Don’t Follow
I am in the Walsmith’s guest bedroom on Ashby Street in Beaverdale, Iowa. The house is silent save for the ceiling fan whirling overhead, and a bird chirping just outside the window.
I am some 1014 miles west of New York City, in a quiet neighborhood just northwest of Des Moines. I am barnstorming the Midwest this week, rocking through Des Moines, Waterloo, Iowa City, Cedar Falls, Naperville, and Kansas City. My host is Nadas front man and Authentic Records co-founder Jason Walsmith.
I woke to the sound of thunder this morning, scrambled in my boxer shorts to my rental car to close the windows, then sat up in bed reading articles about Ryan Adams, Jeff Tweedy, and other alt-country heroes in Harp Magazine.
Taking the time zones into account yesterday was a 23-hour day. There is music everywhere here: reference the day’s frenzied activities below. It is seeping out of my skin already, as is evident from the song I just wrote, “Long Way Down.” Of course, it’ll have to be on the new record.
6AM – My car service driver is facing east and listening to his morning prayers. I smile, and relish the contrast to where I’m headed: Des Moines, Iowa.
8:13AM – American Airlines flight #3902 takes off. I fall asleep.
11:03AM – I wake up in Des Moines, IA. The airport is roughly the size of my high school, and shares a similar aesthetic.
11:24AM – The Alamo car rental guy asks me, “So how are things in New York?” I don’t really know how to answer him.
12:32PM – I visit the Iowa State Historical Society. There’s a huge mammoth on display in the entrance. It was found in a farmer’s field in… Wisconsin. I learn that the state was founded in 1846, traded away from the Chippewa, Winnebago, and Sioux Indians for $800,000 a year. Also, Glenn Miller was born and raised in Clarinda, Iowa.
1:28PM – I walk into ZZZ Records on Locust Street and discover that record store clerks are the same all over the country: too cool for school. I buy two local records, Like Knives and The Poison Control Center, and a black ZZZ Records T-shirt.
2:11PM – I call Jason. “We’re about 20 minutes out of Des Moines,” he says. “I’m just a little hung over, though. We saved you some Templeton Rye. Like my friend Tug says, ‘It doesn’t get you drunk, but it does make you crazy.’”
2:11PM – I call my father from the steps of the State Capital. “Last time I was there,” he says, “Was 1963. I was a state senator at Hawkeye Boys State.”
3:12PM – Jason calls. The Nadas are loading in down the street.
3:22PM – I park in front of the band’s bus. It’s huge and gray, like Moby Dick. The placard in the front window reads “Meat Loaf.” The band is setting up in an amphitheater in front of the Des Moines River.
3:37PM – I consume my first but surely not last pork tenderloin sandwich.
5:33PM – Sound check wraps. I follow Jason to his home in Beaverdale. He’s a rock star, but drives a Toyota Land Cruiser, and lives in a three bedroom house filled with children’s toys on a tree-lined street.
6:17PM – Jason, Stephanie, Mitchell (their two-year-old son) and I pick up Mike and head back to the venue. Jason and Mike point out local points of interest. “I once saw a burning pickup truck there,” Mike says.
7:01PM – I hang in the green room (second floor of the Des Moines Embassy Sweets) with The Nadas, family and friends. I sneak a few beers and cold cuts, play with Mitchell.
7:42PM – I listen to Josh Davis perform “Don’t Follow” for the first time tonight. Nadas bassist Jon Locker (who’s co-producing my “Heartland” recording) sent me the song in demo form weeks ago. I love the song.
10:42PM – Jason’s wife Stephanie performs “Water In The Fuel” with the band. I immediately begin to plot a way to get her on my forthcoming album.
12:52PM – “Hey Ben, you notice that smell?” Jason asks. “Is it the meat packing plant?” Stephanie inquires. “No, it’s the slaughterhouse,” Jason answers. “Where in hell am I?” I ask.
