Category Archives: Music

Keep looking through the window pane
Just trying to see through the pouring rain
It’s hearing your name, hearing your name
I’ve really never felt quite the same
Since I’ve lost what I had to gain
No one to blame, no one to blame

“You like the classics?” Jamie Fox asks Jada Pinkett Smith as their taxi roams the streets of Los Angeles while the day turns to dusk. In one of the few Tom Cruise movies that I can stomach (the excellent ‘Collateral’) this opening musical scene sets the Zen-like tone of the whole movie, and seems a practically perfect entry for this extra Daylight Savings hour. Settle in, make a cup of coffee or tea and let’s go into Sunday, and this extra hour, in quiet and contemplative fashion. The world can wait a bit…

Time time time… see’s what become of me…

Seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Oh, it seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time

It’s strange the way we turn the time into November. Like a manual switch, the day after Halloween is instantly gray, damp and chilly, and the realization that we will never be going back to September is a sad one. We can only move forward, through the oblivion of winter and the rocky road of spring before we get back to some semblance of the state of summer. What a long trip that seems. A song like this helps us take the first steps of the journey. 

Keep looking through the window pane
Just trying to see through the pouring rain
It’s hearing your name, hearing your name
I’ve really never felt quite the same
Since I’ve lost what I had to gain
No one to blame, no one to blame

The mellow groove marks time, the melancholy lyrics mark our past, and all of it keeps us company when that’s all we have. Sometimes a song is the best company around. Much less messy when it comes to the peskiness of people. You can start it and stop it and repeat it, or shut it down altogether and nobody’s feelings get hurt. We are not so lucky with people. Or with time. Except on this day. We can turn it back, for one hour, and do it all over again. Make things right. Make things better. Maybe just listen a little closer this time. Appreciate things a bit more. Enjoy it. 

It’s only an hour. 

Seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Oh, it seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Seems to me, can’t turn back the hands of time
Seems to me, yesterday was left behind…

He flew in from a cloud of smoke atop a grand piano.

An orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen welcomed him as he landed. 

And so Aerosmith celebrated the 10th anniversary of MTV way back in the fall of 1991 with their classic ‘Dream On’. 

Every time when I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone
It went by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got the dues in life to pay

I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody’s sin
You got to lose to know how to win

For her homage to MTV’s anniversary Madonna had contributed a psychotherapy session in black-and-white cinema verite style, French beret, suspenders and the whole smoking vibe. Without any backing music, however, it is this song and not Madonna that recalls the haunting fall of 1991. 

Suzie was in Denmark that year, and the upcoming holidays would be the first we did not spend together. It would also be the first without her father helming the festivities. So many reasons for sadness, so many days of darkness. That was November, though, no surprises there. I couldn’t pinpoint whether my depressed countenance was typical seasonal sorrow, or something deeper. It didn’t much matter. Whether it was the moment or something more sustaining, destruction beckoned to my wayward  sixteen-year-old self. What sixteen-year-old hasn’t contemplated giving up? When November’s wind and rain crush the summer’s leaves beneath your feet, and you walk alone in the woods eyeing every sunken patch of earth as a possible grave, death strikes you as neither frightening nor unwelcome. 

Half my life’s in books’ written pages
Lived and learned from fools and from sages
You know it’s true
All the things come back to you

On certain nights, just to get away, to feel something – anything – be it cold or chill or danger or dark – I would sneak out of the house when everyone was in bed, and I would run – as fast and as hard as I could – running as furiously as my body would allow, pushing and daring it to give up, to take and tear me down, rip up my muscles, ravage my bones, slice through my skin and render my shell from my soul. Most of us want to run into oblivion eventually. 

It never worked. My brain gave in before my body did, and I’d return, panting and catching what was left of my breath, as much as I fought for it to leave me. In the driveway, beneath the thorny Hawthorne tree that brought us such happiness in its spring bloom, I paused, kicking off the dried and dead berries from those very blooms, now stuck to the bottom of my shoes. This was life, I thought. It always turned to shit. Nothing beautiful remained. Nothing good would last.  

