Birthday Wishes, April 24th, to sweet Disa

Back 40 : Spring 2005

.
What do I play on Better Days? Whatever sounds right for today.
I have a thing called the Back 40 and it's a good starting place in
further answering that question. There is just too much joy,
education and wisdom available to restrict our ears only to what's
new, so the Back 40 includes a few older recordings. Listings are
in no particular order. Artists' websites are linked below titles.

Remember: the Better Days radio program is heard Thursdays
from ten to midnight PDT at www.coopradio.org
around the corner and around the world...

I'm Wide Awake It's Morning : Bright Eyes
http://www.saddle-creek.com/
Knuckle Down : Ani Difranco
http://www.righteousbabe.com
Hopetown : Jenny Whiteley
http://www.jennywhiteley.com
A Different Life : Emily Smith
http://www.emilysmith.org
The Milk-Eyed Mender : Joanna Newsom
http://www.sfburning.com/jnewsom.html
Live In Glenfarg : Jim Malcolm
http://www.jimmalcolm.com
Dusty : Fred Eaglesmith
http://www.fredeaglesmith.com
Selwa : Choying Drolma/Steve Tibbetts
http://www.starsend.org/tibbetts.html
Mercy Now : Mary Gauthier
http://www.marygauthier.com
The Clarence Greenwood Recordings : Citizen Cope
http://www.citizencope.com
Hotwalker : Tom Russell
http://www.tomrussell.com
Handful Of Earth : Dick Gaughan
http://www.dickalba.demon.co.uk/
The Graceful Ghost : Grey Delisle
http://www.greydelisle.com/
Drum Hat Buddha : Dave Carter & Tracy Grammar
http://www.daveandtracy.com
Dear Heather : Leonard Cohen
http://www.leonardcohen.com
Faultlines : Karine Polwart
http://www.karinepolwart.com
The Revolution Starts Now : Steve Earle
http://www.steveearle.com/
Beautiful Dreamer: Songs Of Stephen Foster : Various
http://www.americanrootspublishing.org
I Never Heard You Knockin' : Malcolm Holcombe
http://www.malcolmholcombe.com
An Echo Of Hooves : June Tabor
http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/june_tabor_topic_records.html
The Duhks : The Duhks
http://www.duhks.com/index.php
A Long Road Home : Mickey Newbury
http://www.mickeynewbury.com
The Waking Hour : David Francey
http://www.davidfrancey.com
1798 The First Year Of Liberty : Frank Harte
http://www.hummingbird.ie/
A Grain Of Sand : Cowboy Johnson
http://www.cowboyjohnson.com
Woman King : Iron & Wine
http://www.ironandwine.com
Broken Freedom Song : Kris Kristofferson
http://www.ohboy.com/kris.html
Bridges : Hans Theessink
http://www.theessink.com/en/
Why The Long Face : Suzzy & Maggie Roche
http://www.roches.com
Man For Galway : Sean Tyrrell
http://www.seantyrrell.com
About Baghdad (soundtrack) : Amer Tawfiq
http://www.aboutbaghdad.com
Must I Paint You A Picture? : Billy Bragg
http://www.billybragg.co.uk
The Many Sides Of Fred Neil : Fred Neil
http://www.wirz.de/music/neilfrm.htm
Redbird : Redbird
http://www.younghunter.com/redbird.html
The Big Session Vol 1 : Oysterband & Guests
http://www.oysterband.co.uk
Seven Swans : Sufjan Stevens
http://www.soundsfamilyre.com
Mowing Machair : Fine Friday
http://www.finefriday.com
Banjoman: Tribute to Derroll Adams : Various
http://www.theessink.com/en/
Underneath The Stars : Kate Rusby
http://www.katerusby.com
Bittertown : Lori McKenna
http://www.lorimckenna.com
Breakfast In Balquhidder : Orchestra Macaroon
http://www.theshipbuilders.com

Times

.
My experience of time has little to do with clocks nowadays,
though I understand the human being's need to have a sense
of chronos, of a linear and countable time. I remain more
involved with kairos, the other kind of time the Greeks created
a word for. Kairos, as I experience it, is all time, collected in the
great palm of now. It's what passed through you that morning
when two cars cut you off on the freeway and, as if in slow motion,
collided and exploded into fire, and one minute later you had taken
the next off-ramp and pulled into a parking lot, turned off the car
engine, and sat alone there with your heartbeat.