1:01AM – Outlaw Family Band perform at Walnut Taps, the oldest bar in Des Moines. I sit down next to a toothless octogenarian in a white T-shirt and jeans. He has a teardrop tattooed underneath his right eye. “Doesn’t that mean he’s killed someone?” I ask.
1:44AM – Within three minutes of arriving at AK O¹Conner¹s, Mike throws his arms around me and says, “Ben, I’m totally drunk.” Ten minutes later he’s on stage performing with Josh Davis, who plays “Don’t Follow” for the second time tonight. I still love the song. Jason and Stephanie join the ad hoc band and perform a blistering “Me & Bobby McGee.” I can barely keep my head upright.
2:51AM – Back home, Jason microwaves taquitos. Stephanie snacks on cherry tomatoes. I take two Advil.
2:56AM – I fall into bed.
It’s 12:52 now. The Walsmiths have just gotten home … from lunch. Time to start my Sunday.
Speed Of Sound
Minos may control the land and sea, but not the air.
And so I will fly. I will soar in the clouds, up where I am safe. My wings will be aluminum and steel, graphite and wire. I will drink jet fuel. I will travel faster than sound. I will race the dawn.
And when I land, I will not smell garbage, or urine. I will not hear busses or taxis, alarms or sirens. I will not see cement or neon, smog or haze. I will not feel tired, or frenzied.
I will stand knee-deep in corn. I will drive straight on into morning. I will dive head-first into tomorrow.
And when I return, miles strewn between us, mountains fallen at our feet, I will stand befofre you a changed man. I will sing for you, and whisper into your ear, “It’s going to be all right.”
And it will.
P.S. Should fly too high. Should I soar too close to the sun. Should my wings melt, and send me tumbling earthward. Every song I ever sang is nestled in a tiny black box at my bedside. Set them free. Let them fly where I could not.
Over & Out
I hear laughter as I climb the stairs. I knock loudly, inhale deeply, and wait.
The door opens quickly. A reddish-blonde rock star stands before me and says in an Aussie accent, “You must be Benjamin, eh?”
I am two hours late for Neil and Aaron’s dinner party. I have an excuse, but it’s not very good. Or at least it’s trite. I was stuck in the office well after nine o’clock. We continue to iron out the details of our Very Huge and Super-Secret Video Music Awards Project. I leave for a week’s vacation tomorrow (if two records, three shows, four cities, and a family reunion constitutes vacation), and doubt that we’ll have resolution on the Very Huge and Super-Secret Video Music Awards Project, increasing the likelihood that I’ll be tapping away on my Blackberry as I track vocals for “Cry” (which seems oddly appropriate).
ANYWAY (as Chuck Klosterman would say), I walk in, greet Neil and Aaron, apologize profusely, am handed a beer and am seated at the head of the table. “Everyone,” Neil says, “This is Benjamin Wagner. Let’s go around the table.”
One by one, my new friends introduce themselves. They are the United Colors of Benetton. They are everything a New York dinner party — my first in ten years of living here — should be. Neil, Aaron, Tandy, Tal, Angela, Lauren, Eric, Joe, and Mary, are as diverse as this great city. They are all walks of life: documentary makers, television producers, DJs. They are warm, they are open, they are passionate. Our conversation is spirited, and substantive, and fun.
The meal is unbelievable. Neil and Aaron trot out trays upon trays of the freshest, finest, most delicious Thai cuisine I’ve ever tasted: chilled watermelon and crab soup, baked snapper, a chicken dish with crisp iceberg lettuce, coconut, mango, pineapple, bananas, and sorbet of every color and stripe. And Thai beer, just for me.
I am the last to arrive, and the first to depart.
Weaving my way through the crowds outside of Brother Jimmy’s and Jake’s Dilemma, I thought to myself, ‘This is why I moved to New York.’ I didn’t move here for Lotus or Park or whatever club’s hot. I didn’t move here for MTV, or for the bright light of Broadway. I moved here for Heather and Stephanie, Neil and Aaron, Tandy, Tal, Angela, Lauren, Eric, Joe, and Mary, for Casey, Jeff, Amy, and Wes.
