Musings

It’s Labor Day. Yikes.

It’s Labor Day. The ultimate contradiction since the name implies that this is the day we labor.

But no….

We get today off. A nice three day weekend.

Yesterday was March. I’m pretty sure it was. What? September?

We blinked and we are at the end of the summer. What a strange feeling. Georgia and I had a whole summer’s worth of shows and traveling to do and it went away.

The last five months have been full of home made desserts and Peaky Blinders.

What has been the craziest thing is my writing. I’ve gone nutso with it. Turns out when I have to write… I don’t like to write.

When I don’t have to write…I’m a wild man.

Songs are leaking out of me like ….

I’m sorry. Every simile I can think of right now is disgusting.

“Like _______ out of a runner’s ____ who just carb loaded at Taco Bell.”

“Like __________from the _____________ of a teenage boy on Prom Night”

Yikes.

See? I can’t stop writing sensitive and pithy lyrics.

By the end of Labor Day I will undoubtedly have labored myself into a new song. I have about three albums worth. What do I do with them? My storage room can’t hold any more boxes of cds with my face on them. (Maybe I should always put Georgia’s face on my cds. Then they would sell!)

I could make videos for all the songs and put them up on YouTube. (If I were twenty and had forty more years to live.)

I could find a plugger here in town and actually shop them around to the new artists and see if anyon…….sorry. I couldn’t even finish typing that sentence. I was laughing too hard.

So….Happy Labor Day everyone. Blink and we’ll be wishing each other a Happy Thanksgiving and then a Happy New Year.

I’m going to invest in some of those eye clamps like they used at the end of “Clockwork Orange.”

Can’t blink….can’t lose any more time.

Long-Term Commitments

I gotta tell ya….writing blogs to be released every Monday morning was a lot easier when I would spend the week out in the real world doing what I used to call “stuff.”

Georgia and I would go out to restaurants and the waiter would do something that made us laugh or at the very least say to each other “Well, there goes HIS tip.” Boom. That’s a blog right there.

I’d go to an office down on the Row to write with somebody and I would see all the signs hanging from the office buildings, telling me about another twenty-year old writer who just had a number one. Boom. I got a blog about how it feels to NOT have any signs hanging on buildings down on Music Row. (Hint: It feels great. I have embraced my anonymity and it makes my underworld activities so much safer for my “crew.”)

I still go grocery shopping but since I am wearing a mask and everyone I see is hopefully wearing a mask…I can’t recognize anyone and no one recognized me. I don’t have to say hello to anyone. It is an introvert’s wet dream. The downside is that I run into no one who might have an interesting story to tell me that I could then write as a blog and claim it actually happened to ME.

I have been doing these blogs for a long time so I think I can be forgiven for a little experiential plagiarism.

But we have a pact, remember? I made the early, unfortunate choice of not putting an expiration date on this little exercise so on and on and on it goes until I am stealing whole chapters out of books I’ve read and passing them off as my own life.

That’s all for now. I have to get back out in the yard and keep whitewashing the fence with my pal Huck….

Back at The Bluebird

Last Friday night Georgia and I were onstage, singing at the famous Bluebird Café. The audience was quiet and attentive.

Both of them.

This was the Bluebird’s first virtual show…a test run, as it were. Georgia and I have been doing virtual shows on a platform called Stageit every Wednesday night ever since the quarantine hit. We know how it works and we shared our knowledge with the Bluebird to try to help them get up and running.

It was strange to be there playing to an empty house but it was empowering too. It felt like we were reclaiming a bit of our industry, fifty minutes at a time.

That night also made us both think about our history at the club and remember how much it means to us. I have some amazing memories from my years of playing there. Allow me to share a few:

The Bluebird is where I was performing a showcase and my background singer Faith got a record deal instead of me. That’s okay. She was prettier.

I played in the round with amazing artists like Michael McDonald, Carole King, Kenny Loggins, John Sabastian, Richard Marx, Olivia Newton John…the list goes on and on.

We played birthday pajama parties there. We had a band that included hit songwriters Vince Melamed, Jim Photoglo and Bob DiPiero and we were called Mel DiBurpho and every spring we would celebrate our collective birthdays by having a pajama party at the Bluebird. The audience wore pajamas too and it was a blast.

