Mary McCaslin's Roundup

Dec 19, 2002

RETURN TO THE ROAD

Back in the 1970s I would often make two driving trips a year to the east coast and back to play music. Then I began flying east and renting a car for a few weeks worth of shows. Gradually I spent less time traveling to the east coast with as much as two years between visits.

Last year I received two good paying offers for gigs in Virginia, so my husband and I took the opportunity to drive across the U.S. It was a quick trip. We were gone only ten days. This was just a few weeks after the September 11 attacks and signs of patriotism were everywhere, mostly in the form of American flags displayed in every possible manner. It was all we heard anyone talk about on the radio.

After we returned from that trip we realized how much we enjoyed ourselves driving around the country. We decided to book an extended tour. It took months of planning and negotiating to set up a workable schedule of shows that would take us through the midwest to the east coast, back through the midwest again and home to California.

In September we made a short trip to Ventura and L.A. for two gigs. This was a sort of shake-down cruise in preparation for the seven week cross country tour starting in October. Part of the plan was to use the short trip to figure out what kind stuff to leave behind and possibly extrapolate just how many changes of clothes we would need for the long trip. But, by the time we had the rental car packed visions of the Joad family danced in our heads. We have just never learned to pack light.

The first show of the tour was a house concert near Sebastapol at the home Larry Hosford shares with his lady Charlotte. The performance took place late in the afternoon in their front yard. Larry and I each did a set and sangs some songs together to close the concert. It was a beautiful day in a lovely setting and a grand way to start our trip.

The next morning we headed east on I-80. Driving through the mountains this side of Reno, I noticed how many of the trees looked downright sickly. All I could conclude was that either they were the victims of one of the diseases that have been attacking trees in California, or that they had finally lost the battle with pollution.

In the Nevada desert is the town of Battle Mountain. As we approached on the highway, we noticed a billboard that said, "Battle Mountain, Nevada - Voted the Armpit of America". One simply cannot make up this sort of thing.

We spent the night in Elko, home of the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Early the next morning we drove on across the desert and out over the Salt Flats of Utah. A piece called "Alien Music for an Alien Planet"came on over the radio, making our view of this almost blinding white vista all the more stunning.

We pressed on to Wyoming, a vast and beautiful place with a very untamed feeling. It's often said that Wyoming has two seasons: winter and July. It's almost always windy and driving the interstate in a snow storm can be very challenging. The snow blows across the road and it's not uncommon for the authorities to close the interstate when the snow causes "white-out" conditions. This time, however, there was no snow and we made good time.

We found Wyoming Public Radio, which was in the midst of their fall fund raiser. We were astounded at the amount of money one was expected to pledge before receiving any sort of thank you gift. To receive a coffee mug a listener had to pledge $75. A tee shirt went for $125 and one had to pledge $300 to get a denim workshirt. I hope never to hear anyone in the Santa Cruz listening area complain about the pledge rates for our public radio fundraisers, which are considerably lower. I suspect that the reason for Wyoming Public Radio's much higher pledge rates has to do with the lower population in that state.

One more interesting footnote about Wyoming: We stopped at one of the interstate roadside rests to use the facilities and were pleasantly surprised that not only were the restrooms comfortably heated, they also had piped in music. John Denver serenaded us with "Sunshine on my Shoulder" during our visit.

All across the country public radio, mostly NPR, was the only consistant oasis for the ears. Occasionally, in the south or midwest we would find a station playing real country music and giving farm and livestock reports. Some of the ads on these stations were unique to say the least. When is the last time you heard an ad for a company selling medicine for liver flukes in cattle?

As serious as they can take themselves at times, NPR does manage to break away from the solemn duty of reporting the news in great depth to offer some wonderful and somewhat offbeat pieces of information. While driving across Nebraska and listening to All Things Considered, we learned that the best selling book in Iran is a translation of the lyrics of Pink Floyd!

From Nebraska we made our way to the upper midwest to play in Michigan and Wisconsin. After the Wisconsin show, we had enough time to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. What a great place!

What could have appeared as tacky instead comes across as a sincere effort to document and preserve the history of a musical form, or I should say several musical forms.

