Mountain Girl

"Does anyone remember
Does anybody care
The days we danced together
With feathers in our hair
Rivers ran together
To sing a crystal tune
Stones skipped on the water
Circles around the moon

Oooh hey yea yea
When the full moon shines
The mountain pines are swaying
Oooh yeah yea
Close your eyes and listen
To the guitars playing..."

English 102. I chose that class because of you. I could have picked any one of them, I had the scores. I had placed far above the rest...

But when you smiled and looked over at me, guitar in hand, legs beneath you on that green wide blanket of grass, I looked down and pulled a blade, quietly, between my forefinger and thumb and repeated what you said with a smile. "That's funny. Me too. I'm in that class too." I brushed the hair out of my eyes and looked up into the blue midwestern sky. I chose to give my thin poker face to the sun, rather than let it settle onto your surprised expression. This little crush. My dear friend.

You would become my dear friend, transforming from a tanned and tattooed mystery into an easy smile and a gatherer of my thoughts. You gathered them and held them within the chords turned out from your guitar.

"Built a box together
Filled it full of songs
And buried it on the mountain
Beneath a pile of bones.
Then we said goodbye forever
to the hell that was our home
and set out across the flatlands
for 40 years to roam"

You gave so much to me. You gave me the confidence in my faltering love for the music of my childhood. From one chorus in passing of an old America tune, we ventured on, pulling the dusty records from the forgotten coat closets in our memories, playing them on brilliant running Autumn days, playing them until I recognized their cherished tone in so much more. I remember when you first played Blue Mountain for me. The churning guitars and earnest croon of Cary Hudson and company harkened to mid-day journeys down freshly oiled gravel roads, the seasoned wind burning across the prairie and into our way, windows down and arms extended. I could put all of those memories into a rolling contemporary recording and I remember how much that meant to me at the time. Today, ten years later, these days and discoveries of college have turned into heartheld memories of their own.

"Oooh hey yea yea
When the full moon shines
The mountain pines are swaying
Oooh yeah yea
Close your eyes and listen
To the guitars playing..."

Thank you, dear Friend. Though many days and many miles may seperate our traveling souls, tomorrow when Cary takes the stage and begins to sing, I will see you on Scott Field. I will be transported once again.

-lyrics from Mountain Girl, Blue Mountain - Dog Days
Blue Mountain on Wikipedia

Chicago

"Say-rah?" rumbled from the kitchen. I peered around the corner, hand resting on one of the million couches in the living room. When he recognized my face, his lit up. "How you doin', girl."

I rambled across the room and into his arms. Hello Ralph. "Hello, You," I sang. My heart sang too. Tonight would be great. Tonight would be beyond anything we'd seen so far.

John stumbled past, shirt in hand. "Does this go together?" Chuck struggled with the futon. Derek seperated posters and gathered 45s. I grabbed a soda out of the fridge and sat back on the couch closest to the kitchen. Chuck came to sit beside me and I took his shoulder in my palm, the stress flowed, muscle to hand and out into the day. The sun streamed in through the multitude of windows and we all sat back for one moment...one full and quiet moment before the storm.

I was always one for a rainy day. The slight showers of the morning left the streets damp and the buildings perspiring. John's brow was the same. He hoped that there would be no more rain. With the barbecue set up outside the Hideout, the chairs and tables and benches, some under tent, most open air. We pulled up to the venue and spilled out of the car.

OUTSIDE THE HIDEOUT

Sean Michael McCarthy & Emily Oddo

Honky Tonk Barbecue

Brooks Porter

Emily Oddo & Charles Ciba


INSIDE THE HIDEOUT

MLE

DJ Andy Dyson & DJ Brian "Agent 45" Poust


Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves

Hermon Hitson

Ralph "Soul" Jackson & MLE


Adam Fitz & Ralph "Soul" Jackson

The Legendary Roscoe Robinson

Roscoe Robinson

Taylor Hollingsworth & the Spidereaters / Dead Confederate

DEAD CONFEDERATE

The lights went out. I clutched my Rebecca-tini, pulling sugar from the rim of the glass up to my curious lips, and squinted as Charlie Brown frantically ran past. A hum of the guitar still traveled from the stage, the slow crawl of the Dead Confederate set edged to a halt. The darkness and the rumble of crowd conversation prevailed.

