Road Tales - Rode Hard first full chapter

Following two solid weeks of playing in Chicago, 18 gigs in 14 days, we returned to Superior to contemplate the future. I had been offered a gig with a mega-hot chick singer who had written a song that was bound to be a hit. I could live, record, "sleep with", and tour with her or I could finish my senior year of high school in that shitberg of a town.

The choice wasn't as easy as you might suspect.

Signs of Smoke

As we drove into the outskirts of Superior on the heels of two incredible weeks in Chicago the irony of the towns’ name did a Nagasaki in my brain. “Inferior in every possible way,” I declared to my sleepy band mates as I turned right onto Moccasin Mike Road. Complaints abounded; whines, grumbles, and bellyaches assailed my diversion of course. “Superior is the most ironically name town on the planet.”

“Where the fuck are you going?” asked whoever, maybe all.

“It is tradition to visit Gitche Goomee after a road trip,” I explained as patiently as possible.

We ran out of weed somewhere just before Black River Falls, Wisconsin, which turned out to be a good thing because we were pulled over around 3am by this Barney Fife of a local cop because one of my taillights was out. He took one look at me and started writing the ticket. In the middle of Chippewa tribal land I was pulled over by a glow-in-the-dark white cop who didn’t like Indians. Fortunately, the car smelled of cigarettes, unwashed musicians, and a molding sandwich lost deep under a bench seat so Deputy Dawg felt no compulsion to search the vehicle.  What if I hadn’t been accompanied by three Scandinavian kids? I sang Paranoid by Black Sabbath in my head.   

 Loud, incessant bitching brought me back to piloting the Pontiac and trailer past The City Dump ----- Are you seeing the irony of this town named Superior by now? Do you appreciate the depth of the irony? The town dump is on a sacred Ojibwa burial island ---- Why will these guys with me not shut the fuck up? My ancestors are talking to me. Can’t they hear them? Oh, right, these cats aren’t in tune. I could have beamed my thoughts toward Teamo and he’d have gotten it instantly. I was 17 and feeling so much older than the 16’s with me.

“Ok,” I said as I pulled the train over, “I get it. Y’all want to go home. So do I.” With that, I opened the door, slung my bag over my shoulder and started walking toward the lighthouse. They called to me. I waved them off several times. They called more. I ignored. They drove the car up to me. “Go home. I am home. Take the car. I will be fine.” They offered to drive me to the lighthouse. “My ancestors will carry me.”

I was all mystical about it with them at the time, but truthfully, they had no choice than to drive to the lighthouse. There was nowhere to turn around a ’57 Pontiac Wagon and U-Haul trailer once we had passed the dump. Stubbornly, I rode on the bumper to The Point where I knew I would find Ojibwa brothers with whiskey and weed. Jumping off the bumper I strode into the woods and turned to say darkly, “I’ll see you on the other side,” in my best Morrison voice.

I trod toward the lake breaking on through to the other side where my beloved awaited me. Once you fall in love with Lake Superior she has you for life and beyond. My brothers and sisters awaited me beside a fire (that I had seen from Hwy 2) with warm hugs, huge smiles, and smoke.

I regaled my brethren around the fire with my road tales while sharing smoke as our ancestors had for centuries. The larger the tale the more smoke, whiskey, and beer flowed my way. Storytellers are revered by the tribe as teachers, sages of the lessons passed down from the ancestors. I was a storyteller in training. My father was a storyteller and a great Chief. I believed that my destiny was to be the tribal shaman. Like so many times in my life, I was wrong. My destiny was that of storyteller and Chief. My sons would become the shaman, my daughter the medicine woman, and my grandchildren the custodians of the Earth. Yeah, the pot was that good.

Amid a third Leinenkugel’s I hallucinated a familiar figure walking over the dunes toward me. It was Rob Geschwind with that familiar smirk. I pulled a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red that Ben Boudreaux presented me as an emergency kit prior to our tour. Somehow, the bottle remained intact in my bag until that moment or else it magically refilled itself.

Rob still wouldn’t inhale but he did accept a beer and slug of JW Red. “So, what do you think we should do? What are we going to do? What do you want to do?”

Rob and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss the offer presented to us since we left Chicago. I had been around music biz long enough to know that everyone claimed that they had a recording deal and that the deals could mean nothing or everything, but usually nothing. But Laura Miles had such an incredibly great can’t miss hit song. And, she was incredibly passionate about life, music and art… and me.

“I think we should move to Chicago,” I stated.

“No way that my folks will agree to that,” Rob said. “So, it comes down to what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to move to Chicago, live with a hot singer, play the local clubs, get to know and jam with the legends of blues music, make a hit record and play the world. I’m going to open for The Doors, party with Jim Morrison while we have deep, intense discussions of poetry, literature, and sex. I’m going to tour Europe, maybe live there for a while… Maybe even hook up with Patty O’Leary.”

 “No, really, what are you going to do?”

“Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear me? Do you have an ear infucktion? I am accepting Laura’s offer and I’m moving to Chicago.”

“What about finishing high school, graduating?” Rob asked.

“I’ll fill that space on my wall with gold records.

“Holy shit,” I exclaimed as a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red plopped into my lap.

