Chapter Two --

Kate Brady wanted to ride along with him, claiming Bo Billingham was a handful that only a damn fool would try to bring in by himself, but Guthrie turned her down, saying, “Hell, Kate, I’ve known Bo all his life.  He’s not going to go hurting me.”

Brady was short and stocky.  She spent a lot of time in the gym and it showed.  When she moved muscles rippled beneath her denim shirt. Even though she was the Assistant Chief, she refused to wear a uniform, preferring jeans and her denim shirts, of which she appeared to have an unending supply.  Her reasoning was simply; if the chief didn’t wear uniforms, why should the assistant?

“Maybe he won’t hurt you when he’s sober,”  Brady stood in front of his desk, her hands on her hips.  “but he was drinking tonight.  Come on, chief,  you know it makes sense you let me ride along.  Just to be on the safe side, you understand?  A little backup isn’t out of the question.”

“You go on and get out on patrol.  I got this covered.”

#

As he drove out to Bo Billingham’s place, Guthrie hoped he’d called it right.  Kate Brady knew her stuff.  She’d been a homicide detective up in Raleigh until the police politics got to her.  When she mentioned to him at a conference that she was looking for a job where doing police work was more important than PR, he’d hired her on the spot.  Over the two years she’d been here, he’d come to trust her judgment without question, so if she said she ought to go along, he was going to listen.  But still, he had to trust his instincts and they told him to do it alone.  A show of force would just set Bo off and make him that much harder to deal with.  Make the wrong move on Bo Billingham and he was liable to drag a tree out of the ground and hit you with its roots.

As Guthrie got deeper into the country, it looked as though the rape of the land that Ponder County was undergoing had been fought to a stop.  A couple of miles back, he'd passed the last strip shopping center and now he watched pastures and forests roll by as he drove past them.  For a while it had seemed as if Ducky Levine had been out to develop every piece of pasture land still standing, but the economy had brought his plans to a crashing halt.  Still, the county had gone through some big time changes and, every time a developer drove through this area, his eyes lit up. Soon as the unemployment rate dropped a percentage point, the bulldozers would be grinding up the dirt again.  So far, though, this far out, Guthrie could see no sign of the explosion of shopping strips and developments and apartment complexes that were springing up all around the town of Channing.  

Everybody hated the development; all you had to do was walk through town and you’d hear talk about how something pure and beautiful had been lost forever.  Everybody hated it, everybody complained about it, yet everybody bought the new subdivision houses, shopped in the strip malls and ate in the chain restaurants, while they complained about how nobody went downtown anymore.  Folks around Channing were capable of surrounding themselves with the brand new, even while they bitched about how it was taking over their lives.  Guthrie sometimes felt they raised hypocrisy like a flag.

In most of Ponder County the smell of the new hung in the air like Spanish moss, but out here in the westernmost fringes of the county, you could still get away from it.  The land in this area was still as open and remote as it had been when he was growing up.

He took a deep breath.  He wasn’t on a pleasure drive.  If he’d had a choice, he wouldn’t choose  to go pick up Bo Billingham, but he could no more escape it than he could the morning alarm: His jurisdiction, his problem.  

Still, apprehensive as he was, the simple act of cruising down this dark road, feeling the night breeze washing through the car, seeing the headlights cut swaths through the darkness, warmed him like the blaze from the fireplace on a fall evening.

Guthrie told himself to enjoy being here while he could. It wouldn't be long till this land fell into somebody like Duckie Levine’s hands and, just like everybody else, he'd be complaining about its loss.  Just this morning, coming out of the diner, he'd overheard Lillian Lawrence talking to her nurse, Mabel Norris.  

"I just can't stand coming downtown anymore."  Lillian shoved her walker out in front of her and dragged herself up to it.  "Getting to where there ain't room on the sidewalk for a body.  All these new people that done moved in, how do they get their money?  What do they do?  How can they make themselves a living?  Ain’t been no work since the mills closed down."

"There's a bunch of new folks, all right,"  Mabel said.

"I swear, ain't enough room to kick a cat around here.  Ain't the town I was born in anymore, that's for sure."

Mabel held Lillian's arm while the old lady hauled herself into the car.  "Times change," she said.  "Towns grow.”

“They die is what they do.” Lillian Lawrence said.   “This town's ain’t changing, it’s dying.  I can’t recognize it anymore.  And you know the worst of it?  It ain't just there's too many people now.  What's bad is there's too many people and most of them's meaner'n hell."  She shook her head again.  "There's no joy left no more and I for one am pure sick of the way things are.  As far as I'm concerned, you can take what this town's come to be, tuck it in your back pocket and take it to hell with you."

As he clicked on the high beams, scannng for the dirt road that led up to Bo Billingham's house, Guthrie wondered what  Miss Lillian would say if she'd ever run into Bo the way he'd been earlier this evening, as drunk and mean as a man who'd just learned that everything he valued in life had been taken away from him without even an explanation.

Guthrie spotted the dirt road and slowed down for the turn.  As he left the highway, his headlights swept the trees that lined both sides of the makeshift road, casting shadows in the branches.  When he'd been a kid, out riding around at night with his dad, he'd always thought of those shadows as ghosts; he'd read that idea in some book or another and halfway believed it.  The chill that had run through his body when that idea crossed his mind had been delicious.  

He smiled at the memory, as he avoided the ruts that year in and year out traffic had made in the road.  Maybe he ought to turn off the bright lights, he thought, but he rejected the idea; it would be best if Bo knew he was coming.

#

Billingham's old Ford pickup was parked sideways in the front yard.  He stopped next to it, letting his lights shine on the house for a moment.  Taking a deep breath, he cut the engine and stepped out, making sure to slam the door loudly.

"Bo?" he called.  "It's Bobby Guthrie."

As he stepped up onto the porch, he felt old and tired. Maybe he'd been on the job too long.  Maybe it was time to be thinking about taking up a quieter line of work.

"Don't you be coming any closer, sheriff,"  Bo Billingham called from inside.

Why did everybody call him sheriff?  He was the chief of police, not the sheriff.  "Bo, you and me got to talk."

"I don't want to shoot you, sheriff, but you come after me and I won’t have no choice but to blow you away.  I got me a twelve guage in my hands.”  

Billingham was standing in the doorway, the shotgun cradled in his arms as he watched Guthrie.  He frowned, a movement of his face which seemed to take a lot of effort.  His head was the size of a watermelon and when he moved it, he appeared to think the motion through first.

“Bo, what the hell you talking about?  You aren’t going to shoot me.  We've known each other all our lives.  You and me, we don't talk to each other like that."

"You come to take me in."

"You put Tim Andrews in the hospital, Bo."

"They took him to the hospital?"

"What'd you expect?  You broke his jaw and three ribs.  He’s going to be hurting for a long time"

“Three ribs, huh?”

“That’s right.”

"I didn't do it on purpose.  He took a swing at me.  What was I supposed to do but hit him back?"

"If that's the way it went, won't a thing happen to you.  Look, let me come in, we'll talk about it."

"Aw, sheriff...."

"Come on now, Bo, you know we got to talk."  He'd learned long ago that you used a man's name as often as possible; hearing you calling him by name reminded him that the two of you had history together.  That made him less likely to attack.

"I'm telling you, chief...."

"I'm going to come on in, Bo.  We need to talk about what we're going to do about what you done to ol' Tim."

"All right, but you got to leave your gun outside."

"Jesus, Bo, what kind of man you think I am?   You think I'd come out here with a gun?  Friends don't do that to each other."

"You ain't carrying your gun?"

"Hell, no.  How many times I got to tell you, me and you are friends?"

Bo Billingham was as big as a squad car and had a faded tattoo of an anchor on his left forearm.  As he walked up to the house, Guthrie thought the man had no idea how threatening he looked and he wasn't bright enough to realize exactly how much damage he could do to another human being.  Normally, he was a nice enough guy, but let him get drunk and that mean mood would take him over and bones would get broken.  Billingham always felt terrible about it after it happened, but that didn't do anything for the victims. Guthrie nodded his head.  "Thanks for letting me in, Bo."

Billingham shook his head slowly from side to side.  "I'm telling you, sheriff, it wasn't my fault.  Andrews kept saying stuff to me.  Ask anybody.  Then he went and took a swing at me."  He cradled the shotgun in front of him.

"Bo, how come you to hold a shotgun on me?  Is that any way to treat a friend?"

"You're here to take me to jail, ain't you?  Well, I ain’t going.”

"I’m gonna be honest with you, Bo; you know you got to go back into town with me."

"Don't you come any closer, sheriff.  I ain't going nowhere."

"Fact is, Bo, maybe you had cause to hit Andrews, God knows he can be hard to get along with...."

"I did.”  He nodded his head jerkily, abruptly.  “He gave me cause, all right."

"Yeah, well, like I was saying, even if you did have cause, you still got to come back to town and answer for it.  Shooting me won't change that.  They'll just send somebody else out here.  If he can't get it done, they'll send two the time after that.  Then they'll send four.  See, that's the way they work, Bo, they'll just send one bunch of guys after another up here till somebody brings you in."  He shook his head.  "Might not be fair, but the truth of it is you don't have any choice about it.  You got to come back with me."

Billingham shook his head slowly, his eyes squinted, creases across his forehead.  "I told you, I ain't going."

