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Hello, Auto Tuners! I told you I wouldn’t be able to resist posting on my springtime concert-goings-on.
Last night I saw Brandi Carlile and Ray LaMontagne at the waterfront in Bangor, Maine. And it was wonderful.
I worship at the church of live music, and if there’s anything better than being outdoors, amongst happy, easy-going people, with gorgeous music filling the air, I haven’t yet found it.
The Bangor waterfront stage is a great, kind of funny set-up, right off the little downtown area on the shores of the Penobscot River. It’s also right next to — and I mean RIGHT NEXT TO — working train tracks, so performers are occasionally interrupted by a hooting, passing train. The stage is flanked by screened set-up areas and speaker arrangements that are mostly transparent — meaning the audience can pretty much see everything they’re usually not meant to observe. (I hoped for the hilarity of a costume change, but didn’t spy one.)
The best part of the stage set-up, at least from where I was sitting, was that the back of the stage was wide open, and above the performers’ heads was a crisp white church steeple high on the river’s opposite shore. After darkness fell, the steeple was illuminated. It was beautiful and poetic, lending even more of a spirit of worship and rejoicing to the evening than I already felt.
I heard the people behind us mention the steeple a few times throughout the evening, clearly as enchanted as I was. The crowd — all ages, though heavily college-age — seemed so pleased to be out on a (fairly) nice summer’s night, ready for a good show, and many, many in the audience seemed to know each other. I witnessed more waving and chasing down of old friends than I have ever before seen at an event like this.
It was just lovely. And so was the music! Brandi Carlile was a rockin’ little sprite, throwing herself into every song, letting her voice soar and break and clearly loving every moment she was on stage. I burst into tears when she started in on “The Story,” just knowing it would be great (and it was). Ray LaMontagne was more reserved, as is his nature, but delivered a super smooth, controlled performance standing in a triangle of light made all the more visible and dramatic by the mist hanging in the night air. And the openers, the Secret Sisters, were fantastic — I recommend checking them out if you like kind of old-fashioned country with delicious harmonies.
I left the show so grateful to have had the chance to be there, so glad for Bangor that it can get people like this up into the boonies, and so excited about next week’s museical adventure.
More soon.
PS: I don’t think Mama Kitt will mind if I report that she has welcomed Baby #2, and all is well!
These things I wish on this, the final day of regular Auto Tunes blogging:
1. That TGOTS and I had arranged for her splendid final post to be the splendid final post, because it is so splendid. Anything I add can only be an anticlimax.
2. That Boz Scaggs was not the artist sending us on our way. But how could I resist the “one more for the roooaaaadd” refrain of “Lido”?
In truth, everything I heard this morning seemed tinged with Auto Tunes meaningfulness: The “you don’t have to go” pleading of Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer Mak’er” (another in the long list of songs I know whose titles I know, but never can seem to pair properly); the “don’t go breakin’ my heart” perkiness of Mr. John and Ms. Dee; and George Thorogood’s insistent, growly “who do you love?”
Who do I love? I’ll tell you who I love: This blog and its handful of followers! The artists who provided fodder for our flights of fancy! The family and friends who have given me cause to write about them, knowingly or unknowingly, and given me so many fine memories to dredge up!
But mostly, of course, TGOTS — she came up with the idea for this blog, set it up, and made it real. She is determined to flex her writing muscles every chance she gets, to stop saying “someday” and make someday happen now. And she has been my bestest friend for nigh on thirty years — no easy feat.
We’ve allowed ourselves to ooze melodrama this week, and frankly it’s probably a good thing Thursday has come. We could all use a break. But as TGOTS has promised, we’ll be back from time to time. Like a bad Bob Seger chorus or a yummy Joe Perry riff, we’re just not that easy to shake.
Oh, friends. I’m awfully sad that today’s the last day of this blog. And I don’t really know what to say beyond that — though I’ve been drafting this post in my mind for the last couple of weeks.
I did have kind of a perfect moment this morning, though. It’s going to be a crazy day at work, one that requires me to be done up in full professional lady drag — suit, good jewelry, lip gloss, shoes with heels. But as I drove to work, “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” came up on my scan. And friends, I played that shit loud and banged my head like I was in black eyeliner and a ripped t-shirt. It made me very, very happy.
I haven’t been able to figure out that one perfect farewell song, or that ideal note to go out on, so instead I’m going to offer up three that pretty well cover the gamut of my manic musical taste.
(Let me also say that I struggled mightily to come up with the song that perfectly captures my friendship with Mama Kitt. I just couldn’t do it, because ALL songs are that song. As evidenced by this blog — every last stinking entry in it.)
First, the earnest and maudlin farewell must be from my beloved Patty Griffin. She actually has a lot of songs that would serve today, but let’s go with plain old “Goodbye”: Today my heart is big and sore / It’s trying to push right through my skin / ‘Cause I won’t see you anymore / I guess that’s finally sinking in.
She’s just my favorite. No getting around it. She speaks for the realest and truest corner of my cold black heart.
Of course, I could also sign off with some Aerosmith, whom I love nearly as much, though in a very different way. As I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for the much-maligned “Cryin’,” and kind of want it to be the last song played at my funeral. Hence its inclusion here as exit music.
Seriously, that song makes me feel like I’m wearing a miniskirt, dangling stillettos from one hand, and walking off into the sunset with my hair teased high toward Jesus. It may not seem lyrically like a swan song, but to me it sounds like one.
Finally, I didn’t feel like I could really go out without a showtune. But I couldn’t think of one that said au revoir the way I wanted to say it, so instead I’m going to go out with a “a new day’s dawning” message — one with a spirit of excitement tinged with wariness, joy leavened with fear of the unknown. All the things I’m feeling, set to a syncopated beat.
It’s the music of something beginning, y’all. (Also, Gleeks, check out young Lea Michele.)
Dear Mama Kitt, about to become Mama Kitt of two, I love you more than Broadway, more than hair spray, more than five scoops of Frozen Custard. I have loved our little blog project, and toast to many more years of riding in cars (virtually or actually) with the radio blasting.
And readers, you awesome few: Thank you, thank you, thank you for being part of our Auto Tunes party.
It’s a funny thing, waiting to have a baby. On the one hand, you have to tie up loose ends, clear the decks, and all sorts of other cliches, so you’re fully prepared to drop everything at any moment and duck out of society for several days or weeks. On the other, you have to make sure you have enough to do to keep you distracted, engaged, stimulated, busy, whatever it is that you’re trying to be.
You also have to be ready to let go of certain things. Like cuddling with your older child at bedtime, for instance. Or blogging with your best friend.
Yesterday, I had a doctor’s appointment that left me feeling like this baby could come at any minute. Now it’s been nearly twenty-four hours, and I’m a little calmer. But last night I was a wreck — my son and I bonked heads in the dark of his bedroom, and we both cried, and he stopped long before I did.
Before and after the tears, this lyric kept rolling around in my head: “This could be the last time, this could be the last time, may be the last time, I don’t know.”
As my fella pointed out later, there is really nothing to prevent me from cuddling with our son at bedtime after baby comes. But it will be different, there’s no doubt about it. I keep trying to remind myself that the primary reason we chose to have a second child was so Jr. would have a sibling — so it hardly seems logical for me to be mourning the imminent end of his only-childhood. But there it is.
This morning, I heard lots of snippets relatable to that whole looming birth thing. Including some blowhard saying, “It causes you pain because you let it cause you pain” (blowhard though he was, I kind of like this as a mantra) and Stevie Wonder burbling about the loveliness of his one-minute-old daughter.
Anyway. Committed as I was to making this a cheery blog week, I guess it’s more a Whoa, Transitions blog week. And as far as posting goes, well … this could be the last time. But probably I’ll be back again tomorrow.
