| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Jay |
Posted - 08/05/2003 : 2:09:12 PM
This is a great story form one of my favorite musicians...I love this.
Hello everyone,
People in Tuxedos. People in check-shirts. People with processed hair. People with comb-overs and shorts that come up to their armpits. All aboard! As the train lurches forward en route to Pawling New York where the Towne Crier and a forty five minute opening spot for Steve Forbert awaits, one is wont to reminisce.
After playing in Pittsburgh last night and scraping together the barest possible portion of miserly mind-muted minutes (ie. two hours sleep), before racing back to yet another airport in order to reach this platform on time for the 5:47 Metro North, having convinced yourself that an upright state of semi-slumber is actually your preferred physical condition, your mind wanders back through the catalogue of road trips past. You can't help but stroll through the memory lane of previous trials, tribulations, tantrums and retributions in an attempt to rub your own shoulder and tell yourself "You'll survive big boy." With all this in mind I endeavour to share with you:
THE RED EARTH HEDLAND DASH,
NORTH-WEST AUSTRALIA SEPTEMBER 1994
I had been looking forward to these shows for some time. For one thing it was to be the first string of gigs where I had my first album RAVENSWOOD on the road with me. I believe I had been to the North West once before this but this was certainly the first time that my good buddy Phil Manning and I had been here together. I played two nights solo at the Karatha Tavern (the first of these under the haze of an acute ear infection, a condition which gives a live performance an "out-of-body" type aura, whereby the musician has the visual immediacy of the room in front of him as he plays, but experiences the sound as if he were submerged in the swimming pool of a nearby motel). Phil arrived for the third night, met at the airport by a Tavern employee holding a sign which read "FEEL MANSON".
At the end of the night, Phil and I sat down for a Coopers and a Water respectively, blissfully unaware that we were soon to fall prey of the vagaries of local timedistance perception. "Where are you two off to next?" the hotel manager enquired. "Newman", we replied. "How long will it take us to get there? Five hours or so?" the manager widened his eyes. "Oh at least that long by the main highways! You'd be fools to go that way though. You'd be way better off taking the service road along the railway line." Various locals and staff members in the immediate vicinity of our table concurred wholeheartedly. "You'll get there in under 3 hours by that road, easily!" Easily.
So with those words ringing in our ears and a false sense of security surrounding our rented Jeep, off we turned down the railway service road for a nonchalant 3 hour cruise to Newman. Basically a mining town, Newman had already been the source of some chuckles for Phil and myself as a result of the Newman postcard we had found at a general store which depicted various town "attractions" to the prospective tourist on their corresponding cards. You've probably seen these types on postcards for more famous locales plenty of times. A New York City Postcard for instance might have a picture of the Empire State Building or a homeless bum sleeping in a dumpster. A Cairns card might have the Great Barrier Reef. Cowes, Victoria" postcard has the Giant Earthworm. Ahem! Newmans postcard simply had a photo of an enormous explosion sending dirt and debris high into the air. It appeared as though this is what had happened to Newman itself and we couldn't help but wonder if we would arrive there to find a big gaping hole where Newman once stood.
Six and a half hours later we were seriously contemplating whether this was in fact the case and that we had blinked and missed it, as we were still bumping along on the service road. Evidently not a great deal of service was tendered this particular railroad track as we had yet to witness a single vehicle other than our own on this barren stretch of red dirt. "Imagine breaking down out here!" I said as Phil decided to take an exit road labelled "Whittenoon". Maybe someone at Whittenoon could tell us where the hell we were supposed to be by now. Just as we pulled up near the local hotel, (whose boarded-up windows were a fair indicator of a lack of abundant trade), we heard a loud "BANG!" as the front drivers side tyre burst. "Oh well, we'll just pop the spare on," we thought. "Simple." Except that there didn't appear to be a jack anywhere on the vehicle.
