I See Hawks in L.A.

September 30, 2008

TENNESSEE TENDERNESS

Hawks Axiom #43 states that the goofier a club's name, the greater the chances of a cool show. Axiom #9 states that feelings of trepidation at sound check are often harbingers of that same cool gig. So Rhythm N Brews in Chattanooga is delivering a double dose of axiomatic data. The club is dark and cavernous, on a recently gentrified downtown street that's eerily deserted. It's a Sunday evening. It's very quiet.

We meet the Bohannans, brothers Marty and Matt, drummer Jeremy, Josh the bass man. They are regular guys, super nice, and they've set everything up for us, including loaning us their great gear. Paul L is reunited with a Fender Deluxe Reverb with working tremelo, and couldn't be happier. The soundman Doug gets the best onstage sound we've had in a long time, dialed up in about 5 minutes. We're good to go.

We walk to the riverfront and cross the Tennessee River on a half mile wide pedestrian bridge, largest in the U.S., as dusk yields to darkness. A four level riverboat, looking like an old Queen minus the rear paddlewheel, is the picture of slow gentility passing beneath us far below on the black still water, its white clothed dining tables lit by glowing lamps. Civilization. We stroll the bridge to the other side, come back on the highway bridge.

Back in Rhythm & Brews, a solo singer in colorful Peter Case garb is warbling through eccentric and catchy tunes, challenging his own presentation with a deafening and out of tune Telecaster played through a Bassman. There's something going on. A close approximation of a chorus:

Salisbury Steak brings a smile to my face
At least until the meds wear off

It's a strong statement, fearlessly delivered.

Our set goes just great. The room, the gear, us, it's all good, the crowd digs it. We play "Highway Down" at a dirge pace, and it really works. A good conclusion to a fun little Southern adventure. The Bohannons take the stage and knock us out. These modest fellows are a serious and soulful rock band, yes, rock. They rock. The songs are damn good, with some seriously innovative moments that fit seamlessly into the straight ahead framework. Matt is a Stratocaster virtuoso, Jeremy could easily snag the drum chair for Led Zeppelin, and the two brother vocals draw you straight into their very personal lyrics. Their fans are hanging on their every move. Watch out for these guys, World Of Rock.

The fun continues at a local dive around the corner, where a karaoke session is in full swing, a gyrating 20-something nailing the phrasing if not the suggested pitch of Springsteen's "Thunder Road." We retreat out a dark passageway to one of those little gems you can only find in the South: A big open patio, dark except for a candle on our table, where the moist warm midnight air envelopes our SoCal dried skin. Local legend Hobo Joe has provided libations of the ephemeral variety, and we engage in wide ranging, yea, wild ranging conversations with Matt, Marty and super cool spouse Rachel, and their friends and fans. This Bohannon scene runs so much deeper than we'd imagined.

We bid fond farewells and exchange promises of more to come. It's 2:57 in the morning. Hey, that's not even midnight in L.A. Back at the Hampton a 1998 episode of Chris Rock has Magic Johnson in the hotseat. It's the Summit of Cool. Chris Rock is a genius. This is the last thought before Morpheus crooks his finger, at last not to be denied.

Paul L's hideous Samsung cell phone alarm goes off at 8 a.m. Hey, that's 5 a.m. in L.A. This is rough. But we are men. We are road warriors. We rise. We eat a very strange complimentary Hampton's breakfast that displays an innovative processed egg, yolk and white components compressed into a synthetic looking oval shape. Another future facing feature. Hey, but slap eggy unit on a not too bad Southern style biscuit, rip open the hot sauce packet, and this is good eating.

Back to the rooms. Pack up. Sit on the comfy and neglected beds for a last minute glazed staring at a preview for a new reality show featuring hot supermodels and tanned studs. Get up. Drive. Because we are the Hawks, we are cutting it close. Our flight leaves in seven hours.

We hit a monumental traffic jam outside Atlanta. We make a last minute bail onto an obscure rural highway, and it's nice. We're Free wheeling on the Free Love Freeway. Starbucks-free, and a bit dystopian the way we like it, with several shut down gas stations prequeling America the Doomed. We find a remote yet giant gas station miraculously open, and there is absolutely no waiting, despite persistent rumors of gas line fist fights in Atlanta. Poor Atlanta. So near to Macon, so far from God.

