My Foolish Heart

Sister Joan is one of the sweetest people I've ever met. She is a retired nun. One Sunday a month, she hosts a spiritual get together in her apartment. Most attendees are older women. They talk about all kinds of things and they pray.

I happened to be there helping her install something on her computer while one of her meetings was in session. Her computer was in the kitchen, on the other side of the apartment from where the meetings took place.

When the ladies took a break and came into the kitchen for some refreshments, I was introduced to everyone as a musician and computer expert. Like I said, sister Joan is very sweet.

One of the ladies named Gladys told me that her husband had been a full time musician throughout the midwest for many years. She casually mentioned that Bill Evans had been a friend of theirs. In the early 60's, Evans had asked her husband if while he was playing in the Chicago area, he could use their piano to practice.

Gladys said that one time Bill was practicing in the living room and she needed to run some errands. She asked him if he wouldn't mind keeping an eye on her three young children. When she returned home none of the kids greeted her at the door. She went to the living room and found them sitting close together on the floor, mesmerized by the sound of Bill Evans.

The picture of that in my head is priceless.

Keep it quiet? (music of the mind)

I listened to a piano player being interviewed on NPR a few years back. He was not well known. He said that while he was in the early stages of learning his instrument that his teacher had really pushed him to memorize as many standards as possible. He had learned hundreds of tunes. Years later, when he began to explore composition, he found every idea he came up with was usually one of those memorized songs.

Jimmy Webb recounted two separate occasions where he was with well known composers and invited them to his house. They were very reluctant to go. He wondered why. The truth was that they had both been afraid that Webb would being playing music while they were there. Composers actively working on projects don't want any outside musical influence.

I have gone through periods of constant listening. I felt like that was a good thing. I have listened to music while I was sleeping. Sometimes the same song all night. Lately, I am listening mostly to sirens outside my window. That and silence. It has left my mind open to new ideas. I hope those are original.

Berimbau

In 1983, my cousin Steve and I took a trip to southern California. I had been there once before. He had never been. I was interested in working out at World and Gold's Gym. He just wanted to have a fun trip. Both of us had grown up in Royal Oak, Michigan. A suburb of Detroit. The thing that attracted me to the Los Angeles area was diversity. Where we came from, there was a real lack of culture. We had never eaten at a real Mexican restaurant. Chi-Chi's was it as far as we were concerned. Hearing anyone speak Arabic was always cause for alarm and an openly gay guy usually got a chuckle from most people. Southern California was a very open and interesting place.

On our third day there, we had been out walking around in Santa Monica. As we walked back to our room, we passed a little guy with an Afro. He was carrying an attache case and something that looked like a bow. Something you would use to shoot an arrow with. Not a fancy bow. Like a kid would make. Steve and I didn't really discuss this guy, but we had both noticed him.

About an hour later, while we were in the room talking, Steve said, "did you see that guy with the bow?, I think it's some kind of weird instrument." I had thought the same thing. He had been holding a wood stick that looked like a chopstick. Steve went on, "yeah, it looks like he hits the string with that chopstick and that's how it works". We laughed. Honestly, we just thought he was some odd character.

The next day, I was out taking a few photos by myself and I saw this guy again.

He was waiting for a bus in front of the motel where we were staying. He had his bow. I now noticed that it also had a round bowl attached to one side of it. I really wanted to know more so I walked right up to him and asked him about this "instrument" he carried.

He told me it was called a berimbau and it was from Brazil. I asked him if he would demonstrate it for me. He held it upright with the metal string facing out. He started hitting the string with the chopstick which sounded really cool. He held a small round stone in his other hand and placed it at varying locations along the string. Basically, it was a movable fret. It changed the pitch of the note.

Then, he swished the chopstick on the outside of the bowl. That too was a great sound. The bowl's main function was to act like a resonator for the string's vibration. The opening of the bowl faced his stomach. He could keep it open and let it ring loud and clear or hold it close to his stomach and deaden it.

