Starkville, MS

So… this happened.

In Starkville, MS, the town that people only know cause Johnny wrote a song about it, we were walking along after a show (no sidewalks in this part of town) on our way back from having a drink at Chili’s (like one does) and I spot some flowers. I pick one, saying to my compatriots in a jocular fashion: “This one’s for Johnny!”

Kelley, in a similarly jovial mood: “Uh-oh. There goes a cop car. I hope he doesn’t turn around.” Laughs all around at this fabricated copcar. Funny, funny lies.

About thirty yards down the street, Kelley again: “The cop just did a U-turn up there. He’s coming back.” Also funny, but not as funny as the first time.

Thirty seconds later, I am seeing a cop car driving swiftly, directly towards us. He is not fabricated. It becomes abundantly clear that he was never fabricated. It becomes similarly clear that he passed us just as I was picking a flower. That he immediately did a u-turn, that he is now slowing down.

He turns directly at us, in a slow, intentional fashion. I am still holding the flower, am caught in his literal headlights, and he looks in my eyes. His eyes are unambiguously coppy and suspicious. I have never been so certain that I was about to be arrested in my life. Time stretched out, went soft. Kafka was writing my life.

Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for you, dear reader, he swept his policeman gaze over us appraisingly and continued on his way.

They got a curfew in Starkville.

Nashville, TN

Back on tour after a week in Albuquerque. Holy week, and the pilgrimage to Chimayo.

On the way into Nashville, the shuttle driver – a schlubby, solid guy who seemed to make looking tough a priority – took it upon himself to make conversation:

Him: The Sheraton Downtown. They got good beds there.
Me: Oh do they?
Him: Yeah.
Me: …
Him: Yeah I spent the night there once with this woman I met on the shuttle.
Me: …
Him: Yeah.
Me: … And the quality of the bed is what you remember?
Him: …
Me: …
Him: …

And then, in a strangely touching manner,
Him: Actually I remember every inch of that woman’s body.

I believed him.

In Nashville I went out to some bar down on the drag where people seem to go, and in it was a rockabilly band. Man on guitar and vox, chicks with serious blonde hair, in wifebeaters, on standup bass and drums. Good songs, like: Never Met a Road I Didn’t Like. The scene was happening, full of cats in hard-shell greaser do’s and flannel shirts, birds in various iterations of retro outfits. At some point I became the only guy in there that didn’t know the other people around – a real scene. Then Jenny, a singer from New York, introduced herself and her husband Dave to me. Then I knew people.

Smiling, dancing young women in tattoos and polka dot skirts gave me delusions of looking back in time ( with more tattoos) and I thought this: once cost of sexual liberation might just be Charm. If sex is always on the table, it becomes harder to flirt so outrageously, with such confident calm, as charm demands.

Next morning, while a tornado warning gives a certain edge to the storm wailing by outside, I meet Jenny in the lobby of the Hotel. For the first time, it’s someone else in the touring artist economy, and for the first time, I feel part of a big, ramshackle clan.

Next up, Starkville, MS, the joint where Cash got jailed for picking flowers.

Phoenix, AZ

Apologies all around to regular readers (har, har) dying to know about the Arizona experience. Time spent on the bus seems to be time spent on the blog. The converse seems to be true as well.

Phoenix, AZ

If the Wiki is to be believed, fully a quarter of Phoenix is new in the last 7 years. If you want to know what Phoenix is like, think about that for a minute. Extrapolate. You’ll get there.

The experience for us was mixed. Without wheels little presented itself for doing but riding the brand new light rail from the hotel to the theatre and back. Tempe, AZ, about an hour by rail, had about five blocks of pedestrian friendly zoning, boasting frozen yogurt establishments, sportsbars, and an Irish Pub flown in piece by piece from Ireland. Open mic night with an old dude singing tuneless rambles about his youth.

Beyond that, everything seems to be zoned for office parks, with limited license given to parking lots and fast food shacks. The three-mile walk to the theatre passes through the “Arts District” where museums and office buildings are almost indistinguishable in their indifferent, resigned attitudes. Office lawn or public park? Who knows? Who cares?

One feels, as a pedestrian in Phoenix, as if the Zombies have come and gone.

On the positive end of the mix, kitchens in the hotel rooms, grocery down the street. Righteous. Outside, a pool, a lawn, and a grill. You do the math:poker by streetlight, pot roasts til two a.m.

It’s the first time the cast and crew have been in the same hotel. Union regulated as the actor half of the tour is, personal relationships are easy to sort out, things tend very workplace-y. The crew on the other hand don’t have a union on this tour – so two things (at least) happen: they work like dogs, and they control the details of their lives a little more. More intuitive cooperation, more cohabitation. It feels like a pack, and I love it.

We performed in a big and modern theatre (sound very hot, but otherwise a sonic breeze) to wildly different receptions between student shows and grownup shows. The kids were old enough to get the complex plot points, and young enough to laugh at dick jokes. The old people just… sort of seemed like they voted for grandpa last November.

Shakespeare is pretty brutal in his judgments of cowardice in Henry. Watching Shakespeare be unmerciful to his own characters really works best when you sort of love the characters for the very reason that he’s punishing them. Even (or maybe especially) when you think the playwright might be right. So if you get people that can’t be bothered to give two shits about these drunken, cowardly buffoons, much of the payoff is lost. Nobody has to learn anything, nobody wonders about the cost of learning it.

Or so I imagine. I mean, on some level, they make noises, or they don’t. Who knows what the hell they’re thinking?

Up next, Tucson’s belated entry.