Traveling Alone

Listen while you read:  Isbell and Shires live

Mountain's rough this time of year
They close the highway down
They don't warn the town
I've been fighting second gear for fifteen miles or so
Trying to beat the angry snow
I know every town worth passing through
But what good does knowing do with no one to show it to?

I've grown tired of traveling alone
Tired of traveling alone
I've grown tired of traveling alone
Won't you ride with me?
Won't you ride?

I quit talking to myself
And listening to the radio, a long, long time ago
Damn near strangled by my appetite
In Ybor City on a Friday night
Couldn't even stand up right
So high, the street girls wouldn't take my pay
She said come see me on a better day
And she just danced away

I've grown tired of traveling alone
Tired of traveling alone
I've grown tired of traveling alone
Won't you ride with me?
Won't you ride?

Pain in the outside lane
I'm tired of answering to myself
Heart like a rebuilt part
I don't know how much it's got left
How much it's got left

I've grown tired of traveling alone
Tired of traveling alone
I've grown tired of traveling alone
Won't you ride with me?
Won't you ride?

~  Jason Isbell

You may be tired of my Jason Isbell posts, but clearly, I'm not. I don't think I've been this interested in a singer/songwriter since Ryan Adams. (And Isbell has been compared to Ryan Adams!) "Traveling Alone" appears on Isbell's 2013 solo endeavor, Southeastern, but the video linked above is a live duet featuring Isbell's wife, Amanda Shires. Her violin is hauntingly beautiful, and her voice complements his beautifully. Clearly, they have chemistry.

Jason Isbell has struggled in the past with addictions (Damn near strangled by my appetite), but has been sober for several years now. Apparently, Shires was instrumental in creating the intervention that led Isbell to rehab. And certainly, he had extra motivation to get clean; Isbell and Shires married a few days after studio work for Southeastern was completed. Shires is now a featured member of Isbell's back-up band, The 400 Unit. And they are parents to a baby girl, referenced in at least one of Isbell's songs ("White Man's World").

Last night, I flew home from Colorado . . . alone. After spending a week with Sam and Andrea and Luna, plus visits with their friends and Andrea's family, the flight home was a bit lonely, although my Jenna was at the airport at midnight to drive me home. But I had time on the flight to contemplate that aspect of my travels. It may be that I travel as often with friends and family as I do alone, and there are drawbacks and benefits to both kinds of trips. But sometimes, I do grow tired of traveling alone. Navigating airports by myself is not always comfortable, nor is driving to unfamiliar places. It may take some intense conversations with myself to become motivated to pack up the car and go, but I know that if I became complacent about traveling, I might blink my eyes to discover that I am too old or addled to do it anymore, thereby missing out on something that has become so important to me.

And I am not overlooking the obvious. "Traveling Alone" is an extended metaphor for the human condition. While I do think it is possible to enjoy a fulfilling life as a single, unattached person, there is comfort and satisfaction in sharing the ride with someone. For me, right now, I seem to be enjoying the best of both worlds. I am planning a solo road trip to Maine next month, but I will look forward to another trip a few weeks later, on which I hope to be accompanied by my favorite traveling companion.

Won't you ride with me?

September Song

Listen while you read:  Willie Nelson's version

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November . . . 
And these few precious days I'll spend with you
The precious days I'll spend with you

~  Kurt Weill & Maxwell Anderson (1938)

Well, today I am as melancholy as this song. But not quite as old . . . nearly 80 years! Despite the many, many artists who have recorded it, I chose Willie Nelson's version from 1978's Stardust album. Most recently, Willie's son Lukas has been performing it, sometimes with his band, Promise of the Real, and sometimes with Neil Young. I couldn't find a video that I liked of Lukas singing it (crowd noises, etc.), but he sounds very much like his dad.

Clearly, the song is metaphor for aging, and given that I am in the September (or maybe October) of my life, I can get pretty choked up listening to it. On a more literal note, however, I will be returning to New Jersey this evening to spend another month or so enjoying autumn's beauty. The weather here in Colorado has still been summerlike; the high today will be near 90 degrees. But the leaves are turning back East, and I will have to begin those chores that must be done at the end of summer: winterizing the gardens, taking in porch furniture, planting garlic, taking out screens and locking windows. While autumn is truly beautiful back home, I still find it hard to say goodbye to summer.

And I find it hard to say goodbye to my kids. Let me rephrase that: I find it hard to say "so long" to my kids. (My grandmother taught me to never say "goodbye." "So long" means you will see each other again.) I will say so long to Sam when he drops me off at the airport later this afternoon, and my eyes are watering just thinking about it. The problem is that I don't know when I will see him again. Maybe Thanksgiving, but doubtful. Maybe Christmas, but where? If I had a target date to focus on, I would handle the separation much better.

