03/23/2014
Bluegrass, Roots & Folk Music Calendar for Southern California
ACOUSTIC FOLK/ROOTS/BLUEGRASS MUSIC CALENDAR FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
compiled by Mary Katherine Aldin
This calendar is provided as a completely free service. The listings are free (there is no charge to list a show) and there is no charge to access these listings. If you have items which you wish to submit for consideration for inclusion, please send them to me at mkaldin at aol dot com. While there is no deadline per se, since the calendar is updated regularly, sooner is always better than later; the sooner you get the listings to me, the longer time they will spend "up" on the calendar and the more people will be able to see it. NOTE: PLEASE CALL AHEAD TO CONFIRM THESE SHOWS and ticket availability.
Sunday September 29 GEOFF MULDAUR
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Tuesday October 1 Singer-songwriter JOHN PRINE: The Tree of Forgiveness World Tour
John Anson Ford Theatre, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood; 8:00 p.m.
Thursday October 3 MICHAEL NESMITH
Largo at the Coronet, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., L.A.; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 855-0350
Thursday October 3 EMMYLOU HARRIS
Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Dr., Cerritos; 8:00 p.m.
Tuesday October 8 LEO KOTTKE
Lobero Theater, 33 E. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara; 8:00 p.m.
Friday October 11 NORTH MISSISSIPPI ALLSTARS
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Saturday October 12 JAMES LEE STANLEY
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Saturday October 12 THE TODALO SHAKERS (Eric & Suzy Thompson)
Santa Ynez Valley Grange Hall, 2374 Alamo Pintado, Los Olivos; 8:00 p.m.
(805) 688-9894
Sunday October 13 THE 48TH ANNUAL SANTA BARBARA OLD TIME FIDDLERS CONVENTION AND FESTIVAL featuring performances and workshops with RAFE STEFANINI, HOG EYED MAN, ART ROSENBAUM, THE TODALO SHAKERS (Eric & Suzy Thompson), JIM & JAMIE FOX, DAVID BRAGGER & SUSAN PLATZ and more
Rancho La Patera & Stow House, 304 N. Los Carneros Road, Goleta; 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Tuesday Octobe 15 THE TODALO SHAKERS (Eric & Suzy Thompson)
House Concert at the Naiditch's, Altadena; 8:00 p.m.
Reservations and directions: davidnaiditch@charter.net
Saturday October 19 LULA WILES
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Sunday October 20 CACHE VALLEY DRIFTERS plus DAN CRARY, BILL EVANS & WALLY BARNICK
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Friday October 25 THE FOLK COLLECTION
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Saturday October 26 TOM BALL & KENNY SULTAN
Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara; 8:00 pm.
Saturday October 26 RICHARD SHINDELL
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Saturday October 26 Guitarist TERRY ROBB
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Saturday October 26 The Pasadena Folk Music Society presents ROBIN & LINDA WILLIAMS
Beckman Institute Auditorium, Caltech, 400 S. Wilson Ave., Pasadena; 8:00 p.m.
(626) 395-4652
Sunday October 27 TAKE ME TO THE RIVER: Celebrating the Music of New Orleans with THE DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND, IVAN AND IAN NEVILLE, GEORGE PORTER JR., BIG CHIEF MONK BOUDREAUX, LOST BAYOU RAMBLERS and more
Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University Center for the Arts, 24255 Pacific Coast Hwy., Malibu; 7:00 p.m.
Saturday November 2 SUZZY ROCHE and LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Saturday November 2 Bluegrass with BLUE SUMMIT featuring A.J. LEE
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Friday November 8 SUSAN WERNER
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Saturday November 9 AN EVENING WITH RICHARD THOMPSON
Lobero Theater, 33 E. Canon Perdido, Santa Barbara; 8:00 p.m.
Saturday November 9 Guitarist LAURENCE JUBER
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Saturday November 9 THE SUSIE GLZE NEW FOLK ENSEMBLE
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Monday November 11 RCHARD THOMPSON solo acoustic
Teragram Ballroom, 1234 W. 7th St., Los Angeles; 8:00 p.m.
Saturday November 16 JIM KWESKIN & FRIENDS
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
**SOLD OUT**Wednesday November 20 AN EVENING WITH BRUCE COCKBURN
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497**SOLD OUT**
Saturday November 23 Irish fiddle master FRANKIE GAVIN of De Dannan
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Saturday December 7 THE STEEL WHEELS
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Saturday December 7 Bluegrass with GRASSLANDS plus ROCKY NECK
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
Sunday December 8 ROB ICKES & TREY HENSLEY
McCabe's, 3101 W. Pico Blvd., Santa Monica; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 828-4497
Saturday December 14 Guitarist TONY McMANUS with JULIA TAOSPERN
Boulevard Music, 4316 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City; 8:00 p.m.
(310) 398-2583
NOLA
MARY KATHERINE'S GOOFY GUIDE TO NEW ORLEANS AND FRENCH QUARTER TIP SHEET: GENERAL NOTES AND ADVICE FOR FIRST-TIMERS Version 7.0 Last updated April 2015 (working on updates now). All photos by Mary Katherine Aldin.
The French Quarter, the oldest section of New Orleans, is a rectangle of streets six blocks wide and fourteen long, bordered by Decatur on the river side, Rampart on the lake side, Canal on the uptown side, and Esplanade on the downtown side. Within this area, parking is hell. If the majority of your planned activities and sightseeing will be primarily within the French Quarter, don't even bother to rent a car. Take a cab or a shuttle from the airport (many hotels offer a free or low cost shuttle) to the Quarter, and then you can walk to almost everything from your hotel. A taxi ride or two, or even ten, will still cost far less than car rental, and there's almost no street parking in the Quarter. The city makes a substantial portion of its annual revenues from parking tickets/towing of tourists' cars, and hotels charge a lot extra ($20-$30 per day) for parking. You can always rent a car for a day or two if you plan to travel outside New Orleans, for instance, to visit Cajun country (Lafayette, Eunice, and environs).
What time of year to go will depend on what you're looking for:
My Friend Keith Briggs
Last updated 3/23/2014 The "Keith Chronicles," as Neil Slaven calls this essay, is a continuing work in progress; text and photos will frequently be added and rearranged. All the drawings were done by Keith; all the photos were taken by Mary Katherine unless otherwise noted.
KEITH JAMES BRIGGS
July 15, 1943-March 6, 2005
Keith Briggs was my close friend and traveling companion for more than twenty years. He spent all his vacations in America with me, and during our years together we drove thousands of miles across the US and spent thousands of hours in each other's company. He often told me, in our late-night talks about life and love and death, that he hoped that when the time came for him to die it would be "quick and clean." He didn't want to undergo a long illness, attached to machines and tubes and needles, helpless and unable to function. And he got his wish, on March 6, 2005. The God he didn't believe in granted him the grace of exactly the death he wanted: quick and clean, indeed. A massive heart attack, and when his friend Cindy called from England to tell me, she said he was dead before his body hit the floor.
Old stuff for sale
Unless otherwise stated, all these posters are *custom framed.* They cannot be unframed, and must be shipped flat. Postage and packing is included in the price to buyers within the continental USA, but outside the continental USA the cost of shipping must be charged to the buyer. Buyers in the Los Angeles area may opt to pick up the items in person. PayPal or money orders only, no checks or credit cards.
