Conversations with Indiana Musicians

When I visited the Midwest a couple of weeks ago, me and the family took a little trip within a trip. My parents live in Illinois on the Indiana border. My father rented an SUV and me, him, Mom, Brother and his Gal, and a Dog all headed to Southern Indiana. We went to a couple of beautiful state parks, including Clifty Falls; visited the Thomas Family Winery in historic Madison along the Ohio River; and, stayed at a really cool, super dog friendly hotel in Columbus.

Down in Nashville, Indiana – a quaint and groovy little tourist town – we hung out at a Microbrewery. (There was an unfortunate incident with Bubby, our Boxer, but I won’t get into that). They had live music on the patio, a singer/guitarist was featured.

“Who’s he sound like?” Dad leaned over to play his Betcha Don’t Know Game.

“Neil Young.” Of course I knew. Who the hell else sounds like Neil Young?

When the musician went on break, I chatted with the lanky, around fifty, slightly built, nerdy redneck with a buzz cut, wearing old jeans and thick glasses. “That was great! Do you play here all the time?”

“Oh yeah,” he had one of those wonderful Southern Indiana accents that non-Midwesterners would mistake for Kentucky. “I play all over. In Columbus and all the bars.”

“And you work? You like it?”

“There’s work, sure, but it’s competitive. Guys pulling crazy shit…But I don’t do it for the money or the attention…”

“You do it because you have to.” I knew exactly how to end that sentence. I’d heard this all somewhere before.

“Yeah.”

My folks were getting ready to leave, so I said a quick farewell. As the family was heading back to the car, I lingered to look at the old timey buildings. From behind me, absent-mindedly uttered, “I need to smoke a bowl.” I turned. It was my Hillbilly Neil. “Oh man, what the hell am I saying?” he touched his hand to his forehead. He was right about that. It was still Indiana.

“Oh honey. I’m from Venice Beach. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

A little bell dinged inside his head, “I grow it in mason jars and in with my potted plants.”

I smiled and considered following him. I think that is why he had uttered his intentions out loud. The happenstance tone was merely to make it seem accidental. You have to be careful with musicians. Very, very careful. They know all about striking chords.

“Gotta catch up with my Dad,” I waved and trotted to my family.

A couple days later, when we had returned from our trip within my trip, I had dinner in Terre Haute, Indiana at TGI Fridays with my childhood friend and her family. This is a very different part of Indiana. Not much tourist appeal to the stinky Wabash River, the Creosote plant and the place where they electrocuted Timothy McVeigh.

Regardless, dinner at the mall was wonderful. The company is all that counts. I had not seen my friend’s mother in twenty years. Her sister was so funny and delightful, I couldn’t get over it. I never remembered her that way, but then, I hadn’t seen her in three decades. What the hell had I known as a child?

My friend has two sons, one who is a wrestler and getting ready to enter college. I had been reading all about him on Facebook. The older one is a musician who plays nine instruments, including guitar, banjo and mandolin. I had not know this last fact, until that day.

I loved this young boy, a wonderful pale teddy bear, his shoulders thrust up to short red hair and sideburns, rolling his back into the accident baby’s “I’m sorry I’m here” posture – a held physicality I know all too well. He is married to his childhood sweetheart, the young woman he has been with since they were fourteen. He is an atheist, but not the angry kind. A gentle young man who pays close attention, he has to understand before he believes.

“So, do you play with a band?” I asked, wondering why someone like him would be in this part of the Midwest. As I had observed in Southern Indiana, around Brown County and IU, there is actually a decent music and art scene. But again, we were in Terre Haute…the “armpit of America” as Steve Martin once dubbed it.

“I had a band at school, in Florida. We recorded out in San Diego.”

“You don’t play with guys around here?”

“Well…” my new young friend lowered his eyes in genuine humility and softened his voice to match, “It’s hard to find guys around here who play at my level.”

“I bet.” Something about him made me trust, implicitly, his self assessment. I knew he was talented.

He went on to the second major issue, one not exclusive to geography, “And, then a lot of guys just want to sit around and smoke pot. So we don’t make any music.”

“I can see that.”

“Or…” and I should have seen this coming, but I forgot where I came from, “They just want to play Metal.” There was a little nausea in his throat.

“Of course they do.” I almost laughed, but the thought of this poor young man and his banjo and a Death Metal Cover Band in some forty year old guy’s mother’s garage…

I told him a few funny musician stories and quotes from guitarists I knew in San Francisco and LA. My young friend shared some secrets of the trade, confirming long held suspicions I had about his sort. So sweet, so open and so honest…I so enjoyed his youth.