Finally, after getting desperate (or fed-up) enough to start pulling up the vinyl wall panels, we found the jack inside the side wall of the Jeep near the rear wheel arch, submerged in brown water. Of course, should've looked there first! Proceeding to get covered in red dirt we changed the flat tyre. Okay, now to find someone to tell us where we are. Phil slipped her into first and the Jeep screeched loudly and refused to move. We had the wrong sized spare wheel and it was locking up against the brake mechanism. Of course! I left Phil with the Jeep to contemplate which particular brand of letter bomb to send Avis Car Rental and managed to find a general store who pointed us to a couple of English gentlemen who lived two blocks from where we broke down.
I guess anyone living is such a remote location would need some kind of puncture repair setup and these guys had it down. As they fixed our flat tyre I asked them why the pub was closed."Not enough people live here anymore" one of them told us. "How come?" I asked. "Asbestos poisoning. Not that you can tell....." As he said this he bent down, his eyes not leaving mine as he grabbed a handful of dirt from his drive-way and held it in front of me. It was full of asbestos fibre. More fibre than dirt it seemed.
"Why don't you leave?" Phil asked.
"Where would we go? We can't afford to buy property anywhere else, we're too old to get a job and who'd buy this place?" He gestured with his hand.
"What about the mining company? Surely you could get compensation?"
He looked blankly at us.
"Sure. We'll see them in court in about eighty years if we're real persistent...."
We gave them some money for fixing the tyre and they gave us directions to get to Newman. We were two hours away and covered in red dirt from head to toe. It was seven in the evening. We were pushing shit uphill to make it on time.
Looking at our dirty clothes one of the Englishmen said "Where have you two been?" we told him.
"The SERVICE ROAD!? Who the fuck told you to go that way ........?"
Sigh.
As we sped into Newman I joked, "Imagine that we get there and there's no P.A." "Don't say that!" Phil said. We worked out that as Phil loaded our gear into the venue I could get cleaned up then play the first set while Phil found our accommodation and had himself a shower before taking on the second set. We found the Red Sands Tavern and ran inside. There was no P.A. After much moaning and gnashing of teeth a P.A. was located and brought in. We played the first of our two night stint at the Red Sands Tavern to six men and a dog. Many iced waters and Coopers later, after somehow resisting the advances of a sexually starved miner we made it to the motel for a well deserved heavy nights sleep.
We arrived for the Saturday night show at the Red Sands. The room was nearly empty with about 20 minutes until we were due to start. We stood at the bar between four Aboriginal men and a couple of white guys in their mid twenties. One of the white guys wore glasses and hardly said a word. The other was far more verbal.
"I hope you guys are gonna play some REAL blues tonight, not that crap you played last night!" he said about four inches from my face.
"Well that depends on what you think real blues is." I replied evenly.
"Wellll......REAL blues goes like: How, how, howwwww....." he said, doing his best impersonation of George Thorogood impersonating John Lee Hooker. "Can you do that stuff?" he challenged.
"Well not really" I said "I mean only black men can sing that stuff properly."
"WHAT?!" he yelled: "YOU WON"T SING FOR BLACK MEN? RACIST!!!!! THIS GUY"S A RACIST!!!! He was yelling this towards the four Aboriginal guys. "That"s not what I said," I protested, but he was off. "RACIST! RACIST! THIS GUY WON"T SING FOR BLACK MEN! ETC......"
I looked towards Phil " What a fuckwit!" I said. Big Mistake. "What did you CALL ME?! NO-ONE CALLS ME A FUCKWIT!! OHHHH YOU"RE A DEAD MAN!!!"
I tried to explain that I called him a fuckwit because he was calling me a racist, which I explained I am not, and that he was misquoting me to the Aboriginals which in my eyes made him a fuckwit. He was having none of this. He pointed out in no uncertain terms that he was going to have to beat me to death for this and that the beating would happen at the end of the night outside the Tavern, as this was the only pub in town he wasn't banned from. Oh dear. Phil graciously took the stage for the first set while I stood across the room from the psychotic guy and his graven-faced bespectacled friend, contemplating my imminent violent death. He was leering at me continually through Phils' set, and it became clear to me that he wouldn't just drop the issue, and that with surely nothing better to do with his time he would doubtless be waiting outside for me, no matter how long I cowered indoors.