"Bo, you got to."

"I don't want to."  He sounded like a small child.

"I know that.  Hell, I don’t want to take you, but neither one of us has a choice in this thing.  You got to go back and I got to drive you in."  He was careful to keep his voice soft, neutral.  "That’s all there is to it."

"No."

He waited until Billingham stopped shaking his head.  "I know you don't want to, but it’s not a matter of whether you want to or not.  You have to."

Billingham looked up at him excitedly, his eyes brightened by an idea.  "You go away and I'll come in tomorrow."

"Bo..."

"I'll come in tomorrow.  In the morning."

“What are you talking about?  You know I can’t just let you say you’ll come in on your own.”

“Damn it, sheriff, you ever know me to say I’ll do a thing and then not do it?”

“Matter of fact, no.  You always been a man of your word.”

“So I say I’ll be there, I’ll be there.”

"I got your word on that?"

"Sure do."

"You'll be in my office by ten in the morning?"

"Ten o'clock sharp.  I promise."

"I can trust you?  You're not going to let me down?"

"You can trust me, Sheriff.  I'll be there.  I promise."

Billingham was right; if he said he’d do a thing, it got done.  Slowly, ploddingly, without a drop of imagination, but it got done.  

"I'm going to trust you.  I’ll see you in the morning."

"Ten o'clock."  Bo nodded wildly.  "I'll be there."

“See you then.”

When he started up the car, he exhaled, surprised to feel the pounding of his heart.

Rope Dancers. Chapter 1

I've decided to bring this blog back from the dead for a new project: I want to write a novel as blog entries. So, each Sunday I will post a new chapter of ROPE DANCERS, a crime novel that will explore the themes of guilt and forgiveness. The technical idea is to see if I can write a visual, cinematic novel, one that could be adapted to the screen with few to no changes. The model is John Steinbeck's play-novelettes, which he saw as novellas that could be performed without any alterations. Will this experiment work? I have no idea. |Is it worth trying? I believe so. Since this is a working progress, I welcome any feedback. Here then is chapter one of ROPE DANCERS:


                                                            ROPE DANCERS
                                                                   a novel by
                                                            Michael Scott Cain



                                    He who will dance on a rope will be alone,
                                    and I will gather a stronger mob of people
                                    who will say it was unbecoming.
                                                                              -- Blaise Pascal




 Chapter One

      If there was one thing Jordan Crow had become aware of during this past week, it was that the whole town of Channing felt he should never have come back. The way they felt was that maybe he had gone off and become a big man up north, maybe Jordan Crow had talked folks into believing he was some kind of powerful man, a guy to be admired and feared, a leader of men, a person of influence. Maybe in some other places, he'd gone and built himself a big reputation and made a ton of money, but down here, folks still thought he was one small time son of a bitch. So when he came back here just being himself, the locals acted like he was lording it over them and carrying on like he really was the person he pretended to be, well, maybe some folks were willing to believe he was all that and a basket of fries, but here in Channing, people weren't that easy to fool. Not by Jordan Crow, anyway.
      Channing people remembered who he was; they had grown up with Jordan Crow and had put up with him long enough to know that this particular leopard wasn't about to change his spots. The presence of this particular leopard bothered them so much that if they had known that right now, as Crow drove past the park, the man who followed along behind Crow in his Kia had in mind doing something about Jordan Crow, they would not have minded. They would have just nodded their heads and said, “Good. ‘Bout time, too.”
       Maybe what the driver of the Kia had in mind wasn’t quite appropriate, you wouldn't catch any of them arguing that Crow didn't have it coming. # Terence Glass, the man driving the Kia, wore jeans, an Allman Brothers tee-shirt and a windbreaker. He had on a Braves cap and while he knew he was never going to be mistaken for a local, at least he wasn’t a sore thumb. He stayed a quarter of a mile behind Jordan Crow as they drove through town, driving lazily, his mind on things that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, things like revenge and justice and morality. He speculated about how people insisted on trying to be bigger, more important than other people; wondered how come people who hit it big and got themselves rich thought they were better than ordinary folks, no matter what they’d done or who they hurt to get all that money in the first place.
        He had a lot of money himself -- if he started burning dollar bills right now, it would take him a decade or so to get rid of all the cash he had. Still, he didn’t think he was better than anyone else. He was a man like any other man. And if Jordan Crow had continued to think of himself that way, he might not have Terence Glass on his trail right now. And he told himself that what was going to happen now was a matter of simple justice and that anybody with a brain knew he was morally obligated to carry out this particular act.
        Sometimes he wished he could tell people about why he was coming for Crow, take out an ad in the papers maybe, or make a public service announcement for TV. Somehow, he thought, when it happens, people will know why, even if he didn’t tell them.

