Reporting to you from the outskirts of Sparta, IL, where I drove solo today nearly nonstop (1 gas and 2 rest stops)--and was welcomed by a voicemail from our engineer Gary Gordon that he, his wife Roberta and friend Katie had just arrived at the Mexican restaurant next door to my hotel. What a lovely way to end my drive! Got caught up about happenings since we last saw each other at FARM (and oh, how I wish I'd gone to SERFA)!
Got home from Alton, IL 4 am last Tues.--had a full house and a delightful audience and we're looking forward to doing another Andina & Rich show for the public library as soon as they've got their new performance space and a slot open. Errands, errands, e-mails, schedules, practicing, and packing Wed. & Thurs.
Flew off to NYC at noon last Fri. Arrived at my hotel (spent more time sitting in a cab in traffic on the Van Wyck and L.I.E. than in the air--bags too heavy to schlep on the train) and was bummed out to find that "God of Carnage" was dark on Sunday and sold out that night except for the $250+ "premium" seating. Nuh-unh. Night 2 of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert (actually Thursday was the night I'd have sold my car to attend) was also sold out. But, I got Sunday matinee tickets to Carrie Fisher's "Wishful Drinking" and a late, late Fri. night reservation at Le Bernardin (I know what you're thinking, but I've been eating a lot of pasta and Costco bulk frozen stuff lately), thus also scoring enough time to nap. I was halfway through my second course when a very familiar-looking woman swept past my table and up the stairs to the upstairs party room. OMG--it was ARETHA FRANKLIN! (The waiter, ever discreet, would neither confirm nor deny but the record industry lawyer at the next table confirmed it was indeed the Queen of Soul). The meal was so wonderful it was more than worth the check (and the heartburn).
Next day was Halloween. You have not experienced Halloween if you haven't experienced it in Times Square (unless, of course, you've experienced it in the Village, Key West or S.F.). More little kids wielding talking plastic chainsaws and elderly women in Chanel suits and pink bunny ears than I'd ever thought possible. (Of course, it could also have been the glass of bubbly I had at alfresco lunch across from 30 Rock). Then it was off on a one-mile-on-foot unsuccessful quest to find either a walk-in hair appointment for me, and Gordy a bomber jacket (birthday present) that would cost less than an actual bomber. Back to the hotel just in time to greet Gordy, whose flight was delayed but who skipped baggage claim and got a lightning-fast cab ride in from JFK. Off to Uncle Henry's party.
Half an hour later we were still standing on the corner of W. 52st & 7th Ave. futilely trying to hail a taxi (subway too far away from either end of the route). Not even the doorman had any success. We resorted to pulling over limos and bargaining with them. Made it up to 106th to find that we had paid less than half for our limo ride as did our cousins from Boston for their pedicab (known in pre-PC times as a rickshaw). Anyway, it was a lovely party, and I'm glad we went--family is precious and I've learned the hard way never to take their presence on earth as a given. Uncle Henry is a retired French horn player who's been in the pit bands of half of the Broadway shows of the '50s and '60s; his late wife (my Aunt Pearl) was the principal second violinist of the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, concertmaster of the Queens Symphony, and the violin soloist on the original "Will You Love Me Tomorrow;" and their daughter Gena, a talented violinist herself, is a music therapy and pedagogy professor at both Columbia U. and U. Mass. (and had produced hundreds of jingles and scores for TV commercials before that. Her brother Warren joined the other "family profession:" law, of course).
Needless to say, decades of networking has produced amazing results. With all the professional musicians and singers (including one legendary songwriter-recording artist whose name I will not mention in order to protect her privacy....and prevent me from sounding like a name-dropping jerk) in attendance, and my cousin Gena's prowess as both a violinist and recording engineer, I have never heard (much less participated in) such a version of "Happy Birthday" (30 people, all in the same key, unrehearsed, and 3 of us on harmony, and Gena's multitrack string-quartet accompaniment), nor am I ever likely to again. No, nobody was recording it. Anyway, Uncle Henry did a star turn--leave it to a lifelong horn player to blow out all the candles with one unassisted puff....at several days past 90.
Sunday, we slept in and saw "Wishful Drinking" (funny enough to have to pass the asthma inhaler back and forth between us). Many people on the streets of Manhattan were still in costume, but oddly enough it was the same costume: shorts, medals around their necks, running shoes, swathed in Space Blankets, and the same expressions of exhausted accomplishment. Sheesh--you'd think they'd just finished a marathon or something!
Sunday night Gordy's lifelong (since pre-first-grade) friend John came up from the Village (and earlier, Flatbush) to have a lovely dinner with us at Remi before we took two subways to Greenpoint (narrowly escaping a serenade by a busking four-man drumline equipped only with sticks) to meet one of Gordy's acting colleague who'd moved to Brooklyn. She never answered her cellphone, but the three of us had lively conversation over drinks at the retro-kitsch-cool sand-floored Surf Bar (where we'll return one day for the food too) before John went back to Flatbush and we went back to our hotel to pack.
Yesterday, it was ride back to JFK, fly to O'Hare, cab it back home, drop our bags, check our snail mail and phone messages, ransom my car from the mechanic (brake job, sigh), find where he'd parked it (2 blocks away), and head off to the House of Blues (aka House of Booze or House of Rules--you wouldn't believe how many they have) to see Roger Daltrey and his tour band. Now, you've read my former posts about the stellar (as in exploded nova) condition of my feet, knees and back......the show was SRO. Yup. Couldn't even bribe my way on to a bar stool. Was a "reverse barfly:" found a railing in front of the top balcony on which I could rest my drink and over which I could lean. Amazing show (although the opener, Paper Zoo, was a yawn--good harmonies and chops but boring material--nouveau-psychedelia, every song in the same key. They do have promise, though). Spent another hour standing in line to pay for parking and then wait for it to be retrieved.
But it was a great weekend, a pleasant drive down here, a delightful dinner with the Gordons and Katie. And it promises to be a fruitful few days of final vocal and instrumental overdubs and beginning to actually mix. I go home late Friday and get to sleep in my own bed again till next Wed., when I fly to Albany and hit NERFA on Thurs. (After that, a FARM meeting in MI and a court hearing--just to remind me I occasionally do other things with my law license than perform in the Bar Show).
Bummed out about the snail's pace of healthcare reform, as well as by most of today's off-year elections (sad to say, no big doings in IL, as I really have no dog in the upcoming Quinn-Hynes fight for the Dem. nom. for Gov--either'll do. Can't even find out if there's anything I might have voted for today had I not skipped town). Only bright spot is that the teabaggers got their comeuppance in upstate NY when the first Democrat in over a century won the 23rd Cong. Dist. Also, a nearly-invisible Democrat almost unseated Bloomberg for mayor of NYC. Sadly, at this hour it looks like Maine is choosing intolerance over equality. The NJ Gov. race is unfortunate, but was mainly a reflection on how radioactive Corzine had become over the past year and a half (and he didn't even try to sell a Senate seat, just started his decline by riding without a seatbelt). Between Corzine & Bloomberg, they spent more of their own personal fortunes to buy their reelections (one successfully, one not) than the Yankees did to buy their way to an apparent (Game 6 will tell) World Series victory.
The real heartbreaker is the VA Gov. race--an antediluvian (anti-women-working, anti-contraception) Republican beat an untainted Democrat, probably because the teabaggers got out their voters and we failed to motivate ours. Consolation is that governors have less impact on important national issues (except when Senate seats suddenly get vacated.......)
And Randy, you and your brother are in my prayers again tonight.