“Old weird America,” Greil Marcus wrote describing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, groundbreaking anthology of regional musics from the ’20s & ’30s. Now entering the New Weird America driving down California into Arizona & New Mexico; skeleton houses, rusty RVs, & remote outposts on highways surrounded by red rock, mountains, immense sky.
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My late wife Tina loved to travel; I was a stay home sort. In the late ’60s we took a road trip across the US en route to NYC en route to UK where we were going to live the life of exiles. I’d set up readings along the way to finance occasional overnighters in Ramada Inns. By the time we got to the East Coast, I was totally antagonistic to the sound of my voice & to the poems I read along the way. We lasted less than 2 months in UK (another story) & ended our exile where it started in Bolinas.
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Hours driving through Arizona to Lubbock, TX — the flat vast — new ghost towns boarded up & abandoned — fields & fields of cotton, corn, sunflowers — the usual usual of malls, familiar logo icons everywhere — oil pumps — ranches — cows, horses, sometimes burros in pastures — then small villages almost there surrounded by out-of-business shops — gas station mini-stores where locals hang out & tourists use toilets & maybe buy souvenirs — the unending isolation punctured by new off-freeway clusters of MacDonald’s, Arby’s, Denny’s, Red Lobster, Taco Bell, &tc.
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I keep recalling Michel Butor’s book “Mobile,” a road trip across the States told by all the signs along the road & through the towns & cities. Also Kerouac’s “Lonesome Traveller”, impeccable title describing the bottom of the US landscapes, the ruined objects, homeless wanderers, railroad yards, broken-in ghost warehouses, dead smokestacks housing mice, &tc. — Kerouac gets it down better — it’s worth checking out.
–David
Karen, have thought of you many times on this trip. We have been running around like crazy, an intense schedule demanding more organization and focus than I had imagine. Tomorrow is the big show with Dirty Dozen folks and should be awesome. Seems like everyone we meet is turned on by what we are doing. Way exciting! Wish you could be here for the show. love from the Rockpilers– MR
Hey — I’ve been wondering how you are all doing —- and from that video – I’ve got the answer. I hope it’s been wonderful – and you’ve been tearing it up like in LA.
Wish I were there! Karen
David, I remember reading Lonesome Traveler by Kerouac and looking out at the old-time diners near my hometown Ohio and hearing the jazz in the local clubs that played it. Back then, old jazzmen setting up before a show and I realized the long continuous line that stretches from the jazz and Americana of the Forties that Kerouac had written about and its continuation in the hands of those who are still telling their story through this music today.
Now I’ve been 10 years living in Chicago, I’m excited by these posts and love to see that the trip is going well and that you, Michael and Terri are bringing some of these hot sounds to Chicago where we need it as the temps drop this chilly morning in an autumn Chicago. Sure the landscapes are different now but there’s a PULSE there that’s the same seismic rumbling of the BLUES that everybody feels and shit you artists out there on the road on an important mission, after all that reconnaissance hitting the road to bring poetry and jazz, making it new like Ez, and just letting it all flow out from the page and doing that, it’s happening—shaking awake America! I’m just jealous of your road trip. Can’t wait to see you all Nov. 17 for the talk and then on the Nov. 19 at the Hideout when we can all see it.
Bests.
Michael, Terri and David tearing up the road…at least back home I’ve got their books to keep me warm! But question? Is that REALLY David Meltzer himself circa ’74 photographed as a circa ’20s? Fuller or should I say feather brush man on the cover of Blue Rags? Well, I guess that’s one way to supplement the tour income, and if I ever met a man who could sell me a feather brush it’s David Meltzer! I mean that as a compliment!