#thee hobo love tour

[razorsadness]

Monday morning, early, heads throbbing and fuzzy from Maker's Mark and Jameson. A healthy breakfast at the Co-Op, coffees to go, and here we are, On the Road, again.

We drove west, then south, down through Illinois, down Route 66, Illinois country rutted and seedless and tough as its own scrub oak, in and out of cloudbursts. Raindrops and bug guts splattered on the windshield. I babbled, about heart-trouble, love-trouble, and the Devil, all my dreams of Lucifer and other fallen angels. Emchy was mostly quiet, interjecting here & there to say - Hey, Jess, lookit that. Illinois pigfarming country, and the railroad lines, ley-lines of the land, running in an endless straightline south south South.

When we crossed the Big Muddy, we lit cigarettes, because that is a tradition a buddy o' mine taught me years ago - lightin' up when you cross that river. That same boy said - Seeing the Mississippi is one of the only things that makes me feel proud to be an American. I knew what he meant, I know what he meant - that river, so roiling, a snake in the landscape that could divide, conquer, swallow us all; that river, huge as longing and deadly as lust, and it just never stops.

It was to be a full moon that night - the Full Harvest Moon - and we were playing a bar called Pop's Blue Moon. It was a good sign.

Our motel was way out in Maryland Heights, a dingy La Quinta far away from the action, cos it was cheaper that way. The elevator was slow as a dinosaur and smelled of death, and I joked - La Quinta: Spanish for creepy elevator. (Y'all must've seen those stupid ads before, the ones that say La Quinta: Spanish for free Internet.) When we got in the car to drive over to the show, I had to run back to the room for something I'd forgotten, and I got turned around, all the hallways looked identical to each other, a labyrinth of beige walls and crusty carpet and ice machines. I came out on the opposite side of the building, and for a moment before I figured out what'd happened, I was so disoriented, going - Where's my car? Where's Emchy? Am I in the Twilight Zone?

Pop's Blue Moon is in The Hill, which is the Italian neighborhood of St. Louis; a strange neighborhood mostly residential with the occasional trattoria or market thrown in here and there. We rolled up to the venue, checked in with the father & son team that run the place, then went to get food at a sweet little Greek/Italian joint. Then back to Pop's, to put on our make-up and soundcheck and begin drinking. I don't think St. Louis was ready for us. The crowd was loud and rude, chattering through most of our set and throwing us the evil eye, and one meathead of a dude called me a fucking freakshow, and he did not mean that in a complimentary way, when I sidled up to the bar for another drink. Fuck them. Our drinks were cheap and stiff, and we sounded damn good. And the people who worked at Pop's dug us, and Pete Kartsounes and Greg Shocket, the bluegrass half of the bluegrass & hobo night, got what we were doing. So we played for them, and for ourselves. Greg and Pete were total sweethearts, we all kept hugging each other and sharing stories about touring and places we've lived - turned out, me and Emchy and Pete are all from Michigan - and Greg and I bonded over a nerdy love of crossword puzzles. I thought maybe the audience would be a bit kinder to Pete and Greg, as their music is more mainstream accessible, and I don't mean that as a bad thing - it's just, well, I play music that tears itself apart. I need a catchy tune like I need a bullet through the heart. No, no, the bar patrons were jerks to them, too, maybe even more so; one guy actually got up and started playing pinball right next to the stage during their set. It is hard to concentrate on listening to a pretty bluegrass tune when you keep hearing clang! beep! ding! mixed in with it. So, like we had played for them, they played for us, me and Emchy cheered and raised our lighters when they covered "Wish You Were Here," and one of Pete's songs was so thick with loss and beauty that it brought tears to my eyes. I played accordion with them for a couple songs, first the Milton Brown and His Brownies' cowtown swing of "The Blues Ain't Nothing But A Good Man Feelin' Bad," and then Bob Dylan's "Buckets of Rain." And that was a glad thing; that is one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs. Maybe it was all the whiskey n' beer we consumed, but for me that fullmoon St. Louis night, life was a cabaret, and Emchy was such a gorgeous mess. When the crowd left, the bar staff let the four of us stay for one more drink before they kicked us out, and we traded CDs and all hugged one last time, and the payment was divvied up. We didn't make a helluva lot, but some bucks is better than no bucks. Yeah, the crowd were assholes, I said, but when it comes down to it, they still had to pay to get in, and we got paid to be here.