As it happens, I’ll get to privately honor two years of Auto Tunes in the next couple weeks with two very promising live shows: the Avett Brothers and Ray LaMontagne with Brandi Carlile.
“But TGOTS,” you protest. “You live in Western New York, and our Googling does not find those performers in that region any time soon.”
True, I respond. I’ll actually be in Maine for a while at the end of May, in large part because and it turns out that those beloved artists will be there as well. I’ll get Ray and Brandi on the lawn at the riverside in Bangor and the Avetts in Portland’s State Theatre (a porn palace throughout our growing up, now magically restored) a week later.
HEAVEN. Instead of “I and Love and You,” it’s “Maine and Music and Me.” Which really amounts to about the same thing.
I suspect I’ll feel the need to swoon publicly about these shows, so check this space for updates. See that? We mean it when we say we can’t quite quit this blog.
I do love “I and Love and You,” and the subject line of this entry did come to me late last night, but for Avett exit music, I think I’m gonna have to go with “Slight Figure of Speech”:
Yeah, brother, I don’t always know what I’m rambling on about either.
I have hinted at this along the way, but it is time now to confess: I harbor a deep, unexplainable fondness for Justin Timberlake.
OK, it is not entirely unexplainable. He’s a handsome fellow. He clearly has a sense of humor, as evidenced on SNL, Jimmy Fallon, and other outlets. He can dance. And he has made an impressive career for himself for someone with boy-band roots, a feat I always admire.
Do I find his high-pitched, girly voice distasteful at times? Yes. Do I throw up a little when I read about his simultaneous dalliances with various starlets? Sure. Do I wish I could get back the 9:22 I just spent watching the video for “What Goes Around … Comes Around”? More than I can say.
But despite all that, there’s a tiny place reserved for JT in my heart. Oh, I’m not proud. But it’s time to face the truth.
I know it’ll look like pandering, on this WE HEART SPRINGSTEEN blog, but I really did hear “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” this morning. And was DELIGHTED.
I had stopped at the grocery store to grab some lunch on the way to work, and the E Street Band was blasting over the speakers the whole time I ran my errand. I couldn’t help smiling; I also couldn’t help skipping my way through the deserted store. (Seriously, I did — to the point that I got a “right on” nod from a stock boy.)
It really isn’t a farewell song, but somehow it felt perfect to hear “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” this morning. It celebrates friendship, fun, and easy good times. And we’re all about that on the Auto Tunes.
Have I confessed before that there once was a time I despised this song? Yeah. It was ages ago, but I remember classifying it, in my stupid youthful brain, with dreary rainy day classic rock. O how I have grown! O how much wiser I am now!
And how glad I am to get a little Springsteen send-off this week. Please imagine me turning up “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” on the stereo, clinking my beer bottle on yours, and toasting friendship, fun, and easy good times.
As MK and I have pondered the fate of our Auto Tunes enterprise in recent weeks, I’ve had two main thoughts:
1.) Whatever will I do without this blog?
2.) What the flock did we mean when we said we’d talk about “exit music,” “triumphant recessionals” and “operatic swan songs” in this final week?
I looked for inspiration on the latter front as I drove to work this morning, but the radio didn’t offer up much of anything good. I thought about my college, which allows its graduating seniors to choose their own recessional music for the commencement ceremony, and how my class chose Rusted Root’s “Send Me on My Way,” the Muppets’ “Movin’ Right Along,” and the “Imperial March” from Star Wars.
Excellent exit music all. But I’m not feeling particularly imperial or hippy-dippy or felt-covered today, so none of those is really working for me.
However, my subconscious is working like MK’s, if not at the same impressive level of detail. It turns out I have “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself” in my head — a song I despise, by Burt Blech-arach. Just a terrible, nails-on-chalkboard song, one that out of nowhere has latched onto my brain. But … it’s also apt.