1. Carlos Montoya concert poster. Note that there are stains in lower left corner and a small tear in lower right corner. Date on poster is March 11, 1978. Price $250.
The Blob
August 2016 Yes, it has been awhile. I have been Dealing With Stuff.
In the Sad News But Not Unexpected Department, our dear old senior citizen cat Sweet Pea has, we believe, gone to Kitty Heaven. I say we believe, because one day she just didn't come home after being let out for her walk, and it's been so long now that we're sure that she is gone for good. She was well over sixteen years old, and may have decided that her time had come, and she was kind enough, whether she knew it or not, to go somewhere else to die. The children are sad, but knew that she was old, and are being very matter of fact about it, as children are.
I have been writing a lot lately, and two of the projects I've done are about to hatch. It was a great honor to be asked to write the liner notes for the final recordings that Theodore Bikel made before he died. It's a two-CD set coming out next month on Red House Records. An honor on a whole different level was that my old friend Geoff Muldaur asked me to write the liner notes for his forthcoming duo record with his Jug Band compadre Jim Kweskin. That too will be out in September, and they will be touring to support the release. I heard a rumor that I will get in free to their show at McCabe's.
I am awaiting word on whether the Santa Barbara Old Time Fiddlers Convention will happen this coming October. I have been the emcee for thirty something years, but the contest has recently changed hands and I am hoping that the new regime will continue to present the contest as it has been going for 42-ish years. If it does happen it will be the second Sunday in October.
I am on some music business committees, and the first of several annual meetings will be held here in late September. This is a pro bono work that I do, partly because I feel that it is useful and helpful and also because the 10 other people who are on the committee are old, dear and far-flung friends of mine, so these meetings are always a glad reunion of sorts.
The children and grandchildren are flourishing. Jennifer and Bruce are happy and healthy, and ditto Josh and Kate. Kate, smart and beautiful lawyer daughter-in-law, has been courted for over a year by a prestigious downtown L.A. firm to leave her small company and join them, so finally she did, after much discussion. She has traded the prestige of being a partner with her name on the stationery for the security of a large firm and a better paycheck. Josh, too, is thinking of making a move; his present job, overseeing twelve stores in six states and two different countries, keeps him traveling more than he or any of us like. The girls especially miss their daddy when he is away, so he's hoping for a similar job with less travel. Eliza will be seven years old next week, and starts second grade two weeks after that. Tess is two and a half, and both girls are smart, strong, fearless and kind people of whom I am proud to be grandma.
Radio is an occasional treat. KPFK has me on call as the replacement programmer when someone goes on vacation, and that seems to happen a lot during the summer months. I'll next be on the air the first Saturday in September, sitting in for my pal Tom Nixon, who is going to Vietnam.
Since I last wrote here I have had a very sad loss, that has kept me from writing - partially because I am just paralyzed when I try to think of what to say. If you read down near the bottom of these entries you will find some long-ago words about my dear friend Stevenson Palfi, who took his own life after Katrina destroyed New Orleans and whose daughter Nell was my godchild. Well, Nell ended her life with an overdose of drugs in May, at age 30. There's just nothing that I know how to say. The drug she took is the same one that killed various celebrities, also at young ages (Prince was a recent one), called Fentanyl (sp?). Apparently this is a medically prescribed drug, but is ALSO available illegally as a street drug, and although there are quality controls on the former there are of course none on the latter. Every now and then a bad batch of the stuff gets through, and my darling Nell was on the receiving end of one such batch. I was going to go to New Orleans to be with her mother Polly when she took Nell off life support, but Nell died in Polly's arms the morning of the day I was supposed to get on the train, so I stayed home. There was a memorial service a couple of weeks later, but I couldn't do it. I just could not do it. I was at her father's memorial after he committed suicide, and I just couldn't deal with it again.
I went to Berkeley in July to visit my old friend Chris Strachwitz. After a stroke and some other issues, he is no longer able to live alone, so has moved into an assisted living facility. He recently sold his Arhoolie Records label to Smithsonian/Folkways, who will preserve his life's work as it should be cared for. I helped blow out the candles on his 85th birthday cake, and hope that he will have many more years at his great store Down Home Music.
I'm told one should always end on an up note. So, in the past few months I have seen AMAZING concerts by Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen, Bonnie Raitt & Richard Thompson, Happy Traum & Jim Kweskin, and the Savoy Family Band.
October 2015
Things are hopping around Casa Aldin.We moved, again, and are now living in "Castle Heights," which is a made up name for Palms. It's also called "Beverlywood." Seriously? Anyway, Tess is 20 months old now, and Eliza is six and has started first grade. Separately and together they are a delight. They both like Thai food!
Last weekend I drove up to Santa Barbara to emcee the Old Time Fiddlers Convention, one of my favorite events all year. Rather than staying at my usual motel in SB, this year for the first time the contest sponsors put me up in a (free) hotel in Goleta. A GREAT touch: in each room, rather than the usual tinny clock radio, there was a turntable and a selection of - gasp! - LPs to play! I actually listened to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass for the first time since they were a thing. And enjoyed it! At dinner after the contest with my old friend Peter Feldmann, I compared notes with Mark Humphrey, who had entered the contest in a couple of different categories. He won first place in Traditional Singing and also in Guitar. Each of those songs took about three minutes to perform and each came with a cash prize. All right, here we go: Mark's total prize money for six minutes of work was more than my compensation for eight hours of standing on my feet emceeing on two different stages. I'm in the wrong business!! Next year I will let Mr. Humphrey emcee the contest, and I will busy myself learning to play the banjo.
The Howlin' Wolf 2-CD set came out, and promptly disappeared. It was out for about five minutes. The proposed Stanley Brothers box set I had hoped to do is cancelled, foundered on the rocks of legal issues. Oh well, I hope my next project fares better: I'm to do liner notes for the record that Theodore Bikel was working on and had just completed at the time of his death. I haven't actually heard it yet, but am awaiting the music so I know what I'm writing about.
I had, and am still having, some music biz committee meetings, and in the past they were always held at a local hotel, using their conference rooms. This year due to construction issues at that hotel they are being held further out of town, at the Four Seasons in Westlake Village. I could learn to like staying at fancy hotels pretty easily, if it wasn't that my entire Social Security check is about enough to pay for one night!
Lots of friends in town, lots of lunches and dinners. Elijah Wald, now DR. Elijah Wald if you please, was here to do a lecture and some readings/signings of his new book on Bob Dylan's appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. I took him to my favorite new Oaxacan place, El Nopal, and we had a nice visit together. Tom Fitzmorris, the premier restaurant critic of New Orleans, was in town briefly, and I took him and his son and daughter in law to dinner at the Magic Castle, which I think everyone enjoyed. Stephen Winick was in town for the American Folklore Society annual conference, which I wasn't able to attend due to labor issues at the conference hotel - I come from a long line of people who won't cross picket lines, even invisible ones - so on his way out back to the Library of Congress he stopped and we had Italian food at Alejo's with Mark Humphrey.
Too many people are dying, and a frightening number of them are considerably younger than I am. Cancer is such a scourge.
