South By Southwest 2011

Street tacos at 2:30am. That's the photo I choose. Mostly because the rest are blurry. But also because there's something about that taco truck that encapsulates the flurry that is SXSW. A quiet respite in the middle of the night in a parking lot with a huge neon "BINGO" sign above, picnic tables alongside the highway, $3 for-real-tacos with spicy pork and chicken and some hot hot green sauce and Pineapple soda, trying to line our stomachs after 12 hours of walking up and down Austin to hear bands, to play shows, our ears ringing, our calf muscles stretched to sore, feet throbbing.

SXSW, Austin. Music week. Last year I tagged along as an observer with only one pair of sneakers and one pair of jeans and few t shirts, and was given the rare opportunity to stand onstage at Antone's alongside The Posies and Evan Dando and members of Big Star to honor the late great Alex Chilton, having caught a ride to Austin with some friends and a manager who didn't think I should go, thought I should stay home, take the week off, as I didn't have an official showcase, and I argued with him, "sometimes you just show up and magic happens." Sadly, magic happened only because the world lost a great talent. This year, I had reason to be there. A new record, an official showcase, my Nashville band in tow. Into the swirling sea that is SXSW.

I heard there were 30% more people this year. Makes sense. I've been going to SXSW since 2005 with a year or two off in between. It was crazy then, and I've watched it grow, but it was corporate and big in 2005. Its bigger and more corporate now, but there's still reason to go. Still little moments of indie magic and moments of indie crap. And moments of corporate crap and moments of corporate righteousness. Its all there, a big swirling mardi gras of the best and worst of the business of art.

The darkside first, just cause its fun and gross like a carwreck like Snooky: drunken craziness, parades of spring-break like kids with beads around their neck, no official wristbands ($165) or badges ($500), just a swarm of kids who come for the party, to walk up and down 6th street and eat street tacos and drink margaritas till they pass out on the San Jacinto Sidewalk. Girls gone wild madness where my maternal instinct went on overdrive as I saw way too many drunk scantily clad bombshells held up by equally drunk boys, worried about their safety, their choices, wanting to tell them all that drinking until you pass out in the street is a recipe for danger. I saw a few disturbing things: a girl bent over while a boy behind her held her up, she was digging in her short-shorts trying to pull her thongs out of her shorts without taking anything off and the boy was laughing. Ick. And in line at a ladies room bathroom with 10 other women who were hopping from foot to foot, the need to urinate a kinetic urge, and a couple emerge from the handicapped stall, the girl--head down, hiding; the boy, head up, proud. A few snaps in a circle and an exclamations: "Oh yeah. Believe it." I'll leave the darkside with one more image that encapsulates this shadow edge of it all. 3am. Driving the van to the hotel through sidestreets the headlights shine on a possum in the middle of the road, standing in a pile of puke, dining on this, looking up at the approaching van, looking directly at us inside as if to say "Dudes. I'm not moving. This is good shit" and then going right back to lapping the puddle up. And we have to go around the possum because he is not moving. Its nasty, I know, but then, SXSW has the nasty side.

The magic: Driving through the downtown mess of bumpertobumper traffic in the van with the band, trying to get to a gig, filled with anxiety of honking horns and garage rock bands echoing off the tall hotel buildings, we are stuck in a jam out in front of the doors to the Hilton Hotel, where a beautiful wisp of a girl is strumming a classical guitar through an amp, another girl is playing brushes on a cookie sheet snare on her lap, one microphone is amplified through a tiny beat up amp. They've set up there on the corner like buskers. And the girl is singing in french, this lovely melody and its like Edith Piaf right there, and its so different and quiet and REAL and TRUE and something from the depths of her heart, unlike the throngs of skinnyjeans-chains hanging from the left pocket-long sideburns/handlebar mustaches-boybands punkrocking along 6th Street (god bless anyone with a dream and I love music, but I heard the same band about a thousand times, whether it was the 5 piece rockband breaking down the last chorus to its bland emotional center or the acoustic pileup in the center of the room thwarting the soundsystem like every Mumford & Sons follower, but regardless of the sameness, god bless those who follow their passion and at least throw their dream into the wind to see what catches...I'd hate to be an A&R person these days. I'm content in my little world just trying to write something real from what moves me, just me, not everyone, but me). So this girl, our car stopped, Neilson rolls down the window and wants to leap out and get her CD, wants to record her right there, in front of the Hilton, and just as we are about to all do a Chinese FireDrill out of the car, the traffic opens up and we have to go and we lose that one bit of magic. We don't even know who she was. But I hope some jaded record label person wandered by, his or her ears buzzing with distortion, and heard her in her quiet little shadow space, and stopped and was as moved as we were.

