On My Own Mortality

(Post originally written on June 12, 2012)


I sit here in my hotel room, really the front room of the bandhouse of the Atlantis, and I face a major crossroads. A few days ago – Thursday, to be exact – I received word that my paternal grandfather Richard J. Franklin had passed away. He'd lived a very full ninety-six years, and was only a few months away from celebrating his ninety-seventh. He was the last of my grandparents to pass, the first to go being my maternal grandfather, passing on my seventh birthday after a long struggle with emphysema. Both of my grandmothers died in a haze of Alzheimer's-related dementia, scarcely cognizant of the world around them. I do consider myself blessed that Grandpa Dick lived a long and healthy life, even recovering from the loss of his wife and finding a new love, who my family embraced with open arms. He lived long enough to meet Joy, her children, and even our first two grandchildren.

But what I found myself totally unprepared for was that loss, the finality of it. An entire generation of my life, gone. I mean, I'm fully aware of the concept of mortality, don't get me wrong. I have vague memories of my great-grandfather, all we ever called him was 'G.G.'. He passed away before I was really understanding of the concept of death. I remember my friend Shannon Allen, her mother and mine were (and still are) best of friends. She was hit and killed by a careless driver not more than a block from my house in Port Angeles. I wasn't there, I didn't see it happen. But I remember the whole family in tears, while I shed none – why?

I remember Grandpa Forrest. Frail, rattling, wheezing, his smoking habit having gotten the best of him in the end. Grandma Gen, scarcely able to remember her own name by the time Grandpa Dick sent her to a Lutheran nursing home. To this day I still regret that I never went to visit her, even though I know why I chose not to – I wanted to remember her as she had been, before the disease robbed her of her memories, her thoughts, her self, fingers flying in random patterns – cursing in the sign language she'd taught for years, rather than out loud. Grandma Jennie, stubborn and independent to the last, but then too losing her memories, thoughts and self. But I didn't cry for them either – why?

It's not like I'd ever been taught not to cry. I'd always been taught to express myself, good bad or otherwise. But at the same time, I've always found myself holding in those emotions, even when all those around me were letting them out. But I actually found myself able to let something out, even though it was hardly public – alone in my stepdaughter's house in Sun Valley, just north of Reno. And today I learned that Grandpa's funeral will be a week from Saturday in Tacoma, and that I'll be able to attend. I hope that I will finally be able to cry.

I think that I need to take stock of my life. By no means am I successful. Hell, I moved back in with my mother and stepfather two-plus years ago, although it wasn't because I wanted to. Between being laid off from work and my wife's declining health, going home was the best thing to do. I have no children of my own, but Joy's three kids accepted me well enough. And I've been a part of the lives of my stepdaughter's two children pretty much from birth. Cody is eight now, a rambunctious pile of energy, only marginally constrained by a mild form of Asperger's disease (a form of autism) and a speech impediment, while his sister Elizabeth – Ellie – is a tiny, bird-bright seven-year-old, already the princess-in-training. And I can already see a sort of Lenny-and-George dynamic forming between them – Ellie the brains, Cody the muscle. I have two bands that I play in, one here in Nevada, the other back home in Washington. The band here in Nevada, the singers have been working together for forty years now, and they act like an old married couple. The band in Washington is still in development, but there are already positive signs. I've had a reasonably successful marriage, eighteen years and still going strong despite Joy's poor health. We're lovers, best friends, partners in crime and in business. To be quite honest, I think she may be the only person in this world who completely gets me, totally understands me and all my weirdness.

The other night – in fact, it was just Sunday night – I was playing video games with Cody. Well, I was doing the playing, he just wanted to watch me run through 'Fable II' on his mother and stepfather's Xbox 360. He snuggled up next to me, put his head on my arm as I slew bandits and hobbes (the game's version of goblins, or orcs, or whatever), then eventually fell asleep. Just having lost the last of my grandparents, I felt warm and comfortable with my grandson, my little buddy at my side, and Ellie just a few feet away, also quietly asleep. I want to be a good grandparent for them, like mine were for me. I want them to remember the good times we shared as fondly as I do the times I spent with mine when I was a little boy. Whenn I'm gone, I want them to remember their 'papa' as fondly as I remember my grandmas and grandpas.

But that leads to the final problem for me. I've still yet to lose my fear of dying. I know that it's inevitable, that we all go sooner or later. But it terrifies me. And especially the lifestyle I lead – always on the road, eating shitty food, always driving from one place to another, never home for any length of time. If life were fair, let alone perfect, I'd die quietly in Joy's arms, slipping into the abyss embraced by the woman I love and cherish. But I'm always afraid that I'll die in some hotel room, alone and unnoticed until far too late for help to arrive. But I also know that this fear isn't reasonable, nor would succumbing to it be any fair to those I work with. Therefore, I need to confront my fears, look death in the eye and see it for what it is. But I'm way too much of a chickenshit to do anything particularly death-defying or even mildly dangerous. So what the fuck do I do?

I carry on, that's what I do. I shoulder my burden, complete the task at hand, then go home to the one I love, where I'm truly comfortable, even though I get squirrely soon enough and long for the open road. I understand the inevitable, but I'd still rather not deal with it. I still have a life to live, after all. I don't see a need to be morbidly afraid of dying – but what's difficult is truly embracing that thought. I hope I can someday, and just live as gracefully as I can before going off the the great beyond.

Goodbye, grandpa. May you rest in peace.

Boom And Bust

Nothing's ever easy - that's a lesson I learn at least once every few weeks.

Take this weekend past. Steppen Stonz had a good weekend up at Boomtown in Verdi. Nothing spectacular, but solid. This time around, we had steady crowds both nights, a lot of our regulars. We got good tips again, averageing out to about $20 a man for the weekend. We got lots of good remarks from casino management, and I was asked by the suits when we'd be back. I honestly wouldn't know that - as I told one pit boss, that was information way above my pay grade.

But getting ready to play Saturday night, I noticed something that could only be considered a bad omen. While I was checking my pads and triggers, making sure that all my connections were sure and they were all registering with their module, I saw two gentlemen walking about the casino floor, one taking copious amounts of pictures of the cabaret area with a cellphone, while the other talked about putting things here and there. These gentlemen clearly fit the profile of people who were about to purchase the place, confirming what Mikey had said the night before over breakfast at the Denny's inside Boomtown, that the casino was about to be sold to new owners.

Ownership changes in casinos never bode well for bands here in Northern Nevada. The last time Boomtown changed hands (to its current owners), among the first things they did was to not only cancel all live entertainment, but to tear out the previous cabaret, and move the sportsbook into its place. That said, they did rectify that (IMO) mistake, and while the cabaret area is only portable staging and flooring, it's still in a good location with good sound and lights. The truth is that this happens all over the area, as new owners suddenly realize that casinos require a lot of capital, and seemingly the first thing to get cut from the budget to save money is live entertainment. And the process has been ongoing for decades now. Back in the old days, the largest casinos had live orchestras, and the musicians were unionized, and the union was strong. But as the first generation of casino operators gave way to corporate owners from far away, the union was broken, and smaller bands took the place of the orchestras. Now the bands are being replaced by DJ's and karaoke hosts - if anything at all. I look around, and see how few people on the circuit are even my age, let alone younger than me (Miguel notwithstanding), and I wonder sometimes if I'm the last of my generation.

And sometimes I wonder about the newest generation of casino owners. The phrase I keep hearing over and over is 'Vegas-style'. 'Vegas-style gaming'. 'Vegas-style attractions'. There's just one problem with 'Vegas-style':

This isn't Las Vegas.

The biggest difference? Here in Reno, you don't have to stay inside because of 120-degree heat. Even when the temperatures hit triple-digits here, there's a nice cool river to play in. There's a nice cool lake just a short drive away that's usually a good ten to twenty degrees cooler than the Truckee Meadows. Then there's the audience itself. More gamblers here are older, and they generally don't respond well to late-night 'party pits' where the dealers are pretty girls in sexy costumes that dance as much as they deal blackjack. Not a lot of younger people (as in my age and younger) gamble that much here, there are just a lot of other things to do here than just stay indoors and gamble. Don't get me wrong - I'd love to be a part of those 'Vegas-style attractions'. That'd mean stable, longer-running shows that pay better, right?

Oh well.

And karma being the bitch that it is, I got back to Sun Valley to resume living in my trailer for a few weeks of personal business (and maybe a fill-in gig this weekend - who knows?) before going home, and I promptly left my truck's headlights on. And only came to realize this about ten hours later. I got my truck jump-started, but the battery is weaker than a sick kitten, even with the solar trickle-charger I have. Hopefully, Michelle and Bill's friend Frank will come through with the battery charger Michelle says he has.

Like I said before, nothing's ever easy. And more often than not, I'm no help making it any easier.

Cakes And Confusion

And coffee. I pulled up the page to start writing this post, then realized I was caffeine-deficient, and wanting of a hot beverage. While I'm not this bad:



I could still use some coffee right now. I like my coffee the way I like my women: pale, sweet and acidic.

It's been a weird couple of weeks recently. I almost feel like I stumbled into a Gabriel Iglesias concert because Steppen Stonz have been bombarded with cakes. Allow me to explain, right after I get my coffee from my little coffeemaker......

mmmmjavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavajavammmm

Okay, better now. Y'see, Mike and Arthur are almost exactly the same age. As in Arthur is four days older than Mike. Arthur was born on May 7th, and Mike on the 11th. And their birthdays, as you might have guessed by now, have fallen during this current run of gigs. And in an ironic twist, our new keyboardist Miguel, well.... his birthday was May 15th. With three-fourths of the band having birthdays within eight days of each other, that can only lead to one thing. Cake, and lots of it. During the first two weeks of the run at CVI and John Ascuaga's Nugget, we received no less than six cakes from our loyal fans. It was wonderful and horrible at the same time. Wonderful because we have such good fans, and horrible because I think we all gained five or ten pounds each from all that cake!

And since then, I've been camped out in our old pop-up trailer, stashed behind Michelle's place up in Sun Valley (often only half-jokingly referred to as 'The World's Largest Trailer Park' or 'The World's Largest Halfway House' or more succinctly as 'The Toilet Bowl') while we run through a few weekenders, first at Casino Fandango, then up at Boomtown up in Verdi. I then have a few weeks off in Reno to conduct some other business before I can head for home for a few weeks.

But what about the 'confusion' you mentioned in the title?

Well, that started the night before last, and is continuing apace. I was inside Michelle's house playing Oblivion on their Xbox 360 (mine was physically repaired, but it's still not working right - I think I may have to reformat my 360's hard drive when I get home, but not before I get a second opinion on it), when I started to hear what I thought was rain on the roof. Turns out that I was only partially right - it was a hailstorm instead, rapidly followed by thunder and lightning, then about an inch of snow! And more snow came in the next day as well, when I encountered near-whiteout conditions driving up to Carson City to set up at the Fandango!

I lived here for three years, so you'd think that I'd be aware of these late-spring storms that come in and totally fuck everything up around here. But no! Hell, this happened last year as well, when Joy and I encountered a sudden whiteout-condition snowstorm up above Eagle Lake, about a half-hour north of Susanville, CA - on June 1st! I should know better, but I never seem to be ready or prepared for this time of year, just waiting for the desert heat to come. And it will by the middle of next week, as the usual high-desert summer kicks in with daytime high temperatures in the 90's. As it was, with the sudden snow (and then lots of standing water when it melted), I wound up having to replace both pair of shoes that I'd brought with me. One pair, that I'd originally thought would just be my regular sneakers, wound up looking and feeling so good onstage that I decided to use them as my drumming shoes, which forced me (no really, it did) to buy a second pair of cheap sneaks at Wal-Mart on the way back to Reno. And how much did I spend? Well, let's just say less than $30 for both pair of shoes - I really am a cheap bastard.

Well, the coffee's kicking in now, so I'd better cut this short. I hear the porcelain god calling my name. A lot.

Later, taters!

"Do You Ever Forget.....

...it happens to me." - Ron White

Another long journey is in the books, and I'm in my hotel room at the Carson Valley Inn again. Before I go to set up and soundcheck, I take a quick mental inventory of my things and find out what I forgot at home. Joy always tells me to make checklists, and while I know I should, I kinda resent that idea. To me, it's kinda like surrendering to my wife's habit of micromanaging (which after her years as a bureaucrat, will likely never fully disappear). But I should start using a checklist. She does have my best interests in mind, after all.

But the fog of war, as Clausewitz described it, is all-powerful. I always manage to forget something, no matter how often I check and recheck things manually. This time around, I forgot my mp3 player. It's nice to have it when I go for a walk, and very useful to kill time while setting up and tearing down. But its' headphones are the most useful for me, as those are used every night onstage, as I use them for my monitors, coming up from my little mixing board. So much better than a big clunky speaker right next to me that can be awfully loud onstage because I absolutely need to hear it over my drums.