We're racing the clock on I-85 north to Charlotte airport, our eye on the gas gauge. It's a point of honor to return our KIA van with the exact same niggling 5/8 full tank that Hertz presented us, along with their smirk about the gas shortage. Die, Hertz, Die. And take your customer is always screwed stance all the way to the bottom of the social collapse.

It does feel like a sneak preview of what James Kunstler calls The Long Emergency. Why is one gas station flush with regular, though at premium prices, and panic reigns 20 miles away? The signs are chaotic and not to be read. May we quote Yeats? Again, no, the Second Coming has been appropriated by HBO.

Last gas station, a carefully calibrated $18 gas purchase, and some sweet Georgia peaches, $3 for big basket. Damn, these are goo-ood. Southern states, we love you. Bring us back.

We fly. We do not pay U.S. Airways $5 for a snak pak. We are monastic in our sleep deprived overstimulated narrow tilted back seats. LAX awaits in golden dusk.

US 41 AT ACWORTH

We're rolling on a handsome and very wide interstate, I-75 to be exact, connecting Atlanta and Chattanooga. Rob's cell phone can go online, and so: as we slice through densely wooded hills and ridges, Rob finds the Starbucks locater website and dials in Acworth, Georgia. And lo--tucked into these rural hills are not your naïve imaginings of banjo pickers on lonely cabin porches in grassy clearings, but rather 53, yes, 53 Starbucks within a 20 mile range. This is mindboggling. Fifty three Starbucks in a small patch of rural South Carolina. We're far down this road to the future. There are wonders to be seen in the palm of your hand.

Rob has located a Starbucks. We're exiting for Cartersville. At 605 Main Street, we are promised a Starbucks. We stop at the access road. In every direction are tall pines. Surely we will see the maiden Hiawatha treading a cool shaded trail. No. There's a fresh red dirt gash in forest slope, and a pastel gas center. With a very long line.

Now we pass a Kohl's Chili's Pier 1 Imports Target Red Lobster Honda KFC Knights Inn Applebee's BP (Beyond Petroleum) pastel empire. Anymall, USA. And there's the Starbucks.

A young couple is huddled at the outdoor patio, downloading each other's favorite tunes For Free. Everything is free. Everything works. The future works. We are not collapsing. We are entering Starbucks.

This is a good one. It's not like the tawdry and already tattered Starbucks at the sunbleached access road in Baker, CA, where the barista couldn't pull a shot if his meth informed life depended on it. No, this is a highly trained multi racial poster child of a Starbucks crew, the shiny end of the what's-right-with-America-God-save-her veneer bravely preserving this troubled land.

Rob orders his secret drink, a concoction that makes a verbal end run around Starbucks regulations. We can't tell you what it is, because then Starbucks would be flooded with this rogue order and would shut it down, but it does involve ice and soy milk. That's all we can give you.

We're seated at comfy chairs.

Rob's charging this very computer generating these very words, sipping his secret drink. Shawn too has ordered the Rob Special. (Shawn's verdict: "It was a nice change. It got me going, without a lot of product. Wakes you up. I don't have to pee right now. I'm not sick to my stomach.") Paul M has uncharacteristically ordered the adolescent Java Chip Frappucino.

Paul L is dipping a chocolate chip cookie into a soy cappuccino and babbling ecstatically, absorbing a rainbow of doomsday headlines screaming from today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

We step out into the heat. We're low on gas. The brand new BP, like every gas station in the South right now, has a line of cars waiting for their 10 gallon limit of regular gas flowing through the premium pump at premium prices (hold on to your receipts, Carolinians, you may get a 75 cent refund in a future class action suit). We get in line. Not too bad. Our faithful KIA mini van drinks its fill, and now we're a sure bet to make Chattanooga. I-75 is a 6 lane tunnel through an unchanging rolling wall of woodland, kind of hypnotic. We see few vistas, mostly trees, with some towering billboards, these suckers are tall. Hours pass. We reach the outskirts of a new Hawks city, with multiple consonants and vowels indicative of the south: Chattanooga.

ALBINO SKUNKFEST: '51 JIMMY AND MOONSHINE AGED IN THE BARREL

Zig is a very cool guy, grizzled, sharp, and tall enough to see the big picture, the forest and the trees. His 10 acre spread of trees and permanently parked RV's is set up for FES-TAA-VULLL! He's proud of his 1951 GMC bus, which logged millions of miles as a Greyhound, then in service of the Lord as band bus, with bunks and kitchen for gospel group The Singing Apostles. It still gets 13 miles to the gallon. A faded Jesus walking on the water is painted on the rear. Only four forward gears, the shifter connected by a single long rod running the length of the bus to the transmission in the back. To get reverse you put the bus in first gear, hit a solenoid switch, and shift into second, which has been electro-converted into reverse. Let us weep a moment for ingenious mechanical solutions that die with the 21st century. Good. That's enough. Reader, weep no more.

For we are at Albino Skunk Fest, jacked up on Waffle House coffee and carbs, and good times are here. Zig and his mythical pal Toothbrush conjured this musical celebration about six years ago, and it's really hit a stride. We pull into the hardening red mud parking area and hear powerful bluegrass harmonies wafting through the pines and the steamy but pleasant air. Down a meandering path through big bamboo stand passageways, and we're in a little hollow. A laid back audience on lawn chairs on the grassy slope surrounding the wood stage is digging the banjo/fiddle/guitar virtuosity. We're sandwiched between two newgrass bands, complete with drums and aggressive six string fretless bass. The fusion scales n the woodsy setting are jarring to our overly sensitive and luddite musical ears, but the energy and chops of these guys are undeniable, and the crowd loves it. And when the fiddle kicks the band into a I IV V standard, they own it.

Our first set is very enthusiastically cheered by half the crowd, with the rest gazing in polite stupefication. It reminds us of the Mariposa County Fair a bit. We're urban messengers of old time ruralism playing to a rural crowd indifferent to tradition. The real country music descendants are effortlessly absorbing all sounds modern and offensive to the retro minded. While we've been gazing backwards, these Carolina boys have absorbed in Bela Fleck and Al Dimeola.

We chow down on local pulled pork BBQ and even some great veggie chili, sitting on a brick pile being taken over by vines. Big black clouds are on the horizon but gentle gray clouds hold their position overhead, and it cools off. Our evening set kicks off as darkness descends on the hollow and the bonfire blazes. Little kids hang out and dance on the clogging platform to the side of the stage. We get a stronger reaction from the crowd, and we're feeling good. Zig suggests we try the local moonshine.

It was in a Mason jar, of course, but instead of the cool, clear liquid we've tasted before, this moonshine has been aged in a charred oak barrel, just like the big boys, and Zig says that it may have been aged for two years. It's whiskey dark brown, with a real flavor, plus that moonshine zing from the very high proof. Good, good, good. And our next tasting, from the kind folks manning the merch tables, is a local peach brandy, also of professional caliber, if sweet be your thing. It's clear that craftsmanship is taken seriously here, and there is prestige to be had by the distillers. We hope to meet these underground heroes in a future trip.

September 28, 2008

WAFFLE HOUSE -- KEEPING AMERICA SAFE

Darkness. Pillows. A stumble to the bathroom. Digital clock on the little table between the Comfort Inn beds proclaims 10 a.m. Across the beige divide, Shawn slumbers, the enviable deep sleep of the good and kind man. Turn on CNN. The bailout is reaching agreement in Congress. There's no agreement. Nancy Pelosi and Christopher Dodd are our best and brightest hope. In other words, we're screwed. A knock on the door. Open the door. Jeez. It's a bright and shiny Saturday morning in Greer, South Carolina. Rob W is blindingly backlit by pale blue sky and puffy clouds, a kudzu choked yard of an auto repair garage in the bg. Zoom to RW. "Waffle House?"

Salvation. As the TV pundits babble, Bill O'Reilly denounces CEO's, George Will declares McCain unfit, and Obama sounds like young George W, hungry for fresh blood in Afghanistan, it's hard to avoid the fact that madness is the order of the day. We'd quote Yeats, but HBO's idiotic "Heroes" just did, so that noble vision of 2008 and beyond is cheapened beyond repair. Fulfilling its own dire millennial prophecy. And yet -- Salvation is At Hand.