We sat illuminated moments later, wagging our heads and allowing the distortion to take its part in the conversation again. It was the conversation, the smoke and lights and rock and roll.

TAYLOR HOLLINGSWORTH & THE SPIDEREATERS



Taylor, striped shirt and easy smile. I followed Sarah up to the stage. I couldn't help but reflect on a night in Austin over a year ago. Travis and I stood side by side, much as we were at this moment, smiling at each other and back at Taylor's flailing sweaty head as he bent over his guitar. Macey. Brian. Dim orange light and crowd of friends in an off-street mexican restaurant. Tonight we stood, under crunch and curses, beers in hands and grins on faces, watching this son of Birmingham burn bright again.

Welcome Home Mister.

Sara Sunglasses

The glasses are holding the sleep in and keeping the day, this dark and dreary Thursday morning, out. It seems silly to fight darkness with darkness...but sometimes that is just what has to be done.

Subterranean Homesick Alien

Leaning up against the back of the bench, my legs crossed, my eyes squinted in the misty morning air, I clutched my discman and turned to gaze out upon the patterned blue. We were crossing from Maine to Nova Scotia. To my impatient heart this was the longest ferry ride in the whole wide world. This was the longest morning. I closed my eyes again with the slow somber roll of the ferry engine. A breeze rushed through the summer skies and my hair fell onto my face, touching my cheek. As I brushed it away I looked up:


"The breath of the morning I keep forgetting. The smell of the warm summer air. I live in a town where you can't smell a thing, you watch your feet for cracks in the pavement."


I had bought a new organizer for the trip. This was long before the days of the IPOD, I picked out the most travel-worthy of the music collection and filed them, flip-envelope after flip-envelope in a big black book for the car, a small shoulder bag for day excursions. I preferred walking through the visitors centers and museums, Norman Rockwell's Studio in Stockbridge, Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, earbuds in, avoiding the wandering conversation of my parents. My companion for this day and the next, the voice that I heard, that told me everything as I walked down a cold, pale hallway in the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck, NS, was Thom Yorke....


"I wish that they'd swoop down in a country lane, late at night when I'm driving. Take me on board their beautiful ship, show me the world as I'd love to see it."


How is it that out of the hundreds of CDs that I had brought along on this trip, every moment of this three week journey across the eastern seaboard and to the north seems stilted in the warbling, earnest voice of Thom Yorke and OK Computer's intricate weaving modern bell-prose of the organ and guitar.


I think of walking through the gardens of a bed and breakfast, some hazy new england morning, driving up the coast of Nova Scotia, marvelling at the rising Highlands, the winding shore. I think of collapsing after a long day's journey, curled up in a hotel bed, no cares, no worries until morning, the darkness and Jonny Greenwood, the quiet and Thom's voice.


"I'd tell all my friends but they'd never believe me, they'd think that I'd finally lost it completely. I'd show them the stars and the meaning of life. They'd shut me away. But I'd be alright..."

(excerpts from Subterranean Homesick Alien from Radiohead's OK COMPUTER)

Topper Price

-Topper-
What makes you feel alive
inside this slowing shell,
this stifled air
I dream of cutting away the flesh
peeling it apart to free the soul

He sings to bring the days
an ever after youth
with a yowl and a beautiful scream
I'm half his age and only dream
of that sort of release
that sort of return
-(01/12/2006)

At the Scott Boyer benefit a few weeks ago, as Donnie Fritts wailed and writhed at the microphone, as the forever jam blasted out into the room, two men raced to the back-up microphone. Paul Thorne took the long way around, pushing back the stage curtains, careful to walk behind the musicians onstage...he stopped, midstride as he caught sight of Topper Price swaggering across the stage, in front of Donnie, David, and Scott, stepping over cords and around amps. Topper took his place, with a sideways smile, at the microphone beside Bonnie Bramblett, and pulled out his harmonica. I turned to John and we both wagged our heads and smiled. Topper.

"Hey little girl." He tugged on one of my ponytails as I sat outside the Nick. I looked up and saw Topper's curly mess of hair and crooked grin. I had never met him before, but I knew exactly who he was. Most of my musician friends had played with him at one time or another, always coming back from a late night/early morning liquor soaked roustabout with story after story. That night, almost 7 years ago, that I first met this Force of Nature will always stick in my mind....because beyond all of the stories, beyond of the tall tales, I found some kind of magic. When he pulled out his harmonica and closed his eyes and began to play, stomping his foot, bobbing his head, the crunching blues notes became something pure and true.

