Feels Like Home
Oh man, wait until The Nadas get a load of this.
At one point in tonight’s rehearsal, I said to the guys, “You know this is The Official Song Of The City Of Des Moines™, right?”
But let me back up…
My name is Benjamin Wagner. By day, I am a middle manager for a Fortune 500 media company. By night, I am an aspiring rock star. You may have heard one of my twelve records. Or maybe you know one of my recordings, like “Dear Elizabeth” or my cover of “Leaving On A Jet Plane” (very popular on iTunes!).
My label is a great, little independent out of the Hawkeye State (that’s Iowa, folks), called Authentic Records. It was founded by a great, little rock band out of western Iowa called The Nadas. You may have heard of them. Playboy Magazine called them “The Best College Band You’ve Never Heard Of” (technically, it should have been “The Best College Band Of Which You’ve Never Heard,” but whatever).
Anyway, The Nadas celebrate their fifteenth anniversary this year, and are doing so (I’m pretty sure you’re hearing it here first) by assembling a tribute album comprised of all of their label mates: The Josh Davis Band, The Tyler Thompson Band, She Swings She Sways, Dick Prall, Bonnie Finken, Fat Andy, and yours truly.
Song selection was a bit haphazard (which is to say, I’m sure more than one band lobbied to record this one), but I ended up with “Feels Like Home” from the band’s 2008 release, “The Ghosts Inside These Halls.”
Now, I love a bunch of the band’s tunes, so why not “Coming Home?” Or “Hallelujah?” Or “California II?”
“Feels Like Home” is an amazing song. Mike wrote it on commission for the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, but managed to write a song as much about the city as a woman. The band released the song as a single the year after I spent three weeks on the road and in the studio with the band, a period of time the led to my 2005 CD, “Heartland,” but also a reconnection with my birth state. In fact, I was hoping the guys would perform it at Abbi and my wedding (it was us or The Little Bear Saloon, and The Little Bear Saloon won). What’s more, the “Ghosts” recording is muscular, dynamic, nuanced, and completely compelling.
None of which are adjectives I would have employed on behalf of our rehearsal tonight. We spent nearly two hours trying to find our footing. First, we attempted a straight version, then quickly dispensed of it; not raucous enough. Then we started tweaking it. First it was a slow, arpeggiated ballad. Then we tried to give it something of a Coldplay spin. We finally arrived on something I described as “U2 meets The Replacements.”
We’re recording this Saturday with our pal Travis Harrison (the gentleman who tracked our first holiday single, “A Holiday Benefit.”. My assumption is that — despite our shaky rehearsal — we’ll knock out a draft pretty quickly and then move onto some other new songs (“Waited Up,” “Someday, Baby”). And then we’ll hop a cab to Rockwood Music Hall for our double bill.
Hopefully. Jason and Mike will be otherwise occupied.
Hush
I’m a long-time admirer of CBS Sunday Morning, especially the segment before the show’s closing credits when our host (once, Charles Kuralt and now Charles Osgood) transports us somewhere tranquil and scenic for a few, restful moments.
Those patiently unfolding natural scenes — from a babbling brook in Arcadia, Maine, to the desert alpinglow of Virgin Wilderness, Arizona — were a final respite, it seems, between the coffee, couch and New York Times, and frenzied week ahead. Ad time (if not time itself), one imagines, was less scarce upon the show’s inception in 1979. The shots lingered then, rarely panning or zooming, just being. Today, the cuts feel more harried, the segment abbreviated. Fitting.
The population of Bray’s Island, South Carolina, is somewhere around 400. People are far outnumbered by herons, snakes, lizards and alligators. The nearest town, Sheldon, counts 4,966 residents. Even with the Marine Corps Air Station in nearby Beaufort, it’s not unusual to hear nothing at all for hours on end.
It was with CBS Sunday Morning in mind this Sunday morning, then, that I paddled through the cordgrass and into the wide channel of the Haulover Creek, hung my camera over the side of my canoe, held it as still and unflinching as possible, and captured one, fleeting minute of breathtaking solitude.
Enjoy.
Ebb Tide
By the time I finally got outside and dragged the canoe from the garage to the edge of the marsh, the tide was already receding. The edge of the shore was all honeycombed-mud and half-cracked shells.
There would be no boating this morning.
