TomFlannery.com

Last Half Bottle of Wine

written by Tom Flannery and Bret Alexander
download mp3

Bret Alexander – vocals, guitar, keyboards

It’s been a weird summer. Mostly because it doesn’t really feel like summer at all.

The weather, sure. But that’s only a small part of it.

It’s the music too. The way it used to climb out of car radios. The way it provided a soundtrack for gathering after dark, “sipping warm beer in the soft summer rain” as someone sorta famous once said. A certain record, a certain song, it could fill in all the awkward silences. We could sit around a fire with friends and family and everything worrisome receded, like an ocean tide. It’ll return surely, but not while this song is playing. Or this one…..

If the music is right, and the fire doesn’t go out, and the friends don’t go home, it could go on forever. What threads through all of our best memories is that we didn’t want those nights to end. And they all contain a soundtrack.

That’s what summer is supposed to feel like.

Baseball games. Concerts. Church picnics and patios. Nights at the drive-in. A moon bright enough to read by. We slow down long enough to enjoy the things worth slowing down for.

Now we’re largely alone. The music is in our ears only. We can’t share it anymore. Friends are on the other end of a smart phone. We bunker ourselves in and wait it out. Looking forward to, what exactly?

Fall is coming….and for kids it’s already here….as schools are back in session. Many of the classrooms are closing up faster than the students can get their lockers open, as the virus continues to spread. There’s no plan. No nationwide effort to eradicate it. We’re on our own. Kids are on their own. Homework every single night is “read this chapter and try not to get sick and kill grandma..” The only winners seem to be the ones who bought stock in Zoom at the beginning of the year.

Summer was the reward for getting through the other 9 months. You could take some time off. It wasn’t dark on your drive home anymore. You had hours more to go before you had to shut yourself down and plug into the next day.

I have these offbeat memories of summer music. At the Saint Joseph’s picnic in 1984, an older kid from our high school carrying a boom box around, blasting the brand new Springsteen. Something called “Born in the USA”. It sounded gigantic….and everybody already seemed to know all the words.

Another Springsteen memory. Sitting in the back of a pick-up, “The River” playing from start to finish as we illegally drank from a cooler of Rolling Rock, listening hard. And wondering if what we were in for was what Bruce was singing about in these songs, because he didn’t make adult-ing sound that much fun. Stolen Cars and wrecks on the highway and wandering the streets looking for shoes, then waking up early to push baby carriages spawned from unwanted pregnancies. All the prices you had to pay. You can look but you better not touch indeed. I was terrified of growing up because of this record. But at the same time, it taught us that even though it might suck to get old, we could still hit the roadhouse and ramrod all night long….that is if a babysitter was available. Bruce was raging against the dying of the light even then. But he still sounded like he was having fun. Lesson learned.

One more. I think it was the summer of 1983. I had a job with the county housing authority. Painting. It was hot and sticky and full time and I was miserable but it paid well and featured quite the cast of characters. It allowed me to buy my first walkman, which seemed magical at the time. On day one I splattered paint all over it, which made it that much cooler. A friend had taped the Who’s final show of their 1982 show off the radio. A show from Toronto. And he made me a copy and I played that show so much that the tape disintegrated and I had to sheepishly ask him to make me another copy. This truly kick-started my life-long Who/Townshend obsession. That tape. That summer.

I’ve listened to all sorts of music since we’ve been locked down. And it’s gotten me through. And inspired me. All of it. But what I don’t have is the memories that go along with it. The boom-box blaring or the cold Rolling Rocks or the brand new walk-man. And the friends who were alongside me for all of it.

And I miss that. And I miss them.

I want this to end.

In a bit..

–tf

Colleges are back. Some have thrown the doors open and some have taken a more moderate approach….half on-line and half “try-not-to-breathe-on-each-other”. Some have thrown in the towel entirely and go full online. It is what it is. Stay safe out there. And if anybody thinks college kids onsite ain’t gonna spread the shit out of this thing in about 6 seconds, you probably didn’t go to college.