Topper passed away yesterday. The Magic City has lost one of it's bright, burning lights. But the stories, the legend of this extraordinary, wild-eyed music man, will live on.

Tiny European Cars

I have a secret little page full of stars (otherwise known as bad poetry) that I've been working on for some time. Some of it is inspired by stories, some inspired by circumstance, most of it sails on memory, a glaring, crashing sea of streaming pictures. I stuff my little words in quiet corners, saving them for later, so I can pull them out one day and wag my head at my young heart's desires.

I was thinking of this last night, driving home from the Bottletree and listening to Clem Snide. I was thinking of my plain words on crumpled page and Eef Barzelay's lawn chair pondering lyrics, so simple and interesting. I say "lawn chair" because when I hear them, over his formulaic, easy construction of a song, it makes me think of sitting in the front driveway on a Saturday, leaning back in a criss-cross nylon and aluminum chair, drinking coca-cola out of a perspiring red can and watching the neighborhood cars zoom past one after another. I see the lazy, lingering stride of day but I'm thinking of something more. This is the way Eef Barzelay tells his stories. Open ended and honest. I wish that I could do the same, with such simplicity and beauty. In my last blog, I left you a small bunch of thoughts, a flash of memory of wintertime from what seems long ago. I don't know why I thought of it, or wanted to share, but there it is.

Wherein Sara Leah's music geekness rises to a new level...

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be singing. It seemed to be a sing-a-long type of moment. We were crowded in the center of the room. Crowded in the dark, circling John Vanderslice and his guitar, David and the bass drum, St. Vincent and her crystal clear harmonies. John pulled his arm up from his side and waved it in the air. Was it a sing-a-long? No one else was singing with them, but Will and I, but at that moment there could have been choirs behind us. The whole room was filled with sound. As John opened his mouth and wagged his blonde head, the whole world seemed to be singing along:

"You know that guy who
stole your girlfriend
away from you
in the summer
of '95
he's going to die

you know her name
sits in your brain
like a tumor
eyes still shine in your memory
she's going to die

well you can carry that grudge
or you can let it go
but as sure as I'm singing this song, you know
she's going to die, she's going to die

five'll get you ten so just let it go
that she and he and i will hear the final chord
just let it go, let it go, we're going to die"

-Nikki Oh Nikki, Life and Death of an American Four Tracker



The room was still. The lights were very low, casting an orange and golden glow upon the faces of my friends, standing just across the way. Rebecca stood, elevated on a bar stool, camera pulled up to her small serious face. Amber stood below her, hands clasped, eyes warm, smiling in my direction. This was it. A perfect moment.

I sat at the bar earlier, trying to tell Ben way I love John's music, telling what scattered history that I knew, what my nervous brain could remember. I kept saying the word perfect. Scott Solter's production, perfect. John's lyrics, perfect. I know that these statements are not true. The lyrics, the clicks and whirrs, the piano, the guitar...not perfect. They are odd and interesting, off putting and inviting at the same time. There is an earnestness in every measure that I can't shake off, that seems perfect when it hits my ear, like that moment when you slip into a warm bath and you sigh and smile. It's a good moment and to you, it is perfect because it's what you've longed for. I long for music that speaks to me. More than that, I long for music that makes me think, drives my day. I long for music that will make me tilt my head as I start my car, exhausted from a long day of work. I turn through the intersection, underneath the overpass and forget everything. I lose myself in his voice and what he has to say, every clear strum of the guitar. Every distorted chord transports...

