Bob Malone }-- Essays & Road Stories

“There is science, logic, reason; there is though verified by experience. And then there is California.”
– Edward Abbey

Time is elastic on the road. This thought came to me recently as I sat in the cellar-bound cave of a green-room at a venerable old listening room in Bethlehem, PA called Godfrey Daniels. I had played there exactly one year before, and it seemed like yesterday. Nothing there had changed, and the gig felt like slipping on a well-worn pair of shoes. Yet, the shows I had done just four days before seemed impossibly remote. Now I’m finally back home after a month on the road, and that gig at Godfrey’s seems like it was eons ago. Part of another damn lifetime. It has in fact been only two weeks since I did the encore, got the check, and slipped out into that frigid Pennsylvania night, headed for the next town.

That said, I have been meaning to write a few words about the short but exceedingly pleasant January tour I did with my wife, Karen Nash, mostly right here in California. Late January, not even two full months ago. But since then I’ve played in thirteen different states, and…well, you know the rest.

It is a rare chance these days for me to go on the road with my wife. When I met her, she was a full-time road doggie folk singer, but she quit the life some time ago, went back to school, and became a full-time public defender instead. Karen is a small girl, but she has a heart impossibly large with compassion and shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world’s problems. She one day declared that she’d be better equipped to help the poor and less fortunate “armed with a law degree instead of a guitar” and that was it – a great public defender was born. But unfortunately, a great singer-songwriter nearly died, and that would have been a shame – she certainly had the goods, if not the stomach, to survive the music business, had she chosen to.

Lately, though, Karen has been playing more, and writing new songs, and regaining some of the fire to create that had lain dormant while she changed her life. I was going out to do three shows that, to me, were “local” – i.e., I didn’t have to get on a plane – and Karen was going to be my opening act for the run.

First stop was Carson City, Nevada…a town I have always loved to play. I was back to play the Comma Concerts acoustic concert series run by a great guy named Doug Reynolds, who I first met when he was booking the Upstage Center Theatre. Karen and I had played there the year previous, and it was a memorable night. We headed out of L.A. the night before, straight up the back side of California up and over the Sierra Nevadas on Route 395. And just like last year we stopped at the Denny’s in Mojave. Not that we really like Denny’s all that much, but the trip the previous year had gone so well that we felt compelled to do everything the same. After another 6 hours of driving, we made it to Carson and checked into the Best Western Carson Station, where for forty-five bucks you could get a room in a hotel with a restaurant and a casino with a band every night. Such a deal! The joint isn’t all that slick, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it – it’s where the promoter had put me up the first time I ever played Carson City, and not only had the gig been great, but I had won eighty bucks in the quarter slots after the gig. Last year, Karen and I had gotten a late start leaving L.A. and thought we’d never get to Carson. Around midnight we started looking for hotel rooms along the way, and couldn’t find anything. Spent, starving and crabby, we crawled into the lobby of the Carson Station hotel, and attained a kind of low-rent nirvana. Not only did they have a room, but after checking in, we were treated to the best hotdog ever at the casino snack bar. And nickel slot machines. And a country-western band in the lounge. Since then, we have always loved the place.

This time, we made it there by ten am, checked in, and headed right for the hotdogs. Just as good as last time!

The next morning, sticking with the previous year’s trajectory, we headed for Java Joe’s, where I always have my morning coffee when in Carson City. They have great organic coffee, and make a mean scone. After that, we packed our bags and moved ourselves over to Bliss Mansion – the B&B the promoter was putting us up at for the night of the show. This was the first time we’d been here, and what a place! A fully restored Victorian beauty, my favorite. I’ve always dreamed of buying a big ol gingerbreaded, turreted Victorian pile and restoring it to former glory. Of course, I have neither the carpentry skills or money or time required for such an undertaking, but the dream persists all the same. Our room was awesome – giant four-poster bed dominating one corner of the large chamber, and a bathroom nearly the size of the bedroom. Both rooms had working fireplaces, I got those going right away, while Karen tried out the claw-foot bathtub.

