<The beginning of The Blind Spots' southern tour, January 2015>
I know it’s naive to say it so early, but I can’t help myself: this is good. We drove out of a snowstorm straight to Jim’s studio apartment connected to a chiropractic office that sees lots of traffic from pregnant women, right near the heart of West Asheville — Jim, the singer and guitar player for a Grateful Dead cover band, is a curly-haired cruise ship chef with thick glasses and the kind of face you trust right away. The walls of his apartment were covered with artwork, my favorite of which was a piece he found in an attic in Boston years ago: a huge charcoal sketch on a swath of specialty cotton paper with curled edges featuring a peaceful but focused heavyset woman in coveralls with a nest of tangled hair around her face, sitting on a stool playing a clarinet.
I know it’s naive to say it so early, but I can’t help myself: this is good. We drove out of a snowstorm straight to Jim’s studio apartment connected to a chiropractic office that sees lots of traffic from pregnant women, right near the heart of West Asheville — Jim, the singer and guitar player for a Grateful Dead cover band, is a curly-haired cruise ship chef with thick glasses and the kind of face you trust right away. The walls of his apartment were covered with artwork, my favorite of which was a piece he found in an attic in Boston years ago: a huge charcoal sketch on a swath of specialty cotton paper with curled edges featuring a peaceful but focused heavyset woman in coveralls with a nest of tangled hair around her face, sitting on a stool playing a clarinet.
There was no shower curtain around the tub, because Jim doesn’t like the smell of vinyl, and the window was propped open with a drumstick. Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” was framed on the bathroom wall beside a chart of minerals and vitamins, the couple surfaces covered in odds and ends, like loose change and tacks, a couple guitar picks and screws, a rusty old shoehorn, and a head made of coconut shells wearing a boy scout hat. Jim could have moved out in two hours, even if he was taking his sweet time. He lives simply and freely.
We smoked a cigarette on the front stoop late night after the show we opened for his band at one of the many brew pubs in town, and we talked about death (his mother’s, my friends’) and the concept I like to revisit with new kindred spirits about the log that burns into ash, having emitted so much light and heat to become less—the energy exchange. Jim’s older than I am, and, for that fact alone undoubtedly far more wise, but he listened and said, “Far out,” and after a short sleep, we woke up to grey light blasting through curtainless windows, and we took Jim to his favorite taco joint in the art district by the river called the White Duck. It was early but he ordered himself a nice dark beer with his lunch. Jim is the kind of guy you like more and more, the more time you spend with him, and we gave real hugs as we left, knowing we’d see him again.
Khris and I found a community yoga studio in Asheville that we hit up twice for $5 a class—a big, beautiful room with new hardwood floors, high ceilings covered in white billowy sheets, a couple lotus flower stained class windows, and people so friendly you wondered if there was a catch. We hopped in the van sweaty, footy, and blissful, where the guys were eating catfish, collard greens, and baked beans, and we drove to the next show.
The routine of loading gear in and out of new places is quickly becoming more streamlined—we duck and dip around each other, holding doors without having to be asked, grab a handle of a two-man op and wait for someone else to grab the other end and lift. (Among other things, we are furniture movers, and we’re getting better at our job.) I set up the merch table and use a Sharpie and quarter sheets of paper to make three copies of the set list Suave wrote. We unwrap and run cables. There is nothing romantic about the mechanics of setting up a stage…unless you realize that these simple functions have become a part of the work that pushes the dreams through—the crank that draws the bucket full of fresh water up from the well. I am singing every day, all the time, songs that I wrote with these four people I love. And then there is no complaining about that—just the doing, to make the dreamy parts so.
The other night a pretty bartender in her mid-thirties with long, tinseled brown hair kept her four-month-old puppy, a teacup yorkie wearing a blue argyle sweater, behind the bar with her while we played, and after the show, she poured us shots of Woodford Reserve and showed us how she was teaching him to pick up a tip off the bar and drop it in her tip jar. She reminded Suave of many of the Dead Heads he met at shows in the nineties when he was touring with the band: kind, honest, easy but aware, and as down to earth as they come. I gave her a band t-shirt, and she threw on right on top of her other shirt.
We’re staying with family and friends that none of us have had proper time to connect with in years—and maybe wouldn’t have for much longer if it weren’t for what we’re doing out here. After drinking coffee this morning on a porch overlooking a golf course in the brilliant Carolina sun, Khris’s grandma explained her new regiment of medications to him as he listened sympathetically at the kitchen table while Suave raked the yard outside with Khris’s uncle and cousin, and his aunt talked to me about their hibernating 65-pound African tortoise named Speedie who grazes in the lawn during the warmer months. His sixteen-year-old cousin, a budding novelist nicknamed V, navigated us back to their house and stole my heart as she explained in great detail the plot of the novel she’s working on (with accompanying screenplay and a full album of songs) about a touring band much like ours, covering her face when she said she loved her main character so much—a talented singer/songwriter with a tragic upbringing named Reilly. She stole it again when we overheard her telling her mom this morning that the day she spent with us (having dinner at her house, watching us play a show in her town, riding shotgun int the van, and letting us take her out for late night cheeseburgers) was pretty much one of the best days of her life.
On that ride to their house last night from a show for tips we scored last minute in a town I’d never been to fourteen hours’ drive from the comforts and distractions of home, my eyes caught the tail end of a giant shooting star out the van window, and I shrieked right out, which made us all share the-best-shooting-star-I-ever-saw stories. I made a blanket wish on this one—with lots of spokes, specifics, sequined patches, and wild addenda!—but really, just the one big wish at the center, the one I always make. And already, it’s coming true.