We would do crazy things. We’d set an alarm and when it went off we would take our break…even if it were in the middle of a song.

We would order pizzas for the whole club and auction off autographed slices (the crust).

One year I bought two huge teddy bears and sliced open their stomachs so I could slip my feet into them and wear them all night as slippers.

Most of my friends are Bluebird friends. I met them there or played with them there or saw them there and went up after the show and introduced myself and begged them to be my friend.

Friday night we felt like we were helping to nurse the club back to health, in a small way. We were very careful and health conscious. I hope they do more of these shows. Just seeing the neon bluebird lit up behind the stage made me feel a little better about the world.

We didn’t order pizza but if we had… we could have gotten away with a small.

Pure Prairie League

In 1974 Pure Prairie League was playing Wesleyan College, right up the street. I had recently returned from Santa Cruz and was working at an auto parts store. I took the job in a desperate effort to resist the gravitational pull of Dad’s business. Let me type that again: an AUTO Parts store.

I had no idea what tie rods were, but for several months I pretended I did and handed them over to people who seemed to really need them and trust me. With luck they nodded and handed me $37.50. Sometimes they asked me questions like “Do I need to replace the floivan if the retro gaskets are spoogled?” That’s when I became the Bill Murray character in the Greek Diner sketch. Frantically nodding my head and hoping one of the grizzled veterans would step up and answer.

This job did not pay well enough to allow me concert tickets. I drove up to the campus in the late afternoon and looked for the auditorium, hoping I could hear a little bit of their sound check.

I found the venue, parked the car and set my ear against a large metal door.  I could hear them running through “Country Song”…the very song that made me fall in love with this band! It was so cool to hear them working it out…starting and stopping…..great harmonies. The song finished and I thought that was about as much excitement as I was going to get when suddenly the door opened and out came their bass player, Mike Reilly. He was incredibly warm and nice to me (didn’t offer me tickets even though I very plainly told him I was too broke to come to the show) and chatted with me for a nice while.

Pure Prairie League went through some strange transitions in the next bunch of years. They got Vince Gill in the band and went pop with saxophones and stuff and put out their big pop hit “Let Me Love You Tonight” . They appeared on Midnight Special. This was not my favorite time for them. I sort of lost interest in this new version but treasured the old records and the memory of that afternoon at their sound check.

One day in 1980, Harold, my producer in NYC,  called and said he had an interesting proposition for me. He was also my publisher and had been sending out my tapes a hundred at a time all over the country to try and get my songwriting career going. One of the people he had been sending regular tapes to was a producer who was in talks to do an album with Pure Prairie League. The band had a slight dilemma. They had just fired Vince Gill. (Their side of the story. Fired? Quit? Vince will have to tell you his own damn version over breakfast at Noshville) They hired a new guy and just had to fire him because on the first gig he had sex with the housekeeper at the hotel and the hotel management frowned on that.

The producer knew my voice and thought I would be a good fit. Would I be interested in flying to Cincinnati and auditioning for the slot?

I hopped on a plane (on their dime…holy cow this is real show business) and I went out where I discovered that, rather than being a voice the producer insisted would be the missing piece….I was one of many singers they were auditioning that week. One of the hopefuls had just won Star Search. If it came down to him and me, my only hope would be that they would quiz us on car parts and I could tell them how much a tie rod costs.

The good news? They chose me. I was now the lead singer of one of my favorite bands. The bad news? They had a saxophone. No steel guitar. A saxophone.  They were a much more rock and pop sounding band than I remember. It was still an amazing lineup. Al Garth on sax and Merle Bregante on drums, from the Loggins and Messina band (foreshadowing?) Tim Goshorn, a great lead guitarist who’s brother used to be in the band and wrote several of their hits during the “Two Lane Highway” era. Mike Reilly still on bass. He did not remember our conversation all those years ago. (Do I not make the impression I think I do? He was probably on drugs.)

The downiest down side was that my idol, Craig Fuller, was no longer with them. He started the band and wrote all those great early songs like “Amie” and “Early Morning Riser.” That meant I was singing Amie. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and thanked me for writing that song and telling me how great it was. In the beginning I tried to give credit where it was due and tell them Craig wrote it. After a few months I just started saying “thank you” and signing their breasts. I signed very illegibly so they would see what they want to see.

