Chapter Twenty-Two

Mother & daughter on the road in 2004, the last hurrah?

This episode brought me to tears a few times. I cut out the big sobs. It also made me laugh.

Includes I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts live from Barry's Pub Grange Ireland by Hazel & Amy Rigby

You can watch the whole show on YouTube

Transcript

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Chapter twenty two Stop being so perky shouted Hazel as we dragged our rolling suitcases up the hill from London's Tufno Park tube station. I carried my new Gibson acoustic guitar on my back and a black gig bag and my duffel bag on my shoulder, packed to bursting with clothes and shoes. Hazel carried a snare drum and a soft case on her back. Her suitcase held clothes, mine was full of merchandise, CDs and those nasty plastic jewel boxes that were the only option in the early two thousands. At least my merch case felt lighter than when we set off. Everything else seemed to have grown in weight and girth over the last two weeks of touring. There were days I believed I led a charmed life, the thrill of travel and playing for people. Other times I thought I must be insane to be doing this. The physical and mental toll. Life as a touring artist was usually a combination of those two things. The distance from Nashville reminded me things weren't exactly sane and reasonable back home. I may have been winded climbing the streets of London, but I was breathing easier than I had in months. Hazel had been working hard to learn to play drums, guitar and bass. Brad Jones gifted her with a cool Dan Electro longhorn bass, and I think we'd been housing one of Hazel's dad's spare drum kits. Not sure where she'd stay in Nashville during this early summer tour of a few weeks, it occurred to me she might enjoy coming along on the road, and I'd asked if she'd like to join me for a few songs each night. I hoped it would give her something to look forward to at gigs rather than just dragging around with me. And would benefit me too because A, she was a cute kid who could play and sing, and B, who couldn't use a guest star like that every night, especially one who didn't expect to be paid. Hazel chose the songs. First was the Kramps version of Roy Orbison's domino, with Hazel ripping the guitar solo perfectly every time. We sang X's I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts in Unison, Hazel on the Snare Drum, the song finally resonating with me through Hazel's passionate reading of the anti-war sentiments, another instance I'd experienced more and more over the years, where I thought I knew music but realized I didn't know all that much compared to my daughter. Last we covered Mannequin by Wire, a still relevant British band of the punk era. Starting together and breaking off into harmony brought me back to the days of the Shams, a vocal blend that felt so much more comfortable than standing out there all alone. Being mother and daughter, our voices genetically fit together to sound like one voice, double-tracked. We'd prepped for the tour performing with my brother Michael's band, Susquehanna Industrial Tool and Dye Company, at Otta's shrunken head lounge on East 14th Street in Manhattan, just a block from our old apartment between avenues B and C. Will and I unloaded the apartment when the building went co-op in the late 80s for a buyout of $3,000, approximately one month's rent in this neighborhood in 2003. Oh, to be young, poor, and stupid again. Wait, forget poor and stupid. Michael still lived in the apartment he'd had for years. He kept a monthly stand at Otto's, conveniently located just around the corner. The back room filled up with old friends who stopped by regularly to hear Michael's original songs that sounded like lost country classics, along with his rybald and often scathing comments about his band, the audience, but mostly himself. The night we joined him, everyone remembered back to when Hazel was a tiny girl in a grimy petticoat, and it filled me with pride to see her so cool and confident on stage. At the same time, I couldn't help but feel aware I was hanging out in a bar with my teenage daughter and would be doing so for the next few weeks. Men were talking to her, and there was lots of alcohol around. Then I remembered I'd been doing the same thing when I wasn't much older than she was now, without the safety of the stage to lift me above it all. My mother had no idea where I was back then or what I was up to. I knew that would happen for Hazel, but for now we were together. We'd begun the tour in Ireland, arriving in Dublin on a bright June day. I got the nagging feeling as we lugged all our bags and instruments on and off shuttle buses and down sidewalks that I was too old to be touring like this. Maybe it was the presence of my daughter, a constant witness to the continually trying