Big Decision My Music Partner Lou and I
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Seattle including the Roadrunner Cafe a motel parking lot in Schenectady. Sitting - where we tried the exhausting experiment on the ferry on the way to mainland US ©2017 of two shows in one night (mistake). Played from Victoria BC gig fixing Lou's accordion Peter Berryman in the cattle town of Dodge City Kansas, monopod with wire and epoxy; Playing to a where they told us if we climbed a nearby sold-out hall in Grand Rapids MI thanks to Big Decision hill we could see all the feedlots in town. a newspaper article titled "Divorced Cou- Played the wonderful middle-of-nowhere ple Sings Funny Songs." My music partner Lou and I have decided Sangerville Maine grange hall; best pie in to stop touring nationally. We have one the world. Had the honor of Tom Lehrer in Live radio was always a nervous treat. Had more brief New York slog in April, but then our audience on the west coast, Noam giggly radio interviews in Boston, Berke- we're winding down, and gigging only clos- Chomsky in on the east coast, and, thanks ley, Santa Cruz and other places on the er to home. I find myself reminiscing, and to connections made by our friend Bob mornings of the gigs, or sometimes the don't know if Whither Zither needs to know Blackman, folk DJ at WKAR in Lansing MI, morning after; Minnesota Public Radio had about it, but what the heck. the Pulitzer prize winning author and fa- us on their Morning Show many fun times; vorite of mine Doug Hofstadter in Bloom- we loved the bucolic drive to Cedar Falls IA We will miss so dearly the far flung friends, ington Indiana came to our show, and and Live from Studio One on KUNI; Nation- venues, and audiences we have come to drove out to our sleazy motel later that al Public Radio's Flea Market with Jim Post love so passionately. The memories tum- night in his old station wagon as we sat in and Art Thieme in Chicago; KPIG in Santa ble: The church basement, storefront, crumbling adirondack chairs waiting to flag Cruz, Robbie Osman's show Across the garage, living room, back yard, circus tent, him because the lights were burned out Great Divide from KPFA in Berkeley; Su- nature preserve, union hall, general store, over our room numbers. san Forbes Hansen's Valley Folk on grange hall, opera house, coffeehouse, WFCR in Amherst MA, our dear friend Matt restaurant, tavern, museum, library, hay We played festivals: the Ozark Folk Center Watroba who had us on his WDET show wagon, flatbed trailer, town hall, baseball State Park Festival of Humor and Story- Folks Like Us many times over the years in diamond, barn, office building, airplane telling where we were kindly received, Detroit and who now is a touring musician hangar, boat dock, health spa, rec room, which made me feel great because the late himself; Rich Warren and the WFMT Folk- winery warehouse, polyethylene inflatable Jimmie Driftwood help start the Folk Cen- stage in Chicago, and many more, includ- igloo. ter, and he's a songwriting hero of mine. ing Garrison Keillor's show where we ap- Played Kentucky Folk Music Weekend in peared thrice with a twenty year hiatus be- Down the ancient steps to the legendary Louisville where we yakked with the tradi- tween the second and third times... Club Passim in Cambridge MA; up the nar- tional music superhero Jean Ritchie. row steps to the funky famed Caffe Lena of Played the Big Muddy in Booneville, MO, So many marvelous friends opened up Saratoga Springs NY; down the crowded more than once, and Juel Ulven's labor of their homes for house concerts, such as steps to the cozy Cornelia St Cafe in love, the Fox Valley Festival in Geneva, IL. songwriter and ceramic artist Barbara Svo- Greenwich Village; up the mountain in a We played three Canadian Festivals: Win- boda of Catonsville MD, poet Marilyn steam train to a mountain stage in Fir, Col- nipeg, where someone proposed marriage Robertson of Felton CA, the multi talented orado. during one of our workshops; Mariposa in Murray Callahan of Havertown PA, trad Toronto where we had a wonderful work- musicians Anne Dodson and Matt Szostak Through two terrifying post-gig freezing shop with Si Kahn, Oscar Brand, Artisan, on the Maine coast, the amazing Cathy rains, one in Boston in the 80's, the other in and Len Wallace, in old labor hall in Toron- Fink and Marcy Marxer in Silver Spring Minneapolis fifteen years later, both to; and the first Stan Rogers festival in Can- MD, the hilarious Therapy Sisters of Austin treacherous hours-long bumper-car slides so Nova Scotia where they shut down the TX, old friends from the late New Folk Col- back to motels. Hot drive to Omaha in '76 town's canneries for the weekend so the lective Doug and Mary Olsen of St Paul Chevy Malibu we called the Green Banana workers could help run the fest. Played the MN, Woody and Rebecca Fridae of Win- with cigarette-lighter plug-in fan blown Philadelphia Folk Festival; Boston Folk ters, CA, and so many, many more; the list over huge ice block for AC. Pieces of pie in Festival; Golden Link festival in Honeoye goes on and on and on and on. Cozad Nebraska restaurant while waiting Falls NY where we met the great Sam Hin- for new fuel pump for Nissan wagon on the ton; Old Songs Festival near Albany where And on we blundered through stage fright, way to Denver. The first missed gig be- we had a bizarre workshop with Dr. De- contact dermatitis, laryngitis, colds, flues, cause of weather, early season blizzard mento and Utah Phillips. Played the Festi- cancer, panic attacks, kidney stones, shin- Oct 26, 1987, supposed to be in Kingsbury val at the Fort in Omaha; Adams Avenue gles, motion sickness, arthritis, bedbugs, NY but we spent the night snowed in in Roots Festival in San Diego; Hiawatha fest and nocturnal twitches. Here's to the twi- Chicopee, MA. in the UP where we slept in pup tents in a light navigation through unfamiliar streets, thunderstorm. Had a rip roaring workshop the search for last minute pre-gig taco or We played Berkeley's Freight and Salvage with Peggy Seeger at the Champlain Val- breath mint, the butterflies, the big hellos, many times both before and after their big ley Folk Festival in Vermont. the fun of music, the wild laughs, huge cof- move, and the famed Ark in Ann Arbor in all fee pots. The tired good byes, the haunted of their increasingly swank locations. Memories include helping folk icon Faith motels. And now, back to Wisconsin. But Loved playing the songwriter hotspot of Petric, in her 90s, onto the stage to join us not without special thanks to our mentor, Bellingham WA, the enthusiastic Portland at the Freight & Salvage; eating blueber- Michael Cooney, for talking us out of the Folklore Society, various sweet venues in ries with Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan in state in the first place. --WZ, Feb 2017.