Yes, dear reader, America has gone mad. The signs are in heaven and on earth. We just named a hurricane after Ike Turner. We're going to print $700 billion in play money after a national online deliberation of 24 hours (if you're at your computer on a Sunday afternoon). We're an anthill that's just been kicked over. Our thought patterns are ants running madly into each other, their wi fi scrambled, their standard answers useless to new and baffling questions.

And Yet -- Salvation is At Hand. We're rolling out of the Comfort Inn lot. We're on the four lane highway. One minute, no, 45 seconds, no, ten seconds away is the yellow and black sign, the signature awnings, the glory and Salvation that is Waffle House.

We enter. It's packed, but not too packed. This is a tobacco state, so the smoking section is triple the size of non smoking. We wait. Then we get the signal. From our man Antonio.

Antonio is meant for greater things than bringing you your waffles, bacon, eggs, raisin toast, coffee, and smothered, slathered, salvation hash browns. He's a star, burning almost too bright for his surroundings. But -- Wait. Hold. There is no greater good than this mission, and Antonio's is the greatness to meet the task at hand. He takes our orders, grants us substitutions, additions and omissions, sings snatches of Waylon and Willie in a better than karaoke baritone, and nails it. We feel special. And then the food arrives.

Yes, dear reader, America has gone mad. But what is America? Is there anything more American than Waffle House? Is there a finer institution, something we'd rather export to France to say yes, we have culture, we have cuisine, we have rationality, efficiency, and a system that not only works, but exudes soul and refined aesthetics in the same graceful, effortless moment? If Waffle House is America, then that star spangled banner doth wave.

And yes, these state boundaries may dissolve; we may soon indeed not be filing income tax statements, or taking our driver's test; we may in fact be hunkered down in Tujunga bivouacs and Kentucky aerie arsenals, our deer rifles trained on approaching federal troops; or we may be fleeing the conflict on commandeered luxury yachts and snowmobiles, seeking sanctuary on Vancouver Island, Medicine Hat, or Cabo Wabo. But till Antonio's apron is pried off his Waffle House carcass, till that jukebox is silenced of Journey and Elton John, till that griddle is cooled and those coffee beans unground -- we are America.

NO GAS IN CHARLOTTE

We're flying U.S. Airways to Charlotte. Dear reader, we've bagged enough on the state of air travel of late, so we'll spare you. Okay, there were moments of unpleasantness, and inappropriate hubris by Airways staff at the gate. But we'll leave it at that. We left hot sunshine and disembarked to a steady rain at Charlotte International Airport. Southern wetness feels good.

There's no gas in Charlotte. We learn this at the airport in line at the Hertz counter. It seems like a joke at first. "Hope you brought your own gas!" says the jovial guy behind the counter. He must be kidding, right? Oh, no. The Ike-inspired gas shortage is causing some mild chaos. They give us our minivan with 5/8 of a tank, the amount left over by the last rental driver. He left 5/8 of a tank and some smoky smells covered over with the toxic perfumed air "freshener" applied by the Hertz people. Hertz? Yes, it does.

The KIA mini-van is silvery gray and kind, with an innovative rear seat system that lets you make the seats disappear. Watch out, Ford and GM. You're going to be in trouble some day if these Asian carmakers keep coming up with cool stuff like this.

The gas shortage is covering the southern states like kudzu. We see long lines of cars at every Charlotte gas station, except for the stations that are shut down. We hear that that the pipeline from Houston is drained dry, and that gas is on the way, at 3 miles per hour through the evacuated pipe. Does this mean that all gas, no matter the brand name, is from one source?

We return to play at the friendly and hip Evening Muse in Charlotte. Joe, the sound man and all around good guy, hooks us up with all the gear we need. A snare drum even makes it to the stage as we are about to start. The lovely Bowman sisters kick things off with their songs of intimate personal experiences. It's raining outside. Some Charlotte folks tell us it's badly needed. This region is out of water and out of gas.

We do a semi-mellow electric show to a small but very enthusiastic crowd. Paul L is very happy with the club's Fender Champ. (Click here for a good recording of the concert, thanks to ace tapir Brian Hadella) The Carolinas are always kind to us Hawks. We pack up, chat with folks, drive off in the rain. A freight train is sitting on the tracks, and we sit on the road. That's all right. It's nice to be in the Carolina rain.

