Work ethic, pornography and "the road"

Potter Stewart an associate justice for the Supreme court said this about pornography (though I don't quite agree with him on porn, I like the quote) in trying to define the undefinable "...I know it when I see it...". Contents (and a stretch) aside, that's my thoughts exactly on "work ethic". I can't quite define it but I know it when I see it. These past few weeks I've been going out on the road with a few bands and getting just a small taste of life as a road musician. These guys drive MANY hours sometimes to make a coupla hundred bucks (sometimes more or less). It's a grind, it's gotta be tough on the family life, not predictable or reliable and I'm not sure if people wanting to get into "show business" know what kind of life that it can really be. These are some DAMN talented musicians too! I sure the hell don't know the life myself  but last Thursday morning about 5 AM, I found myself pulling into a Nashville Kroger parking lot after taking only a 4 hour drive (NOthing to them) from a great Misty Loggins show (in Atlanta) thinking I've pulled off some kind of physical feat or something! All the while, I'm following a hard working manager, artist and another truck-load (NOT the nice fancy bus) of musicians.
Musicians, road managers and a LOT of artists know this story all too well. I didn't and my admiration for them has been growing every day in my "new road" I'm travelling down. This past weekend I traveled with 4 of them on a 7 hour trip to play a Friday and Saturday night show for people that didn't know WHO the hell they were. It was a GREAT eff-ing time! It was this little band playing with Chris Cavanaugh (the artist) opening for Thompson Square ("Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not"). It was kind of "them against the world" type of feeling where they go out there and have to convince a sellout crowd (for TS who traveled the same road a few years earlier) that they were worth their time.  Chris and the band played like rock stars and sold a helluvu lot of CD's and added a ton of new e-mails. It was my peek at life in the trenches for those guys playing every where they can. It just inspired the HELL out of me! Think I'm gonna LOVE working for the "underdogs" :)
God bless them every one : Billy Brimblecom,Gary Ishee, Brian Bixbie, Aaron Wolfcale, Misty Loggins,  Alex Gallagher,William Ellis, Bandon Taulbee and Chris Cavanaugh.

Drinks with Bobby and Nanci Griffith

Me and Bobby Rymer ran into Nanci at my current favorite Nashville "happy hour" place, Sportsman's Grill a few nights ago. It's kind of a pub crowd where regulars stop in on their way from work to home. Me and Bobby were just catching up and talking about the Almo Irving days and our days since when Nanci walks up to the bar to get a "dinner to go" and a glass of white wine which turned into two. We'd all met while she wrote and we'd worked for Almo Irving years back. I really never knew Nanci that well but was a BIG fan of some of her records over the years. "One Fair Summer Evening" being my favorite! Great, GREAT "live" record. Also, "Late Night Grande" (apologies for the ad on the intro of this vid) from her '91 record being a song that still kills me every time that I listen to it. Also, a few years back she had also invited me to famous Abbey Roads Studio (while I was in London for work) to watch her record sides with the London Symphony Orchestra which ended up being the "Dust Bowl Symphony" album (INCREDIBLE record!). That being one of those lifetime memories. Anyways sitting there we talked about Texas (her home state) quite a bit, seeing as I spent a coupla months there this past Summer on my bloggin journey.  She loved, admired and looked up to the Texas writers like Townes, Guy and the writers from that era. She was a predecessor and/or contemporaries to the Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen group of artists. It was interesting in her take on the whole music scene now and she seemed to be honestly pretty positive about it all. She talked about how talented Taylor Swift is and how there are really talented new people out there making new music. This coming from a woman who's achieved a lot of hard earned success over the years (including a Grammy or two along the way) but had started out in a car working her way from Austin to Boston finding and making enough money in the clubs like "The Down Home" in Johnson City,TN (which is where she first met my favorite singer of all time, Keith Whitley pre-Nashville) to make her way on to the next town headed north. I asked her how she knew where to play (being in the new towns) and she said that the artists that came through Austin would tell her of the cool places (kind of an early "internet"). Her contemporaries read like a like a wall of Hall of Famers: Guy Clark, Harlan Howard, Emmylou Harris, The Crickets, Jimmy Webb and on and on. We all talked for a coupla hours maybe and though she says that she's trying to take a year off to write she says that she's finding herself booking shows for this year (she'd just returned from Belfast, Ireland). Sounded like she was sincerely excited about being in the "writing mode" though. We ended up talking about things like poverty in the south (specifically in Mississippi) and how real and over looked it all is nowadays. She talked and was really excited and was honored for a song that she'd written about Mildred and Richard Loving. They were plaintiffs in the landmark "Loving vs. Virginia" in the U.S. Supreme court which protected mixed raced marriages (in the end). Nanci has been really serious about social issues over the years. Of course we did talk about fluffy stuff like her love for "the soaps", dislike of beer and her love for wine, as well.