Enjoy it now. ‘Cause we’re all gonna be back home soon.

Whatever. I was the class of 1988. Things were a little different back then, and not only because a credit cost $125. Today’s books cost more than yesterday’s class credits.

I was distinctly unmotivated back then. Not by design….it was just that I tended to live inside my own head. I wasn’t much good at anything. Surrounded myself with books and old movies and Sanford and Son re-runs and never worried about what was going on over the next hill. I’d rush home from wherever, desperate to get re-lost inside whatever memoir or novel or history I had put down. I worked a retail job…..lots of hours but no money. Didn’t have a girl. Never felt like I was missing something more important than what I was doing, even if I wasn’t doing much at all. I figured all this was normal. Today we even have a word for all of this. It’s called “immaturity”. Or at the very least crippling social anxiety. But ain’t nobody got time for that now.

But summer was ending, and college was an expectation. I knew I’d go, I just didn’t think about it all that much. Or at all. So with a few weeks left I had to choose, and since I didn’t have a driver’s license at the time and could not afford to go away, I chose a college I could walk to. Not driving distance mind you. WALKING distance.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

So that September I’d wake up way too early and cut through Dunmore high school property, about a mile or so away, find the sliced hole in the fence by the football field, enter a large graveyard, and climb up a hill that brought me to the back of the Marywood College campus (upgraded to University status years later). It was like walking as the crow flies. If I followed the streets it would take three times as long. I’d emerge near the old science building, mindful of the dead nun headstones in the front yard. And I’d be dragging the 20+ poundage business textbooks the entire way. Business was the major you chose if you had no idea what to do with your life. So, it’s the major I would chose now if I had to do things all over again.

This plan was bearable in the fall. In the winter, it become problematic, for obvious reasons. And so it came to pass that I showed up for my freshman Management class mid-term exam, only to be stopped at the door because the teacher didn’t recognize me. It wasn’t my fault he had such a poor memory. But I did get to sleep in a lot.

Eventually I’d get my license, but that was largely irrelevant since I didn’t have a car. These days we simply buy our kids cars. Back then? Not so much. I made $3.70 an hour at the drug store, the kind of salary that kept you walking to school. If I asked my dad for money he’d inevitably pull his wallet out and say “You can have whatever is in there..” and after I while I stopped calling his bluff because I realized he was dead serious.

Without a car I didn’t have many options between classes. I could study in the library or…well….come to think of it….I rarely did this.

So I’d nap on one of the student union couches or shoot pool and listen to the jukebox in the cafeteria. “Pink Cadillac” and “Owner of a Lonely Heart” would pour out of the thing incessantly. Interesting how lots of details fade but the music remains. And when the last class of the day was let out, back through the graveyards I’d go, making my way back home. All in all it was a pretty bizarre college life thinking back on it. I don’t think I came out of there with a single new friend…..skulking around campus with a walkman jammed in my ears, too shy to engage despite the 75-25 female to male student ratio at the time. It felt more like an extension of high school.

Did I mention that my walk to school took my past my favorite bar? When I started taking night classes….this became a problem. It’s pretty easy to whistle past a bar at 8am, but 5:30pm? How much time do I have? Maybe just one……I can still make it. And then….well….predicable really. The fact that I was able to graduate on time and with slightly middle of the road grades is still a constant source of wonder to me. I wasn’t intentionally deviant…..just prone to distraction.

And I regret it all. I should have gone away……or at the very least tried to engage. I should have done all the stupid things that college kids do and made all the same mistakes that college kids make….I should have noticed at the very least how beautiful Marywood’s campus was….and tramped through the place like I owned it instead of like I was stealing something.