circumstances I put myself through in order to play a gig. Up and down stairs, standing in long lines, moving constantly in and out of the wrong doors. No tour manager to smooth the way. It was the rugged life of a 45-year-old troubadour. We checked into an almost nice Dublin hotel on what turned out to be the first day of the city's new light rail system. There were balloons and free train rides, so we jumped aboard and rode as far as a pub where we ate chips and I drank a pint of beer. A taxi driver taking us back to the hotel called the New Line A Fooking Train to Nowhere. The poetry of the Irish. It was hard to stay awake that first day after an overnight transatlantic flight. We turned in early, but not before I checked in with Charles. This set a precedent for the entire trip, no matter how inconvenient, exhausting, or even downright unsafe it felt to stand at a phone box in the middle of a city or the edge of nowhere. He expected to hear from me at least once a day. I told him I'd move in with him at the end of the summer. A few weeks earlier, Will had asked me to meet up at Wild Oats, the healthy supermarket next to the Green Hills Mall. When we'd sat down with our smoothies, he told me he was getting married and moving to Northeast Ohio, to Cleveland. I found myself saying, That's funny. I'm getting married too. Hazel and I are moving to Alabama. God bless Will. He took it in his stride. A part of my soul called out for the man I'd married and had a child with, who'd made me Beach Boys tapes and taken me to my first Bob Dylan concert, who'd wept with me when my mother was in a coma. The part of me who'd loved and looked up to him, that would forever live inside me, wished he'd shake me by the shoulders and say, No, don't do it. But he'd simply drawled, Well, if you're sure, I guess, um, congratulations. And what about Hazel? When faced with the option of living in Alabama, where she knew no one except a man she mistrusted deeply, or moving in with her father and his new bride, my daughter felt which way the wind was blowing and chose Cleveland. So this tour felt a little like our last hurrah. I rented a car in Dublin, and it was harrowing leaving town, trying to find the route pre-GPS, adjusting to driving on the other side of the road. It was hard to appear as much of an authority figure to my kid while I kept bursting into panicked sobs for the few hours it took to drive across the country. But Hazel cheered me on supportively. In the charming city of Cork, I managed to park outside our bed and breakfast without hitting the other cars, and we carried the equipment and merch across town on foot. The gig wasn't very well attended, but our duo bit especially was a hit with the people who'd come out. Afterwards, starving for a snack, we tried waiting in the queue at Kennedy Fried Chicken, but felt so conspicuously female next to the boozed-up male contingent, waiting for their chicken and chips, that we gave up and climbed the hill back to our lodging, making do with the biscuits and long shelf life milk in our room. But nothing like touring to remind a woman. It was still very much a man's world out there. The hardships of the road bound us together like we'd been until Charles entered the picture. I tried not to think about the future. Me with him, her with her father and his wife. Ireland was lovely and the locals were colorful, especially in Sligo. It was one more place to add to my list of possible places to escape to. I pictured myself ambling into the town shops, dressed in a poncho and turban, where I'd buy whiskey and biscuits. There goes that American lady, the townspeople would say, the one from New York by way of Nashville. They loved us at Barry's pub in the small village of Grange near Sligo, repeatedly toasting us during and after the gig and practically carrying us out on their shoulders at the end of the night. The armpit of Ireland, the locals called it. They stole Hazel's snare drum and my suitcase of merchandise out of the trunk. I sobbed into the arms of a soft-spoken garda who shook his head and said, Who knows? Perhaps this will be the start of great things for you here in Ireland. Look on the bright side. This may be the best distribution your CDs get. And Hazel, being herself at least a quarter Irish, chimed in. And we've got less luggage to carry now. The police recovered the snare drum and the CDs, which felt like some kind of judgment. It was a cold night in Hull. In my experience, it was always a cold night in Hull, even in the middle of July. This port city in the northeast, where the river Hull meets the Humber Estuary, meets the North Sea, kept calling me back. The robbery and dealing with the police and the rental car company made for good stage banter in London. We had a shit time in Ireland. It never failed to get a London audience on your side, trashing the