Sing with me, sing for the year
Sing for the laughter and sing for the tear
Sing with me, just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good Lord’ll take you away…

Back inside, I clicked on the basement lights and put in this MTV tape, mostly to watch Madonna again. No matter what happened, there would always be Madonna. Whether Aerosmith was before or after her, I somehow always managed to see a bit of their ‘Dream On’ performance, and the song became part of my teenage life, as it did to so many others before and since. The classics never die. Steven Tyler had been to hell and back and still managed to scream and screech and work that magic like it never left him. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe you couldn’t kill that artistic glory – not even in death. This song would live on. This music would continue to sound. This moment, shared by the audience and the listeners then and now, will keep going. There was comfort in that. Some small seed of inspiration had been dropped into my sub-conscious. And so I kept going. Not because I didn’t want to die. Not because the world wasn’t cruel and rife with misery. Not because I had any breakthrough realization. No, I kept going because… I didn’t really know what to do. And if you’re not sure about something that big, I find it best to wait and consider. One day. One night. Then another day. Another night. And another. And I made it through. 

Dream on, dream on, dream on
Dream until your dreams come true
Dream on, dream on, dream on
Dream until your dreams come true…

And so November’s days ticked away. Thanksgiving came to the Ko home. My brother and I haunted the attic and its secret passages, but it wasn’t the same without Suzie or her Dad. We sat on the stairs remembering things instead of making new memories. I never liked adding sad rooms to my memory castle, but there it is, all these years later. November tends to unlock it. I’ll take a quick look, do a bit of dusting, then carefully lock it up again. 

He stood at the edge of the yard, rather a long distance away. Arms crossed in front of him, his eyes squinting into the high sun of noon, he seemed determined. Sometimes, even on sunny summer days, the hardest thing to be is a boy. As the initial minutes of our visit wore on, he got closer to the house, until he was peering in, watching us and waiting for the right moment to enter.

The last time I’d seen Julian he was barely able to walk, much less speak. Now he was a boy, walking and talking and, as he would show us later, mastering the ukulele. His Mom is one of my closest friends, whom I’ve known since I can remember, having met her at Suzie’s birthday parties in the Junes of our childhood. There’s a bond that a childhood friendship carries that is like no other, and in many ways it is as unbreakable as the bonds of family. Sometimes more. As her son Julian walked in and sheepishly said hello, I was flooded with memory, happiness and warmth. 

His younger brother Cameron hid behind Mommy for a while, with a shy but irrepressible smile across his face. He would break into giggles periodically and I hoped his happiness would last. I think that should be the goal of all the world: keeping that childhood happiness for as long as possible. The lucky ones among us never lose it. Most of us do at some point, then spend the rest of our lives trying to get it back, with varying degrees of success. Or maybe I’m just conflating happiness with innocence. They are both too often fleeting, as was our visit to Connecticut.

The days were idyllic. It was hot and sunny – perfect for some time in and beside the pool. The house lent itself to easy relaxation, with its large windows and airy layout. Still new enough to be uncluttered, and lived-in enough to be comfortable, it was the perfect backdrop to a reunion with friends we hadn’t seen in far too long. On our way in, a swath of evening primrose lifted their bright canary faces next to the brick walkway. Nearer the front door, a clump of shasta daisies was at the height of its bloom, as if welcoming us with its greatest finery. Behind them, waves of shrubs softened the long lines of the house. Everything whispered ‘home’ and erased the recent bout of traffic we had to endure to get there. More than an oasis, this was a very real realm of respite, and as the door closed behind us, so did the troubles of the world.

We enjoyed our brief time there immensely; it was exactly what Andy and I needed to start the summer off, and I’m hopeful we left a little something behind too (besides the proliferation of feathers that remains the tell-tale sign of a visit). We’d been warned that Julian would ask a million questions, but the inquisitive nature of children was never an annoyance to me. Quite the contrary: seeing that insatiable curiosity, when one question leads to another, as if he already understood that the process of getting to knowledge was its own fulfilling journey, was a balm on my own soul, a reminder of another kid who had nothing but questions and a world unwilling to be bothered.

As for his fabulous younger brother Cameron, there were other happy reminders of my childhood mirrored in him. He liked feathers and sequins and all sorts of fancy items that lend magic to an unadorned summer day. He liked dressing up and expressing himself in costume and theatrics. He was on the verge of being exactly who he was meant to be, and yet also on the verge of drawing back into himself.

No matter what the rest of their lives brought, they had this summer – the first time in their pool, the first time in those pink pumps, and the first time we got to visit them. I know a thing or two about brothers, especially brothers who are dramatically different in so many ways. Brotherly love is almost unbreakable, but it doesn’t happen without tensions and traumas. Still, it’s best to dwell on days like this, when your brother is your best friend.