Halloween approaches, and I'll be having dinner that week at the Castle with Jim Dawson, Mark Humphrey and Tom Nixon and Claire Chandler. We love to see the place all spookied up! And next month is Thanksgiving, and then - at last! - I'll return to my darlin' New Orleans in early December.
March 2015
Saw my good friends Peter Yarrow and Noel Stookey at a great show with Theodore Bikel. I sat with Art Podell and Judy Montgomery and really enjoyed the evening.
Got my copies of the Dave Van Ronk CD that I produced and wrote notes for - and am pretty happy with it. Really enjoying doing productive work again!
But alas, along with the good news...I lost yet another friend, my dear Tom Freeland, attorney, of Oxford, MS. A big part of my life for twenty years, gone suddenly and shockingly from complications of surgery.
And I just found out that we have to move. This house is being taken off the rental market in order to be sold. Been there, done that, don't care for it much. Don't worry if I don't post here much for awhile. Lots to do. More when I can.
February 2015
Has it really been this long since I've written? I'm just....swamped. The children, some writing work that has been trickling in, a bunch of other "stuff." There just hasn't been time to write here. But will try now to do a catching up post.
Went to the NAMM show in February and had a great time.
It's been a time of loss, too, but at my age I guess I shouldn't be surprised that most of my invitations have morphed from party invites to funeral announcements, seemingly overnight. One hard loss was that of my friend Marian, who was my landlady at the apartment I lived in for 42 years. Her memorial service, like so many others, brought me a sense of realization that she had many sides that I knew nothing about. At her husband's funeral many years ago I learned with shock that he was a champion bowler! I LOVE bowling (though I am by no means a champion at it - au contraire) and wish I had known that while he was alive. Anyhow, I learned a lot about someone I thought I had known for 42 years.
Went to the Bay Area for a benefit for my previously-mentioned friend Johnny, who is now, to everyone's surprise, doing much better but faces a stack of medical bills that would choke a horse. Hence the benefit, at which I heard some really good music/musicians, and while I was up there I visited and had lunch with Chris Strachwitz and shopped at Down Home Music, and had lunch at a Turkish restaurant with Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin.
And another excuse for my lack of writing here is that I am writing elsewhere. I've been doing sets of liner notes and producing reissues again, something that I had done for many decades but had to mostly let go when I was working full time. Most recently I did notes for a Phil Ochs CD that's a live concert from 1976, and produced and annotated a 2-CD set of Dave Van Ronk. Both these guys were longtime friends, so it felt good to be working on projects honoring their music. In the years since I set this kind of work aside, the pay scale has shrunk considerably, so I'm definitely not doing it for the money! There's a Howling Wolf set in my near future, and I think maybe some live Stanley Brothers too. So please don't worry if there are gaps between my posts. I have the children all day every weekday and try to get all my errands, shopping, laundry and music writing done on the weekends!
Another funeral, just yesterday, was for my old friend Bill Papalexis. He owned the Beachwood Market on the hillside where I lived for over 40 years, and was a big part of the community up there. The funeral was at an ornately beautiful Greek Orthodox church, and again I learned a great deal about someone I thought I already knew. And it was like a family reunion to see a lot of my hillside folks that I haven't been much in touch with since I had to move.
Once a month I get together with a group of friends for lunch; we are all music industry warriors of one sort or another, and together we are over 500 years old (!). Here's a pic I took at our January gathering: left to right Billy Vera, Michael Ochs, Larry Cohn, Andy McKaie and Jim Dawson. I love them all.
I plan to attend the Topanga Banjo and Fiddle Contest, as usual, but won't be emceeing this year. They have a new policy where they are going to film all the contestants and all the emcees on every stage to create some kind of document of the event. I'm not at all comfortable with being photographed or filmed, so said a polite "see you next year" and will just go and enjoy myself as a civilian.
Oh, and my health is okay. I tested clean for the cancer at the one year after surgery date, so that, as they say, is that. There are a few other minor aches and pains, but as a (Medicare) card-carrying senior citizen I guess that's only to be expected. So now to bed, and will try not to let it be as long till the next time I touch base.
September 2014, Part One
It's been a busy time. Eliza has started kindergarten at her new school, a charter magnet. It's an adjustment for her, but she's doing well so far. Tess is seven months old and fat as a little piggie. She's crawling all over the place now, and we have to watch her every second.
One of my oldest friends, Johnny Harper, is in Intensive Care in a hospital up in the Bay Area. A group of his friends has created an e-tree to keep everyone informed of his progress, or lack thereof. He's in very bad shape. The fact that this is years in the making and largely self-inflicted (he bought his own blues, as the song says) doesn't make it any less horrific for those of us who love him. He's a fine musician and a good friend, and I hope he makes it back from the edge.
Wrangling with bureaocracy is not good for one's blood pressure. On the other hand, I've lost nearly fifteen pounds!
There is some talk of me returning to the radio waves. Will keep you posted.
I've been having lunch every Tuesday with Jennifer, usually with Tess in tow. It's good to have our regular mother-daughter bonding time.
Also have had lunch with Mark a few time lately, and Jim and I celebrated his birthday at Astroburger! The wonderful and long-thought-extinct Indian restaurant Bombay Grill has risen from the ashes and is now located at Santa Monica and Highland in Hollywood. Incredible food and very nice folks. Speaking of food, I went to the recently-opened New Orleans restaurant in Chinatown called Little Jewel of New Orleans. Had a fine catfish plate!
Went to my first Dodger game in a long time. Josh got tickets through someone he knows or something. Anyway, the seats were great (as you can see from the photo), the Dodgers won, the girls enjoyed it, Tess got an official certificate (free!) and there were fireworks at the end. What's not to love? Kershaw just won his 20th game of the season and we're edging up on making it to the playoffs.
August 2014
At the end of July we piled into the car and drove north, up the 5 freeway from L.A., then over the 46 to Paso Robles, where we stayed overnight in a motel. Up the next morning and drove to Monterey, where we found a restaurant called the Artichoke Grill, which specializes in, guess what, artichokes. There was a big photo of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, in her capacity as Artichoke Queen of Contra Costa County in 1948, and we feasted. Then off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium down the block, and Eliza rejoiced in the octopuses, sharks and other finny friends. The next morning we walked through the Point Lobos Nature Reserve, which Eliza told us was an enchanted forest. And then drove home. A nice getaway.
July 2014: Since the new place has a back yard, I bought a humingbird feeder and hung it on a high branch of the lemon tree. Apparently there is a hummingbird internet, as we are now, just a few days later, the most popular back yard on our block for these tiny magical creatures. Have also planted some flowers that I am assured are well liked by both hummingbirds and butterflies. The upside of moving from an apartment to a house is that now I can spend a lot of money on stuff for the yard that we probably can't take with us to the next place. Sigh. Well, never mind, it's worth it to be surrounded by what Jennifer used to call flutterbys when she was little.
I was saddened to learn of the death a few days ago of Dr. Paul Fleiss, who was Jennifer and Josh's pediatrician from birth until they moved along to the world of grownup doctors. He was an incredibly kind man. When my children were small, and life was difficult for us, he constantly "forgot" about past due bills; he repeatedly told me that if one of the kids got sick to always come straight to him, regardless of the current state of my finances; he kept a huge box of fresh organic apples by the front door of his office, and encouraged all his patients to take home as many as they wanted, knowing full well that it might be the only fresh fruit some of them got all week. Many things were said about him when his daughter Heidi went on trial; even the obituary headlines didn't say anything about his half century of selfless care and devotion to his profession. He was far more than just "the father of the Hollywood Madam," and I'll stand right up and say so, out loud, any time. He was a wonderful doctor and a generous human being.