                                                                                #

      The night was hot. Even though it was September and back up north the summer heat had already broken, the air here was hot enough and humid enough to make Crow feel like he was sitting in a steam bath after a workout. He cranked the air conditioner all the way up and drove quickly, as if road speed contributed to coolness.
      Being back in Channing was more complicated than Crow had figured it was going to be. He'd been looking for the triumphant homecoming. He'd had visions of being made welcome by the people who'd treated him so badly when he'd been growing up here. The way they’d treated him still got to him. They still made him feel like a box of rusty nails, left behind when the construction job was done.
       Crow had been surprised to discover that he still hurt from their treatment; until he came back, he’d figured it had all faded away like last week’s dream. Now he had to face the fact that even after all these years, after everything he'd accomplished, to the people he’d grown up with, he was still and forever would be nothing more than mud on the soles of their shoes. He'd been gone for more than ten years, more than enough time for everybody to forgive and forget, but the town still treated him like an outsider. They just weren’t about to warm up to him, didn't trust him any more than they would a liberal president. Crow didn't know how to feel about that.
       Physically, Channing had changed. He had a hard time recognizing it as the place where he'd grown up. His hotel was out by the highway, maybe ten miles west of town. When he’d lived here, there had been nothing around this area but pasture land and a drive-in theater. Now the drive-in had been so thoroughly demolished he couldn’t quite remember exactly where it had even stood. In its place were sprawling subdivisions, hundreds of vinyl-sided houses with formstone fronts that were supposed to fool a person into thinking they were brick. The houses all looked the same and were too close together, crowded up against each other like scared kids.
       The subdivisions had names like Rambling Heights and Country Corners and the houses stood in bare open areas that looked like middle east war zones; all of the trees, in fact, all of the vegetation, had been stripped when they were built. The area looked even more desolate because, due to the spring and summer drought, the sodded lawns hadn't grown in. Every couple of miles, he'd drive past a strip mall, made from the same cheap materials as the houses. Each of the strip malls held the same assortment of Piggly-Wigglys, Seven-Elevens, Eye Care Centers, dollar stores and Hardware Fairs.                   Every once in a while, you could see something unusual, like a hypnosis center, that seemed to have been dropped into the wrong place.  When Crow first saw the hypnosis center, it reminded him of a puzzle piece that had been broken off at the corners and shoved into a slot where it didn't fit.
       He couldn’t get over the changes. When he'd lived here, the only buildings out this way had been the ramshackle falling-down cottages that the white people called slave shacks, even though the odds of them having been erected during the slavery era were pretty remote. Still, since migrant workers had lived in them during the old days, the name fit. As he sped past these buildings, Jordan Crow couldn't help but remember how Channing hadn’t been a good place for a man with a brain and some ambition to grow up.

                                                                                      #

      Now, on his last night back, he recognized that he was still looking for respect. He wanted all of these people who'd treated him so miserably, who'd ignored him, who had never been willing to take a single minute out of their lives to make time for him, well, he wanted them to take him seriously. He wanted, no, he needed them to be able to, if they couldn't find kindness in their hearts for him, at the very least they could show a little respect and fear. Because here was the thing; he was about to turn their town upside down. In just a couple of years, he was going to own this place. They might as well change the name of Channing to Crow right now because it was all going to be be his.

                                                                                     #

       He slowed as he drove down Main Street. The downtown Channing was the same as it had always been. Small and quiet, remote and forgotten, like a pocket watch lost so long ago that no one could remember ever owning it, Channing just sat there, a terminally ill town waiting to die. All of the growth was outside of town. Channing might be falling into nothingness, but Ponder County was a Gold Rush. For the past ten years or so, Atlanta had been spreading out like ripples from a wave, sweeping up every piece of land before it. Places that just a few years ago were covered with farms were now covered with townhouse communities. Damn near the whole state of Georgia was becoming one big suburb. Now, it was Ponder County’s turn. It was caught up in change and growth and in just a few years it was going to be unrecognizable. And Jordan Crow was going to be right in the middle of it, driving the change, shaping Ponder County into what he wanted it to be and raking in money like some fairy tale character whose garden grew gold coins.
       Traveling Main Street, he wondered how long it would take for the change to hit downtown Channing. Main Street was less than a mile long, with the town square located right at the halfway point. The square was made up of a bunch of stores and offices that formed a horseshoe around Robert E. Lee Park, which was where all the townspeople gathered. In any weather, you could find the old guys playing dominos at one end, while at the other, the young mothers sat on benches and passed the time as their kids ran and played and climbed on the monkey bars.
       When he’d lived here, the black folks had concentrated themselves down at the south end of the park as though they’d been shoved behind one of those electronic fences that held dogs in, but now, he noticed, they spread out over the whole park, like they would if they lived up north. The park anchored the town the way a big box store anchored a mall. When you drove down the main drag, you saw it looming in front of you from blocks away, growing bigger as you neared it. Main Street sloped around it in a long, slow graded curve and then headed out again into the miles and miles of new suburbs and strip malls.
        Three blocks beyond the park, he turned left and cruised down a dark street into a declining section of working class houses, still unaware of the Kia behind him. This had been a pretty good neighborhood when he’d been here, one that he’d always felt self-conscious walking through, but these days as soon as you entered it, you could see that it had known better days. It had gotten shabby; too many houses had chipped paint and untended lawns. Down the block, he could see a rusted out Chevy up on blocks. It looked like it had been there forever. He drove slowly for three blocks, past the Goodwill store that had been an electronics repair shop during his days here, and pulled into a driveway. It was late; no other cars drove the street.
       The house he'd arrived at was the only one with lights on. Before he had a chance to get out of the car, the front door opened. In the doorway, Doreen Melson flashed him a smile that was shadowed by the back light which also showed the curve of her legs under her nightgown. When he reached her, she caressed his cheek and said, "Why don't you put the car in the garage? We don't want to be worried about the neighbors, do we?"
       Now it was his turn to smile.