No one else will go through the exact same things you go through.

No one else in the world will experience the exact same basic upbringing, remember the same house, the same worries, the same resentments, the same triumphs, the same love.

I hope they hold onto that above all else. Not everyone does.

By the time we were reluctantly ready to leave, Julian was willing to sing us a song. It encapsulated our time there, and in many ways our entire summer.

{Check out Julian’s other videos here.}

Ahh, the musical montage. That glorious bit of cinematic magic wherein a key song plays over a spattering of key dramatic moments, in which storylines are advanced, tied up, or busted open while a single snippet of music brings it all together. I love a good musical montage. I’ve also found one to see us off into summer break and take us through the rest of the season. It’s an oldie, from a summer long ago, and just in time it will save the day, take us to a castle far away…

HOLDING BACK THE YEARS

THINKING OF THE FEAR I’VE HAD SO LONG

WHEN SOMEBODY HEARS

LISTEN TO THE FEAR THAT’S GONE

STRANGLED BY THE WISHES OF PATER

HOPING FOR THE ARMS OF MATER

GET TO ME THE SOONER OR LATER

I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON

I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON

It’s the perfect bit of languid music minimalism, ripe for a hot and lazy summer day when it takes every last ounce of effort to simply walk from one room to another. It’s ambivalent too, like summer can be. A certain tension informs these days, when too much sudden heat can clash with cooler realms and summer storms may be born into devilish, destructive offspring. We always pay for such heat.

Last year I took my first break from the blog, not knowing what to expect, feeling a vague fear and trepidation reminiscent of whenever I had had a really good year of school, when part of me didn’t want to break for summer, as crazy and incredulous as that may sound for a kid to think. I always felt older than the others. I always knew that that was the best time of our lives. At least, I forced myself to believe that. It worked well. Not expecting as much from these grown-up years has made them feel like a bonus. And no one wants to peak too soon.

On that last day of school, when even the teachers seemed to let down their guard in giddy relief, I walked a little slower, trying vainly to still the minutes, trying to enjoy them because somehow in the previous year I had forged bonds, made connections and even formed a few friendships that would last my lifetime. It was then, near the end of the year, that I started to feel a little loved. It always came so late, and it always overwhelmed me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want it to end. Maybe we all wanted to be kids for just a little bit longer.

HOLDING BACK THE YEARS

CHANCE FOR ME TO ESCAPE FROM ALL I’VE KNOWN

HOLDING BACK THE TEARS

CAUSE NOTHING HERE HAS GROWN

I’VE WASTED ALL MY TEARS, WASTED ALL THOSE YEARS

AND NOTHING HAD THE CHANCE TO BE GOOD

NOTHING EVER COULD

It only took the brief walk home, however, to turn off school-mode and ease instantly into vacationland. By the time I reached our house, that brief bout of nostalgia passed and only elation and the hope of a full summer ahead was left. I’d throw my pencils up into the sky, scattering them on the roof of our garage where they’d fade and warp in the sun and summer rains. I’d inhale the freshly-cut grass and begin the daily ritual of examining the gardens. Between bike rides and trading baseball cards, I would do my best to indulge in the traditional trappings of a boy in summer, and for the most part I enjoyed the days as they passed. Part of me longed for adventure, for something more exciting like we’d seen in ‘The Goonies‘ or ‘Stand By Me‘, and whenever we’d see a movie and were waiting for our ride, we’d roam the sparkly cement of the Amsterdam Mall parking lot and race into whatever dramatic scenario we’d concocted in our mind. The same spirit would accompany our night-time pool play, where we’d splash in the aqua light like some ‘Poltergeist’ meets ‘Jaws’ monster-mash. They were simple joys, and we never needed anything else. When left to their own devices, children will find a way to entertain themselves. Sometimes I think parents today feel some strange need to provide continual and constant stimulation, entertainment and occupation for their kids – when they really just need to be left alone. But what do I know? Andy and I remain happily unburdened by children. We are lucky that way. Besides, we have more than enough kids in our orbit to fulfill any sense of missing something, and we get to give them back at the end of the day. (Sometimes before the end of the day.)

I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON

I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON

I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON

I’LL KEEP HOLDING ON

As we wind down for summer, I’m reminded of those television shows that went on hiatus until the fall, leaving us with re-runs and non-challenging fare. Sometimes they ended with a bang, and a big dramatic cliffhanger (remember ‘Dallas’ and the whole ‘Who shot J.R.?’ mystery?) Just as often, however, they finished in quieter form, with a more contemplative place-holder. This post is one of the latter and that feels right for this moment in time – both for the blog and the summer. It’s simply too hot to work up a bombastic season finale. Instead, I’m putting ‘Music’ on repeat and holding on.

For now, if you remember last summer, this is not a goodbye. It is a quick little break to allow us both to enjoy the season of the sun without the onus of obligation, a chance to break away from the computer or the phone and take a swim, see a silly movie, or sleep in. It will pass too soon, the days will dwindle, and before we know it the cool night whispers of September will be tickling our ears and begging for the heat to be put to sleep. That heat has only just begun, and we’re at the point where we can embrace it.

HOLDING, HOLDING, HOLDING…

THAT’S ALL I HAVE TODAY

IT’S ALL I HAVE TO SAY.

The oscillation of a fan casts its sleepy spell.

A cicada revs up its shrill symphony.

Water laps at the edge of oceans, lakes, ponds and pools.

Summer settles in, adjusting her pretty, ruffled finery.

In a very quiet room, I try to sit very still. Outside the window, I can see the heat rising off the pavement in those surreal waves that seem to bend the air. Already, the peonies have been overcome by mildew. The lilacs will not be far behind. Others come into their own with such heat – the sweet potato vines have finally started leaping out of their pots. A lion’s paw plant has begun its subtle but steady ascent. The cup plant, provided it gets enough water, stretches its staunch stems skyward. Soon it will bloom in happy daisy-like faces of bright yellow, to be visited by bees and butterflies, and later by the goldfinches. They will scatter its ripe seed on the ground, starting the cycle over again, continuing this beautiful circle of life on its wondrously infinite trajectory.

This is the moment for which we’ve waited.

This is the garden in all its glory.

This is summer…

See you in September.

Joe’s Pub at The Public, June 9, 2018 – 9:30 PM

The slightly restless sonic soundscape of ‘Ecotopia’ signals that this won’t be the usual night of standards by a typical Broadway chanteuse, but Betty Buckley has always been much more than that. Never content to tread the same old boards, she tries death-defying vocal aerobics and challenging interpretations of songs she loves, story songs in which she believes. If you’re brave enough to come along for the ride, the rewards are rich and ample. She’s also got a backing band that does justice to her wide-ranging selections, as evidenced in that opening piece of evocative, contemplative and deliciously moody music. The only way to find hope is to go through some dark places, and dark places have always inspired some of the best songs.

She kicks things off with the ambivalent ‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You’ in which she struts the stage in her high-heeled black boots and enough swagger to knock out any Scoundrel-in-Chief; clearly, Ms. Buckley came to slay, and we came to swoon. More than just telling a story with music, Buckley absolutely inhabits her songs, evidenced by moments when she was clearly moved – and we are moved in return.She has mastered the art of connecting to an audience on an emotional level and at such times, as in the transcendent and exquisite ‘Chanson’, she manages to turn Joe’s Pub into a church, stilling the bustle and holding the room absolutely rapt at this wonder of an artistic vessel. (A simple ‘Mmm-hmm’ near the beginning of Lisa Loeb’s gorgeous ‘Falling in Love’, a throwaway sigh that might be barely noticeable if sung by anyone else, is given a world of emotion in Buckley’s heartbreaking reading.) Complemented by a band that seems to have an innate understanding of Ms. Buckley’s wide-ranging musical skills and styling, the evening is anchored by the brilliant Christian Jacob, whose intuitive arrangements and piano work prove a marvelous extension of Buckley’s own musical instincts.

The hymn-like ‘Hope’ by Jason Robert Brown is the centerpiece and elegiac heart of the show, an antidote to our ever-dimming world, even as it struggles with its primal ambition: how does one find hope in such a world?

‘I come to sing a song about hope

I’m not inspired much right now

But even so

I came out here to sing a song

So here I go

I guess I think that if I tinker long enough

One might appear

And look it’s here

One verse is done, the work’s begun’

In a year in which so many have been left hopeless, the mere act of trying, of getting up and getting dressed is its own act of rebellion and resistance, its own form of fighting back. When one looks back upon Buckley’s astounding career, and the many curves and unlikely roads it has taken, it is clear she knows of what she sings. When she pauses, and Mr. Jacob’s piano work carries Mr. Brown’s sweet sounds and melancholy lyrics across the night, it is a moment of delicate bittersweet joy. This is the Artist, come to grieve, and come to heal. She didn’t even need to explain; every person in that room understood.

Now more than ever, Buckley’s message that no one is better, or, more importantly, less than anyone else informs her shows in ways that belie the multiple standing ovations she gets throughout the evening. That may be the essence of the ‘Hope album: honoring the experience of everybody. It’s there in the characters she brings to life, and the way her own life experience in turn informs her performance. It is, in essence, the very purpose of art. To resonate. To reveal. To connect.

That kind of connection begins with the close-knit group of musicans she has assembled. They are tightly in tune with her rollicking journey here, and each gets a little spotlight at some point in the evening. The most glorious moments, however, may be when everyone is working together in rockers like ‘Don’t Take Me Alive’, when all cylinders are firing away with locomotive-like might. It as at such times that the driving drums of Dan Rieser, the slinky fluid bass of Tony Marino, and the rapturous rock-star licks of guitarist Oz Noy coalesce with Jacob’s piano genius, finally getting their chance to let go as in the rousing ‘I Feel Lucky’. A difficult but wondrously-executed take on Paul Simon’s ‘Quiet’ demonstrates the trust within this group of musicians, with Buckley’s voice soaring over the meditative lyrics.

A touching memory of Gilda Radner sets up a moving version of ‘Prisoner in Disguise’ and she brings the audience through the heartbreak and loss with a brittle bit of beauty and a delicate balm of soothing vocals. Maybe that’s where we will find the hope that sometimes feels so elusive these days: in the way we share with each other, in the same way Buckley has shared her voice and her talent over the years.

Rather than keep it dangling there, however, she offers a coda of release and relief, and a wink at what happiness might just yet come. ‘Young At Heart’ was the requisite encore, and a neat nod to where she is heading. As she prepares to embark on a much-anticipated U.S. tour of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Ms. Buckley ends on a positive and nostalgic note, a blissful ending to an evening of musical enchantment.When it dawns on her that she won’t be playing Joe’s Pub for a while, she pauses wistfully in the realization, and some of us felt the slightest twinge of sadness that there won’t be a fall show this year. But sometimes it is best to share such wonderful talent with others, to spread the message of hope that she so expertly managed to capture, if just for a night, with the sheer happy exuberance of doing what she loves and doing it so well. It is only fair for her to take that joy on the road, across a nation that needs it like never before.

Besides, a meadowlark sings best when she is free.

 SHE HEARD THAT INTO EVERY LIFE A LITTLE OF IT MUST FALL,

SO SHE SPENDS HER EVENINGS PRAYING

FOR A LITTLE OF THAT SOUTHERN RAIN.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘OUTHERN RAIN’

The planning was just as important as the operation itself, and if we were going to pull it all off we’d need precision. Such things required tact and foresight, reservations and schedules ~ the very things I found most appealing to a proper Virgo. In the late spring of 1992, we made our way to Boston to implement the planning stage of a European visit that would find us attending a two-part New York/Finland wedding of a family friend, while bringing Suzie back from Denmark after her year abroad had come to an end. We had survived, friendship-wise, through a steady stream of letters sent back and forth over the Atlantic ocean. Not that I had ever doubted our friendship or placemark in each other’s life ~ we were family and never to be torn apart ~ but a year, and half a world away, can change things no matter how much you hope it won’t, especially when you’re only sixteen years old. But before we made it to that reunion we needed to plan…

We arrived, in a bit of rain as I recall, at the home of Suzie’s relative Susan who would be joining us for the expedition. She was hosting the dinner in which we would begin to hatch the plan for our trip. There was another event that coincided with and gave additional impetus for the trip: a wedding in Finland for one of the first Ko exchange students. Now, part of our contingent for the trip was assembling: my Mom, Suzie’s Mom (in Boston while she was taking a course to become a Montessori school teacher), and Susan.

We sat at the table eating a delicious and simple tortellini plate while a Cowboy Junkies album played in the background. Plans were made, dates were plotted, and cities were designated. It was my kind of meal: good food and future planning. Surrounded by adults, part of me still wished Suzie was there, hanging onto our childhoods because what boy or girl can do such a thing alone, but part of me was giddy at being at the adult table. That part of me had never been able to wait to grow up. Now that I was entering adulthood, I was simultaneously enchanted and scared. Even so, I couldn’t wait. I wanted culture and worldly experience. I wanted to see what was beyond the small confines of Amsterdam, New York and the Mohawk Valley. Mostly, I wanted to see my friend again, see how we had changed, see where we might still go.

It had not been an easy year away for Suzie. I feared her sorrow and pain perhaps more than I feared my own. My hurts were petty and insignificant when placed beside hers, and what she had gone through terrified me. Losing her Dad so early and unexpectedly, then going to Denmark and being without her own family a few months afterward ~ I couldn’t get my head around how she could do that, but I remember talking to her about it, and how she said it might be the best thing after everything that had happened. She couldn’t know her new host father would die so soon after her arrival, and it must have seemed like she couldn’t escape death or shadow for that whole year.

In my usual knack for timing, my own brushes with suicide didn’t help matters, and in retrospect they feel foolish and selfish. I couldn’t see that then, and when Suzie called me around Christmas that year, when I was in a truly despondent state and had written as much to her, I pretended everything was ok when it really wasn’t. She jolted me into saving myself, at least for the moment.

A RIVER TO THE SOUTH

TO WASH AWAY ALL SINS.

A COLLEGE TO THE EAST OF US

TO LEARN WHERE SIN BEGINS.

A GRAVEYARD TO THE WEST OF IT ALL

WHICH I MAY BE SOON BE LYING IN.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘OREGON HILL’

Her name was in the Cowboy Junkies song still playing as dinner finished. It was an early-spring night. Winter had only just departed, but warmth was in the Boston breeze that accompanied some of the rain. We talked of castles and lakes, of a two-part wedding in New York and Finland that would unite two people, two countries and two cultures, and all the logistics of how it would work. For a quick moment, I felt a slight trepidation in going. Two moody teenagers don’t necessarily make for an easy way of getting along, even if we’d always felt like brother and sister, even if we were standing within the glow of a gorgeous wedding on a lake in Finland.

Outside, the rain slowed. At the table a round of coffee filled the space with the closing scent of a grown-up dinner party, of which I was now, ready or not, a part. I asked for the name of the CD that was playing and made a mental note of it for later. Memories were made from scents and music, as much as from love. A trip is only as good as its planning stages, and as we finalized our European plan, including a few stops in Russia, and a cast of characters whom I would quickly come to adore, I knew it was going to be good. Better than good; this would be life-changing.

LORD, YOU PLAY A HARD GAME, YOU KNOW WE FOLLOW EVERY RULE.

THEN YOU TAKE THE ONE THING WE THOUGHT WE’D NEVER LOSE.

ALL I ASK IS IF SHE’S WITH YOU, PLEASE KEEP HER WARM AND SAFE

AND IF IT’S IN YOUR POWER PLEASE PURGE THE MEMORY OF THIS PLACE.

THIS LIFE HOLDS IT SECRETS LIKE A SEASHELL HOLDS THE SEA,

SOFT AND DISTANT, CALLING LIKE A FADING MEMORY.

THIS LIFE HAS ITS VICTORIES BUT ITS DEFEATS TEAR SO VICIOUSLY.

THIS LIFE HOLDS ITS SECRETS LIKE THE SEA.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES ‘THIS STREET, THAT MAN, THIS LIFE’

After that dinner, when we’d gotten back to upstate New York, I found the Cowboy Junkies album ‘Black-Eyed Man’ and set it spinning on repeat as spring ripened into summer and the wait until our trip left me in a happy state of anticipation. I went to bed with the ethereal voice of Margo Timmins sounding over my prayers, and she woke me as the sun streamed into my childhood bedroom. The promise of summer tapped like the hawthorne branch against the window. There was other music that would come to personify that summer ~ ‘This Used To Be My Playground‘ for wonderful instance ~ but the Cowboy Junkies album would be the one that resonated the most. A collection of story songs that touched on the forlorn and the forgotten, it came with a lining of love ~ ambivalent love, but love nonetheless. It was a musical map of emotions, perfect for two haunted teenagers about to abandon their youth.

There had been many times when I wished Suzie had been with me during the year she was in Denmark. On New Year’s Day, faced with a house of extended family, I laid in bed dreading the walk downstairs and the social interactions that would be required. I didn’t have a name or explanation for such social anxiety at the time, and in the past all those holiday stresses were eased because Suzie was there. As soon as dinner was done I retreated upstairs and wrote her a letter. It was a habit I’d continued religiously because it was my only outlet during the maelstrom of a sixteen-year-old’s junior year of high school. As we finished the first part of the wedding in New York, and our plane flew us into Finland, I wondered whether I had revealed too much. It’s easy to pour your heart out to someone when they’re a world away. In a rare moment of unguarded non-planning, I hadn’t thought out how I might feel that someone knew everything I shared with the quiet non-response and non-judgment of paper and stamps, and that someone was returning to the States armed with all my secrets.

There was one quick moment of awkwardness that passed the instant we hugged, and it was the last time I’d ever feel awkward with her. A year apart, when we’d both had so much growing up to do, would change us more than we’d ever change between visits, and neither of us knew whether the other had turned into an unbearable asshole.

She had cut off her trademark ponytail while she was away. I would see it later that summer in a box, saved for a doll that her cousin would make. It was like a carcass, a body that had long ago let go of its soul. In that headless braid was our childhood, intertwined and neatly tied at each end, as if a colorful ribbon could make it pretty enough to distract from all the heartache it held.

On the night of the wedding, we held birch branches aloft in a make-do arch right after the happy couple had come ashore from being rowed across an impossibly-beautiful lake. It was the stuff of fairy tales, and felt far from our reach. We had not yet fallen in love with anyone, and neither of us was in any rush for it. We stepped out of the boisterous revelry for a moment and walked by the lake. What we were saying or talking about wasn’t important, at least not important enough to remember, and most likely we were just being silly and laughing, not quite ready to step into adulthood despite our ill-fitting grown-up outfits. (The picture here was taken before or after that quick walk.)

The green and silver tokens of the birch trees fluttered in the breeze. The lake, mostly still, barely lapped at its shore, asleep for the night. Far from home, in a land I’d never known, surrounded by happy strangers, I felt safe. Because of Suzie.

From that summer day she shared her grape taffy beneath a grape arbor, to the time she shut my fingers in the car window en route to ‘Mary Poppins’, from the late-night talks we had in high school, college, and beyond, through the moves and homes, the marriages and divorces, and all the births and the deaths, Suzie has been home for me. No matter what happens, no matter where we go, she is that space of safety and security, the one sure thing in a world of ever-receding certainty.

WE ALL GOT HOLES TO FILL AND THEM HOLES ARE ALL THAT’S REAL

SOME FALL ON YOU LIKE A STORM, SOMETIMES YOU DIG YOUR OWN

BUT CHOICE IS YOURS TO MAKE, TIME IS YOURS TO TAKE

SOME DIVE INTO THE SEA, SOME TOLL UPON THE STONE.

TO LIVE IS TO FLY LOW AND HIGH

SO SHAKE THE DUST OFF OF YOUR WINGS

THE SLEEP OUT OF YOUR EYES.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘TO LIVE IS TO FLY’

Tomorrow night a dream comes true as I finally get to hear Betty Buckley sing live again – a first since the mid-1990’s for me, as I always seemed unable to coordinate enough to get to one of her shows. This time Andy is joining me in New York for her Saturday night performance at Joe’s Pub, and we are super-excited. Having been a fan since her triumphant reign as Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard’, I’ve enjoyed every album she’s made, as well as her turns on the big and little screens. Yet I’ve always felt her greatest way of reaching people has been through live performance.

She’ll get to wow audiences across the nation when she takes the helm of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ later this year and I’m already plotting out how many cities we might visit to catch her in the title role. Though some of her work is decidedly (and deliciously) macabre (check out ‘Carrie’ and the upcoming ‘Preacher’), I have a sneaking suspicion she’ll make a grand comedienne – and she certainly has the vocal prowess to stun the largest theater into gleeful submission.

As for her performance at Joe’s Pub, I’ve already reserved a special spot on this blog for a write-up before we take our summer hiatus, so stay tuned for that. When you have the chance to hear an angel sigh, you must listen. For so many reasons Ms. Buckley has been that vocal angel for me, and tomorrow we’ll get to hear her take flight.

Here’s the blurb from Joe’s Pub:

Betty Buckley — the Tony Award winning Broadway legend — will return to Joe’s Pub at the Public to celebrate  Palmetto Records release of her inspirational new album Hope, recorded live at Joe’s last Fall. This exclusive four-concert engagement coincides with her debut as Madame L’Angelle in the  AMC hit television show “Preacher”.  The third season begins June 25.  The four concerts at Joe’s also preface her rehearsals this summer as she begins work for her starring role in the first National Tour of the smash Tony-winning revival of Hello, Dolly! 

