Suck and Blow (34 page)

I have had a ton of moments like that, when I get lost in the music and the crowd takes us there. That's the reason why we all do what we do.

People often ask me what music means to me, and it's really hard for me to describe. It's like air, and it's hard to appreciate air. You need air to live, but you don't celebrate air.

But what I
can
celebrate is my audience. And if you've read this far, then you're a member of that audience, so I'd like to leave you with this. I wrote it on Jam Cruise in 2015—there may have been some mushroom chocolate involved—to celebrate what we've all done together and how I feel about you after all these years. With the deepest admiration and awe let me again emphasize that I never could have done any of this without all of you. You've shaped my experience and perspective. Without you out there to receive my thoughts and ideas, they never would have taken flight. But together, all of us can sail.

Our connection has meant more to me than any of the cool things I've done, the money I've made, or the art I've helped create.

I came from a place where I was entirely isolated, and now I am able to share myself and my music in such a wonderful, surprising way. The lyrics below try to explain how much you as a collective mass or a single ear for me to bend have really saved my life and helped to give it meaning. I owe you something that I will never be able to repay; I can only appreciate it, and I assure you, I never take it for granted. I never take
you
for granted . . .

“Owed from the Aspect”

              
A chance again to diatribe,

              
You'll go along if you've imbibed,

              
My mannered tones of dire cost,

              
& if something gets translated lost,

              
Again I seek to hide the same

              
as though we've never stopped our game

              
and all the tidings I could bring

              
Have never really changed a thing.

              
Dependent on each other we

              
kept infinite the “you and me” that never really set us free

              
. . . or too lonely was the place we'd be . . .

              
(Chorus)

              
But for all I've ever tried to tell you,

              
I just couldn't seem to say how much I care,

              
and speaking as the aspect that befell you,

              
. . . You've come to mean (be) my (very) universe out there . . .

              
For all the right or wrong I'd done,

              
I had to share it with someone.

              
The true the lie the in between,

              
their implications what they mean,

              
a troubled tale or trophied turn,

              
within my heart they'd only burn

              
'til the echoes on the acetate

              
reveal what we can all relate,

              
then freely we can share our pain

              
& know that we are not insane

              
or at least a frenzy we can own.

              
it's enough for me I'm not alone . . .

              
(Chorus)

              
(Bridge)

              
I stumble to the floor until I realize that I'm climbing.

              
I can fall right up a staircase

              
just as easily as down . . .

              
'Cause hope can flip the building on its end and in the timing

              
needs a friend

              
or else it lands

              
within the sand

              
without a sound

              
A chance again to double-down,

              
perhaps a way of standing ground

              
for any sin that took a toll by every rescue of my soul.

              
Each choice I made to turn to you,

              
a thing I had to learn to do,

              
so grateful I could see it through

              
almost as if you always knew . . .

              
I choose again to share anew . . .

              
as if compulsively on cue,

              
more karma for we happy few,

              
whose destiny's the devil's due

              
(and yet I'm thanking god for you . . .)

              
(Chorus)

              
(Searching for the dawn until it's we who are both shining . . .)

AFTERWORD

To My Darling Daughter, Eloise, on the Eve of Her Birth

November 20, 2015, 1:00ish a.m. PST

Hello Weezy!

Wow, this is kind of the first thing I'm ever saying to you in a very real way. In fact, I initially wanted this entire Afterword to be the Foreword so it would be the first thing you read, but we all felt that it would make more sense to the other readers if this appeared after they got to know me a little bit. Hopefully you won't have that problem. If I've done my job as a father, this will only be the most recent thing you are hearing from me. And hopefully not the last.

So first of all, I love you! Here and now from the year 2015. I am excited as I sit here with your mother waiting for your labor to begin, well, really hers. (By the way, you kicked the crap out of her rib cage and you need to call her more. Buy her a lovely Bundt cake. Nothing garners forgiveness like a lovely Bundt cake.)

But the key here is that you know how much we both wanted you. You were a total surprise and, in my mind, ever more intended by some higher power to be here—perhaps to save the world, perhaps
to become part of it—but, in any event, to thrive and certainly to save my life. And mind you, my life is saved by the hope you bring to me. You are more than the sun, moon, and stars because stars always ultimately fade, while hope goes on forever and feeds everything. I'm honored to get to tell you that you'll understand one day (I feel like I just joined that club).

I don't know when in your life you'll be reading this book or how old you'll be, but it must already seem weird to be hearing me dialogue with you in this tone before we've even met. I wonder if this is close to how we'll talk. It is 2015, as I was saying, the night before you are to be born, and though it's the 20th, which is the day before you're expected according to science, in the minds of your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, grandaunts, granduncles, cousins of all degrees, in-laws, outlaws, Facebook followers, and general populace of friends who are in some sense involved and awaiting your arrival, you are keeping us all waiting.

I expect that sort of pressure to occasionally bother you at times with this bunch, but that's your family—patience comes only painfully to such a collection of independent thinkers, but by far it's your mother who shines throughout all of this and who is awaiting you most deeply. I want to tell you about her. . . .

It was April of 2014. We were playing a festival, and these two beautiful women approached me for help getting side stage for the Allman Brothers. One of them, the shorter one, though still very attractive, seemed more relatable—at least she didn't scare me any. But it was her taller friend who struck me as a goddess, leaving me utterly if momentarily helpless for any semblance of “game” or smoothness. Normally, as I look back at my past rapport with intimidatingly attractive women, I will make all manner of jackass of myself or sometimes stumble into a smooth banter all to get the object of my affection to say “yes” to some extent or another. But there was something about this tall, beautiful, free-spirited blonde that was different, and all such thoughts in my head were gone and all I could say in my heart over and over to myself was “Yes . . .” And in that subtle difference, so slight yet so enduringly significant, I didn't need to find the words—they came of their own volition.

I don't recall any strategy because when you truly decide you want someone, your self is revealed and strategy becomes far too stagnant for something that rings throughout your core so truthfully. I said yes in my heart and began to talk to her, and before the night was over I would steal a kiss—a respectful kiss but a real passionate kiss because I wanted one from her, and that was simply that. I also made sure to get her contact info, and with each step of the process I would say yes.

We were both involved with other people and did our best to respect those relationships, but we were instantly drawn to each other, and as I said yes, as I came to know your mother, I came to see what an amazing and passionate mind and heart had befallen me. She was so much younger than me, and her innocence in some of life's adventures seemed to need me. But the innocence in me could immediately realize and value the wisdom she'd garnered at so tender an age.

She knew of hearts and of love's purpose as it spoke to me . . . and we were off and running. I truly feel that it was she who began to make my life matter to me again, even before that night in Atlanta when I was gigging with a local band and she, having seen us the night before in Alabama, really wanted to go see Willie Nelson play at the “enormo-dome” there. We knew Mickey (Willie's harp player), and he got her into the show. When she met back up at my gig afterward, she waited for me to finish, and we went back to our room and conceived you.

So an automatic take-away here is that should you ever get the opportunity to see the Red Headed Stranger, please bring contraception (because apparently it only takes one out of every couple). Actually, take several forms of contraception because your mom was on the pill and Shotgun Willie don't mess around!

So there we were, less than a year into our relationship and pregnant with you! Bear in mind, we had just decided to get a dog (Trigger), and you were a total surprise. Yes, we both freaked, but we very quickly knew we wanted you so bad, like the sun wants light! We were already becoming a family, and off we went. We said yes to you, and every yes we've said has saved us in this, our newest chapter of this life we are living.

So it certainly seems time to pen a book of my life before I met you or your mom, partly because I'm finally starting to get to an age when my memory is starting to fade and I want to recount as accurately as possible these events I befell, now that I no longer live them with the same daily determination. I am now dedicated to a very new priority, one I hope I can deserve. I also craft this little tome to help understand how I got here as well as perhaps gain any catharsis in the retrospect at their recounting.