And I moved here for you.
I think it was a good move. Maybe even my best.
A Grammarian Stuck In A Medical Drama
I’ve never really been one for games.
Just ask my brother. He spent a childhood wrestling with my apathy. I grew bored with jigsaw puzzles, lost interest in Monopoly, and walked away from pick-up flag football. Not surprisingly, when he and his bespectacled friends began playing all-night sessions of Dungeons & Dragons, I was not invited to participate. (Which, in the end, is definitely for the best. But still.)
Take Connect Four, The Classic Vertical Four-In-A-Row Game. Simple enough, right? Tic-Tac-Toe, and then some? Well, I waded into the deep end of the Connect Four pool recently, and while I didn’t quite drown, I was flailing my arms and swallowing gallons and gallons of chlorinated water.
Jigsaw puzzles, Monopoly, flag football, Dungeons & Dragons, Connect Four — what’s the thread?
I transferred from Holmes Elementary in Oak Park, IL, to Devon Elementary in Devon, PA, when I was eleven-years-old. I went from a sixth to a fourth grade math level overnight. Were the suburban Chicago schools that bad? Were the suburban Philadelphia schools that good? Did it matter?
I spent the balance of sixth grade struggling to catch up. I was poked and prodded by guidance councilors (including, I kid you not, the Rorschach Test — on an eleven-year-old, can you imagine!?!). At one point, at my mother’s (well-intentioned) insistence, the school district sent the head of developmental learning to observe me. ME!?! Eleven-year-old me! Spied on by a tall, curly-haired, geeky lookin’ dude!
I distinctly remember taking a standardized spacial relations exam in junior high school. It was one of those number two pencils deals. Basically, they gave us illustrations of geometric objects with fold lines, and quizzed us on what shape they would take if folded. I have no idea how I did, but I’m pretty certain I considered shading those little ovals in the shape of a surf board.
I was tutored in math — algebra, geometry, you name it — throughout high school. I spent almost two years preparing for the SATs, and still barely eked out 1200.
My very first college course — 8:55 Monday morning — was Logic 101. Seemed interesting in the course book. “Logic 101 introduces students to logical arguments, uses of language, definition and meaning, fallacies of relevance, presumption, and ambiguity.” Fallacies of relevance!?! Cool! How abstract, how collegiate, how academic is that?
Sweet sweet pickled butternut squash on a popsicle stick, it was Hell on Earth. It was sentential calculus. It was numbers and symbols. There wasn’t an iota of language or — for that matter, meaning — for miles. I went to my professor after my first exam with beads of sweat busting from my forehead.
“Professor, I got a 56% on our first exam. I wonder if you can suggest a tutor?”
“Don’t worry about it kid. With the curve, a 56% is a C.”
The curve? Huh?
To this day, I avoid math like the plague. I still carry my ones. (“You may want to avoid other people seeing you do that,” my mom once suggested.) I intuit my checkbook. I ballpark. I’m a word guy, a concept guy. I’m all about the gestalt, the overall, the big picture. I can’t plan my moves two steps ahead. I can barely see my next move.
But I can sing about it.
Milk & Honey
NPR’s Carl Kasell just delivered the good news.
“The extensive heat wave across the eastern third of the country is expected to break tonight.”
Cool. Where I’m goin’, I don’t need any more heat.
It’s Video Music Awards season at The MTV. It’s all hands on deck. It’s full court press. It’s all kinds of clichés about being wicked pissa’ busy. Every year has to be bigger, better, badder, cooler, etc. etc. etc. than the last. Which means that much more work, and that much longer days. It’s fun, and it’s scary, and it’s overwhelming.
In the middle of it all, I’m recording three new CDs.
One of ‘em, “The Rivington Sessions,” is pretty much done.