After about a year I got the great news that Craig Fuller was rejoining the band. I would still have plenty of songs to sing but he would take over the ones he wrote. Craig is a brilliantly cynical bastard. At one outdoor concert we got to the last chorus of Amie, where we stop singing and let the audience carry the song. We had about 10,000 people singing at the top of their lungs. That would make me pretty damn emotional if it was a song I had written. Craig sidled up next to me, leaned his head close to mine, smirked and said “Touching, isn’t it?”

I stayed with PPL for about six years and had some wonderful experiences. Vince and I were both inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame on the same year so we laughed about our connection. Their great steel player John David Call is back with the band these days. Reilly is still on bass and looks more and more like “Old Luke”, the guy on their album covers.. Their wonderful piano player Michael Connor passed away as did Tim Goshorn…. yikes, we’re losing people.

One of the great seminal country rock bands. And “Amie” is one of the best songs ever written about an underage French Canadian prostitute.

Imaginary Lobster Salad Sandwiches

I am getting on a plane today to fly to New Hampshire to do a show at the Tupelo Music Hall with my CSN Tribute Band, Laurel Canyon.

I thought a blog about my flying experience during the pandemic might be interesting.

I’m afraid that this weekend I will be busy with the show and everything so I decided to write the blog ahead of time. Here goes:

I decided to wear a full hazmat coverall on the plane. Unfortunately the only ones I could find on Amazon were “smalls” so they weren’t totally comfortable. I can’t stand exactly “upright” in it and there is no room for any clothing underneath. I should not have worn my necklace when I went through security. The alarm went off. I didn’t have to totally disrobe but I did have to pull the zipper down far enough for what TSA calls a “Security Peek” that pretty much went down “the whole way”.

I got to the airport with plenty of time but I was too afraid to sit anywhere so I went to the men’s room and got about forty paper towels to spread out on a chair. To be absolutely safe I then perched up ON the chair like some sort of Puffin or an Egret. That seemed hygienic. I had long ago decided that, upon landing, I would throw my shoes away and buy new ones in New Hampshire. Clogs maybe.

I thought the plane would be half full but it was empty!!!! It was a little embarrassing when the gate lady came on to tell me I had taken the wrong gate ramp and was sitting in a plane that was going in for servicing. Oh well. Better safe than sorry.

I found the right plane and it was indeed only a third full. Maybe forty people in total. Everyone wore a mask. I wore a complete face shield with a mask underneath. I thought it would be a fun touch to paint the shield red white and blue and tell everyone I was Captain America but that plan backfired. It actually made the plane ride very uncomfortable and boring because I could not read through the paint so I had to sit still and “listen” to a movie. “Ghostbusters,”  I think. Maybe “A Few Good Men.” My ears were clogged up.

I accepted no food or beverages on the plane. I had packed a bit of last night’s dinner in my knapsack and discretely slipped bites up under my mask during the flight to Cleveland. The bad choice was actually made the night before when Georgia and I opted for a full rack of Martin’s ribs. When we landed in Cleveland I kind of looked like Dexter, (season five).

I was worried that New England would turn me away since I was coming from one of the states still racking up bad numbers but apparently, because I was born in Connecticut, I was allowed in under a Grandfather Clause that not only allowed me to stay in hotels but to French kiss the woman behind the Best Western counter.

The flight back was much, much easier. I made so much money playing the show that I took a private plane back to Nashville.

Had lobster salad sandwiches.

This was written Friday at noon…three hours before I left to go to the airport. It is all imaginary. I’ve never had a lobster salad sandwich.

Big Boxes

Amazon boxes are piling up in the garage entrance of our house. Big boxes that held big things. Big boxes that held little tiny things. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of logic behind what goes into where. Kind of like an orgy when everyone is on acid.

(So I’m told.)

We are not indiscriminately buying stuff. We bought a thermometer that you hold up to your forehead and it tells you if you are alive or a zombie.

(Independent thought. Why is zombie spelled with an “ie” and not a “Y”?