We spent the afternoon in one of my favorite places…Virginia City. Virginia City, about a 30 minute drive up into the mountains outside if Carson, is a place frozen in time. For a short while in the 1860s and 70s it was the richest city in America, as it sat on top of the Comstock Lode, the single largest deposit of silver ever found in North America. The mines are all played out now, of course, and what remains of the once populous city sits atop a hollow mountain, catacomb with hundreds of miles of abandoned mine shafts. A place of ghosts.

The town retains its old west gold rush feel…in a good way. It isn’t so much that they tarted the place up for the tourists (although there’s a bit of that), its more that the place has just never changed much. And as far as buildings – if it didn’t burn down, they didn’t tear it down. The main appeal of the town for me is that it was the first place that Sam Clemons signed a piece of writing with his legendary nom de plume, Mark Twain. This would have been the 1860s, and at the time, ol’ Sammy was not much more than a former riverboat pilot (put out of business by the civil war), failed gold miner, and vagabond freelance newspaper writer. Out of dough after the mining thing didn’t work out, he took a gig at the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, and the rest, as they say, is history. All of this is covered in Twain’s Roughing It, one of my favorite books from my favorite writer.

The gig was great, just like last year. There were probably just over 100 people there – pretty much a full house. The concert series is held at a placer called Comma Coffee. Usually, I avoid like the plague any gig involving a place with the word “Coffee” or “Java” or “Bean” or “Coffeehouse” in its name, but this joint is a step above. For one thing, it’s much bigger than your average coffeehouse…but besides that, it’s got a much better than average vibe, and the folks that work there are really passionately into the music. Also, they have the biggest plush spider I have ever seen hanging from the chandelier. I love that spider…it adds immeasurable charm to the place. I don’t know why.

They will still occasionally run the fucking cappuccino machine during a ballad, but on account of all the other wonderful things about the place, I’ll give ‘em a pass on that one.

Karen opened the show, and had a great set. I went on shortly after, and it was one of those nights. I was tightly connected with the crowd right from the beginning. The Carson listening crowd is fascinatingly different from others I play to. In the realm of live music performance, there are generally either talkative bar crowds, or there are attentive concert crowds. The Carson crowd listens like a concert crowd, but occasionally someone just can’t contain him or her self any longer and will burst out loudly with a passionate comment. Sometimes at length…while standing. I love that, it’s like the best of both worlds. They all probably get nice and lubricated at the bar around the corner before they come in…and that’s just how I like it!

The next morning, Karen woke me up all excited. “Honey!” she said. “You’ll never guess who I’m having breakfast with!” “Who?” I inquired blearily. “Jack Carter…Jimmy Carter’s son! Get dressed and get your ass downstairs, I told them all about you!” I am not my best in the morning, even after I’m “awake,” it’s at least a couple of hours and several cups of coffee before I am able to engage in any kind of meaningful conversation with others. I was really going to have to step up to the plate for this one.

Dressed, but definitely at the lowest ebb of my grooming potential, I stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, and there stood…Jimmy Carter. Circa 1976. Damn! He looks just like his dad, I thought. “You look just like your dad,” I said. I wonder how many times he’s heard that one? Well, Jack Carter is a delightful guy, and his wife Elizabeth was great, too. We all stood around in the kitchen for an hour or so, shooting the shit, talking about music and politics, and generally enjoying ourselves. Karen and I gave them copies of our CDs. I am a very big fan of Jimmy Carter, his post-presidential humanitarian work is truly to be admired. So it was good to see that the son was going to follow (if somewhat late in life) in the father’s footsteps. Jack announced his candidacy for the senate the following week.