September 07, 2008

NASHVILLE - ST. PAUL - D.C.

an opinion piece by Hawks guitarist Paul Lacques

Our new American Age is the ascendancy of warped rural values.

What made us strong, what gave us soul, what defined us and defended us, went sour, and weird. All of us born after 1950 are defined by comfort, TV, and the safe and dazzling haven of the city and the suburb. We've traded life expectancy for life in the country.

My cousins in Bakersfield in the 60's were super cowboys. They were on the tractor by age 12, and not the kind with air conditioned cabs and stereo systems, but the nasty old beasts that left you at the end of the 10 hour day with sunburned skin and dust in every pore.

They were rodeo champions and pro football prospects. They played guitar well enough to master the lick from "Born On The Bayou." They listened to Glen Campbell, and Barry Sadler's "Ballad Of The Green Beret," and this was the word of God.

"I beat up a Mexican this afternoon. On the canal."

Yes, they also were racists through and through. It was a deep family belief, like their belief in Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It was a warrior's creed, unquestioned. Racism defined the cousins--along with allegiance to Dodge trucks and the Super Bee, quail hunting, the spring roundup, early and faithful marriage, and lots of babies. And country music.

KUZZ in Bakersfield played Merle and Buck and Porter Wagoner, songs about cheaters and losers and drinkers lost in the big city. It sounded different out here, in a pickup truck on an endless road cutting straight across the flat Valley floor, alongside the swift black irrigation canal and the endless cotton with the sweet reek of pesticide from the daredevil crazies in the buzzing cropdusters. The steel and fiddle and lone Telecaster stark against silent horizons.

Today the cowboys and small ranchers and family farmers are scarce enough to be exotic, exemplary, an image to fill us with yearning, like the village blacksmith or the quilting bee. Rural America is mostly worn out fields pumped with nitrogen and Roundup, corn for cow factories, rootless day laborers toiling for Archer Daniels Midland. No one's singing about these people.

Commercial country music is pragmatic, not nostalgic. In a way, it's more the real deal than the reconstituted ruralisms of the sincere practitioners of alt country. Today's Nashville sings for the soccer mom and the reformed bad boy grinning in the back row of the mega-church. Country music, severed at last from white man's blues, has drifted and mutated, like an invasive species in a strange new land.

And the Nashville sounds got real, real strange, when producers tweaked gated reverb and autotuning, country drummers learned Kiss and Metallica licks, Telecaster players bought Les Pauls and screaming distortion boxes. Nashville songwriter teams discovered Jesus lite, upbeat sentimentality, and how to subtly reference the faded soul of our rural past. Bring up the fiddle a little. Good.

And with 9/11, Nashville found its mission, its message, and its Party. Karl Rove discovered gated Jesus and the terror pedal. The president found an exaggeration to the Texas twang grafted onto his New England blue blood branches, learned a parody of rural tasks on his newly purchased ranch.

The Republican convention in St. Paul was Nashville pop dragged out over four days. Sarah Palin is Mylie Cyrus, all adolescent passion and cleverness and rage. The throaty roar of the Republican delegates is the group hysteria of lost Disney Channel teens, pitched down an octave, primed and cued to outburst at the slightest rise in pitch or rhetoric from their scrubbed new prophetess.

Rural soul is the boxed prize pig in this contest for the reins of American power. John McCain, privileged son of a Navy Admiral, has to play up his warrior status, like the ghost of a Confederate soldier sacrificed for the old ways. Never forget, we are reminded, that we are pioneers, we were formed from war, and we will never be anything else.

On the final night of the Republican convention in St. Paul, the dazzling video that introduced our next President was bursting with the naive bombast of a Nashville top ten single. Were you offended by the aggressive orchestral music, the hushed religious tones of the narrator, the story of Christ re-writ in a Hanoi torture pit?

Too bad. Move to France. The steel guitar has left the honky tonk, and the honky tonk is found only in the margins of the nation, in towns the candidates will never even hear of, let alone visit. Coming to Fresno, Mr. McCain? Mr. Obama?

Still--rural soul lives. It's in all of us. A mere 100 years ago our people farmed. The whole earth farmed. Get thee to your garden. Grow your own.