Category Archives: My Back Pages

The Night The Singer Forgot The Words

I’ve been playing guitar close to fifty years now, both solo and in bands, and outside of an occasional harmonic background “ah ah ah” or “ooo ooo ooo”, I don’t sing. First off, I’d do it badly. No English accent, no Texas twang. But more to the point, I can’t remember a lyric even when I’ve heard the tune a thousand times and the words are written on a piece of paper six inches in front of my face. It’s been an issue for me like acne on a teenage girl’s face. And then I noticed that Lucinda Williams almost always has a stand with her lyrics sitting on it while performing on stage. And Frank Sinatra, when I saw him at the Sands in Vegas right before he died, used an old fashioned floor tele-prompter that rolled the words along and for much of the show it appeared he was staring at his shoes.

Most of us who hold regular type jobs have bad days at the office, studio or store. Shit happens. You’ll make a mistake, we all do. Inevitable. Destined. Unavoidable. You ship the wrong part, give a customer a steak when they ordered fish, tell your boss you saw his wife last night at a bar with some other guy, spill red paint on the white carpet or play in the key of C while everyone else is in E. You go home, feel awful, maybe have a drink or a smoke or watch the tube and realize maybe things aren’t all that bad. Perspective is a great healer of wounds,

So let me tell you about this show I went to…

I’d been wanting to see this particular singer-songwriter-guitarist for years, and as luck would have it, the show was literally down the street from me. Not exactly a house concert, but a warm-up for an upcoming tour that just happened to be at a house turned into a beautiful venue. And only twenty bucks to get up close and personal, rather than travel later to a larger venue in the city for probably five times that. What could be bad?

The room, which I would like to note was quite lovely with a great stage set and a state of the art sound system, was packed. Twas the usual crowd for a thirty-something Americana/roots/acoustic artist these days: mostly late-fifties to early-seventies, gray hair, baggy jeans, old t-shirts and chattering about the time they saw this band or that. Everybody kew somebody that knew Pete Seeger. Everybody went to Woodstock. You know what I mean.

So after a local warm-up act who you clap extra loud and a little too long for because her parents and siblings and relatives and friends are in the audience to see her and you want to be nice, the fairly seasoned, highly talented and well regarded singer-songwriter-guitarist comes out on the stage and proceeds to play. Songs that are so beautiful you tear up. Guitar playing that one can only wish they could emulate. Vocals that are crisp, clear, on the right beat and then…oops.

They forget the words, make a joke about it. We laugh. It happens again on the next song. Another joke. We laugh even harder. This is some night we think to ourselves. Not your polished hundred buck concert in the city…but a real exchange of human frailty and emotion.

After an hour and at least six songs that get mangled and maimed, there is a hint that perhaps this singer-songwriter didn’t practice enough. Or at all. My favorite line of the evening: “C’mon…if you were going to play a concert, would you listen to your old albums to remind yourselves of the songs?”

Uh….yeah. I might have. You didn’t.

Because this artist is so good and somewhat loved, he pretty much got a pass from the audience. With each song you held your breath in anticipation of the upcoming blooper, but of the twenty or so songs in the set, he only had to stop seven times because of premature memory loss. And if you’re a baseball player, you’ll be going to the Hall of Fame with that statistic.

With all the new technology these days, I still like this old fashioned way to remember the lyrics. And take this advice…when you’re on stage and make a mistake, don’t lose your head.

“Van Gogh – Trauernder alter Mann” by Vincent van Gogh – Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

The Allman Brothers and Life of Pie

New Yorker Before you invest too much time here, this ain’t got much to do about Duane and Gregg. It’s more about a few paragraphs buried within a larger story published by New York magazine this week called Why You Truly Never Leave High School. The gist in a nutshell: everything you are today can be traced back to your days in the tenth through twelfth grades. Or maybe almost everything.

Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist from Temple University who researches such stuff, makes this statement that really made me sit up and think: “There’s no reason why, at the age of 60, I should still be listening to the Allman Brothers. Yet no matter how old you are, the music you listen to for the rest of your life is probably what you listened to when you were an adolescent.”