Is it because spelling it like “zomby” might make them seem too cuddly, like Skippy who lives next door? Only this Skippy will chew your face off to get at your brains?)

Back to buying stuff. Sorry.

We bought some work out stuff so we can look at it sitting in the corner and say “Well, it’s not like we’re not trying.”  We bought some up lights for the yard. I haven’t weeded for quite a while because of the heat…but at least now, at night, our weeds look magnificent.

That got me thinking.
What’s the best and worst thing you ever bought?

The best thing I ever bought was this huge metal “tree” that sits in my studio and all my guitars hang on it. Everyone who has ever walked into my studio sees it and says “Hey! Where’d you get that? I could sure use one of those.”

Then I tell them that they can buy this one from me but so far no one has met by price. I bought it twenty five years ago in Rochester New York at House of Guitars. 75 bucks. I figure by now the thing has to be worth $250,000.00.

The worst thing I ever bought?
A 67 Mustang.

I wanted one my whole life but when I finally bought one I bought it to have a project. I was going to fix it up and sell it and double my money. Let’s consider that for a moment, shall we?

I know nothing about cars. I have no real expertise in tools.

Sure enough I got took and I got took real bad. The seller managed to make it run long enough to get it most of the way into my driveway. When he left he assured me that 67 Mustangs likebeing half in and half out of garages. When I began what was suppose to be the long laborious process of restoring it, I learned something valuable.

To restore something you need to have at least 50% of the original thing to work with.

This car was 85% bondo and duct tape. For those of you that, like me, have no experience in restoring cars….bondo is plastic filler that you use to replicate sections of cars that are missing due to traumatic accidents or explosions.

After a few months of discovery, what was left of my classic car was worth about a third of what I paid for it. And I was thrilled to get that much. I think the guy that bought it from me wanted a go-cart for his kids.

What did I learn from both of these experiences? Collectively, nothing. One was bad…one was good. One was about 75 bucks and lasted for twenty five years…one was 3 grand and was gone in a month. I am searching for some lesson here but the only lesson I can come up with is: Don’t wait till the last minute to write email musings.

Oh, there’s the doorbell. Amazon!!!

My Favorite Screw

There was a magical time when I was in Abbey Road Studios. I can’t remember which Ringo album we were working on. I think it was his Christmas album. I remember bagpipers coming in to play on a song. Many of them were drunk, I recall. On top of that, the song we cut was not it in the same key that the bagpipes were. We had to slow the track down until the keys matched up. Very Strawberry Fields of us.

In the above picture…you will notice I have a screw hanging from my ear. This is the story of that screw.

They were doing renovations on Abbey Road the day we were there. Walls opened, floors torn up. They were probably running new electrical lines. That is the old electrician in me’s best guess. I think Mark and I had a look pass between us as we saw the opportunity. When the session was over I went out and unscrewed a screw from an old socket in the wall. This screw was there when the Beatles made all their records. Surely it absorbed some magic in all those years, right?

I slipped it in my pocket. I thought Mark would do the same sort of thing but I underestimated our dear Mr. Hudson.

He pulled up a board. An entire board. It was about three feet long, though it might have grown in my imagination as years have rock and rolled by. We were both paranoid that what we were doing might not be allowed. “Might not” is the key phrase here.

I put my little screw safely down in my pocket.

Mark shoved the board down his pant leg and walked out of the studio with an impressive limp he did not have when he arrived.

I’m not sure what he did with the board. I took my screw to a jeweler who made an earring out of it so it could hang next to my ear and whisper to me “They wouldn’t have done it that way.”

I stopped wearing it about five years ago. I didn’t know how long solder joints last but I started to worry that I would come home one day screwless. Come to think of it, that was how I spent a great deal of my time during those years but I digress.

Rock Star Biographies

I’ve decided, while stuck here at home, to get into a new business.

I am writing short vignettes about rock stars. Sort of a Reader’s Digest version of them. The best part is…..I’m making it all up!!!!

It goes so much faster that way!!!!

Here’s my first one:
In the years to come, little Ian Hunter could never remember whether it was the music from next door or the wet diaper that woke him up.