John had walked quickly to me once he had found that I was there. We chatted about the music scene, the Bottletree, Chris Ward and Pattern is Movement, the SDRE/Mk Ultra show in St. Louis. He smiled so easily and spoke with an honest warmth. Why was I so nervous? I felt nauseous still and the meeting was already over. I knelt down by Hamric, who was sitting at a table on the patio, his green "Wes McDonald and the Fizz" t-shirt, his smirking, wonderful eyes. I told Jason Hamric and Brandon that maybe it was because as a listener, you build this image of, this meaning behind what you hear. This is the freedom that you are given, to create a persona, a history from which the stories and the songs are born. To finally meet the person behind all of this can be devastating or transcendent

I remember meeting Mark Kozelek a couple years ago at the Nick. I had seen him in Nashville the night before and had decided not to talk to him as he stood beside me quietly during Warren Gently's opening set. Having seen him on stage a few times in my life and knowing his cloudy and sometimes downright mean disposition, I did not want to actually talk to him, for fear that his stage persona would leak into his true self, a self that I so honestly wanted to be the yearning, sad hearted, quiet lover of his voice. In other words, I did not want him to punch me in the face for asking him about a particular song or album. When I finally got up the nerve to approach him at the Nick, after much pushing and prodding by my friends, he was genuinely...well...sweet. "Hi. Hey. I remember you. Pink scarf girl." It was a great moment.

I've been listening to John Vanderslice for ten years. His music has been a great part of my life soundtrack. I do not know him, but I know his climbing voice. His voice has been a friend to me. His music has gotten me through dark days and accompanied me on great adventures. When he walked up to me after his set and hugged me and thanked me for smiling and singing along...I thought to that moment, sitting at a table at the back of the room, when he had traveled from the stage to the organ by the bathrooms to sing a number. I sat at that table and smiled as he lifted his head and sang out. It was a perfect moment. Worth all of the nervousness, worth all of this quiet hope.

check out tour dates and news of John Vanderslice at www.johnvanderslice.com

Right Here. (updated)

I pulled up into the driveway and stopped the car. A man in his mid-forties stood peering at me, waterhose in hand. I opened my door and stepped out and smiled. "I'm Sara Leah Miller. Dave Miller's daughter." His questioning stare turned into a half grin as he put down the hose and walked over to where I stood. I stood next to a green tinted mound of earth. A sad strange heap of ground where a white two story house once stood. The house of my Grandfather and his father. The simple small house that I often run through in my day dreams, thinking of it's stale quiet air. Dusty corners and dead silence. My sad homestead, my heritage, now a mound of dirt and a lonesome gate.

We chatted for a while. We walked to the backyard of the gentleman's small white prefab house nestled where the drive once ran into the garage and the milkhouse. A tree stood in the distance, familiar, but bare...the tree which once held my treehouse. The treehouse had been a grand affair, two platforms of lumber and an underbelly of sturdy limbs to climb in and swing from. It had once seemed so grand....so big and strong...like my father, like my family, roots so deep in the soil, so tall and healthy and eternal. Now it stood, branches outstretched and unburdened, wading through the mid-day breeze coming across the plains. I felt it. I understood it's lonliness and it's freedom in one long glance.

His wife leaned on the deck. Her faded t-shirt and easy smile made me feel at home, even while I felt this small constant yearning, this comparison of old and new, memories to reality tearing at my head. "I think I may come back through this summer. Would it be okay if I came out here and took a walk through the pasture? I don't have time today but..."

She nodded her head, "Of course, you are always welcome."
He scratched his head and put his hand on his hip, "Now mind you the cows aren't out. We've got a new bull, so check with me first."

I turned and looked across the slight roll of hills, the trees in the distance cloaking the turn in Camp Creek, the turn at the base of a big tree. Blue bells always bloomed there at it's feet. It's branches were so high that Davey and his friends would take a running-flying leap, running their shoes and knees and gangly arms up the side to reach one big solid knob about 7 feet up. They rarely got very far, there was really nothing to hold on to. They would look up longingly to the upmost branches and see the remains of my father's boyhood treehouse...a few grey tattered boards, but to them it was like some fabled land, some dream in distant past that someday would come true.

I turned the corner of the house back to my car and slid into the seat. My shoulders bent and searching, my heart a little weary. I drove up the lane, speeding and speeding, my thoughts bursting, my memories flowing down my body and into my car seat and out into the road behind me. At the stop sign, the abrupt screeching halt, a young boy on a riding mower looked up, smiled and lifted his hat. I looked out over the farmland, down the road to my family's resting place and to the land they loved so much. The stereo was turned off, but in my head...I heard these familiar measures of song in John Wozniak's low and somber voice...