Kairos is the way we remember tomorrow. It is as though all of
our experiences hold hands and move in us like children whose
purpose is to keep us closer to amusement than despair. I'm no
enemy to chronos, but counting time can be a form of subtle
torture intended to keep us from all-time-now experiences and
deeper states of being. I am amused to know that, in one second,
a hummingbird's wings beat 70 times, that the copulation of gray
squirrels lasts an average of 2.4 seconds, that it takes bees just
15 seconds to communicate by dancing, that a flying fish's average
flight lasts 30 seconds, that a snowflake takes 10 minutes to form,
and that the male indigo bunting sings at least 8,640 songs per day.

It's been 53 years today my mother tells me, 53 years of escaping
the capture of clocks en route to the land of kairos, and I'm happy
to tell you that, on this my birthday, I'm still on the loose. I'm not
even certain that I'm wanted anymore in the towns of the dreaded
tick-tick-tock. It's dark in the meadows of the soul. Fabulously dark.

I remain under the spell of candles.

Ice #9 : Aurora Borealis

better days______www.coopradio.org
.
I grew up in Saskatchewan, where the northern lights
are enough to make a child believe in all mysteries. If
space were one enormous grand piano and the angels
blew their trumpets into its open body, the aurora borealis
is the humming you´d hear, the resonance of invisible
strings sending harmonics into the heavens in the form
of floating and swaying ballerinas of light. Well, if the
northern lights visit Saskatchewan, they must live in
Iceland, this place where so many old mysteries are
kept alive.

Iceland is about the size of Cuba, only with less than 3%
of Cuba´s population. About 85% live in the big city here.
Downtown Reykjavik, where Disa lives, is known as 101,
after its postal code. It is a compact area, sometimes
referred to as "Europe´s coolest hotspot," and is filled
with shops, music clubs, coffee alcoves, cd stores and
galleries. In his book, Waking Up In Iceland, John Sullivan
wrote of 101, "You can get to most destinations by means
of a short, sharp sprint. A trip to the single state-run
liquor store in town can be done in under a minute with
the right shoes and a favorable wind. However, if the winds
are traveling against you at speeds greater than those at
which you are moving forwards, you will be pushed rudely
backwards. In these conditions, it´s best to stay at home
and order pizza." There´s only been one night so far where
pizza would have been the safe idea; instead we battled
the 101 wind for Thai curry.

Disa´s made sure that we´ve taken in quite a few of the
island´s secret and special places and now, settling into
Reykjavik for the long Easter weekend, I am content to
explore 101. The Sugarcubes played in town the same
night I played at the Borg, and since they and Bjork have
captured international audiences, Iceland has become
something of a little volcano, sending a few sparks into
Europe´s and North America´s musical spheres on a semi-
regular basis. Music has played a significant role in drawing
attention to Iceland and making tourism the number two
industry behind fish products, ahead of farming. There are
tiny cafes which morph into clubs by night where, once
musicians set up their gear, there´s room for only thirty
or forty bodies to sardine their way in, the tables moved
out of sight to make a dancefloor possible. The excitement
of it makes me think, though I´ve never been there, of
how Liverpool may have felt toward the end of the fifties.

Reykjavik has everything larger cities have, but seems to
have just one of them. There's little here that could be
called superfluous; there´s just not room for that in 101.
Oh, by the way, they do have one McDonald´s downtown.
Just one. This may be due to the fact that Icelanders are
obsessed with hotdog stands; they are everywhere, and
if you order eina med ollu, "one with everything," you
get a long European weiner with two kinds of onion, a kind
of yellow mayonnaise and a pungent mustard to die for.
Disa took me to a flea market yesterday down by the docks
and afterwards, in the rain, she took me to the "best
hotdog stand in Reykjavik," where we stood in queue under
a green umbrella for this treat. Eina med ollu is also,
she tells me, a phrase used to describe a woman who never
learned to say no.

On March 1st, 1989, a day known as "Beer Day," it became
legal for Icelanders to buy beer. Prior to that, only a weak
beer was allowed to be sold in bars. The only way to make
this weak beer palatable was to mix in stronger spirits, the
resultant drink being known as bjorliki, meaning "like beer."
This became a favorite national drink for years, until it was
banned in 1985. With the ban, mock funerals broke out all
over Iceland. Since March 1st, 1989, the country has been
making up for lost time, apparently. Weekends in Reykjavik
are nothing short of a party of liquor, flesh and pleasure.
Because of the high price of bar drinks, folks get leathered
up at home first. The city gradually builds momentum on
Friday and Saturday nights, with midnight seeming to be
when things kick into the next gear and 2:00 a.m. being
about when the iceberg breaks in half and geysers of steam
blow from the city´s collective skullcap. The surreal, even
somewhat depressing movie, 101 Reykjavik, might be
worth a rental as it is set in the 101 area of downtown
Reykjavik that Disa lives in.