And as expected, my good friend Ed Archer died. He took over hosting Preaching the Blues on KPFK when it became time for me to stop doing it, and we were good friends; we spent many hours visiting together on the phone after he retired from the station. When he was diagnosed with cancer he made the decision to go straight into home hospice care, no chemo, no surgery, no nothing, he just wanted to let go. He was 86, and had been very lonely since the death of his wife of 60+ years, Hazel, a few years back. Thanks to the hospice angels who came to his home he was able to go gently, peacefully and painlessly, as he had wished. I was able to visit with him twice in the two weeks before he died, and I treasure the last talk we had, at which I was able to thank him for the honor of being his friend for so many years.
Went to Berkeley on the Coast Starlight, an all day journey and late night arrival but better than driving, for lots of reasons. Helped Chris Strachwitz blow out the candles on his 83rd birthday cake (and spent some money at Down Home while I was up there!); and had a series of breakfasts, lunches and dinners with many old friends and a few new ones. Pakistani food with Kate Brislin and Jody Stecher and Mark Humphrey, Cajun food with Johnny Harper, and some mighty fine breakfasts with Amelia Sue Marshall and her husband (whom I met for the first time, despite having known her since we were girls), my good friend Alice Fuller Rippetoe and her granddaughter Christina, and Steve Goldfield, who was kind enough to bring me a copy of the new issue of Fiddler Magazine with his article about Franklin George. Spent time in Berkeley and San Francisco, visited Moe's Books, walked all over Chinatown with Mark, and really enjoyed being a tourist.
Didn't mean to drop the cancer bomb into the middle of something else, but really, it was just part of a long string of Stuff That Happened To Me last year. Thanks for your anxious messages, but the surgery was successful, the cancer is gone, and I'm still here, for now.
The Dodgers are having an interesting season. Up and down, with Kershaw and Puig getting most of the interest, but there are some other good players there too. If only they could "mesh" better; sometimes it seems as though they're not all playing on the same team. Do they ever practice?
I'm spending all day every day with the granddaughters these days, as Eliza is out of school for the summer and both mommy and daddy work all week. We're deep into plans for a short trip up to Big Sur and Carmel (and Monterey, so Eliza can go to the Aquarium) at the end of this month, and then August 11 will be Eliza's 5th birthday, so there will be some kind of festivities here, I'm sure.
Keith, who has been dead since 2005, made a rare visit to my dreams the other night. Losing him was the greatest grief of my life, and he's only come back to walk with me twice in the years since he went. But we made each other a promise that whoever went first would, if it was allowed, come back to help the other one across. This wasn't "that" visit, but another kind of communion, and one that I badly needed. I woke feeling positively irradiated with love, a feeling that has been gone for so long I had forgotten what that pure, clean happiness is like.
KPFK is, for unfathomable (to me) reasons, eliminating the custom of having volunteers come in to answer the phones during pledge drives, opting instead to farm this work out to a calling center. I'll miss the camaraderie of hanging out with the guys on Saturday mornings when they're on the air, but can only assume that the station knows what it's doing. Oh, wait...
Jim Dawson and I went to Cantalini's to hear Ian Whitcomb and Fred Sokolow; Ian is sounding incrementally improved every time I hear him. Andy McKaie and I held down the Second Tuesday Lunch Krewe all by ourselves (with Tess), as everyone else was busy, but actually the origination of these gatherings was just me and Andy getting together for lunch anyway, so it was good to get some time on our own again.
June 2014: Since I last wrote here, I have traveled (by train) to Kansas City, Santa Barbara and New Orleans, have changed about a thousand diapers, more or less, have had cancer, have lost several close friends to the inexorable progress of life and death, have emceed the Topanga Banjo & Fiddle Contest, and have moved. Of these, I would vote for the move as being the most traumatic.
Moving is just so....stressful. I need to find everyday things like a new grocery store, and am playing the endless game of "now where's the nearest <fill in the blanks>." I need to work out the best route to take Eliza to school every morning, although since this is her last month at the old school I will then need to find the best route to her new school starting in September. And because everything I own is in boxes, and about half those boxes are in the garage, I can't lay hands on even the most basic necessities. Since there was no handicapped bar in the bathroom when we moved in, and since the new house sports one of those very cool looking "antique" claw foot bathtubs, I have been bathing in the kitchen sink for our first week here. Fortunately, a handyman came yesterday and finally installed a bar for me so I can haul myself in and out of the tub. The nice long hot shower I took this morning has made me marginally less cranky. But only marginally.
As I write this, my close friend Ed Archer is making his final journey through to whatever is next. Mark Humphrey and I visited him a few days ago, and I went back a few days later alone; he was much more responsive the second time, and we discussed many things, and said goodbye then. He has chosen not to pursue treatment for his cancer, and is in hospice care, at home, and not in any pain. It was Ed who took over hosting "Preaching the Blues" on KPFK back in the mid-80s when I decided it was time to move on from that show. We've been good friends for over thirty years.
And Joe died. DEAR Joe Frazier, who was my early Saturday morning radio show co-host a few times, has lost his long battle with ill-health. Joe was a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio and was also an ordained Episcopal priest, and if he didn't find anything weird in that juxtaposition, then neither should I. His memorial service was a lovely tribute to his life and career.
Eliza will be five years old in mid-August. As if to keep me from dwelling too long on that fact, Tess is just about four months old, and is doing all those adorable baby things that melt a grandma's heart. But Josh and Kate have firmly decreed that there will be No More, so am enjoying my last grandbaby while I can. They're SO sweet when they're little.
Music. Well, never enough, but some. Of course Topanga is a whole day of music, so that was great. Ian Whitcomb, who is recovering very well from the stroke, played at Cantalini's, so Jim and I went out to stuff ourselves on Italian food and hear him play. I also went to McCabe's in late April to see my dear friend Noel Stookey, who put forth an amazing program of his original songs. In late May I went back to McCabe's, this time to get my bluegrass fix from Loafers Glory. Had dinner beforehand with the Sauber Clan, and then got a wonderful surprise when I got a bonus visit with Chris and Connie Hillman, and we got caught up on all our children's news. Chris and I go back to Ash Grove days. There's not as much live music these days as I wish there could be, but I am full-time live-in nanny to my two girls now and can't get away much at all. And one of the things I can't find is my stereo, so unless I'm in my car I can't even play CDs. And where ARE all the boxes of CDs that I packed? Sigh.
In just about a month I'm getting on a train and going to the Bay Area to visit my friend Chris Strachwitz and help him celebrate his 84th (or is it 85th?) birthday. Can't wait!
OLDER ENTRIES
I've gained something, and I've lost something.
Fifty years ago I was young, strong and bulletproof, and deeply committed to the belief that I could change the world, or at least make it a better place. I marched, I sang, I protested. I *believed* what Dr King said, that day in Washington. I went to every political rally, peace march and concert within a hundred miles, and hitchhiked (which was much safer in those days) up to San Francisco for a sit-in, not realizing that we'd soon have plenty of our own sit-ins here in L.A.
Forty years ago I took my kids along to those marches and rallies. Before she was ten years old my daughter Jennifer had listened to more speeches than most people hear in a lifetime. Everyone from Dr. Helen Caldicott to Barry Commoner to Wavy Gravy told her, and later her little brother, that nuclear power was wrong, and equality for everyone of every race, gender and political persuasion was the way to live. I took pictures of her backstage at the Hollywood Bowl at one of the Survival Sunday programs, proudly holding a sign she was barely old enough to read. Another summer I sent my kids to my close friend Berta on the Navajo reservation in Flagstaff so that I could go south, and traveled by train and bus through Mississippi and Alabama and worked at food kitchens. It was a good summer for us all.
Thirty years ago I went with my dear friend Manny Greenhill, who always had the walk and the talk in perfect sync, to do civil disobedience at the nuclear testing grounds in Nevada. We got arrested, along with many other people, and I was both deflated and relieved when the "handcuffs" they put us in were like the plastic strips you tie up trash bags with, and when the "arrest" turned out to be just a means of getting us away from the scene of the demonstration. We were told, sternly, to go away and not come back. I still had kids at home, so I did.
But these last few nights, as I listened to the sirens screaming by and the helicopters going overhead, I realized that something somewhere was different. Instead of rushing out onto the street to see (or join) what was happening, I went into my granddaughters' bedroom. I smoothed Eliza's hair off her face, and tucked baby Tess more firmly into her warm cocoon of blankets, and prayed really hard that nothing would ever come to hurt them. I want the world we were supposed to have changed fifty years ago to BE the place they live in when they grow up. But that doesn't look like it's going to happen. I wonder if my grandmother ever prayed over my cradle. I wonder what she said, and why it didn't come true.
*****
I miss my old friend Pam. She was a true English eccentric and a delightful person, and for many years we were very close. She started life as the pampered only child of the glittering London and Broadway stage star Gertrude Lawrence (she who originated the role of Anna in The King and I). Born in England, little Pamela quickly became an afterthought to her glamorous mother's career; as a child she was raised in the Plaza Hotel in New York (shades of Eloise!) by a series of nannies and governesses, who brought her, freshly bathed and ready for bed, to her mother for the obligatory goodnight kiss. Other than that Pam rarely saw her mother; occasionally she was trotted out for publicity photos, but Ms. Lawrence's nightly Broadway stage appearances meant she slept all day, then entertained friends like Noel Coward at afternoon tea, while Pamela was taken to the park to play or had lessons with her tutors. As soon as she was old enough she was sent off to an English boarding school, and that, as they say, was that.
I met her some sixty years later, when she moved to my neighborhood to live with and care for the children of my close friend Bob Pickering, a single father with three young children whose wife had died of cancer immediately after the birth of their youngest. Pam was slightly scatty, very eccentric and quintessentially English. "Now where did I put my specs?" she would say aloud to herself, as I waited patiently for her to find them where they always were, on the chain around her neck. Her purse was a Mary Poppins carpet bag, stuffed with who knows what, but every time anyone needed anything - a pair of scissors, a pair of socks, a band-aid, a candy bar - Pam had one in her hand before you could turn around. After six decades in America she retained her perfect upper-class English accent and her inability to say "cents" - it was always "can I borrow fifty p (for pence) for the trolley, dear?" She was proud of her own children, both grown by the time we met; her daughter had stayed in England, married, and given Pam grandchildren, while her son Ben became a well known jazz musician in the US. Divorced, aging and lonely, living on her mother's dwindling soundtrack record royalties and a small pension, Pam was taking art classes at LACC when she heard about the Pickering family's need for a nanny for the kids, and so we met. She was loving, generous and had lots of the proverbial good intentions, and told me fascinating stories of her unusual childhood in London and New York. My two small children and her three charges spent a lot of play time together, as Pam and I sat on park benches or took them to amusement parks and pony rides.
With the passing of the years the Pickering kids grew up, Bob died of cancer, and Pam drifted away from my life; we had lunch together a few times, but eventually she returned to England. We corresponded for a few more years, until she too became ill; her daughter cared for her until the end. I only found out she was gone when several unanswered letters in a row finally drew a reply telling me that she had died two years before! I wish I had a photo of her; it never occurred to me to take one, and although I did find one of her in an old biography of her mother on a back shelf in a second-hand bookstore, it was taken when she was about ten, and so doesn't really reflect the person I remember so fondly.
*****
I’ve been thinking about Robert Palmer a lot the past few days, as the anniversary of his passing comes around, a new book of his collected writings has just been published, and yet another year goes by without him. Nobody will ever know how lucky I was to have this incredibly special person as a friend. He had the most open ears of anyone I’ve ever known, and did his best to pry mine loose (without, I’m sorry to say, ever really succeeding). “What the HELL is that noise?” I’d ask as he played some foreign-sounding stuff in a language I didn’t recognize. “Oh, Mary Katherine, it’s pygmy rain chants!” he’d reply, evidently expecting me to react as if it was the Holy Grail, which maybe to him it was. I’m a four-four person, and he was way out there in the land of seven-nine where I knew I was never going to be able to follow. Fortunately, he spoke my language even though I couldn’t speak his, so we communicated in what was probably the musical equivalent of baby-talk to him, although he was always too kind to say so.
Bob was a good friend, and I cared a great deal about him, but his addictions scared the crap out of me. I was single-parenting two small children, and was dead set against them coming into contact with drugs of any kind; during the many times he came west to stay for weeks at a time at my apartment in Hollywood, he drank cough syrup by the pint to ease the uncontrollable pain without violating my rules. When that didn’t cut it he went out to score, never bringing anything back with him beyond the glazed look in his eyes that told me that at least for the moment he didn’t hurt any more.
And drugs or no drugs, he could write; words came pouring out of him like water out of the Grand Coulee Dam. As chief pop critic of the New York Times and Rolling Stone, he wrote record reviews, live concert reviews, chapters on whatever the current book in progress was and still found time to write me four, five, or six-page single-spaced typed letters, all of which I still have, talking about whatever wonderful music he was listening to, shows he was seeing and people he was meeting along the way. His enthusiasm was contagious and his unlimited love of music was profound. He also had the amazing ability to write in his head, without benefit of (in those days) a typewriter. We went to the first night of Bob Dylan’s Saved tour, up in San Francisco, and after we got back to our hotel room he said, “Okay, now I have to turn in the review.” Neither of us had taken notes during the show, and we had driven up from L.A. with no typewriter, so I expected to see at least a notebook come out and the process begin. Nope. He picked up the phone and called a number at the New York Times, spoke for a moment to someone he knew, and then was connected to a tape recorder, into which he began dictating, cold, with no notes. “Bob Dylan D-y-l-a-n comma whose current concert tour opened last night at the Warfield W-a-r-f-i-e-l-d Theater in San Francisco comma displayed an unusual sense of…” and on it went, a long, at least ten-paragraph review into which without pause or hesitation he inserted punctuation cues, paragraph breaks and created a little literary masterpiece. I was frozen into silence, afraid to break the flow, but as soon as he put the phone down he casually resumed the conversation we’d been having before he made the call. I was floored, and humbled. If that’s what being a real writer meant, I knew I’d never get there.
