Off the Ship and Into the Blackness

Off the ship and into the blackness. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia at night. Kenny Rogers and the boys roar past in a cloud of diesel: a convoy of sleek busses, they're bound to make Cleveland, Ohio. Flying in fresh drivers like fresh horses, tonight they own this dark road. I'm three days behind from the storm, and since there's not a hope in hell I'll make the Gaspe, I pull the big Lincoln off the highway to wait for morning light.

It's cold now, and I climb into the passenger seat where the heat seems to work better. I can't find any radio, so I sleep in shifts- waking to run the heater. Dawn creeps in shyly to reveal my situation. Maybe I lost a few years, waking up someplace outside Reno, NV. Bad booze? A stroke? Shit happens. I'm not getting any younger. I woke up one time in a burning car in the middle of the desert. At least my car's not on fire today. My GPS says I'm in North Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Fresh coffee and a full tank of gas. I'm headed west for New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. Atlantic Canada has been the last major leg of this year's National Steel "Big X" Blues Tour. From here on I'm counting down to the designated 1000th show under the National Steel banner. The tenth consecutive year of ten provinces, two territories.

Detour to Musquodoboit, NS. I can spell it. And I can pronounce it. I've played Middle Musquodoboit a few times. Somewhere, in the deep dressing rooms of the Bicentennial Theatre, my name is written on the wall. Today, I'm meeting a fan from Halifax who wanted to buy more CDs. I need the cash, so I've taken this crazy detour. A beautiful, calming drive through near abandoned rural lands. The tax base to pay for these roads seems to have left with the rising of the water, the rise of the scrub, the fall of family farms on sticky, soft clay soil. I have friends here who use horses to work their farm- tractors are too heavy, and get bogged. Today is an opportunity to drop in and say hello. A few coffees later, I'm back on the Big Road and bound for Moncton, New Brunswick.

Jean's, in Moncton. You want breakfast? Jean's. It's half the reason I stop in this town. The other half is Plan B. This time, I've missed the gig for the storm, but the venue still treats me like gold. Tracy and Meadow really get it. They understand that I live in a car most of the time. A Big Car, but still- a car. They've seen it all roll up and down the big highway. I wish I could get a Plan B welcome in my own, home town. But I guess this is just part of my bigger home: this map, this Tour. If home is where you hang your hat, than this it it. Where the heart is. This car. This tour. This place and That.

Toronto. The Six. Big Smoke. T-dot. Whatever. It's as good a place as any to get an oil change and a set of new tires.

Osgoode, Toronto. Trying to scrape silver off this hard ass town. Somebody took ten shots yesterday, just upstairs and around the corner. This is a place where the stories crawl past me. Or walk past me, done up in perfume to punch. My imagination would have me elsewhere: a younger man with fewer stories. More disposable income. Walking past. Spare change for a busker.

Some days there are people who jump in front of trains. And some days there are people who don't. Walking past. I don't see you, I don't hear you. "I heard your music, and I changed my mind." Driving down the highway is like that, too. When you cut beneath the grime and hit the clear sky you can be anybody. Or somebody. You can find yourself, or chase after your own soul. Win or lose on your own terms. Osgoode.

Fat City Blues, Toronto, Canada. I wrap this year's National Steel "Big X" Blues Tour here. Ten consecutive years of playing almost everywhere in North America. It's easier to list the places I haven't played under the Tour banner. And, beyond that- over forty years of shows now. Back in The Day shows were often four, five, six nighters. We travelled a lot. Stayed places for weeks, months. But "touring" was something that was done by acts with Agents, Managers, record Deals. I would never of dreamed of the Internet. A digital world. Science fiction. Me, and my Dick Tracy phone, playing the world. Talking to you. Songs and stories.

The life and death of a Tour. The National Steel "Big X" Blues Tour. Theatres, festivals, drive shows, bars, cafes, gas stations, house concerts, boxing clubs. Now wrapped with a couple of dozen people in a small, Toronto club. It's had me on the road most of the year. Ten provinces, and as many states. My Lincoln says it wants oil. My arms are getting acupuncture for pain, and Osgoode is waiting. I won't jump in front of the train, but I will imagine it: warm with soft seats. My personal train, headed for the distance. February and March will be shows in Chicago, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Get on board!