And some 30+ years later, it’s more stunning than ever. Expanded. New buildings everywhere. Pretty sure that front yard nun graveyard is gone, wherever it is that nun graveyards go when donors dig deep and need the real estate. Along with that slice in the fence by the high school. No more short cuts. If you’re gonna choose a college, ask more serious questions than I did.

All the best to the class of 2024. The one thing you deserve more than anything else is normalcy, and since you ain’t gonna get that here’s hoping for engaging weirdness. At the very least.

In a bit..

–tf

So it’s Kamala.

Within minutes of the announcement my social media feed was filled with some of the most vile, disgraceful racist and sexist comments I’ve ever seen. Crude, Vicious. It made me despair for what we’ve become…..a nation of ignorant, hate filled, gleefully cruel cowards. This stain has been spreading for years now, and even frog-marching Trump out of the White House in leg-irons is not gonna wash it away. All he’s done is brought all of this out into the open air. He’s emboldened those who hated in private to go public. And they have. In droves. And most don’t care who knows it. Prominent local business owners…..cops…..local musicians, and on and on. Even I was shocked by the level of vitriol. They don’t fear retribution. Or being called racist. Or sexist. That’s the way things used to be. But this is 2020. They welcome it. They revel in it. They shout from the rooftops. They troll relentlessly, seeking to inject their own brand of disinfectant into the veins of anybody guilty of perceived empathy. Facts are irrelevant. Science is an eye-rolling irritation. Conspiracies and cardboard cut-outs of Dear Leader share their beds. Fox News plays on an endless loop, giving them the Orwell Two Minutes Hate without the pesky timer.

It’s extremely unpleasant out there, Bubba.

It’s a good ticket I think. Harris’s youth and energy will give the campaign a jolt. And while Trump stews on Twitter trying to find the proper demeaning nickname for her, poor Mike Pence is suddenly at a fork in the road, with each leading to a cliff. If he debates her, a former prosecutor…..he’ll get slaughtered. That is, assuming Mother lets him stand on stage with another woman, unsupervised. But still.

More likely Pence will be dumped from the ticket sooner rather than later. In 2016 you could argue that he was needed to court the evangelical vote, but now? That segment of the population have become the most adoring of Trump’s slavish sycophants. He could name the ghost of Bull Connor as his VP and they’d still vote for him. Pence’s only value to Trump is being so bland and dull and subservient that he never deflects attention away from where Trump wants it. On Trump.

Harris and Biden have differences. They clashed heatedly in the debates. If she thought his past actions were racist, she called him out on it. Trumpers could not believe that Biden would actually choose somebody who might disagree with him. But Uncle Joe just selected the anti-Pence. She ain’t gonna be a yes-woman. And that’s what a healthy democracy needs. Right now we have a boy-king, surrounded by shameless toadies. And it’s not going well. So Biden threw down a marker. Good for him. Someday republicans will get it. It just ain’t gonna be this day.

And good for us. Finally. A woman will be VP. One step closer to the oval office. It’s long overdue.

The Trump News Channel went crazy last night. Hannity and Tucker practically tossing spittle at the camera lens. Tucker Carlson kept intentionally mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s name, even after being corrected by his guests. That’s pretty much what they’ve got left. Hannity kept calling her a “socialist”, which is what they call everybody when they’ve run out of the other words. Pretty pathetic stuff, really. These guys are the confederate dance band on the Titanic.

Trump, as he does with any woman who displeases him, has repeatedly called her “nasty”. He’s especially upset with how she made one of his locker room boyos, Justice Kavanaugh, melt down and cry on national TV. She may cause Pence to have an aneurysm. I for one eagerly await the debate question asking Trump about donating $6000 to Harris’s California Attorney General campaign. Was she less “nasty” then?

It’s history. Right here, right now. Being made. We’re all flawed. We’ve all got baggage. Many progressives are not happy with Harris’s sometimes overzealous prosecutions of petty drug crimes. But that was then. This is now. Hopefully we learn and adapt and eventually find ourselves parallel to the arc of justice. There is no perfect ticket. Hell, I voted for Bernie. But this is what we got, and it’s good. If he’d chosen Elizabeth Warren as his running mate, I’d say it was good too. And so it goes. Biden had a talented bench to choose from.