On Saturday morning, I fly to Des Moines, IA. The Nadas are performing a big outdoor show Saturday night, which I’m stoked to see. On Sunday night, Nadas bassist Jon Locker and I begin recording my next CD, “Heartland”. The band joins us in the studio Monday and Tuesday. They head to a gig in Kansas City on Wednesday, at which point I drive up to Minneapolis to hang out with Kevin Anthony and (knock on wood) record a really loose, countrified acoustic EP. On Saturday I head back to Iowa for two shows, one of which in the next town over from Waterloo, IA, where my parents were born. Plus a Wagner family reunion.
Itinerary, blah blah blah.
A valid question, at this point, might be, “Dude, what the fuck?”
I have kind of a twisted view on vacation. More importantly, I seem to have some sort of twisted view on achievement. And I’m not exactly sure why. And I guess I’m not exactly sure whether it matters.
I think I might be a little bit hypomanic.
More revealing still, perhaps, I think all these goals — marathons, triathlons, albums, tours — have some sort of relation to how I feel about my self worth, my value. Like, if I’m just some Corporate Drone, I’m offering nothing to the world. And if I’m not going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone (I’m not), then at least I can do everything in my power to spread my songs and my hope as far and wide as possible.
In the end, though, I just get these ideas, like, ‘I’ll release four records this year!’ And then figure, ‘What the heck, let’s see if I can pull it off.’ I love sitting in front of the TV in the AC like the next guy, but, jeez, there’s only so much on anyway.
So, yeah, I’m a little bit anxious. I might fail. I might play crappy shows, or make a crappy record. I might fall asleep at the wheel. My plane might go down somewhere around Clear Lake (I’ve got the glasses for it).
But in the end, heat tempers metal. And I’m pretty sure I can take the heat.
Different Names For The Same Thing
When I was seven-years-old, my parents took Chris and me to “Annie” at Chicago’s Schubert Theatre.
Two things stuck: Annie’s “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” (reprised in every song I’ve written since), and Miss Hannigan. Miss Hannigan scared the living shit out of seven-year-old me. (My mother loves to remind me of this.) Heck, I’d avoid her in a dark ally to this day.
But here’s what really stuck: Miss Hannigan screaming at the orphans, “You’ll stay up till this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building!”
Gives me goose bumps to this day.
I’m sitting in a conference room on the twenty-eighth floor of The Mighty Viacom (aka “The Death Star”). It’s nearly eight o’clock. The meeting is in its second hour. My brief vacation has long since faded from memory.
“So what you’re telling me,” a Fairly Major Dude says, “Is that we’re going to go onto this plot of land that has nothing but light rigs and putting some of the most advanced technology on Earth in 120° heat during hurricane season?”
I stifle a laugh, and look out the window over my shoulder. The sky is deep blue, almost purple. The Chrysler Building is glowing orange in the sunset. And it’s shining. I smile, and I think to myself, ‘Everything’s in its right place, dude.’
Soul Meets Body
I checked my last Xanax through to Logan before I could choke it down.
I’m in seat 3A of an eight-seat Cessna 402, a plane only slightly larger than a station wagon. I’m not quite white knuckling this puddle jump between Nantucket and Boston, but I am uncomfortable. I am remarkably lucid. Too lucid. There is clarity of vision to this flight — a 60-mile flight across the Atlantic at 5000 feet — that is unnerving.
I try to read (I am revisiting Douglas Coupland’s “Generation X” some ten years on), but I’m faking it. None of it sticks. My eyes dart from the controls to the passengers to the shimmering sea below me. I imagine a water landing. Would I have time to assume the crash position? Would my neck break? My spine compress? Would there even enough room between me and the smooth-shouldered blonde occupying the co-pilot’s seat? Well, I thought, at least my last vision would be this woman’s smooth, tanned shoulders.
Soon we are over land, and I determine that it’s Cape Cod. I see the elbow of the Cape, and follow it to Providencetown where Erin and I once sat on the dunes and whiled away an afternoon some fifteen years ago.