He swore he could see the beauty there
And he said " ooo ooo oh I never wanna leave
Ooo ooo this place
Ooo ooo yes I always wanna be
Right here"

Find a place
To call home
Any place
To call home

Right here

And so I came in the dead of night
Climbed up into the satellite and
Looked out over America
I swear I could see the buffalo
Ooo ooo oh and I never wanna leave
Ooo ooo this place
Ooo ooo yes I always wanna be
Right here, right here

-America, Marcy Playground, Shapeshifter

I don't know if you know that song at all. But know this, for those first two years after I moved here, after my family had sold our land and had left our home behind...I would listen to this song so often and it's like it took the place of my heart on the matter. My night dreams were tied so tightly with the loss of all of this. My sad head would swim within the shadowed guitars and resurface in his hollow vocals. I imagined myself standing on the tip top of my treehouse, looking out over the land on a bright and windy day. Then I saw myself in the darkness climbing higher and higher and peering at the neighbors' lights so far down the road and at the barn yard and summer kitchen and every single structure glowing from the one light above the barn. At that moment, in that vision, it was all I ever knew and everything I ever wanted. I never understood it until then, I let the rest of myself, everything that I ever thought I was, crumble away and I stood there, clutching to limbs in the thick whipping air of the plains watching the night fade back into sleep. (j)

Land o' Lincoln

Today we will be embarking on a great adventure. My mother and I will be driving across the great state of Tennessee, through Kentucky, to my hometown in Illinois. She will spend the weekend with her close circle of friends from our home church. I will spend the weekend running around with two of my closest Friends in all of the world. I've not been home in over a year and a half. It's funny when I think about it. My mother grew up in Hawaii across from Turtle beach on Oahu and finds that every few years she must go home, go back to the place she spent the days of her childhood, replenish her soul in the surf and sand. I feel the same way. Although not as an exotic location, to look across the flat plains of Illinois, to drive those winding dark back roads with the windows open taking in the farm-filled air, to walk through the woods and around the lake on Jaime's farm, to peer at the ghost town that is the downtown of Vandalia, my own heart is renewed.

I can never really go home again. The house of my heart, the homestead of my childhood was sold long ago, as was our family farm. The farmhouse was eventually torn down by the new owners and replaced by a double-wide. But in my mind's eye, I often see it, in fresh spring greens and blues, the white of the two story house that had been my family's legacy, the red of the barn, the stone in the barnyard taken from the creek bed, the buffalo trail, a quiet straight line across the property worn by the hooves of beasts long disappeared from our land. The rusted metal frame of a model t out in the pasture. A ghost of a machine, I turned it's tired steering wheel in my imagination so many times, standing on it's sideboards while my grandfather and brother carried firewood from the mountain of timber lying at it's side.

I miss the simple things, the pieces and foldings of our little county that made it so unique. Everyone took such pride in it's rich history. My father's Law Office was across the street from the Old State Capital Building in Vandalia. Lincoln served there from 1834 as a freshman legislator to 1839. One of my favorite annual events was the Grand Levee. Tradesmen and crafters from all over Illinois would come in period costume selling their wares. They'd set up in canvas tents and pretty wood paneled booths around the capital building. A women would make chicken and dumplings every year and I would fairly run from my father's office building to her booth following the perfume of pepper and chicken and celery. The root beer guy was set up right next to her and the Kettle Corn booth beside him. There were tatters of lace and blacksmiths, a man who made brooms and baskets, a man who made whistles and kitchen ware from tin (the whistles, much to my parents chagrin, were what I was really interested in. Somehow every year my treasure of a tin whistle would seem to disappear a few days after the festival...after I had driven everyone crazy with it). There was a young girl who cut paper into silhouettes and whimsical seasonal shapes. Her father had a big red nose and bushy beard and a crooked smile and he whittled wood into small angels with light paper thin wings. Each angel held a musical instrument. I would wistfully bide my time in that booth, wishing for a intricately cut valentine or an angel for my mother. But most times I'd already spent all of my pocket money on my lunch and tin whistles and bags full of rock candy.

The musicians would be on the back side of the building, accompanying a handful of clog dancers who click-clacked away on wooden squares arranged just-so on the freshly cut lawn. There were an equal amount of onlookers in standard summer fare as there were young ladies in bonnets and mothers in flowing skirts and aprons. The Lincoln Impersonator would take the stage after the Old Timey Medicine Show. The Native American dancers from Cahokia would put on quite a display by the Children's activity area. I would sit on the stairs of the courthouse and listen to the ladies from the historical society play their recorders (They named their merry little troupe "Baroque Folk"). The hollow beautiful harmonies would echo through the building. I was enchanted.

