Day Forty Four - Reminisces, and Near Misses

Greetings, salutations, etc.:

By the time you get this, we’ll be at home in Tacoma. Right at this instant I’m pretty worn out. I am at Heathrow London. We spent the night at an Ibis Hotel, and Kristi apparently didn’t sleep a wink. She has spent the last two weeks thinking bad thoughts about flying, and I think her obsession has caught up with her. To be fair, the last 24 hours have been intense. We drove from a town near Durham in No. England yesterday. We stopped for lunch with John Montague in Syston,nr Leicester, and stopped in Sawbridgeworth to leave the house keys with Jacqui Leeds. We were driving from 9:30 am until about 5 pm, and stuck in traffic on the M25, getting run in circles by the satnav, and getting stressed out about it. That was yesterday. Today has gone smoothly so far. It’s just a matter of getting on the airplane now. We played on Thursday night in Skelton, near Redcar at the Cutty Wren folk club. We got a nice email from one of the audience yesterday. He was a kind of new age guy, and really was into my nature/raven paradigm. That was nice. We said goodbye to Jimmy and Val, who were outstanding when they played their set. We went to Fred Brierly’s house, had whisky and cheese, and crackers with Fred, and his significant other, Sheila. We stayed up too late, and left too early. We were more, or less exhausted all day yesterday, and today things are even worse. Oh well.

Fred and Sheila

It has been an exceptional tour. We have good friends here who take very good care of us while we are here. We used to spend a lot more time alone on these tours, but no longer. We now tend to stay at one place or another as guests for longer periods of time. The entire experience can turn somewhat claustrophobic after awhile.

I didn’t write about the trip down to Hastingleigh, Kent. We played in Cannock the night before that, and to some extent the entire weekend seems dreamlike, a lot of it being played out on the motorways as in seemingly endless hours of driving. We were worried about the experience in advance as it was a long way to travel, and it seems we were never traveling in too rested state. We stayed in Wolverhampton at a Holiday Inn the night we played in Cannock. It was a nice enough room, small, but clean and with a nice bathroom. It was right next to a horse racing track, which I think must have been the main source of patronage. We found it on the internet.

We had played the Chase Folk Club another year, and so we were known a bit to the patrons, and certainly to the club organizers. It is a different club, which had no floor spots, but had a support act, one of whom had seen us a number of years ago at another club, and at another time. Usually I would think that an opening act would open for you, but these guys were “support”, not “opening”. They were essentially a duo who were into more or less modern country music, although they did some oldies too. One of them played dobro, the other only guitar. Both sang, and they were OK at singing, but were both pretty good with their instruments. Don’t take that lightly, as I’m often quite critical of Brits performing American music. Whatever I think doesn’t really matter though. The crowd seemed to like them fine, and I was damned pleased with their rendition of Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road”. I worked pretty hard to try to please that crowd. I think they really are kind of a “country” kind of crowd (whatever that means). It was a long, narrow room, and I think the bar must have done pretty well. When we finished playing I asked Kristi to go down to the other end of the room and sell some CDs. The next thing I hear is the club organizer over the PA asking for an end to fighting, and then Kristi is down at my end of the room, scared off by being in the middle of a fistfight. Having worked in barrooms half her life, you might think she’d be used to all that.

We didn’t have to leave our hotel room until noon the next day, so we didn’t. Even after getting out of the hotel, we felt like we had some time to kill, and so visited a museum in the Wolverhampton area. We used our satnav to find the place, and likewise to get out of there, and onto the motorway down to Kent. In recollection I feel like most of the journey was spent on the M25, which is the ring road around London. In fact, it was a pretty long trek down the M1, onto the M25, and onward off the M25 down towards Dover/Canterbury. After we got off of the motorways there was a fairly long drive on little country roads. Someone asked me to compare English country roads with American. All I could say was they would think that American country roads were like a freeway in comparison. Even in the most rural conditions in the U.S. you don’t usually see single track roads.

It was a long drive, long day after a long night. Our first glance at the Bowl Inn inspired the impulse to just keep on driving. We even discussed the fact that the owner wouldn’t even know what happened to us. We were talking about this even as I was parking across the street from the place. The first time we saw the place we did drive on by. The second time we spotted it we drove on by again. It was the third time that finally took us to the door, and a totally charming evening at a country pub in Kent. The owner was sitting in a chair talking to some customers when we showed up. He got up out of his chair, introduced himself, and gave me his chair. He was a stout fellow, and had tattoos all up his arms. I had heard that he was into motorcycles from another singer/songwriter who plays the same venue. His name was Ron, and he was a genuine biker kinda guy with the same bluster, and braggadocio that I’ve come to expect from such characters. He was a proud owner of a country pub.

He was engaged in a conversation with a couple, and another fellow when we came in. The single fellow left, but the couple stayed around. I was immediately being questioned about my motives for being at such a remote location, and all the way from America to boot. At first I admitted that I wasn’t certain how I came to be there at all, but as we talked eventually asked them if a person shouldn’t have some adventure in his/her life. They acknowledged that yes, this would be a good thing, and I think that things went well after that. It turned out that “James” was a very wealthy guy who came out to his estate in rural Kent from central London, and slummed a bit at the Bowl Inn, fascinated with the biker owner, and his rural patrons. We got the information about James from Ron after James had gone home to his estate.

Eventually we set up our gear, and we had a little time after that so Ron showed us the place. He has an owl living in the “garden”. He calls it an “Eagle” owl. Ron was an antique dealer prior to his pub ownership, and still has antiques for sale. He keeps them in a building on the property that was built around 1668. Most of the antiques are newer than the building that houses them. The antique garage has two stories, and when we were upstairs, and you could feel the floorboards bend as you walked, he reassured us that it was no problem. There was a nineteenth century coat of armor there, lots of china, old recordings, furniture, and more that one would expect to find in an antique shop.

We started playing almost immediately after Ron showed us the antiques. While we had been talking to Ron, a number of people had filtered into the little barroom. They were talking with great animation, and volume. I had done a sound check earlier to an empty room, but now we could hardly hear ourselves over the din. There was nothing to do but turn up, so that’s what I did. Nobody said a word to us about being too loud. We played a real variety repertoire. Some of it was cover tunes, most of it was my songs. People were polite, and occasionally they’d all get silent while we were playing, and they would even applaud. It isn’t easy playing a bar like that. Well, maybe it’s easy if you’re really prepared with an appropriate repertoire. We played from 8 pm to 11 pm. There was a lady in red sitting down to our left by the front door. She was with a man and they were both quite attentive to us. When we were on break we sat down with her (he had gone out to smoke). When she opened her mouth and started talking I was reminded of the guys in Monty Python doing impressions of women. She really seemed like a caricature of herself to me, and of course that’s because I’m an American and unused to the dialects that you find in England.

Rick, Jill, and Sparky

We played until 11 pm, and when we quit, the bar emptied out quite fast. Ron had collected some tips for us, and between what he paid us, and the tips we made close to one hundred pounds. That paid for the gasoline we used getting there, and then some. Gas is about $5 a gallon. They sell it by the liter, so I’m not certain exactly what it is, but it was one pound 21 pence for a liter. After we finished playing we packed up the car and headed for Essex, and the home of Rick, and Jill Christian. Rick was a DJ the first time we knew of him. He played our recordings on the BBC back in the 80s. He is a fellow musician, and a congenial sort with whom we have a great deal in common. It’s always great to see him. We got up the next morning, and after breakfast headed back to Blyth and Jiva. It was a genuine adventure, and a part of our journey I’m sure we’ll never forget. Ron was very clear that we should contact him for a return engagement next time we’re in England. I think that will be 2011. Y’all come on down and give us a listen when we’re next at the Bowl Inn. Ya heah?

Steve Nebel, May 24, 2010