I traced the edge of the shore instead, sliding ankle-deep into the mud, puzzling over every detail. Pencil-thin rivulets flowed into one another, growing steadily deeper and wider. A pod of minnows darted through the muddy pool. Fiddler crabs scurried for cover.
The air was alive with sound: the the his of water through cordgrass, the whir of breeze through palms, the buzz of insects, and various songs of Southern birds. A turkey vulture circled in the vast, pristine blue overhead.
Squinting through the trees, it wasn’t difficult to imagine this little patch of mud a few clicks northeast of the Pocataligo River three hundred or even three thousand years ago. Peering int the explosion of green before me, imagined a time before time, before television or telescopes, iPhones or alphabets.
Story goes, The Kellers spent years wandering these highways before driving through the white gates of Bray’s Island. Just a few hundred feet on the tree-lined lane here, they knew they’d found the spot. Five years later, as Abbi and I paced the great, green lawn behind the Inn, we knew we found ours. The huge, live oak there along the river is strewn with Spanish moss. Early Carolinians used the massive trunks for sailing masts, and the moss for furniture. Seemed a fortuitous combination of attributes: strength for long travel and comfort. And so we were married there just eighteen months ago.
It’s quiet here. My ears ring. My pulse slows. And, though I log onto my email account from time to time, I find it difficult to believe that any of the other stuff really matters: the blips and beeps, web pages and WAP sites. It’s really about the turning tide: in and out, in and out, in and out. It is it’s own rhythm, its own pace, attendant on no one and dependent on nothing except the moon herself.
Bray’s Island, South Carolina (Spring 2009)
April 26th, 2009
Better Be Home Soon
Everyone’s losing their job. If not, they’re loathing it.
Mine’s like Whack-a-Mole or Missile Command or a California wildfire; I resolve one issue, and another pops up, or falls from the sky, or catches fire. You get the idea.
Still, even at the end of a Tuesday that feels like a Thursday, at the end of a twelve-hour day running on nothing but Shredded Wheat and water, it beats the converse. What’s more, while I may not sleep through the night anymore on account of ambitious goals amidst these troubled times, I appreciate that (as a colleague reminded me last night) a lot of people would love my job. Most of the time, I certainly do.
Lately, my only quiet moments have seem to be in the back of cabs. Tonight, as mine turned right off Central Park West, I looked up to see Midtown wrapped in fog. It was lit from below, glowing red and blue. As I took it in, Fountains of Wayne front man Adam Schlesinger sang, “You made it through the troubled times.” So I smiled. It was beautiful. It was a moment.
I thought about a meeting I had this afternoon, one in which I was being pitched an integrated marketing (aka “branded entertainment” aka “sponsored programing”) execution that was just a few inches too many beyond what I call, The Grunnick Line. (At the end of Albert Brook’s 1987 Oscar-winner, “Broadcast News,” Tom Grunnick (William Hurt) says to Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) of journalistic ethics, “It’s hard not to cross the line when they keep moving the little sucker, don’t they!?!”)
Now, I didn’t move to Manhattan to be a socialist or a prude, and I appreciate the challenging business climate. So I do my best to say yes. Which led me to share with my colleagues the story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s first meeting.
“Listen,” I said (talking quickly on account of running on nothing but Shredded Wheat and water), “I’m as dubious as the next guy that Yoko broke up The Beatles. But that’s not my point here. My point is, one of my favorite stories is that of John and Yoko’s first meeting. He walked into a big, empty, whitewashed art gallery with a ladder in the middle of the room. He climbed it to find a magnifying glass hanging from a string. He looked through the magnifying glass to see one word written in tiny letters: Yes.”
I told them no in the meeting, but that’s not my point either.
So my cab turned right off Central Park West, and I looked up to see Midtown wrapped in fog just as Fountains of Wayne front man Adam Schlesinger sang, “You made it through the troubled times.” He turned left on Ninth Avenue, right on 57th, then double-parked on the near right of 57th and Tenth. I stopped into Duane Reade for some contact solution and Claratin-D, then crossed the Tenth towards my apartment.
As I stepped off the elevator, Crowded House’s “Better Be Home Soon” came on my iPod. I smiled, because it was a beautiful moment. And as I turned the key, Neil Finn sang:
I know I’m right
For the first time in my life
That’s why I tell you
You’d better be home soon
I slipped my headphones onto Abbi’s head, and we slow danced in place.