last place you played before hitting the smoke. But up in Hull I had a crisis of faith. What was I doing here? Yet again, the B and B with themed rooms, Egypt, Mexico, a shared bathroom and huge TV in the parlor, glaring a lurid guns and roses video was a step down from the Beverly Road one from previous trips, if that was possible. The walk to the venue took forever, and both Hazel and I cursed my penny pinching ways. I would have hailed a cab if only I could have found one. Did it ever get any better than this? I shouted, at the gray sky as it spit freezing rain. I'd taken some kind of absurd pride in playing this town again and again. Having my daughter along as witness made it feel more like an exercise and futility. I told her how I met Reckless Eric a few visits back, playing at the Bull Hotel. She loved his record, take the cash. He went to art college here in Hull, I said. Hazel was thinking of applying to art school herself. This time I was back at the Adelphi, a rock club I first played with Sid Griffin in 2000. Amy Allison and Neil Cleary and I did our Triple Bill show here back in November 2003. The venues in the UK were all freezing during sound check as the landlords kept the heat off till the punters came in. The familiar smell of disinfectant mingled with the odor of beer was comforting and anxiety-inducing. Would anyone show up? Hazel laughed when the club owner Paul asked if we fancied a curry, exactly as I'd predicted he would, but we felt oddly at home. There was an appreciative audience. We survived our night in Egypt and the shared bathroom. Newcastle, Wellingborough, back to London for a set at come down and meet the folks, a long-running Sunday afternoon gig. Hazel was resplendent in a maud yellow coat, and my Nashville pal Dave Jakes played bass on a few songs. People kept putting fresh beers on the stage. I remembered how much I loved London, a love hard won back in 1980-81, when I spent a year there as a penniless art student outside the cocoon of downtown No Wave, New York. I'd learned survival skills then, and no small measure of humility. But there was never enough of that for an artist, certainly not in Nashville or out in the world, as a touring musician. I hear reckless Eric might drop by this afternoon, said Big Steve, the promoter. Someone said Eric had a book coming out soon. An autobiography. I wanted to read that book. Brighton, Leicester. I left my guitar on the train taking us from Leicester to somewhere else, where we need to change trains again. My litany throughout the tour. Do we have everything? Repeated in a shrill, frantic tone until it was almost a joke, had become so automatic I didn't even notice why I felt lighter than usual without that weight on my back until we were on another train to Sheffield. I screamed, I sobbed, but the conductor radioed ahead to the first train. They removed my guitar at the next station, and another conductor met me on the platform, holding the Gibson aloft in its familiar black case. I cried with relief and drank a small bottle of wine from the snack cart. Hazel pretended not to know me. Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, trains and help from friends. I rented a car in Aberdeen to drive to Cumbria for one last gig. The scenery was stunning, billowy clouds and sheep, tall hedges and tumbling hills. It was a very long way to go for a gig in a tiny village pub. The sound man was deaf, everyone drank heavily. The only reason I was there was the barmaid was the mother of the woman who booked the tour. Hazel and I tried to sleep in one of the rooms above after the gig, needing to wake and leave at 3 a.m. to drive back up to Edinburgh to catch a flight home. Darling, you're not leaving, croaked the fifties-ish leather clad barmaid when she saw us trying to tiptoe to our car past the drunken revelers. Then she tumbled headfirst into a beat-up ban to the strains of Neil Diamond. I thought comfortingly that there were all kinds of moms in the world, and I was just one of them. Certainly not the best, but probably not the worst. Hazel shouted at me to slow down as I careened around rabbits on tiny roads before reaching the motorway. The sun was just coming up. We listened to the Velvet Underground and ate caramel logs and bacon rolls from the motorway services, and it felt like we were the only car in the whole world. I know you probably think it wasn't worth it to play that gig, and right now I totally agree with you, I told my daughter. But years from now, you'll remember this moment. She probably doesn't, but I hold on to the image of her in that yellow coat, her effortless shredding on guitar, and the blur of our voices singing together. I put it out of my mind that we were leaving each other in Nashville, me for Birmingham and her to Cleveland. If I didn't think about it, maybe it wasn't really happening.