Today you get Asters

Will posted a picture a while back that I just love. I think Dan took it. It shows Will and Joe and I sitting on John Keane's porch in Athens, Georgia, taking a break from recording our last, Visiting Normaltown. I tried to paste the picture in here, but it didn't transfer well. Today you get Asters.

At the moment the picture was taken, we were recording in the best studio we'd ever used in our lives, surrounded by beautiful equipment, gold records on the wall, attended to by John, a quiet man with a dry sense of humor, who cut his teeth recording all the early stuff with REM. Locals, including a former member of the band Sea Level, dropped by to listen as we laid down tracks. We played a local watering hole and lots of enthusiastic locals came by to hear this band the Andy Carlson was producing. We got up and did a hot two or three songs and one slightly drunk man came up and grabbed me by the shoulders, got into my face and said: "You are one singin' mother-fuckah!" We laid down all our tracks the third week of December, or maybe it was the second, but it was close to Christmas, and then Andy stayed there (his family live there) and mixed our work with John.

I think at this point Big Wooden Radio was at the top of our game, in our incarnation as a six piece band. We had several other points where we were in similar fettle, once when our first CD came out, again when we added Paul on percussion and went to Telluride.

Soon life intervened, as it will tend to do. We ran into our own limitations. Could we really travel enough to support life at the "next level?" Would one person continue to do the vast majority of the booking (along with tearing down, the most thankless part of playing gigs)? Would years and years of focusing on putting on a show rather than addressing issues between us wear on us? When you're bringing original material, arrangements, and ideas that you care deeply about to a group of peers you care deeply about, a certain degree of emotional turmoil is to be expected. There's a reason most bands break up, often with acrimony.

Merle Haggard, or somebody equally cool, commented "Anyone can be gracious on the way up." After that photo was taken, we learned a lot about our limitations. We did therapy together, for God's sake! Over the coming years, the number of gigs we played diminished. Our lives and band process really did not permit taking the time and making the commitment to make another recording and work together to play gigs and sell it. Much of being a band is working to retain the illusion of some sort of momentum. It helps to be the band that is going someplace. One really has no control over this. What does one do in order to be prom king year after year? Popularity is evanescent. There's even a band by this name, of course, chosen, I hope, with irony.

We continued to make good music together, perhaps not at the level of practice and attention to detail that we brought to our game during the Athens days, or by the end of a summer playing more than 50 gigs, but solid, honest music. We worked as a quartet, the way we started. This was probably our most interesting formation. This isn't a reflection on the other fine musicians we've included in the band. It's just that we were most surprising when we looked like a quaint little bluegrass band, but then played an amazing array of songs. It was great fun to play eight songs in a row, all unlike each other, and watch the audience figure out "what kind of band we are."

I miss playing music in public. So far, I don't miss it enough to book any gigs. I have a standing offer from one of my favorite bar owners at my favorite bar, and on this very computer I have a song list to work on when I pick up a guitar. Playing even two hours in a bar requires arranging at least 40 songs. All my old arrangements have spaces in them for Will or Joe or Andy or Greg or Al to play instrumental solos. My list needs to be rearranged now so that I can do something on the guitar, or scat sing, or tap dance and fart, to fill that space. Because of my association with these fine musicians, I know I can't just fill that space. I need to make it matter, make it my own. I pick up my guitar, not regularly enough, and work through arrangements. One of these days I'll book that gig, providing enough pressure for me to finish the arrangements and learn them satisfactorily.

I don't know who it was, maybe Paul, who introduced the term "clams," to our vocabulary. Making an error in our highly arranged material became known as "dropping a clam." Paul taught us a lot about rhythm and arranging. He also taught us not to make faces when we "dropped clams." "You guys have to learn to smile when your pants are full." He was right. It was not permissible to make a face. It was permissible to turn to one's partner, off mike, and say "this is a real chowder-fest!"

A solo artist is responsible for his own arrangement. He or she can take more liberties with arranging, since changing direction mid-song doesn't cause any trouble for any partners. We're also lonelier. When times are bad, a good band becomes a closed committee. "They sure hate us. Let's crank this out and get out of here!" A solo artist bombing is lonely. He can only rely on the audience or on himself for strength. His clams are his own and he must stand in them. (Standing the Clams! There's a song.) I miss the good gigs. I also remember bombing slowly, a musician on a slow rotisserie, basted with audience disregard.

I'm happy with where we turned out. I'm grateful for those times on the porch, times when our hard work and discipline paid off, when opportunities seemed unlimited, when we found ourselves playing out of our league and doing well. That, my friends, is a really fine feeling.