Category: folkies

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Stealin’ Stealin’!

Starters

I’ll start by mentioning something in a song by a former folksinger I do not like: ” He who is not busy being born is busy dying.”

It’s true that we should all keep moving, learning, and creating for as long as we are permitted. This time of year it is particularly true as the days get darker and we count out the names of those who no longer join us in fellowship. Do not let the dark win.

Carving

As I did last year, it’s at this point of the year that I plot out my course for the coming year. I’ll be heating the shop more in January and February because instead of a winter of design inside, I’ve decided on a winter of carving in a chilled shop. This year, the new thing was a major advance in my techniques of carving boat portraits. With the carving of Ada Bailey, my ships have broken free of the background of the carving into a new dimensionality.

Several more carvings will explore this. But more. My ships look too new. I’ll be exploring ways to subtly weather hulls and change alabaster sails into something more weathered. Not beat up, but looking like they’ve seen some weather.

Playing

I’ve been practicing guitar more, which has also meant some singing. It’s important to remember that my vocal gifts were never the best. I carefully selected most of my repertoire to match my abilities, but years of inhalers for asthma have taken a toll on my voice. Rather than give in to croaking, I’ve started singing in the car as I drive and attempting to master my new voice. Things may be trimmed from the set list.

Boundaries

Oh, the set list. Now, here is a little issue. Playing and singing have thinned the boundary between now, then, and when. I’ve had conversations with Charlie ( my 

guitar) about this. I used to have these conversations all the time when I was on the road and performing. Charlie was in constant contact with me. I practiced a minimum of two hours every day. Until my cat, Clancy, came along, it was my constant companion. Charlie was ” the Worried Man’s Companion.” I’ve beat the stuffing out of people who tried to steal my guitar. It’s special.

But recently, the conversations have been about other performers we knew, their songs, how they performed them, etc. It’s worrisome. It’s another time and place, and it also feels like another universe—one that no longer exists.

It’s like the boundary is thinning out, and I can almost reach through it. There have been too many changes in the world recently, and in the words of an old folk song, ” I don’t want to get adjusted to this world.”

Whither?

Then, last night, we went to a holiday party, and I happened to start talking to someone who was an old Folkie diehard. We knew people. We knew their stories. They knew their habits and their music.

Now, the guy who wrote the song I quoted at the top of this rant will not be named, and I don’t write about the incidents that made me dislike him. But last night, we talked about the peculiarities of all our common acquaintances, friends, and enemies. For both of us, the boundary was very thin. In our late seventies, the number of peers who know this shit is vanishingly small. for an hour it was like small bubble universe formed about us, and you’d have to be pretty audacious to butt in unless you knew why the Fort Hill bunch migrated to the Coast, what the Minetta tavern was, or why the Cafe Why Not lurked in subterranean glory opposite the Wha!

So I should end this. But!!!! If you see a spry oldster hitching a ride with a pack and guitar, give him a ride. He’ll probably be in search of a gig at a coffeehouse in some distant location. Irritate him enough and he might grace you with a song:

Stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me

I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be

Now put your arms around me like the circle round the sun

I want ya to love me, mama, like my easy rider done

If you don’t believe I love ya look what a fool I’ve been

If you don’t believe I’m sinkin’ look what a hole I’m in

Stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me

I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be

I’m stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me

I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be

The woman I’m lovin’ she just my height and size

She’s a married woman come to see me sometimes

If you don’t believe I love ya look what a fool I’ve been

If you don’t believe I’m sinkin’ look what a hole I’m in

I’m stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me

I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be

I’m stealin’, stealin’, pretty mama don’t you tell on me

I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be

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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.

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The High Life

I live a quiet and peaceful life. Wildlife, you ask? Well, the cats and dogs like to chase chipmunks and frogs. We see squirrels often, and a few years ago, a moose wandered by. The moose gave the pets some reason to be cautious.

But in general, there is not a lot of action around here. It’s just the way I like it. Quiet.