Tonight around midnight, we will arrive in this fair town. My mother will go to her friend Charlotte's house to sleep and Jaime will pick me up. We might go to the local hangout, the Depot, for a drink. We may just go back to her farm and spend the next 13 hours talking and sleeping and eating and watching movies. Darren will drive through (with Tom and Patti in tow) the next afternoon to pick me up and whisk me away to St. Louis for the Son Volt show. It should be an incredible time.

--------------------------------------------------------------

John Ciba has been here in the Magic City since Wednesday. We spent yesterday evening with Janie Alfano, the daughter of the Birmingham Sound's Neal Hemphill. We met her at an Applebees and talked for hours. She told stories we'd never heard about her mother and father, about their devotion to each other and their dreams of the future. What an incredible family. What an incredible legacy. If you've not read Bob Mehr's article on the Birmingham Sound, here it is: Bob Mehr's Article on the Birmingham Sound

Derek, the other half of John's label Rabbit Factory, is flying in from New York today and as Mom and I drive north, he and John will be driving south to meet up with J. D. and Jim Lancaster. After last night's late night brew-tasting and Eddie Hinton storytelling at J. Clydes with Moises and Darryl (Documentary filmmakers, in from New Mexico for the Scott Boyer Benefit), and early morning rise (John rode in with me to work at 7 am and is currently working on his computer over at Lucy's), I'm sure their drive will be a tough one. I know it will be for me and the mum, for sure, but it will be worth it.

John Ciba Day! / Scott Boyer Benefit

It's John Ciba Day! No, this is not some obscure Canadian holiday, rather an exclaimation from a girl who has missed her best friend...although it should be a holiday of some sort here in the Magic City, filled with SweetWater Blue and Dreamland Barbecue and lots and lots of Soul music.



Oh wait. I think that's exactly what today will be like. Nevermind.

And tonight we will be here:

From the website-
" A concert benefiting former Capricorn Records recording artist Scott Boyer promises delightful surprises from today and yesterday, as familiar recording artists from Muscle Shoals and Nashville get ready to perform at the Alabama Theatre. Boyer, who had surgery for an arterial disease, is recognized in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame for his work in bands such as Cowboy, The Locust Fork Band, The Convertibles and The Decoys.

The concert will be held Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at the Alabama Theatre, 1811 Third Avenue North in downtown Birmingham, and starts at 7:00 pm. Tickets are available at all Ticketmaster outlets.

Headlining the show is Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks of The Allman Brothers Band. Solo recording artists Bonnie Bramlett, Paul Thorn and Donnie Fritts, former keyboardist for Kris Kristofferson, will also perform along with The Amazing Rhythm Aces, The Capricorn Rhythm Section and The Decoys. Joining them will be Zac Hacker, runner-up in the popular television show Nashville Stars and Topper Price, solo artist and former band mate with Boyer in Cowboy.

The stage band will include former Steppenwolf guitarist Larry Byrom, Charlie Daniel's Band bassist Charlie Haywood, original Fame Gang drummer Jerry Carrigan, guitarist Rick Kurtz, formerly of The Mortals, guitarist Wayne Perkins, formerly of Crimson Tide, guitarist Tommy Talton of Cowboy, Burrito Deluxe drummer Bryan Owings, bassist David Hood, formerly of Traffic, original Fame Gang percussionist and producer Mickey Buckins and The Bamman Bighorns. Byrom, Carrigan, Perkins, Owings, Hood and Buckins along with Thorn, Fritts and Price, have all been recognized as musical achievers by the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Boyer will also be performing alongside his friends in this All-Star review that will be a historical if not legendary show. "We have a couple of surprises in the works for this show", said Dick Cooper, promoter of the event. "We hope everyone will take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to see some great performers on this very special night."

For complete and up-to-date details please visit http://www.myspace.com/scottboyerbenefit."

I know it's short notice. We'll be out and around town after the show and for a while tomorrow evening too, so give me a call if you want to hang out.

Regarding The Dexateens/ River City Tanlines Show

Dear Sweetdog,

You sure do know how to throw a good party.

