Plundering the Pastoral
Planted plenty of romaine, arugula and red leaf lettuce. Offstage for more than a year I’ve grown accustomed to not having to chase the demon showman from town to town. Good lets grow tomatoes to celebrate. Squash and cantaloupe seem to be making a go of life here.
I’m a lucky creative stiff. Swashbuckling for my supper in front of an audience has kept me busy for most of 5 decades, but a good part of these many years there’s been the writing too. Creative types without an outlet are a danger.
Swinging for the fences, you know really getting over on an audience, nailing a well devised scene, these are not exercise’s they are full blown creative skirmishes. That’s what the untamed and untrammeled ego will do for you. Off the boards and out of the lights the pressure to perform retreats from the top of the to do list.
A solo vaudevillian is its own particular show business steed. You can do your set with your eyes closed, you can play it start to finish word for word. If you want you can improvise the set, riff all the way through, might be hard or might be just what the doctor ordered, usually we have material so we don’t have to open the vortex into the source fires, where sure a set of new might be willing to tumble on out.
I’m talking to the grapes, I’m singing with the birds, and whispering sweet nothings to a lizard. My backyard is a conversation.
Leon Redbone and I hooked up across Northern California to play some dates. Leon ever the pro’s pro was always banging out shows not just to keep food on his table, but since he had a name he’d carry a good size band along and for giggles toss a juggler into the act as his opener. Backstage we’d hang in the green room. Leon always said he’d rather be home working in his garden. The coy musician didn’t say it once he said it a thousand times and meant by it that it was there that he was able to be of service to his wife, and his garden, both of which he dearly loved.
I was still too full of wild horses and tempting horizons. Tending to my own garden wasn’t in my fool youth’s playing cards.
Vince Giordano was out on the tour with Leon. Brooklyn based he brought out his collection of rare instruments, most no longer made, many seldom if ever heard or played. Like Leon, Vince was meticulous, his music was note for note pitch perfect. Leon’s sidemen all made the cut because these cats could keep up, they had a knack for nailing the tune.
I’m more than lucky I found this garden to tend. Getting my barehands into the soil, toiling beneath a wide brimmed straw hat, plucking a ripe blueberry to eat, caring for the living, paying my respects to the plants that have lived well beyond their prime, planting yams hoping for yam greens soon with whole yams to bake next winter.
That’s the big show. Tonight and for one lifetime only, appearing beneath the old oak tree, ladies and gentlemen “the father of my children” let’s hear it for the guy giving these plants his best…
Originally published at http://danasmith.com on June 12, 2021.