A couple weeks of downtime before the Maple Blues Awards. An unusual, outdoor Christmas in Canada. Mom played carols on the porch, and you could hear the sweetness of the fiddle right down the block.

End of Summer: Old Questions, New Adventures

Toronto. I've had a long affair with this place, but it's been fleeting, and not always loving. When you are on the road over 200 days a year for over 10 years, it's not easy to call it- or anyplace-  a "home town." Toronto has never tried to claim me for it's own, either. I don't belong to it, and somehow the town knows that. Deep in it's bones. Suspicious. It's a place where authenticity tends to flood in from the suburbs: weekend warriors with the right hats, the right gear, sensible pensions, practical daytime professions. Of course I'm jealous. And not.

No, you don't have to suffer in some specific way to appreciate the blues- one only needs to be human. That's complicated enough. This healing music, these healing stories, the placement of the spirit on the edge of the string, on the edge of the chair, the edge of the world, the edge of my pocket knife. Would you jump off, and not come back? Fall off? Would you risk your life? Not on purpose, but by accident? Some strange twist of fate. Down on your knees like the Wolf. Out of your body like Son. Sometimes that's probably what might save your life. Or my life. Or not. Sometimes it's just being near to it. Like dreaming. The sounds you hear before dawn. Pan slinking by on cloven feet. Waking up in the back seat of your car. Waking up in Mavis Staples' hotel room, watching the mist rising off the water, the early sun full of itself and flushed with opportunity.

But that's not Toronto, a town progress has left without strongly identified blues places. The empty lot where the Colonial Tavern used to be: where Buddy Guy and Junior Wells used to come in and play 5 nights, where I saw Wolf on his hands and knees, where Colin Linden and I opened shows for Muddy Waters... The ghosts of Grossman's Tavern, The Silver Dollar Room, The Victory, the El Mo, the Paramount: the memory of neon and smoke, draft beer and laughter spread down Spadina Ave. The Market: Chickens running around. Old, Jewish businesses not yet pushed out by ChinaTown, not yet retired, not yet willing to leave. Sammy, selling me my hats, steaming the brims. Have you heard of a "hat trick?" Uptown: Coming in the back door of the Riverboat. Two shows a night with Sonny and Brownie. Walking and wheeling my Super Reverb through the Market at 3 AM, showtime at Tiger's. Paper Door. Elephant Walk. All the speaks we'd play until dawn.  Jane and Donnie. Ben banging the drums too loud. Wilcox puts his strat on the gaming table. Bo Diddley coming in for a little jam. But it's all gone. Gone. It's all different now. Like everywhere else, the small shows are getting smaller, while the big shows have more production gear and crew than musicians and instruments. It's all different. And it's always different. Not better, not worse. Different. Live music, the way we used to consume it and make it, has changed.

The scene: always changing. Graffiti: a new generation paints new things on the walls. And that's how it should be. The focal points are more properly some of the players themselves. And even these are shifting, moving about from month to month. This cafe, that bar, which second Tuesday, in this band and that. There was a time when there were great blues rooms here in Toronto. And good blues rooms. There still are some cool rooms- but most are smallish, local affairs. Tip jar rooms with long residencies. Nothing wrong with that. In Canada it is mostly about bass and drums. Toronto, long lost in the red glow of my tail lights. You never know. You might get lucky. You might hear a story you haven't heard before. Or not.

Big times in Hollandale, Mississippi. A new stone for Sam Chatmon, unveiled before the Sam Chatmon Blues Festival. Butch, Libby Rae, Roy... and a whole bunch of other good folks helped make this happen. Sam was a great friend and mentor to so many of us! And look at us over 30 years beyond his passing! It was kind of cool to see the words "Stop and Listen" on the new bench next to the stone. I had suggested that, and I guess everybody ran with it. Back in the day, Sam used to tell me "getting old is good for business." That would of been my number two pick. For the bench, that is. But I sure hope he was right!