But I'm not that worried. I have the Sennheiser over-the-ear-headphone that I use for my computer, they'll do. I prefer in-ear monitoring, but big 'phones are better than nothing at all. That's why I bought them in the first place. But they never fit right on my head, over the Sennheiser headset mic that's finally getting repaired by my old pal Leo at Strait Music in Port Angeles. So I went to earbuds, and the rest is history.

And I need to buy some rice for my foodbox. A small sewing kit, because the front button on my camouflage shorts popped off at a bathroom stall in the Guitar Center in Tacoma. And I seem to have only brought three pair of socks - I coulda sworn I'd thrown more into my duffel bag....

It never ends, does it?

A Comment From A Reader

Here's a letter from a gentleman named Clint:

You sure are not very careful about what you say about other people.  Especially people you used to consider as "friends"!  Then again, if you take into consideration all of your writings then you don't seem to have a friend in this world.  For one thing, you talk about the drugs that they do.  That is nobody's business but their own.  If you're going to put everything they do out in the street then you had better find a safe place to suck your thumb.  You're lucky that you don't know me or my name cause you would probably say a lot of very bad things about me that doesn't concern you or any of your non-friends.  Then you would have to watch your back and hope I'm in a good enough mood to just write it off cause if I was to end up in a very different frame of mind regarding the things you said about me then you would end up a very broken man.  Trust me.  Roger is a very close friend of mine and the way you talk not just about him, but also about his mother, and putting a drumstick in her eye.  You are a very big piece of shit, asshole.  Now why don't you go on your website and talk shit about the guy that sent you this email.  I'm looking forward to reading your unprofessional comments about your feelings on people like me or Roger.  Please write more so I'll have something to think about.

Regards
Your future nightmare!!!

Dear Clint,

You don't know me, and I don't know you either. But let me tell you what I do know: I've never meant to hurt, insult or belittle Roger Mallicott. But this is a FACT: the man needs help. Right now, he's out there somewhere in a lot of pain. He's lost a lot of friends. Most of the people I work with no longer have anything to do with him. I occasionally see his van around town, he's never driving it. I hope he's okay. I have never tried to harm him in any way. In fact, I tried very hard to help him. The reason he asked me to join his band was of my professionalism, because he hoped that I would be able to move the group to a higher level.  But it didn't work out that way. The sad thing is that it's plain to see that he's in a downward spiral. If you're as good a friend of his as you claim to be, you'd agree with me. I saw it within only a short while of getting to know him - and I know why he is where he is. I'm sure you know as well. I do hope that he's able to find help. He genuinely needs it. And while I had very little experience with his mother, I got the impression that she didn't like me, or any of the other guys in the band. In so many words, she gave us a very negative vibe. And Roger told me himself that he wasn't happy to have her around. So I don't really like her all that much. Big deal. It's my opinion and mine only, and like most people I get angry at people who - in my opinion - try to prevent me from achieving my goals.

Now as for me, it's my life - and it's my blog. In fact, I have two of them. And I'll write about whatever I want to write about on either one of them, and while I try not to step on any toes in general, I do not, and will not, sugar-coat anything about anyone, myself included. And I have no problem with calling people on their bullshit. Or their drug use. I'm a professional musician, Clint. And I have little tolerance for people who spend time getting high when they should be practicing. I don't drink, smoke, or do drugs - I know, sounds odd, doesn't it? I'd rather play than get high, drunk, whatever. I was hired to be a bandleader. That means whipping a group of individuals into shape and making them into a tight, cohesive unit. And it didn't happen, likely because the people I tried to lead, did not want to be led. You know the old line, 'you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.' To varying degrees, they didn't want to become what I thought they were capable of being, and I found that very, very disappointing. And I chose to make my disappointment known.

Now as for you. Your letter comes perilously close to making a threat - in fact, you are threatening me. Do you know that threatening someone is a crime? Here's a link that should enlighten you:

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9a.46.020

Clint, I'm not going to talk smack about you, since you're right, after all - I don't know you and I likely never will. I'm sorry if that disappoints you. And I'm genuinely sorry if I offended you with my honest feelings and opinions about those I work with. I'm glad we had this chance to talk about things. But I've moved on, and so should you. I'm done with Roger, I'm done with this, and I'm done with you. If you decide to continue to harass me, I will send copies of any correspondence of yours to the Port Angeles Police Department.