I got particularly lucky when, as he was working on Deep Blues, he came to stay with me during a dry spell and I offered to compile the discography for the back of the book, to take that laundry-list chore off his hands. He lit up like a Christmas tree, and we sat crosslegged on my living room floor pulling albums off my shelves and sorting them into piles of “yes” and “no.” But then things went really dry, and he went back to New York with no sign that the book would ever be finished. A few phone calls later, I was getting really worried; the publisher, unreasonably enough, was demanding the finished manuscript, which was already months late. I went to New York and stayed with Bob and his ginger cat Snooky, who were, for the moment, living like two crusty old bachelors in a penthouse apartment that looked like it had been through the blitz.
The manuscript was in chaos. Two lately-finished chapters which he had sent to me for proofreading I had brought back to New York with me and were sitting in plain view on the coffee table, but where was the rest of it? Ah. Part of it was on top of the refrigerator. Of course. And another chapter in the bedroom, having evidently been thrown against a wall, because the pages were all over the room. My role was clear: den mother, nanny, whatever you want to call it, he needed to finish the damn book, and I simply refused to leave New York until he did. And then, a miracle. A week later it was done, all was in perfect order, and I typed the final pages of the discography on his machine, trying to pretend I didn’t see the hypodermic needles in the trash can.
Then I got really lucky; I got to work with him. When I was asked by MCA Records’ Andy McKaie to compile and annotate a box set of the Chess Recordings of Muddy Waters, I agreed, but suggested Bob do the notes; he had done so much research on Muddy during the writing of Deep Blues that I figured he could write them in his sleep. I sent him a list of the tracks I had chosen, and he made a couple of excellent suggestions for changes. Then we waited for the notes. And we waited, and waited. In desperation I started to write them myself, figuring that when his finally arrived we could dump mine.
What kind of mojo he used I don’t know, but when his notes finally showed up they were an absolutely perfect segue from what I had already written; not a thought duplicated, not a redundant sentence in the lot. Andy simply used my notes and his, side by side, a perfect fit. The resulting Grammy Award nomination for Best Liner Notes was, Bob assured me, for both of us, but I knew better. The Grammy certificate on my wall has both our names on it, but it was his words that made mine shine.
When he was in L.A. he often guest-hosted my blues radio show. Since his own collection was three thousand miles away, he’d go through my shelves, pulling out albums I’d forgotten I owned and choosing tracks that I had no idea were on them, always bringing something fresh and insightful to the studio and revitalizing my own programming style for weeks after each visit. If I was working on liner notes while he was here he’d make helpful suggestions, untangle sentences, offer comments, but never condescendingly, from the New York Times/Rolling Stone critic to the neophyte. He did me the honor of always treating me as a colleague, and sometimes made me believe I deserved it.
When, five or so years before his death, he moved to my favorite city in the world, New Orleans, we saw each other more regularly. I’d make the cross-country train journey a couple of times a year; we’d meet for lunch or dinner, and I’d fuss at him for not taking better care of his health as we walked, ever more slowly, through the streets of the French Quarter. I knew he had abused his body pretty thoroughly for many years but had no idea, until quite near the end, that he was so seriously ill. He always brushed aside my concerns and questions about his health, and insisted instead that I tell him what shows I had seen, what new records I’d gotten for review, and what reissues I was working on.
And then one day he simply told me the truth. We were sitting on a park bench in Jackson Square in the pale New Orleans winter sunlight, and he looked me in the eye and said that he wanted me to know how much our friendship had always meant to him, and my heart stopped. I knew, but I didn’t want to know. He was very reassuring; I was not to worry, Yoko Ono had offered financial assistance, and he was going back to New York to have a liver transplant. Everything would be fine.
We talked regularly from then on, and two days before he died I spoke to him for the last time. He had recently married JoBeth Britton, an amazing woman who had somehow managed to get him to clean up his act, eat healthier food and take better care of himself, but she couldn’t work miracles. His body was disintegrating before her eyes, and the doctors wouldn’t, couldn't, do a transplant until his health stabilized.
From his hospital bed he told me that he loved JoBeth and that she was aware of his end of life wishes and would see that they were carried out. We said all the things that old friends say to each other when they know it’s for the last time and are given the chance. I somehow kept my voice steady as I agreed with him that it was probably not necessary, and yes, he was probably going to be fine, but that it was good, nonetheless, to say them. I was surprised to find, as I hung up, that tears were pouring down my face. Two days later JoBeth called to let me know that she was honoring his wishes and taking him off life support.
And then I got the phone call that he was gone, and a call asking me for a quote. Then another, and another, and I took the phone off the hook and sat down to work on some liner notes. It seemed somehow the right way to remember him. Still does.
*****
A funny story about how I met Dick Waterman:
I was then working at The Ash Grove, which at that time block-booked artists for 6 nights, Tuesday-Sunday, and was dark on Monday, or occasionally there would be special events (political gatherings, art shows, community events, whatever) on Monday nights. So if an artist came out from Texas or Mississippi or the Appalachias or wherever, they could play a little network that existed back then, 6 nights in San Diego at the Sign of the Sun, Monday off as a travel day, 6 nights in L.A. at the Ash Grove, Monday off as a travel day, 6 nights in Berkeley at the Jabberwock or the Cabale, and so forth all the way north to Portland and Seattle, and then home. This made the long journey to the west coast more financially workable for them, back in the days when most travel, especially by folk and blues musicians, was done by Greyhound Bus.
Dick Waterman was then a respected booking agent in Cambridge, MA, running his Avalon Productions and representing a lot of traditional blues artists (this was before he became Bonnie Raitt's manager and also before he started handling Buddy Guy & Jr. Wells). Many of the artists he booked would play at the Ash Grove, and the pattern was that he would call up and say "I have Son House (or Skip James, or Fred MacDowell, or Mississippi John Hurt, or whoever) coming to the west coast; can you do a week in June?" and then the financial terms and contract issues got done between him and Ed (the owner of the club).
I need to insert a note here, not at all egotistically I assure you, that my speaking voice (the voice he heard on the phone, without being able to see me) is very sultry, and deep, and could be (mis)taken for sexy by some people. A good voice for radio, in fact, which is what I would go on to do some years later.
