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Tourette's Syndrome I: Spring Training

3/23/06
The eternal Equinox marks the quartering of the year. The grim gray fogs of the chilly season give way to boisterous billowing clouds, dull downpour to showers. Birds are fornicating in the bushes, madly chirbling the while. Trees and bushes bristle with new leaves and pollute their environs with pheromonically-enhanced seed.

It's spring.

And in the spring, the once and future musician's heart lightly turns to thoughts of gauntlets, public whippings and tours.

Sandahbeth and I, having long since thrust our grasping roots deep into the fertile soil (ha!) of West Seattle, have assiduously avoided the yoke, the grind, the pummel, the thrust and move that is a traveling performance schedule. While life as a gypsy joker can be pastoral and slack, a 24/7 vacation with no checkout time, touring is a 24/7 job without smoke breaks.

Needless it is to wallow in the sordid details so lovingly adumbrated by the numberless seers, reporters and musicians with pretentions of journalism (as opposed to all their other pretentions) over the years. Perhaps it is best to limit our survey of this particular corner of American literature to the pronouncement of that sterling raconteur and control queen Frank Zappa, who famously and oracularly declaimed, "Touring can make you crazy."

But that's exactly what we're about to do.

Oh noes! you cry. Oh yeses, we reply. Amber Tide, that venerable wreck of an act, is back on its lurching, unpredictable feet and sturdy though worn tires and heading out to eat some macadam and tickle some minds, banging out our own private Walk n Roll through the heartland of the Pac En Dub.

Part of this great unconscious migrational urge stems from San's new and improved health, fueled seemingly by both decent surgery (just for once) and a brand new best friend in the form of a CPAP machine. With the increased energy and spirits accompanying her ability to actually breathe and sleep soundly at night, she's heading straight back to her old feisty, pushy, burn-the-candle-at-both-ends-with-a-blowtorch self.

But like baby birds clad in scruffy plumage not yet rid of its pinfeathers, forswearing craning and peeping for predigested grubs to make short, bitterly unstable flights from nest to branch, with occasional detours to the ground, we're getting back into this home, home on the road thing gradually. We're renewing our addiction to minstrelry one little chip, uh, trip at a time. Call them tourettes. First it's open mikes and jam sessions. Then a coffee house here and there. Next thing you know you're in a van in the middle of southern Oregon with a flat thinking "How did I let myself sink this low again?"

One peculiar ingredient for us to this lamentable debilitation has been church gigs. After a music director pal turned us on (or out, as the case might be) to performing at Unity sevices, we found that ruggedly individual little denomination to be a steady source of solace, spiritual, artistic and financial alike. San sez it's God's sneaky plan to get her into church on Sunday by paying her to do it. Works for me. For perhaps a decade now, we've had access to the odd experience of presenting material that normally bounces off the tin ears and bulletproof psyches of the general populace to a select subgroup that actually gets it, that sees and hears past its pop/folk patina to its more experiental core.

The results can vary. Some congregations are a little stiff about having the guest soloists doing blues-gospel and swing in their sanctuary. But then there are the others. Oh very yes. It's a stricture of performance that you know you're at least adequate when the audience gives you a standing ovation (barring being the POTUS giving the State of the Union address to that pop-up applause machine they always seem to get). Now just imagine getting that standing O in church. It's the kind of appreciation that's nothing less than crack cocaine to the true road warrior and spiritual philosopher alike. And that makes two of me.

Sunday before last was a bit much, though. We roused ourselves at the crevasse of dawn to follow the highway, early March sun roaring from the horizon before us, south, ever south to beautiful Centralia, the town where yesterday will still be today tomorrow. Arriving at the quaint old 1890s era church, we soon discovered that the lesson for the day was a vital one: Always Check For Handicapped Access. Always. AlwaysAlwaysAlways.

Confronted with two flights of stairs and nary an elevator or ramp in sight, we almost lost our freshly-painted professional aplomb and ran away. Fortunately, sort of, more mercenary heads prevailed, and with the aid of the more stalwart members of the over-50ish congregation (both of them), we succeeded against all odds in pushing and pulling San's overworked, underpaid power chair, and San as well, up the north face of Half Dome with only our folding ramp for friction reduction, revealing once again the supremacy of that ancient proto-tool, the inclined plane. I only had to scream "Not today!" once.

Despite the ruckus, the service went every bit as well as you could ask. Having recovered from her near death experience, San gave her first Unity meditation, while I provided the background music on 12-string. And after coffee and cakes downstairs, along with brisk CD sales, we set up all the rest of our instruments and played a pre-arranged after-church concert, which was better attended than the service had been -- apparently everyone went home and told their wayward friends that God was back in business. Much laughing, hand-clapping, along-singing and more brisk CD sales later, we wended our way homeward, blitzed and exhilarated by the whole affair.

This last Sunday wasn't nearly so exciting. There was a very nice ramp up to the main hall and nobody had to reconstruct their lumbar regions to get us in. On the other hand, they did give us the standing O.


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