We’re out of options. Allowing these thugs to run amok for another 4 years is unthinkable. It’s time to rally behind the home team.

It’s time to send the traitors off.

So, November. Bring it on. I like the chances of our better angels.

In a bit..

–tf

It’s been the simple things lately.

The storm that skirted by and left us alone, or the lone cloud that hides the sun just long enough to make the hot temps bearable. The deep blue sky hovering over the top of the green trees off our back deck. Collapsing into a comfortable chair after a long walk, chugging from an ice-cold water bottle, knowing that work is done, and play can commence. Watching the sun go down from the front porch, armed with a blue-tooth speaker and a killer playlist. Feeling the relentless heat finally dissipate, replaced by a cooling breeze. The right song at the right time. A cold drink that’s not water but every bit as refreshing. The well-timed nap…..always best unannounced and unplanned. Catching up with friends via a flurry of fun-filled text messages. Hearing my girls upstairs, together and laughing, best friends even if they still won’t admit it. Finding that one movie you wanted to see pop up all of a sudden on Netflix. Strumming the guitar and finding an expected melody. Finally finding the right word. Playing fetch with the dog…..watching his tail wag as fast as a propeller blade. Our dogs gives the kind of love we could all learn from. Pandemic? For them this is a dream come true. All us, all the time. His tail hasn’t stopped wagging since Mid-march. All these things. Little moments. Frivolous even. Added all up, they are what makes this all bearable. The retrospective good stuff.

All this isolation. Our senses are heightened now. The stuff that made us feel bad pre-covid makes us feel worse now. But the stuff that always made us feel better is even more welcome in this strange new world we’ve build around ourselves.

Hang onto all of it. Somehow we’re gonna get through this.

In a bit..

–tf

From Selma to Montgomery (for John Lewis)

written by Tom Flannery and Bret Alexander
download mp3

Bret Alexander – vocals, guitar, piano, drums, bass
Tom Flannery – vocals, guitar

If your tale has not been told
keep moving on keep moving on
feeling young while you’re growing old
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road

Time will move and time will tell
keep moving on keep moving on
see through these eyes then you’ll know me well
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road

The lord and the devil at 2am
working through their differences as best they can
the hate is always tempting without a plan
but I’m a man

All the lies bought and sold
keep moving on keep moving on
take your time ’till love takes ahold
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road

Oh no….baby please find your way
to believing in me
believing in me for just one more day….just one more day

Redemption washes away the sin
keep moving on keep moving on
of judging by the color of my skin
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road

The ghosts of those who’ve come before
they tip-toe across your bedroom floor
now that I’m gone they need you more
they need you more

If your tale has not been told
keep moving on keep moving on
feeling young while you’re growing old
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road
from Selma to Montgomery is a mighty long road

The rains have come. Hurricane Isaias is barreling up the east coast…..causing all sorts of havoc. We react to such things the way we do with most things. To those not directly affected with danger, it’s “well we needed the rain” and that’s that.  To those in peril, it’s hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. After all, it is 2020. They ain’t expecting anything but chaos. I just wish those not personally affected by any kind of danger, be it violence or poverty or sickness or extreme weather, were a bit more empathetic to those who are. It’s why so many of us have trouble sleeping at night, and don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. A sort of casual meanness that might even go unrecognized by the person being casually mean. To those of us who feel the hurt of others, it’s like being used as a voodoo doll. And it can creep in……that sort if disassociation. Insidiously. I could wall myself off, protected by assorted privilege. And perhaps get a better night’s sleep. And maybe I do sometimes. But then I see something….or hear something….or learn of yet another injustice. And it’s like instantly being re-thrust into Monty Python’s fish slapping dance. Jolted back to the way I was raised. To give a shit. Damn those good parents of mine. Damn then to heaven.