                                                                              #

      Veronica Wyeth couldn't sleep. When you got to be her age, it was hard to get to asleep and even harder to stay that way. You'd no sooner drop off than you'd spring awake by some noise that you wouldn't have even noticed back when you were, say, ten years younger. Most of the time, she would hear something and her eyes would spring wide open, her heart thumping like a hummingbird's and she’d lie in her quiet bed in the still room on her back, looking up at her ceiling, feeling the nerves in her body racing like Nascar cars. She felt that way now and knew she was going to be awake for hours. That always happened. A person her age, well, once you woke them up, that was it; there was no going back to sleep.
       Slowly, she reached down and used her hands to drop her legs over the edge of the bed, and pulled herself up to a sitting position. She moved slowly so she wouldn't get dizzy After her head cleared, Veronica Wyeth stood, exhaled and hauled herself over to her chair. Again, she moved slowly. She'd been getting dizzy spells the past few months and she was afraid of them, since they were sure signs she was failing. She was going to be up for hours, so she did what she always did when this happened: flip on the TV and see if she could find a late starting ball game on ESPN. The Braves were out in California. If ESPN wasn’t carrying the game, maybe TBS was.
       As she searched for the remote, she noticed movement outside and glanced out the window. Across the street, Doreen Meltzer's garage door was closing and a man was walking into her house. It was dark over there, the bulb above the garage door wasn’t bright enough to shed much light, but she could see that Doreen Melton had gone out and found herself a little plaything to warm up her bed.          At one time, not long ago in fact, she would have found that shocking. She would have disapproved.     Well, now she didn’t mind so much.
      Veronica Wyeth was a grown woman, Doreen Melson was a grown woman, and who the hell cared what grown women did with their lives? Nothing like a case of cancer to change your thinking. Since Dr, Draco told her she was dying, a lot of stuff she used to think was so important didn’t mean a thing to her anymore. Facing your own death had a way of putting things into perspective. Veronica Wyeth knew what it was to spend a night in a bed by herself and she didn't wish it on anybody. If Doreen could find herself a man to warm that bed up, well, that was just fine. She only wished Doreen could find another one for her.
       As she was about to turn away from the window, a second car, one of those little foreign jobs that looked like a baby jeep, one of those, what did they call them? SUVs, that was it, one of those SUVs, pulled up in front of Doreen's house. The driver parked next to the big oak tree so that he was in the shadows. Nobody got out of the car. Now that was strange, she thought, as she turned on the TV. But like everything else going on over there, it was none of her business. And the years had taught her not to get involved in stuff that was none of her business.

                                                                              #

      On a night as hot as this, Terence Glass felt he ought to be out at Fat Sam’s Roadhouse, tossing back a few beers and chewing on some ribs in the air conditioning. He liked Fat Sam’s. In fact, discovering that place had made this trip tolerable. There was always some action there because the two counties that bordered Ponder County were still dry and Fat Sam’s had been built to be convenient to all three counties. So there was always a crowd there; lots of pretty young ladies from all over South Georgia. He checked his watch; maybe there’d be time to drop by there when he finished up here.
       He glanced at the shotgun propped against the passenger’s door. Part of him that didn’t want to do this. He had nothing against Jordan Crow but he’d been hired to do a job and he wasn’t about to go against the people who threw money at him. He touched the barrel of the gun as if to make sure it was really there. No matter what the weather, a shotgun’s barrel never heated up. Right now it felt as cool as air conditioning, which in this car wasn’t working and that irritated him. How the agency could have turned loose a car whose air conditioning was going to break down within an hour of his taking it off of the lot was beyond him. He’d thought about taking it back, getting another one, but the airport was so far away and he intended to be out of this town really soon, so it just wasn’t worth the effort.
         Maybe it was fall on the calendar but it was still hot as hell, with humidity that brought a sweat as soon as you stepped out the door and he was going to be sitting here for God knows how long. Maybe he ought to just go on back to the hotel. No, he couldn’t do that. He had a job to do. A mission, if you wanted to use that kind of language. He lifted his Atlanta Braves cap and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm. For just a moment, he wondered exactly how long he'd been stroking the barrel of the shotgun.