I saw great shows. Flogging Molly playing their set as the clock struck midnight on the early morning of St. Patrick's Day as if every song was an encore. Apache Relay's lead singer stands on the monitor and has an exultant rocknroll moment of in the middle of the song calling out "one, two, onetwothreefour" and jumps up and the drums crash and the band kicks into an even higher gear and my skin shivers. Ben Sollee with Tracey Bonham and Phoebe from Belleville Outfit on strings, improvised jam of beautiful songs, a soulful voice, full drum kit rock but layered with classical strings and cello in a 20th Century musical mezcla of Benjamin Britten meets Copeland meets Ray LaMontagne meets The Carter Family...not even sure what it was, but Ben moved me more than anyone this weekend. Watching the Ron Sexsmith documentary, being brought to sobbing tears as his parents' watch the television set in their home of wood-panelled walls lined with baseball caps and lazyboy recliners to cheer their son's win of a Juno (Canadian Grammy) award.

I had great drinks. The Bloody Mary to die for with Joan and Tamara and Jeni on South Congress at Enoteca. The late-night-escape margarita at the Driskoll Bark with Chuck E. Costa. Some local vodka concoction at the Thirty Tigers 10th Anniversary Party at Swan Dive.

I ate well enough. I've mentioned the street tacos. There was duck at Boticelli's with Cary and David. There were enchiladas somewhere with the band.

My own official set was satisfying. I was happy to get through it, to not fuck it up too much, to just relax and play the songs and feel like I was grounded enough to be true and real. And to have good sound and to be able to follow Josh Ritter and be followed by Ron Sexsmith - well, a girl couldn't ask for anything better.

Its fun, this circus, walking up and down the streets looking for good music, hoping to be moved. Because that's what I really believe is at the heart of it all. Sure the execs are worried about sales and placements and money. But what we are looking for, in the end, is something, One Thing, that moves us.

And to be able to hear that in a quiet french song by a girl strumming a nylon string guitar on a loud, loud street in the heart of a mayhem mob is what moves us.

Jack and Julie

Its fitting that I find out about one friend's passing while staying in the home of another, both I can now call mentors. One was an active mentor. The other had no idea.

I am in Virgina, in a sleepy town of well-spaced farmhouses, stone walls, hand-lain, in a craggy-hilled hollow of a town, filled with artists who have made fortunes big and small. It is not a place for the struggling. It is a place where composers and sculptures and Philharmonic conductors live amongst a Ye Olde Inn that has Michelin stars and She-Crab soup, where songwriters meet patrons and wine flows well. I love my friends who live here and I love to gather here yearly to play someone else's music, to joyfully sing amongst the linen clad, well heeled, who need music and rhythm as much as those of us struggling to keep our lights lit. We all need art. Even those wearing pearls suffer. A few years ago a mentor of mine passed and I hear from her in the wind. I have a hard time with the concept of God or Goddess, Higher Power or even the idea of anything outside of what I can physically lay my hands upon. But when I need something beyond, this image of my friend, this impish 60 something woman who seemed to have a grasp on what is Important and could Bestow Truth upon those of us younger, still seeking, this blue ribbon curls in the wind woman comes to my beckoning and I hear her voice, or if not her voice, I can see that glint in her eye that says "you have ALL that you need in your heart; just trust" as if Yoda himself had come out of the ether and danced into my hallucination.

Julie Portman. You are missed. You are still here amidst.

And so, here, in her house, sitting outside on the weather-worn bench in the late winter sun, trying to glean some Truth from the wind in the pines, I find out about another passing.

Jack Hardy.

Can I even call him a friend? I decide I can. I remember the moment it changed. He winked. I was sitting next to him at a circle at Camp Coho at Kerrville and I sang a song. I think Jack Williams was there. And Jack Hardy snapped after I finished. And sank his head back and said, "bellisima!" Now, I'm not so foolhardy to disregard the whiskey or my own youth and Jack's impish delight at young women, but I also know full well that no matter the carve of the leg, Jack suffered no songwriting fools, no matter how much Jamison's had gone down the gullet. And the moment Jack nodded at me, I knew something had changed for me. I felt invited. Not arrived. That's a whole different thing. But at least I knew from that moment on, the chair was open and I could come in. Jack was the gatekeeper and yet he was kindly. He was a critic, but never critical. He told you when you did right and kept it to himself when you didn't move him. It made my day when I got a nod from Jack Hardy, because Jack Hardy was a Great Songwriter. There aren't that many of those amongst us. Jack LOVED great songs. His heart great big and bursting with pain and love and joy and sorrow in front of all of us. Jack had a voice of the boy who sat outside your window to sing you down the oak tree to dance with you in the yard in the rain. Jack the romantic. Jack the crank. Jack the hipster. Jack the drinker. Jack the tribal leader. Jack the cowboy poet. Jack the cook. Jack who poured. Jack who watched the hummingbirds.

I am gushing. I never gushed to Jack. I wanted to. I wanted so much to thank him for welcoming me. Jack Hardy had a Monday night hang at his West Village apartment. He'd make a pot of pasta. We'd bring wine and a new song we'd not debuted in front of an audience. It was a tiny apartment that reminded me of the biographies of Dave Van Ronk and Dylan. The shared bathroom in the hall. The kitchen barely separate from the living room. Not enough room for more than one or two guitars. I was there a few times, with Abbie Gardner. Jack made Pasta Puttanesca. We brought wine. I'd been told about this hang for years and was too intimidated to go. It took knowing Jack a few festivals to get there. When I did I brought a song, "The Fortunate Ones". I remember I sang it, scared that Jack wouldn't dig it. He did. He said "that's a good song" and the next time I saw him, at Falcon Ridge, he sang it with me. Every time I saw him, at Falcon Ridge, sharing a round at Folk Alliance, at Camp Coho, Jack nodded at the empty chair near him, inviting me in. The thing is, Jack was more about that gesture -- the invitation -- than touting his own horn. I never heard Jack say anything self-promoting. He'd mention other songwriters to me. Not himself. He'd tell me Irish songs I should learn so we could play them together. Not his own songs.

The news of his death was a complete shock and I'm a bit numb by it. I keep looking on Facebook to see what others are saying because I want to hold someone's hand in this and just figure out what's going on. I wouldn't think Jack would consider me a 'friend', enough to think I'd want to say goodbye. But friendship in this community of folk singers is this odd thing and Jack's passing makes me want to make sure that the people I consider friends, integral people in my life, regardless of how many times a year I see them, that those people know how important they are to me. We see each other in passing on the road or under tents and we think "oh, I'll see them next year".... but those of you I pass in the hallways in Memphis, and I see and hear briefly at the crossroads in front of the octojohn or in the mud in Hillsdale, or on status updates on Facebook... I hope you know how much you all mean to me...

I won't see Jack Hardy next year. I was at Kerrville last year for about 48 hours and I spent the one night I decided to run around the camps, not running around, but sitting next to Jack Hardy at Camp Coho listening. I didn't want to play. I wanted to hear music and sit by Jack. I regretted then that I couldn't stay for longer, but I was running to another festival. I thought, oh, next year, I'll be back. I'll stay for a week. I'll camp at Coho and learn more Irish or Scottish ballads and harmonize with Jack and bring some new songs to play.

I thought when I played Falcon Ridge this past summer I'd have enough energy to trudge to the top of the hill to visit Jack's camp. But I didn't. I was tired. It was raining. I thought, oh, I'll see Jack again.

The thing is, I hope Jack, who died a few days ago, knew how well he was loved. I haven't cried yet. I still believe he'll be there when I get to Coho this year. Or walk up the hill at Falcon Ridge. I think of the people I associate with Jack, Gary, Jack Williams, Byrd, Karen Mal, Lisa and Bruce, Woody and Michael, the hummingbirds, the bottle of Jamisons, Frank, people I don't even know in the legend of Fast Folk, the famous, and even Felix McTeigue who first invited me to Jack's hang years back....

My friend Julie is in the rocks in the St. Vrain river. And in the wind in the pines in Little Washington, Virginia. And in the blue of the scarf I bought when she was still fighting cancer and we all decided to imagine her in Persian Blue in 2022. And in the song I wrote for her. And I talk to her when I need guidance and so far, I haven't heard back but maybe someday. And Jack, I think I'll bring new songs to him for a while too. Just to see....