Crescent City Catch Up

When I was in my twenties and thirties, I used to love going to Coney Island. There was the beach just a subway ride away and Astroland amusement park was a big part of the fun: Cyclone roller coaster of course, which I thrilled to many times but swore off forever when my friend Keith died from injuries sustained one summer they were running it too fast. My favorite/most feared ride was the Matterhorn with pounding dance music and hyped-up DJ exhorting the riders to scream, asking if we wanted to go faster. It felt like your fate was in the hands of whatever maniac happened to be at the controls. When things were really moving and everyone was gasping for air, praying it would all be over soon, the operator would flip the switch and throw all the cars into reverse. By the time the ride ended I’d be weak but exhilarated, and exit on legs of rubber, my throat raw from yelling. I’d never felt more alive but was deeply relieved it was over, amazed I’d survived.

That’s a little what it felt like landing at Heathrow the other day after a few weeks in America. Calm and quiet, the general tidiness and propriety of England after a carnival ride. Which was the real place? I couldn’t tell. I’m still not sure.

Leaving to come back home had been fraught, British Airways canceling my flight 24 hours before I was supposed to fly direct from New Orleans to London. A couple people had been surprised when I told them such a flight even existed, and apparently the airline wasn’t sure either. They’d replaced my direct flight scheduled for a reasonable hour with a six AM flight one day later, then a nine hour layover in Charlotte, where an ice storm was expected. I learned all of this a minute before I was supposed to play a house concert in Baton Rouge, but that’s show biz. I put it out of my mind and had fun playing my set to a nice group of people, several of whom had been at the show my early band Last Roundup opened for Alex Chilton at a local club nearly forty years ago (1987 – like having a kid nearly four decades old, it’s hard to convince yourself you’re just getting started in this game when the distance between now and back then is decades greater than the years between watching Hogan’s Heroes as a kid and World War Two). Joe Adragna who was so nice and played a great set to open for me convinced me after the show to call and have them find me a better flight and I did – New Orleans to Houston with a tight connection to London, if all went okay I’d see Eric at the airport or a train station sooner than if I’d caught my scheduled flight.

I’d rented a car for the Baton Rouge gig to be returned to Louis Armstrong airport. I listened to I Heart Country radio for the hour long drive back—an experience the announcers kept insisting was “Guaranteed Human” which I found as chilling as it was heartwarming. It’s come to this now, remember when Jack Radio, classic rock packaged with a generic manly announcer voice, felt like we were in the end times? (now I’m kicking myself I didn’t search for WWOZ or WTUL signal on the radio dial while I had them right there, but my head was filled with travel details and a lot of congestion and reminding myself what side of the road to drive on). When I filled up the gas tank a few miles from the airport, the wind was as cold as any I’d felt in New York at the beginning of my trip. The airline let me check my bags for free. I was worried about the very short connecting time in Houston and asked if I could gate check my guitar, then realized I was just too tired and under the weather to carry it and my carryon however far I needed to go to get to my gate. New Orleans had done its job and completely worn me out.

As I waited for one last coffee and beignets past security, a fire alarm went off. “There has been a fire emergency. Please leave the airport now, do not ride the elevators. I repeat, there has been a fire emergency. Please – leave the airport now, do not ride the elevators.” A woman’s voice spoke over the PA system. I expected everyone to start filing out into the frigid air. When would everyone start filing out? I didn’t want to be the first to leave. The staff behind the bakery counter kept working, men sipped pints of beer at the bar while the giant TVs kept showing football, and Dixieland music played (is it still called Dixieland?) A bartender in a tank top and strands of Mardi Gras beads polished pint glasses, laughing with her customers. The fire alarm kept going. Was that the smell of smoke? “…EXIT NOW…do not take the elevators” the lady kept saying.

How did everyone know there wasn’t a fire for real?

They didn’t, but that’s just life in America.

