 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|  |
Travels with Hurricane Charley
“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” “‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I'll give you shelter from the storm.’ ”
ONE “You’re not going to Florida!” said my wife, pleading hysterically into the void of my cell phone voicemail. I was sitting in the parking lot of an Applebee’s in Ocala, Florida as I listened to her message. “There’s two hurricanes coming right through Florida, and you’re not going!” My wife worries about me. A lot. You would too, if you were her. I spend over a hundred days a year on the road, and I’m not exactly the most safety-minded person. Not a good driver, either. Still, I’ve managed to log over 300,000 miles in the last four years, and I’m still alive. This tour had been going on for two weeks – I started with a set at the Cincinnati Blues Festival, and was making my way steadily south in a rented car. I had been driving all day – down through Georgia from Nashville, Tennessee. Except for Chattanooga, and the sprawling tumor of Atlanta, it was mostly rural territory, so cell service had been spotty. She had left this message while I was still in South Georgia. I called back from the Applebee’s parking lot. “Hi, honey!” “You’re not going to Florida!” she said. “I’m already here.” “Well…leave! You’re going to die!” Karen’s world-view always skips directly to worst case scenario. Rose-colored glasses are definitely not an accessory in my love’s fashion arsenal. She told me that hurricane Charley was supposed to make landfall on the southwest coast of the state. And another storm – hurricane Bonnie – was also heading in that general direction. I assured her that I would be safely away from the action. I was staying in Orlando tonight, and would be playing in Palm Beach the following night. “It’s still not safe! You have to leave now!” she said, resolute in her doom. Karen used to be a touring folk singer herself, but her knowledge of Florida geography had clearly atrophied. We live in Los Angeles, where Karen grew up – I tried something she could relate to. “Picture it this way.” I said. “I’m in Lake Tahoe, and the hurricane is going to hit San Diego.” “I still don’t like it! You’re going to do something stupid, I know it!” Actually, she was right. She’s always right. I had a radio interview scheduled in Tampa for the day of the hurricane, and if the building was still there, I planned to be there too. What I didn’t know yet was that Tampa was being evacuated. My policy as a working musician has always been: unless you’re dead, you should be at the gig. Since I quit drinking three years ago, I am a bit less prone to doing crazy shit in the name of making it to a gig. But I am not completely cured. We talked a while more till she was calm, and I went into Applebee’s to sample the cuisine within. It was like most road food: bland and characterless…yet dependable. I was staying just outside of Orlando at the home of Eric and Chris Hoeppner. Their pad would also be the site of a house concert they were hosting for me five days hence. Eric and Chris are a couple of folk angels I met two years ago when they were running a showcase at the Folk Alliance Conference in Nashville. By the time I showed up in their hotel room to play, it was two in the morning, and I had been schlepping around the convention center and adjacent hotel showcasing in various halls and rooms for the last four hours. This after an all day schmooze-a-thon in the main hall of the convention center. Oh, and I also managed to squeeze in the early set at the Bluebird Café. Until this spring, when Eric approached me at a show in Bethlehem, PA and asked if I was interested in doing a house concert during my summer swing through Florida, I had forgotten about the Hoeppners, and what I played that night, and who was there, and how it went – there was only a vague, dreamy recollection of a giant inflatable palm tree hanging behind my head while I played. “Giant inflatable palm tree!” I said, when he told me who he was. And we went on from there. There was a very comfortable guest room, with fluffy towels on the bed and soft jazz playing from a radio. From this room, doors opened directly to the pool and Jacuzzi area. Oh man, I thought. I’m moving in! It was two in the morning when I arrived, but I donned swim-trunks posthaste and jumped in the hot tub. I had a bad case of truckerbutt from the nine hour drive – this was practically a medical necessity. Eric woke up and came out to join me. We went inside and checked the NOAA website to see what fate awaited us. It looked like Bonnie was going to spin off to the west and vent her fury on the Redneck Riviera, but Charley was heading our way, getting uglier by the minute.