‘Yes,’ I thought swaying there in the entryway. ‘For the first time in my life…’
Welcome home.
Soft-Rock Sunday
For months, I’d been trying to get my Rockwood Music Hall pals together in an amplifier-free environment.
It’s not that I don’t like amplifiers. My recent bout with tinnitus notwithstanding, there are few places I’d rather be than standing between a few of ‘em creating a beautiful racket. They’re just conducive to bona fide conversation. Add in lice drums, a hundred people talking, the ambient rumble of traffic and trains and it’s tough to say anything at all. Factor in that I record, rehearse and perform roughly 75% less than five years ago, and …
And then you’d understand why, months ago, I began clamouring about some sort of rock ‘n roll dinner party; something more than a case o’ beer and bag o’ chips affair, but less than you’d see in Gourmet Magazine. Good luck getting a dozen rock stars together on any given night, though (heck, it’s hard enough to coordinate rehearsal schedules). So I settled on the following:
You and your respective +1 are urged to join Abbi and me for an intimate, soft-rock Sunday brunch at which no one need book, perform, run sound, or applaud; just eat, drink, and be together.
Any good gathering (especially one populated by night-crawling rock stars) calls for a kickin’ playlist. This one needed to be themed and nuanced, but just right for a Sunday morning bender. Here’s a sampling:
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Kris Kristofferson)
Two Of Us (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)
I Can See Clearly Now (Hothouse Flowers)
Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles)
The Cornflake Song (Dick Prall)
Champagne Supernova (Matt Pond PA)
Something So Strong (Crowded House)
Rock & Roll Singer (Mark Kozelek)
God Only Knows (The Beach Boys)
Sandusky (Uncle Tupelo)
Similarly, the menu needed to be simple but substantial (come to think of it, the same formula I endeavor to apply to my songs). In addition to fresh-baked fruit salad, home fries, and blueberry muffins, I freestyled (with a little help from Pam Anderson) the following egg dish:
16 Eggs
16 Ounces White Cheddar
1 Quart Half & Half
12 Slices Crust-Free Wonder Bread
Vegetarian Sausage
Asparagus
Plum Tomatoes
Chives
Vidalia Onion
Olive Oil
I’ll spare you my preparation secrets, except to confess that nary a mixing bowl, paring knife, cutting board or no-stick pan went unused. In the end of my whirling dervish through the kitchen, there were orange rinds piled on the counter, blueberry juice splashed on the wall, and clumps of flower and turbino sugar cakes in the corners (to say nothing of the empty liter of Grey Goose and four bottles of Veuve Clicquot headed to the recylcing bin).
The weather held, and so the patio was officially opened. We ate and drank and laughed and talked about nothing in particular, but a few things not at all: booking, performing, running sound, or applause. It was kind of perfect except for one factor: like all good things, it had to end.
Our last guests left at six o’clock, but only because Abbi and I had committed to babysitting Ethan ad Edward. Left to my own devices, I might have transitioned from fresh-squeezed mimosas to fresh-squeezed margaritas.
That said, nothing beats tucking the fellas into their favorite mixtape, then hearing one of your songs quietly emanating from their tiny boombox. It’s the perfect end to a soft-rock Sunday.
Warts & All
“We have Will Ferrell, a monkey, a snake, and a baby pool but we don’t know what we’re doing with any of them.”
It was that kind of day.
“People are having their picture taken, then standing back and taking pictures of their picture projected on the wall.”
And it was that kind of night.
And then I limped home on my bloody foot.
But lemme’ back up. And if you’re can’t stomach reading about plantar warts, then you should probably stop reading now.
Still with me?
Good.
A few weeks ago, I hit a few doctors in one fell swoop. One of them was my dermatologist, Dr. Ariel Ostadt, who reported that my left foot was rife with plantar warts. Yeah, I said it: plantar warts. Verruca plantaris, benign epithelial tumors caused by infection by human papilloma virus types 1, 2, 4, or 63 (mine are all 63s, for sure). Gross, I know. But we’re talking 10% of the population here. Especially dudes who hit a shower now and again. Yeah, I should have worn the flip flops, but…
So I jogged to my Dr. Ostadt’s this morning at eight assuming he’d freeze the Mo Fos (as he did with my first treatment three weeks ago), then send me running back home.
Stupid.