My life was different “back in the day.” To be kind, it was disturbingly dis-functional to the extreme. For much of the sixties, I was a peripatetic occupant of a crashpad on Boston’s Beacon Hill. I’ve called it the Folkie Palace and less flattering things in my writings. Half the people there were known only by nicknames: The Teahead of the August Moon, the Monk, Mike the Vike, The Canary, the Sadist, and me, Wes Carson. 

The use of nicknames makes writing about it more manageable. No real names get used to besmirch the reputations of “pillars of the community.” 

At the Folkie Palace, we did not need the excuse of it being Friday or the weekend to have a blowout party. A friend blowing into town from the “coast” was sufficient reason. All normal activity stopped. We scrupulously invited the neighbors—if they came, they couldn’t call the cops and complain.

We were cagey about our messes. The next day, we’d send a work detail to wash and clean so the rental manager wouldn’t see any signs of wrack and ruin. We were dissipated, not dumb!

Yup, it was no little gingerbread make-believe house we lived in. We were all royally pissed when the movie “Animal House” came out. 

How dare they use us as a model and not give us credit in the title roll!

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Going Home, Again?

We’ve all heard the expression, ” You can never go home again.” Having experienced it, I can tell you that it’s not the places—it’s the people.

Most of us have vague ideas of one day traveling back to somewhere we prized. Wiser heads warn us not to do it. Most of us go ahead and try anyway. I returned to New York City to find my old neighborhood unrecognizable and then had people ask me where I was from because my accent had changed. At that point, I had lived in New England for forty years and sounded more like a New Englander than a New Yorker. It was like a dash of cold water on the face.

One summer after working in Maine at the WoodenBoat School, I detoured on the way home to deliver a set of quarterboards to a client. From his house to where I had lived “in the day” was an hour’s drive. Oh, what a mistake. The site where I had lived no longer sported a cabin. It now was an entire subdivision. I retreated as rapidly as I could. In town, I recognized some businesses, but I needed people. And no one recognized me.

More recently, we visited a small city in Connecticut. Sitting in the restaurant, I had a weird deja vu sensation. Something about the center of this town seemed familiar. Then, I began to perspire. Oh yes. Around the corner, there, and down the stairs, there had been a coffeehouse I had played in. A feeling that I was being watched crept over me. Was it that attractive, mature lady? She was about the right age. Could it be? Luckily, my wife wanted to be on the road ASAP, and I did too.

Had it been Janet? I don’t know, and I feel grateful that I didn’t find out. Introductions could have been awkward. Sometimes, it’s best to leave the past alone.
” You can never go home again,” goes the saying. Having experienced it, I can tell you that it’s not the places—it’s the people. As always, be careful what you wish for.

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The Brooks Brothers Suit

I always tried hard to be off the road before Thanksgiving. By that point, travel by thumb was becoming a chancy proposition. And camping out in the woods required more than a pancho and a few blankets.
But I had a need, one November first. I had to be in a middling size city in Connecticut for a gig that Saturday.
Although I started late, I figured that I’d make it before dark, sleep on a sofa at someone’s house, and be there for the gig the next evening. I was wrong.

Getting rides was not happening. It was almost dark when I stumbled across a little stream to a thicket of woods where I figured I’d make an overnight camp. Carefully stepping from stone to stone, I managed to misstep and fall into the stream. My last dry act was to toss the guitar to the other side of the stream. Now I was wet. The clothes in my pack for the gig were also wet—no dry clothes to sleep in.

Wet and cold, I started a small fire and spread all my wet clothes out so they could dry. This looked like it was going to be a challenging evening. Then I looked over into the field behind me. There stood a nattily attired scarecrow. The three-piece suit it wore was entirely better than anything I owned. No, I thought. But it’s dry, I then thought. Let’s get it.

It took minutes to strip the scarecrow and dress it in my worn and soaked duds. I then retired to my fire and feasted on some candy bars that I kept stored in the pack for emergencies like this. It was a moment of resourcefulness in the face of adversity, and it felt empowering.

The following day, I debated redressing the scarecrow in its suit but decided that dry cleaning would make it the best feature of my sad and tawdry wardrobe. Besides, anyone who could afford to discard an excellent Brooks Brothers suit for a scarecrow wouldn’t miss it. I dressed in my now dry spares and packed away the suit.

In about ten minutes, I was in a nearby roadhouse. The $.99 breakfast special was terrific. I ate and listened to the local gossip. The gossip stopped me cold.

It turned out that Mrs. Doughtry wanted to play a joke on her husband. He was skinny ( like I was in those days), and she couldn’t fatten up no matter how good her cooking was. As a joke, she had dressed their garden scarecrow in his best Brooks Brothers suit. But this morning, when she showed him her joke, the scarecrow was attired in some bums-worn-out jeans and a chambray shirt. Sheriff Doughtry was not amused and was looking for whoever had swiped the suit.

Instead of hitchhiking, I walked calmly to the nearby bus terminal and took the next bus to where I was going. The last person I wanted to run into while hitching was an angry sheriff who wanted to know how his Brooks Brothers suit had wound up in my backpack.

I wore the suit for several years. It was eventually stolen from my pack, but I was glad to see it gone by then. I felt a bit guilty every time I wore it.

So, if you come across a well-attired scarecrow, think twice before taking advantage of the poor thing.

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A Beacon Hill Halloween

Halloween was always an oversized event among the habitues of the backside of Boston’s Beacon Hill. The residents of the posher front side of the Hill and Back Bay residents described our neighborhood as a “working-class slum.”

But we noted that they always crept into our neighborhood for the outrageous at Halloween. Costumes, impromptu parades, bizarre behaviors, and general mayhem, which was Halloween in our neighborhood.

It was an interesting part of town with a very diverse population. The base level was the average Bostonian with firmly established roots in the area. Additionally, there were nurses, technicians, and physicians from the Eye and Ear and the Massachusetts General Hospitals. Then there were the old West End refugees from the neighborhood that the city had cleared for “redevelopment.” Lastly, there were the Folkies, who resided there for the cheap rent.

It was a real neighborhood, and it was Home. It was also whacked out on Halloween. Seeing the hospital crew doing a fake surgery on a monster wasn’t unusual. IV bottles were full of a horrid Vodka cocktail that everyone would suck from periodically, including the patient. Every building had at least one open house party. And on Charles Street for many years, there was a very risque semi-official parade. It seemed as if the workday slowly sunk into a celebratory revel that was much less proper Bostonian and much more out of Petronius the Arbiter’s Satyricon of Nero’s Rome.

I always tried to make it back to Boston for this holiday. All I had to do was sit on the stoop at our folkie Paradise on Grove Street. Eventually, all the goblins, ghosts, ghouls, politicians, and unvirtuous dead would stream by.

There was another side to this, However. Boston’s Finest was busy with brawls, drunks, and emergencies—likewise, the fire department. If you were, unfortunately, working in the emergency department of the General, there were suicide attempts, alcohol intoxications, insertion of foreign objects where they did not belong, and all sorts of other real horrors that out competed the false ones on the streets.

Luckily, the MTA—public transportation—stopped running early. So sometime around two AM, people caught the last trolleys and trains to Cambridge, Dorchester, and Southie. By three, only the truly dedicated witches and ghouls roamed the streets with bedraggled broomsticks and gauze wrappings. When the sun started to come up, only the litter left from the partying was there to greet it.

Christmas in Boston was lovely, with the Common lit up and the stores decorated. But it lacked the gritty and decadent ballyhoo of Halloween. Nowadays, you go to Salem for the Halloween experience, but back when the world seemed a bit younger at heart, you could find your mayhem closer to home.