When I’d landed in New Orleans ten days before, the air was warm and gentle. My Uber arrived, a bright orange Dodge Charger. I checked into the hotel on Canal Street and floated over to Killer PoBoys in the French Quarter where they were playing the Pretty Things. I ate a lot of delicious food in New Orleans but there’s really nothing like that first crunch of a shrimp poboy, almost like a banh mi, yes I went back again it was so good.

The Folk Alliance was starting up, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into at the Sheraton, singer/songwriters and folkies and the people who love them or eke out an existence through them riding up and down from the huge lobby to the performances in hotel rooms, hour in and hour out. This kind of music networking experience makes me feel very insecure and almost like I’m not sure I love music as much as I should. I was glad to have my panel idea accepted (When I’m 65…70…74, Solo Touring beyond the age of reason) and happy to feel part of the world of songwriters and performers but not very adept at navigating the packed schedule of performances, daytime discussions and nocturnal gigs. I kept drifting away to stroll around the French Quarter, wished I’d brought other clothes, and kept an eye on the news and the weather reports which weren’t looking very promising for my house concert outside Oxford MS and in Memphis – ice and snow can be catastrophic down south.

“God love you,” said a younger guy I chatted with at the lobby bar, when I told him I still toured playing my own gigs. It felt a little like the way they say “bless your heart” down south when they feel a little sorry for you. He’d been able to leave the touring life behind via co-writing with a successful artist. I remember imagining this kind of creative payday for myself back around when I moved to Nashville. How could I explain to the guy the beauty of a gig like the previous Saturday night in the bookstore/bar I’d spent twelve years working behind the bar in New York’s Hudson Valley, getting to know the townsfolk, shelving books and occasionally standing up to play my own songs, an It’s A Wonderful Life affirmation, like many of the house concerts and small bar gigs I play these days. The logistics and physical strain feel impossible sometimes, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner manifest. Maybe his “God love you” meant “somebody’s got to do it.” Many are called, few are chosen.

Maybe that was what drove my panel suggestion. I think it had been prompted by the passing of Michael Hurley at the age of 83, the same week he wowed an audience at the Big Ears Festival in Chattanooga. Could he have stopped touring, playing his folk art songs for eager, increasingly younger audiences? Should he have stopped touring? As Willie Nelson says, “All I do is play music and golf – which one do you want me to give up?” But the long game looks a lot different when you’re in it than from the outside. Sometimes for the better (we get to see the audience’s faces, a benign version of working the Matterhorn thrill ride levers) and sometimes for the worse (with all the culinary delights of New Orleans on the doorstep, I had no choice one night but to eat a sad packaged sandwich from a late night deli on Canal Street).

Mile High Pie at the Ponchartrain, circa 1984

The older woman cloak of invisibility is a kind of double-edged sword at this type of event (is there a “this type of event” or is Folk Alliance really its own thing, i think maybe it is) The upside is, no one notices you and no one cares – the down side is, no one notices you and no one cares. I’m not inviting compliments or arguments, please don’t say “age is just a number” – do you think Mavis Staples sits unaccompanied and completely anonymous at a hotel bar in New Orleans before playing to a packed room? This type of event is alternately humbling and gratifying, where else can you feel the weight of your history (“I last saw you at the Mucky Duck in Houston, I think it was…2003?”) the absence of fallen peers (“I really miss Greg Trooper”) the insane eternal sense of possibility (“this guy does a house concert series out west you’d be perfect for”), all in the course of a few minutes?