Half-drunk, Emchy and I looped around sleepy nighttime streets with the full moon bright and bonecold above us, drove down a street of big stone houses, tree-lined, that I recognized from the first time I was ever in the Gateway to the West, and I shivered with the body-memory of the boy I was with that night, his thin, beersoaked lips on mine and his fingers tracing my safety-pin-stuck-in-my-heart tattoo and The Clash on the tapedeck. We got a little lost, eventually found our way back to the motel (La Quinta: Spanish for way the fuck outside of the city), and though it was the wee hours and we were exhausted and had a long drive ahead of us the next day...well, of course we stayed up for a couple more hours, chainsmoking and writing. We are about as smart as a cat.

[excerpt from a longer piece, written in 2008]

[emchy]

#Reposting @rustbeltjessie - Once upon, @secretemchysociety and I went on Thee Hobo Love Tour, and I made us pitch cards a la old-time sideshows to give out at our gigs. #ephemera #thingsifoundinboxes #2008 #emchy #waltzingmatilda #pitchcards #accordionists #hobosisters

[rustbeltjessie]

For: Stinky Monkeypants

From: Scruffy Whiskeytits

Today is emchy's birthday, and in two days it will be the sixth anniversary of Thee Hobo Love Tour - a music and spoken word tour Emchy and I went on in 2008, in which we traveled from Milwaukee to St. Louis to New Orleans to Louisville to Chicago. In honor of those events, I have made downloadable, digital versions of the mixes I made for our journey. Happy birthday to my hobo sister!

Vol. 1: Milwaukee to St. Louis I'm gonna quit my ramblin' ways one of these days.

Firewater - Already Gone

Gogol Bordello - Wonderlust King

Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra - Long Vehicle

Yard Dogs Road Show - King of the Hobos

Tom Waits - Train Song

Ben Weaver - Alligators and Owls

The Magnetic Fields - Two Characters In Search of a Country Song

Cat Power - Ramblin' (Wo)man

Kelly Willis & 16 Horsepower - Aren't I True

The Bad Mitten Orchestre - Pretty Men

The Be Good Tanyas - The Littlest Birds

Bonnie Prince Billy - Nomadic Revery (All Around)

Patrick Wolf - The Libertine

The Murder City Devils - 18 Wheels

Mischief Brew - Oh Sweet Misery

Roma di Luna - Ghost Dance

Duke Ellington and His Washingtonians - East St. Louis Toodle-oo

Jason Webley with Reverend Peyton - 43rd Place Shoot Out

The Hellblinki Sextet - Ruckus

Dandelion Junk Queens - O' Buddy

1 Man Banjo! - Big Rock Candy Mountain

(DOWNLOAD)

Vol. 2: St. Louis to New Orleans, part one We can drink just as fast as the river is strong.

Tom Waits - I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In the Ninth Ward)

Arlo Guthrie - City of New Orleans

Johnny Cash - Big River

Lucero - Drink 'Till We're Gone

Jim White - Ghost-Town of My Brain

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

Mississippi John Hurt - Corrinna, Corrinna

Bob Dylan - Corrina, Corrina

Joe Strummer - Tennessee Rain

Casa De Chihuahua - Two Mile

Foddershock - Eat Possum and Prosper

The Gun Club - Ghost on the Highway

Jason Webley - Southern Cross

Lightnin' Hopkins - Shine On Moon

Leadbelly - Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Chris Thomas King - O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Howlin' Wolf - Tail Dragger

Heavy Trash - You Can't Win

The Gadjits - Waffle House Is Not A Home

Hank Williams Sr. - Lost Highway

Ella Fitzgerald - When I Get Low I Get High

Cab Calloway - St. James Infirmary

(DOWNLOAD)

Vol. 3: St. Louis to New Orleans, part two My death lays awake there, whistling Dixie.