Still wearing a diaper at the age of fourteen was bad enough but to need one because of raging teenage alcoholism was doubly troubling. He could never depend on getting through the night without a gusher erupting.

He remembers how he focused on the sound coming in through the window. Little Mott heard the band in the neighbors backyard. Mott was the nickname his parents, Ethel and Julius Hunter, gave him. They had three dogs in a row named Mott and when the third one died they couldn’t bear getting a fourth dog so they bestowed the nickname on Ian. It comforted them to yell “Mott” and have something show up for dinner, even if it was just Ian. 

His best friend, Larry Hoople, was out there with his siblings again. His four brothers and two sisters had formed a musical combo and were wailing on this warm spring morning.

Mott listened and thought to himself…”not bad…but that lead singer is terrible. I could do better than that!”

But first, a fresh nappie.

If anyone has suggestions for future episodes…please let me know.

Gary “Dickens” Burr

To Fly or Not To Fly

At the end of the first week of August I have a show to perform in New Hampshire. That means I have to fly. I could drive but I’d have to leave today to get there on time.

No such luck. The show is with my band Laurel Canyon, the CSN tribute band with Mark Hudson and Mark Mirando. It’s a blast to do these shows. The songs, the harmonies, the hang…all wonderful. The downside is: I am going to have to get on an airplane. I truly thought that by the time flying became an issue for me, the pandemic would be a bit more in our rear view mirrors.

I am not freaking out per se about the show. It will be one of those outdoor, drive in shows. Everyone in the audience will be in a car. We are going to tell them, in lieu of clapping, to turn on their windshield wipers. The sing-a-longs will get a little tricky. Maybe they hit their horns instead of singing.

But now I have to get there.

I am a cautious man. I have no doubt that I will do my part to keep myself safe. Unfortunately, judging from our infrequent trips to Publix or Lowes….Tennessee still has an impressive number of morons who don’t dig the whole “science” vibe.

So I am going way over the top.

I got one of those disposable suits to wear on the plane. Actually TWO. When I land, I strip and dispose, baby!!! I’ll keep my ID in a plastic bag. I’ll have a carry on so no one but me ever touches my “stuff”.

I won’t eat. I won’t drink. I won’t talk. I used miles to go first class so I have a little more room. I bought a visor and will wear a mask as well.

I will be unidentifiable. I will be….safe?

When I get there, the three of us will keep our distances and refrain from eating in restaurants. It seems that New Hampshire is a pretty safe place to have a show (if you had to choose) so that’s a plus.

I guess there is a chance that everything could blow up again between now and August 7. Maybe New Hampshire will not allow Tennesseans into it’s borders thanks to the above mentioned morons. I admit it will not break my heart if that happens and circumstances beyond my control dictate that the show can’t happen.

It would suck cause it’s a good money show and I am ALL about the dinero.

If anyone has any horror stories…lay ‘em on me. If any of you have words of encouragement…ley ‘em on me. If any of you have any recipes for a nice casserole…lay ‘em on me.

You got till August 7th to talk me out of it or help me sleep at night.

Summer School

The summer before my first year of college would be spent, partially, at the college in question. WPI. Even the letters make it sound like some sort of 50’s era work program. They offered a three-week summer program to make sure that incoming students like me would be up to snuff on the courses I would be expected to fail at in the fall.

I would be diving into an empty swimming pool. I knew next to nothing about calculus or chemistry or physics. I don’t remember taking any sort of test to give them a heads up that Knucklehead Smith was on his way, but they knew. Oh, they knew.

The day before my father was bringing me up for the program, my best friend Billy got in trouble. He got into another fight with his parents and had taken off and no one knew where he was. So, naturally, I could not go to Worchester. I had to save my friend. Billy had it tough. His angry relationship with his parents always made me appreciate how good I had it at home. Maybe I felt a little guilty that my folks and I got along so well. All that temporarily changed when I announced I could not, under any circumstances, leave town without finding Billy.

I quickly found out there were, indeed, circumstances that would allow me to leave town with Billy still unaccounted for. Those circumstances were my father offering to kill me if I didn’t get in the car. Let’s hit the road!!