All of a sudden I start to understand why so many of my elders…alright, lets call them my contemporaries if we must…spend so much time waxing about the old days of the sixties and seventies, of the Byrds and Gram Parsons, the Beatles and Stones, Journey and Kansas, Manilow and Diamond. You get the idea, I’m trying to be democratic with the small “d”. It’s all tied into the development of the prefrontal cortex and your dopamine levels, and “any cultural stimuli we are exposed to during puberty can therefore make more of an impression”.

Steinberg again: “During times when your identity is in transition, it’s possible you store memories better than you do in times of stability.” Example: “I am the kind of person who likes the Allman Brothers.” Egads…a life sentence of Eat A Peach.

The extension of this and other research that’s now being done by psychologists and neurologists, are the differences in development for today’s teens from my generation. And the article, which is touted on the front cover with the sub-title of High School Is A Sadistic Institution, is well worth your time to read if you’re interested in such things.

But the thought about how our aural patterns and preferences develop, and more importantly stick with us like glue, is what I find fascinating. I know that I still am listening to much of the music of yesterday. But on the other hand, I also listen to lots of new things, and two nights ago I even spent an hour listening to an avant-garde radio show broadcast on WNYU. Yes, my son had it on, but I stayed there with him and listened. And liked it. (Is that the musical equivalent to “Some of my best friends are into avant-garde”?)

Now to be clear, the research doesn’t say that all of a sudden at age sixteen we stop developing or are no longer interested in learning and being exposed to new things. Hardly.

On the other hand, let us talk pie for a moment. When I was a teen…and would find myself getting into a particular state of craving…my go-to nibble was either the entire box of Nabisco Nilla Wafers my mom hid in the pantry or a Tastykake Blueberry Pie, which today is just a mere shadow of itself packed in a fancy plastic sealed carton. While the box may claim “Baked Fresh Daily”, there is no indication of being delivered and sold that same day. Preservatives.

Back in the old days, it came from the bakery still warm, and the side of the box had air vents for the steam to escape so that the crust remained crisp and didn’t get soggy. While Tastykake also satisfied with their Chocolate Junior, Jelly Krimpets and Cream Filled Cupcakes, it was always the pie that I’d reach for first. And if they didn’t have blueberry, apple was a close second.

And the reason I bring this up is that in terms of comfort food, in times of stress I might still reach for one of these tasty treats from my high school days. It’s the pattern ingrained in me. And I might still throw on a little Byrds or Springfield, some Moby Grape or perhaps Lowell George or the Youngbloods or if I’m feeling out of control, Pearls Before Swine.

High school was sadistic…but the magic’s in the music and the music is in me.

The New York article, which I linked above, was written by Jennifer Senior. An unlikely name for this piece.

Six Strings of Love and How Ricky Nelson Changed My Life

Like many other American kids in the fifties and early sixties, I fell in love with wood and strings while watching Ricky Nelson play at the end of each weeks “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett” TV show. I recall dragging my parents to my Uncle Lou’s music store to sign up for lessons and he said guitars were just a fad, so I took home an accordion instead. That lasted about a month.

For the next year I saved my pennies for my first axe: a black Silvertone S-623 archtop with f-holes and white pick guard that I bought from Sears and Roebucks. That guitar got lost along the way, and outside of a decade flirtation with a Hagstrom solid body electric that ended in the mid-seventies, I’ve always been an acoustic man.

There is something honest and truthful about being unplugged and the images of old cowboys out in the prairie or sharecroppers on the steps of their shacks, takes me back to times that may have been simpler or maybe not. Never one to spend a ton of money on my instruments, there are times I admit that I lust after the Martins that you see on e-Bay for twenty grand or more. I do like those Taylor guitars and the way they ring, and if you ask me, an old National steel is just too cool for words.

Whether I play them or not, being around guitars just feels damn good. In high school I hung around the Guitar Workshop in Philly, long gone now. Met David Crosby there, who wandered in with Joni Mitchell. When I go to Nashville I go to Gruhns’ and for loads of fun there’s Willie’s in St. Paul. There used to be a bunch of music stores off Broadway in Manhattan, but they’re all shuttered now.

