Comfort food given to Townes Van Zandt by his 3rd wife after she busted him out of the hospital because because his DT's were putting him in a shitty way. He was in the hospital for surgery on the hip he broke and ignored for 8 days. EIGHT DAYS! And to top it off, he had traveled to Memphis to record with
Steve Shelley and
Tim Foljhan at Easley. The recordings, apparently, went awful.
Anyway, the documentary on Townes,
'Be Here To Love Me', played at a country music festival I caught at the Paradiso. It's a damn good film. There is some great footage of Van Zandt singing 'Waiting Around To Die' that sets some old-timer to crying and some funny stuff shot in the backyard with a fifth, a pellet gun and some cans of Coke. Oh and Guy Clark is a fucking bust.
The Meat Purveyors were to play the festival but cancelled. Kind of a drag, their show in Fairbanks was a blast. I stuck around for a bit drinking 'small beers'--little 8 oz. fuckers that were a pain in the ass because to make things worth while, you really had to buy two at a time and then you were stuck with your hands full. Really, what's the point of a drink that small? (I also hate the juice glasses at hotel continental breakfasts--I usually stand in front of the pitcher and down a few before sitting). Plus, it's difficult to watch a film about Van Zandt when drinking from glasses that make you feel as though you should be sticking out your pinky.
Then came the Dutch-Canadian all the middle agers (you know the joos song i was living, dontcha?) were there to see:
Fred Eaglesmith. I tried to give the guy a chance, even after opening with a song that's chorus went: 'I ain't never givin' in, I ain't never givin' in', (dramatic pause, then kicks in with a mighty down-strum) 'anytime soon!' That doesn't even make any sense!!! He then went on to spend more time playing out a half-assed 'i just a plain ole simple country boy' comedy routine than playing any songs and his schtick was more than I could handle. Closest I've ever come to heckling. Instead, I just headed out to the cobbles and found myself at the Rokery with it's killer White Widow.
Elsewhere,
Barry Hannah is interviewed in The Paris Review # 172. Here's a poem from the same issue:
Out of the Way Bungalow-Style AreasCharlie Smith
Sometimes love's vagrancy (whatever you call it)
overwhelms all but the most robust subscriber's,
and, dishonest as it may sound, the whole cramped enterprise
is given only a few minutes to clear out of town.
We were touchy that year, all year,
at least until the old lady died. Perhaps a singularity
enraptured you, caused the sell-off
and the false positive. Compare your notes
with the sample addresses, the ones
the boss started to give, but then just couldn't.
Outside the metropolis
you hardly find any restaurants worth eating in. Yet
the places are always full. Little families, conversation groups,
a sense of the fell and distracted nature of humankind,
the displaced circular reasoning one gets into after a gambling loss,
these show up, disperse among the tables
and fade into the background.
It appears we'll be here just long enough. For whatever
the thing is that knows no human reason to have its say. Or something
other, she explained, and passed the biscuits around.