I know that once I fall back into my routines, I will adjust to this. But today, my melancholia is real.

Dog Days Are Over

Listen while you read:  Or are they?

Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble, she sank with a drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming, so you better run
Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind you
Can't carry it with you if you want to survive
. . . 

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

~ Florence (Welch) & The Machine

This song put Florence & The Machine on the U.S. charts back in 2009 with the release of their second effort, Lungs. The linked video is said to be a favorite of Florence's, but I find it kind of creepy and really don't care to ever watch it again. But you have to give the song credit for making you want to get up and run. It would be an understatement to say that it is energizing.

There's really only one reason I chose this song today. This evening, I get to watch Sam and Andrea play softball, so I googled songs about softball / baseball. (I already used Fogerty's "Centerfield" back in March when we went to a Mets' spring training game.) I came upon a link to some softball organization's list of the best walk-up songs, and this song was on the list. I guess because of the energy and the references to running? Well, exhausted by hurricanes and politics and 9/11 remembrances, I was grateful for a song that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but is upbeat.

"The dog days of summer" refers to the time when Sirius, the dog star, appears to rise just before the sun. This occurs in late July, which is usually the hottest month of the year. This may explain why the phrase has come to refer to those hot and steamy days of summer. It's probably safe to say that the dog days are over now in mid-September . . . although one never knows.

On a different note, my dog days (my time here spent with Luna, the coolest dog in the Rockies) are almost over, as I fly back east tomorrow. Oh, I will miss her!

And I will miss Sam and Andrea, who have provided me with a wonderful visit full of fun and relaxation. And beer. More of that tonight after the ballgame!

Hey, Sam:  run for your mother!

Jesus Etc.

Listen while you read:  Norah Jones covers Wilco

Jesus, don't cry
You can rely on me, honey
You can combine anything you want
I'll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a setting sun

Tall buildings shake
Voices escape singing sad, sad songs
Tuned to chords strung down your cheeks
Bitter melodies, turning your orbit around

Don't cry
You can rely on me, honey
You can come by anytime you want
I'll be around
You were right about the stars
Each one is a burning sun

Tall buildings shake . . .

Voices whine
Skyscrapers are scraping together
Your voice is smoking
Last cigarettes are all you can get
Turning your orbit around

Our love
Our love
Our love is all we have

Our love
Our love is all of God's money
Everyone is a burning sun

~  Jeff Tweety & Jay Bennett

So yes, there's a reason I selected this song today. But if you thought that it was written about 9/11, you would be wrong. Appearing on Wilco's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the song was written and recorded months before September 11, 2001. The album was scheduled for release on that exact date (strange coincidence) under Reprise Records, but Wilco was dropped from the label when Time Warner (Reprise's parent company) merged with AOL. Wilco subsequently offered the entire album on live stream from their website on September 18. After signing with Nonesuch Records in November, the album was released in April 2002. So even though "Jesus Etc." was released post-9/11, the song was written and recorded before that tragedy occurred. Of the coincidences, Jeff Tweedy said, "There were a lot of eerie echoes of 9/11 that I heard on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, maybe because some of the focus on that record was being introspective about America. I understand how people could hear that in it. I'm obviously very, very honored if anybody found any kind of consolation in that record, at that time or now."

Despite my love for Wilco, I chose a Norah Jones cover of the song for this post because I really love her version. I first heard it (with the duo Puss 'n Boots) from a video recorded at the 22nd annual Bridge School Benefit Concert in 2008. The Bridge School concerts, founded by Neil and Pegi Young, supported the Bridge School, which serves students with severe physical impairments and complex communication needs in Mountain View, California. Due to Live Nation taking too much of the money raised, last October saw the last of the concerts.

When we, as a nation, were inconsolable about the tragedy that we watched play out on our TV screens, the music industry tried to help us by offering music to soothe the soul and give us hope. But the suits at Clear Channel decided that it was in our best interest to be spared songs that might be considered insensitive. While the list was not an outright ban, but rather a suggestion of songs not to play, most of the songs would hardly be considered appropriate by any deejay with any sense at all. But also on the list were songs like Cat Stevens' "Peace Train" and John Lennon's "Imagine." I remember well the fallout from music fans against Clear Channel and the control they tried to place on free speech.

(If you think I might be trying to make a statement by putting certain names in bold print in this post, you get an A. And if you know what that statement is, A+.)