“Get out West!” the last thing I said to anyone right before I left, my belly full of Jack Daniel’s salmon and fried cheese. Even if I am scared of how it will change him, I recognize a fish who was born into the wrong pond.

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Addiction

I am addicted to swimming in the Pacific.

A perpetual wader, knee deep was as far as I once would go.

I float out now.

My feet cannot touch the sea floor.

At the mercy of rolling and crashing and saltwater up my nose,

Headfirst – thrust up and back – I completely surrender control.

Had I this addiction from arrival in Venice,

I might not have had sex with the wrong sort;

Like the the suicidal Indiana Catholic and the stress shattered Israeli SEAL;

Or, the divided and severed, monumentally insane, Argentinian guitarist.

Oceans hold more than weak men.

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Guitarist in the Yard

Last night, I awoke, naked, to discover a guitarist in the yard.

Hiding under Grandma Toots’ orange and green afghan, I tried to go back to sleep.

Slumber impossible through spotty plinking and the warbling of familiar melody,

I slipped into clothes, then under the stars to join a hearty throng of three.

 

Wood and strings screwed around on, adeptly, by a wasted man singing so loud,

I thought sure someone would call the police.

A beer spilling doggie tail sent bottles swooshing;

While Stairway to Heaven (picked as a joke near a hot iron stove),

Rolled laughter through good company.

 

Hitting my bed after midnight – in comfy pajamas -

Nothing on my mind, but the awesome surrender of sleep…

“We lost the crowd,” I heard murmured outside my window,

Just before I gave myself to dreams…

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7A: The Passing of Davy Jones

The death of Monkees’ singer, Davy Jones, keeps crossing my mind, bringing up a lot of old memories and nostalgia, as these kinds of passings often do.

Davy was my favorite, like he was with so many. I remember his charm and comic timing on the show. Stage trained, he sang with warmth, sincerity and great fun. Though he did whack a mean tambourine, his true instrument was embodying cute with grace. He was one of the Monkees’ two primary lead vocalists, but all the guys were featured. Mickey Dolenz sang most of the group’s biggest hits. As far as having a front man, the Monkees, as much as any band that has ever been, was a true ensemble.

Dismissed as bubble gum by most music critics, the Monkees were defended by one of the Great Daddies of the Counter Culture, Timothy Leary. He saw them as bringing the hippie message to children and tweens (word, of course, not yet coined). They were probably my gateway to the Beatles, though I was already listening to Janis Joplin and old Motown by the time I was in 6th grade.

Despite being a fabricated band (or because of it), the Monkees recorded tunes by some of the best song writers of the day, including Neil Diamond. Late in the 60s, Mickey, Peter, Davy and Mike worked with a young Jack Nicholson on their one movie, Head. Composed in a hotel room with a giant bag of weed, it was what you’d expect from the circumstances.

For Mickey Dolenz, and especially Davy Jones, they were actors cast as guys in a pop band. It was a bit absurd, in a way, that they would be expected to play their own instruments and go out on tour. An actor, hired to portray a doctor, doesn’t go to an actual hospital, when off set, and operate on people. But so crazy were girls for them, the Monkees had to deliver. Mickey Dolenz learned the drums in a matter of months, a task made more difficult for a right handed guy being taught on a left handed drum set.

As far as the band’s first two albums, they were not allowed to play on the records. It was all studio musicians. This was particularly hard on Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork. Both good guitarists, Peter Tork had a degree in music and was proficient on numerous instruments. There were constant battles with the studio for increased creative control. After their second studio album, bolstered by wild popularity, the Monkees pushed out their commercially successful producer, the “man with the golden ear” himself, Don Kirschner. He took his marbles (in the form of the soon to be Archie’s smash, Sugar Sugar) and went home. At that point, the Monkees were in charge of their music. Not bad for the pre-fab four, even if they did sacrifice continued mainstream popularity.

Incredibly beloved by their fans back in day, the Monkees enjoyed a couple of revivals in the decades that followed. In the mid 80s, the series picked up a new generation of fans on MTV and Nickelodeon. The only thing that kept their Christmas Video (holiday medley recorded with the VJs) from reaching number one on the MTV Daily Top Ten was Bon Jovi’s video for Living on a Prayer. The hair band of all hair bands locked the Monkees out of the top spot the entire holiday season. I remember you could call in and vote for your favorite. Several times, I voted for the Monkees (all in their 40s at that time). Never once in my life have I ever voted for anything else via telephone or text, and that includes American Idol.