With Covid-19 wildly out of control right now, hurricane’s spawning tornadoes and flooding in the midst of it all seems dirty pool. Teachers and children prepare to…what? Return to school? Not return to school? Online? It seems madness to pile kids together on buses and in classrooms right now. We expect them to handle masks and social distancing when the grown-ups spectacularly failed at the same things? Sometimes it seems we’ve lost our collective minds. To all my teacher friends out there, whatever they’re paying you ain’t nearly enough. Anybody who doesn’t place all of you on a symbolic civil-war-type-statue pedestal should be forced to teach their own kids the new math.

(I’m checking the weather app on my phone, and it’s telling me that it is currently raining (true story), and that over the next few hours there is a an 100% chance it will continue, and at the same time projecting that overall the chance of rain today is 30%. Surely a bug, no? It’s these types of things that make me feel better about myself. We all suffer from impostor syndrome to some extent…..assuming that we’re in over heads in what we do, and are just kinda clinging to the ledge with fingers, desperate to hide our shortcomings. So whenever I think I’m about to be outed at my job for stunning lack-of-qualification fraud, I think of something like this weather app and the folks who developed it and think, “well…..I think I’m kinda like a resident of Lake Woebegone…..slightly above average…so maybe I won’t fall and die”.  Not sure why I felt the need to share this but then, there you are.)

I’m thinking of friends today…..the ones who have helped me get through this. The ones who’ve been checking in and working alongside me remotely. The ones who are helping me feel connected to something other than the walls of my house. Some nights I’ll sit out on the porch and carry on multiple text conversations at once…..sharing this and that and sometimes just saying “I’m doing ok I think, thanks for checking in.” Mundane things mostly, because that’s what we miss the most. The kind of things you mumble to each other over while elbow to elbow at the bar. Our kids. Our work. Our music. “Let me buy you one. No, I got this one. Put your money away”.

I’m trying to make music. But I don’t want to do it alone. So I’ve been reaching out to others. Friends. Co-writing. Trading tracks. Building new songs from the ground up. Again, desperate to feel connected when everything seems intent on keeping us apart.

This storm has killed people. Destroyed lives. It’s currently cutting a swath up the coast. And when it’s over folks will get back up and have at it again. They’ll rebuild. Because there are multiple fights going on right now. And no one can afford to lay down and not get back up again.

And if there’s a way any of us can help, we should find it.

In a bit..

–tf

Eventually we’re gonna get through whatever all this is.

We’re gonna have new leadership…..some compassionate adults even. And the arc that bends towards justice is finally gonna be allowed to go its own way, without being manipulated by closed, hateful, small minds.

Things will never be “normal” again, but we’ll find a new version of normalcy that we can live with. We’ll be able to kiss and hug and gather and luxuriate in simply being together all at once, cheering the crack of a bat or that iconic guitar riff that kicks off our favorite song.

And being outwardly hateful towards others will no longer be gleefully tolerated. You will be whack-a-moled back into your spider-hole. The way it used to be. Before….well…you know.

That day is coming, as long as the gentlest among us continue to push and pull the hardest. In the same direction. At the same time.

****

Are you ok with what you’re seeing? Federal agents in riot-gear, tossing peaceful protesters into unmarked vans, detaining them without charge? In American cities? Lines of protective Mothers getting tear-gassed by wild-eyed Trumptroopers, blindly following illegal orders, disgracing whatever uniform they are wearing. Fascism isn’t on its way, it has already arrived. And there is no longer any sideline to stand on. You either approve of fascism, or you do not. You can be as coy as you want, but you got to pick a side. You don’t get to shit on law and order while chanting “law and order”, unless of course you are just a racist hateful dick looking for some sort of small-dicked validation.

Just following orders. Now where have we heard that one before?

And when the brown shirts come for you, you might want to re-think what side you did choose. Because the back of that van can be a mighty lonely place to be.

You think it ends here? This is where it starts. And unless we rise up and stop it, it will continue. Because if they can get away with detaining you, they’ll move on to the next step. And then the next. And before you know it, people will be disappeared.

They are trying to equate dissent with disloyalty, something tyrants have done for centuries. They always lose, but history can be a bitch when she reminds us how long the games can last.

Nearly 150,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19.

Civil rights giant John Lewis is being honored in the Capital.

Our President is golfing.

But he passed a dementia test. So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.

****

I’ve got 1600+ “friends” on facebook…..the majority of whom I’ve never met in my life. Some I know quite well, and I love hearing from them in all sorts of ways. What they’re up to and what they’re thinking and seeing pictures of their dog in the swimming pool. That’s kinda the point of all this. Or at least it used to be the point.

But somehow there’s a very vocal minority who seem to be living, breathing members of the fucking Nazi party. Just drop-dead racists, the kind of sociopathic dead-enders who only seem to come alive when the people they’ve been taught to blame for everything are truly hurting. Adoring Trump cultists who are not at all worried that their man is making their lives infinitely worse, as long as he sticks it to us brown-queer-immigrant-loving libtards. The ones chanting “lock her up” and waving guns in their front yards and calling a global pandemic a democratic hoax that the entire world is in on just to punish their Lord and Savior….the one who gets massive cheers for walking down a ramp and drinking water with 2 hands and being able to identify small animals from pictures. These are the same ones waltzing through Wal-Mart, faces uncovered so we can better see their scowls, immune to virus droplets and buttressed by their extensive medical experience, courtesy of viral memes from Breitbart. The ones drop-kicking their own children out the door this fall into covid-land, even though Baron doesn’t have to go. Because you know…..

Somehow they also find the time to troll all your posts. Remarkable.

These people make me sad. And they can’t fucking spell either, which drives me CRAZY. Don’t underestimate this point. I can deal with all sorts of nonsensical gibberish, as long as the argument, however filled with lies it may be, is structured and ultimately spell-checked. Allow me to destroy your racist drivel point by point, and not be craze-distracted by your inability to use “there / their / they’re / your / you’re” properly in a fucking sentence.

I’m much more discriminating now than I used to be with the friend approval button. I have to do a quick profile check…..and if there’s a confederate flag or a fucking bald eagle or NASCAR-themed pic front and center…..into the Facebook ether it goes.

You know you do the same. Admit it.

****

That’s about it for now boys and girls.

Happy racism-isms! I’m about to block your asses!

In a bit..

–tf

Break It Down

written by Tom Flannery and Bret Alexander
download mp3

Tom Flannery – vocals, guitar
Bret Alexander – mandolin, harmonica, background vocals
recorded in quarantine from our respective bunkers

Find the wall that I can slide down
close to the door that gets me out of town
catch your eye before the time’s gone
then divert by pushing on ’till dawn
can’t you see
that’s just me
can’t you see

Put in the time to take you away
from the ones who got nothing left to say
what you dream is what you deserve
so take a chance if you’ve still got the nerve
tell me where
I’ll take you there
just tell me where

Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good

What matters most matters not at all
to the ones who won’t offer a hand when you fall
if you can feel a tear on its way down
then you’re worthy of that flag in your ground
together one
together all

Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good

Tell me where it doesn’t hurt
When you decide what love is worth to you
Hope and dreams they come and go
But never in the hearts of those who decide to
Follow through

Time changes everything but love
that drops from the stars stuck up above
styles come and styles go
where they’ll stop to rest ain’t nobody knows
but love stays
come what may
come what may

Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good
Break it down until it feels good

I sit here listening to “Chest Fever” from The Band….a glorious song that never fails to stir me even though I have no idea what it’s about….and neither does anybody else.