corrections, updates and a note to message people

I just went back and corrected the typos in the Blind Pig piece. I wrote it in a fit of excitement and, still out of my mind with excitement over the music, posted it without proofreading it. I know: those musicians and Blind Pig deserve better from me. My apologies.
Also, for those of you who have been posting responses, I'm brand new to this blogging business and just found them today. So, I did respond to them -- except the ones in Japanese, which I am not able to read. I was profoundly amazed and touched to find a seven entry conversation responding to something I'd posted, conducted in a language I'm unable to read. Thanks, and please, keep it up.
Finally, since this blog appears to be trending toward music, and since I want to keep the poetry discussions going, I'm thinking about starting a new, second blog devoted entirely to poetry. What do you think?

Blind Pig Records

At one time, I’d buy whatever Atlantic Records put out. Anything on Sun Records tempted me and folk music on Electra was pretty much a must. Those labels, all independents at that time, had their own identity, their own characteristic types of music and for an artist to be associated with them was a sign of quality. I haven’t felt that way about a record label in a long time but now I’m falling in love with Blind Pig Records.
Blind Pig, a small but important indie blues label out of San Francisco, that issues two or three CDs a month and is putting out some of the most significant roots music in America today. Anybody who loves American – even examples of it that originate in Australia -- music should be paying attention. To make my point, I want to take a look at their releases from the last two months.
Peter Karp and Sue Foley
Peter Karp and Sue Foley are both well-known blues artists. They began emailing each other, discussing life on the road and pretty soon those emails grew into songs and the result is “He Said, She Said,” a duet album in which they explore human relationships. The songs are all over the map; they’re driving bluesy, rocking, light-hearted and funny. They’re also beautifully written. Both of these artists can write, they can both sing the rubber off of a truck tire, and they know how to dress up a song – they play acoustic guitars, electric guitars, classical guitars, harmonicas, bring in horn sections when they’re appropriate and they sound like they’re having the time of their life doing it. Peter Karp and Sue Foley demand to be listened to.
Popa Chubby
Last month’s other release was Popa Chubby’s “The Fight is On.” Though the label says it’s his first CD in two years, it appears that the prolific guitar-slinger puts out an album a month. Each release is thematic, ranging from salutes to Chicago blues to a two-CD tribute to Jimi Hendrix. This time out, we get the arena rock side of Popa Chubby. He salutes classic rock with a set of guitar-driven anthems. In the notes, he says the songs were built out of his fooling around with classic riffs and you can hear them in the playing, a little Zeppelin here, some Sabbath there, but Popa Chubby everywhere.
John Nemeth
This month, Blind Pig leads off with John Nemeth’s “Name the Day.” Nemeth, a harmonica playing soul singer, comes across as a man who has been internalizing rhythm and blues since birth. He’s at home with all of its forms, from the hard-charging, horn-driven uptempo shouters to the soft ballads. Retro-looking in tight suits, skinny ties and porkpie hats, Nemeth never comes across as a throwback He’s today and his writing, singing and playing are going to be key elements of tomorrow’s soul music. Take Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and Ray Charles, mix them together and then add a shot of a brand new artistic touch and you’ve got John Nemeth.
Harper
Harper, who divides his time between Australia, his birthplace and Michigan, began as a blues singing harmonica wizard but on tour in Colorado a decade or so back, he met some Native Americans and was inspired to investigate the aboriginal music of Australia. He became proficient at the didgeridoo and soon developed a world music-based blues that incorporated native instruments and influences. It’s a fascinating sound and on “Stand Together,” his new album, he goes much deeper into it because for the first time, he is recording with his touring band, rather than a group of touring musicians. The songs range from ballads calling for peace to straight ahead rockers but the didgeridoo keeps it from being familiar. You’ll hear the blues in a new way.
Magic Slim
You’re not going to hear the blues in a new way in Magic Slim and the Teardrops’ new CD, “Raising the Bar.” The veteran blues picker Magic Slim and his group have been called the last of Chicago blues bands. A master of Delta blues, he has traced the same Mississippi to Chicago path blazed by Muddy Waters and I’d say he’s currently at his creative peak if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of times in the past twenty years or so, I’ve said he was at his peak only to hear him get better. Magic Slim is a genius of the blues; he’s the man who keeps digging in a played out mine but keep coming up with new and fresh treasure. Magic Slim himself is a national treasure.
What do these artists, different and unique as each one is, have in common? They’re all on Blind Pig Records. That should send you a signal or two about this label.