I saw the Monkees twice in concert. One show was in northern Indiana, a city called Merryville I think, where we stayed in the same hotel. Weird Al opened for them. Though never a huge Weird Al fan, he was a more appropriate pairing for their semi-vaudeville style than when Jimi Hendrix opened briefly for them, during one of their first tours in the 60s. The boys loved having the guitar god around, but Hendrix quickly grew too frustrated with the thousands of girls, who screamed non-stop for the Monkees during his entire set. He left the tour early with a one fingered salute to the teeny boppers on his way out.

In the mid 80s, I met Mickey Dolenz at The World of Wheels in Indianapolis where he autographed a picture. When I was in junior high, I had that photo hanging on my wall, along with reproductions of Monkee’s posters from back in the day. I had all of their albums on cassette, which I had ordered from Rhino Records or bought at Honey Creek Mall in Terre Haute. So familiar I was with their catalogue, I had phonetically learned to sing The Monkees Theme in Italian.

By the end of my sophomore year of high school, I was over the Monkees. With the release of I Want Your Sex, fantasies that George Michael would take me to prom and ravish me after, replaced holding hands and Eskimo kisses with Davy Jones. Sadly, George wouldn’t be my last or only gay crush, but he still indicated a certain kind of maturity on my part. So, tapes were thrown in boxes, posters rolled up and stashed or tossed away, and that was it for me and the Monkees and my time travel fantasies to be Davy Jones’ true love.

My favorite Monkees song of all time is and always will be Daydream Believer. Maybe it is because my mother used to rouse me for school when I was little, by calling, “Wake up Sleepy Jean!” Maybe it is the light and that little smile in Davy Jones’ voice. Maybe it is because I can see him, so short, so cute and so sweet…My first celebrity love.

Oh, I could hide ‘neath the wings of the bluebird, as she sings. The six o’clock alarm would never ring…Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh what can it mean, to a Daydream Believer and a Homecoming Queen?…You once thought of me, as a white knight on his steed. Now you know how happy I can be…Cheer up sleepy Jean…

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Iva Bittová in My Feet

I had the pleasure of seeing Iva Bittová, an experimental violinist from the Czech Republic, play recently at the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica. Improvising with her voice in several languages (including her native tongue, English and Yiddish) and playing in multiple genres, Iva Bittová was rather fearless.

She came out a capella, in what seemed an ancient language. Summoning voluminous reaches of sorrow and pain, there was no messing around. In response to Iva Bittová’s presence, so strong and multifaceted, two women walked out. It wasn’t for them.

Iva Bittová stepped evenly through the entire space, singing with such luscious layers of emotion, it was a little while before I could look at her. Molded into a bean bag, wishing my poor dog walker’s feet would stop hurting, I was grateful for the weight of her spirit.  Her aura, stuffed into what was not a small room, massaged my bones. Clean and strong, she was easy to breathe. By the end of the evening, the audience was warm and rapt.

Stunning throughout, in a rich and complex dialog between her voice and the violin, she did fall back on the safety of cute perhaps one too many times. Since she is so completely original and I don’t feel music these days, it is hard for me to say what Iva Bittová is exactly, although I was utterly fascinated.  If I could have felt music on that night, I am positive I would have felt her.

On duets, originally composed for two violins, Iva Bittová split the parts between the instrument and her voice, performing the pieces with excruciating concentration. Also included in her set, an original song inspired by quotes from Gertrude Stein and pieces by Mozart and the Beatles. She was playful on the kazoo, and several times with a little girl sitting next to me in the front. Addressing the audience, she was charming and gentle; also, honest in admitting she did not have a mind that could be expected to perform songs in the order they were listed in the program.

The violin, the melodic strokes and screeches, lent itself to jiggling the feet. So, I jiggled my poor feet. They were happy to have been jiggled. Since Iva Bittová slipped in through my toes on that sweet little night, my feet have been popping and cracking, bones and joints finding their way back to where they fit, after so long an out-of-place tour beneath my skin.

If the feet can come back, there must be hope for the rest of my tired and broken hearted body. If I am patient and don’t try too hard or push, I’ll feel notes and vibrations again. If Iva Bittová can sneak in through my heels and toes, rhythm will poke into cracks and tears in the veneer…

While waiting on a subway platform, perhaps a street performer’s saxophone or trumpet rattles the head, nesting in the crown. Weeks or months later, I might mosey past a piano, twiggling high up on my belly, just under the ribs. More time passes and, at a random coffee house or street fair, a guitar or banjo will jostle the flesh of a dormant heart, so the chest trembles like a giant barrel and doesn’t stop until I am dead in my bones.

Or, maybe it will happen all at once, like falling into a symphony, almost drowning before realizing it is as simple as breath…

For now, silence is good company…and Iva Bittová is in my feet…

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee.