Short story seems to be coming but I don't want to let the cat out of the bag just yet. I have to avoid installments lest I run out of steam. Since, to my knowledge no one truly reads my blog, except that I caught Jason Bash reading my Son Volt review (it was all good- it's always good when someone catches your stuff somewhere and enjoys it), I can speak a little to the fact that an ex of mine wrote a few tidbits of her own on her myspace that pertained to our relationship which probably ended something like 2 1/2 years ago.

Immediately, I was shocked by what she had included there because I wondered how long she had held on to her little pearls, believing, of course, that water had gone uner the bridge there. But then you come back into the dark passageways of regret and frrustration that you thought you had neatly paddled away from. I had to pass instead through the stages of anger enough to realize that it was futile, that I was only going to get myself revved up with no chance at resolution. Better to let the water spill off the duck's back. Even so, I had to understand the natural progression of my own, at times, tendency to take the first response to a slight. It may have been a slight after all, but was it worth my time. Is it ever really worth my time? Has it not cost me already much in life that I might otherwise have been able to enjoy? I am Jack's raging bile duct.

She sat in the room holding yarn, she had done herself up to look like a dedicated mother, knitting a sweater for him, only she had started a few days late. I driven him somewhere a thousand miles, he was chirping on & on about how he was going to see his mother. I had told him as much because it was the truth. She was his mother. Now for four years or something like it.

I gave him his birthday cake just three months prior to this. He had gleamed with a cone-shaped hat that was multi-colored, festive with craypaper-wrapped presents stacked neatly on the kitchen table. Happily, my friends took pictures while he smiled at the little candles on his chocolate cake.

I had asked him earlier that day what flavor he liked and he had said vanilla with chocolate frosting. It had been an easy feat: Teenage Ninja Turtles were his favorite and it wasn't hard to find plastic placards to mount all around on the chocolate. Of course, he didn't know what to do with the plastic when the candles were blown out, he smiled, but wavered when I began removing them. In fact, he started to whine as was customary now that I had gotten into the habit of giving him everything his heart desired. I could afford it but I was beginning to wonder about the trend I had set. I was not a spoiled brat but I had always known guys and girls who grew up that way, and they all ended up the same.

I wasn't making that judgment every time but I had to admit to myself that I couldn't afford the confrontation. I'd set up a boundary with him and would think I had made progress. Nevertheless, he always worked on that boundary until I caved, and I found myself doing just that more and more. Now, more often, there was no fight in me. Let the kid have whatever it was that he had fixated on and feed that fix temporarily. Until the next one came along.

So that was my story, what I was coming into this meeting with, but I knew she knew none of it. So let her knit away. I was cordial at greeting her. She didn't know me well. I was her uncle, and my sister, her mother, was an ATM for her. I know I had given money here and there, but that's where the connection dropped. I only heard thing she said from her mother, nothing directly from her mouth, so this was a first for a long time. She was modest but I suspected that was a front. She was acting, as she no doubt did when people were strictly watching her. She shook my hand and smiled a working class smile, no teeth, wan, streching of the lips. She looked down at her son, and looked him up and down, doting on him. Maybe that was legitimate.

The stars came out at midnight,

a faded milk blot in the sky like a fist,

by then we were three-fourths to the way drunk,

gathered on the hill behind the school,

shivering, chattering like mad thieves,

about how we had scored, carrying our egoes,

waiting for the apocalypse, we might have been

talking about Jesus, like apostles huddled in a room,

hiding like outlaws.

"Anyone caught speaking Esperanto is thought crazy or headed for jail,

There'll be peace in the wilds of West Texas where the sun and the sky prevail."



It started off like a whimper, maybe not entirely for all involved but for the Son Volt/Tupelo purists, it was a head-scratcher. I never once expected Mr. Farrar to pull out a Tupelo classic but somewhere around the fifth or sixth song of the set, he plunged into "Grindstone," the lead track off the lesser known, March 15-22, 1992. My dates may be askew but the album remains intact in its obscurity. I say obscurity because it is seldom mentioned as being paramount to No Depression, Still Feel Gone or Anodyne. But the real story was that this show was a display of the landscape of his more recent frontiers, Okemah and The Search. So if you haven't been paying much attention, you felt a little out of sorts. But it was vintage Son Volt music, and that's ultimately what mattered on this particular night. Put down your ego, and let the oracle blow his breeze. Jay's not wisdomatic, no, I think he just writes about things he sees, and imagines from real life and the stuff which he might feel deserves homage. "Cocaine and Ashes" case in point.

But then you watch him stepping up to the microphone with his burnt brown acoustic and begin to moan out his lyrics like they were matter of fact. He doesn't smile, not once, mostly because he seems to always have to come back to himself to realize that there are other people in his vicinity. Then, there is an almost apologetic haste in moving on to the next song, the next time zone. Maybe we speak of these peculiarties too much, he's a musician, and all it takes is a few hours with him to know that he's a damn good musician.



I had forgotten just how spacey things could get with Son Volt music, how you couldn't really pen it into a country slot, or a rock slot or even an alt-country slot. None of that matters when they take the stage, because they seem to just play it how they feel it. Why I would even bother to critique their work has little to do now with my own preferential leanings toward Jay Farrar. I sometimes chuckle at his occasional (often occasional) lyrical pretensions, and his voice is a like a broken cuckoo clock behind unwound or an upright bass being unstrung. It's not that alone, though those conditions certainly do exist.



It was more a feeling that welled up in me, as I watched the bowl-cut headed maestro spinning his magic before a crowd of maybe 300-400, if that. This was a feeling of adoration on end, amazement on another, and a strange exception, which was pride. Pride because I was at last in the presence of an undeniable greatness. I'll never really fully understand his lyrics or creative process. But this adoration, pride at witness a true musician in his cups, comes from an insight that Mr. Farrar appears to be contributing to the library of folk tradition that continues to grow as the world of music turns. It seems inevitable that his songs will be sung by our children and our children will no doubt teach them to their children. Okemah & the melody of Riot, the name is ambitious, bold in its echoing connotations, but there it was right in front of us, as he slung guitars around his neck, strapped the harmonica shelf to his shoulders, and sang sometimes with the same intonations as Woody Guthrie. At least, with a sullenness the old horse would no doubt show appreciation for.

I've struggled at times with the strains of Guthrie, but it doesn't seem like Farrar ever has. I've always marvelled at his taste and ear for the beginnings of Americana music. And the aftermath thereof. I remember hearing an episode of the radio program, E-town where Son Volt performed several songs for the airwaves. Intermittently, the host, Nick Forester, asked Jay and some of the members of the band some leading questions regarding their understanding of the roots of the music which they played...it was all summed up when the band gathered together with Nick & Helen Forester and Josh Rouse, who was also featured that night and played Townes Van Zandt's "White Freight Liner Blues". It foolish to think, but I imgaine Mr. Farrar might have begun to think at a time like that that he had arrived. Any aspiring American rock star would have and should have.