Nowadays I go through websites to see whats new, or look through the Guitar Center catalogs that get stuffed into my mailbox. It’s a pretty lousy substitute for standing in store full of wire and wood. Sort of lonesome…

Ameri-tography: Sandy Dyas Captures the Red, White and Blues

Should the name Sandy Dyas sound familiar to you, you might recall seeing some of her work back in the day when the roots music magazine No Depression was printed with ink on paper, or perhaps you’ve read about and viewed her photography in various articles that I’ve posted on the internet over the years. Perhaps you were one of her students, or even a subject in one of her many photo essays. And if you’re truly fortunate, you own her book “Down To The River: Portraits of Iowa Musicians” which still sits on my desk for daily reflection and inspiration.

Grant Alden, founder and co-publisher of No Depression: “One of the many things I miss about no longer publishing a magazine is getting to work with photographers like Sandy. As I type this, it occurs to me that we e-mailed often, never met, and probably never even spoke on the phone. If she knocked on my door, I wouldn’t know what she looked like. And yet seeing her photos always makes my lips twitch upwards.”

Sandy: “Traveled down 80 on Wednesday for a trip to the Iowa State Fair. It was hot. Way too hot for six hours of being at the fair. But I was there and ready to find some photos. An August day at the state fair in Iowa…”

Sandy: “I started taking pictures when I was 8 or 9 years old. My dad gave me an old Brownie camera and then my parents gave me a Polaroid Swinger when I was in 7th grade, and then an Instamatic when I graduated from 8th grade. Back then I didn’t really know what a 35 mm was. My Uncle Bob had one that I saw him use occasionally and I vividly recall his slide shows at my Grandpa Roy’s house. My uncle would invite us over there for the evening when he and my Aunt Lu were visiting. He shot slides—primarily of flowers, trees, and landscapes. I was completely intrigued with these large, colorful images projected on that old screen in the darkened living room. I realize now how much those evenings influenced me.”

There was no state fair in the concrete and asphalt jungle of Philadelphia where I grew up. Not much livestock in our neighborhood. Nobody’s mom canned preserves or made quilts. I never did see a butter sculpture nor ate anything (other than a Popsicle) on a stick, or at least as I can recall. But in sixty-two when Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and Ann-Margret danced their way across the screen of the Mayfair theater over on Frankford Avenue and sang about how their state fair was the best state fair, I developed an interest.

Sandy: “I wear many hats–most are photographic hats. I teach photography at Cornell College part-time, usually 4 or 5 classes per year. Since it is not full-time and my income is about half of full-time professors, I freelance for the rest of my income. Portraiture is one of my skills and weddings have been a big source of income since 1976. I do photograph musicians fairly often but I also am commissioned to photograph non-musicians. I also do magazine and newspaper shoots–I suppose they are more “editorial” in nature but they always involve some portraits.

In a small California desert town and there was a county fair out near the lake every year. One year I drove out there, and played one of those “toss a ring over the neck of a Coke bottle” games and won a goldfish. Not a stuffed one from Taiwan, but a real live fish. I carried it around the fair in a glass bowl and took it back home to Los Angeles. He lived for about five or six years.

The five long winters living in the north country during the mid-late nineties were made a bit more tolerable by looking forward to what they call the Great Minnesota Get-Together at the end of each August through Labor Day. It’s such a huge event that the local television stations broadcast their morning shows and newscasts from the fairgrounds. Bombs may be raining down in the Middle East, an assassination in India or snipers cutting down students in Texas…but “the big news tonight is that our weatherman will be sampling the deep-fried candy bars, the deep-fried oreos, the deep-fried spaghetti and meatballs on a stick, the chocolate covered bacon and the pot roast sundae to give you the best of this year’s gluttony”.

Sandy: “Photography has taught me to pay attention to the little details in the everyday world. Teaching photography has done that too. I find myself talking to my students about getting in the zone, paying attention to the frame, slowing down and really seeing what is in front of you. Photography has taught me a great deal about life.”

Sandy’s Picture This Blog