TWO Leaving the Hoeppner compound was hard. The house was beautiful, there was food in the fridge. Hot tub and pool, of course. And a barn full of horses out back. Idyllic. They lived in Clarcona, a rural, unincorporated area just outside the theme park sprawl of Orlando. Eric taught school, and Kris worked for The Mouse. Just as I was pulling out of the driveway, my cell rang. It was Laurie from the Main Street Café in Homestead. My gig on Friday was cancelled. They were stacking sandbags in front of the club as we spoke. Suddenly, this tour was losing money. When you’re walking the tightrope of playing music for a living, one cancellation can really set you back. But who could blame them? We all know what happened to Homestead when Andrew came through in 1992. I’d be plenty paranoid, were I in their sandals. Mostly I was bummed because I love that gig. They treat you like family down there at the Main Street, and I always look forward to a visit. It was a quick and easy three hour drive from Clarcona to Lake Worth, where my gig was this evening. I just hopped on Florida’s Turnpike, and took the Palm Beach exit. I love that they call it “Florida’s Turnpike,” with the ’s. It gives the name an inviting hominess that something like, say, THE NEW YORK THROUGHWAY could never hope to convey. Of course, there was still a fucking seventy-five cent toll every three miles, so it wasn’t that inviting. There is an exuberant goofiness about South Florida that I love. Like South Louisiana and almost all of California, it is a place so singular and eccentric that when you go there, you really feel as though you’ve left America and entered an entirely different country. Florida, like California and New Orleans, attracts eccentrics by the truckload. That is the upside. The downside is that all of these beautiful and singular places also attract a disheartening amount of staggeringly corrupt politicians and business interests, wanton environmental destruction, and really terrible drivers. Lake Worth is essentially the non-rich section of Palm Beach, that fabulous isle of bling just across the channel. It is also the home of the Bamboo Room, one of my favorite gigs. The Bamboo Room is a blues club done up in a style I can only call “road house tiki bar.” It’s just great. Everything is done right. Great stage, great sound, great atmosphere. And you can smoke in there! The Blues without smoking is just absurd. Russell Hibbard, the guy that owns the place, is definitely one of my top-three favorite club-owners to work for. He is wonderfully opinioned, always interesting to converse with, always fair with the dough, and being a musician himself, he knows how to treat a road-weary purveyor of the blues. Also, he owns an apartment building half a block down from the club, where he keeps nicely appointed apartments for the musicians. There’s food and libations in the fridge, Pop Tarts in the cupboard, a clean bathroom, and cable TV. A home away from home. The bedspread and curtains match, and they are stain-free. Not a big deal, you say? Only if you have not experienced the dread “Band House.” Some clubs keep a house or apartments above the club for the musicians. They are always the same. Lumpy, bloodstained mattresses. Threadbare sheets and blankets, also bloodstained. Early seventies vintage wall paneling – cracked, holed, defaced, and shredded. Mouldering bathroom. Unspeakable kitchen with nothing but ancient rat-turds in the cupboards. Said kitchen equipped with a foul-smelling fridge that, in spite of the hair-curling odor emanating from within, shows no signs of ever having had any food in it. If there is a TV, it’s got an antenna with tinfoil on it, and you can only get one station. An overpowering aroma of cheap disinfectant prevails throughout. You can tell that on the infrequent occasions when these places are cleaned, the method is to give the place a cursory hosing down, followed by a generous spraying of generic, bought-in-bulk disinfectant. You must first stay in one of these places for five nights in a row, sharing your room with a sound-guy who rarely bathes, before you can truly appreciate the greatness of the band apartments at the Bamboo Room. The gig was a pleasure, as always. Turnout was respectable, but low, due to weather-related anxiety. The crowd was appreciative and enthusiastic. I hung around after the show to sell CDs and sign autographs, but I kept the post-gig schmoozing to a minimum (although I did take time to smoke a cigar with Russell, otherwise the gig would not have been complete). I was still planning to throw my stuff in the car, and take off across the ‘Glades to find a hotel room in Tampa. I had to be at the radio station at eight a.m., and I knew I wasn’t going to be getting up at four in the morning to do the drive. Road lesson number one: know thyself. Back at the apartment, I was packing my bag and watching the Weather Channel, which at this point should have been calling itself the “Hurricane Charley Channel,” were they at all interested in accuracy. Top story: MANDATORY EVACUATION OF TAMPA. I paused over my open suitcase, crumpled underwear in hand. Am I really going to do this? I thought. I had been calling the radio station all day, and no one was answering the phone. Program director was out, receptionist was out. I had no idea if they were expecting me or not. It was a reckless and exquisitely stupid idea to actually get in the car at one a.m. and drive there, but I was still considering doing it. I’ve never missed a gig or a radio show. The thought of not going caused physical pain. The act of going would really cause physical pain. What to do? After much neurotic mulling, I decided not to go. I wasn’t going to risk my life for a radio show. Especially when I didn’t even really know if it was happening or not. I did not sleep well that night.
