Daniel, my manager, wanted me to post my Instagram memories of Dolly here on Substack. Management speaks. We the people listen. So here you go.

Meanwhile I’ve been doing a lot of listening to Dolly around here. Marveling at Dolly the musician. She’s got so much power. Like she could be standing in front of you singing and paddy caking and you’d hear a whole record in there. Hard to explain, CASE IN POINT: I encourage you to get into this “Travelin’ Man” track. A heads-up: there is more than one version floating around. You want the one with the humming.

“Travelin’ Man” is from Coat of Many Colors, and there’s a nice little plot twist at the end, so pay attention. Dolly sings a line, then answers herself humming. A miniature call-and-response. Someone, somewhere, was smart enough not to mute the humming.

Nope. Not touching that.

Listen to “Travelin’ Man” on Spotify

Onward,

-CP

* * *

I was staying with Kim Richey at her place in Nashville. We were writing for a few days when she mentioned she had a session the next morning. When she described it, I was immediately intrigued.

Dolly Parton?

It was going to be a version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!” for an IMAX film. Randy Scruggs was producing. And besides Dolly there would be some other voices: Kim and folks like Guy Clark, Roger McGuinn… plus a band of heavyweight A-Team/First Call players.

I wanted to be a fly on the wall. So I asked Kim, “Do you have a camera?” She did. Perfect. I tried to make myself invisible and just kind of hung around like I was the photographer, which I’ve seen plenty of people do over the years. If you look like you belong, maybe you do.

There were so many classic moments.

The band was setting up, and I sat there in the shadows of the control room while Randy Scruggs moved the capo up and down the neck of his J-45, trying to find the perfect key for Dolly. What you’re looking for is you want that low note to be comfortable, but you also want to be able to hit the highest note still in your range. You’re looking for that little sweet spot. To hear Dolly sing and push her voice here and there and then correct? Thrilling.

They found the key.

Getting Roger McGuinn to play “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in any key other than the one he’d been playing it in for fifty years turned out to be a challenge. They worked it out in the control room, and Randy kind of stood over him occasionally pointing at Roger’s fingering here and there.

Someone produced a Nashville number chart and everybody went out and cut the track with the A-Team.

One take, of course.

When they got to the end, the engineer hit the talkback and said, “Do you think I should record this next one?”

Everybody cracked up.

Then the musicians got their charts signed by Dolly. A cool move.

I gathered everybody—including Dolly—into the big room for a group photo. Dolly looked around and said, “We gotta get this photo for Tom. He’s gotta get back out on the road.”

She kept calling me Tom Petty.

I didn’t mind.

At some point the musicians were breaking down and seemed like everybody had disappeared, and I was alone with Dolly. Dolly was spinning around in a roller chair, just goofing around. She spun around, stopped… looked at me and said, “You need to get your picture taken with me.”

It’s me. CP. We’re headed back down the road on our continued Summer Acoustic Quartet Folk-Rock Rampage Tour. Got a warm laptop on my knee.

Speaking of pyrotechnics.

A friend of mine went to see Morrissey and told me about his no opening act approach. Apparently, before the band ever walks onstage, there’s a video montage: the New York Dolls, Elvis, rockabilly clips, snippets of political imagery, Meat Is Murder propaganda. A smattering of clips of Moz’s obsessions, I guess. A kind of Mr. Roger’s welcome-to-the-neighborhood Morrissey primer. I thought that sounded pretty cool.

It got me thinking about what I’d throw up there if I ever had the wherewithal—or the budget—to pull off something that ambitious. Maybe I’ll make it a thing here on the old Substack.

Here’s one thought:

Pogoing to Richard Thompson.

There was a time—sometime in the Reagan years, maybe before, maybe after—when Richard Thompson still crossed America in an Econoline van. San Francisco was one of his regular ports of call. Wolfgang’s in the city. Maybe the Palms in Davis. A room in Cotati that’s probably been a revolving door of eighteen failed wine stores by now.

The Richard Thompson Band I saw was stripped down: two guitars, bass, drums. I seem to remember the drummer had been borrowed from Jethro Tull. Imagine that. And the beautiful Christine Collister at the microphone, all velvet tone, covering Linda’s parts.

And one night at Wolfgang’s there was a guy perched on a road case, squeeze box balanced on his knee, spitting out licks in another language while Thompson traded back and forth on Stratocaster.

Looking over old album credits years later, I figured it must’ve been John Kirkpatrick.

More flashbulb memories. For years I suspected I’d dreamed the whole episode.

Then YouTube settled the argument.

Here’s a clip from a British festival in 1980. Rain coming down in biblical sheets. Of course it is. Because a festival over there isn’t official until the sky opens up and pisses down on the whole gathering. Then they come alive. Seriously, if you look really close—really look—you’ll catch them: the “punters” down front, pogoing in the mud. Pogoing to Richard Thompson. Pogoing to a concertina. Strange. Cool. Odd. It really is pretty awesome. And soooooo British. In fact, while they’re calling the songs the bass player can be heard saying, “Sorry?”

They are forever saying “Sorry?” over there.

Check it out:

Also, about the fine art of newslettering? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still making this up as I go. Why not become a paid subscriber today if you’re not already? If not, you can always donate to Doctors Without Borders. They’ve been providing food, water, and health care around the globe for 50 years. Or an abortion fund or any gun violence prevention group. They can ban abortions but can’t seem to regulate guns.

You can also do none of the above and just carry on. We are happy to have you.

Onward,

-CP

P.S. Summer Acoustic Quartet Folk-Rock Rampage Tour hits Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville this week; Nashville, Atlanta, St. Petersburg, Tampa, New Orleans, Houston and Austin next week. Be there or not.

It’s Chuck coming to you from Denver. Where we’re starting a new tour. Check your local listings as they say.

If you follow me, you might just know I’ve been kicking a Temple Beautiful Musical around for more than several years. Co-writing with klipschutz.

And thanks to some seed money, recently we rolled up our sleeves (again!), working intensively with our script guru Gene Corr. We now have a rewritten script with some extra polish and Gene’s blessings. The libretto is leaner, more focused, and emotionally true. The story has a clearer arc, the relationships have more weight, and the characters finally seem to understand what they’re doing in the play.

This next-level stuff all came to pass through working with Chicago-based career theater m’ofessional Richard Friedman.

To get here, we’ve gone through a couple theatre companies. Way back when, for a spell, there was even a Tony award winning writer in our midst. More directors, table reads, staged readings… Lots of twists and turns. We’ve written new songs. Re-tooled old songs. Put the whole deal up on the shelf and pulled it down. This time around, we’re hoping we have all the tumblers clicking, all the boxes checked.

As a result of this project you could say I have a heightened awareness of Musicals—and you would be right!

Everything is a musical to me now.

Which brings me to Bowie.

I subscribe to Lloyd Cole’s Substack. It’s a revelation. Along with sharing the ephemeral artifacts of his “process” as it were—Lloyd the songwriter, Lloyd the record maker—he has given his readers a great gift by taking us on a guided tour through Bowie’s 70’s oeuvre.

And it’s amazing. Lloyd is incredibly knowledgeable and insightful. And has clearly thought hard and long about this stuff. Plus he’s got the literary chops to dig in. And like any good music writing, he got me reaching for the records.

Those records are part of my DNA. That’s my Substack tip right there, BTW. If that sounds like your cup of meat, sign up for Lloyd Cole’s Substack HERE.

Which brings me to Bowie’s Diamond Dogs LP.

I’m beginning to think that a Diamond Dogs musical is a no brainer. Bowie thought so too, but was blocked by George Orwell’s family, which wouldn’t grant him permission. (Go ahead and factcheck me.)

In my fantasies, I would write it! (Yeah, right, like I need another project! But maybe I do. Or do I?) One thing for sure: By now, I’d be ready when theatre arts academics asked me, “Yeah Chuck, cool dialogue and all, but what do the characters want?”

I’d be like, “Oh that’s easy. They want to “Buy some drugs and watch a band. Jump in a river holding hands.”

Who can’t relate to that? I can see it now. Tourists by the busloads in Times Square throwing down for that airbrushed dog t-shirt.

“Bow wow, woof, woof!”

Picture it: the characters are already there. Rebel Rebel is the ingenue. But the actual protagonist is Halloween Jack, because of course he is. He’s a cool cat who lives atop Manhattan Chase. He swings everywhere on a rope like Tarzan or Peter Pan, right? He and Rebel Rebel are hiding from the regime. Then you’ve got the Diamond Dogs themselves: a Greek Chorus. In matching costumes. Mink coats and fur leg warmers. It’s all right there.

The only mystery is why nobody’s done it yet. Imagine a dystopian set. Exposed wires and pipes and catwalks, see-through rusty metal grates, steaming manholes… in a cellar like a church. Or where the lizards lay crying in the heat.

When the lights go dim the first thing you hear is that synthesized voice. The voiceover of Big Brother. And then the harmonized guitars. And pow! “This ain’t rock and roll, this is genocide!”

More cowbell!!

Oh well, I should have been a Broadway Musical Producer.

***

Growing up in lower California with two older sisters, Bowie’s 70s records made their way into our house. My sister Jeanne even saw the Station to Station tour. On a school night, no less. But yeah, Hunky Dory. That was my education. Who’s Andy Warhol? Who’s Zimmerman? Martin Scorsese says that when filmmaking works, the filmmaker is able to make you care about his or her obsessions. That’s the job. That’s the goal. That’s the whole point. By the time I got my hands on Diamond Dogs after securing my copy at the Music Box on Harbor Boulevard in La Habra, I’d been turned on to Chuck Berry and was learning guitar. I heard that riffing on Diamond Dogs and maybe, just maybe a voice inside my head said, “You can do this, man.”

A lot has happened since that incredible run of LP’s Bowie seemed to just effortlessly spit out with hardly a breath in between. I actually ended up working on an album with Diamond Dog producer Toni Visconti. [Alejandro Escovedo’s Real Animal. Yeah, check it out:

I suppose Visconti let a few tricks out of the bag. Not too many, though. But there was this gem I’ll share with you and run the risk of meandering too far into shop talk: When Marc Bolan doubled his rhythm parts, they were always a little sloppy to Visconti’s ears. He’d tried to get Bolan to do a tighter overdub, but Bolan couldn’t be bothered. And would brush him off. In the end after decades of hearing those songs on the radio, Visconti told me he reluctantly came around to Bolan’s thinking. At this point he can hardly imagine it another way. Sloppy doubles and all.