My first clue should have been the sight of the scalpel in his hand. Or when he said, “I’m sorry. Treatment of the feet really hurts.”
Point an X-Acto blade at the ball of your foot, plunge it in there, repeat, and then call me.
Still with me?
Good.
Because it’s then, after cutting away all of the skin around the affected area (and we’re talking ball and pad of the foot here, people), that Dr. Ostadt (really, a terrific guy otherwise) began spraying the affected area (ostensibly, an open wound) with liquid nitrogen (a liquefied atmospheric gas produced industrially in large quantities by fractional distillation of liquid air that, when contained in a vacuum flask, stores at -321°).
I took the subway home (not recommended wearing running tights during rush hour), showered with a plastic bag over my foot (highly ineffective and still resulting in a bloody bath mat), then took a cab to work where I spent the afternoon popping Tylenol at my desk. Somewhere in there, the following was said: “We have Will Ferrell, a monkey, a snake, and a baby pool but we don’t know what we’re doing with any of them.”
Which is all I can say about that, except that I thought to myself, ‘Save this conversation for your memoir.’
Fast forward to 8:07 p.m. EDT. I cross 28th & Park to meet Abbi who is standing astride the Conde Nast Hot 100 red carpet. Oddly, no one shouts my name when I pass the cameras and step inside the thumping, crowded club.
Inside, the place is teaming with copy writers, assistant editors, and a fair dose of executives who appear to believe “Bright Lights, Big City” still current. We grab a drink (Petron Mojito!), then dive into the pin-striped crowd. The gathered are third-tier fabulous, wishing to be somebody or see somebody famous. They scope us out and size us up as we push past. ‘Sorry,’ I think nearly spilling my drink on a cluster of editorial assistants, ‘Just me.’
“In case you’re wondering,” I scream over Yaz’s “Don’t Go,” “This is my worst nightmare.”
We find an empty spot against the wall and move onto our second Petron Mojito.
“She shouldn’t call attention to her legs,” Abbi says of a woman in plaid, fishnet stockings.
“Red stripes, a bow tie and lipstick,” I say of a young man in red stripes, a bow tie and lipstick. “Really!?!”
A line is forming in front of us for the Petron Photo Booth. Those photos are then projected on the wall behind us. Which is when I notice the guy across the room, holding a digital camera in his hand and waiting for his mug to be splashed across the wall (Warhol’s fifteen minutes diminished).
“Should we?” Abbi asks.
“Nah,” I say. “People are having their picture taken, then standing back and taking pictures of their picture projected on the wall.”
Seconds pass. Abbi leads me to the photo booth. We don’t wait for it on the wall, but instead stride confidently (though painfully) for the street. Park Avenue is a sea of tranquility in contrast. I limp westward on my bloody stump, each step burning mercilessly. We hail a cab, and settle in, quietly giggling at the absurdity of it all.
‘Here’s to tomorrow,’ I think as we slip through Midtown towards home.
My First New York
I moved to New York in 1995 with a Takamine acoustic guitar, MacIntosh SE40, and $400 I’d saved in a Quaker Oats box. I was 24-years-old.
The city felt dangerous from the moment I stepped off that Greyhound from Saratoga Springs. It was teeming with people — dirty, loud, delusional people gesturing wildly to no one at all. It moved at a pace I’d could scarcely comprehend as I dragged my duffel bag up Ninth Avenue. So I kept my eyes to myself, and tuned out the din with the mixtape on my Sony WalkMan (likely hits: Counting Crows “Anna Begins,” Dar Williams “When I Was Boy,” and REM’s “Losing My Religion”).
I lived with my brother in a railroad apartment on 56th & Tenth. Our narrow, 12′x48′ one-bedroom featured exposed brick, hardwood floors and a fire escape on which I spent hours watching the street from above: the high school (later to inspire “Dear Elizabeth”), the avenue, and the taxi garage later to be torn down to make way for building in which Abbi and I live today.
I survived on generic hot dogs and concentrated orange drink from the A&P on the corner (now another upscale apartment building, The Nicole), wiling away afternoons pitching my reportage skills on the telephone. Chris worked two jobs to pay our rent. We spent evenings smoking pot, watching Jackie Chan movies and eating Haagen Dazs. Within three months, I’d visited newsrooms at WNBC, The New York Times and Newsday, before blundering my way into an internship at Men’s Journal Magazine that would lead to freelance work at Rolling Stone Online.