We talked for a while. He was from Brazil. I noticed amongst a bunch of stickers on his attache case, that one of them read "Royal Oak Music Theatre".

That was really interesting. I asked him if he had been there and he said that he had been a special guest on tour with someone. Who? Pat Metheny!

He said, "my name is Nana Vasconcelos". I asked him if he had played on Pat's song, Are You Going With Me? Of course, he had. I loved that song.

As I got more into Brazilian music, I realized that Nana was nothing short of a legend. He had worked with Milton Nascimento, Egberto Gismonti and Gato Barberi just to name a few. Our "odd character" had turned out to be quite special. See what I mean when I say lack of culture?

A very non-Irish St. Patrick's Day.

After making a couple of attempts at finding a job, I felt like I deserved some of the sun that was shining onto my front porch. I got a guitar and sat down to practice. I had only been playing for a few minutes when a man and woman walking by looked up to see where the music was coming from. The man was very interested and asked what kind of guitar I was playing. We talked as his friend waited. He said he had a guitar but it needed a new high E string. I told him that I would put one on for him. He asked how much I would charge and I told him he could have the whole set for $5. I only ended up changing the one string and still gave me $5.

His guitar was from a little electronics store in the neighborhood. It was a 3/4 size sunburst model. I tuned it the best I could. The intonation was really bad. It was impossible to get it totally in tune. But he was happy. He said, "I love chords". So I played a series of chords on his guitar. His reaction to each chord was not unlike someone watching a fireworks display. I played a B minor7 and he went "oooh", A minor9 "ahhh", C major9 "hey". Finally an E minor11 and he said "aw, you're killin' me".

We talked for a while. His name was Duane. He lived three doors down. He invited me over to drink some beer on the balcony of his third floor apartment. On the way there he asked how much I would charge to give him lessons. I told him $15 for a half hour. He said that he needed a tuner and "one of them things that keeps time, a methadone". He had forgotten his keys and began ringing the doorbell a bunch of times. A woman yelled from the balcony "who's ringing that bell like that?"
Duane said, "I'm sorry sugga wugga, I forgot my keys". She buzzed us in.
This woman turned out to be his wife. He introduced us and she had this look like, who is this guy you're bringing into our apartment? He said, "Dan's my guitar teacher we're going to play out on the balcony". His wife said, "I hope you don't drive all the neighbors inside". Duane said, "are you kiddin', we're gonna bring 'em out!"

Once we settled in on the balcony with a couple of cans of Icehouse, Duane played me a few things he knew and gave me an idea of what he'd like to learn. He looked at his watch and said, "ok, the lessons start NOW". It was 6 pm. He gave me a $20 bill and I gave him his $5 back. I wrote out some nice chord progressions and showed him how to play the voicings. He was really excited. At 6:30, the sun was going down and we were done. He brought out a calender and marked down his next lesson. March 24th. He gave me a fresh Icehouse for the road.

Sometimes, you just gotta listen.

Several years ago, I was very excited about route 66. The newly de-certified route 66. De-certified because interstates made it redundant. It was in vogue to travel the old road. It wasn't like you could just get on in Chicago and drive for four days and be in L.A. anymore. De-certified means little or no maintenance and plenty of dead ends. You had to really want to drive this road. There were a lot of detours and you got lost often.

The route 66 society of Illinois planned a road trip on the stretch that ran from Chicago to St. Louis. It lasted a weekend. Saturday night there was a block party for the participants of the road trip. It took place in downtown Springfield, Illinois. I met an older couple that had been dancing in the street. The woman told me that her and her husband had been in a Western Swing band in the 50's and that they had played many roadhouses along the old route 66. I asked her what Gallup, New Mexico was like. I had never been there and that name Gallup just sounded cool to me. I figured great things happened there. Nat King Cole made it sound important. I'll never forget her response. She said "Gallup is all drunk Indians".
I couldn't believe it. All I could think was that these were some serious rednecks who didn't know anything. Me with all of my culture would surely find all kinds of wonderful things in Gallup.