   Another afternoon in a Nashville bar with a brilliant singer/songwriter sitting down and having a drink or two and giving her wisdom and stories to people like Bobby and me. I'm lucky to have gotten to work with both. Thanks Bobby for the beers :)

Randomness from "Working the Door" in downtown Nashville

My little office for a coupla nights

I spent a coupla nights this week "working the door" in a downtown Nashville bar "The Wheel". It's a really cool old bar that a good friend of mine Robert Lee co-owns and he's been SO damn nice enough to ask me to do it. The hours are pretty much stripper hours (7PM-3AM) AND it's CRS week (where a ton of Radio guys come into town and meet and hear a bunch of the Nashville "stars", as well).
Thoughts
-FIRSTLY-Good GOD, I've not been sober past 12AM since church camp.
-One night I talked with a really sweet 76 year old man Billy Hazelwood who told me that he'd retired from 37 years of working at the Ford plant and now farms "cuz you GOTTA do something (with your time)!". He had open heart surgery back in '06. Says with the diesel prices going up he's not sure if he can afford to keep farming. Lives out in Springfield and was sitting there by himself just listening to the band play.
 -Sidewalk watching:  Roland & Ashton Shepherd stopped by (gooood "people"!), Two Foot Fred kept rollin' by "at a fast clip", Jessie Jo Dillon (great young writer) stopped and said hey, Pete Robinson (who said some really kind things about my old blog :)), young girls in REALLY short skirts (walkin like Foster Brooks) continuously walked by but rarely "bent over" (as IF they could), Joe BIDDLE (what the hell's a local sports reporter doing with a CRS badge?), Jim Butler, Luke Bryan (ain't changed a damn bit/God bless 'em), Red Marlow and Phillip White. Phillip get's the survivor arward. He was nursin a hangover from the night before (and still out late!).
 -Friends and industry people walking by asking "WHAT the hell are you doing working down here, now"? Some of them looked at me like I was now homeless. I thought about panhandling to play the part but I suck at begging (which I kinda resulted to to get songs recorded and STILL had no luck).
-Watched an artist (post-show) screaming at her boyfriend or husband (in the middle of the street) next to his truck "I QUITE, I QUIT...I'm TIRED OF THIS FUCKING TOWN!!! I love you and I'll see you at home".
Two (mostly) female bands playing in side by side bars! THAT was surprising! More in these two bars than in all of Texas! Maybe their from Texas.
-Some drunk older guy who kept trying to sing his songs to everybody that would listen He said that he's best at writing "Rap" but his son had told him not to sing that stuff down here in Nashville. He kept telling me he wasn't drunk. I kept telling him he was. Being sober is really sobering.
-The GREAT Texas blogger Rita Ballou keeping me company with some funny texts (though she couldn't make it here this year :()

Lookin in through the glass and glare

Lookin' down the street

-Sweet little bartender on Tues. night said a coupla weeks back that it was her and two guys last in the bar late one night and they were wanting to fight. Her being under 5 foot tall said "guys... REALLY!!?? It's us three and I'M gonna have to try and break you up!!?" She said they took it outside (thankfully).
 I may see if ol' Robert will let me do this again. Fun in a weird sorta way....

My good (and damn funny) bud Ali working behind the bar.