The Best Singer-Songwriter You've Never Heard

Her name is Krista Detor and, though she plays most of the major folk festivals and has a serious following in Europe, it's safe to say that most American listeners have no idea who she is. She's been played on NPR and the other noncommercial stations but her marketplace profile isn't very high.
Which is a shame because she's fabulous.
Maybe it isn't a shame. Maybe she's just too good for radio.
I reviewed her second album and her third, the world's best Christmas album, for Rambles and fell in love with her music. I said then that she can't really be categorized, which might have something to do with her lack of big time commercial success. If you don't fit neatly into an established genre, radio doesn't know what to do with you and Detor is not going to be pinned down.
A piano-playing singer-songwriter, she appears to belong to the folk-rock school, but if that's the case, she attends a school with a mighty wide-ranging curriculum. She's bluesy, folky,jazzy, an ironic chanteuse, a depression era diva -- she's not only all over the map, she is the map.
In short, she's an original. Her songs are startling, with fine lyrics and unusual tunes. She's fond of dressing the tunes with trombones, saxes, banjos and dobros -- in the same song and the accompaniments give her work a sweet, postmodern feel.
Her voice is the story. Detor doesn't seem to sing at all. She never oversings, never shows off her marvelous voice at the expense of the song. What she does is tell you a story in a low, intimate, husky voice that appears to be directed just to you.
A new album is scheduled for release this fall. I recommend you be standing in line when it comes out. I know I will be.

Carole King's Really Rosy

The Nutshell Library

The other day, Helene called me from her office, wanting to know the name of the Carole King song about the boy who would only say, "I don't care." She wanted someone else to hear it. As soon as she mentioned it, I felt an overwhelming craving to hear not only the song but the entire album again.
The album is called "Really Rosy" and its the soundtrack from an animated TV special done by children's book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak back in the Seventies. The special took his four book set called the Nutshell Library, a tiny boxed set three inches tall and two inches deep that contains four of his best works: "Alligators All Around," "Pierre," "Chicken Soup With Rice," and "One Was Johnny." Sendak mashed these book up with his "Really Rosie" title and created one magical half hour of kid's programming and animation, for which King created a soundtrack by writing tunes to his words.
"Alligators All Around" is an alphabet book. "Chicken Soup With Rice" teaches the calendar, while "One was Johnny" is a counting book. "Pierre" can best be described as a wild card. Sendak subtitles it a cautionary tale with a moral; he might just as well call it a hilarious tale that subverts itself all over the place.

The Show

I don't remember the show very well; I saw it with my kids when it aired and then it disappeared into the ozone layer that contains old TV shows and, to the best of my knowledge, was never seen again. A shortlived VHS was released, went quickly out of print, and a DVD has never been issued. What I do remember is that Sendak oversaw the animation and directed the show, so that it was in his style and accurately presented his world. It centered on a group of kids in a working class neighborhood of Brooklyn and their adventures, both real and imaginary. It was a creative triumph and should have become a classic.

The Music

The soundtrack album did become a classic. It has never been out of print and the children's librarian in my library tells me that it is one of the most in-demand albums in libraries across the country. I know in my town if you want to get it out of the library, you've got a six week wait. It can, however, be found in the kid's departments of all the chain book and record stores and can be downloaded on Itunes. If you have kids, it is an essential purchase. If you don't, it is still well worth having.
It is Carole King at her most exuberant. She takes the songs seriously but still packs them with more energy and fun than you'd think a Carole King CD could produce. She knows that in this instance especially, the song is much more important than the singer, so she concentrates on letting the song speak. She acts the songs, becoming the character of Rosie and lets her voice wail and moan when Rosie
acts out a horror picture, becoming formal with the Shakespeare. It's a great performance. The fact that her backup singers are her kids makes it even more fun.

The conclusion

Here is what I'm thinking: everybody, no matter what their age, should read Maurice Sendak at least once a day and everybody, no matter what their age, should own this CD and play it all the time.