Meanwhile I've got the Lincoln pointed towards Atlantic Canada. Quick stop in Ontario where I had hoped to do a Toronto Blues Society showcase event for the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals. Not folked up enough, I guess... No, plenty of good acts- I'm just disappointed that I failed to make the TBS cut for a showcase. I didn't get to play the Blues Summit showcases, either. Simply put, there is now an abundance of authentic blues artists in the region and across the country. Quite a few own high end guitars, cigar boxes, custom made microphones. Some have even been to Chicago. Or Memphis. Or both. Of course, I'm jealous. Or not. I need a fret job, and I could put some of that money into new tires- but I do get to play all the magic places lost in the folds of the maps. Yeah, magic places. 

After ten solid years of the Tour I really need, more than ever, to connect face to face with more of the Canadian folk festival scene movers and shakers. And that's difficult when they don't often come out to independent live shows over ten provinces and two territories. Without access to the Canadian folk and blues festivals it's getting to be pretty difficult to continue working as I have been in Canada. So, next year it may be a little different. Maybe a lot fewer Canadian shows. I won't blow off the European festivals anymore, that's for sure. (Call me, Franz, I no longer need to room with Willie Nelson.) I probably mentioned in an earlier blog that I am working on a book based on my adventures along the National Steel Blues Tour. It's not about the South. It covers 1000 shows in Canada, mostly by road- but also by boat, dogsled and small aircraft. Critics will eventually tell you what they think it's about. Time will tell more stories.

The business may be getting old, but today, in Canada, the National Steel Big X Blues Tour continues. No agents, managers, tour busses, or fancy new guitars. Apparently no showcases, either. Damn! Come to think of it, that's not so bad. At my age, summer is clearly over. Fall is underway. Winter is in the distance. Snow in the color of my hair. Vulgar vagabond! After 42 years of travel and shows, I still stop for coffee, and piss where I please.

On the Atlantic Tour I've got some really fun shows lined up- including a gig at the East Coast Amateur Boxing Club in Halifax.

Rockford, Nova Scotia. Six rounds, pre-show bare knuckle. A place that doesn't Google well. Near Bedford, Nova Scotia. Yeah, just behind the pounders in the picture there is a boxing ring. When the Tour reaches Maritime Canada in a few weeks time- I'll be there. The East Coast Amateur Boxing Club. Hands down, one of the coolest gigs on the Big X Blues Tour. It's the first show in my career where fans can actually get ringside seats. I may tape up before the gig, I don't know. But I will be in the Ring, with my guitars to back me up. Saturday, November 14, 225 Bedford Highway, near the ghost of Africville.

Africville. Do you know about that? They say that used to be one tough town. Now: all sucked into the big city of Halifax. Africville- exotic colours and smells. Gone. All but forgotten now, it's memory like a mirage in the shadow of the big bridge. I've stood there and looked at it. Squinting in the small hours. The tuneless hum of traffic nearby. There was Blues here. Jazz. A black town in Canada. It wasn't rich, and it wasn't pretty- but it was home to perhaps 500 souls. During the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and beyond- waves of escaped slaves and free black Loyalists settled at Africville. Then, between 1964 and 1970, the City of Halifax moved the residents out and levelled the community. House by house. As a sign of respect, garbage trucks were used to help residents move their possessions. Today, the Bedford Highway creeps down the basin, providing suburban commuters with a toll free run around the bridges.

It's my tenth consecutive year of bringing the Tour to the Halifax region, the Maritimes, Atlantic Canada. I'm pleased to be booked solid across Newfoundland again this year. Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. When I turn off the Lincoln in December, that will mark over 1000 shows for the Tour. And only one boxing ring.

The majority of my shows in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island will be played with local guitar hero, Matchstick Mike. We've done some shows together before, so I know it's going to be pretty neat. Yes, he is the heavily tattooed blues rocker guy! But he's also pretty handy on the dobro, mandolin, acoustic guitar. Sings harmony. Writes. We'll have some big fun.

Some of the shows I'm looking forward to with Mike include BarNone, up in the red dirt hills of PEI, and The Factory, in Charlottetown, where we'll guest with a full band. And we've got some house concerts, some pub shows, and possibly a gig in a tattoo joint... Schedule and posters are now in the Links sidebar. We've still got a couple of open dates, so there's no telling where we might end up.

Then, I'll be on the boat to Newfoundland... Life is always good when the wheels are turning.