A great deal of this book was taken from my journal entries that I kept dutifully from around 1990 to 1999. Then I would recall the tale through my current eyes to allow the forty-eight-year-old man to reconcile with the determined young lad in his twenties. I hope I was sincere in that attempt and not just burying bodies (metaphorically as far as you know).

Which reminds me: all recounts in this book are not to be taken as factual or legally binding. They are merely my interpretations and embellishments for entertainment value. I try to be fair, but my brain always makes shit up to tell a tale and sell a nifty book. Perhaps I just don't want you to judge me—and perhaps you will and I should be judged—but my intention is for you to have gotten to know me well enough to make up your own informed mind (the rest of the readership will have to risk this uninformed, but they are paying me, so . . .). I hope you can know what it felt like. I must say the hardest part of writing this book was finishing it.

I often found myself telling the same story or mentioning it to Dean, my co-author, as we'd go through his edits only to have the story in question appear in the next line. I think I just wanted to keep reliving it, as the first telling brought so much back. Dean was great at keeping track of my tangential ramblings to give them form, and he even kept my subject-changing and time-jumping through my various yarns as accurate as we could (without disintegrating into pure non sequitur, of course). We felt that there was value in that tactic of yarn-spinning.

Retrospect does really tend to offer insight, and Dean had a great gift throughout this whole project for letting me shine where I shone best, and this wouldn't be possible without him. I hope the reader can
keep track. The
only
section of the book I did not go over with Dean Budnick and the process we came to rely on is this very dedication . . .

And it is at this point that I put down this rather longwinded dedication I've been working on for the past two days and drive your mother to the hospital to give birth to you. So to be continued and see you soon!

November 23, 2015, 11:15ish pm PST

Oh my god, we just had you!

Call your mother! Call your mother! Call your mother!

Eleven hours and no drugs the whole time, she was such a champ. I cut your little cord after I got you both to the hospital (an hour away) in only thirty-five minutes. That Mercedes still moves!

You are so beautiful! Pulling you from your mother's nether regions has to be one of the most significant moments of my life! Well done, kiddo!

Anyway, I will wrap this up, my darling daughter, by telling you three true things that every father would want his daughter to know:

First, I am an undefeated thumb wrestler—righty, lefty, doubles . . . it doesn't matter. Well, I have lost on a rare occasion or two, but in the no-holds-barred underworld atmosphere of freestyle full-on thumb wrestling, you can't count on fair rulings or equal footing—or, rather, thumbing—every time. But suffice it to say, I would roam the Earth searching for a warrior to best me and never could. Concert promoters would bet money on me, though I was in it for the love and grace of the sport. One night I beat both Goldberg and Hulk Hogan (though, to be fair, Goldberg had just “real” wrestled five guys and was rather tired, and Hulk just kinda didn't wanna be standing there anymore and gave me the win). The moral? If you choose a ridiculous enough thing to be great at, you can rule at it (see harmonicas).

Second, I have pulled many four-leaf clovers—and even a five-leafer when needed. I guess I only tell you that because I want you to know they are out there. So look for them whenever possible if it isn't too much of a stretch.

Finally, I hear music in my head all the time. Like a punch-drunk fighter, I can't tell if I have played too many gigs and it's stuck in my head or if it's the reason I've played so many, but if you notice your dear old dad seeming distracted or as though listening to something else, I can only tell you that life all around us has music in it, and once you learn to speak or hear it, it cannot be ignored. I only hope that has been a good thing as I have decided to see it—or, rather, hear it—and I thank you for any patience you might require. I also thank you for showing me that love is a breathing two-way communicative conduit that started instantly when I saw that confused face first emerge, and the instant we started that conversation, love became the most important thing.

We are embarking on a grand adventure, you and I. This book is what I was doing while waiting for you. Enjoy it!