I don't know what exactly possessed me to go and stand next to him, but I guess in lieu of any other strategy this was all that was left to do.
It proved to be a sound move. After screaming at me for half and hour or so, he suddenly turned around offering his hand and telling me how much he admired me for "not backing down." I told him that I was grateful for this change of heart as I had no desire to be beaten senseless this evening. "Oh I know I would've killed you," he said "but it's the fact that you "DIDN'T BACK DOWN......' Some kind of code of honour among thugs was my unlikely saviour that night. The first words that his visually impaired partner uttered for the evening were when Phil and I were playing the duo set later that night. The quiet one leaned over and muttered something in the ear of the loud-mouth one. The loud one grabbed the nearest glass from the bar and smashed it over the quiet ones' head!
Apparently this was by REQUEST (!) as the quiet one placed his glasses back on his bloodied face and nodded his thanks before they turned their attention back to the stage.
"He just split up with his missus,---- the loud one later explained........
The next day we had to travel from Newman to Port Hedland to fly back to our respective homes. Sydney and Brisbane. We were told that there were no flights from Newman so we had a 450 km drive ahead of us. Nothing too difficult in that especially with recent experience telling us to stick to the main road. We emerged from the motel find a deflated rear tyre on our rented Jeep.
"What the #@&*?!" The local Avis representatives were very apologetic while they repaired the flat (that's right, they had no correctly fitting spares!)
We now had four hours until our plane took off. As we raced up the highway towards Port Hedland a thought entered my mind.
"Hey Phil, imagine if..."
"Don't tell me you bastard! "Phil interrupted.
"Every fucked-up thing you've imagined on this trip has come true so far! Keep it to yourself!"
I couldn't argue with him really. There was a fuel station at the halfway point and as we approached it we had a hard decision to make. Do we fill up the tank and waste precious minutes in the process, or trust that we will make it on what we have. We had a quarter of a tank of petrol left with 200-odd km to go and an hour and three quarters till our plane took off. "We'll make it," we decided as we sped past the fuel stop. Idiots. We spent the last forty-five minutes of the journey watching the fuel gauge slip further and further below empty. We finally came to a fork in the road: "Port Hedland. South Hedland. "we didn't have a clue where the airport was but the South Hedland turnoff had a petrol bowser symbol next to it, so we veered to the right. As Phil threw some fuel in our breathlessly hungry engine I hurriedly asked where the airport was. "JUST 500M AROUND THE NEXT CORNER!"
At last a small glimmer of good fortune! We made it to the baggage counter 1.47 minutes before take off. Our guitars and bags wouldn't make this flight we were informed. They'll have to go on the next one and be rechecked on the connecting flights from Perth. "Whatever!" we said as we ran onto the tarmac and up the aircraft stairs.
PLONK! At last we plonked ourselves onto those wonderfully cramped air plane seats. looked at each other and said a big "Thank fuck that's over!" As we moved out onto the runway for take off I heard Phils' voice: "Jeff....have you looked at your boarding pass....?" I read the card:
PORT HEDLAND TO PARABADU
PARABADU TO NEWMAN
NEWMAN TO KARATHA
KARATHA TO PERTH
"I don't know whether to laugh or get really pissed off!" said Phil, managing to achieve both simultaneously as we soared over the red carpet below.
It's now 11:30 pm and I'm on the train again heading back from Pawling to Manhattan. Steve Forbert drew a packed house at the Towne Crier and I played to an extremely receptive virgin audience who greeted the end of my set with an encore and a standing ovation(!) As I read back over this account of a single weekend from four years ago and think of my night ahead staying in a friends' east Harlem loft with a maximum sleep quota of six hours before catching the plane to Nashville, I am reminded that we choose the life we lead. This bed is of my making and at the end of the day I am always glad to lie in it.
Jeff Lang. September 1998
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