THREE I called WMNF in Tampa at 8:00 sharp the next morning to tell them I would not be attending. Program director Randy Wynne, who I was supposed to be on the air with in a half hour, picked up the phone. “You’re not coming, right?” he said. “Uh….no.” “That’s probably for the best,” he said, “we’re a little tied up with this hurricane right now.” All that agony for nothing. Then again, without neurosis and agony, would I have ever written any songs? Would I have even had a career playing music? I think not. I went back to bed and slept in. Russell was letting me stay in the room ‘til the storm blew over, so I went out for a late breakfast down the street at a local greasy-spoon called the Pelican, and strolled the town for a bit. By early afternoon I had retreated back to the room, beaten bloody by the heat. I ended up prone on the couch, unable to stop watching the Weather Channel. Once in a while I would try to change to another station, but with 140 mile-per-hour winds heading my way, everything else on the tube seemed rather frivolous. Finally, around three o’clock, I succumbed to cabin fever, and headed off to the Flagler Museum in West Palm. The odd and corrupt twists and turns of Florida history fascinate me, and Henry Flagler – that old robber baron and Standard Oil cohort – was a towering figure. Barely more than a century ago, Before Flagler took an interest in the Sunshine State, the farthest south you could travel by rail in Florida was Jacksonville. Key West was the largest city in the state, but it was only accessible by ship. Miami did not exist at all. Ol’ Henry built the railroad all the way to Key West, built hotels to give the railroad a reason for being, and laid out the grid for what would become Miami in a mosquito-infested, barely inhabited, swampy mangrove. For better and for worse, modern, tourism-driven Florida was born. Two years ago when I was playing down here, I found myself with a couple of days off. I was playing some shows in New York just the week before and a friend there offered me the keys to his condo in Marathon. “Stay as long as you like!” he said. Now there was an offer I could not refuse! So, a week later, musical duties dispatched, and with time to kill, I bought a copy of Jimmy Buffett’s “Havana Daydreamin’,” shoved it in the rental car CD player, and headed for the Keys. On the way from Marathon down to Key West, I stopped at the Pigeon Key Historical Site. This tiny rock of an island – about the size of a football field – is where most of the railroad workers were housed while they were building the Seven-Mile Bridge – an engineering feat that still takes the breath away. This is where I first learned about “The Railway that Went to Sea,” and what it took to get it built. I’ve been fascinated by Henry and his railroad ever since. The Flagler Museum was housed in Whitehall, Henry Flagler’s fifty-five room Palm Beach summer home, where he spent less than three months out of the year. It was a stunning example of Gilded Age excess. I enjoyed the tour, but the thing I most wanted to see – Flagler’s fully restored private railroad car – was closed due to construction. I have always thought of the private rail car as a kind of early tour bus. I mean, think about it – having your own railroad car – that’s just so rock and roll. I had to be content with the mansion. The wind was gusting hard outside the rarified confines of Whitehall, but here in Palm Beach, we were safe from the storm currently raging. While I was touring the upstairs guest bedrooms, Charley made landfall at Punta Gorda, one-hundred miles south of Tampa. I drove back to my room and watched the Weather Channel for the rest of the night.
