when i wake up in oklahoma its not so ok.
it’s a sad day. hard to explain why.
could be because you got to have one every now again to balance out the good days. could be because of the strange dream i was wakened up from when my phone rung. its all left me with a sadness. then i left the bus to get some coffee and all that was there was a cracker barrel, which is where my dad used to like to go. so i began missing him, him and his wife having just passed away last december.

it’s just a sad day.

when i enter the restaurant the rest of the bus are all sitting around a huge round table. there is no more room and i saunter off to read the sad newspaper.

it’s just a sad day.

then the others all leave the restaurant and i sit there finishing my sad eggs.

cause its just a sad day.

and then neko come in and startles me by just sitting down and she is a ray of sunshine. so i feel better after we talk about sad things and the way we deal with em.

after all that sad muck, the bus heads out to the venue.

people it is in the middle of nowhere. it’s on the outskirts of town and is the kind of juke joint that the texas playboys must’ve played back in the day.

it’s just a sad joint today.

and robert plant and alison kraus are coincidently playing in town here again with t-bone, but it is 13 miles away.

which is very sad.

- – - – — – — -

well sir,

sadness is just gravity seeping through the buoyancy of existence and doing its dirty work. the gravity of the situation is always daunting that way.

so … we take the stage tonight with another game plan. every night is another game plan. in the band huddle i lay out the plays of the night. ok men, we’re going in and not playing any piano songs cause they are too quiet and vulnerable in a non theater atmosphere, and in a full blown bar, they can get murdered.

and then i lay out the rest of the set of songs, but i have taken to doing it verbally like a coach. not writing set lists, just directions on how to find our way through the set and home again.
ok. good to go. i am ready for it to be a crowd of indifference and encrusted with infinite sadness.

we take the stage in a bound. first thing i do is play the piano. hard. rocking piano.

the crowd yelps at the end of it and sizzles the sensibilities. i grab a guitar then and am already in love with this crowd. i think i outfoxed that sadness demon when he thought i really wasn’t gonna play piano and then confused the hell out of him by doing just that.

cause now he is running just behind and having a tough time catching up. we lean into ‘out there’, which has such a fine lope to its strum tonight and folks respond so well to it. the odd clinking and spoink effects of my magic blue and gold pedals seem to reward the effort.

onward to ‘robes of bible black’. why not? it turns into a storm chaser and folks are wriggling and smiling and then hoopin’ and hollerin’.

next up, i don’t remember. coulda been ‘paradise here abouts’. just can’t remember. i know i meant to do ‘the ballad of the tucson 2’, but don’t think we did. anyhow, the crowd was just so wonderful.

oklahoma was making very much sense to me. felt like we could have a real conversation.

so i played em a quiet piano song. the one about ‘vortexas’. and they seemed tickled as the keys.

then we belted out ‘increment of love’ and ‘can do’. and funny enough, out of all the songs, it seemed ‘can do’ got the lightest applause, whereas everywhere else we played it in this country, it got the biggest cheer.

but i think it was a severe compliment, because it sounded too real for them. the kind of country song they have been pelted with since birth and could use a break from right about now. the notion of that just made me so proud of my boys here from the deep south of scandonavia that they made it sound that real.
they done good. real good.

then we brought out the delightful miss Kelly Hogan to sing the duet on ‘stranded pearl’. sheer sweetness peppered with distortion.

then we pummeled through the new one, just me and peter, on ‘a better man then me’. folks went wild for peter’s drums on that one. he is a professor, you know, of drums, back in denmark.

and finally we brought up jon rauhouse and paul rigby for the noodle fest finale ‘loving cup’. it roared and so did the crowd. we left em happy and drenched, and so were we.

severe yippity was in the house.

well, john convertino’s niece was there somewhere and i had not seen her since she was knee high, but sadly we did not locate each other.

so then we were off after taking in some of neko’s set, i informed the boys we were back on the guest list of the plant/kraus shindig and why not make a run to see it again no matter how far it was from nowhere.

so we did.

apparently they were playing at the zoo.
off we rode into the night with the light of the GPS device guiding our way.

we got there late and right on time for the last song.

but it was sweet delight none the less. robert plant had suggested they set up this show to help out the hurricane ike victims in houston where they were supposed to play. they set up this gig with only a week’s
notice and 5,000 folks showed up here for it, bless him.

when you get to be my age, the planet gets a whole lot darker and colder from the grand lack of elders that have left this existence for the next. we stumble on slowly becoming the next in line for younger folks to lean on us the same way. but the ache in our eye is from so many we cherished being gone now and never getting enough of that pathfinder advice or warmth of close proximity.

for a few moments there when robert came out to greet us, that feeling of grace filled me. he gave me a bear hug that had both rainer and pappy in it. i can only ever talk to the man for so long before the dylan effect begins to kick in. but he is a source of sage advice and warmth that this world could use every drop of.

ok. well.
we talked a bit and bid safe travels and it was off into the night a whole lot less sadder then the day originally was laden.

when i got back to the bus, i was crumpled from it all.
how hard we are on ourselves sometimes and how much this world delivers upon us too. everyone was just hanging out outside the bus taking in the splendor of each other’s company, neko on the phone checking in on her sick dog back home, her band enjoying the lull and fetchings of a sweet oklahoma midnight. the danes stained with smiles. the high lonesome of the western night & me quietly noting the tour is ending tomorrow.

up in the mother ship we clustered then.
diesel engines toiling.
a short single malt to end the day.
and in need of a 2 day shower and semi brain baked from this life, i tucked into the coffin like bed and closed the curtain. the rolling bus rocking this boy to sleep and delivering another morning.

sleep is transportation too.

where we are now is where the 1st presidential debate is supposed to happen the following night. so the town is preparing for the onslaught of course. there is some talk that it might not happen because the government is squirming to figure out how to deal with a 700 billion dollar bailout to avoid complete collapse of the economic system. capitalism is on its broken hinges at the moment.

but i have never been to Mississippi before and i take the opportunity to indulge in a walk to William Faulkner’s house, rowan oak, for a behind the scenes tour and enjoy the amazing foliage along the way.

we leave the bus in a party, me and neko and some of her band. my band is still somewhere driving their way here from st. louis. it’s the logistical spoink of this tour that i ride on the bus with neko and her band and my band takes a look around this country of ours in a separate rented car and zips along that way.

so we walk and take in the sweet splendor of the southern fauna. i take a lot of lectures of the houses. different neighborhoods harbor the same political signs in their lawn. first we pass a bunch of mcain, then a slew of obama.

after a day of walking around town and taking in the scene of a town strung with banners and camera people everywhere interviewing all manner of folks with flags flying everywhere, we are asked to take part in jim dickinson’s radio show which is usually aired live from a little book store.

but tonight, because of all the ruckus here, it is going to be held on a stage built on the town square smack dab in the center of the brewing cluster surrounding the debate which is now, of course, debatable it might happen.

i get unusually nervous about all this. what song should i play? i am asked to play just one song for the occasion, as well as neko. she is calm and cool and catching up on some reading just prior to hitting that stage, but i am rapt with the hour of history and its making me nuts. i don’t wanna sing a preachy song and i can’t ignore the moment of humanity hanging in the balance either with whomever the next president is going to be.

it just seems that whatever any of us do in these times we should do with the notion that every moment counts.

so i take the stage and say hello to my old friend and producer jim dickinson. from the chore of enchantment record. and i then spring into a better man then me, a new song that i wrote a couple weeks ago at john parish’s house.

it goes over pretty good i think. the crowd ranges from 5 to 95 and mixed with mcain and obama supporters.
a relief to deliver the goods. and so good to see jim again.
he tells me as i am leaving that he loved what i did with ‘chore of enchantment’, been listening to it and loves it. but at first he was angry cause i cut it all up and mixed it all around, since it ended up having 3 different producers on it and me co-producing.

then he said as he listened several times he got it. and he loved it. i had no idea. either he didn’t like it or he did, but was so comforting to hear now.

so ok, neko gets up next and delivers a fine version of that teenage feeling from her last record.
that woman can sing.

and then we have some chill time before our set begins at the venue. we take the stage and deliver the goods in bulk this time. it’s a very good set and the southern folk seem as into our music as i genuinely was into them. there is a pretty young girl in the center of the stage who is obviously there to see neko and not us, but i ask her anyway “how are you ?” cause she looks a lot like the girl i asked to dance when i was 12 years old, and she says she is fine and could we please play something from ramp.

that stumbles me in surprise, being that record came out in 1991. anyhow i try and then morph into something else. it’s a wonderful night.

i think i should get drunk after the set. the boys have to leave right away because of the long drive to oklahoma city the next night. and i am left there to attempt a whiskey and a spontaneous interview by an italian crew following obama and then argue with some young republicans in the late night pizza shop while getting my slice. it’s a full life this day. i am well taken my the flavors of this area.

but now its time to go. and so i do. and the bus pulls out into the night. and we all linger in the bus eating that pizza and enjoying the wane of the tour with each other’s company as the brave danes courage the night and make some tracks.

waking up in old saint loo.

the last time i was here was almost the last time i was anywhere. i went with a couple over the bridge to a river boat casino to check it out after our set. on the way back the driver lost control of the car and we were headed for the railing of the bridge at about 100 miles an hour. i was trying to imagine what the cold churning waters of the Mississippi river below was going to feel like besides completely black and foreboding.

instead the car did not flip over the sides, it bonked back across to the other side of railings and then back to first side again and we rolled down the down ramp until the car came to a rest all crinkled up like an accordian.

we all walked away completely unhurt.

so here i am again, threatening to stay off the bridge.

the show was another good one for us. but after the show we bolted over to the fox theater to see the 2nd half of the robert plant and alison kraus show there the same night. i saw t-bone was in the band, and also noticed buddy miller. turned out i knew the drummer from an opening for us eons ago and the tour manager from a p.j. harvey tour.

so we mingled a bit afterward and t-bone seemed to recognize me there, which always seems strange. he came back to the bus to visit neko and we all talked a bit. he said he had been following my stuff over the years. how is that possible i asked. he mentioned something about inviting me into something he might be doing and we left it at that. i didn’t give him any number though. it all seemed delightful enough. things that don’t happen unless you are out on the road and happenstance comes into play.