16 Horsepower - Red Neck Reel

Tin Hat Trio - Fear of the South

Jolie Holland - Don't Get Trouble On Your Mind

Odetta - The Great Historical Bum

The Inkwell Rhythm Makers - Ain't No Tellin'

Carl Perkins - Restless

Rosco Gordon - Let's Get High

Patsy Cline - Gotta Lot of Rhythm In My Soul

Stumps duh Clown - That Open Road

Magnolia Beacon - Walking

Johnette Napolitano - New Orleans Ain't Been the Same (Since You've Been Gone)

Nina Simone - House of the Rising Sun

Norridge Mayhams and The Blue Chips - Stay On the Right Side of the Road

Asylum Street Spankers - New Jazz Fiddle

Baby Soda Jazz Band - Creole Love Call

Peggy Lee - Basin Street Blues

The Zydepunks - La Maraichine/Amadee Breaux's Two-Step

Elvis Presley - Crawfish

deadboy & The Elephantmen - Barefoot in the Dark

The Knotwells - New Orleans

Pacific Gas & Electric - Staggolee

John Lurie - Strangers in the Day

Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon

(DOWNLOAD)

Vol. 4: New Orleans to Louisville I can drive with my eyes closed and play by ear.

Justin Townes Earle - Ain't Glad I'm Leaving

Preacher Boy - A Little Better When It Rains

The Devil Makes Three - Beneath the Piano

Beck - Farewell Ride

Bob Dylan - Man in the Long Black Coat

The Felice Brothers - Greatest Show on Earth

Bruce Springsteen - O Mary Don't You Weep

The Carter Family - The Lonesome Valley

Skip James - Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues

O'Death - Busted Old Church

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Tupelo

Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down

Tom Waits - Don't Go Into That Barn

Frank Morey - In The Middle of Nowhere

Bread & Roses - To Beat the Devil

Magnolia Electric Co. - Nashville Moon

Gloria Deluxe - Once in the Mountains

Loretta Lynn - High On A Mountain Top

Reverend Glasseye - Blood O' Lambs

Th' Legendary Shack*Shakers - Blood on the Bluegrass

(DOWNLOAD)

Vol. 5: Louisville to Chicago It's hard to remember that one September.

The Pine Hill Haints - Fountains of Smoke, Rivers of Beer

Elvis Perkins - The Night & The Liquor

Iron and Wine - The Night Descending

Concrete Blonde - Side of the Road

Trailer Bride - Trains At Night

The Avett Brothers - Denouncing November Blue (Uneasy Writer)

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel

The Shins - Gone for Good

Peter and the Wolf - Safe Travels

Real Live Tigers - Let the Things You Love Kill You

One Beer Prophet - Moon River

Tom Waits - Ol' 55

Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros - Long Shadow

Heartless Bastards - Searching for the Ghost

Eric Siegel & Liam Warfield - Din and Danger

Woody Guthrie - Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy

Blackbird Raum - Honey in the Hair

That Damned Band - Whisky & Beer (For The Love Of)

Deal's Gone Bad - City City

Robert Johnson - Sweet Home Chicago

Firewater - Weird To Be Back

World/Inferno Friendship Society - Heart Attack '64

(DOWNLOAD)

(Note: these mixes are shared in the spirit of fair use. I have provided links, where possible, to purchase the music and support the artists.)

[razorsadness]

Kosmomancy. The universe sent us a myriad of good signs, and that was the first catchphrase of the tour (when you spend that much time cooped up in a car with someone, you're bound ta develop catchphrases & inside jokes) - It's a good sign!

We had a day off before we had to head to St. Louis, so I showed her some favorite spots of my dear drunken city, we slipped in the mud and let the cool autumn drizzle coat our arm hair, walked to Fuel Cafe. It still trips me out that Fuel's gone non-smoking, has remodeled and cleaned up its act. I will always long for the Fuel of the late '90s/early '00s, when it smelled like shit & a permanent nicotine haze hung at the ceiling, and it was fulla strange old men with matted hair who drummed on the tabletops & young punkrock boys with comic book tattoos who made fun of my anarchy tattoo but lauded my amazing ability to scam free copies of my zine. But Fuel still has good strong coffee, still sells copies of Cometbus, so there we went. Two coffees to go, and I thought the Traveler Lid on my coffee cup said Traveler Kid, and - It's a good sign!

I drove us downtown for diner food and a glimpse at the Bronze Fonz, which is tacky and not even in a fun kitsch way, I mean, blue bronze? C'mon. And where's the bronze Laverne & Shirley? I did joke that me n' Emch should reenact the opening credits of that show...Give us any chance, we'll take it, give us any rule, we'll break it, we're gonna make our dreams come true.

We jammed in the basement of my apartment building for a couple hours; rain trickled down the small windows high up above us. Emchy got friendly with Lydia, my accordion, for we were sharing her on this tour. Ain't she lucky? I said. She gets to be squeezed by two lovely ladies. We worked out a couple duets to play, though we ended up only performing one of 'em in front of people; Emchy with the accordion and me with guitar & ankle bells. We strummed and squeezed in the basement, and even when we fucked up it was great, the two of us playing our hearts out under the bare buzzing bulbs amid the musty basement smells, with crumbling leaf corpses sticking to our pants and cobwebs brushing our foreheads.

Then south again, back to Bayview, to meet some friends at the Hi-Fi, and then I took her to Burnheart's. We meant to leave early, but there was so much whiskey to be had and so much soul-talk to be poured out, not to mention the horrible pickup lines. (You gals wanna talk about the Packers? -No. -How about Large Hadron Colliders?) We were there 'til barclose.

[excerpt from a longer piece, written in 2008]

[razorsadness]

Most of the crowd cleared out, but me and Emchy were there ‘til barclose, trading CDs and talking with the other performers and the folks who worked there. Everyone raved about my song “Free Razorblades,” which I didn’t know was all that spectacular, but every time I’ve played it live, I’ve been complimented on it. That song’s not recorded? the sound guy asked, Cos it needs to be. If you ever come back to New Orleans, I will record that song free of charge. I sat talking to N. for a while, and he really convinced me that I had to move to New Orleans. We talked a bit about what I was doing in Milwaukee, and then I said something like: I love New Orleans so much, she seduced me quickly, and I don’t want to leave. –She’ll do that, she’s a very seductive city, and if she wants you here, she’ll make it known. Why don’t you move here?  -Well, I... -Just a second. You told me you don’t have a steady job in Milwaukee, you don’t own a lot of stuff, you’re not on a lease, and you want to get out of Milwaukee, and you love it here. You have no good reason not to move here. -When you put it that way, it sounds so simple. I was so grateful for that conversation. I already wanted to move there, but I often talk myself out of doing the things I really want to do with all these bullshit fears & excuses. N. saying that to me made me realize that I couldn’t try to logic myself out of this one, because...everything was going according to plan. It was a good sign; and all signs pointed to yes.

We finished our last drinks of the night, collected our money (we made more money that night than we did any other night of the tour), hugged our new friends and said our see ya down the roads, and then to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. And I knew we had to get up at the crack of dawn, and I knew we had a long drive ahead of us, but once again, I could not sleep. I was already missin’ NoLa, and we hadn’t even left, yet. When I finally did nod off, once again, I wandered the streets in my dreams.

