July 18, 2005

4:19 p.m.

In an Unprecedented Twist of Fate,

we had to cancel half of our Michigan tour. After limping through the first gig we realized that Carol was still too laryngitical to sing. It was painful to listen to her try. We only tried a couple of her songs and the rest were mine, but it was clearly a sad effort.

To add to the misery, there were exactly seven people there. One was the sound guy. One was Chris's cousin, and two were the people she'd driven five hours to visit so she could see us. The other three were local folks.

It was definitely the low point of our careers.

I've been making music in public, alone or in cahoots, for some twenty years now. I've played a lot of gigs. This was the saddest one to date.

Oh, we also didn't have a guarantee, so what we made from the door was, obviously, not worth mentioning.

We went back to our "lodging" (quotes used because it's an approximate term) and had a long band meeting about the rest of the tour. We had three more gigs and a radio appearance, and Carol was unable to sing any more. After discussing it at length, we decided we had to cancel the rest of the engagements. We'd never done that before. Even when I had laryngitis a couple of years ago, it was a terrible weekend but I think we had a break afterwards where I could recover. We'd just kept thinking she'd be better enough by this weekend to manage. But it took me maybe six weeks to really get my range back, and in the meantime there were only certain things I could sing safely. I guess we overestimated the severity of her bronchitis this time.

So when we got back to the "lodging," we emailed all the presenters and the radio DJ, and with heavy hearts went to bed. Whoops, I mean "bed."

BECAUSE, as if all that wasn't enough, we were lodged with someone in the community who had this trailer. It was spacious enough, but we'd stayed in a trailer once before and should have known better. It was the kind where the front and the back pull out into sleeping platforms, and they stick way out over the points where the wheels actually touch ground. That means whenever someone on one end of the trailer turns over in bed (particularly Chris, who is on the large side), the whole thing shakes like there's an earthquake, and everyone else wakes up. Chris tends to turn over, oh, about every fifteen minutes.

IN ADDITION to the aforementioned, our hosts had a little ex-barn-turned-hangout in the back yard, about thirty feet from the trailer, where they liked to have pickin' parties and beer fests late at night. As this was a Friday, and no one had to go to work the next day, they decided to have a few neighbors over and drink and yell and laugh and bang things together and whoop and holler until two fucking-thirty in the morning. (We went to bed, oh, around 12:30am.) So we listened to them for a couple of hours, and after they FINALLY went home, Chris tossed and turned all night and a mosquito took up residence about an inch from my ear. So, guess what? I didn't sleep all night.

Well, I dozed on and off between approximately 4:30am and maybe 7:00, waking of course every quarter hour for the earthquake, and by then it was too hot to sleep any more anyway.

I went in and showered (oh, bathroom was in the house, too) and when everyone was up and about we called Saturday's presenter and talked about the gig. Because it was such short notice we hated to just bag, so we worked something out where he would try to find someone for a second set, and we'd just do one short set of my material without Carol peeping, and we'd split the door with whomever else played. This promoter also books other venues so it was just important that we show up.

On the way to Boyne Falls we went to Lake Michigan and cooled our legs in the lapping water. Chris went swimming. It was nice, and soothing, and we also found cherries at a self-serve farm stand. Everyone grows cherries in Michigan, apparently -- sweet, dark Bing cherries, $3 a quart. Things were looking up.

We got to the venue, which is sort of a house concert but it's in their converted barn, and what a wonderful space. They have 20 acres so it's pastoral and bucolic and Maxine has a big garden. The series is in its 11th year. Our host had found another player, who was coming with his percussionist, to take the second set. He turned out to be really great, very funny, and enjoyable. We set up, then took a wee nap, and got ready for the evening.

Our set was way better than the previous night, partly because we weren't wincing every time Carol opened her mouth, and partly because we already knew the score so we had the set down a little tighter. AND, there were plenty of people to actually call an audience this time, and it was the kind that sighs or cries out or says, "Yes!" after every single song, so we felt really validated for the first time in over 1,000 miles.

Chris went up and jammed on a couple of the boys' tunes, so he got a little male bonding in as well. He's such a good player, and so affable. I heard him sing more clearly that night, too, since there were only our two voices, and he really did a good job. Four years ago he was hardly a singer, and we've made him sing so much that his voice has really improved. I was glad he had a few moments to shine.

We definitely accomplished a repeat booking, so we did the right thing by showing up. I had to move to a different room in the house (they run a B&B as well) because a neighbor's dog kept waking me up (hm, every fifteen damn minutes; what is this?) and the room was also very hot. I didn't say anything about the heat, but they put me in a downstairs room, away from the side of the house with the offending canine, and it had an air conditioner AND its own bathroom. Hot doggie! I'd hit gold. I had a very good night's sleep to make up for the long night before, and they cooked us award-winning french toast in the morning, with fresh blueberries and homemade strawberry compote.

We hit the road yesterday, stayed overnight at a Motel 6 in Syracuse, and when I awoke at 8:20 this morning, C&C had already been driving almost 2 hours. Chris had wanted to drive all the way through last night, a total of probably 860 miles for them, but I knew I wouldn't make it. But they got the early start and I got the good night's sleep.

It was a hard trip. We almost could have stayed home; I'm not sure that what we made covered gas and food, and we went over 2,000 miles. But we paved the way for the next MI tour and I guess that was something. And we have a few found days this week, so now I have album prep work to do. I'm feeling very sluggish about that. We'll probably do this Saturday's gig whether Carol's up for much or not. It's fairly local, we need the money more than ever now, and we could rig a set without her singing if need be. It'd just be a little shorter than we usually do there.

And next week will take care of itself.