Judge here for yourself:

PS: Those records hit me pretty hard. Especially Hunky Dory. [Breaking news: according to Lloyd, it “sold 5,000 copies.” More proof that what’s popular isn’t necessarily right. And what’s right isn’t necessarily popular.]

PPS: Thanks for subscribing. For being here. They say the only way to get good at writing is to actually do it, one misspelled word at a time (praise be to spellcheck). That’s one reason why I’m here. You’re the other reason. So thanks for being here too.

Onwards,

-CP

Baked and glazed in New York City, Julie got her start off-off-Broadway before snagging the role as the Puerto Rican mother opposite Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes’ Gloria. Not a bad start.

[You haven’t seen Gloria? That film is HUGE around here. Even on the small screen.]

Today Julie is one of those shape-shifting actresses with a list of credits longer than your right arm. From that Cassavetes’ credit, she built a solid body of work with such luminaries as Robert Redford, John Carpenter, Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino—and others like the man behind the man… wait for it: Robert. Mailer. Anderson. And she starred in Fright Night.

Last night they began the three night film fest celebrating Julie with a bang: In the Mouth of Madness. A John Carpenter jam. Itself a H.P. Lovecraft by way of Stephen King fever dream. Followed by a Q and A with Julie Carmen and Robert Mailer Anderson.

Tonight is night two. Featuring Night of the Juggler from 1980. A big movie for Quentin Tarantino as it turns out. A gritty NYC jam, a nod to the jogging craze of the day. [Beware health nuts!] This one also beats the whole “intense dad hunting down the kidnapper” plot—later perfected ad nauseam by Liam Neeson and Mel Gibson. Night of the Juggler beat it to the punch by about forty years. But who’s counting?

For those of us still here in San Francisco, one of the perks of living in the heart of the Money Belt is the movies. For a while we had more art houses per capita than anywhere else. But that’s water under the bridge. The single screen theater has been on the endangered species list for a while—even if not quite long enough to be taken off the list by The Current Administration. (Hell, try to find a bowling alley in this burg.)

The art houses are going down one by one by one. [I should have some kind of Ken Burns graphic here that shows each theatre falling. You know the ones, the red rectangles. Does Substack offer anything like that? I wonder.]

The York! The Red Vic, the Clay, the Northpoint! Gone, baby gone(!!!) More condos for the homeless AI tech bros. Condos with housekeeping and tea service.

But, somehow, a few single screen retro houses refuse to go down without a fight. Thanks in no small part to the non-profit CinemaSF, Balboa Theatre, the Vogue, and the 4-Star are very much alive and well.

Yeah, despite the Revenge of the Multiplexes and the Dread (Covid) and all the doldrums about streaming and episodics and people staying home, it’s cool to see people coming out. Which ain’t no iPad, tray-table, headphones-half-working nonsense. Real, live, in-the-flesh movie viewing is still available! Yes, it is.

Personally, you don’t have to ask me twice to sit in the dark. Be still. And just dig the majesty of the big screen. We certainly won’t be hitting Best Buy any day soon to haul home a construction worker big screen TV.

Oh, and last night, it was touching to see Julie Carmen’s family there. Her daughter, along with an entourage of friends.

You could feel the love.

Robert Anderson describes these evenings at the Balboa as a “neighborhood movie night.” Sounds about right to me.

I still remember squeezing into somebody else’s Country Squire station wagon at the drive-in in Santa Ana, watching Manhattan on the big screen. I was probably 12. I didn’t understand half of what I was seeing, but I remember looking at that city and thinking, I’ve got to get out of this place. (Me and Eric Burdon both.) I mean, they’ve got surfing in New York, right?

Onwards,

-CP

P.S. In a couple weeks, we’ll be loading up the Econoline and heading Eastward: FloydFest, Petaluma, Denver, Kansas City, Des Moines, Three Oaks, Madison, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinatti, Louisville, Nashville, Atlanta, St. Petersburg, Tampa, New Orleans, Houston, Austin. You know where to find more info.

You got your airport shuttle van. Which you don’t see much these days. (Uber killed the SuperShuttle.) You got your plumber’s van with the hockey-puck style lock on the backdoor. You got your panel van with no windows, otherwise known in certain circles as a “stabbin’ cabin.” Which is a little unfair to electricians. The “Church Van.” And the indie rock twelve-passenger-pulling-a-trailer model, to name a few.

You can tell a lot about a band by the van they’re driving. More than they’d ever tell you over that backstage hummus. For example: Sprinters are de rigueur overseas, but Sprinters stateside give off a certain image here in the US. Somehow on the posh side. Not exactly the Country Club type but sometimes it feels like The Sprinter Van people—they’re looking down on us Econoline class. Maybe they’re just looking down because you can stand up in a Sprinter. Yeah, the interior standing height can be six feet plus…

I digress.

ANYHOODLES: I wrote a song about my van. And it’s stood the test of time. (The song. Not the van). I don’t know how many Econolines I’ve owned since I wrote that song. But to this day, it remains a song that consistently asserts its way into the set. And thankfully, it’s a song where no one has ever cornered me after a gig and asked me what it’s about.

It’s about the Ford Econoline.

Mystery solved.

I didn’t exactly write it in one sitting. But I do remember sitting in the kitchen one morning reading the paper and getting inspired. It must have a been a slow day because I somehow made it to the business section. And it was there that I read about the Ford Motor Company discontinuing the manufacturing of the Econoline. I’ll admit it, I got a little misty. I may have shed a tear. There was no one around to see me. But yeah, where to start? A lot of miles logged in those things. Too many to count. Great conversations. Band therapy sessions no one exactly billed insurance for. Awkward silences that seemed to stretch on for days. Heated debates over where to stop for lunch. Arguments Stephie always seemed to win.

Not sure how many we’ve owned at this point. But the first thing you do with a new Econoline? Take out that last bench seat. Then find some place to stash it. In the city that can be tough. I’m sitting on one right now in my South of Market shoebox of an office.

I’m not much for pulling a trailer. Parking is humbling enough as is.

So yeah… the song. We cut it during the Night Surfer tracking sessions. It came together on one of the days when Peter Buck was in the band. Three guitars tracking live—just like Skynyrd. Me with my fretting out acoustic, James playing slide and Peter playing that ding-ding-a-ding lick on 12 string. That lick really makes the chorus. No surprise there. But Peter Buck proved to be a hook machine.

Here’s the song. And the lyrics below. And as an added bonus, an extra verse that didn’t make the song. It must’ve fallen out of the back of the van somewhere between the studio and that gas station somewhere outside Needles, California—the one where Stephie, against all odds, managed to find a salad bar. Nuts! For real. James will back me up on that one.

Onwards,

-CP

P.S. We’ll be loading up the Econoline and taking it to Woollystar this weekend, and then Guerneville in a few weeks (Saturday, June 27) for Summertime Thing at the Rio Nido Roadhouse. It may not be the biggest festival out there. But if you like Chuck Prophet music, it just might be the best one going.

Ford Econoline

She pulled over said, “Climb on in”
I did what she said
She turned the music up real loud
It was The Talking Heads

Didn’t matter where we was going
Made no difference to me at the time
Takes me back when I hear that song
Makes me feel warm inside

Ford Econoline!

Ever since the beginning of the world
The beginning of time
Somebody said that the road was his
Somebody said, “No, it’s mine”

Some folks are born ‘neath a sign on the road
Close enough to turn and leave it all behind
Fall together like the Rock Of Gibraltar
Guitars and drums inside

Ford Econoline! Ford Econoline Ford Econoline

Chris-crossed the country in a two tone job
It was a 1985
Mile after mile we was burning oil
We couldn’t keep it alive

Laid out flatter than a Chinese rug
When she went her way I went mine
All these memories like dirty plates
Stacked up in the sink of time

Ford Econoline! Ford Econoline

They hosed me down just for a laugh
And said, “It’s not a crime”
I saw you coming over the hill
I couldn’t get there in time

When I think of how you suffered
I can’t believe the tears are mine
I still picture you behind the wheel
Squinting into the sun, coming down the line

In your Ford Econoline

We’ve been in the studio, so I’ve been focused on things besides my missives to you here—you know, songs and tempos and keys and the rest of it. We got down to brass tacks with our fearless leader Brad Jones at Tiny Telephone in Oakland, in an effort to sort the wheat from the chaff. Figure out which songs are standing up for themselves. Triage the situation. In short, it was a bloodbath.

Anyhoo: here’s a newsletter classic I thought I’d share with you. A missive between James and me when we were in a serious holding pattern and had no real idea if we’d ever gas up the Econoline and get out there again. Spoiler alert: We did. And we continue to.

Onwards,

-CP

I was talking to James today. And James asked me if there was any songs he needed to brush up on for when we get back out there. And what I think it’ll look like when we do get back out there. And I thought about it for a second and I said...

[I have this new software that turns conversations into a legal transcript, so check it out…].

CP: Have you ever seen the movie High Plains Drifter?

James: Ah, no...

CP: Well, I’ve been watching a lot of movies these days. So, you’ve never seen the movie High Plains Drifter?

James: “Go on…”

[And I went on.]

CP: Well in the film, Clint Eastwood rides into this mining town. And Clint’s character doesn’t have a name. He’s only known as The Stranger. Now within minutes of riding into town, The Stranger takes on an entire gang of tough guys and gives them a serious beat down. The cowering townspeople watch this from behind curtains and under buildings. The Stranger is clearly a bad ass. About this time, the town learns that a psychotic outlaw has been been sprung from jail and is headed their way to seek revenge for exactly what we’re not sure. They talk The Stranger into staying and acting as protection. The Stranger agrees, but he has his price. He demands complete authority over the town. The Stranger has his own governing style or whatever you want to call it. He first appoints a dwarf, Mordecai, as Sheriff. (Mordecai is a big name from the Bible, by the way. In a movie, you can never go wrong using a name from the Bible.) Then The Stranger takes the entire hotel for himself. And he manages to climb into bed with both the town bad girl, Callie, and the hotel manager’s wife, Sarah. You still there?

James: Kind of. Half listening. But my breakfast is getting cold. Does he take a bath?

CP: Who?

James: The Stranger. Don’t they always take a bath and smoke a cigar in the bath, grinning.

CP: Yeah, now that you mention it. But this is important. The next scene is the money shot. The Stranger has a big bucket of red paint, and he’s meandering down Main Street calmly repainting the town while Mordecai, in his Sheriff’s badge, looks on approvingly. Yep, this crazy son of a bitch is PAINTING THE ENTIRE TOWN RED. And with the last bit of paint in the bucket he fashions a sign that reads: HELL.

James: This sounds a lot like the news these days.

CP: I’m getting there, I’m getting there. There’s a bunch of flashbacks and snippets of dialogue. Then the gang of black hat wearing menaces roll into town and the first thing they see is that sign that reads “HELL.” And anyone who’s ever seen the film is thinking, “Huh, this is going to be good.” I think we’ll approach every gig we play like that. Just like that. Roll into town. Turn it upside down. Take over the nicest hotel and then paint the town red. So, bring a change of clothes. It could get messy.

James: Ready when you are. And unlike you, I’ve actually painted houses. I guess I’ll just put this oatmeal in the microwave. What do you think, about 2 minutes?

CP: Yeah, that should do it.

***END OF TRANSCRIPT***

And James thought for a second and said, “Uh… not really. I didn’t even know it was a thing. Didn’t know it was a possibility. So how could it be on my bucket list?”

I second that emotion, James.

But there we were. Sitting in our dressing room at the Grand Ole Opry. Yeah—that Opry. The place with the famous circle of wood on the stage—cut straight out of the original house. James and I were there to play some songs backed by the house band.

When the gig offer first came in, I didn’t think much of it. Seemed a little odd, to be honest. I figured the Opry had turned into something like an amusement park by now. But I didn’t hesitate. I was like, “Sure, sounds fun.”

And then when we posted it on social media, something interesting happened. All my Nashville pals chimed in.

“Rad muffin!”

“You’ll love it!”

“That’s the deal real, man!”

My old friend Dawn Holliday reached out and said she wanted to come. Going on about the scene backstage and the whole vibe.

Someone even suggested we swing by the Cheesecake Factory when we get to Opryland. They said, make sure you have the carrot cake.

Okay, maybe I made that last part up.

I started thinking there might be something to this Opry thing. I was getting genuinely excited about it. James was game to come along and play guitar too. They asked me to pick a couple of songs so they could chart them out.

This is as good as any time to mention that Nashville players are ridiculously good. Not like virtuosic or flashy good, but total assassins all the same. They can jump feet first into any song, any key, any old mess of chords and combinations of notes and just kill. They intuitively understand the shape of a song. They just get it.

Sometimes I tell this story about how Dan Stuart and I—in the Green On Red days—were recording in Nashville at the Sound Emporium. This was years ago. Al Kooper was producing us. But he had some prior obligation to be part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, or something along those lines, and he left us alone in the studio to have at it.

We’d written a song at the Holiday Inn where we were staying. A song called Little Things in Life. A little ditty of a song, really. But we were determined to record it right then and there. I’m not sure who suggested it—it might’ve been engineer Gary Laney, who incidentally I just ran into after all these years. He’s now up in Tulsa running the old Leon Russell studio – The Church Studio. Anyways, if not Gary, somebody had the bright idea of grabbing a couple musicians from the bigger room at the Sound Emporium—where, I’m pretty sure, they were cutting a Dolly Parton record at the time. The players were all standing around on a break, smoking.

Danny and I had what we liked to call a “Chicago roll” of cash, and we may have showed it to them – told them we’d make it worth their while. Session legends drummer Eddie Bayers and bass player Michael Rhodes were game. And maybe a little amused by us and where it was all going.

They came over to the other room at the Sound Emporium where we were camped out. The four of us formed a circle on the studio floor. Gary had suggested a makeshift drum kit. He put a mic down at Eddie Bayers’ feet to capture the tapping. And in what was a pretty ingenious move, he put a tambourine inside a two-inch tape box. Eddie balanced the box on his knees and played brushes on it.

With a little EQ and liberal amounts of compression, within just 5 minutes or so, we had a sound.

I started running the song on acoustic. Danny singing. The four of us falling in together and grooving along. And I swear, halfway through the second verse, something happened that I’ve never forgotten. Eddie Bayers came to a dead stop and asked, “How does this thing end?” He’d pretty much mapped the song out in his head by then. A kind of I-get-it-so-let’s-just-fast-forward through the next couple verses and agree how it ends.

Efficiency monsters!

I was like, ah… good question! I hadn’t really thought about it. Hadn’t gotten that far. So I played a kind of ding ding, diggity dum dum a ditty figure on the acoustic, and he seemed satisfied with that. We cut the song in one take.

When Al Kooper got back from New York, we played it for him. He dug it. Smiled and gave us an “A-plus, gentlemen.”

But we all agreed the track was missing something. It needed a little sparkle on top.

After what seemed like half a day of sitting around talking nonsense, Al suggested a glockenspiel, kind of like the one on Buddy Holly’s “Everyday.” 1 Someone produced a glockenspiel and Al played it pulling a great melody out of the air. We loved it.

Done!

Fast-forward to the present.

On the afternoon of the Opry gig, my manager Daniel and I were tooling around town in our rental car in search of pho when my phone lit up. The screen said “Wanda,” and it was a 615 number. So I answered, figuring it had something to do with Nashville business.

Sure enough, it was Wanda from the Grand Ole Opry Staff Band. She’s a multi-instrumentalist and wanted to know about a sound on the record. On the song “First Came the Thunder.”

She asked, “Is that a bouzouki?”

The bouzouki is a Greek instrument, to the best of my knowledge, and for a second I was like, “Huh?” But then it dawned on me and I said, “Oh no, that’s a bajo sexto.”

Not exactly My Big Fat Greek Wedding. More El Mariachi.

And Wanda said, “A hwat?”

And I said a little louder, “A bajo sexto.”

Then, hearing myself say it out loud, I added, “Errr… never mind.”

She suggested maybe trying a nylon-string guitar instead. I thought about Marty Robbins, thought about El Paso, and said, “Sure. Yeah. Let’s take it to El Paso. Sounds good”.

After our pho, we headed back to the hotel to change strings and maybe lay down. Glenn Dicker, the man behind the man behind the man at all things Yep Roc, swung by later and picked us up and took us to Opryland. We enjoyed a coffee at the Cheesecake Factory [When in Rome!] And I ordered the carrot cake. (You know I did.)

We circled around the lot looking for the artist entrance until we came to a sign:

We were escorted in and settled into our dressing room.

Someone ducked his head in the door and said, “Hey there, my name’s Eddie Bayers. I’ll be playing drums with you today.” I looked up and was like, “Oh, I know you”.

I reminded him about that session at the Sound Emporium with Green On Red. He looked at me kind of quizzical, so I said, “You played brushes on a tape box with a tambourine inside it.”

Took him a second. But you could see the light come on. At least I think that’s what I saw.

Full circle.

Eventually someone came around and led us to the stage where the Opry house band was already set up and running songs. The musical director—who told me later that he’d spent eight years playing with Roger Miller and grew up in Lake Arrowhead, CA—came strolling over wearing an accordion. Beaming. I think he was digging the chance to get it out of its case.

We ran the songs down with the band. When one of the players played those cool fills on a nylon string, I smiled and nodded to Wanda back there. It was all good. Like butter.

Then we ran “Summertime Thing.” It had been so long since I’d heard the record, I’d forgotten a couple of the twists and turns in the road and may have added some GBU’s here and there—but the band followed me just fine. James covered the pedal steel licks on slide. And the girls were singing:

“Summer, summer, summer, summertime…
Summer, summer, summer, summertime…”

To end it, I cued the band with my headstock.

Next!

Then it was time for some backstage Southern food and a breather before the show.

They came and got us and led us to the stage to hang in the musicians bullpen stage side.

We were introduced and walked out. We played the first song. And when it ended I started fumbling with my capo and into the mic said, “Thank you. This next song features a capo on the 5^th fret.” Not sure what else I said.

We launched into Summertime Thing, James peeled out a solo and got some big applause.

After the set, walking off, I did an interview with Kelly Sutton, the host. She said something about me taking the long way to get to the Opry. And how did that feel? I don’t remember what I said… but I do remember hoping she didn’t look down and see my geriatric shoes with all the support. Which I’ve been wearing on stage lately (don’t ask!) We talked a while longer. She asked what was going through my head up there. And I said, I was thinking: I sure hope we get through our set before they figure out that we aren’t supposed to be there. Only half kidding.

The show itself went by in a blur—a parade of singers, every one of them lighting it up.

Highlights: Paul Cauthen. Unfakably weird—in the best possible way. Up to no good out there, singing like nobody else. He didn’t perform his hit song Cocaine Country Dancing—the one that rhymes “It’s a quarter to four” with “do we have any more?”—but he rolled out some killer new numbers like Ain’t No Crime and Texas Swagger. And there was a cool gospel tune he did solo that we didn’t quite catch the name of.

John Conlee was on the show too. Stone cold classic singer. For his final song he pulls pink glasses out of his pocket—puts them on and the crowd goes bananas. “Rose Colored Glasses” don’t you know?

It all goes by in a blur. But James and I agreed we won’t be forgetting that gig anytime soon.

And like that, it was back to the hotel to rest our eyes, and set that wake up call for the airport to zero dark 30.

And now we’re heading down the road in the Econoline stopping for a Fuji Apple Salad at Panera.

That’s show business, friends. Glamour with a plastic fork.

Onwards,

-CP

Next week, me and my Cumbia Shoes are heading out for shows in Texas and a few other points beyond, including Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut before we head home.

In anticipation of roaring down I-35 in the Ford Econoline: a plug for STYLE STATION!

As if the road doesn’t present to you enough weirdness, without going out and looking for it. When we’re in Texas I do hope to visit our friends Art and Rebecca who are camped out just off I-35, somewhere north (or maybe south… it depends on your mood) of Dallas. We haven’t been there in ages.

First time we rolled in, years ago – thanks to Tom Heyman for the tip – we crunched into that gravel driveway in the van and parked. Before the dust even settled, here comes the proprietor, Art, squinting into the sun like he’s in a Western. In my mind he’s carrying a shotgun. But, I can’t say for certain. But it was Texas. That much I’m sure of.

He says, “Y’all in a band?”

We go, “Uh, yeah… “

He’s all, “What band?”.

And we’re all, “Uh, Chuck Prophet.”

He looks us up and down. “I think y’all are liars.”

Awkward silence.

Then he says, “I know for a fact Chuck Prophet went down in that plane crash with them Skynyrd fellas.”1

Now I’m thinking: this is my kind of guy. A man with conviction. Belligerent, but with a kind of twinkle in his eye. I like this place already.

Art ends up being a great hang. Aside from the deep stock of vintage clothes, Art’s got a PhD in Detroit Rock City — The Stooges, MC5, Fred “Sonic” Smith and a host of Michigan legends. Aside from a deep knowledge of obscure rock ’n’ roll B-sides, he’ll get into the tensile strength of 1973 selvage denim, the elusive art of yarn character, or just exactly how much weed Willie Nelson goes through in a week. Not to mention conspiracy theories that run from Huntsville Penitentiary to why Jerry Jeff Walker used to pay his sidemen so poorly.

Listen to the professor!

And Rebecca? Clearly the brains behind Pa in more ways than one, is holding down the fort. Counting out the change.

If you’re drifting down I-35 and feel the urge to try on a Levi jacket while somebody talks over an Iggy Pop record loudly, this is the place. (Just ask Kelly.)

We never pass up a chance to pull into that gravel lot and pay our respects.

I just called over there. And yes, it’s still there! Art answered – and yelling over what sounded like a loud TV, said, “We’re not on the internet! We’re open 10 to 4:30, 7 days a week.”

Boom!

They got it all. Vintage stock. New stock. Brand used or NWT (That’s “new with tags” to you) or NOS (“New old stock”).

Onwards,

-CP

I first saw Mose Tolliver’s paintings at the Yard Dog Gallery in Austin sometime in the ’90s. Weird stuff. Birds, bus passengers, snakes, fish, fruit, flying pterodactyls. Titles like Watermelon…My 3rd, Ray Charles Dancers, Wide Dinosaur Bird, Bow-Legged Sal.

I was touring with The Silos then. We’d been hanging out with Randy Franklin, who—along with his wife, Jann—had recently opened a great gallery on South Congress called Yard Dog, with a bias toward Outsider and folk art. We might have even played the gallery. Not sure. But there we were. I gravitated toward Mose’s work on the wall. Stood there for a long while, staring. And the paintings stared back. I don’t know exactly why they hit me the way they did, but they did.

Randy suggested that if we were ever passing through Montgomery, Alabama, we ought to go see Mose. As it happened, we were. So we did.

We found the address and stood on the porch, knocking on the screen door, until a soft voice invited us in. Mose was sitting up in bed, painting. A walker sat within arm’s reach. At the foot of the bed, a paint-splattered box held everything he needed. That was the setup. He couldn’t get around much, but he could stretch across that bed, drag a piece of plywood toward him, and paint on it. His mobility issues hardly slowed him down when it came to making art.

When he finished a painting, he’d lean the plywood against a little space heater—presumably to dry. It looked like a system. He generally painted on plywood and nailed a beer-can or soda-can pull tab to the back to make a hanging ring. (I wonder if they’ve got a stash of those pop-tops somewhere. Even back then, the old-style tabs were getting harder to find.) Anyway, that was his studio. That was the whole operation.

We hung out for a while. He made us feel welcome. There were paintings everywhere in that shotgun shack—jammed to the ceiling. Twisted animals. Moose-looking women. Women riding bicycles. A painted refrigerator. More than one painted guitar. Old doors. Painted objects of all kinds. People must’ve dragged them in for him to work on. Every surface felt alive. It was exciting. Immersive. A little overwhelming.

At one point, Walter Salas-Humara’s brother Ignacio—who was playing drums on that tour—asked Mose why he painted the same image over and over again. Mose shrugged.

“Uh… people seem to like ’em.”

No MFA gibberish from Mose.

Tom Freund, who was playing bass with The Silos at the time, started picking up paintings, holding them up, and asking, “How much?”

Mose never varied. No haggling. No explanation. Just said, every time: “Fiddy.”

We all left with paintings that afternoon. And Ignacio snapped this photo.

Mose painted until a stroke stopped him in 2005. He died the following year. The funeral procession stretched for a mile.

Here’s the backstory: In the late ’60s, Mose was working in a furniture factory when a thousand-pound crate of marble slipped off a forklift and crushed his legs. His employer’s son was shaken by it and, during Mose’s rehabilitation, would visit often—encouraged him to paint, bought supplies, took a real interest. Something clicked.

Mose used house paint and worked on whatever was around. People in Montgomery responded—regular folks. They brought him leftover paint. And eventually, folks like the Metropolitan Museum of Art took notice. The work gave him purpose. And along with that purpose, it paid. He managed to support a pretty large extended family through his art.

The next time I found myself in Austin, I stopped by Yard Dog and thanked Randy for the tip about visiting Mose in Montgomery. I recounted the whole experience. Randy looked at me, puzzled, and said, “Was there not anybody there?”

Apparently, it was unusual for Mose not to have family around keeping an eye on the breadwinner. Randy noted that if they had been, the prices might’ve been more… specific. Instead of just “fiddy.”

But because of that, we got real quality time. We had Mose T to ourselves. It was one of those tour detours that usually lead nowhere—but every once in a while, they really pay off.

I still get the same good feeling when I look at those paintings. They’re why Stephie shuts the curtains at night—she doesn’t like the morning light hitting them. Doesn’t want them to fade. She’s good that way.

If you want to know more, here’s the dealer in Montgomery who handles Mose’s work. There’s a bio there too.

Thanks for subscribing. For being here. They say the only way to get good at writing is to actually do it—one misspelled word at a time (praise be to spellcheck). That’s one reason I’m here. You’re the other.

Onwards,
—Chuck

[An earlier tribute to Mose Tolliver was featured in MAGNET]

Alex Chilton was born in 1950. Had he lived he’d have turned 75 years old yesterday. Here’s some thoughts I had about Alex that I wrote sometime back for Magnet.

Tom Waits once described Alex Chilton as “the Thelonius Monk of the rhythm guitar”. That sounds about right. I heard it all for the first time live in 1986 at the 688 Club in Atlanta, Georgia. I was 22 years old; and in a band called Green On Red and we were playing on a bill with him that night. We were positively bourgeois; freshly signed to Polygram Records with an extra van and a rag-tag road crew. We were living high on the hog (or so we thought, anyway). Meanwhile our opening act, Alex Chilton, pulled up the gravel drive to the back of the club in an old Buick Skylark spitting plumes of blue smoke. They loaded their gear up on stage. Alex took off his shirt, shoving it into the back of his Fender Super Reverb amp, and pulled out the one he wore for gigs. He threw a harmonica rack over his head, tuned up his guitar to the harp, all the while looking at his bass player and drummer (Rene Coman and Doug Garrison). He stepped up to the mic and clicked his heels four times. That was it. I don’t know who my little psyche’s influences were at the time: Neil Young, Joe Strummer, David Bowie, Tom Verlaine? They all went out the window at that moment; floated up into the ether and stayed put. Alex has remained. I have forgotten many heroes along the way, but Alex has stayed right there. That night I stood about ten feet from Alex’s Fender Super Reverb amp and heard September Gurls for the first time. For real. First time I heard that descending cluster of chords - that chimey intro was coming right out of his fingers. Put on “Bangkok” or “Sister Lovers” or “Radio City” and you’ll begin to understand why this man, this rock and roll song and dance man, can’t be tossed aside. Ever.

That night Peter Buck was in attendance. I don’t know who it was but someone called out for Elmore James’ “Shake Your Money Maker” and Alex twisted the gears on his headstock, went straight into open G, and nailed it. What planet did he come from, this “invisible man who can sing in a visible voice”?

Alex did his time, but his time has never been up. Through the Box Tops, Big Star, and on to the days of his solo work, Alex is a true American enigma. He was at once an Anglophile in the heart of Memphis’ Stax driven scene and a white boy with as much soul as anyone who ever walked through the doors of that studio on McLemore. Nobody really got it. Not the goth kids wanting to bleed all over the upholstery of Sister Lover’s Big Black Car. Not the power pop candy boys: they wanted to rub up against the man in the confessional booth of Radio City. They wanted to come in as clean as their mom’s kitchen floor and leave, no, steal away with a bit of Alex’s dirty soul. He attracted his share of freaks. And came in expecting one Alex and got another. As he toured around the world with a trio doing his songs and songs from the American Songbook. He was always full of surprises. Who knew that 10 years later “In The Street,” covered by Cheap Trick, would become the opening track to every episode of “That 70’s Show,” paying a perpetually broke Alex Chilton prime time royalties.

Alex is from another era, an entirely different time. He just wants to sing “Volare” or “Goldfinger.” He defies categorization entirely. Entirely. Isn’t that rock and roll? What rock and roll was and should be all about? And the critics; they have panned and adored his work, in some twisted and perverse circular motion. They got their feelings hurt when Big Star didn’t become the next Badfinger, and went on to call Big Star’s third record, ”Sister Lover’s,” shit when it was released and brilliant today. Through it all Alex has remained. Stax was torn down, Elvis is dead, Paul McCartney started Wings. But Alex is naming records “Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy,” playing his guitar for whoever shows up, and doing exactly as he pleases. The New York Times once called Green On Red “one of the most important bands of the decade.” When Alex came to Ardent Studios while we were mixing “Here Come The Snakes” to collect a royalty check for “September Gurls” he hung out and listened for a while. He stood up, with his bag of “vitamins” in hand, and said, “it’s good.” Alex Chilton smoked a joint, listened, and said it was good. Alex Chilton. Now when I hear “Flies On Sherbet” I can think of a rock and roll genius telling me “it’s good.” That’s more than enough for me. Who needs The New York Times when you’ve got rock and roll; the kind that saves souls, makes kids buy guitars, and always keeps the intelligensia on their toes.

Onwards,

—CP

I’d almost forgotten I’d written a few words about this a couple of months ago. Honestly, not long after that, I was up in Vancouver and managed to leave my laptop behind in a hotel room. That turned into a whole production just getting it back.

Then there were a couple of trips across the pond to Europe for touring, so everything kept moving along.

Anyway, I pulled this up again this morning, and here it is. Still standing.

Sometimes when I think about ‘90s pop culture, I feel like I wasn’t there. Grunge and electronica, Britpop, The Real World… what is all that? It was on TV, along with the first Gulf War, but I often didn’t have a TV. First time I heard Nirvana, I mistook them for Wire Train.

Plus Green on Red were hitting it hard then. We were making records seemingly back to back, scraping together whatever songs we could. By then, Stephanie and I were touring too, and that’s its own bubble. But seeing that exhibit the other night at the Yerba Buena, and those flyers for bands like Ovarion Trolley, Shotwell, X-Tal, and A Subtle Plague among others, I realized I knew them all. It occurred to me, “Oh, that must be what I was doing back then!”

I guess it’s possible we did have something like our own scene. It’s hard to see it when you’re in the middle of it. One of those things you don’t realize is actually something until it’s gone. The exhibit at the Yerba Buena (curated by Chris Johanson) included flyers and ephemera from all these underground hangs, and we played all of them—Ocho Loco, Kommotion, the firetrap of a back room of the Albion, Adobe Books, and The Chatterbox. It feels sometimes like just some dream, but there are artifacts as proof. It happened.

I wouldn’t exactly call these top secret places, or people doing secret things, but let’s just say I doubt anyone was paying taxes. Ocho Loco, where John Wischman made those wooden posters for all those years, was a cool gig, too. (Folks who’ve frequented our merch table over the years should be familiar with those artifacts.) It was actually someone’s house. I don’t remember a stage exactly; I think we may have played in the kitchen. But it was a gig. John lived in that house and cranked out those wooden posters.

I think the place is a vacant lot now. John relocated to Philadelphia. Still does the occasional poster for us to commemorate a tour. The Chatterbox turned into the Chameleon, and more recently Amnesia (which closed its doors in 2020). Adobe moved over to 24^th Street.

Back to the Yerba Buena exhibit. Behind glass were all kinds of evidence of a time and place. There was a Kommotion ‘zine that came with a cassette. I could see “Chuck Prophet” written on the one in the exhibit, along with Stephen Yerkey, The Gits, Bedlam Rovers, Pansy Division, and Penelope Houston. We all played Kommotion. Plus, it was a place you could get in and rehearse if you knew who to talk to.

Back when Michael Franti had a group called The Beatnigs, they and we were once double booked to rehearse at Kommotion. (Josef Brinkman was like a dispatcher for all things Kommotion, including running the scheduling calendar, so it was probably his snafu.) We both showed up at the same time, standing there on the 16^th Street sidewalk in front of the Kommotion gates, shuffling our feet. It was a standoff. Who was going to go in, and who was going to go home?

I think we had five band members at the time, including Brian Godchaux, the great fiddler; but on the other side was just Franti and his partner in crime at the time, Rono Tse, a guy whose gig seemingly was beating sheet metal with a mallet. (How did they mic that thing?) So I took a shot. I was like, “Look, I know you’re tall and everything [this was back when he still wore shoes], but we have a gig tonight at the Paradise, and we have a new bass player to break in. We’re struggling to get through one set, let alone three.”

Franti nodded along like “that makes sense,” and stood down. He was always cool to me. Down the road he introduced me to engineer Mark Pistel, who I worked with quite a bit circa No Other Love.

This has me thinking about a show at Kommotion we did with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. How or why it happened, I’m not sure, but there wasn’t much of a turnout. Like seven people. Maybe? We volunteered to go on first, and then we stuck around for their set. I think it was just Anton and Joel, Anton sitting on a stool playing an acoustic. I know they have a reputation for being dangerous, especially after that movie Dig!, but I thought they were kind of funny. Joel with his neurotic combover and tambourine, chattering nonsense into the mic in between songs: “Why don’t you go home and watch Seinfeld?” We were looking around. The place was empty. We were like, “Who is he talking to?”

It wasn’t shaping up to be a particularly memorable evening, but I guess Anton wasn’t having it. He started yelling, “Hey, sound man! This microphone smells like GG Allin’s grandmother’s jockstrap. Bring me another one just like it now! I mean now!” Then he started yelling at Stephie: “Your boyfriend has AIDS! Everybody knows it! Do you hear me? Is anybody out there?”

Silence, followed by the waka waka waka of what I assume was a Pac-Man machine in the back, consuming dots.

Later, Stephie wanted to know what that was all about. I was like, “Oh, he’s just stirring it up,” but she was baffled. “Yeah, but why would he say that?” I didn’t really have an answer. Pretty funny, I guess.

Eventually we played the more established clubs, like Slims and the Great American Music Hall. But the Mission was its own thing. Long before Dave Eggers and his Pirate Supply Store, 16th and Mission was a world apart. Aside from the black tar, people came into my life around then, like JC Hopkins, Mark Eitzel, Chris von Sneidern, Mick and Andrea Freeman, Stephen Yerkey, Bone Cootes, Kurt Lipschutz, and Jimmy Broutis. Carlos Guitarlos too. And the writer Ann Powers. She worked at Tower Records on Bay. That was a friends-with-benefits gig. Pat Thomas started a label called Heyday (named after a Fairport Convention song) and put out records by Barbara Manning, Sonya Hunter, and JC Hopkins’ Flophouse among others. If and when I could get along with Kurt Lipschutz for more than 45 minutes, we developed the habit of writing songs. Pretty good ones. In fact, we’re still eating lunches all the time at Tu Lan, during long days South of Market, finishing up songs hopefully for my next one.

Lil Mike—himself kind of a savant—was part of a hilarious ‘zine called Filth. He refers to it as a “cabal of cheap beer alcoholics and corrupt cartoonists.” They funded it by hitting up local businesses for ads; $20 for business card size, $50 for larger. He says they typeset it on an old Apple IIe at Chicken John’s warehouse loft on Army Street, and many other ad hoc newsrooms; according to him, they “usually did about 10,000 copies printed up the street at the same newsprint printer joint on 16th Street that did Maximum Rock and Roll”. Lil Mike did a music gossip column that he mostly made up, and had a feature where he’d let bands review their own records. Brad Johnson of Wannabe Texans, as well as old maverick S Clay Wilson, were involved somehow too.

Robert Collison, who did a lot of the Kennel Club flyers back then, was also on board. Great guy. Years later, Stephie and I sang a couple songs at Robert’s wedding at the Swedenborgian Church. Same place we tied the knot.

Lil Mike had the genes. His dad “Rudy” Martzke was a beloved sportswriter for USA Today, the kind of guy who could watch 17 televisions at the same time—college basketball, pro ball, hockey, God knows what else—and follow all of it without missing a beat. Equally feared and revered. Described by one coach as “unpredictable as anyone you’ll ever meet.”

Apple and the tree. Sounds about right.

I think I was paying maybe $600 for that loft on Folsom Street, catty-corner to the Rite Spot where Vince Welnick (later of the Grateful Dead) played the upright piano into the wee hours every night. After their long time together, keyboardist Brent Mydland OD’d and Vince joined the Dead. The Rite Spot is still ongoing.

Around that time I was trying to record my first album on an Otari eight-track at Tom Mallon’s studio. We had a few false starts. I ran into Vince in the halls of the loft we were living in. I had the bright idea of getting him to come down one evening for a session. I thought I needed somebody who could really play piano. We ended up doing a session with Vince where we kicked one song around (a ballad) until the session disintegrated around 4:00 AM, right around the time Vince’s bindle was depleted. We didn’t get anything accomplished. Years later (I mean years), I was playing the Haight Street Fair, and post-Dead Vince was on the bill as well, playing with his band. I was carrying gear up onto the stage when he ran up to me and said, “Chuck! Hey man, listen, we got to get that song down! That song was beautiful.”

Did not see that coming. People surprise you. I figured at best I was just a blip.

We were always playing. It was a ramshackle bohemia. We were scraping by. Tough going. But it was glorious in its own way, I suppose. A burrito at La Cumbre on Valencia was $1.85. How do I remember that? I can hardly remember my ATM card’s PIN number. There were sausage sandwiches at Picaro, and the flan there too! It weren’t no Sara Lee coffee cake, no sir. The flan at Picaro was exotic. I imagined a little old lady from Barcelona back there cooking in the kitchen. Right across the street was the Roxie Theater. Obscure and foreign films day and night.

If you weren’t there for that San Francisco, I feel sorry for you. I know I’ve left out a million people, places, and things from back then. Maybe I’ll pick this up next time where I’m leaving off today.

Thanks for subscribing. For being here. They say the only way to get good at writing is to actually do it, one misspelled word at a time (praise be to spellcheck). That’s one reason why I’m here. You’re the other reason. So thanks for being here too.

Onwards,

—CP

P.S. Three nights of Chuck Prophet next week: Friday, December 26 and Saturday, December 27 at The Chapel in San Francisco. Sunday, December 28 at Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz. Different sets/different deal. So grab a date, don’t be late. Come out wherever you are. We look forward to glaring at you from the bandstand.

There are those records you can slip to someone like a secret handshake, knowing with complete confidence there’s no way they won’t make the love connection.

When I first heard JJ Cale’s Naturally, it hit me like some long-lost friend drifting in from the cosmos—or maybe just Oklahoma, which might as well be another planet.

Naturally was one of the few things everyone in the Green On Red van could agree on. I used to listen to it in the dark with Stephie. Music brought us together. For a while there it was all I listened to.

After a gig not all that long ago (Eighteen months ago? Eighteen years ago?), the sound man put it on and let it play straight through sides one and two (for a total of 27 minutes or whatever). And after a fairly unrewarding night of humping gear and playing to a sparse crowd on a rainy Wednesday somewhere out there in the Midwest, that record floated through the room like a rescue mission. Picked my mood right up.

Another time—Louisiana, St. Francisville— not 25 miles from Angola prison. I remember it pouring out of some cabin after three straight days of rain. Air thick. Crickets going at it. The major-seventh ooze of “Magnolia” mixing with the humidity and the smell of wet pine. Beautiful. One of those moments you want to go on forever.

I was getting ready to head into the studio—last week, actually—to work on some new songs and I put it on for inspiration. I’ve learned a few tricks about making records along the way. There are always tricks. But this one… this JJ Cale record stays a mystery. How the hell did he do it? Maybe it’s because JJ engineered his own stuff. Like Prince. Recording that vocal all alone in the dark. Maybe there’s no trick at all. Whatever the case, it’s a masterpiece. Thirty some odd minutes of pure, effortless greatness. The songs are short—demo-short. Like postcards from some outsider genius. Sometimes he buries the guitar and vocal low in the mix—makes you lean in. Sometime it’s crackling loud. Like the wah guitar on Crazy Mama [Praise be Mac Gayden]. Sonic abstract-expressionist stuff. In some ways what he really did with Naturally was lift up the whole record-making process to high art. JJ just may have been the OG sonic auteur.

Me, Stephanie, and Roly saw him at the Great American Music Hall ages ago. He and his band were up there on stage practically in the pitch black dark. I remember someone whispering over my shoulder, “Which one’s JJ?”

Buy a copy of Naturally for yourself if you haven’t already. Hell, buy a copy for everyone you love.

Okay, thanks for being here. Got to pack now for Europe. I’m going back on tour, don’t you know. Did I ever get OFF tour?

Yours,

-CP

PS: JJ’s mailing address through the ’70s and ’80s? A trailer park near Disneyland—right there in the heart of Orange County, hiding in plain sight. They say he didn’t have a phone, either. Didn’t stop him. His gal Christine Lakeland might have had a phone— Christine, a hell of a singer and guitarist herself—would roll her RV up next to his for a while. And when they weren’t out playing JJ Cale gigs, she might head off for her own shows in Alaska, Idaho, or some half-abandoned ski resort in Colorado. Pretty cool.

When they asked me to be involved, I didn’t blink — “Yes! Count me in,” I said.

Now, here’s the thing: I interviewed Lucinda for the City Arts & Lectures series in San Francisco right around the time her autobiography, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, came out.

The book cuts deep — into her career, her childhood trauma (of which there is plenty), and her love life (also plenty).

A lot of what’s in the book feels like an extension of what we already know — if we’ve been paying attention. Because really, Lucinda has been singing her memoirs from day one.

Learning a couple of her songs for this gig reminded me: she’s always been writing straight from her life. Going back to her childhood. When she sings, “When I get back this room better be picked-up,” in Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, that’s little Lucinda — four or five years old — in the backseat, looking out the window.

Anyway, like I told the crowd: I know we’re living in uncertain times. And our relationship with Canada, thanks to a certain orange fella, is… complicated, at best. There are wars breaking out all over the world. People are worried about the planet, the economy, their IRAs, Social Security, their pensions.

So here’s my take. If you’re looking for a good investment that’ll hold its value over time — and sure, I may be a little biased here — my suggestion is this:

Buy Lucinda Williams records.

Onwards,

-CP

PS: Thanks for subscribing. For being here. They say the only way to get good at writing is to actually do it, one misspelled word at a time (praise be to spellcheck). That’s one reason why I’m here. You’re the other reason. So thanks for being here too.

Nobody knew anything about it! My teachers didn’t know about it. The newspapers didn’t know about it. My scout masters didn’t know about it. The television didn’t know about it. My friends didn’t know about it. Even their parents didn’t know about it. —Dave Hickey

Not too long after that DK’s gig I went on about in my last Substack post, I moved into the city proper—San Francisco. It was the early '80s, and the city was pretty hollowed out. In fact, I just googled it—turns out the city’s population was at its lowest around that time. Maybe that explains why it seemed so easy to park and find a place to live. In the wake of the Zodiac Killer and the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, I suppose anyone with any sense fled town. Which meant we were right on time.

I enrolled at San Francisco State University. I don’t remember any hassle; just cruised over and signed up. No admissions counselor interview. No essay. You’re transferring over from community college? OK. Just sign up for whatever you’re interested in. Film, creative writing, journalism, audio engineering, broadcast communications? That’s how things worked back then. Seemed like it, anyway.

More flashbulb memories.

SF State also had a college radio station (KSFS) where I snagged an on-air shift . It was hardly as ubiquitous as KUSF, which was a beacon of San Francisco’s underground music scene, but KSFS had all the makings of a proper radio station…except the whole listenership thing. It didn’t have the strongest signal out there. I think it was actually broadcast over cable TV or something. I don’t know. Those college stations were a godsend. KSFS provided a library of records for me to explore. I was always taking records home. I was a sponge. Guest passes for tons of shows were also a perk for a broke loser like me. KSFS was an education, if for nothing else than that lending library.

After two semesters, I flaked out of SF State; I went on the road with Green on Red that summer, and never turned back. We toured hard. Too hard, probably. Makes it difficult to have a life. It’s hard to keep relationships going, including those with your bandmates.

In the early days, when I’d get back to town after a tour, I was a bike messenger by day and barfly by night. I eventually parked myself on a barstool at the Albion, a bar at the corner of 16^th and Albion, and stayed there. Smoking Marlboro Reds, soaking up whatever the bartenders or Mick Freeman were playing on cassette from behind the bar: Nick Drake, John Cale, American Music Club, De La Soul.

The original punk scene? Yeah, it ripped the hinges out of the doorframes, for sure. That initial blast—the Nuns, Crime, the Avengers, Dead Kennedys—have been eulogized many times over, but beyond the DK’s, I never really saw any of those other bands. I don’t think any of them were still together by the time I got to town. (Years later, Alejandro Escovedo from the Nuns and I went on to form a close friendship and write a mess of songs together.)

Onwards,

-CP

PS: Thanks for subscribing. For being here. They say the only way to get good at writing is to actually do it, one misspelled word at a time (praise be to spellcheck). That’s one reason why I’m here. You’re the other reason. So thanks for being here too.

Here’s another flashbulb memory.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I drove my mom’s Toyota Corolla over the Embarcadero Freeway and off the Broadway exit. That concrete eyesore of a freeway is gone now (Brutalist!), but back then it was like a secret portal. And I swear I just glided into a parking space right across the street from the Mabuhay Gardens. Parking was a breeze! Like a movie.

North Beach was paradise.

I was there for the Dead Kennedys at the Mabuhay Gardens. A punk club at night and a Filipino restaurant by day. It didn’t seem like a restaurant in there. Maybe in the light of day it might have resembled one.

The stage was barely a stage—no barricades, no floor monitors—just side-fills pumping vocals if you were lucky. People piled toward the front like sinners at the altar.

As for the DKs? East Bay Ray stood out—his guitar tone was unique. He had this bright, reverb-tank twang. Sharp as a needle. And ran it through an Echoplex. Nothing like the chug-chug squishy eighth note shuffle of the Dolls/Pistols school that was so prevalent at the time. He was on the other side of the tracks channeling Link Wray through a car cigarette lighter socket.

As a kind of footnote, around that time I remember being up in Sacramento playing some lame gig. And talking to the other band about the DKs and East Bay Ray. And one of the guys swore that East Bay Ray had been in a 50s Sha Na Na type band that played at his high school prom. You know, the kind of band that wore tuxedos.

Hmm . . . I could see that.

Yeah, and then there was Jello Biafra. The lead singer. Totally unhinged. But kind of a pro in many ways. Ranting to the kids about Jerry Brown, and Cambodia and Dan White. Jello was and is a walking contradiction. He was almost like an educator. Eventually, he did move on to the lecture circuit. These days I can really appreciate all the theater of the absurd that he brought to the party.

Klaus Fluoride on bass, and I believe Bruce Slesinger on drums, who I played with down the road in Barry Sobel’s act.

Toward the end of the set I distinctly recall that Jello leaned into the mic, broke the fourth wall, and said, “I’ll see everybody tomorrow at the Iggy Pop show at the Warfield!”—like a fan, not a frontman. It was oddly sincere.

In some ways they were probably still figuring it out—I don’t know. I know they hadn’t logged their 10,000 hours. Come to think, at that point nobody really had.

To be continued.

-CP

I picked up some trivia over the weekend. Apparently, the outdoor stage at the Rio Nido Roadhouse at various times has played host to Duke Ellington, the Beach Boys, and the Grateful Dead, among others. Not on the same bill (imagine that); but yeah, at one time they all graced that warped plywood stage. In the case of the Beach Boys, it was in 1963. The place has history! Plus a swimming pool with a cranky lifeguard, towering redwoods, and not a single Porta Potty. Hiding in plain sight, just a couple hours north of the City.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going here; maybe a kind of recap. But before I go any further, this is a good time for me to give a shoutout to Daniel Strickland, who’s really the brains behind this whole Summertime Thing endeavor. He had the vision, and to be fair, he’s done most of the heavy lifting to make it happen.

* * *

Presently, Stephie and I are back home in the City. I’m sitting here chilling with a warm laptop on my knees, on the morning after our second annual (can we call it annual? Sure, why not?) Hoedown. Like I said, by all accounts it was a rousing success. Or as we used to say in the mosh pit days, a good time was had by all, and no one got hurt. Music, food, friends, family… all that and a weekend soaking up the restorative qualities of the Russian River. I’m not feeling half bad.

Can I say everybody brought it?

This year we opted for one stage. Maybe the two-stage thing was too much of a good thing. Up first was Jason Morgan, aka Harold Ray, and his band East Side Dynamite. They went on at two in the afternoon, when it was approaching 90 degrees (32 C). Jason was in a full suit and tie, working the stage, sweating like the bastard child of Tom Jones and Roy Head.

Aside from being an unhinged performer, Jason has a gift for finding a song. He should’ve been an A&R guy for Stax or Malaco or something. When he digs through the crates, Jason’s got lightning in his fingers. He can find that haystack in the needle. Really. His show is always covers, yet I hardly recognize any of them. When it comes to ’60s soul stompers, I consider myself pretty hard to stump. There’s always at least one astonishingly cool deep cut in his set that tears me up.

This was the case on Saturday when I chased Jason down and asked him what that “Let’s Get Together” song was. Turns out it’s Little Milton, who Jason told me is not to be confused with Little Steven, Little Richard, or Rich Little for that matter! (Apologies to Lil Mike, Little Roger and the Goosebumps, and any other Little I left out.) The lyrics go:

When we were together, oh baby
I treated you so bad
I don’t blame you for leaving me, darling
Cause I made you feel so sad

But I heard it through the grapevine
That your new love was cheating on you
What’s so bad about it, what’s so bad about it, baby
He’s treating you twice as bad as I used to do

Now I know this is an awful thing for me to say
But I’m glad that he’s treating you this way
But, while he’s gone?
Let’s get together

He’s doing you wrong
Let’s get together
While you’re alone
Let’s get back together

And let me love you one more time

And you can check it out here:

Next up, the Kellys.

Kelly McFarling played a great set. Sophisticated songs. Strong JJ Cale game, or “Vajayjay Cale,” if you will. (Her words, not mine). I was admiring Kelly’s wide-brimmed powder blue hat, too.

Kelley Stoltz was hilarious and cool enough to accommodate a couple of my requests (“Underwater’s Where the Action Is” is a stone cold classic around here), plus he brought his family along. Wifey Allyson Baker subbing on guitar was an added bonus. Allyson also DJed between sets.

The sure-handed Rusty Miller was on drums. I’d introduced Rusty to my mother earlier, and had told him I wouldn’t mind if he talked me up a little bit. I know she remains pretty unimpressed by my bullshit. I exaggerate to make a point, but sometimes I think she thinks I’m a pot dealer or something.

Earlier Stephie and I enjoyed some quiet time with Allyson and Kelley down on the banks of the river. Allyson and Kelley brought their three-year-old daughter Dion, who apparently had never seen either of her parents perform. So when baby Dion looked up at the stage at Mom bending notes on her polka-dot Telecaster in cut-off denim hot pants, and Dad singing into a Vocoder, she had a look that said, “What the hell? What is my dad doing with a Vocoder? Does he think he’s Neil Young? Somebody call Child Protective Services!!”

