On Stage? Me?

A quick look at my hands shows that the nails on the left hand are clipped close, while those on the right are longer. It’s been that way since I was twelve and took up the guitar. At age thirteen, I got up and sang an original composition at the local talent show and got a taste of what applause can do to an ego. It was the beginning of the slide downhill into being a folksinger at coffeehouses, bars, and the occasional street corner.

When the New York City School Department declared me an intolerable nuisance and expelled me from high school, I took the loose alternative and migrated to Greenwich Village. Then, the Village was ground zero for the folk revival. I was in the right place at the right time, and it profoundly affected me; some might say it corrupted me.

My first appearance on stage in the Village was with a jug band group that my friend Bart was part of. I was recruited one night to fill in for an absent band member. It was the Hobwalled Apple Knockers, and the venue was the rather infamous Village Purple Onion. I was hooked, and soon, I was a regular at some of the lower-tier Coffeehouses in the Village, such as the Cafe Why Not and the Dragon’s Den. Between sets, I could be found in the back room of Cafe Rienzi.
In the Rienzi, I hung out with Beat poet refugees from the West Coast, other folksingers, and slumming academics from nearby universities. The general public did not know about the back room, so depending on your take on Village society, I was among the elite or in the mud with society’s rejects. We firmly believed that it was the former.

While most of my former associates “Up Town” hibernated and lived quiet middle- and working-class lives, I found myself ripped out of that whether I wanted to or not. And no, we were not Hippies; they came along later. I found myself rubbing elbows with anarchists, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, artists, authors, composers, and erudite bums. It was the early 1960s, and at least in places like the Village, a person’s gender and sexual preferences were their choice, not that of the outside society. I remember one night when an out-of-towner tried to lodge a complaint with the manager about a “bunch of queers” at the table next to him. He was summarily told that “his type” was not appreciated and he should finish up and leave. Always into absurd performance art, the regulars stood to give a round of applause.

So there you have it. I was corrupted at an early age. Eventually, I left the Village to chase gigs, “see the elephant,” and travel around. I performed on and off into the 1970’s but was called out of retirement in the nineties to do a friend’s funeral. The widow requested that I pull every dirty ditty out of my repertoire to do at the wake. The attendees were all sailors who taught me some new, dirtier verses than the ones I had sung.

So you see, I have to keep the nails on my hands trimmed properly, the guitar hung up in easy reach, and a willingness to take a good loose alternative. You never know what may turn up.