Highlights at Joe’s Pub will include the album’s inspiring title song by Jason Robert Brown, selections from the seminal jazz rock fusion group, Steely Dan; Buckley’s favorite singer/songwriters Paul Simon, T Bone Burnett, Joni Mitchell and Mary Chapin Carpenter and classic pop standards. Hope, Buckley’s eighteenth album, features her quartet of musicians including the renowned multi-Grammy-nominated Christian Jacob, Buckley’s long-term Pianist, Arranger and Music Director, and guitarist Oz Noy on guitar, Tony Marino on bass and Dan Rieser on drums.

Hope will first be available for sale at Buckley’s concerts. The in-store and online release date is June 8. Pre order for the album is available here.

Review: Cigarettes After Sex at Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA – April 6, 2018

Outside, a cold almost-rainy night kept spring at bay. The tattered body of that season which refused to return hung like a shredded shroud gently waving in the wind. Into this evening, a smoky stage coalesced as the quartet that comprises Cigarettes After Sex sent a melancholy musical missive into the air, and the sold-out crowd at Paradise Rock Club embraced the group for the only Boston stop on their current tour.

Drummer Jacob Tomsky was good enough to say a quick hello before the show started, and as he pointed to the place where the microphone stood he said, “Watch that space. It’s brilliant what he does,” and he was absolutely correct. Greg Gonzalez, the quietly-intense lead singer and founder of the band, exudes a Zen-like calm, then holds the audience completely rapt from the first words he gently coos. His vocals can sound deceptively female, and Gonzalez himself has cited Julee Cruise and Connie Francis as singers whose sound he has occasionally emulated. The band as a whole betrays an almost-shy stage presence, putting the music first, letting the melodies and the lyrics speak and act out the emotional stage-craft that seduces the soul and bruises the heart.

Early in the set they showcased their 2015 cover of ‘Keep On Loving You’ giving the REO Speedwagon hit a transformative and almost unrecognizable reinvention, allowing its plaintive promises to come into crystalline focus. The rest of the evening consisted mostly of songs from their wondrous 2017 eponymous album, and that’s precisely what this crowd wanted from them.

The juxtaposition of the sweet melodies and acrid lyrics of ‘Young & Dumb’ read more powerfully in person, the words given delicate treatment in the tender delivery of Gonzalez. He holds them with such precision you almost forget the bite of a gloriously seething senorita known as the ‘patron saint of sucking cock.’

Keeping time in super-human metronomic fashion was Tomsky, who managed to take the sparse beats of a gorgeous song like ‘Opera House’ and propel it forward just as he teased and kept pulling back, lending a tension that perfectly rendered the brittle and earnest lyrics: “If I abandoned love I’d be a man without dreams/ I’d rather be out there staring death right between its eyes now.”

By the end of the evening, as Gonzalez moves across the stage for perhaps only the third or fourth time, they have conjured an amorphous phantom of a character with their haunting music. More than a mood – though moods are important – and more than a feeling, this is meditative music, the spare lyrics providing a poetic panoply of ambivalence, desire, bitterness, longing, and, yes, love.

An exquisite finale of the fan-favorite ‘Apocalypse’ had many singing along, and we demanded an encore. They obliged, bringing a rare set of brief smiles across the band as they returned. Gonzalez’s delicate voice caresses ‘Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby’ ~ “When we’re laughing in the microphone and singing/ With our sunglasses on to our favorite songs” and he brings the room into one. Together, we sway in the dark, and I’m reminded of the transcendent experience that some bands can craft with a cohesive set-list, a transfixing focus and four musicians on top of their game.

The mesmerizing performance enthralled the audience, casting its spell with the lush melodic grooves of dreamy pop effectively staged with an economical use of lighting and shadows that mirrored the hide-and-seek emotions of the music. It revealed as it concealed, the way many of the lyrics could be read as genuine, earnest love or double-edged razor-sharp derision.

As quickly and unobtrusively as they arrived, they were gone, dissipating like the most fragile of smoke rings, but what they left behind – a mood, an evocation, a magical moment – kept haunting those of us lucky enough to have listened.

Shows are selling out quickly all over the world, so check out their schedule and get your tickets before they’re gone.  (Last US performance is May 1 in Phoenix, Arizona before they head to Europe.)