We traveled to Disa´s parents for an Easter dinner yesterday,
Saturday. First we stopped at her sister´s and brother-in-
law´s place in the countryside. Anna has a new Bosendorf
piano in her loft studio, a magnificent instrument she bought
in Vienna which was lowered in by crane through an overhead
skylight. She played a beautiful solo piece for us, then Sigge,
her hubby, joined her for a clarinet-piano duet on Gershwin´s
Summertime. Very impressive. Music seems to be everywhere
here. Off to Gudmundur´s and Aagot´s for dinner.

Things are looking very festive. The table is covered, lit up
with candles, wine and seafood salad of lobster, prawns
and crab. There are baby potatoes, cooked red cabbage,
bowls of mixed vegetables, and two different lamb dishes
with separate gravies. Tumi is there, Disa´s nephew, who
took photos of my performance at the Borg and is digitizing
them to disc for me. Gummi and Asta, Anna and Sigge´s
children, are there as well; Gummi is a little shy and plays
clarinet like his father, and Asta represents to me the
quintessential Icelandic teenager with piercings, a wool
bonnet, five-toed circus-colored socks, and a burning
desire to get a little tattoo on the sole of her foot. What
kind of tattoo? A supermarket bar-code, of course!

Aagot has created a moist, homemade chocolate cake for
dessert with whipped cream and a fruit compote. Winking,
Gudmundur brings out the cognac. Gummi´s off to play on
the computer. Asta has friends to go and meet, so gives
me a hug good-bye. Enormous photo albums are brought
out, pictures of summer visits to the eastern fjords and
also a trip to the south of France the family made for
Disa´s 40th birthday.

Disa is the designated driver. We all hug and say goda
nott, blessbless, and I even get a kiss on the cheek
from Disa´s father. Disa relates to me that Gudmundur
had at one point leaned over to her and said, "Albert fellur
vel inn i hopinn," meaning "Albert fits in well with us." I
feel at ease with Disa´s family.

The drive back into Reykjavik makes it look like a city of
a million people, the lights spread out to the horizons. We
can´t see the aurora borealis this night, but I can still hear
the harmonics in the night wind. It´s the radio station from
high in outer space, where the music and the old mysteries
remain safe.

Driving into 101 it´s almost eleven o´clock. Being a long
weekend, the party is only starting. Later I step on to the
balcony for a smoke, and see below a car filled with youths
speed into a parking lot and come to an abrupt stop. Three
silhouettes leap out hurriedly and run into the shadows to
answer nature´s call, leap back in and head back down old
Laugavegur to where the dancefloors are.

I take a deep draw on a Camel. I´ve been here eleven
days. Sometimes I feel homesick. Other times, mystery
of mysteries, I feel like I´ve come home.

DL

Cowboy Johnson

better days______www.coopradio.org
.
Cowboy Johnson and I sat out on his screened-in porch
one morning last summer in Austin, Texas, and talked
about things to do with being a man.

There's lots to talk about, and friendship aplenty.

We've both got a fair amount of mileage on us now, and
that's all right. The questions and the humour only get
better with age. The music we make gets better.

He put out his first record in 2004, called A Grain Of Sand,
a tribute to the late American songwriter, Mickey Newbury.
It's a beauty of a record, too, full of love and goodness. His
voice has a whole new depth of feeling under the melody.
You can listen a bit at http://www.cowboyjohnson.com
and you'll regularly hear Cowboy on my radio show as well.

After we played at the Mickey Newbury Gathering last June,
Cowboy and I shared some gigs around Austin and towns
nearby. We even did a gig at Buckeye's Beer Bait n Tackle
out in the hill country, which turned out to be the professional
debut of Mickey's youngest daughter, Laura Shayne Newbury.

A few days later, Cowboy played at Willie Nelson's annual
Fourth of July Picnic at the Stockyards in Fort Worth, and
Laura Shayne was called on stage to duet with him on her
daddy's Sweet Memories. Boy, that was fine. I couldn't help
but think to myself that two nights before he played for thirty
wild-ass river people in a tackle shop out in the sticks, and that
here he is in front of thirty thousand, the same humble man.

It was Cowboy's idea to wave her on there to sing with him.
He's generous that way. He may not write a lot of songs, but
he has a deep understanding of poetry in life.

I'm happy to say that Cowboy Johnson is a friend of mine.

That screened-in porch of his in Austin had chairs and it was hot
and we sat laughing and crying, rocking back and forth there
with our clothes sticking to us, and we talked about all the things
that have to do with being a man.

Cowboy in 1968 on the tundra of Minnesota