“Welcome back, brother,” boomed Ben Boudreaux. “How was the tour? I saw bass boy a few days after you left. He says you guys stranded him at the resort,” he said with a great, hearty, sincere laugh that is his trademark.

“Did that little fucker say that?” Rob asked. “He bailed on us. Called his mommy to come get him. Grant took over on bass. Why, that little fucker.”

“Grant?” Ben said. “I’m a better bass player than Grant and I don’t play bass. Hell, I can barely play guitar and I’m sure I’d be better than Grant.”

“It would be hard to be worse,” I agreed. “You could try to play worse, but you would probably fail.”

“Come on,” said Rob, “He wasn’t that bad.”

“We jammed with Mike Bloomfield,” I changed the subject.

“No shit,” said Ben. So, I regaled him with tales of our tour while Belinda hung on his shoulder, head atop two folded hands.

I went through the whole story of Chi, the blues jams, Bloomfield, and the offer from Laura Miles to join the Chicago Express. I spared the intimate nature of my relationship with Laura  because Belinda was there, but I ached to describe in minute detail to Ben every moan and groan. 

“It comes down to a decision that I have to make. Do I stay here in torture and graduate from loathsome high school or move to Chicago and pursue my destiny?”

“What are you going to do,” asked Ben.

The answer seemed incredibly obvious to me.

“I’m moving to Chicago,” I said, “Tomorrow.”

“No, really,” Ben asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Seriously,” I asked? “I haven’t a fucking clue.”

While we passed the Johnny Red back and forth Ben caught me up on local happenings. The most disturbing news was that Belinda’s recently divorced mother had become best buds with my mother. Shit, nothing good could come from that union.

“Do you realize how incredibly bat-shit crazy my mother is?” was my question.

“Yeah, my Mom is pretty crazy too,” said Belinda.

            We launched into topping one another’s tales of crazy Mom until finally calling a truce. From what she related her mother might actually approach my mother’s level of crazy.

~~~

Eventually, Ben and Belinda drove Rob and me to my car. I dropped Rob off at his house and drove out to Granny Blackwater’s lodge. I shared tidbits of our tour – those events that I could speak of in front of my elders – over a beer with my dad while Granny prepared food, as was tribal tradition, and sipped Brandy, which was Granny B’s tradition.  

While we drank and talked I continued to contemplate how to broach the subject of moving to Chicago to live with a female blues singer and playing in her band. Dad had become a lot cooler since the stress of Mom was lifted from him, though he would harbor deep feelings of love for her until the day he died. We were becoming more like buddies. He had backed off from the Sergeant Major mode since his return to what he called the “Real World” and I call the “Land Beyond Reality”.

Sunshine had been spending more time with his local drinking buddies and lady friends. He was becoming himself again. Beer by beer, story after story, he shed the military skin and restored to his former self as a human being. He spent much time deep in the woods fishing, hunting, and living in the pines for days at a time. To his mind, a vacation would involve going off to engineer a project for a few months and then return to life in the woods, real life.

I felt tremendous relief seeing my father in this new light. The Sun was shining from him once again. Ok, how could I tell him that I want to move to Chicago – go there to live with a chick singer and write songs – and quit before graduating high school. His one request of me from my earliest days was that I graduate high school. “Don’t be a dummy like I was.” Dad quit school to fight in WWII. I wanted to quit school and shack up in Chi, not quite the equivalent.

I spoke of my remembrance of Grandpa Jones. Dad listed a cavalcade of musicians that had passed through our midst that I had forgotten. Cowboy Copus, the dude with the big white hat, and that scruffy guy named Boxcar Willie, and the big Irish guy named Dave Dudley. Musicians galore passed through our flat in New Orleans. Some of them became famous, most did not, but all were great.

Would the Packers win another Super Bowl? Absolutely, we toasted, whereupon Dad headed to the can. I sauntered out to see what Granny Blackwater was preparing only to discover a feast of venison, bear, walleye, wild rice, and cheese, lots of cheese. Wisconsin is the cheesiest state in the Union.

“Armond, Long Drink of Water, it is good that you are back. Your father and I have missed you. He talked about you the entire time that you were gone. He is proud of his son. He is proud of the man that you are becoming. I always knew that my grandson would turn into a fine man, a peaceful warrior.”

What the fuck do you say to that?

This wasn’t the time to tell them that I planned to shack up in a cold-water flat in Chicago with an aspiring songwriter, play in dingy clubs, smoke pot, drink, fuck-a-lot and, oh yeah, quit school.

Granny handed me a glass that contained 7-Up and a pinch of brandy, just like when I was a kid. My face betrayed my disappointment whereupon the wonderful lady laughed and handed me a glass of pure brandy.

“I love you, Armond Joy,” Granny Blackwater clutched my face and kissed my forehead.

She knew. Don’t ask me how she knew. She knew.

Sunshine knew too. He was a quick pisser. He lingered way too long. Sunshine knew too.

The difficulty of the decision increased manifold.  

Dad returned from the bathroom and announced, “I just took the shit of a lifetime,” he said that a lot. “Oh yeah, Charley Westover called. He wants to talk to you.”

Charley Westover called? That was way cool news.