I walked everywhere; the subway was too scary and cabs were out of the question. The city lacked its current patina of smoked glass, brushed steel and neon then. Times Square was choked with porn shops and prostitutes. Hell’s Kitchen had one, lone tavern, Ninth Avenue Grill, the doorstep of which I dared not darken. Everything was gray and streaked in blood, feces and urine then. There were no ribbons of green park space on the river’s edge, no Toys R Us Virgin Megastore or Best Buy.
No, the city was for tougher, more-adventurous types then. Or so it seemed to me in my Today’s Man sport coat and Eastern Mountain Sports fleece. Sure, Chris and I rode our Cannondales to Brooklyn, and took in Luna at S.O.B.s, but we still looked up at the skyline like visitors, voyeurs, tourists.
Which is the beauty of being twenty-four. It didn’t occur to me that The Mercury Lounge was busy booking Dinosaur Junior, or that MTV News had bigger fish to fry in Kurt Loder. I didn’t know what I know now, just that everything was larger than life, and mine for the asking (if only I had the nerve to ask).
Inspired by New York Magazine’s, “My First New York.”
The Great Easter Train Wreck
It’s a recipe for disaster: a five and three-year-old boys, plastic railroad tracks, a wind-up diesel engine, and two fists full of chocolate eggs.
Hollywood blockbuster and dime store novel alike are rife with the plot line. Aunt, uncles, grandparents, nieces and nephews gather around the holiday table and chaos ensues. The nephew kicks the leg out from under the table. The holiday meal slides onto the hardwood floor. The dog steals the turkey. The niece throws up. The brother-in-law announces he’s gay. The sister announces that she’s going to rehab. The parents announce their imminent divorce. Then the first snowflake of winter falls. Or the pregnant sister-in-law suddenly gives birth. Distracted from the chaos for a moment, the family reconvenes to discover that everything’s really just fine after all.
It’s a simple formula, really: discord, then epiphany, and everyone leaves with an iota more appreciation for the family and the meaning of the holiday than on page one.
And though the table was set with a tape measure, and baskets were filled with toys and treats (worse, Edward — not Ethan — received a diesel train engine), Hollywood Screenwriting 101 would not inject its dramatic self into my mom’s Upper West Side Easter Dinner last night.
There was plenty of chaos (see YouTube video below), but ample tranquility as well. Ethan and Edward were wound like tops (adorable, toe-headed tops), yes. Ella was poised like a princess. Dinner was lovely (albeit at four o’clock in the afternoon). There were no major announcements (though I did make an unnecessary crack about Cardinal Eagan). And still, everyone left with an iota more appreciation for the family and the meaning of the holiday than on page one.
It was an Easter Miracle (with a Great Easter Train Wreck thrown in for good measure).
Easter, Central Park
I have just three, distinct Easter memories.
In the first, the year is 1975. I am hunting Easter eggs with my cousins, Kalah and Nancy (she of “Ants, Ants, Ants”) and my brother in the wooded backyard of my Aunt Rosalie’s Baltimore home. I’m wearing plaid pants and a white Lacoste shirt. White, that is, until I slip down the muddy hillside and sully the whole holiday.
In the second, the year is 1978. I’m sneaking around the house before mom, dad and Chris wake up. The Easter Bunnie’s delivered Melissa Manchester’s single, “Don’t Cry Out Loud” to my basket as I had so desperately hoped. I’m nosing around corners and under furniture for eggs when my dad, suddenly towering over me, inquires “What are you doing?” sullying the whole holiday.
In the third, the year is 2008. I’m bar hopping and bowling with Chris, Meg and Abbi. Which is about where my memory ends on that one.
Despite being raised as I was in a fairly Catholic household (mom and dad attended Catholic high schools, Chris and I were alter boys), I’m not terribly sold on the notion of Christ’s Resurrection. Symbolically, cool; I get it. Literally, no way; totally implausible. So Easter’s not high on my list.
Still, I do think of it as the actual start of spring (though this morning’s 36° temperature might indicate otherwise). And so, after a six week near-hiatus from running (following two marathons in four months), I struck out to the park for the second day in a row. And while the morning chill had the early-rising flowers shivering from the cold, the bright blue sky and blinding sun were welcome companion. As was Abbi, with whom I intend to make many, many more Easter memories.