I still have the picture my proud Mom took of the two of us that fine summer day. There is a small suitcase at my feet between us. We are both glaring at the camera after what I am sure was a prolonged shouting match. The look on his face would not kill… but it would definitely maim and make you spit up blood.

Worchester was about two hours up the road, past Hartford, on up Rte 84 into Massachusetts. A pretty little town with the big boy college up on the hill and the small Girl’s Junior college nestled at the bottom. Dad walked me through the enrollment process and got me safely into my dorm room. I’m sure we calmed down on the ride up. He was not a big conflict guy. He laughed easy and often and didn’t see the point in a lot of drama. By the time we hit the Massachusetts border I’m sure we were telling bad jokes and shooting at overhead birds with our fingers. The fact that Billy was found, later that day, dead in a crack house really never….I’m kidding. He was fine. He showed up at home later that afternoon and took his punishment like a good boy.

My memories of that summer session are great in some areas…sketchy in others. Too much new all at once. My roommate was a nonentity. No recollection of him at all except that he thought I was the straightest guy he had ever met. (Not totally erroneous.) He once put a plastic bag of oregano in my sock drawer to scare me. He thought I would find it, think it was marijuana and freak out. I never let on that I found it. I was too busy smoking pot with my new friend, Jim, one floor above us, to freak out over an Italian seasoning.

One day in the hall of the dorm I ran into a tall, good looking New jersey boy named Jim Matthews. We became inseparable.  Besides having weed, running a thriving mescaline business from under his waterbed and having the best record collection I had ever seen….he was a great guy who, for some reason, decided to work on making me cool and helping to give me a career by encouraging me to play and sing in public.

Our third leg of the stool was Dave. Dave was truly embracing the hippy lifestyle. He introduced me to his amazing record collection. Neil Young, Dave Mason…all the cool singer/songwriters of the day. He introduced us to pot and hashish. We laughed a lot for three weeks.

WPI was all male until that year. Now there were about six girls in the student body. That ratio made them seem like Yetis to us boys. Rare sightings and you certainly never struck up a conversation with them.

The classes were daunting. I was daunted for the entire three weeks. They prepared me for an entire fucking year of daunt. I knew I was in over my head. School was always hard for me but I was up against something crazy hard now and I was already starting to plot exit strategies.

I promptly hung up a hammock in my room to sleep in. At 18 years of age you can sleep anywhere, in any position. Later that became a waterbed. (I later took the waterbed home to Meriden and set it up in my upstairs bedroom where it immediately made a giant crack in my parents living room ceiling. Waterbeds weigh a million pounds.)

I hung my Black light posters on the walls and set up a black light to enjoy them. Without the light…they’re just…posters.  My stereo sat on the window sill, new Neil Young records at the ready. Oregano in the drawer. Check.
At the end of the orientation session we all went home for what was left of the summer. Jim headed back to New Jersey, I went home to Connecticut and Dave, being the cool one of the three, went off to a Rock Festival in Toronto called Strawberry Fields.

September came and Jim and I found ourselves back on campus for real this time. After a few days with no Dave sightings, we made some inquiries.  We learned that, while he was at the festival in Toronto, he was walking on the sidewalk when a car jumped the curb and killed him. This wasn’t my first experience with losing a friend. In Meriden we had a couple of classmates go camping and they stayed in a small cabin with a faulty heater. Carbon dioxide killed one of them.

Our new third wheel on our hormone tricycle was another Gary. He was quite the hound. He immediately started dating five out of the six girls on campus. What I learned from Jim about mescaline and Dave about music…I learned from Gary about how to make hormones work for you. They worked for him. They never lifted a finger for me.

I struggled with the workload. I tried going to classes. That didn’t work. I tried Jim’s method. Don’t go to class…study your ass off the night before the test and pass with a D. That didn’t work for me either. At the end of the first term I had my exit strategy. I dropped all my tech classes and took every English class they offered. Creative writing. Shakespeare. Punctuation. If it was in the manual…I signed up.

It didn’t help that I was driving home every weekend to rehearse and play clubs with my band. One of the points of going to college is the social bonding that comes with being off on your own with kids your own age. If I was hitting the road every Friday night….then all college was for me was the work.

I coasted my way to the end of the school year and slipped off into the world of community college and manual labor.