FOUR I awoke unrefreshed and dying to go…anywhere. But first, like the drunk I once was having his morning shot of whiskey, I grabbed the remote with a shaking hand and switched on the Weather Channel. “The worst is over in Florida now, but unfortunately, the storm is still strong and heading for the South Carolina coast. We wish we had better news to report.” Bullshit! They were loving this…this sort of shit was their reason for being! The newscaster was reporting it all with barely restrained glee. The mouth was all dour sadness and longing for a better world. The eyes were shining with the promise of a major boost in the Nielsens. It was indeed over in Florida, all except for the insurance fraud and illegal contractors. I got an email from Fogarty Café in Bradenton, where I was supposed to play tonight – the show was still on. Sweet relief. There is nothing more emasculating than a day off on the road. If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing while you’re out there, you’re just a stranger in a strange land. And Florida was plenty strange just lately. I headed out. State road 80 would take me in a nearly straight line across the Everglades to the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee, where I would then head north through Arcadia, and on into Bradenton. There were very few towns on my route, just the river of grass, and the wide open sky. About 30 miles east of Belle Glade, the sky turned dark and angry. Rain began to fall so hard that visibility was cut to just about zero, then it would stop all at once, as if someone had turned a faucet off. I could see waterspouts on the distant lake, and tornadoes trying to form over the swamp, but not quite making it. The road in front of me was ruler straight and tabletop flat. Driving across the everglades is always a fascinating experience. At first it’s just swamp and sawgrass as far as the eye can see, but as the miles unfold, its beauty slowly creeps up on you, until you’ve been ambushed, and you are looking upon one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. Even if it is a swamp. On Route 70 I began to enter Charley’s path of destruction. There was little in the way of settlement out here, so at first the changes were subtle…a broken tree, a downed telephone pole. A road sign down at an empty crossroads. But then I saw a house strewn across a field with nothing left clinging to the foundation in front of it but a brick chimney. Pretty soon I arrived in Arcadia, Florida. I’d never seen such destruction up close and personal. Nothing prepares you for it. Houses turned to matchsticks; trees pulled from the ground, roots and all; powerlines down for miles at a stretch. On my slow crawl through the outskirts of town, I saw a mammoth, three-story tall Wal-Mart sign, its blue metal stanchions as big around as large culverts, bent double by the wind. The Wal-Mart itself wasn’t looking too great either. No great loss there. Traffic was thick, debris clogged the road, traffic lights were out, stop signs were down. It took me more than an hour to pass through Arcadia. After that, it was more mostly wide open spaces till I got to I-75 and the outskirts of Bradenton. I was running late and almost drove right by the club. The entire front of the building was covered by metal sheeting with WE ARE OPEN scrawled on it in red spray-paint. Hurricanes are the only thing I can think of that cause people to paint graffiti on their own buildings. I was met inside by Dave, the owner of the club and a very nice guy, who helped me with my stuff and directed me to an old upright piano sitting to the left of the stage. It was one of those tall, scrolled old uprights that haven’t been made since your grandparents were children, and in the barely-playable condition typical of instruments of this vintage. I could tell he kind of wanted me to do my show on this piano, and I was reluctant to say no…I always prefer a real piano and I wanted to make Dave happy, but tonight I had to regretfully decline. I was too stressed and cranky to deal with a stressed and cranky piano. You don’t really play a piano like this so much as you fight it tooth and nail to get through the show. When I’m in the mood, I will roll a decrepit piano over to the stage, aim a couple of mics at it, and do battle with the hoary old campaigner for an hour or two. See which of us comes out the winner. Tonight I was not in the mood. I hauled my electric keyboard in from the car, and did soundcheck. Up until about ten minutes before showtime, things were looking pretty dismal, but by 8:15 or so, a good crowd had formed. I was heartened by this. Bradenton ended up getting missed by the hurricane, but only just barely. There were a lot of flooded cellars and distracted homeowners in Bradenton that night. I did two sets and had a fine time playing for a very wonderful audience. After all that had happened, I think both the audience and I needed this show. During the second set, I slipped over to the upright and played a pseudo-ragtime piece of my own devising, called “Gaslamp Fantasie” – it felt appropriate to the instrument and it was a slow one, so the piano didn’t fight me too much. The crowd loved it. Afterwards, I had a Chicago-Dog (the bartender was from Chi-town, he brought this particular delicacy to the menu), got paid, and packed up. The club owner had offered me a room for the night, but I was itching to get some miles in. He also offered me a Cuban cigar, which I gladly accepted. I knew I’d be wide awake for the next few hours, and I always prefer to drive at night. I had a room waiting for me in Orlando, back at the Hoeppner’s. Back at the ranch, it was quite a different place than the one I had left. The power was out, the water was out, the phones were out. Candles lit my room, and there was no central air to soothe the hot and weary traveler. I had arrived in the nineteenth century. I lay on the bed in the perfectly still air, wide awake and sweating miserably. I thought: What a coddled wuss the modern American is. When the power is on, the water is flowing, and the gas tank is full, we don’t have the slightest idea how good we have it. I got up, took a candle out to the pool, and slipped into the blessedly cool water, lowering my body temperature. Sleep came quickly after that.