Not to ever take anything away from those who suffered from the 9/11 tragedy, I have often thought about our collective grieving over only certain acts of terrorism or mass murder and why there are not designated days to commemorate the lives lost in other tragic events, like those at Sandy Hook or Oklahoma City or the Boston Marathon. If the answer to my pondering is the sheer number of casualties from 9/11, then what about the approximately 1,620 people who die each day from cancer? I have been known to say, "There's no terrorist like cancer." Have we just accepted that cancer deaths are unavoidable and a natural occurrence? (And might we one day think the same about mass murders?) I would love to someday see a "war on cancer" that receives an equally passionate dialog (and funding) as the "war on terror" (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

Our love is all we have. Our love is all of God's money. Everyone is a burning sun. We rise, we burn in one another's lives, but eventually, we set. And in the end, we realize that our love was the most valuable thing we had to give or receive. It's that simple.

Never forget love.

Sunset on Islamorada 3/2016

Where to Now, St. Peter?

Listen while you read:  I took myself a blue canoe . . .

I took myself a blue canoe
And floated like a leaf
Dazzling, dancing, half enchanted
In my Merlin sleep

Crazy was the feeling
Restless were my eyes
Insane, they took the paddles
My arms, they paralyzed

So where to now, St. Peter
If it's true I'm in your hands
I may not be a Christian
But I've done all one man can
I understand I'm on the road
Where all that was is gone
So where to now, St. Peter?
Show me which road I'm on
Which road I'm on

It took a sweet young foreign gun
This lazy life is short
Something for nothing always ending
With a bad report

Dirty was the daybreak
Sudden was the change
In such a silent place as this
Beyond the rifle range

So where to now, St. Peter . . . 

I took myself a blue canoe

~  Bernie Taupin & Elton John

I'm still in Colorado with my son and Andrea and Luna, the coolest dog in the Rockies. Upon waking this morning, I asked Sam what the plan was. He said that we would probably go canoeing. Okay. Getting dressed, I glanced up at the wall to notice a framed record album cover, something I'd given Sam when he was still a kid living at home. The album cover was Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection. I'd had two things in mind when I selected that cover to put in the frame all those years ago. For one thing, it was Sam's dad's favorite album. And because Pete had played it so many times, scratching it beyond repair, he'd had to buy a second copy. So I had an extra cover. And then a line floated into my head: I took myself a blue canoe . . .  So I made the connection, and it's only 9:00 a.m. Tumbleweed Connection was released in 1970, the third of Elton John's thirty studio albums.

From what I can gather, Bernie Taupin had a fascination with the American Civil War, something shared by many people, historians or not. We visited a number of Civil War historic sites back in the day, none of which was as compelling as Gettysburg. If you can leave that place without being moved by the horror of war or humbled by the sacrifices made in that war, you are missing some part of that which makes us human. So Taupin wrote a song about the death of a Confederate soldier (or so my research says) and does so in a haunting and powerful way. Suddenly, the war isn't about the Union and the Confederacy, but rather, about the death of one man.

And putting aside the backdrop of war, that is why I chose this song as part of the soundtrack for Pete's memorial service nearly fifteen years ago. In the face of my sorrow, the lyrics offered some comfort, describing death as something dreamlike and hazy and soft.

Which might also describe a canoe trip. I can recall several dreamy canoe trips on the Delaware with Pete when we were young and healthy and looking toward our future. And now here I am, ready to spend some time on Carter Lake in a canoe with Pete's son, who is now the same age that his dad was when I started dating him. And I am looking toward Sam's and Andrea's future, hoping that it stretches far beyond the future I had with Pete.

Connections.

I took myself a blue canoe.

Like a Hurricane

Listen while you read:  Live Rust 1972

Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar
Dancing on the light from star to star
Far across the moonbeam, I know that's who you are
I saw your brown eyes turning once to fire

You are like a hurricane, there's calm in your eye
And I'm getting blown away to somewhere safer where the feeling stays
I want to love you, but I get so blown away

I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream
You could have been anyone to me
Before that moment you touched my lips
That perfect feeling when time just slips away
Between us on our foggy trip

You are like a hurricane . . . 

~ Neil Young

Well, that was predictable, wasn't it? But despite the onset of Hurricane Irma, "Like a Hurricane" is my favorite Neil Young song. Although he wrote it in 1975 (pretty much in a drunken, stoned stupor with laryngitis, no less), it did not really reach the public until 1977's American Stars & Bars. It had been released as a single before then, but didn't take off until the album came out. Since then, it has become one of Young's most often performed songs. The video linked above is from a performance during the "Live Rust" tour. Sure, there are some on-stage theatrics, but the recording is pretty good.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen Neil Young in concert, most recently one year ago this month with Promise of the Real, but there was one concert that stands out most for me. I was in the third row at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. I can't recall the exact date, but if I connect it to my own personal life events, I would guess that it was somewhere between 1979 and 1981. And I think it was Neil Young solo with a back-up band that wasn't Crazy Horse. (I could be wrong about this.) Anyway, what I remember is that Neil did "Like a Hurricane" with an industrial-sized fan blowing on him, and that simple effect was amazing. I felt like I was in the storm. Maybe I was buzzed and maybe I wasn't, but that didn't matter. "Like a Hurricane" has always had the power to send me to some other place.