All right, here it comes, or as Ron Thomason would say, I told you that to tell you this:
*****
Jim and Guy and I were sitting at the coffee shop on my hillside this afternoon, and the conversation wandered around, as it does; and Jim and I shared some apple pie, as we do; and after an hour or so Jim got up to go have dinner with Ian and then go with him to the noir film series at the Egyptian, and Guy got up to go off for a walk, and I came home. And these quiet little times that don't have any heavy meaning, that are just the everyday connections that I make with friends, have become part of the brightly colored patchwork of my life. I have been sitting in almost the same spot at that same coffee shop for nearly forty-five years; back when I first started going there my daughter Jennifer (45 on her next birthday) was barely old enough to sit up in a highchair, and she drew patterns in her cracker crumbs on the highchair's silver tray. It was just one long soda fountain counter then, with one waitress, my dear old friend Addie, who later, when I was alone and pregnant with Josh (who'll be 38 on his next one) threw me the baby shower that brought me so much that I needed. Addie, by then in her seventies, still came trudging up the hill to unlock the place and start the first pot of coffee at 6:00 every morning, until the day she didn't, and her sister-in-law Frances the cook and Milton, then the assistant cook, called and called but got no answer so finally went down the street to her apartment and found her on the floor, all dressed for work and with her apron over her arm, blown out painlessly like a candle by God before she could get out her front door. And I remember when they expanded the place after Addie died, put in tables and chairs and booths, and how Berta, my dear friend from the Village who had come out to L.A. to join me in working at the Ash Grove, went to work at the coffee shop after the club closed, and she taught Milton how to make eggs Benedict, and being a New York woman she made them put egg creams on the menu too, and eventually they hired a bunch more waitresses, who've come and gone through the years, each with a life and a story someone should write. I've known every waitress by name; I know which one worked extra shifts so that she and her husband could put a down payment on a house that had to be near a good school for her son; I know which one worked two jobs and single-parented a kid, which one came in to work on even the warmest days wearing long sleeved tops that didn't always hide the bruises on her arms, and which one has been sober for over a year now, and how hard that is for her. I know that European tourists aren't used to tipping, because they don't have that custom there, and that when you stand on your feet eight hours a day for minimum wage, every dollar that you don't get makes a difference. I know Monique, the weekend hostess/cashier, who lost her dearly-loved father to cancer and then single-handedly cared for her mother for years, seeing her drift ever-further away into the long goodbye of Alzheimer's Disease until she too finally died, and how Monique watched the Neptune Society boat out of sight and then straightened her shoulders and went to work to get her Extras Union card so she could make some money, and now every time she has a few flashing seconds of film (even way in the background) on a network TV show, everyone in the canyon tunes in to watch. And I know Milton and Miguel, the cooks, and I know that Milton has diabetes and isn't supposed to eat sweets, so when I bring back pralines from New Orleans for everyone I just break off a tiny bite of one for him instead of giving him a whole one. And I know that his wife Margo had surgery recently, but is doing better now, thanks, and I know that he has an adult daughter who's a quadraplegic in an assisted living facility, and that paying for her care is a big part of why at long past retirement age he still stands on his feet ten hours a day in a tiny kitchen where in the summer it's over 100 degrees every day, and although he has never taken a vacation day in thirty years he always has a smile for everyone and always remembers that I like my french fries well done and my fruit salad without any canteloupe. And I know Miguel's son Ernie, who used to work there on weekends when he was in high school, handing out menus and seating people. And I know the busboys and the dishwashers and their families and their stories; Rafael has a small son back in Mexico, and he sends home money to his wife every week. I know many of the "regulars" who eat there every day (and I remember the ones who've died, too, like Paul Pepper, who couldn't stop smoking until it was too late, and John Nolan, a really good writer who hand-carved the wooden sign that hangs over the door and who died in the doorway of his apartment upstairs from the coffee shop of a massive heart attack one sunny morning, and John Milford, who built the booths when he was between acting jobs). It's a community in the best sense of the word, because whenever somebody in the canyon sells a story or sells a painting or gets a speaking part or places a script or gets an advance from a publisher or sweats out an audition for a role in a tiny non-Equity theater, everyone congratulates them on their success. And when there's an occasional celebrity sighting (Kevin Costner used to stop in now and then, and Jennifer saw Jessica Simpson once, and Lord help us all Lindsay Lohan used to live just two blocks up the hill, and having paparazzi and helicopters there every damn day made it hard to get through the one lane canyon street I live on, so nobody was really thrilled about having her there, but we all agreed that it was better than when Madonna lived up here and built a helipad on her front lawn, because when she sold her house and moved away they practically had a block party to celebrate) everyone is very cool until they pay their check and leave, and then it's "wow, did you see who was here?" And I know that most late afternoons when I get home from work Jim will be there, and we'll talk, or share sections of the paper, or I'll bring him the latest issue of Blues & Rhythm, or we'll do the crossword puzzle together (in ink, of course!), and he'll drink too much coffee and I won't drink any, and on winter days he covers my always-cold hands with his warm ones and we're always comfortable together; and whenever I walk in the cafe door on a weekend morning there's a chorus from them all of "good morning, Mary Katherine!" that makes me feel, as I am, at home.
*****
I haven't written much here about my friend Stevenson Palfi, but I've been thinking about him a lot lately. He was a good friend of mine, a smart, funny, devilishly handsome guy who became like a brother to me. We met and fell passionately in like while he was shooting his Professor Longhair documentary called Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together, a prizewinning film that's just recently become available on DVD, and if you've never seen it and love New Orleans and its music I highly recommend it. Stevenson had moved from his native Chicago to New Orleans after spending a summer there working at the front desk of the Maison DeVille Hotel in the French Quarter. The hotel was close to Preservation Hall, and he found himself drawn to an 80-something year old banjo player named Manny Sayles (Emmanuel, really, but everyone called him Manny) who was a longtime member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band; Manny became the subject of one of Stevenson's earliest music documentaries. He met his lovely wife Polly Waring there, and not long after I met them they rejoiced in the birth of their daughter, my darling Nell.
Anyway, Stevenson and I became close friends; we joked and flirted our way harmessly through the possible pitfalls of a relationship that was always determinedly platonic, and whenever he was in L.A. or I was in New Orleans we spent a lot of time together. Life went on, things changed, he and Polly separated and eventually divorced, but our friendship continued for about twenty years. When my dear friend Keith and I would visit New Orleans the two of them would go off to visit the local bars together, and I was really glad that they, too, ended up with a friendship that enriched both their lives. When Keith died of a massive heart attack in March of 2005, it was Stevenson who let me cry, and cry, and cry, and in a series of late night phone calls he helped me start to heal from that awful loss.
And then, barely six months after Keith died, came Hurricane Katrina, and then the levees broke. Stevenson's house was on Banks Street in Mid-City, the area which other than the 9th Ward was hardest hit in all New Orleans. He was forced to evacuate, ending up in Tunica, Mississippi for several weeks. When he was finally allowed back into the city it was to find that his home, which was also his office and editing facility, had taken eight feet of standing water, and nearly everything he owned was destroyed.
He had homeowners insurance, he told me in a series of breathless phonecalls, but was having a hard time trying to collect. He spent every morning for over two months wearing hip boots, rubber gloves and a protective mask, cleaning out the filthy, stinking, toxic, mold-covered mess that had once been his home, and then spent every afternoon on any working phone he could find, calling various insurance companies, trying to slog his way through the bureaocracy and put through his claims. It was enough to make anyone depressed, but Stevenson had other problems as well, which long predated the flood. He had not been able to work for quite some time; two car accidents, one close upon the other, had left him with a shattered collarbone and shoulder that never really healed properly, and lifting the heavy videocamera with which he made his living became first painful, and finally impossible. He had a half-finished documentary in the works about New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint, and it was becoming clear that he was not going to be able to finish it, despite having gone into debt and borrowed money to make it. The medication that the doctors had given him for a lower back injury also caused by the car crash had unintended physical side effects which left him more depressed than before.