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The Great Louie Lefkowitz

It came up just the other day. Who was the best blues harmonica player ever? Someone to my right mentioned a member of a successful band. I almost choked on my soup. Then, one by one, my friends rolled off a list of their favorites: John Lee Curtis, Little Walker, Sonny Terry, and Charlie Musselwhite. All outstanding harpists and masters of the blues vibe.*

“But,” I interposed, ” you forgot Louie Lefkowitz.” There was an incredulous “Who?” from the far end of the table. That’s when I started telling them about Lefkowitz and his unique abilities. Lefkowitz was in the Village at the same time as me. Anytime someone was playing blues at a local club or bar, you would likely find Louie backing them up on harp. Lots of us went just to hear him play. He was sought after because he could make a so-so guitarist sound like a million dollars. Every once in a while, he’d back me up, and I always felt that there was something special about those nights.

But Lefkowitz had other abilities, too. Given a theme, he could compose a satirical ditty on the spot right out of his head. We’d be sitting around in the back room at Rienzi’s, and Louie would pop in. Someone would comment on what was happening in New York City politics, and out would pop a satyrical verse.

Lefkowitz was also hard to miss. He was short and skinny, Black, and very Jewish. He spoke English, Yiddish, and badly accented Spanish. Like most of us, he had an intricate backstory that was parsed just so as to conceal some of the parts we preferred to hide. In those days, nothing in Greenwich Village was quite what it let on. The mystique was an essential part of the existence. But Louie had the mystique by the horns and shook it up. Not much to look at, but you focused on him as soon as he played the harp.

He upset people, too. Just about a week before I blew the scene to head to Boston, we were all sitting around Rienzi’s Coffeehouse as Louie taught us the words to a newly created satire of Dylan’s “Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man.” Just about then the man himself walks in. Louie stands up like a conductor, waves his hands, and goes 1 and 2 and – “Hey, Mr. Tangerine man….” and leads us through the verses about Dylan and his then-girlfriend. Dylan turned without a word and walked out.

As I mentioned, I hitched up to Boston to look for a gig about a week later and returned late in the fall. In those days, that was an entire generation in the Village. Folk Rock had started appearing in the clubs. A new crop of Dylan and Baez wannabes had appeared, and many of my friends had split the scene. Lefkowitz was one of the departees.

Where did he go? My Ex, Sue, thought that he’d gone back to Brooklyn. Someone else mentioned that they heard he enrolled at Yeshiva and was serious about becoming a Rabbi. Louie had always taken his faith very seriously.
I knew just a bit more about Louie than was expected on MacDougall Street. He was the son of a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant and a Nigerian woman whom his father had met at the UN. Educated at private schools and a resident of Brooklyn, he was not really the street-savvy tough guy he pretended to be. But like me, he understood that walking the walk and talking the talk was a part of performing. Who’s going to take you seriously on a stage in Greenwich Village when they hear that you went to fancy private schools and chummed around with the kids of the diplomatic community? So, you were a high school dropout from Brooklyn.

I have no idea what happened to Lefkowitz. Like my Road Bum persona, he may have simply dissolved as other events shaped his life. But I was adamant in maintaining to my friends that the great Louis Lefkowitz had to be in the Top Ten.

We old Folkies have to stick together; there are few of us left!

  • So you heard the bit about “you can’t make up stuff like this?” It’s true. I’ve fictionalied bits of this, but it is based on true events, and real people. Like lots of the 60’s and 70’s scenes they were as much fantasy as reality.
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Stage Fright

Daily writing prompt
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
View all responses

Opinions vary. A music teacher told me it was a one-time thing for her. A friend informed me that it was a nightly thing. Others have said it depended on their “read of the house”—the audience. I am talking about stage fright, and learning to overcome it or master it can be a difficult process.
Being timid is not something we often associate with performers. But it is a common phenomenon, and people I’ve known use things as esoteric as rituals and prayer to steel themselves for getting on stage. It is not something to joke about when you see a talented performer chanting a mantra in panic just before walking out in front of a small coffeehouse audience. That’s another thing. For some, the size of the house matters, and for others, that’s irrelevant.
My ritual was the icebreaker song. I’d pick a song to play first that would break the ice with the audience. It would get me over my initial stage fright. It was something I knew well. Playing it allowed me to get a read on the house as I watched their reaction to it. While I performed it, I was already reshuffling my set list in my mind to adjust for the “read.”