It was raining as we left town, which made it harder to depart, the whole city washed and glittering. Other cities look warn down, scummy, sad in the rain, N. had said to us, New Orleans is the only city I know of where the rain makes it look prettier, like the whole town has put on its Sunday best. Yes, that’s how it was, Lady Crescent dressed in a sequined gown and waving a jasmine-perfumed handkerchief at us as we drove away, as though we wouldn’t have missed her enough already. We stopped at Cafe du Monde for cafe au laits and beignets to take with us, and the drizzle continued as we drove out of the city, and we got covered in powdered sugar from the hot fried pastries. We drove back through the bayou, headed northeast, away, away. All I have, so far as tangible, physical evidence of my stay there is a tattoo, some photographs, a ghost painted on a block of wood, a small vial of an ancient potion, a show poster, an alligator foot (which I had before, my raindog vagabond boy had given it to me), a to-go bag from Cafe du Monde that still smells of beignets, a leaf shaped like a heart, and three firecrackers I found under my bed; but that city lives inside me, now, and I dream of her all the time, intense vivid dreams where I hear every sound and taste every smell, much as if I were actually there. 

—Jessie Lynn McMains, from a longer piece, written autumn 2008

[razorsadness]

September first we set out on our day trip. Through Kenosha County, Walworth County, and Rock County, I thought of all the boys I’ve loved from those small towns and others, oh my small town boys. Then Beloit, and the Rock River; I hadn’t been there in over twenty years. And Big Foot Beach State Park, where I found a fairy circle near the old playground. (We stayed a safe distance away, at the newer playground.) And to and from and in-between, we took the backroads, blue highways through the weird small towns, stopped when we felt like it. In parks and parking lots, I made friends of strangers. Saw hills and horses and hay bales; wind rippling through the corn. Broken-down barns and silos. Turkey vultures, hawks, sandhill cranes. Rattlesnake master and black-eyed Susans. A tree that had been split nearly clean down the middle by lightning, with one side still living and the other dead. A run-down antique store that seemed to specialize in Christian iconography. Swamp Angel Road.

It was good to travel, even just for that little stretch of miles and hours, but instead of scratching my restless itch it made it worse. Travel and sex can both be like that, for me. I can go a long while without them, and at first it’s terrible, my constant longing. But after a while that longing fades to a dull ache. And then I fuck, or take a little trip, and even if it’s really good—especially if it’s really good—it doesn’t satisfy me. It just reminds me how much I need it. And then it’s terrible again, the kind of relentless desire that would only be sated by driving hundreds of miles a day or having hundreds of orgasms a day, and probably not even then.

Speaking of longing. The end of summer/creeping into autumn nostalgia is thick upon me. I’m thinking of all the lives I’ve lived in this one lifetime. I’m thinking of Augusts and Septembers past. Thinking of 1997, Door County. Me and Ali getting stoned at the coffee shop, reading Kerouac. And Princess Di died and my Auntie was dying, that trip to Door County was the last time I saw her alive and she spent most of the time glued to the 24-hour news of Diana’s death. Thinking of 2003. Heartbreak and perpetual motion. Montreal and New York City and Cincinnati. 2004; Iowa and Look Homeward, Angel. (O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.) 2006; Oshkosh and the girl I loved. 2007; Milwaukee, and meeting my rain dog boy. 2008; Thee Hobo Love Tour. Emchy and I opening our show every night with our duet rendition of Concrete Blonde’s “Side of the Road.” St. Louis, and the cats we opened for asking me to jump in with my accordion when they covered Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain.” And New Orleans, New Orleans, New Orleans. 2009; driving cross-country with P. to begin our new life in Oakland together. And all the other years and...

I’m here sending mail to far-flung (and not-so-far) pals in Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Kenosha, and Oakland. Listening to sad bastard music, missing playing music, and my friends, and my favorite places, and everything else, all the time.