It makes me terribly sad to think we have only a few days left with this blog. As MK will attest, I haven’t been able to talk about it without tearing up — even as I know bringing it to a close is the right and good thing to do. It’s been such a gift: having this project to connect me to my dearest friend, having an outlet to write something for fun every day, gleefully obsessing over how many people (not SO many people) were finding their way to us over the interwebs.
This blog has been a thing of joy, and I am grateful for it. I don’t know quite what I’ll do with myself without it, but for the rest of the week I promise to celebrate it in more joyful style.
After all, I want to leave a lasting impression that is less this:
… and more this:
(With, obviously, no disrespect to Ms. Springfield. Only her outfit and hairdo and choice of terrible song.)
I awoke at dawn with Supertramp in my head. “Goodbye stranger, it’s been nice …” sang the chirpy voices, and I let them roll around in there for a few minutes before I shushed them and went back to sleep.
I knew, even in my sleepy haze, that it was the day TGOTS was posting our farewell notice. In fact, I had dreamed about it in two intertwined segments: In the first, she put up that post and then both of us were too busy to write anything more, which seemed a sad indication that the timing of our closing up shop was right. In the other vine, I was perusing her new blog — and I do mean perusing. It was one of those dreams that happens in real time, or even slower than real time, and the fact that her new blog was a five- or six-page, full-size newspaper contributed to the length of time I spent looking at it.
I should back up and say that she and I talked in real life over the weekend, and she was hesitant to reveal to me the nature of her new undertaking. So it was that my subconscious took over the job of trying to figure it out. In the dream, her broadsheet blog was a combination of political commentary, cultural analysis, and personal confession. The only thing that seemed a little odd was her choice to include a full page of reprinted Garfield strips. But hey, who am I to quibble.
Anyhow. This week does indeed mark a turning point — for this blog, and for both of us. I have no doubt that good things are coming along. But it doesn’t make it easier to stumble through the transition, or to let go of a project that has become an important part of our friendship, teaching us new things about each other just when we thought, after thirty years, that we knew it all.
So, Supertramp. It’s not the first time my brain has provided such a soundtrack. When one of my sisters came out toward the end of my high-school years, I found the song “Make Love Like a Man” playing, completely unbidden, on my mental cassette deck. And a few years later, after witnessing a particularly horrifying incident involving another sister and my mother, I couldn’t stop singing “She’s Come Undone” for days.
So it might well be that Supertramp stays in my head all week, or long after this week has passed. But I promise not to write about them for the next four days.
Friends, it’s been real and it’s been super fun, but we’re going to close up shop on the Auto Tunes blog this week. On Thursday, May 12, to be exact.
Of course, when we say “close up shop,” what we really mean is that we’re not going to post on a daily basis any more, but will in all likelihood post when the spirit moves us, and since we’re wordy gals with hearts full of song there is every chance the spirit will move us with some frequency. The shop that is Auto Tunes — dusty, junky, packed to the gills with the nonsense that delights us and the memories that move us — will never completely close. So please let your daily scan of the interwebs land on us from time to time!
As for the immediate future:
Mama Kitt will become a mama of two any day now. Seriously: We are posting this announcement now because her newest bundle of joy could arrive at any moment. ANY. MOMENT. Hooray for new babies!
The only labor The Girl on the Swing will be going into is a new blog of her own. Though she knows it won’t be nearly as enjoyable without her partner in crime, she’s desperate to keep writing for fun somewhere, somehow. So: Watch this space for more details.
And readers — dear, cherished readers; you wonderful few! — please keep reading this week, because we’re going to try to go out with a bang. Each day we’ll discuss the exit music in our heads, the triumphant recessionals and the operatic swan songs, and maybe look back on the last (almost) two years of looking back. We hope it will be big, big fun.
Turn, turn, turn.
xoxo Mama Kitt and The Girl on the Swing