A few years later I drove the old road through New Mexico. When I got to Gallup, the main drag was very lit up. I found a motel and pulled into the driveway. There were some people off in the shadows near one of the rooms. I didn't pay too much attention to them. I parked. As I sat in the car for a minute, I looked in the rear view mirror only to see that these people were two Indians lifting a third very drunk Indian off of the sidewalk.

Tonight, I decided to go out and sit in at a bar I had heard about but never been to.
Let's just call this bar Snuckles to protect the innocent (and me). A review on the internet said, "white trash, convict and crack-ho heaven!" I thought no way could it really be that bad. First off, a little white trash never hurt anyone. Convicts? How would a person even know? Horizontal black stripes on a white outfit? One of those ball and chain deals hooked onto their ankles? And lastly, I think some people just love using a cliche like crack-ho. It sounds real hip. How many actual crack-hos do we ever really see?

I walked in with my amp and guitar and sat down near a window. The house band members were all fooling with a Casio keyboard. It sounded awful. A guy began playing The Entertainer. You know, maybe a keyboard player would play a few bars of that and there would be a chuckle or two and the joke would be over. This guy played the whole tune with fervor. And one of the worst keyboard sounds imaginable. It was like a slow death. This band could have been called White Trash. Then I overheard two guys talking (yelling) to each other about a mutual friend that was doing five years in the big house. They seemed to be delighted. One of these guys had one of those truck driver kidney belts on and a special harness that held a CD player right in the middle of his lumbar region. When it was shift change time, the new bar maid walked in with her poorly died dark red hair. As she walked past, she smiled a semi-toothless smile at me. She looked like I would imagine a "crack-ho" to look like.

I left before the house band started to play.

News Boy's Blues

Being obsessed with guitars and music in general by the age of twelve, I needed some form of income. There were two ways for a kid my age to make money. Get a paper route or become a caddy at the Red Run Golf Course. I chose a Detroit News route. I subbed for a kid on vacation who never came back. My route consisted of a large apartment complex with multi-unit buildings and individual units that were connected together, part of a busy street and two quiet streets. Papers were picked up in a little dark room in the rear of the G&P Market. My Dad and I found a Red Schwinn Heavy-Duty Bicycle in the Tradin' Times newspaper for $60. There was a broken weld on one part of the frame that Dad said Tommy Adams could fix. Tommy Adams was a little guy that worked on Corvettes. He looked like he would have made a great jockey. My Dad told me that because he was so small, that he was the perfect Corvette mechanic.

Tommy welded the frame with great skill while I played with his bulldog and Dad looked on. This was going to be some bike. It had 105 gauge spokes. It was made for a paper route. Dad bought original Schwinn replacement parts, primer, black spray paint and even decals at Powers Bike Shop on Washington Avenue. He sanded it, sprayed it with primer then sprayed several coats of the black. Sanding between each coat. Very professional. When everything was finished, we put it together and it looked like it had just rolled off the assembly line.

I delivered The Detroit News everyday. Monday and Tuesday were light days. Thin papers. Wednesday was a big paper with two sections that had to be put together at the paper station. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were normal sized papers. Sunday was huge and easily the worst day of the week. Some customers received the paper every day. That was $1.20 per week. Some people only wanted the paper on Sunday and that was $.50 per week. You needed to collect from each customer every week. Each carrier had a little book in which we kept track of our collections. Collecting could start on Thursday. The bill needed to be paid on Saturday morning at the station. If you paid it on Sunday, the manager, Mr. Budrey would get angry.

The main reason for this route as far as I was concerned was to raise cash for records. The Wholesale Record Outlet was only a mile from the house and I went all the time. Everyone that worked there knew me by name and I knew them by theirs. There was Ed, Mae, Dianne and Steve. I bought lots of records. This is where I got my first Jeff Beck, Hendrix, Cream and Deep Purple records. The list could go on and on.