Since the flood, with his own home unlivable, he had been staying with his former wife Polly, and one evening in December 2005 while she was out of the house he stole the gun she kept for protection. A few days later, on December 14, he went back to his house; after writing a four page longhand letter in which he absolved those he loved of responsibility and railed against FEMA and the insurance companies for their lack of understanding and assistance, he left the note on his desk, went upstairs, lay down on his bed and put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
There's no good way to find out that kind of news, but I found out about it in maybe the worst way possible; an anonymous email from a stranger, the morning after his death, saying something along the lines of "sorry to hear about your friend Stevenson." I was stunned, and scared - wait, what? sorry to hear WHAT?? - and then began the long and difficult quest for solid information. Less than three months after Katrina, few people in New Orleans had working telephone service yet; I called his house line and his home-office line and left increasingly frantic messages on his machines. Polly's phone wasn't working, and Nell wasn't answering her cell, but I finally reached Barry Smith at the Louisiana Music Factory, who confirmed that it was true.
Parents who commit suicide leave lasting scars on their children; it's a deep, dark, harsh, hardly forgiveable sin, and it casts a shadow over subsequent generations that never really goes away. When you hear someone say, "My grandfather committed suicide before I was born," the statement itself speaks of enormous, somehow contagious, incurable, inheritable pain. Those left behind feel profound guilt and self-reproach (how could I have talked to Stevenson less than a week before he killed himself and heard nothing in his voice, even though at that point he had already stolen the gun he was going to use? How could I have been so self-involved that all those times he told me how hard it was to throw out the accumulated possessions of a lifetime because the mold had rendered them untouchable, I didn't hear the cry for help behind the words? Why did someone so popular and with so many friends -- there were hundreds of people at his memorial service -- pick up a gun instead of picking up a phone?) and eventually anger at someone I once loved so much, ranging from "how could you do this?" to "how could you do this to me?" to the ultimate unanswerable question, "how could you do this to Nell?"
Nell was the joy of his life, a bright, shining, goldenhaired child who was not supposed to live. When she was born, with a combination of birth defects any one of which would have stunned most new fathers into silence, Stevenson refused to believe the doctors who said she wouldn't make it (they had been right the two previous times that Polly had given birth, first to their stillborn son and then to a premature daughter who lived only an hour). He paid no attention; he went into the pediatric emergency room and picked up the tiny child who, in her baby pictures, has so many tubes and wires attached to her that you cannot see a human being at all, and he said "this child will LIVE." He held her, talked to her constantly, willed her to live by simply refusing to believe that she would die. For the first three months he and Polly never left her alone. Nurses and doctors came, shook their heads, and went, but Stevenson and Polly stayed with Nell, praying constantly, calling specialists all over the country, and telling her and everyone else who'd listen that everything that was wrong with her was going to be fixed and that she was going to be fine. Fourteen staggering operations and six years later, the child who had been pronounced brain-dead at birth started first grade, right on schedule with the other children her age; the child who doctors originally said was in a permanent vegetative state and would never be able to walk, talk, read or write ended up dancing her way lightly through elementary school, then high school, and finally entered LSU in Baton Rouge; she would have graduated college with honors with the rest of her class if her father hadn't derailed her education and her life by putting that gun in his mouth. She was only eighteen when he died, and she will never get over it. She will never be the same person again; she adored her father, and when he killed himself the light in her eyes just went out. I still see her every time I go to New Orleans; we maintain the tradition that we started when she was just a little girl, of having one nice "dressup" dinner together in a fancy retaurant during my stay; but she doesn't want to talk about Stevenson. She doesn't want to hear how much he loved her or how important she was to him. She sits quietly, always unfailingly courteous to her father's old friend, looking at her plate, picking at her food, and occasionally glancing at her watch under the table where she thinks I won't see her, wondering how much longer she'll have to stay. When I ask her, with the easy familiarity of someone who has known her all her life, what her own plans for the future are, when she might start looking for a job, or when she might be going back to college, she just shrugs and doesn't answer.
The last time I was there she gave me a reliquary with some of Stevenson's ashes in it, and a container of more of his ashes which, when the time is right, I'll be putting into the ocean at Malibu, where we loved to go for long walks. I'm trying to think of the right words to say when I release his ashes into the water, maybe some perfect poem or song lyric, but all these years later the only words I can find to say to him are still just "how could you do this?"
*****
Hard to believe that when I wake up tomorrow morning Eliza will be one year old. Like all grandmothers, I think it's gone by too fast. The first year has been full of adventures for all of us as we got to know the new person in our lives. Together we've been through colic, teething, learning to sit up by herself, holding her own bottle, learning to crawl, to eat (semi) solid food, to pull herself up to a standing position, to stand all by herself - and taking a bath in the big bathtub, with a great deal of splashing and giggling. She can't talk, but she can make herself known - da means daddy, ba means bottle (and sometimes banana), and keys, oddly enough, clearly means keys. And puff means, not a magic dragon, but a baby food item called puffs. She can point to things, and she knows her books and lots of the words and pictures in them. She's already, in just her first year, been to Disneyland, had a limo ride, and is close pals with both Elmo and Minnie Mouse. She loves her Baby Einstein videos, and to sit on my lap and play patty-cake and sing "the itsy bitsy spider." She loves to play in her bouncer and to go on walks (well, she rides in her stroller like a princess while the rest of us walk) to the park near her house or to the coffee shop on my hillside, where she sits on Jim's lap and charms the waitresses and gets pureed carrots all over herself and anyone else who ventures too near. She loves her mommy and her daddy and her aunt Jennifer and me, and we love her right back. This is the best adventure; as I see the winding down of own my life coming slowly around the horizon, watching this little girl grow and play is a lot of fun. I used to say that my children were my stealth bombs to the future - that I had raised amazing kids who were good human beings and would make the world a better place. I was right about that - and now they are carrying it on with yet another generation. I sent Eliza home the other night wrapped in a blanket that I had wrapped her father in 33 years ago; Jennifer found an old photo of Josh strapped into his carrier with that same blanket keeping him warm.
Parenting has lots of ways it can go, and I was very lucky that my kids turned out so well despite, or because of, their slightly unorthodox single-mother upbringing. You have a lot of choices in parenting; if you are abused as a child, you can choose to perpetuate it by handing it down to your own children, or you can choose to break the cycle of abuse by giving them nothing but love. I chose to look very hard at the way I was raised, and to take from it every good and fun and wonderful thing that happened and pass those things along to my own children; and I then took every bad thing that happened and made a specific and concerted effort to eliminate the negative stuff from my vocabulary of parenting skills. For instance, my maternal grandmother, whom I adored, was a racist from the word go, and I am grateful that her frequent verbal expressions of prejudice never became part of my own mindset. My own children never heard those words until they started school, and it was a point of pride with me that they had no idea what the words meant when they first heard them, and had to come to me for a definition! Babies are not born hating babies of other races. Prejudice and hatred are learned behaviors, and babies learn them from their parents. We are responsible for who our children are; when they are born they are like blank pieces of paper, and what we write on them is part of who they will become. I am incredibly proud of the people my children have grown into. And now Josh is taking every good and fun and wonderful thing from his own childhood and giving it to Eliza, and is also remembering my frequent mistakes and vowing not to repeat them. At this rate we will have perfect children in just another generation or two!
Any minute now Eliza will be learning to walk, and then look out, world, here she comes!
Other Voices, Other Sites
HERE ARE SOME OTHER INTERESTING MUSIC-RELATED PLACES TO VISIT.
BluegrassAssociation of Southern California
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