SL







More Pictures On My Flickr

Rain

I pulled out of your driveway and down the street. This strange summer day. I had spent the afternoon, sitting in your hollow home. Tile floors and wide doorways. This house was a gift from your family to you and Wes, that someday, when it was all too much for you to bear, when you could no longer do things on your own...you would be provided for. I sat on the couch, Lucy the collie's head in my hand, wrestling for my attention. My eyes were on you. I watched you wavering, walking, fingers in the air, stiff and awkward, your kind face that I'd known all my life settling into a smile.

I've never loved a friend so much as you. I'd slept by your side so many nights of my childhood. We had spent our summer days exploring the never ending avenues of our imagination. We were so fortunate, dearest girl.

Our mothers had met at church and became fast friends, both strangers in a small town, both married to young ambitious professionals, both with small children. And truly, we were sisters from the start. You were always short and dark. I was tall and fair. You were soft spoken. I was loud. When your father became ill and your family moved away, we still saw each other, every holiday, every summer. We traded books and tapes. We wrote each other the longest letters that we possibly could. We talked for hours on the phone. Our lives were completely interwoven an hour and a half apart. My favorite time of every year was your birthday, which usually fell around Columbus Day. My school would be out on that holiday. So I'd go down to Sesser and spend the weekend with you. And on Monday, when you got up to go to school, I went with you. I've no idea what trouble your mother (who was a teacher there at Sesser) went through to make this possible, maybe none at all. But let me say now, that I was always so thankful for it.

It was a chance for me to live one day a year in the dream that you and I would, just like in Saved by the Bell and all the other teen shows I watched every Saturday morning, go to school together, gossip, hang out at our lockers, pass notes in class. You were my best friend. I wanted to spend my youth hanging out on Friday nights and talking about boys. I wanted to spend my days pulling pranks on teachers with you, cutting class, walking home from school together.

I spent my youth on the outside. I was the artistic girl, the non-smelly freak in a small rural school of 100 students, who loved Dinosaur JR and R.E.M., Klimt and Van Gogh, and hung out with her art and band teachers more than her fellow students. I remember walking those ten blocks to school by myself every day, most always very late...walking home was worse, the cars full of laughing, silly students driving right past me as if I was completely invisible...and I was.

I was never invisible to you. You... How can I say this? Huntington's. I knew. I knew when we were young. I knew sitting by your side playing Nintendo. I knew when you drank from a cup, opened a drawer, walked down the sidewalk. I saw all of these traits of your father's disease in so many moments of so many days years before you were diagnosed. We'd lie in bed on those summer nights and talk of the possibility of all of this being true. You said that if it were, you would rather take your own life than live with it. When you finally went in for testing, right after high school, the doctor knew almost instantly. All of these things, all of these quiet terrible things, all of this, this mortality, this life, in a small town, all you'd ever known...I feared so much....

Then you met Wes. He said that he didn't care that you were sick. He loved you. He was your angel. This person given to you as a chance to live the life that you deserved to live, to be loved. The two of you were inseparable. You married in Jamaica in 2001. I, now living in Alabama, received letters full of stories of your adventures. You moved into this house, got another dog. He worked, you stayed at home. Over the years, as you became more ill, the two of you began to fall apart. He stayed out later, you stayed at home. He went out with friends and left you behind for days. Your family tried to help out, make sure you had groceries. But sometimes, you had nothing. Somehow in your disability, he had forgotten about you. The girl he married and treasured and promised to love forever. Or maybe he denied it, trying to save himself from the imminent future. One day, he called your mother. Said that he had left you and for her come get you. You had been left in the house for a fortnight without anything more than some soda and a bag of chips. I cannot even tell you the rage that I felt. I can't even tell you how helpless I felt 500 miles away.

Now you will live with your mother. She will come into your childhood room to vacuum every Saturday morning at 7am, as she's done every Saturday morning since we were children. Wasn't that the worst? After we'd spent all night talking and listening to music and watching movies. We'd finally just drifted off to sleep and she would swing open your door, light from the hall flooding into your room, into our faces. We'd curl up, head under covers, pillows over ears, insomnia turning into insanity with a burst of giggles. We'd slowly, sluggishly, crawl out of bed and into our jeans and t-shirts, and wearily take ourselves next door to battle it out with your Grandpa Burt in the playroom. He was a stellar Super Mario Brothers player.

