then mama we got a problem that’s nationwide. Just got back from retrieving 2 cups of “coffee” and just staring at the free breakfast which was incomprehensible. Just show me an apple, you know? Good morning. It’s Mt. Vernon IL out there; thunder woke me up and I just lay here for awhile, listening to Skip James while the storm passed over. Looks like rain all the way to Iowa City. I’ve played Iowa City on Easter weekend many times over the last several years, without planning it that way. We’re playing there tonight, you know–at The Mill. Hope you can be there, for the music, and for the hang. Tomorrow in the SideBar at FitzGerald’s in Berwyn, IL. Long drive for two shows; I plan on making them count. Gonna try to pull a couple of songs out that I haven’t done live in a while.
I brought 3 old journals/notebooks with me on this run–doing preliminary work for a new project that Joe and I are planning. One of them is from the Spring of 1992, a few months before I moved to Nashville. Here’s an excerpt from April 14:
“Last night’s dream of (John Lee) Hooker . . . , turning from me so I couldn’t see what he was playing–his last chord–he reaches up to the tuning keys, raises one string’s pitch way up; in the dream the effect had incredible sonic power.
Other dreams–in jail, other inmates having free access to my personal belongings, including one box of Shed-05. (the record I made and released on cassette, which eventually became “Carnival Time”) Somehow I got free to walk a neighborhood that was dark, foggy–plenty of sharp sticks angled toward my eye-level eye. Turning past one of these, a doll-sized monster turned phosphorescent and showed vampire teeth–then reached to touch me–gave me a sensation like touching fiberglass–itching, burning. I passed a billboard advertising an all-woman guitar duets record–the pairing I remember was Odetta with Cordell Jackson . . .”
Okay, enough of that. But Odetta and Cordell, that would’ve been cool. Hope to see you this weekend, prairie-dwellers. I’ve missed ya!
It’s John Lee Hooker’s birthday today.
see you tomorrow, Kevin!
I’m glad to hear that someone else dreams about guitars. Takin’ “Down to the Well” on the road with me today, waiting for the new record. Travel safe, Kev.
Kevin,
For some reason I have not been able to get the guy who played in Ruston out of my head. Seems as though music strikes like lightning and in rare instances it hits those who can replay it to others.
Cobb