Two Veteran folkies

In the early sixties, when I was a kid hanging out in Fort Lauderdale, I ran into a friend of mine in front of the legendary beachfront bar, the Elbow room. My buddy was excited. “Listen,” he said, “You got to come around to the Catacombs with me. There’s somebody you got to see there.”
The Catacombs was a tiny coffeehouse, down the alley from the elbow room. It drew a completely different crowd. The boozehounds went to the Elbow Room while the intellectuals, the creative people, frequented the Catacombs. We went in ands there on the stage about ten feet away from us, working to a capacity crowd of maybe fifty people, was a young Native American woman playing a mouth bow. That was Buffy Sainte-Marie. I watched her play three sets that night and became a major fan. Over the next forty-five years, my devotion has never wavered.
Now, my devotion has been paid off by Saint-Marie’s first album in thirteen years and it is one amazing piece of work. The world has changed a lot in forty-five years but Sainte-Marie has remained insistently her own person, going her own way. She has never become a nostalgia act, but neither has she abandoned her earlier styles and concerns. She has, however, deepened. Her work is stronger, truer and more powerful than it has ever been.
The new album, Running for the Drum, opened with three songs that simply can’t be classified, songs that use all the weapons in her vast arsenal. With their roots deep in Native American rhythms and dances, they take on corporate greed and contemporary politics, familiar protest themes of Sainte-Marie’s. The song include elements of folk, rock, pop and electronic, in addition to powwow chants. These songs are stunning. After this mini-set, she uses a fine version of her classic song, “Little Wheel Turn and Spin” as a transition into a varied set of love songs, contemporary blues and rock. “When I Had You” is a torch song while “I Bet My Heart on You” features Sainte-Marie and Taj Mahal on twin pianos. “Blue Sunday” could have been recorded in Sam Phillips Sun Studios with Jerry Lee Lewis on piano and Carl Perkins on guitar.
One thing Buffy Sainte-Marie has never been is predictable. She has always confounded people’s expectations, has always gone In directions that no casual listener could have anticipated. Running for the Drum continues that tradition of originality and creativity. It is brilliant and is like nothing else she has done. To my mind, anybody interested in where Americana music has been and is going needs to hear it.
Also brilliant is the DVD biographical film that is included in this set. Entitled Buffy Sainte-Marie: a Multimedia Life, this Canadian made film traces her life, covering her upbringing, her early days as a Greenwich Village folkie up to her current activities. It’s a film that will spend more than one viewing in your DVD player.
I also want to call your attention to a fine reissue: Carolyn Hester’s The Tradition Years. Tom Rush said a few years back that in the early years, no record company actually produced folk music. Most albums back then were “one voice, one guitar, one mic.”
By choice, Tradition Records was a one-voice, one guitar, one mic label. Formed by the Clancy Brothers, Tradition was devoted to the folk song, rather than to the music business. The Clancies spurned the more commercial trio and group acts. They had no interest in recording the legions of Kingston Trio imitators who blanketed the air, polluting the radio waves with what Folk music heavies called fakelore and fake music. Tradition concentrated on the people they felt were doing true folklore in song.
Carolyn Hester was one of those people. She lived in legend as the person who gave Bob Dylan his first shot in a recording studio and was responsible for Dylan being signed to Columbia Records. Like many legends, her reputation is better known today than her music, which is a shame. She was then and is now a brilliant artist. In her early sixties heyday, her work was widely admired and respected, her popularity wide enough for the Saturday Evening Post, a leading mass market magazine of the time, to label her “the face of folk music.” Significantly, she achieved that popularity doing mostly public domain songs from the great body of American and Latin traditional music.
Obviously, she was a good fit for Tradition Records, who recorded her with only her guitar for accompaniment, with no harmony vocals or overdubs. The result is a spare and haunting recording which makes the bold claim that, no matter how beautiful the singer’s voice, that voice is to be used to serve the song, which is more important.
And Hester does have a beautiful voice. This album reveals an achingly pure soprano that graces the songs she sings, a voice that never strains, never reaches but seems to soar effortlessly instead. The voice is intoxicating and when she takes on simple American folk songs like “Go Way From My Window” and “If I had a Ribbon Bow,” you feel the pain of the speakers in the song. Her voice is flexible enough to take on “Malaguena Salerosa” and, since she was raised on the Texas-Mexican border and was always well acquainted with Latin music, she sounds right at home with it. The only contemporary song on the album is George and Ira Gershwin’s “Summertime,” which the hide-bound label justified as folk music because it came from Porgy and Bess, a folk opera.
The Tradition Years is a reissue of Carolyn Hester, a 1961 album. It includes a couple of songs deleted from the original record. Thoroughly digitalized, the sound is as beautiful as the music.
It is great to see the early stuff coming back and it is great to see that artists who began in the early sixties are still vital. Hester has recent CDs that are fabulous. Listen to these women. Hear the good stuff that you’re never going to hear on FM radio.