Dave Marsh, who in my opinion is the god of rock critics, referred to the song as an eight-minute tour-de-force of electric guitar feedback and extended metaphor. "Smokey Robinson meets Jimi Hendrix on Bob Dylan's old block," said Marsh. Sounds right to me. Young has referenced Del Shannon's "Runaway" as an influence, saying that the the chords in the bridge ("You are like a hurricane . . . ") are the same chords as those in the "Runaway" line, "I'm a-walkin' in the rain." Hmm . . . I can hear it. And talk about extended metaphor, there's rain in both songs.

And there's rain in Florida. While it looks like my county is out of the cone at this point, that does not mean that there won't be damage. I am looking for distraction from worry anywhere I can find it.

And on cue, my son just suggested we go get a beer. Wait up, Sam!

Anxiety

Listen while you read:  Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit

Anxiety
How do you always get the best of me?
I'm out here living in a fantasy
I can't enjoy a goddamn thing

Anxiety
Why am I never where I'm supposed to be?
Even with my lover sleeping close to me
I'm wide awake and I'm in pain

Watching the sunrise slash through the blinds
Dust in the room hovers over mine
Lying here in silence
Wife and child still sleeping deep enough to dream
And oh, I'm a lucky man today
But so afraid that time will take it all from me

Anxiety . . . 

It's the weight of the world but it's nothing at all
Light as a prayer, and then I feel myself fall
You got to give me a minute because I'm way down in it
And I can't breathe so I can't speak
I want to be strong and steady, always ready
Now I feel so small, I feel so weak

Anxiety . . . 

A crowded room is a burning battlefield
If I don't move, I'll come undone
My heart beats harder, a hammer striking steel
Will I walk now or be a "wait and run"?

Anxiety . . . 

~  Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires

"I just worry too much," Jason Isbell said about this song. It's interesting that my son said the same thing to me yesterday and further stated that he inherited that character trait from me. I immediately blamed my grandmother for my propensity to worry. "Anxiety" appears on That Nashville Sound, released a few months ago. And Jason Isbell and his wife Amanda Shires and the rest of The 400 Unit appeared last night at Red Rocks Amphitheatre overlooking Denver, Colorado.  And I was there, absolutely anxiety-free, at least for one night.

I am sometimes disappointed when a band sounds the same live as they do on their studio recordings. (The Eagles are a good example of that. Unless crazy Joe Walsh is front and center, there's no spontaneity. You might just as well avoid the traffic, stay home, and put on a CD.) Now, Jason Isbell sounds as good live as he does on his recordings, but somehow, I don't find that tedious. He's just that damn good, and the music is so powerful, you become entranced with the performance. It can't be matched by a CD in your living room.

And that's how last night's performance went. Amanda Shires' violin was pivotal to the power of the music, and the rest of The 400 Unit backed Isbell up flawlessly. It was an amazing show, and I was so grateful to be with Sam and Andrea on a beautiful Colorado night with an almost-full moon rising over us. The beer was damn good, too.

So of all of Isbell's setlist last night, why did I pick a song called "Anxiety," for goodness sake? Well, because anxiety seems to be what many of us have been feeling lately. We've become weary of the post-election anxiety, exacerbated by "that Rusher thing" and the ongoing escalating tension with North Korea. And now, we have Mother Nature adding to our stress. The Houston flooding wasn't bad enough, we now have this monster Irma threatening to annihilate the entire state of Florida and then some. I saw a headline this morning about an earthquake in Mexico and a possible resulting tsunami, just as I was adjusting to coming down from last night's concert. Enough already!

Yes, I have a condo in Florida. No, I am not there. And there isn't a damn thing I can do about what may or may not happen to it.

"So much of anxiety, or any of those off-shoots of fear, they deal in confusion," says Isbell. Once you clear up the confusion regarding whatever it is you are worrying about, you can see a pathway clear to dealing with the source of the anxiety. I know that right now, part of our anxiety about Irma is not knowing exactly where and how it is going to hit. We're confused and anxious because of our fear of the unknown. We may end up longing for these times of confusion once the reality of the event is known.

For now, aside from checking my newsfeed and The Weather Channel every ten minutes, I think I will choose to dwell on a particularly enjoyable evening of great music, fantastic scenery, good beer, and people I love. Thanks, Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit for the break from anxiety.