The other night, I was telling Tim about how I tend to have a pen pal. I have one person over a period of time that I write, and when I write them, it's big letters full of thoughts and stories and ideas. Gorjus, E, Stodgey-D, Shaun, Zeek, Stratis...they've all come to know, if not my big left-handed, rolling script, then the paragraphs of type in their inbox. This is because of you. Because I've always had someone there to tell these things. Though I've kept diaries for years, I find that when I write to someone else, tell them about my day, capture the conversations, sights, thoughts...all of the little moments come back to life when I tell them to someone else.

"Why do you stop writing them?" He asked. Some I never do. Some, we write in fits and starts, maybe no longer short novels, but enough to get each other through the days when we need it the most. How familiar does that sound? Sometimes, though, it ends, I finally stop writing because they've stopped, interest is lost. Sometimes, it just can't be explained. Your letters, dear Frannie, continued until the day you could no longer write anymore. I moved here knowing no one and like clockwork, every week I had a friend. The pages and pages of telling of days events, family gossip, health reports. I looked forward to them so.

I sit now and wonder at you, my brave girl. I wonder about your days and your thoughts and your frustrations and your joys. I wonder if your small niece will ever know your dry wit and your laugh like I knew it. I saved all your letters, so that one day she will know as much as they can tell her. As much as I can tell her.

As I pulled out of your driveway and down the street, and Patty Griffin poured her heart into my heart over my car stereo, I stopped suddenly. Turning around, I jumped out of my car at the walk in front of your house and ran back, Patty Griffin's 1000 Kisses in my hand. You smiled as you opened the door, as if almost expecting it, and took the CD and we hugged once more. I don't know how to explain that moment. It was as if everything I was feeling in that moment, pulling away from your house, listening to that music, I just wanted to wrap it all up in that CD case and give it to you, my heart and all. So I did the best that I could do. I gave you the song to listen to.

Tuesday Morning

How do these hours creep and creep and creep away? My intention to sleep was blindsided by nothing more than the grade schooler's want to stay up past bedtime and read. Like a child under the covers with a flashlight, eyes squinty and searching frantically through the dream of a book like Nancy Mitford's.... I looked up and it was 11:30pm. I counted on the fingers of my right hand the hours I would get to sleep last night. I closed my book with a resignated sigh, and turned off the light.

Was it worth the tired eyes this morning, sitting up and listening to Windham Hill's the Impressionists and gobbling up the lovely banter such as this:

Louise was married in the spring. Her wedding dress, of tulle frills and sprays of orange blossom, was short to the knee and had a train, as was the hideous fashion then. Jassy got very worked up about it.

"So unsuitable."
"Why, Jassy?"
"To be buried in, I mean. Women are always buried in their wedding dresses, aren't they? Think of your poor old dead legs sticking out."
"Don't be such a ghoul. I'll wrap them up in my train."
"Not very nice for the undertakers."

-The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford

Um...I heart this book.
Just so you know.
(Thank you Sally!)
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THIS WEEK IN BIRMINGHAM:

We are all the same age.

I was a 5 year old giantess. Or maybe all of my friends were just really, really short.

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For the last two nights, we have gathered around picnic tables at the Bottletree, stone tables at the Garage. We've bought each other rounds and told tales from the last two weeks adventures, in Austin and at home. It had felt so good to be there, to be home in Birmingham. Looking around at my friends, laughing, grinning, eyes bright and shining...I took every moment to heart.

Pictures from the weekend

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"Hey baby sing to me to sleep
Let the shoes fall off my feet
Let this phone ring out into nowhere
Let this phone ring out into nowhere"

This is unexpected. This newfound love for Chad VanGaalen. I keep listening to one particular track on Skelliconnection and even when I'm not at my computer or in my car or in my room, when I'm walking down the hallway at work, down the aisle at the supermarket, sitting at a bar and staring off into the distance, it keeps coming back to me, all of these tender and drowning guitar fingerings, his somber yet pleading voice....

"Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from
Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from

Hey baby sing us a song
Tell us how it all went wrong
Sing about our evil ways
And what's hidden in our DNA

Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from
Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from

Sing me 2 sleep
Sing me 2 sleep"

http://www.myspace.com/chadvangaalen