There was a room dedicated to Hank Williams, who was one of the major influences in American music. There were Elvis momentos, great inter-active music stations, interesting films with historical footage and lots of great guitars, including one that belonged to someone who has not been inducted into the Hall of Fame - Ani Difranco. Her acoustic Alvarez guitar is on display right next to two of Jerry Garcia's guitars. Ani Difranco is a powerful force in today's music, but she has not yet met the critteria (mostly age, I think) to become an inductee. I don't recall seeing any guitars that had been owned by either Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez, two equally powerful forces and influences of today's music. Maybe they were there and I somehow missed them.

There was so much more than we had time to see. We really needed to spend an entire day instead of the four hours we could spare before driving on. So, we will just have to put together another tour of the midwest.

From Cleveland we drove to the south for four shows and then up to the northeast for three. I did a show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a place that feels like a second home. My old friends there are like family.

The Boston/Cambridge area is a lovely place to visit, but it's a terrible place to drive. The streets and intersections are not laid out for the faint of heart. A driver can often come to an intersection and not see a street sign anywhere. Think the Morrissey "weave" on the east side of Santa Cruz is bad? Try negotiating your way through a five-point "honk and swerve" when you're not sure where you're going.

Heading back south we stopped through Washington D.C. to do a radio interview with former KPIG dj Felton Pruitt. Thankfully, the "sniper" had been caught a couple of weeks before our visit.

Felton now works for XM Satellite Radio, a company that installs special radios in cars. These radios broadcast a wide selection of "channels" for every musical taste. He programs the channel called Bluegrass Junction and they have recently started a new folk music channel called the Village. The wave of the future? Time will tell.

On the way back west, I played a show in Oklahoma City, home of the Cowboy Hall of Fame. This is a wonderful museum, lovingly put together to honor not only cowboys (historical and modern), but also American Indians and others who were part of the American West. However, nowhere did I see any acknowledgment of Oklahoma's very own Cowboy Philosopher, Will Rogers.

There is a hallway lined with paintings of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, John Wayne and other Hollywood "cowboys". Will was a real cowboy who also starred in movies and became a statesman of sorts. Even though it's been open for many years, the museum still is not completed. They are working on an exhibit of singing, movie and TV cowboys. Maybe that's where they will put Will Rogers.

From Oklahoma City we drove up to play in El Dorado, Kansas and then backtracked to Columbia and St. Louis, Missouri for the last two shows of the tour. Columbia is a beautiful college town with a great community radio station called KOPN and we felt very much at home, almost like being in Santa Cruz.

In St. Louis, we bought tickets to take the tram up inside the Gateway Arch, but the doors on one of the cars got stuck and would not open. They shut down for the rest of the day and did not say whether or not anyone was inside that car. I guess we were lucky. Getting stuck inside the Gateway Arch and missing my concert would have made for an unforgettable conclusion to a sixteen show tour.

From St. Louis we headed west and made it home a day earlier than planned. We drove through twenty-eight states, spent time with friends and had a great time.

ACRES OF ARCHES

This trip was not just a string of shows, it was also a chance to take a look around the rest of the country. A lot of what we saw and heard was disheartening.

The nation's highways are lined with the Golden Arches and the Word of God is borne on the airwaves. The Subway sandwich chain is tunneling right in next to McDonald's. Small cafes and diners that depend on hungry travelers for their survival are struggling to compete with these fast food giants.

On both AM and FM radio throughout the country every angle is used to bring the Message to us. From Bible beating preachers to smooth talking radio personalities, old time gospel to Christian rock, there is no let up.

Much has been said about global warming in recent years. All one has to do is take a couple days' drive anywhere in this country to see that concern over this matter is valid. More and more houses, shopping malls and Walmarts are being built on farmland and open prairie. Walmart alone has taken up enough acreage to cover the state of Rhode Island. Every one of these buildings generates heat. It seems that if the outside temperature drops below sixty degrees the heat gets cranked up to seventy or seventy-five on the inside. In the warm weather air conditioning keeps it cool inside and the hot air is vented outside. It's not just cars and heavy industry that are heating up the world.

Even with the disturbing changes that uncontrolled growth is bringing to this country, there is no place that I would rather live. We still have lots of wide open spaces. The thing is to keep them wide open.

Best wishes for the Holidays and the coming year.

E-mail Mary McCaslin at roundup@marymccaslin.com