After about six months of delivering The Detroit News,I learned that if I really needed cash for some great record, I could collect from a few customers on Wednesday and get what I needed. Eventually,I would even collect from some customers as early as Tuesday. Some paid without any questions. I told The ones that wondered why I was collecting so early that my family was leaving town for the weekend and I needed to get a jump on things. They believed me.

Then,one day a fairly new customer who I hardly ever saw approached me and said "hey, I'm almost always gone and I want to pay up through the next eight months. Is that O.K.?" I told him that I thought it was a great idea. He gave me about $40. I went straight to The Wholesale Record Outlet and spent all of it on Django Reinhardt albums. He recorded a lot of material and I wanted all of it. I was in heaven and listened to him non-stop.

Tragedy struck about two months later when some couple who lived in the complex but were not customers informed me that this guy who paid me for eight months had MOVED!
He had asked them to talk to me about getting the money I now owed him. I told them whatever I had to to keep them at bay for a while. And I told them something new and different each time they asked me. After a while, they got kind of pricky. And I already had an attitude about them because they were not customers of mine. What were they doing trying to get money from me? And on top of that, they just seemed weird.

Finally, quite a while later(like a year or more)this guy who wanted his money found out who I was and he went to see my Mom about it. I wasn't home. But she paid him the balance. She was only a little upset with me, but thought the guy was a total dork.
He kept telling her "I could have his job!" As a thirteen year old kid, I didn't understand exactly what he meant by this. I wondered how if he was already gone all the time, he going to keep up with doing my route. Was he going to want my bike too? Tommy Adams and my Dad would really be disappointed with me. They had worked so hard on it.

This story concludes twelve years later in the Meijers Thrifty Acres parking lot in Royal Oak, Michigan. As Teresa(my wife at the time) and I walked toward the store entrance, I noticed this guy with a woman. It's the guy. I don't know why I recognized him. I just did. I asked him if he had ever lived in the Rochester apartments and he said "yeah, a really long time ago". I reminded him of the whole incident and he acted like he barely remembered. That's old age for you. Or maybe just embarrassment.

Cowboy Eddie Okroy

My Mom,Deanna and myself used to go to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints every Sunday. This was 1971 and my Dad would drop us off. He didn't have time for the Lord. He spent much of his time at Carney's gas station over on eleven mile. It was owned and operated by Al and Keith Carney. Father and Son. They also did body work. Dad would often quote Al Carney saying, "you cain't bump one out". He was from the south and believed in using bondo. Dad would hang around with Al and Keith and maybe a few other neighborhood guys and they would drink RC Cola and eat cashews from one of those glass topped vending machines. This was real livin' down there at Carney's. More fun than church.

Even though my Dad normally just dropped us off and left, he couldn't help but noticing one parishioner that stood out from the rest. "Cowboy Eddie Okroy" Dad would say with a smile. The reason Cowboy Eddie stood out was because in the suburbs of the Motor City, everyone used cars to get from point A to point B but Eddie could only be found riding his burgundy Rollfast bicycle. He would pull up to the church on it dressed in a powder blue western style suit with a yolk across the back, black cowboy boots, horn rimmed glasses and a cowboy hat. He would then lock the bike to a small maple tree using one of those chain covered in see through vinyl tubing, four tumbler bike locks. There was certainly no one else like Cowboy Eddie Okroy in Royal Oak. Remembering back, I would say that he looked a little like Buddy Holly(with a cowboy hat). I used to listen to a 45 of Holly's That'll be the Day around that time, but I never really noticed the likeness.

Years later, Deanna and Jeff (her high school sweetheart) got married in that church and I read something from Proverbs out loud. Today, it is one of those 10 minute oil change places. Can they even do that? I wonder if Cowboy Eddie Okroy knows about it.