Hundred Highways Tour #48, 49: M-13, M-84 to Bemo’s Bar

Posted on August 18, 2016 by marcbeaudin
Sitting with the Northwoods Improvisors (Mike Johnston on bass)

Sitting in with the Northwoods Improvisers (Mike Johnston on bass)

No tour would be complete without a visit to my birthplace of Bay City, Michigan, and a reading at Bemo’s, my favorite Bay City bar (now that the Old Bar is long gone).

The show was fantastic thanks in large part to the amazing crowd of family and friends who came out for it. Also, having my brother/comrade Todd Berner open for me was perfect. He’s a hell of a songwriter and sounded great. Later, his set with Alyssa Diaz held the room in awe.

The absolute highlight of the evening (or maybe the entire tour so far) was sitting in during Northwoods Improvisors’ set. This trio of mind and soul-bending artists: Mike Gilmore (vibraphones, marimba, cheng, guitar, saz, percussion), Mike Johnston (bass, wood flutes, percussion) and Nick Ashton (drums, percussion), inspire me like no other living musicians do. It was an honor to be able to introduce their music to some new people, and then to share a new poem while they played an Alice Coltrane piece — wow!
The poem is from a new project I hope to record called From Coltrane to Coal Train: An Eco-Jazz Suite. Here’s the piece we debuted:

Communion

“All a musician can do
is to get closer to the sources of nature,
and so feel that he is in communion
with the natural laws.”
– John Coltrane
spoke these words, 1962
the same year a German coal mine explodes
killing 299 and John Glenn orbits the earth
dancing through “fireflies” of ice
the Centralia coal mine fire begins to burn
decimating two towns & likely to continue
burning for 250 more years and Bob Dylan
first sings “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”
& 50 years later
I sit outside this bar
in a brief respite between coal trains
listening to the sparrows
discuss a coming storm
the willow across the road
dances out the same message
the aspens of the courtyard
sigh their thirst,
soon to be slated

I’d like to go in for another beer
But the earth’s music is too compelling

All any of us can do
(as the first rain drops fall)
is to get closer to the sources of nature
(as the birds fall silent)
& so feel we are in communion
w/ the natural laws
(even though what I first take for thunder
is instead the next train
rounding the bend)

[More reports from the Hundred Highways Tour here]

Posted in Hundred Highways, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hundred Highways Tour #44 – 47: M-25, I-75, I-23, M-14 to Bookbound

Posted on August 15, 2016 by marcbeaudin

When I was in college at a small school in a mid-Michigan cornfield, my best friend was at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was the poor kid who wanted to transfer there, but knew I could never afford it. It was my Christminster (if that’s not too obscure (hint-hint) of a reference).

Ann Arbor was where I got hipped to social and political activism in the form of the anti-apartheid movement, to the overwhelming amount of what there was to possibly learn in the form of the endless stacks at the graduate library, to the wonders of mind-expanding substances in the form of a little baggie of Pinconning Paralyzer in Mary Markley Hall. It was also where I discovered and fell in love with independent bookstores.

Places like Shaman Drum, West Side Bookshop, Wooden Spoon Books, Crazy Wisdom, David’s Books, and the original Borders — before they sold to K-Mart and the corporate suits did what they always do to a cultural institution. (Sadly, the stores I just listed that don’t have links are no longer with us).

On this visit, nearly 30 years after those days, I had the great pleasure to read at a new Ann Arbor bookstore, Bookbound. The owner’s Peter and Megan Blackshear were fantastically welcoming and friendly. The crowd was small, but a chance to reunite with some great old friends – one of whom, Monica Rico, was one of the Saginista poets of the Red Eye poetry scene back in Saginaw (read her work!), another was my friend Kevin from the pow-wow circuit days who was with me at the beginning and end of several of the road trips in Vagabond Song.

After the reading, there were drinks and more drinks with great friends (Good Ol’ Nats), new and old. The next day, I visited some of the other bookstores in town and kicked around the art fair, where I bought a new hat. Just in time to wear for my next reading, that night at Bemo’s Bar in Bay City (the subject of the next report from the Hundred Highways Tour).

newhat

Posted in Hundred Highways, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hundred Highways Tour #42, #43: I-90 & US 2 to the GetLit! Festival

Posted on July 29, 2016 by marcbeaudin

DSCN1667A short jump from Coeur d’Alene to Spokane for the GetLit! Fest. Too much free wine, too nice of a hotel and a fantastic downtown/park. Mostly I walked around being surprised by how nice of a city this is. I’d only visited once before, and that was just to fill a U-Haul truck with boxes of my cousin Doug Peacock‘s book, Walking It Off. The press that published it was getting the axe, so we bought up all their stock. I was in town only long enough to load up.

So it was great to be able to spend a few days and realize how much this city has going on. After my reading at the festival, sharing a stage with a fantastic memoirist, Julie Riddle, who’s book The Solace of Stones is a powerfully honest look at childhood, wilderness and the endless paradox of Montana, someone asked me if I’d been to the waterfall yet. I had seen signs for it in the park and for some reason pictured a small run of whitewater cascading over rocks, maybe a couple dozens yards worth of drop — pretty, but not a huge priority.

Why that was my assumption, I have no idea. I’d forgotten the importance of remaining open to everything while on the road (0r anywhere for that matter). But, if someone says, “you should go see this,” it’s important to remember the words of Kurt Vonnegut: “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

DSCN1697[Read more reports from the Hundred Highways Tour here.]

Posted in Hundred Highways, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment