Gig at The Stampede went well, by all accounts. But imagine suavemeister Tony Reedus all in cashmere black half-hidden behind his drums and a stuffed rank half a buffalo made to look like it's charging the stage! Think of black-light sweating Elvis posters and scores of bumper stickers from places like Abaline, TX and the Dixie Diner Truck Stop all around urbane Ugonna Okegwo's haloed head and you have some idea of the visual incongruity of the evening.

Mark, the owner, was there himself to run sound (an open and likable cat in denim jacket, tired unshaven face with bleary eyes from whiskey & no sleep - a good ol'boy in The City). A stuffed-to-the-gills brick room with mostly white collar white kids there to hear the "Flying Neutrinos", an updated jump band I never got to hear because of the help the human crush afforded me in exiting quickly and completely after our show.

Mark pumps the volume like a rock show. (Do audiences in these joints always listen to sounds this loud? Are people's ears hiding in the earth?) One of our fans stuffs cotton in his overburdened ears at the first crashing chord of LH's night (thereafter digging it and relaxing). Plus slamming Tony Reedus - with a New York edge to his time feel that bespeaks a man fully hooked up to the super-bustle of the First City of the World. His shattering pulse couples with Ugonna's cosmopolitan counter melodies to pound bound and expound all around the spellbound underground. The sound is stronger than the sight, you dig?

Plus, I can dig from the stage that some return friends have brought whole tables full of uninitiated with them, so the word of mouth vibe is spreading. We are doing the job we came to do. Big applause at the end of the night and good vibe from all sides. I'm relieved 'cause while I could sense victory during the show, There were actually very few visual signs to go on. The audience looked passive. Maybe they'd never heard anything like what we do (not impossible). Maybe they couldn't move 'cause the force of the amplified sound waves crashing around them held them straitjacketed! Maybe they were HYPMOTIZED!!

Well, another non-listening room, sort of, conquered, sort of: Boubon Street Cafe last night in faux New Orleans Mardi Gras tin-roofed roadhouse vibe with peanut shells on the floor & old-style upright piano. We open for the Smokin' Swingers (or some such name) - another stylish knock-off jump band in resale spectator wing-tips and fedoras who play way out-of-tune very extremely white bread NOT EVEN THE RIGHT CHANGES covers of Louie Jordan b-sides. Their fans are nubile short-skirts and the men that chase them, sweating and dancing. The owner's a stout seen-it-all kind of a businessman who comes on in beard, long sweaty hair & Hawaiian shirt. You expect him to be the guy who chews up a cigar a day without ever lighting it. He takes me aside and lays down a scene-cynic, squint-eyed trip like,

"Last year at this time I had a Ska band in here & THAT'S what they came for. Ah it'll change again by next year & these guys 'l be outta' work -but YOU guys: You gotta' LONG career ahead of YOU!" He goes on swaggering right out loud in front of customers & says, "All this swing shit's popularity's just a reaction to grunge anyway - 'cause grunge is anti-sex & these kids wanta' HAVE FUN and GET LAID. I mean, here's a situation where the girls wanta' look like girls, you know' & get danced around on some guy's arm & show it off a bit. Next year they'll do it to different sounds, though."
All this just after we do our 60 minutes. It's got to be loud charts and with a phat swing 'cause this room's the noisiest yet.

So: X of the Season
quickish, bluesey piano segue
Night Dreamer --- drum segue
April In Paris (a little faster) . . .

You know, just punch it out.

Excellent free food after: relaxed & spicy catfish & cornbread - that and free drinks. The cats & I sit quietly with beers at the table, watching the dance floor, not talking, and thinking what men think. I decide it's probably best to just get home & call my wife, so once we eat (it's a little loud, young and silly anyway), I help Tony with his drums, have a quick night cap & taxi home to phone & zone.

Well, I skipped a day of writing for all-out break from exhaustion, but more on that later. Rose on am of 22nd early to catch the car to do another interview. Pony Girl came along in well-used stretch limo all up Riverside Drive in wind and gray, the wind almost blowing a man and his dogs over when they cross the street. The studio is inside Riverside church (Reinholt Niebuhr's ex cathedra ) but by the time we're through two hours later we forget to stop and check it out.

We waited in the office room on a beat green leather couch digging the sounds of a back woods bluegrass duo singing "You'd Better Pray to the Lord When You See Them Flying Saucers - It May Mean The Coming Of The Judgment Day" (only on college radio!). An older press photo hung above our heads and had drawn the snidery of some nimble collegial mind because the caption clearly read "The Pat Metheny Group" and only showed Pat leaning against a wall, smiling, amid alley debris. "Hey!" - somebody wrote with arrows pointing - "The Pat Metheny Group! Woah! With Spare Tire on piano and Brick on bass! You should hear him wail! What an excellent BAND!! These guys ROCK!"

The interview itself went well, though I sensed some kind of confrontational vibe in the air. For a while I thought it might turn surreal with intellectualism like an interview I did at Berkeley where the shaggy-haired mechanic-outfitted host turned combative with one-upsmanship in an absurd debate about black & white movies & whether or not "one" had really "taken in" that kind of "cinema" if "one" had merely "seen" it on TV rather than in a "movie haus". So at first I'm a little wary when spotting a few signs of the smirky smart-guy syndrome from my wiry, myopic host - petty nomenclature corrections & statistical snottiness like pointing out correctingly that Louis Jordan's career apex lasted "only about two years, not five" (squinting and nodding now). But, I can tell you thankfully that "Rick" and I actually had a pretty open and easy time of it after the initial "how d' you do". Also, John & Saachi Pattatucci show up so John can be done in the next interview re his new record "One More Angel". He's a very generous and beautiful cat as well as a total mf on bass, and I was glad to get the chance to hang with him and Sacchi (Here's the world famous Red Baron holed up with two jazzers and their burning-fine-moxie dark-haired wives in a white-washed basement.)

Then there's a call for me. It's the other shoe.
Comes a measured aggrivated street cadence: "Hey, man, I just have one concern about what you said earlier, man. Did you realize that if you're workin' for the door at these joints that you're putting working musicians out of work!?"

"Man, I AM a working musician," says I.

Confrontational now, he says, "Man the ONLY person who wins on a night when a cat like you plays the club is the CLUB OWNER! - And cats who live by the music are out of a job because of you - Have you considered THAT!?"

I start to tell him how a) there are at least three more cats per night who are making a living from MY music because I'M working my ASS off to get something started in the world, and also how b) I happen to be living by the music. But there's no time to go there - the song's almost up and it's time to talk on-air again. So I say (always trying to work it out),

"I'm sorry, man, but I've got to do this thing - If you'd come out to a gig I'd be happy to talk more about it..."

"I AIN'T comin' out to no gig!" (dismissively, angrily) "You've clearly not considered the IMPACT of what you're doing & also DON'T CARE!" - CLICK!

'Nuff said.
We get the driver to drop us off in rainy Soho so Pony Girl can look into galleries & so's I can hang with the beautiful artist Fred Hersch. Fred and I met when we shared a manager. We grab a bite at a wood & fern flavored cafe and later go back to his crib to dig sides; specifically, his new Monk record. It's a deep and rich artistic message - often more like duets for two hands than solo piano work. We also play a few tunes together at his baby grand. And then, "It's 5:00 already?!"