FIVE The heat forced me out of bed way before I was ready to get up. It had to be at least a hundred degrees, and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze. The humidity was a warm wet towel, smothering everything. I could hear the distant clatter of the two generators that were powering the water pump and a few lights. Both of them combined didn’t have what it took to get the air conditioner back on, but at least the toilet flushed. Things could be worse. There were donuts and coffee from the 7-11 down around the corner, and I partook shamelessly. As I sipped coffee – still at least two cups away from coherent – Eric approached me, cell phone in hand. Carrie Hamby, sometimes known as the Singing Biscuit, was on the phone, wanting to know if she should still come down from Tallahassee to do the opening set. I said I needed more coffee before I could make such a complicated decision. Eric told her we’d get right back to her. We mulled the possibilities, and after much consideration, came to the following well thought out position on the matter: “why the fuck not?” The house was in understandable disarray, but the Hoeppners and a next door neighbor began to bustle about, tidying the joint up, setting up folding chairs, swamping out water, setting up tables for food scarfing and CD-selling. I eyed them blearily over the rim of my coffee cup. I am suspect of morning people. How can they be so cheerful? How can they be so energetic? How can they even get out of their chairs? After lunch, Kris gave me a tour of the horse barn. My wife and I both love horses and I had been looking forward to meeting these magnificent beasts since I first arrived here. Karen told me to be sure to “pet each horsy on their nose, and on that soft spot on their cheek!” I obliged these requests gladly. There was a new baby foal among the horse family, and it was determined to eat my shorts. Everywhere I went, it followed me around, nipping and pulling at my Tommy Bahamas. I began to worry that I might end up involuntarily exposing myself. I smoked a couple of cigars on the back porch, and then went inside to see about sound check. Eric had built a stage in the living room and had procured a P.A. system, microphones, and a four-can light setup – all of it was being powered by the generators outside. They even managed to get a fan blowing in my direction. Not bad! I’d seen far worse in some of the clubs I’ve played. As long as the gas held out, we were golden. Pre-hurricane, they had taken reservations for some sixty or seventy people for the show, but landlines and internet were out, so most of them were now unreachable. Also, there was the very real possibility that some of these people no longer had roofs on their houses. Expectations regarding crowd size were not high. Didn’t matter all that much to me – four, forty, four hundred, or four thousand, I give ‘em the same show. Why skimp on the energy just because the crowd is small? They still paid good money to see you play. I put on white linen pants, shirt, and vest; black tie, and panama hat. Wound up my pocket-watch and put it in the vest pocket. This outfit would have constituted beach-wear in those pre-electricity days we were involuntarily reenacting – I figured if I was going to be forced back to the nineteenth century, I’d embrace it all the way. The only thing I needed now was that battered old upright piano from Fogartyville Café. Then we could shut down the generators, and I’d pound, shout, and stomp my way through the tunes the old fashioned way. Carrie arrived, did her soundcheck, and then we waited. A stillness fell over the house. I found a chair, lit another cigar, and settled into the book I had been reading for most of this tour, Steinbeck’s “Log from the Sea of Cortez.” Carrie laid down and allowed herself to be worshipped and stood on by the resident Maine Coon cat. Carrie was clearly this cat’s favorite person, the people who fed him and housed him be damned. Finally, two people arrived, then two more, and it started to feel like we might get a crowd. Then there was a lull…which never ended. By showtime we had a total of seven people. Carrie went on and did her thing, then I did my set. It was actually a fun gig, in spite of the tiny crowd. Can one even call seven people a crowd? You can barely even call it a quorum. The crowd-size really didn’t matter, it was the liberating rush of beating the elements that made it fun. Laughing in the face of adversity. Boldly going where no one else would bother. Afterwards, I sold a CD to every person in the crowd. One hundred per-cent turnover! At least I had that going for me. By eight p.m., it was all over. My wife was waiting for me in New Orleans, where she was visiting her best friend, and I was not going to waste another minute getting there. I bid farewell to my wonderful hosts, packed up my stuff, lit the Cuban cigar I had gotten the night before in Bradenton, and got behind the wheel. I had “McNally’s Puzzle” by Lawrence Sanders on CD, and it would get me through most of the trip. I slipped the first disc in, and went in search of Florida’s Turnpike. Battered, but not beaten, I arrived in New Orleans just behind the dawn. © 2004 by Bob Malone
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