The Snake

Remember how I mentioned in the last post about how our old pal Jay Reid expressed his dislike to Eddie about how I was hired to play drums for Willis instead of him? In case you forgot, he described me as such:

"That poser who plays in Reno."

Yet in a twist of fate worthy of The Twilight Zone, I logged on to my Facebook page, and there was a friend request waiting for me. And who was it from, you ask?

None other than our old pal Jay Reid.

Jay, if you're reading this, ask yourself this: Why try to be nice to me to my face when you've dissed me when I'm not around? And on top of it, the truth is that you barely know me, and you certainly don't know my wife. It's true that I don't really know that many players here on the Olympic Peninsula, but that's a fault of never really playing here all that much. My connections are in Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, Reno, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles.... need I go any further?

You're probably more talented than I am, I'll give you that. But I'm a professional. I'm the first one to arrive, and the last one to leave. I do my job - I don't overplay, or act like a rock star and just expect things to be handed to me. I work my ass off, and I'll just leave it at that. But I will indulge myself a bit, and be an ass for a moment. Here's what you're missing:

I'll post some video when I can get a more stable connection.

Goodbye Jay, you just don't matter any more.

Post #100: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Car.....

This was just after the rehearsal with Willis on Saturday. Eddie and I were bullshitting with Joy, when I just off-handedly mentioned that if they needed a drummer while I was away, there was one just about three miles that-a-way, as I pointed to the east. Joy wasn't sure who I was talking about, but Eddie did. And what he said next kinda surprised me: that this particular drummer wasn't happy that Eddie had chosen me over him, and didn't think that much of me, referring to me (to Eddie) as 'that poser who plays in Reno'.

Well, if you haven't already figured it out by now, we're talking about our old pal Jay Reid, who briefly played with me in Dirty Joe, and his disinterest in working with the group led to me going back behind the kit to be the singing drummer instead of merely being the singer. To be totally honest with you, Jay's a good drummer, but he's also an asshole with a massive ego, who can't be bothered to put in the work necessary to make a good band work right. Apparently, he didn't think he'd even have to audition for Willis, that he was just going to get the gig because he was Jay Reid.

And Eddie already knew this, which was why I had the gig from the moment I had voiced an interest in it. The audition/rehearsal on Friday was pretty much a formality. Eddie and Jay have been friends and bandmates for thirty years now, but Eddie won't work with him ever again because of Jay's very bad habits, such as the aforementioned lack of punctuality for rehearsals and gigs, and his desire to just play in his mobile home instead. I also learned a few things about Jay that I didn't know before - mostly that he'd had a tumor removed from his brain several years ago, and that had affected him in several physical and psychological ways.

I wanted to feel some sort of sympathy for the guy, but I couldn't. Up until that day, I didn't think that Jay had harbored some sort of ill will towards me before, and had chalked up his departure from Dirty Joe to his known disinterest in driving back and forth from Agnew to Roger's place up at Laird's Corner for rehearsals. He'd even tried to friend me on Facebook, but I wasn't really interested in being friends with him after disrespecting my band like he did.

But enough about him. Eddie and I had a nice conversation yesterday, talking about adding material to the repertoire for me to sing lead on, confirming rehearsals for next weekend, and setting up a regular rehearsal schedule that would be copacetic with my schedule with Steppen Stonz. Eddie wants me to commit full-time to Willis, but understands that I'm not going anywhere without something to fall back on. Which means there would have to be a lot of guaranteed gigs for Willis lined up before I'd even think of switching bands. That said, if some of Mike and Arthur's plans come to fruition in the near future, Steppen Stonz might need a fifth member. And seeing how Eddie was geeking out over a Roland guitar-synth controller John has - playing the saxophone riff to "Careless Whisper" by Wham! over and over again with the synth's saxophone patch - that kind of versatility could come in very handy down in Reno and points elsewhere.....

Oh, and as you may have noted from the title of this post, this is the 100th post of my insane ramblings on this blog. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my brain droppings, and trust me on this - there's a whole fuck of a lot more to come, I ain't dead yet! Here's to the past hundred posts, and to the next hundred!