The owner of Bliss Mansion (along with a bunch of other people at the gig the night before) gave me dire warnings about needing tire chains in the mountain passes between Carson City and California. I was at a loss on this one. I grew up on the east coast, so I can drive in the snow, but we always had snow tires. When you leave for a road trip from L.A. and its 75 degrees out, its kinda hard to wrap your head around the idea of getting stuck in a blizzard in Donner Pass the following day. But there it was. I blew fifty bucks on chains at the local Pep Boys, and we hit the road. Just outside of Carson, we hit the snow. Still, I didn’t see any other cars with chains, and the sailing was relatively smooth. I had made this trip many times before, and had always dodged this particular bullet. I had no earthly idea how to put the chains on my tires, and no gloves or boots to much around in the snow with. I knew that I would have to pay some dude by the roadside to put them on for me. Reports and rumors on how much it would cost varied from obscene to suspiciously low.

Soon enough, the moment arrived. We approached the checkpoint where people without chains were being turned back. SO we pulled over. It turned out to be $30. A bargain, as far as I was concerned. We were approached by a malevolent Santa Clause in an orange jumpsuit and green knit cap. “Thirty dollars!” he barked through his snow-white beard. “You got chains?!” I handed over the gear and he got to work. “Turn your wheel!” “Move forward…move forward…move forward. STOP!” He moved on to the passenger side tire. “Turn your wheel!” “Move for…NO NO NO!!” “Not that way, dammit, the other way!” “Move forward…move forward…”

The “NO NO NO” was kind of an inverted “HO HO HO” meant to convey can’t you do anything right, you stupid fuck? And who could blame the guy…I was just another tenderfoot, helpless in the wilderness. It was all kinda funny, all the same.

We drove about sixty miles over the mountain in a tremendous blizzard, and all I can say is…thank God for Santa Clause! We would have been hosed for sure. Down in the foothills, there was another checkpoint, where we had to remove our chains. Another thirty bucks. No way I was paying that, so I pulled over and prepared to remove the chains myself. How hard could it be? Plenty. I screwed it up in every conceivable way, and ended up with the chains hopelessly tangled around my axels. As I stood there in my city shoes, city pants, and city coat…paralyzed with incompetence, a very friendly Samaritan in the car behind me offered his assistance. He had the chains off in no time, I gave him a copy of my new CD, and we were off. Sometimes people are so nice you just want to cry.

We arrived in Hangtown, otherwise known as Placerville, California, enveloped by a sullen drizzle. The Cary House hotel, where the promoter was putting us up, was downtown…right where I thought it would be. Not that I had asked for directions or an address, I just knew. As we were approaching town, Karen asked “where’s the directions? I’ll read them to you so we can find the hotel.” I explained that I needed none. After years on the road, I have developed a skill for guessing where I’m going before I get there. I’d never been to Placerville, but in a sense, I’d been there many times before. I figured that since the hotel was a local one, and not an outskirts-of-town type of chain place, that it would be downtown on the main drag. I figured Placerville – judging by its size, age and location, and the socio-economic makeup of the crowd that the gig implied – would have an exit off the highway leading to its fully re-gentrified “Historic Downtown.” I figured the hotel would be a marginally grand but faded old pile right near the center of town, buttressed by a single-screen movie theatre, a variety of restaurants, and a former drug store now converted into a boutique that sells wind-chimes, cat-themed knickknacks, and potpourri. I was right on all accounts. “How did you do that?!” my wife marveled. I didn’t say much…the ability to reduce a town to a stereotype of itself is not a skill I particularly relish having.

The gig was a good folk-acoustic concert series put on by Q-Note Productions, run by Bruce Hayden, a guy I have known for years, and done shows for before. We first met in 1997, when I played the Napa Music Festival. I had arrived there in my piece-of-shit 1984 Dodge cargo van, and parked under a tree on the festival grounds, near the stage. It was there that I discovered I had a flat tire. Bruce, in the right place at the right time (for me, at least), changed my tire. I have always felt indebted to him for that…given my tire-changing skills, I might still be there under that tree in Napa today, staring a lug nut and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with it.