The Mission Express played a tight ninety and change. It was so great to play some of those songs I haven’t played in what seems like ages… and to hear Stephie’s voice in my monitor. The vibe was perfect when Dave Alvin and his Third Mind played after the sun went down behind those towering redwoods.

We had some vendors on hand too. The Record Mill from Forestville had a booth, so people could get their retail on. In an effort to thin out my herd, I brought a few crates from my personal library, and priced them to move. It was kind of interesting to see people walking around with my records under their arms. I was like, “Hey, that’s my copy of Some Girls!” It’s OK—I have duplicates.

Denise Campanaro from BellRinger Vintage threw up a vintage clothing shop right there, and brought quite the array of floral print shirts to liven up any scene. Kelley referred to it as the James Gandolfini section.

* * *

There’s a kind of urban exodus going on in the Bay Area these days, similar to when people in NYC moved to the Hudson Valley. I’ve had a few friends from the City relocate to Guerneville. Maybe driven by the promise of actually owning a home? Or some kind of pandemic-inspired migration? Or people simply priced out of the cool gray city? A few years back, Stephie and I drove around that area, looking at pads. We actually had a realtor help us. We had this crazy idea that we might leave the city. (What were we thinking?! I know, I know, we weren’t thinking!!)

It may look completely serene, but it’s dicey up there if you ask this urban apartment dweller. For one, the Russian River is known to rise, which lends a kind of John Lee Hooker Southern Gothic edge to the whole place. Guerneville has a history of major floods, as evidenced by the warped plywood stage held together by rusty nails, chewing gum, and termite turds. What’s more, if you look around, you’ll notice most of the houses in Guerneville are built on stilts. Shit is weird up there. But oddly enough, in a good way too. The locals roll with it.

I noticed the power outlets on the stage were at eye-level, which I’m assuming makes them less likely to end up underwater. Or maybe the electricians had us aging rockers in mind; at my age, any opportunity to avoid bending over helps me keep those sciatica wolves from my door.

Oh, and if that’s not enough harm’s way for you, in Guerneville there’s always the threat of fires too. In fact, a couple years back, the entire town of Guerneville had to be completely evacuated. Meanwhile, here we are in 2025, and the planet shows no signs of cooling. Mother Nature is pissed. In the words of Martha and the Vandellas, there really is “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide.”

But for now it remains pretty stunning up there.

Onwards!

-CP

P.S. The Cumbia Shoes have summer dates, starting with Minneapolis tomorrow night. Hope to see you out there.

Dateline: Guerneville, California. 11:30 PM.

It’s been a long day. Stephie is back at the Airbnb, and I’m still wandering around in a daze, with equipment to put in the van, a pinball game inside my head, both flippers fast and furious...

The parking lot is emptying out. Darkness reigns. People who lingered huddle in circles nursing that last beer before stumbling off to their lodging in the woods. A few stragglers are settling up their tabs at the bar. Others ease out of the parking lot down River Road to Highway 101.

And as I’m standing there looking around it occurs to me: Oh snap, am I going to be “The Last Fool at the Bar”? (All hail Mike Stinson!) I hate to be that guy. Besides, my drinking days are long down the road in my rearview mirror.

But I can’t split. Why? Well, let’s just say that a "leave no gear behind" ethos has been hammered into me, and hammered hard. Someone always draws the short straw, and tonight it’s me. There are still a couple amps, guitars, and pedal boards, along with random gear stacked up on the side of the stage. And they’re not going to find their way into the van by themselves.

Also, I’m wondering, who has the van keys?

That’s when I spot my white Ford Econoline in the back parking lot and decide to start humping gear in that direction. I plop a couple amps down behind the van and am fixing to head back and hump another load. Hopefully, someone in my group will come along with the keys and, Bass Player or not, we’ll load the van like we’ve done a thousand times before. (Hot tip: There is a right way and a wrong way to pack the van. When in doubt consult Bass Player.)

Meanwhile, as I walk around the van toward the driver’s side, I see the front door is wide open. Passing strange. I approach closer and look in. Cigarette smoke wafts out of the cabin and in the dark a red hot ember—a cherry from a cigarette glowing. That’s all I can see.

And then a low disembodied unmistakable voice says, “How ya doin’, Chuck.”

And before I can think, I respond with an, “Okay, I guess.”

And now it’s all beginning to make a little more sense, but I’m still thinking: What is Dave Alvin doing sitting in our van? (Stephanie’s not gonna like that smoking thing either, I can tell you that. )

It turns out Dave is sitting in HIS van, the same exact model Ford Econoline as I have. A white 15 passenger. (All tough guys drive white 15 passenger Ford Econolines.)

Well, after I calmed down a little, I enjoyed a nice chat with Dave. We talked shop. The big C. The little c. And all the Cs in between. His group The Third Mind was great tonight. And really sweet people. I encourage everybody to get out and see them if they come to your town. When they play, it’s 1968 all over again and more. And aside from the Quicksilver / Cipollina aesthetic (which I love), with Jesse Sykes on lead vocals, I was picking up a real Fairport Convention vibe too. Very cool. My friends know how nerdy I can be for all things Richard Thompson. Old friend Victor Krummenacher on bass as well. And all the musicians were geeking out hard over Michael Jerome on drums, who I had played with at the Bob Neuwirth memorial. Oh and aside from Dave, there was the wicked cool Mark Karan on guitar too. Between them they had all the modalities working.

* * *

I’d love to tell you that Stephie and I are in the midst of a two day staycation, complete with a Giants game and some laying around watching cooking shows… no such luck.

There’s always more. More gigs coming up around the bend (next week!). Plus I gotta feed the newsletter monster.

See the website for all the Cumbia Shoes summer dates. Chuck and Stephie duo gigs and the like. And make no mistake, there are worse groups (let me count the numbers and the ways) of people to be sandwiched in a van together with than The Mission Express or the Cumbia Shoes – superheroes one and all. There are days when it’s hard to find anything to be unhappy about.

Tomorrow I’ll circle back to Summertime Thing with a play-by-play. So stay tuned.

Onwards!

-CP

I will say this: every bad wreck I’ve ever been in was while on tour. The first one was black ice near Seattle on the way to Calgary. And next up was this mess. I’ve learned that the stupidity stacks up over the years. And the meter is running. It gets expensive. What else can you do but wise up? Eventually. I guess that’s wisdom. Or something like it.

There were murmurs. Chris Cacavas, who I roomed with, said, “Well yeah, there was some drinking going on.” He wasn’t thrilled about it.

I was probably too out of it to think there was anything out of the ordinary.

I do have vivid memories here and there. But a lot of my memories are incomplete, selective. Flashbulb memories, they call them.

It says here on Wikipedia that Hurricane Gloria made landfall on September 27, 1985.

We were playing in Providence that night. The gig was at Lupo’s Heartbreak Inn. I had hoped to get a T-shirt from the club with its namesake. Chrissie Hynde was often photographed in a Lupo’s T-shirt, looking impossibly cool.

Joe Strummer wore one too. The shirt had this cool typography and an (unlicensed, I assume) Elvis image. It was the kind of T-shirt that said, “Look at me, man. I was there.” And certainly a few steps above “Hard Rock Café.”

We played our gig. To a light crowd. Ending with Van Morrison’s “Gloria” for twelve minutes or whatever as our last song. It was fitting if nothing else, as Hurricane Gloria was very much headed our way, and she was threatening to be a doozy. Although I don’t remember anyone being terribly concerned. I do remember loading the gear in the back of a rented Ford Econoline after the gig, standing around smoking and taking notice of the National Guard piling up sandbags—stacking them against the bottom and sides of the building, creating a barrier. That was curious. I thought, maybe there really is something to this whole hurricane thing.

I’m from California, where we don’t experience things like hurricanes very often. Earthquakes? Sure! People will say you can feel the quiet before the storm. That there’s electricity in the air and it hangs heavy. Animals know the score; they’ll go hide under the house.

I can’t say I had a sixth sense for any impending disaster. But every day with that band was an impending disaster. All I could think was, “What now?” I probably just took it in stride.

After we loaded out our equipment and packed the van, we were waiting around while someone in the band (I assume) went into an office, or huddled with the club owner or house manager or whoever, to do the settling up. Never my favorite part of a gig, honestly. Especially when the crowd is light and the attendance doesn’t quite justify the guarantee. (“Er, ah…yeah, sorry…slow night…hurricane and all…”) Oh, and we got our customary case of beer to go, like we always did. Priorities, you know.

I don’t remember who was behind the wheel. Barch? I don’t know where we were going. Boston? To a hotel off the freeway? Away from the hurricane? Into the hurricane?

The freeway had a merge or turnoff or something, and a cloverleaf that was pretty sharp. That’s where we lost it.

We went flying off the road. And we were really moving. We’re lucky the van didn’t flip.

Down an embankment into a ditch. Flying. To a crashing stop. With the weight of all the gear surging forward on impact. And there was a heavy load back there in that rented Econoline: drum hardware, a bass amp and speaker cabinet, plus a couple Fender Twins. Maybe even a Yamaha CP-70 piano. A mighty surge.

To this day, I dread seeing equipment stacked up in the back of the van. All I can think of is coming to an abrupt stop and everything flying forward. It's a good way to end up getting decapitated by a flying Anvil briefcase. (Attention, touring musicians: place the soft bags on top, like duffel bags filled with T-shirts and things. You’re welcome.)

We were moving at a clip. The impact was intense. With all that weight of the gear hefting forward, the bench seat I was on came unseated from the floor of the van. I ended up wedged in there between it and the bench seat in front of it. The impact knocked the wind out of me instantly.

Along with the gear surging forward, the case of beer cans were crushed on impact and exploded everywhere. There was beer and foam all over the inside of the van, in our hair, on our clothes…everywhere. Comical.

Eventually a highway patrolman pulled up. He made his way down the embankment, pointed a flashlight, stuck his head in the passenger window, and asked us if we were alright.

Mostly alright, yeah. We climbed out of the ditch back up to the road. I’m sure we were a sight.

We were standing on the side of the embankment when the patrolman looked down at the dozens of skid marks heading into the abyss, and said, “They should have put a guard rail up here years ago.” When we first went over, I had thought, pretty dumb, guys. Well, from the looks of it, stupidity had company at this lonely turnoff.

I guess he called for a tow truck. Maybe some of us hung back, while the highway patrolman gave the rest of us a ride to our hotel. We got in his patrol car and he didn’t waste any time reaching a cruising speed of like 90 miles an hour. It took my breath away. I was shook up.

