This is about the first weekend I can remember where rob and I haven’t been working. Friday night and no gig to play. With my internet down today, I actually had to call rob to make sure that I wasn’t forgetting some important event or some secret show. It worked out okay. My body knew there were no shows even if my mind was hesitant to buy it; I have a cold. Anymore I pretty much only get sick when it’s convenient, which is good and bad. It would be nice to have off-time and be well to enjoy it. But I think that comes second to having to play shows sick, which is hell.
Watching a barge navigate off into the fog in Coal Center. Poor Heather. Poor Brandi. They got stuck at the top of the hill watching me slipping and slidding and shivering and shuddering down by the edge of the river. Heather informed me that if I were to fall in she was NOT going to come down and save me. Sigh.
rob and I haven’t been updating much because we’re having some rare downtime. I’m spending a lot of time with my family. My grandmother is having some health problems. That’s the most I will get into it here.
Corey and Alex playing their little hearts out at the Underground in California, PA. I can’t even express the chaos that ensued. As the farewell show for Corey we… well we had to praise him a lot. Eventually he dropped his pants. We refused to praise him any further as this just sort of encouraged him.
So on the return trip from California, PA, I finally pulled to the side of the road to get a picture (ie: send rob out into the freezing cold to take a picture) of the stone fireplaces that are left standing like momuments to a pair of unknown soldiers. I remembered that they were to be found right near the site of Lick Hollow, which strikes me every time we pass it because it makes me think of a line I once heard … something from a book about licking someone’s world hollow. I always though how overtly sexual and visceral that was. Turns out the Lick Hollow in Pennsylvania is named for something much less sexy, for the mineral deposits frequented by the deer.
Corey taking down the Underground Cafe flag for the last time. I enjoyed asking him to keep holding this pose while I took the picture again… and again… and again…
These fireplaces always struck me because there are no remains of a rotting house. They sit immediately off the highway, but not at any sort of rest stop or picnic area. For a long time, with how they faced each other,I thought they flanked a sprawling house decayed into nothing long ago. Up close, it looked like too big an expanse. Maybe two houses?
Heather singing…
As a songwriter, it got me to thinking about what potential stories they suggested. Who owned the house? What happened to it, and to them? Maybe how is the decay of the house a metaphor for what happened to it’s residents? For example, with no remains besides the fireplaces … was there ever even a completed house? Seeing the remains it’s impossible to know if there was even ever any more than the fireplaces.
Who knew she knew ALL the words to “Bootylicious”? Well… I mean… I did… and I imagine… well… that just about anyone who knows her well did… but the DANCE man!!!! THE DANCE!!!!
I thought about architect in the late 1800s who was building his dream house for his new bride, pregnant with their first child. And maybe she died, and he never even fireplaces are the only things that survived, like tombstones to them both, forever facing each other, but so far apart. No chance for an embrace unless they crumbled inward after a hundred years of erosion.
I had less antique thoughts, too. I thought of how the slight bend in the bothered to put a roof on it. He just lived in it as it came down around him, and the fireplaces made them like parentheses surrounding the phrase of a house. I thought about them like arthritic Japanese business men too old for the courteous bows they were trying to make to each other.
Finally – something for Heather to write about – so she better, cause I’m not telling you jack SHIT!!!
I wrote a handful of verses building on these concepts.
But as is the case with a lot of songs … it became about me. Once I landed on the line, “I am not the home you hoped for/ I am the wreckingball,” the song changed shape and became what it is now. In my efforts to move into a more crafted, objective songwriting, I wound up right back at myself.
I’d like to know more about the fireplaces all the same. I wonder why they’ve been left standing. There’s no historical marker, and yet it’s obvious that there was care taken with them when the modern road was laid. The journalist in me has done a little internet research, but they are not in Lick Hollow … just near the sign for it. So other than them being on 40, I don’t have much to go on. Anyone know?
At the moment, I have a couple riffs in the works, but no idea what to write about. So today after I sat for a while with nothing coming, I decided to learn a few covers, including Redbird’s version of the traditional “Moonshiner,” and Sugarland’s “Believe” (for my dad).
I’ve also joined my generation, finally. I’ve never been a tech person. I have a mediocre computer. I got myself some free audio-editing software online last week and have been making a lot of progress cutting up some ilyAIMY songs for festival entries with time constraints. I have no nifty software besides that. I have a 1.2 megapixel digital camera from the stone age. I have a no frills cell phone. I was a major latecomer to the digital music revolution and I still have less than 2,000 songs on my computer. And I was the only person in my family without an ipod.
Well that’s all changed. My mother got the video ipod she wanted for her anniversary, so she’s passed on her 3rd generation 30 gig ipod to me. So while I learn covers, I’ve spent 24 hours converting all my music into itunes. Right now I’m on the Ns.
But I maintain my bohemian status. I’m recycling. My ipod is second-hand. And come on … I still have a 1.2 megapixel digital camera. That’s GOT to give me some sort of special status. I might as well be living at Walden Pond.
Heather caught me headbanging in the kitchen while making taboule. I’m not proud. Who knew that the heavy metal channel on Comcast’s cable music thingie was so very good. Heather came home to find the house a rockin’. She snapped up my camera and proved it far too user-friendly.