The concert was in a nice little hall above the Cozmic Café, just down the street from the hotel. A decent crowd of fans filed in who knew me from places I’d played all over that part of Northern California – from Sacramento to Berkeley to Sutter Creek to Grass Valley to Davis. I don’t think there was a single person there actually from Placerville. Which is why the gig felt normal, but the town felt weird. I never could put my finger on it, but something about Hangtown felt unsettling to me. It was a nice enough looking place, with nice enough folks, but it seemed to exist in its own dimension…a place not quite California redneck, not quite Napa Valley chic, not quite quaint tourist trap. It was all of these things and none of them. Worst of all, you couldn’t get a thing to eat after ten pm. Karen and I did a great show for a great crowd, signed autographs and soaked up adulation…then, next thing we knew, we were standing in the rain in a ghost-town, hungry and homeless. We got in the van and ranged far and wide – ten miles out of town in every direction, every side street we could find off the main street through town. Not even so much as a gas station sandwich could be had. We gave up and headed back to the hotel. Karen flopped on the bed, despondent, and I went downstairs to run recon. I stepped into the deadly-quite and empty lobby (no one manned the counter after 11pm), and headed for the room where they held the morning continental breakfast. There I found a jar of peanut butter, small individual-sized boxes of Raisin Bran, and a couple of bags of chips. Back at the room, Karen was taken aback for a second when she discovered that I had looted the hotel food supplies, then she fell to, ravenously. It was the best dry box of Raisin Bran I ever ate with my bare hands.

The next morning we started our day with an enormous, greasy, heart-stopping, artery-clogging breakfast feast. Feeling satisfied that we had made up for our previous night’s sustenance-denial, we shook the dust of Hangtown from our shoes, and headed for the coast. Tonight’s gig was also a repeat from last year’s tour…a show at a co-housing community in Cotati, CA – just south of Santa Rosa. The promoter for this one was someone we went way back with – Matt Kramer. When I first started playing in Los Angeles in the early nineties, Matt was owner and talent buyer for a club in Santa Monica called At My Place. It was by far my favorite place to play. In fact, I think every musician I know who was around at the time would agree. Before Matt opened At My Place, he was the booker at the Troubadour. Among other things, Matt booked the famous Troub “Hoot Night” of the 70s, where he put undiscovered new talent like Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, and Jackson Browne on stage. Matt, disgusted by the treatment he saw musicians getting at the hands of Los Angeles club owners, decided to open a joint where he would “treat musicians with respect, pay them fairly, and give them something to eat after the gig.” A simple concept, no? Well…it’s been ten years since At My Place closed, and still no one else in this town has picked up on that concept. Matt Kramer is definitely one of a kind.

In the years that Matt has been out of the music business, and living quietly up in northern California as a family mediator, he had begun to miss The Life, and so began this little concert series he runs in the common room of the housing community he lives in. It’s a small, under-the-radar kind of a gig, but after all his year as a Los Angeles music scene legend, he knows everybody – and everybody loves to work for him – so you never know who will show up to play this gig.

Our show this night was more of a split bill thing than a opener-headliner deal. Matt has always been a big fan of my wife since long before we were married (he even quotes one of her lyrics in his book Conversations Before A Marriage), so it’s a nice bonus for him to get us both for the price of one…so to speak. We had a great show, same as last year. An appreciative crowd, and like the others, they really dug the banter that happened between Karen and I onstage. Well…“ball-busting” would be the more appropriate phrase, but in any case, we got a lot of laughs! My occasional co-writer and good friend Michael Rothenberg showed up for the show with some of his friends, which was a wonderful surprise Afterwards, along with Matt and his wife, we all went out for a late bite to eat. It was a wonderful evening, among old friends and old campaigners who have been through it all and lived to tell the tale…the kind of night that really makes this all still worth doing.

In our final effort to follow in the footsteps of the tour we had done the year before, we headed down highway one, and stopped for the night at Cambria. Not for Hearst Castle, interesting though it may be – but for the elephant seals. About fifteen years ago, a small colony of elephant seals began to show up at the beach at Piedras Blancas, just north of Cambria, where the females would give birth, the pups would wean, and the males would fight to protect their harems. This all would have been perfectly natural, except that everyone thought the northern elephant seals were extinct. They hadn’t been seen around here for a hundred years. The seals had been hunted down to a couple of known survivors by the late 19th century, for their blubber, which was used to make lamp oil. Since they suddenly showed up again in 1990, this small out-of-nowhere colony of thought-to-be-extinct creatures has grown to thousands of animals – a real nature success story. Last year, we had just happened upon them, and finding ourselves thoroughly delighted, got a room for the night so we could stay and watch. This year, we planned the whole tour around the seals!