I saw artists play sets I loved: Linda McRae in Rm 900, Steve Poltz in Room 830; Emma Swift. I nearly missed my own first set in the great Black Oak Artists room, the timing confused me (was 12 AM Fri midnight at the end of Thursday, or the dawn of the new day Saturday? I borrowed a guitar at the last minute and powered through) I visited fabulous Euclid Records, the Carousel Bar; ate oysters at Luke with trout dip on toasted bacon fat Saltines (Cajun crack I think they call them). I happened on a sing-in in the Sheraton lobby, after the sad Saturday following the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, hundreds joining together to “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” organized by the Black American Music Movement and Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. Dayna Kurtz invited me to the New Orleans Athletic Club for steam and sauna and swimming – what a beautiful place! And Dayna has a way of inviting conversation, I felt like I’d entered the inner sanctum of NOLA ladies in the locker room. I went back to the Carousel Bar again to see the Iguanas, with Cindy and Dave from the Beachland in Cleveland. The tentacles of a lifetime of touring stretch far and wide and that’s a beautiful thing.

Oysters, trout dip and those insanely good crackers at Luke

When the festival ended, I was under the weather – the Oxford and Memphis gigs cancelled with serious ice storms and damage, friends across MS/Tennessee suffering the effects of the storm, some without power and heat for days. So in spite of feeling like hell, I felt fortunate. Lucky to hunker down in a cheaper hotel with a lovely staff (the Q&C it’s called) and try to get well for my New Orleans and Baton Rouge shows later that week. I managed to get out to the Garden District on my birthday, taking the streetcar down St. Charles past so many memories from the past: the Circle Bar at what was Lee, now called Harmony Circle; Ponchartrain Hotel where I’d tried the Mile High Pie before I was a mom; the Columns, the Rink. I stopped at a bookstore as I like to do in every town. Had a nice birthday dinner thanks to Molly MacPherson a longtime fan who’d encouraged me to try and book a show here – I probably wouldn’t have even tried if she hadn’t done that. My friend Clarke drove me to Snake and Jake’s Christmas Lounge to record Rene Coman’s podcast- the houses brought back memories of my daughter’s year at Tulane, how we’d driven around that part of town looking for an apartment for her to rent and Dave, the bar owner, had said Dr. John was looking for a roommate. Yes, only in New Orleans. It had been such a favorite place of mine, and I’d let myself forget.

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Amy Rigby on Instagram: “A birthday stroll – today I’m 67, life…

When I finally set up to play my gig at Nola Nacular, still slightly delirious, it was good to plug in —my FA shows had been strictly acoustic and I’d done that to test myself but really do feel most comfortable singing into a mic, pumping the acoustic through a PA or an amp or both. Anthony who owns the gallery met me up at Tulane radio station with Shawn Gwin who was also playing the gig, and the host Laura reminded me how valuable the college and noncomm stations are, not just for artists but people listening, it was such an integral part of our old community back in upstate New York. I don’t know what the equivalent is in Norfolk. I still think a bookstore/bar might be the answer.

I stopped into a brewery with pop up roti stand to have some food before my set. Went to the restroom to get ready to play and remembered I’d left my scarf on the back of my chair. When I returned to my table, a pit bull was wearing my scarf. He sat draped in it, while his owner drank a beer. She had that wild-eyed need to talk to someone I know all too well, when you’ve been on the road for a while, you need a witness. She said they were looking for a place to stay, probably saw me recoil and said “I mean I have a hotel now but we’re (her and the pit bull with excellent taste) moving here.” They’d driven down from Wisconsin, where the temperature was twenty below, but where things had gotten REALLY bad was around Oxford Mississippi. They’d spent the night huddled in her van because there wasn’t a motel room anywhere, fifty other cars sitting in the Love’s Truck Stop all night.

I’d always imagined myself as une femme of a certain age sitting on a barstool in New Orleans, just chatting with the world and here it was happening, again and again. I’d missed playing those gigs up north but it had been for the best I didn’t go up there. Just hang out in the Crescent City around Mardi Gras time and let the world come to you.

“Did you used to live in New Orleans?” someone asked at the gig. I never had, but saw friend after friend and people I knew from many different phases of my life. I wished I could tell the young guy on the barstool in the Sheraton lobby how well-loved, by God or the lowdown spirit of New Orleans, I felt.