Chris Hillman & Herb PedersenSunday, August 18, 7pm – $20 (Friends), $24, $28 (DOS)
The ArtsCenter
Carrboro, NC
Pages of Life
He might have been just as happy as a cowboy. Or a surfer. I, for one, am glad Chris Hillman discovered music and listened carefully to that sound in his head that would connect a musically curious generation to country rock back in the late 60’s.
Without Chris Hillman’s influence (The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas, Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, McGuinn Clark & Hillman, McGuinn & Hillman, Desert Rose Band), I’m not sure we’d be listening to the same Avett Brothers or Mumford and Sons we hear today. In the playlist of my life, rock (The Rolling Stones, The Who, etc.) instantly conjures memories of parties, concerts, and good times, man. Country rock (The Byrds, FBB, Poco, Pure Prairie League, etc.) will forever be connected to falling in (and out) of love.
The hardest part of interviewing, IMHO, is trying not to bore the interviewee, especially when they fall into legendary status. Rock and roll history is right there on the line and you’d rather chew pencils than pitch out the same old questions they’ve heard over and over and over, ad nauseam. I decided that if he wanted to talk about The Byrds and Gram Parsons that he was going to have to bring them up. It was a good call on my part.
He started right off by saying “They say some of the best banjo players come out of North Carolina.” Ok, I’m good with where this is going so far.
I knew I wanted to talk about the new crop of young bands joyfully incorporating traditional string music into their current sound. Alt-country, I think they call it. Whatever.
We went in a dozen directions – R&B songs to religion, songwriting to great American novels, heroin to herding cattle – none of them predictable, but all of them connected by a common thread – Chris Hillman himself. After five minutes I felt like I’d been talking with him for hours and he comes across as one of the nicest guys you ever want to meet. Plus he even broke into song several times. I mean, you have to be respectful of a man who can casually mention David (Crosby) without it seeming the least little bit pretentious or bragging. It actually didn’t even take long before we were talking about Gram. But you have to read the entire Q&A for the whole story.
Chris and Herb Pedersen have known one another for 50 years, but didn’t play together in a group until the Desert Rose Band. With all those years, talent, and multi-stringed instruments between them, it’s a given that they’d make beautiful music together and that they’d share that with the appreciative audience that would be us.
An outpatient of love
a weekday. Any day. Let’s just say Tuesday. It’s not unusual for me to run by the post office on my way to work. My route takes me by an adult emporium. And not just one X. Not XX. But XXX. Sometimes I slow down to count the cars in the parking lot. At 9am on a Tuesday. What ARE they doing in there??? Merely rhetorical. Smell the glove.
Shufflin’ Hither & Yon (mostly hither)
Roger McGuinn
One Saturday in March
One Saturday in April
One Friday in May
Sofa Shopping Shuffle:
Pup would be a good place to start here. A friend who was watching me grieve for my beautiful Remy sent me a link on Petfinder. Even while protesting that I wasn’t ready for another dog, I was a goner before you could say “roll over,” and was driving the back roads to Monroe one beautiful October day. Max (a four-year-old mix of bearded collie and PBGV = Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen) was rescued and came to live in the little red house. He’s a nut ball and he makes me laugh every time I look at his furry face.
without a pit stop, or even a wall to stop the motion. When love is new everything in your field of (and peripheral) vision is stunningly clear. Sharp. Gleaming. And achingly fragile … like an expensive Riedel wine glass. You’ve never been surer about anything in your entire life. But when, and if, the shiny wears off and the cracks spider off into everywhere and nowhere, suddenly everything is muffled, dull, pillowed. And achingly fragile. When someone’s talking, you nod like you’re listening, but you’re not really. Suddenly you’re trying to walk through pudding or Jello® wearing 6” spike heels. Which in my case meant my flip-flops were skidding on every surface, every step I took. Downright treacherous, but that’s the thing about trying to make long distance love work. There’s all this empty space between in which to get trapped.
YR15! Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro – October, 2012. 
I was a reluctant first timer in 2010 when Leon Russell was the Saturday night big name artist. Been there, done that with festivals. I like little intimate venues where it feels like I’m yay-far from the stage and feeling up-close-and-personal with who I’ve come to see. Yes, I’m one of those … I want to see the sweat on the brow and the crazy faces the guys in the band make. It turned out to feel like someone’s ginormous backyard party (albiet a really big, cool backyard that has a view of the Cape Fear), and we were not all that many lawn chairs away from stage left. But wait. Two days of nearly non-stop music? More stages? Smaller ones, scattered around the park … one for blues, one for jazz … one of which was so close to the Cape Fear River you could almost party on the boats gathered off-shore. Local food vendors were filling bowls and baskets with seafood chowder, fried shrimp, and other goodies that were right out of the sea only days ago.
But that’s not my final stop for the night … I’m strolling just down the street to Cat’s Cradle for a double dose of Megafaun as they kick off the evening for The Old Ceremony’s new CD release “Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide” just out on the locally-owned Yep Rock Records label. I like everything about Django Haskins, The Old Ceremony’s founder, including his name. I hope he was named after jazz-guitarist Django Reinhardt.
If you still can’t quite quit the night, turn right out of the Cradle and hit Local 506 on West Franklin Street. There are enough musical styles in alt/indie band, Morgan’s End, that you’re bound to find some notes in there that appeal to you. The odd band out here is Hunter Valentine. They have absolutely nothing at all to do with the local music scene, but you may recognize their name if you watch The Real L Word on Showtime where the trio are cast members of the current bi-coastal series that follows a group of lesbians through the daily drama of their own lives in both LA and Brooklyn.
Thursday there was something in the air. And it was not good. By Friday in the mid-90 degree heat, it was something altogether worse. Even Remy wouldn’t go gently into that good yard. I had to push him down the steps. Friday evening my neighbor, Katie, knocked on my door. We discussed the smell and the fact that her other-side neighbors giant 16-lb cat was AWOL. Uh-oh. We walked the two yards, hers and mine, sniffing … me trying to stifle my serious gag-reflex … trying to locate the dead thing. It was worse in my yard. Worser still on my back porch and I’m suddenly sure the dead thing is under my back porch. It had gotten dark enough that neither of us were going to go down on hands and knees with a flashlight to peek under the porch. After all, I’m the one who scoffs at characters in horror movies who go down in the basement without turning on the light asking “is anyone there?” We leave it that in the morning I’ll call our favorite man in the neighborhood. The one who comes to the rescue of us suddenly-helpless girls and seemingly loves every minute of being our savior. Back in the house, I lit candles and let loose an over-kill of room spray, but the dead thing was stronger than anything in a bottle or a jar. I fall asleep humming Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “That Smell.”
Saturday. Mid-morning. The savior arrives waving a short-handled rake. All he needs is a white horse. Only the knee-pads jerk me back from all but hanging a glowing salvation-like halo over his head. Yeah, I know, I’m a sucker for a ruggedly handsome savior. The search begins. The dead thing is not under my porch. It is not under my shed. It is not in Katie’s backyard. The savior walks the easement behind and suddenly sends up an “I got it.” Our first question … “is it the cat?” No, it’s a small deer. By this time, Chad and Shaena, my other-side neighbors have gathered with us at the fence where we toss around ideas of what to do with what’s left of the carcass. Black plastic bag at the curb knowing there’s no trash collection until Tuesday because of the holiday weekend. Sprinkling baking soda over to kill the smell. Collectively we all voted for ashes to ashes, dust to dust … let nature take its course.
We got cowbell!
When was the last time you tested tambourines? Once the 2 row, 2 metal (brass and stainless steel) version hit my hands, it was all over. Dual sounds … dry & bright … with more sustain. I like staying power 🙂
The 2nd Falling (aka The Epiphany) Early afternoon Saturday, May 19 The Music Loft Carrboro, NC with Finney I spy with my little eye … a set of used conga drums. Black and shiny. Drawn like a raven to bling that glints and sparkles, I circle. I thump. Go through the want v. need discussion in my head. Circle some more. Tap. Sigh. Covet. Mine. The price tag dangles provocatively. Cost includes the stand and travel bags, which is a good thing ’cause I’m surely going to need those when I go on the road with Santana. That thought makes me laugh at myself out loud. The musician behind the counter and Finney, who is deep in bass accessories, turn to look at me. Suddenly it hits me. All this time … the boomerang drummer mojo was pointing me toward PLAYING drums, not playing WITH drummers. Instruments of mass percussion have been hollering at me my entire life and I wasn’t listening. No. They didn’t come live with me yet, and I’m fighting the urge. Yay’s or nay’s? ________________________________________________________ 
The 1st Falling (aka what really could be considered The 2nd Falling if you want to get technical about these things) Late evening Tuesday, April 2 What goes around … comes right back ‘atcha. Back in February, right around V Day, I got up on my lovelorn high horse and rode around a bit. It feels funny quoting me, but if you can’t quote yourself, then who? “From the view from my heart, I’ve been lucky in love. Lucky enough to have fallen world-spinning, vision-blinding, crazy-making in love three (okay, five, maybe six) times in my life. You could say it’s unlucky that I’m not with any of them, but that would diminish the original statement. Lucky that I’m still good friends with almost all of them … those that are still alive with a sense of humor and forgiveness anyway. A couple who left a sweet space in my heart just went permanently missing. The bass player with the crooked smile and the long blonde hair. The cowboy D.J with a heart of gold and a voice to melt … well … anything, including me. The one from art school that broke my heart in a gazillion pieces. He’ll surface one day. I just feel it. ” Exactly 50 days later. My bestie in Richmond calls. “Guess who I’ve just spent 2 hours with?” Never a big fan of guessing games, I made some attempts knowing that she’d never be able to out-wait my wrong answers before the name of the “one from art school” rolled off her tongue. “And he’s looking for you.” My heart did some crazy acrobatics and my brain turned to puffed rice. The three of us were roommates together way back in the early 70’s when I was studying painting at VCU. One of us (he and I can’t remember who, but it was probably me) picked the other up in a bar. After all, he was exactly my long-dark-hair-mustachio’d type. A bad boy bass player (yep, I’m recognizing a type here). He just never went home after that first night; that’s how he became a roommate. We pulled my twin bed mattress underneath the bay window so we could see the stars and lay there every night talking ’til dawn about everything under the sun, moon, and stars while listening to 8-tracks (Peaceful Easy Feeling, South City Midnight Lady, Can’t You See, Dream On, etc.) and an old Roberts reel-to-reel. He was my first reckless love and he was trouble plenty. The last time I saw him was in Nashville 1980 when I watched him ride off back to Macon on his big blue Harley. That’s not all that long ago, right? Armed with a phone number, a glass of Vinho Verde, and a healthy sprinkling of cautious curiosity, I dialed. Two hours later and something I didn’t see coming was going on. Or fixin’ to. For the next ten days and ten nights we spent two or more hours every night on phones in separate beds under windows looking at stars talking about everything under the sun = crazy time. Then 170 miles, 38 songs on the IPOD, up I-85/I-95 into the arms of a man who years before at the age of 23 made the ultimate sacrifice for me. Familiar, as if 32 years was really just last week, we held hands and jumped right over that edge one more time. Me and Finney … all giggly and goofy like teenagers. Go figure. On second thought, don’t. Just let it be. _______________________________________________________
simmer2sizzle 