We spent at least a couple of hours at the beach, watching these creatures act out the dance they have done for millions of years. There were many people watching, but I don’t think the seals even knew we were there. It is one of the most beautiful things I have seen, and I can’t tell you how lucky I felt to be around to see it.

We stayed that night at the delightful Pelican Cove Inn on Moonstone Beach, and dined, as we always do when we’re in Cambria, just down the street at the Sea Chest Restaurant and Oyster Bar. We toasted the good fortune of both ourselves, and the elephant seals down the road. Survivors.

There was one last gig for me to do, and that was down in San Diego…a world away from the Central Coast. We bid a reluctant adieu to Moonstone Beach, detoured north to say goodbye to the seals…who still couldn’t have cared less that we were there, and headed south for L.A. I had one night to rest, and then I was off for San Diego to appear on the local NBC affiliate morning news show to promote my upcoming gig. I stayed over the night, and arrived bright and bleary the next morning to shoot the show. I loathe getting up early. I also don’t like perky morning people. Legions of them have no idea how lucky they are to still be walking around alive after being perky and motivated at me at 8 am, before I’ve even had enough coffee to be passably civil. And of course, it seems that every time I gotta do one of these TV things, it’s always in the morning. Which, in many ways, is good. Good time to be on, everyone is having their breakfast before work and watching you on TV. But the downside is that I’ve always got that puffy, just-woke-up look. But who am I to complain about being on TV. Damn…I’m lucky just to be there, I know. I know.

They shot the whole show outside in downtown San Diego, on the plaza right outside the NBC studios building…I never even went inside. It was a nice day out, and the whole thing turned out to be a pleasant experience in spite of the ungodly hour (that, to me, is any hour before noon). I played three tunes, got interviewed, and in an hour was back in my van, on my way home. The gig was the following night, but here we were, less than two months into 2006, and I’d already been on the road for most of the year. If I was anywhere within a hundred miles of home, I was going to sleep in my own bed, by God!

Next day – Karen and I got back in the van, and went back to San Diego. The gig was at a wonderful concert venue called Dizzy’s, where I was splitting the bill with local legend Sue “Queen of Boogie Woogie” Palmer. I was a little nervous about what kind of crowd I’d have. Between 1992 and 1995, the Bob Malone band played a steady gig at Croce’s Top Hat down there in the San Diego Gaslamp District. At least two weekends out of every month (often more) we would head down to Croce’s, where we would play three long sets a night to a very hip crowd. It’s really the place where I pulled together the act I am now known for – and the band I use now is the same band I used back then (including Karen as one of the background singers). We drew great crowds, and had great times, but eventually, the crowd down there changed from hip and adult to college-age and indescribably boneheaded, I started touring a lot, and we did our last show there in December of 1995. Except for one appearance at San Diego Street Scene in 1999, I hadn’t been back there since. I was doubtful that my San Diego fans would remember me after ten years.

I was very mistaken. A crowd of over a hundred filed in to see the show. About half were there for Sue Palmer, and the other half were people who saw me last when I had not yet turned thirty. It was amazing and gratifying. Before the show, while I stood by the CD table, person after person came up to tell me how they used to come see me at Croce’s all the time, and had worn out copies of my CDs in all the time I’d been gone. Some were couples who had met at our shows there. Some of those couples were married now. It was just great.

Sue went up and did a great set, and then I did my thing…we ended the show doing a little four-handed boogie-woogie. The crowd loved it all. It was great to be back in San Diego. I promised everyone I wouldn’t make them wait another ten years to see me (and I meant it!) and then Karen and I slipped out into the night, savoring the town just like we did way back when we were a lot younger, a lot less wise, but just as much in love as we are now.