But music is its own language. When I hear Garth Hudson’s organ falling from the sky…leading into that rolling riff, it pulls me back from whatever precipice I’ve been hanging over. And that’s before those three voices arrive. Richard and Rick and Levon singing together with the power of a closed fist….

And as my mind unweaves, I feel the freeze down in my knees
But just before she leaves, she receives

That four note riff…it snakes its way into my brain and affects my dopamine levels. When I’m old and dying, instead of plying me with drugs, play me songs like this and let me drift off to wherever it is that we go when the pain stops.

George Harrison once said….”how many Beatles does it take to change a lightbulb? Well, four..”

The Band were like that. Equals. Five men. Each, on his own, would have made some sort of mark. Undoubtedly. But they could only have changed the world by coalescing. Robbie Robertson was their main songwriter, but since he hasn’t written a single great song since he left the group (change my mind), you have to wonder. Levon has always claimed that the songs were a group effort, and went to his grave bitter about Robbie getting all the credit (and most of the cash). “Chest Fever” is credited completely to Robertson, but the lyrics were largely improvised by Levon and Richard Manuel, and the song itself was tied together by Garth Hudson’s organ, surely created by he alone. It’s not the kind of song that is written alone in your room with an acoustic guitar. It’s too big for that. Too ambitious. Art like “Chest Fever” is created by ignoring rules, and then obliterating whatever is left over. By ten hands, not two. By the ache of three voices climbing on top of each other. By a crazed genius in the back who sounds like a circus calliope. And with Robbie on the fringes, like some cosmic catcher in the rye, saving the others from getting too close to the sun. Take any of the five away, and “Chest Fever” does not exist.

Everything great about American music, how it can synthesize the blues and country and bluegrass and pop and dance and classical and Little Richard induced rock and roll into a gumbo stew that can feed the world 3 minutes at a time, is here in The Band’s first few records. And it was only when these 5 men got away from each other that the music became anything other than unforgettable.

Who knows why? Egos. Drugs. Peccadilloes. Robbie went off to Hollywood. Made music for movies that sounded like….well….music for movies. The other four soldiered on, making great music as they barnstormed their way around the world, but not great new music. The muse was gone.

And then we lost Richard. Sweet Richard. That twinkle in his eye might have been helped along with the endless bottles of Courvoisier he downed to keep the train on the tracks. But he deserved so much better than depression killing him in a shit Florida motel, after yet another show. One of the saddest voices in the annals of popular music. And one of the best.

And then Rick…..bloated by various excesses. And the need to constantly move or die. Like a shark. That big heart grew so tired. He laid down to sleep and stayed there.

And we all knew what was coming….but Levon was a soul in flight. He had many more glorious years ahead. Already a legend, he became the kind that are carved on mountains. But cancer caught him when nothing else could.

Garth never said much. Ever. A true eccentric who only seemed able to communicate with music. Without it, he all but disappeared. Lost his house in 2002. Had to sell off possessions, one of which was an un-cashed check from EMI in 1979 for $26,000, at a garage sale…..irony completely dead. And if that’s not proof of eccentricity I don’t know what is.

So Robbie is alone out there…..the Band’s narrative is at his mercy. He just released a well received documentary on the group called “Once We Were Brothers”, which not surprisingly paints him as the one level-head amongst the shiftless crazies, which might be true but it’s pretty easy to re-write history when everybody else is conveniently dead (Garth was not asked to be in the doc, apparently. Also, you may want to read Levon’s memoir “The Wheel’s On Fire” to notice some….er…pushback on Robbie’s take on things).

So be it.

Some will swear I’m reading too much into “Chest Fever”.

But you can’t help what moves you. You can’t force yourself to feel bad when something makes you feel good. You can’t be lowered and lifted at the same time.

Music can do both, but the best only moves you in one direction.

And if The Band weren’t the best, they’ll surely do until the best comes around.

Now I’m gonna listen to “Acadian Driftwood” on repeat. Don’t wait up.

In a bit…

–tf