beats the living hell out of $3000. I believe he'd be okay with me ordering that and having it sent to them (with its new timing belt and water pump), if we get to that point. Right now I'm trying not to think about the worst-case until I have to tomorrow.

I missed an appointment with my therapist in Raleigh. Slowly trying to read his suggested book, Feeling Good.

Smart Wife booked me a flight (yet another reason why she's smart) and promised to pick me up at seven when I get in. I finally broke down in tears on the phone to her when it all seemed completely out of hand, but recovered when she offered to pick up the kids and drive to get me in Tennessee.

My dear sweet friends Mike Mayeux and Mike Costanzo got me to the airport. Mayeux, engineer/producer who I've worked with since the dB's recorded in New Orleans, picked me up at the hotel, took me to the garage to rescue some of my belongings from the van/bedroom/dressingroom/paperweight and then took me to Nashville for my flight. We got to visit a little, which was great since he was in New Orleans when I first came through Nashville last week. We bought our house in Arabi from Mike and his family, and he was, in my estimation, the finest recordist in the Crescent City; he co-produced Vermilion with the Continental Drifters. Finding work in Nashville has not been an easy task for him as it is a somewhat closed community, but Mike has such good ears that I'm not worried too much about his future.

The final insult was the T.S.A. taking my blackberry jam from the Loveless Cafe away. It was a gift for my family, especially for my five year old who loves blackberry jam. I cannot begin to tell you the loathing I have for that agency, but I know, somewhere in my heart, that we are all safer in the skies not having a jar of homemade jam flying with me. "The T.S.A./took my jelly away" to paraphrase a Ramones' tune.

Oh yeah, and Antoinette K-Doe passed away this morning, all on a Mardi Gras Day. She will be sorely missed, as will her contribution as an ardent supporter of the New Orleans music scene. Who's gonna trot the Ernie K-Doe mannequin around now? Very sad.

I'm so ready to go home. What a trip. I'm fine, my life is fine, this is just a series of small setbacks that can easily be dealt with in the bigger scheme of things; they're irritating, expensive and inconvenient, but not insurmountable.

Thanks for riding with me, and I hope you dug the posts.

Tennessee Road Trip, pt. XI

I was going to say that, other than sitting in the back of a Fayette County police cruiser this morning for half an hour while my van was being searched for contraband, the trip home was easy and nothing special. The officers did not find any materiel and let me proceed with a stern admonition and my promise to always be a good boy.

That was before it broke down outside of Lebanon and was towed to a garage. This time, at least I was somewhat close to an exit on Interstate 40 than before, so I walked up to the BP station and asked about a garage as I fished for my wallet in vain. The lady at the register said there was none. I was out of breath and slightly exasperated, so I hissed something under my breath like "what, do your cars never need repair?" which went right by her fortunately. She gave me the number of a towing service, and the truck showed up just as I walked back to the dead van/bedroom/dressing room/paperweight at the side of the highway. The driver saw me clawing at the door as the Eurovan rose to its towing position and said "You lookin' for a wallet?" I nodded, and he told me he'd seen one between the seats. Losing my wallet would have been the coup de grace, all this having happened before noon.

The trip home is conspiring against me to take far longer than it was supposed to. All I want is to be with my family at my house in Durham, decompressing. Instead, I'm waiting to spend more money that I didn't make to fix my car so that I can drive all night.

I hope there is no f*cking Day 12.

***

Diagnosis: out of coolant, but more importantly, a bad timing belt that has to be ordered, which will arrive tomorrow morning at 10:30. Installing it will cost around $700. So there is going to be a Day 12 after all, and an expensive one.

There is also the possibility that, new timing belt be damned, I might need to replace the engine. The nice mechanic guy said that he could get one for just under $3000. What a bargain. I found another one in New Jersey for $800, and I'll have to see if these people will let me get that one sent to them instead, if I need it. Doesn't sound like it though, as they have one specific place they order parts from.

I am staying at a motel near the garage. I'm trying hard to keep my attitude happy, or at least productive. Really, though, I feel like crying and kicking a wall, so I will do my level best to keep that in check.

I'm going to try clicking my heels together and saying "there's no place like home, there's no place like home." With the luck I've been having today, I'll probably have security down at my door for disturbing the other tenants.

Tennessee Road Trip, pt. X

All right! We did a good job tonight at Otherlands. What a relief!

I guess I was sweating it a little. The Folk Alliance convention was not exactly what I'd expected, and I wasn't sure by the end of the day yesterday whether we actually did belong at that confab, being old pop rock guys and not modern Woody Guthries. It's not that what we do is anything less than sincere; but we have never been the most portable of rock bands over the years, and this is our new step into uncharted territory that practically requires portability. Will our songs make the leap into the Quiet Realm of Folk?

Apparently so. It sounded good to me, and the audience seemed well pleased with what they heard.

Uncle Monk opened the show. That is Tommy Ramone (of THE Ramones) on mandolin and Claudia Tienan on guitar. Both of them sing, and it's very pure and rustic and pretty bluegrass they write and play. It ain't "Blitzkreig Bop" by a long shot.

Chris, Ilene and I plugged in, and she started the thumpy rolling riff of "Lord of the Manor", a wonderful Everly Brothers song we've played together since we toured for Mavericks (we're big on those guys, could you guess?) From there, we went straight into "Early in the Morning" and then our take on "I Am the Cosmos" by the late Chris Bell (of Memphis and Big Star). We try to play that song more like the flipside of the single that Chris Stamey's CAR Records put out in 1978, "You and Your Sister", much more delicately and without the Beatley bombast of "Cosmos"'s original version. I think it's a great and reverent tribute to one of our influences, and I hope the Memphis audience found it that way as well.

We rolled through a lot of songs. Ilene nailed the bass lines to everything and kept the rhythm incredibly accurate, as though there was some invisible, inaudible drummer that we were playing to. Lots of stuff from both Holsapple/Stamey records. A couple of dB's songs. The usual panoply we try to deliver. The singing was tuneful and easily accomplished, which was nice; sometimes it can be a strain to sound good.

The audience was full of Folk Alliance stragglers and a lot of my ex in-laws, who were all very sweet to me and stuck it out to the end to hear Ilene play with us. I was very happy to see them after all this time.

As Chris has an early flight, we left Otherlands fairly early and got home before midnight. I'm still a little revved (what I refer to as 'the second set', that downtime after a gig when I'd still love to be playing) so I'll finish this up before the long ride home tomorrow.

Yay! Home! That sounds so good....