It’s possible that some publisher has made a small bundle on a book offering solutions to the problem. But in my experience, other, more experienced performers offered tips to the newcomers. You’d find something that fits your panic level and gave satisfaction. for many people overcoming stage fright never forms as rigid goal you plan to overcome.

Perhaps in the book I proposed methods are offered. Or schools may offer workshops which provide guides and plans for it. but for many of us it was a need to do thing. You jumped into the pool and swam…or sunk. For me it was hard to start and stop. If I had a long term gig, or a steady stream of work it faded. If I was out of work it returned.

Was stage fright the hardest thing I ever worked to overcome? I’m not really sure, but it certainly came to mind immediately when I saw this prompt!

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Blue in the Corners

When I left El Paso, I was roaring drunk. The entire trip had been a frolicking detour to see an old Navy buddy and his wife. The visit had been too much of a success to some extent. I’d met up with Shara, fallen fast, and could not get up. 

Years later, an old Patti Smith song would start flashbacks. Because The Night is still not a song I can easily listen to, snatches of memory come back: Shara painting in her studio, me telling her that the portrait of me she was doing needed more blue in the shadows, and the bottles of tequila lined up like dead soldiers.

What came together so rapidly decayed just as fast—the fights and accusations. It was like nasty scenes from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf. I found myself drunk, on the road with only my pack and guitar. I headed back to the east coast in one fantastic hell ride with some dude who must have been transporting. But I was beyond caring.

So it was a surprise last week. I was hanging around the local Barnes and Noble, browsing magazines. I opened the most recent Arts Quarterly and found my face staring out at me. Shara had put more blue in the shadows.

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American Pie

Thinking about favorite albums and performers this morning led me down some twisty corridors of memory. I wound up in a seldom-visited cul de sac on Boston’s Beacon Hill. Another folksinger living in the next building was in talks with a major label. Rumors of an album were floated.

Whenever something important like this happened in our little society, there was a combination of happiness and jealousy. Happiness that one of us was moving up, and jealousy that it was not us. For me it was jealousy. Of course, I was not ready for such a movement. It would have taken a combined equinox, lunar eclipse, and alignment of the planets to bring about. I even knew I was not ready. But never the less, I was jealous.

It seemed like we’d be having coffee every day and asking for status reports. Have you been signed yet? Where will you record? What songs will be in the album? Do they see a single in this?

Every day the answer would be the same, “We’re still talking.”

Eventually, we stopped asking. Then, one day, we heard that they were talking about changes in the songs. They wanted to put strings behind the vocals and hire studio musicians for backup tracks. Music, even for folk musicians, was changing. We all loudly cursed Bob Dylan, ritually shot him the finger, and encouraged our fellow in arms to hang tough.

Eventually, nothing came of it: no single and no album.

Like many coffeehouse singers, that one drifted away – and went to grad school. One friend started a restaurant, another went to nursing school, and lots just drifted away. Many of us felt by 1969 that a great opportunity in American Life had slipped away.

It would be hard to pick one album that speaks to me about the whole era, but the closest is Don McLean’s American Pie album. The song hits all the notes:

I met a girl who sang the blues

And I asked her for some happy news

But she just smiled and turned away

I went down to the sacred store

Where I’d heard the music years before

But the man there said the music wouldn’t play

And in the streets, the children screamed

The lovers cried and the poets dreamed

But not a word was spoken

The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most

The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost

They caught the last train for the coast

The day the music died

And they were singing bye, bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey ‘n rye

Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die

This’ll be the day that I die