He asked us if we’d been drinking. I know the beer cans had sprayed me so much, my hair was wet. Of course we said, “Oh no, officer.” Dan Stuart reckons the patrolman had other fish to fry. Maybe there was another patrolman. Seems odd that he would just leave the scene.

Just today via email, I asked Jack, Chris, and Dan if they remembered anything. Crickets. Though Dan had some disjointed recollections. Barch is no longer with us, so he’s not talking. Neither is Alex McNichol, sadly. Both among the dearly departed. Does anybody remember the name of the company we used to rent the van and the gear from? All the bands rented from him. Especially those British bands flying over the pond for some East Coast dates.

The next day they sent a guy out with a new van to collect us and the gear. He looked like a teenager. Had that bleached blonde Fargo look. Did we get to the next gig? Was there a next gig? Anyone?

Dan recalls that in the morning, CNN was covering the storm and had footage of the hotel where we were staying, with windows blown out. Weird pressurization all night, doors wouldn’t open. We watched it on television from our rooms.

Could have been much worse, Dan says. Like, “that’s all folks” worse.

I hear ya.

—CP

P.S. I never got my T-shirt.

PPS: Thanks for subscribing. For being here. They say the only way to get good at writing is to actually do it. Just do it. One misspelled word at a time (praise be to spellcheck). And, that’s one reason why I’m here. You’re the other reason. So thanks for being here too.

Once again, I’m curating a music festival in Guerneville, California. (Resistance was futile! Especially when you’re as naturally festive as I am. I mean, who could resist booking some of their favorite acts to share a stage with?)

Chuck Prophet’s Summertime Thing Festival 2025 is ready to announce itself. We still have a few details left to iron out. But I have authorized myself to tell you this much: for the third year running, there will be legends joining me and The Mission Express. And pioneers. Next-generation weirdos, too. Plus a couple acts you’ve never heard of.

I’ve been thinking about festivals a lot recently. (Like you do when you’ve entered the curatorial ranks. I almost wish I smoked cigars.) Through the years. And the ones I have fond memories of.

Now, historically I haven’t had skin in the game, and I’m hardly a tastemaker or an influencer. But one festival jumps out for special mention: the Mosswood Meltdown (formerly known as Burger Boogaloo. Long story!). Footnote below. (A cursory search tells me they’ve got tickets on sale for 2025). So. Get. Your. Tickets. Now.

When Mosswood Meltdown (formerly known as...) started out, it was pretty scrappy—extremely low to the ground. But they got our attention because Ronnie Spector was appearing. Ronnie Spector under a freeway overpass in broad daylight. In Oakland? Is that a typo? It happened. And it was a pretty dramatic evening of music.

Speaking of drama. Mosswood Park is kind of hard to describe. But it’s got a little amphitheater. I’m thinking that back in Shakespeare’s day, his plays would have gone down in a place like this. And would have probably looked a lot like Mosswood Meltdown (nothing goes in these parentheses).

There wouldn’t have been much in the way of scenery or props—or lights for that matter. The audience would have stood down front. And the plays would have taken place in the afternoon under natural light. And like a great gig, the audience would have been part of the show. Hurling insults and ham sandwiches up at the stage from the equivalent of a giant mosh pit: “You cockney wanker! You fat lard muffin!” “Take a bath, why don’t you?!” (You can’t come up with anything the denizens of the Angry Island haven’t already worked out to a stinging burn in a public setting. And that fat lard muffin had to stay in character, all the while on the lookout for a sharp stick of a prop to contribute to the debate after the curtain fell.)

The plays were like two to three hours long. And you’d get transported to another world. All for the price of a penny.

Cool! But I regress.

I remember the first Mosswood Meltdown (formerly…). It was not without incident.

We rolled up and parked under the freeway overpass. Sure it was kind of sketchy. But whatever… I’m sketchy too. Then we walked around the perimeter of the park and got to the gate. The “entry gate” wasn’t exactly a barrier, it was really more of a suggestion, as there really wasn’t a fence per se. Tons of people just kind of meandered into the park without tickets. It was loose. Our friend Linda was volunteering and working the gate and just kind of shrugged at the lack of organization.

But the festival on the whole was the place to be for sure. It wasn’t overly crowded. They had vendors. Food, clothing, record store booths. A mess of great bands like Shannon and the Clams—and a gold ticket opportunity to anticipate a taste of heaven: gazing up and and listening to Ronnie Spector from down in the pit. It was kind of unbelievable.

After an afternoon of cool bands, there was some time setting up for Ronnie. The changeover seemed to go on a bit. Yeah, it felt like a while. I began to speculate that being a savvy New Yorker, Ronnie Spector may not have wanted to go on until the sun went down. One thing you learn about being on the lower rung of festivals half your life is that everything gets more rock and roll when the sun goes down and the lights come on.

In fact, I remember The Kinks doing the stalling thing at Glastonbury one year when Green on Red were playing. They had a designated time slot, but when the promoter came to their trailer to gather them and bring them on, Ray had made himself scarce.

I don’t know if this is something I imagined. So I’m looking it up. Oh, look here: Wikipedia says the year was 1993 and look at this lineup! (The Kinks, the Black Crowes, Robert Plant, the Velvet Underground, Green on Red). I can see Lou now. Standing on the steps of the Velvet Underground’s backstage trailer. Smoking a fat cigar after their set. (Maybe I will have to cultivate the habit after all.)

Meanwhile, in another galaxy, the promoters at Mosswood Meltdown (once upon a time in a previous cultural climate known as…) were definitely enthusiastic. But also a little young and inexperienced. They couldn’t figure out why Ronnie wouldn’t come out of her makeshift dressing room. She was in there with her manager, opening and snapping shut her compact, powdering her face as she checked herself in the mirror. (No, I didn’t see this with my own wide eyes. But I know it happened that way and so do you.)

Eventually they coaxed her onstage. Yeah, and by the time she got up there, it was dark. And as it turns out, there were no lights. The festival was meant to wind up before sundown. No one planned on it being dark (see: Shakespeare, back in the day). So, in true DIY fashion, someone crouched down in the pit, held a flashlight, and pointed it up to Ronnie’s face. With her Kabuki makeup, she looked like a French mime. Her face glowing in the dark. Her big eyes. And then there was the voice. Sweet Jesus! That unmistakable vibrato. She played the hits (“Walking in the Rain”, “Baby, I Love You”, “Be My Baby”) plus Johnny Thunders’ “Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory” was one of too many highlights. In that little Amphitheater at Mosswood Park. And she had a crack NYC band. Killer. With our old friend Jenni Muldaur singing with her. Unreal!

A couple years back my beloved Rubinoos played the Mosswood Meltdown in Oakland. There was drama there too. I was completely thrilled that they were playing. It was a little distracting to see Kim Gordon’s crew stacking up anvil cases at the side of the stage while the Rubinoos were performing. But, after a while, I tuned that out, I guess.

As for Summertime Thing? Guerneville, CA is where it’s all going down. (Rio Nido to be more precise.) And Guerneville is downright happening these days. You can find trendy coffee and scratch-made pastries, even a spa or two where you can get a rubdown and detox. (Be sure to drink a lot of water! There may be some bruising.)

And friends, if you’ve ever been to a festival where you didn’t exactly enjoy feeling like a hostage to loud music, this may be the place for you. Because there’s a whole mess of other fun stuff to do on the Russian River! So, bring the whole “fam dam.”

If you’re looking to get out of the house this summer without crossing any international borders (if you know what I mean), we’re here to help.

Yours,

—CP

A dispatch from the motorway. Here in the UK. Where me and my Cumbia Shoes are coming in for a landing at The Garage in London for the final show of the Wake The Dead Tour, Parts I, II and III.

It’s been a heck of a run. Starting up in the Pacific Northwest last October. And criss-crossing the Atlantic. Keeping one step ahead of the blizzards out in the Wild East and bitter cold on the Continent. All the while there’s certainly been no shortage of headlines.

We’ve dedicated the last couple nights’ shows to David Johansen, R.I.P.

Like I said here in the newsletter before, he was the coolest. David didn’t give up much. He never did. Yeah, he’s from that generation. Kind of cool and detached. I understand that when Syl Sylvain of the New York Dolls passed away a couple years ago, a reporter asked David for his thoughts on being the last living NY Doll.

"I guess I'm next" was his reply.

I miss guys like that. A vanishing breed. Yeah, and behind all the Aqua Net and eyeliner, a great songwriter. Frenchette, Donna, Heart of Gold, and going back, Lonely Planet Boy. And more recently, Maimed Happiness. (“Life takes a lot of finesse. It's a maimed happiness.”) You said it, David. Like the Buddha taught us, “Life is suffering,” but great music liberates us. So thanks for letting us hang with you in the Mansion Of Fun.

By golly, when this is over I look forward to a long nap on a short couch. Gotta start pumping the brakes now. I've talked about this before but it's a trip and a half. Coming in for a landing from a tour like this you can crash hard. One day you’re no longer rushing from here to there being told where you should be. You’re home, with nothing to do but stew. [see “Summer Camp In Bars,” a previous Substack post.]

Meanwhile, stop me if you’ve heard this before. But, looking back through my notes, turns out that the last time I did a tour like this, I was never really the same. Not for a good while. I was drained. Hollowed out. Couldn’t hardly get off the couch. Couldn’t seem to make a decision about whether or not to go out and get a coffee or even look for the remote.

Eventually, I was just sitting there. Holding a book but not actually reading it. And Stephie sat down in front of me and said, "We need to talk." And I was like, "Wha…?”

And she said, "Are you going to be okay?”

I felt like taking the Fifth, but that didn’t feel right either, taking the Fifth after a simple question from my wife.

So I went out for a walk. Then I saw our van parked on the street. And so I walked over, unlocked the door and climbed up in it and sat there. I turned on the radio and tilted back the bucket seat and closed my eyes, and I’m not gonna lie. I cried. I sat there for a while thinking about everything and nothing like that guy in that song who just wanted a Pepsi. And then someone pulled up alongside and rolled down their window and asked if I was leaving. And I said, “No, I’m on a stakeout, actually.”

And then the person in the car said, “Are you CRYING?”

Onwards,

-CP

P.S. When we’re out here we all look out for each other. It’s important not to leave anything behind. Like the suits, for example. Here’s a picture of Joaquin taking care of business. I call Joaquin the Cumbia Assassin on the bass. He’s from Mexico City. And he got his 10,000 hours playing cumbia in wedding bands and tours. He can play those three notes like nobody’s business. Your last opportunities to see Joaquin and the rest of the Cumbia Shoes taking care of business in the UK are tonight/Tuesday in Southampton and tomorrow/Wednesday night in London.