I spot Boston glimmering in the setting sun. We bank north, and begin to descend. I find the runway, a tiny postage stamp thousands of feet below, and think, ‘No chance. No. Fucking. Chance.’ My chest tightens. I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I fold my hands in my lap, praying enough to work, but not enough to get caught by the other passengers.
We are falling from the sky like a brick. The tiny plane drops in bumps and fits. The runway seems impossibly small, and impossibly far away. But gaining fast.
A Quantas 747 crosses our runway. An American DC10 idles just off our intended runway. I think, ‘Don’t turn, don’t turn, don’t turn.’ Tony, our 26-year-old pilot, holds steady. Sure enough — sure as I’m typing on my PowerBook right now — Tony sticks the landing.
I bump my head stepping off the plane and think, ‘Great shoulders, but definitely not the last thing I wanna’ see before I die.” I exhale climbing the jet way, and fish the orange prescription bottle from my baggage.
One more flight. One more Xanax.
Party at 21,000 feet.
Holiday Road
Best. Ride. Ever.
I was grilling a piece of freshly caught tuna when it rolled in. The sun faded. The bay disappeared. The air cooled. Tiny droplets of fog clung to my eyelashes.
After dinner, I rode my bike out across the Smith Point Bridge. The night was silent. Everything was pale blue. I couldn’t see three feet in front of me. All I could hear was the hiss of the sand beneath my tires. I felt like I was flying. I felt lost. I feel like I could take a wrong turn and fall clear off the edge of the earth. I felt a thousand miles from home.
Blissfully.
I smiled, thought, ‘This must be why they call it vacation,’ and rode on into the darkness.
The Lady With The Spinning Head
My car departs at 4:45.
I’ve packed swim trunks, running shoes, and my iPod. That’s it.
Delta Shuttle departs Marine Air Terminal at six o’clock.
I arrive Logan 6:56.
I arrive Nantucket at nine a.m.
The sweaty city may never hear from me again.
I’ll be thinking of you.
I promise.
What Sarah Said
I get some text messages now and again, but they’re neither funny nor provocative. I’m a little old school with the whole typing on the phone thing anyway. It’s kind of annoying.
Email, though? Lifeblood of The MTV, and fun part of doin’ this site. So, with a nod to Sara B, here’s a bunch of randomized excerpts from today’s email outbox.
Yeah! I’m gonna’ cook for ya’ on my deck. Then the three three of us are going to make sweet, sweet love beneath the glow of moonlight in my rooftop bedroom. Well, dinner anyway.
I fight tooth and nail to retain integrity, to the degree that sometimes I think people roll their eyes. One of my favorite quotes to that end is from “Broadcast News,” which like “Network” was eerily prescient: “How am I s’posed to know where the line is? They keep moving the little bugger.” That said, this is New York, and we are capitalists.
No prob. We’ll make it so.
Oh my god you saw them kiss!?!
Thanks would love to totally crazed at work and have dinner guests from out of town tonight and to make matters worse I have some sort of crippling lung virus. Ugh. Thanks for the invite. See you soon! :)
Sure: MOPR014
The Commissioner is patient, and grateful. She hopes to deploy final assets Mon/Tue next week. She urges you to remember that simple is fine, and to remind you that She has complete confidence in your aesthetic judgement.
Dude, c’mon, there’s no way a relative of mine is a lousy kisser. If he is, tell me, and I’ll give him pointers. Not, like, literally, just verbally. ‘Cuz as far as i’m concerned, kissing comes first. Everything else is gravy.
I am not going to the doctor eight hours into mysterious back pain. Eight days maybe.
Strawberries and fireworks were very nice. :)~
I’ll call ya just as soon as a) it’s a decent hour and b) I get a minute where I’m not thinking about Jessica Simpson, or Jay-Z.
And my croup feels much better, thanks to Dr. Rob’s diagnosis (pleurisy) and prescription (ibuprofin).
