Radio Nowhere. Somewhere.

This is a little story about what happened when I had to go away, but had nowhere to go away to. I had to go though, it was just that simple. So, I would have to leave where I was, and make up a someplace to go. Turns out that I didn’t have to make it up very far really, ‘cos Where To Go came and found me from the radio. So I went there. But first is a story about what happened before I did.

I had made an album called Brambleland and driven off for California on a little tour. On that album there were two songs written after meeting a girl in the costal town of Mendocino the tour before. “Cliffs Above the Sea”, and “Rooftop” were written after a sublime evening, sitting with a friend of mine down along the craggy rocks that jutted west from the Mendocino headland. We sat watching the ocean, telling stories. Myself and a girl named Capitol D. We sat quietly together watching the sunset. West, and away. West into the sunset and the salt spray, and the crashing waves and the ocean. Capitol D, and myself, and the specks that were far away ships, and the gulls, and the tides, and the salty air, and the silence in between us when there wasn’t anything that needed to be said. And when there wasn’t anything that needed to be said, Capitol D and I just sat there looking out across the water, straining our eyes until we couldn’t see any farther.

My friend Capitol D had taken me to her favorite place for watching sunsets, and was telling me a story. She told me of the time that she was living in Berlin, Germany, and what happened when she was there, and the thing that she did one night that I made into a song, and that song is called “Rooftop”. And as we watched the sunset, and the gulls that wheeled and turned above us in every direction, we agreed that life was good, and that we were lucky to be here. And it was, and we were, and that remains.

After the sun had sunk into the ocean, and then gone ‘round the other side of us while we were sleeping, and then come up from the other way again, I stopped in at the music shop in Mendocino and bought a little red toy accordion which I was very fond of. I made up the song “Cliffs Above the Sea” as I droned away on that accordion while leaned up against my car Spoofer the Honda as it was parked somewhere else, at some other point later on the day, after having driven back out to the seaside to think back on sitting with Capitol D the evening before. And that was it. That’s the story, about the tour that was before the one that I’m about to tell you about.

So, at some point then, I said Adieu to friends in Mendocino, loaded up the gear, and rolled north for Garberville. Or, perhaps if memory serves I actually rolled East for Ukaih, only to return then, back to the coast, several months later with a new album, and two songs on it written for a girl named Capitol D.

I returned to Mendocino on a solo tour driving Spoofer. Spoofer the trusty and stalwart white Honda Accord. I think that, on this tour, Mendocino was the last stop. Or if it wasn’t last, there were several days off before the next show, and I planned to spend at least a couple of those down days out on the coast. Capitol D didn’t come to the show, which was fine. We ran into each other somewhere else though. On the street maybe? Or at some shop where there was a counter in between us? At any rate, Capitol D invited me to stay at the “warehouse/garden/community” space where she was living in a school bus outside. “That’s cracking”, I thought. So, I spent the afternoon down along the seaside, then rolled off to find Capitol D at the Warehouse. The Warehouse was five miles or so north of Mendocino up the highway. And a Warehouse it was. I drove in the drive just off the main road to find a big concrete parking area surrounded by overgrown gardens, and a large building sided over in silver corrugated tin with windows and rusty bits. In the parking area sat Capitol D’s yellow school bus, bits of trash, pine needles, a couple of someone else’s cars, and only a barely quantifiable sinking feeling.

There was one door to this Warehouse that I could see, and that was the one I made for. It opened into a dark industrial looking kitchen with a large dirty black gas stove, pots and pans hanging from a circular iron rack suspended from the ceiling, sinks, and a big wooden utilitarian work table in the middle of the room. And on that table sat an enormous gloomy looking cook pot. And there, in front of that gloomy looking cook pot, spine straight and smiling, sat Capitol D herself. She was perched on a stool cutting up potatoes for the soup that she was making. I took a quick look right, out the kitchen window where briars had grown over, then left, and out into the large expanse of warehouse. There was stuff everywhere. The traditional leftover battered up couches, clothes, a pool table, some bits of shaggy carpet, a stereo that had been though the war, a lamp with no shade (was there a black velvet painting of Jimi Hendrix on the wall? There might have been).

Capitol D welcomed me with a smile and a hug. She was making soup, and told me that life was good, and we caught up on the news as we sat cutting potatoes and collard greens and plopped them into the gloomy looking cook pot. Capitol D told me all about the, well, squat where she was living. No, actually, squats can be beautiful. This place was a wreck. This was the kind of place that was once beautiful but all the energy had left. The energy had gone away, but not necessarily all of the belongings that people who had once lived there had left behind. There was the van that didn’t run, the mattress leaning up against the wall outside that the raccoons had gotten into, and the overgrown gardens, and the peeling paint, and the everything else. It all acted like some kind of psychic blanket of sorts. I suppose that the old energy of the place was there somewhere, but it had been smothered underneath any number of somethings that had been left behind. At some point this ramshackle place had been cared for. In maybe 1984, this place was loved. The owner of this “community experiment” (As Capitol D had called it) was apparently away somewhere. Mexico maybe. Whoever he was, whose place this was, didn’t live there, and hadn’t for some time. Capitol D told me though, that the owner was coming back, and that everyone would have to move soon. I asked how many people lived at the place, and I don’t remember the exact number, but it was in the vicinity of eight perhaps. Plus dogs. Capitol D asked me if I wanted a look around and I said sure. Then Capitol D put down her knife and soup carrot, sneezed and blew her nose and said, “shit. It sucks. We’ve all got the flu around here”.

Capitol D and I walked around the overgrown and brambly herb gardens and stepped over bits of broken pottery and she showed me her bus, and all around the trashed outside of the place. Then we stepped back indoors to the cluttery main room. The main room with the pool table, and the shaggy carpets, and the stereo that had been though the war. This room was tall and narrow, and had a balcony up steep stairs, and up on the balcony was a couch under a big window made up of small panes of glass, and on the couch was the place for me to lay down my sleeping bag.

Then Capitol D took me round to the other rooms underneath the balcony, and it was there, in some back room, where I met one of the other housemates - Lovingly Sneeze. Lovingly Sneeze lived at the warehouse, and she was beautiful, and, as it was explained to me, used to live somewhere else, and that’s where she used to live before she lived here now. Lovingly Sneeze had the flu, and the sneezes, and a room with piles of clothes, and an altar with candles, and seashells, and boughs from redwood trees. She gave me a hug and welcomed me, and then sneezed and then blew her nose, and then smiled and then giggled.

So here I was. Fully arrived in the wreck of the Warehouse That Had the Flu. The compound that carried the depressing feeling of mildew, and snot. Home for the time being of Capitol D. and Lovingly Sneeze, and several others who were all out doing something else at the moment, or who were out of town all together.

The late afternoon passed, and we ate the soup from the gloomy soup pot around the kitchen table. Capitol D, Lovingly Sneeze, another housemate who had rolled in behind the wheel of his big truck, a dog, myself, and the pervasive, and depressing feeling that if I stayed, I was going to get the sick, and there is nothing worse than being hundreds of miles from a safe bed and then getting carpet bombed by the flu. It’s the worst.

Later yet, and in the twilight, Capitol D showed me up to the couch under the big window on the balcony above the main room. The window, if you can see it in your head, was quite large and made up of many small panes of glass, and the back of the couch was right underneath the sill. Outside the window, were the overgrown herb gardens, trees, and a full moon making it’s silent way up behind it all. A big, orange, costal, full moon. Capitol D and I sat together, leaning our elbows on the back of the couch with our fingertips pressed up against the glass, watching in silence as the moon rose and the light came. It was just the same way that she and I had sat and watched the sun set down along the coast. Except this time we didn’t tell any stories. Capitol D and I just sat in silence watching something amazing happen.

We must have sat there together for an hour or more. Watching as the moon moved across the slowly fogging window, marking its slow arc, small pane of glass, by small pane of glass. The moon moved silently across the pane that came after the one that had come before, turning up and to the right of us. A honey colored trajectory across the sky, and the window, and our eyes. When the moon had traveled far enough that it was almost out of window to pass, Capitol D smiled and gave me a hug, and we agreed that life was good, and that we were lucky to be here. And it was, and we were, and that remains, and then we said goodnight. When she was gone, I drew a heart with my fingertip in the fogged-up glass of the window above the couch, and then pulled my sleeping bag tight, hoped I wouldn’t get the flu, and went to sleep.

The next day I was hoping to hang with Capitol D, but she was off to work in a garden, then off to somewhere else, then home, and then she was meant to be away to a community meeting of some sort or other. I spent the day back in Mendocino town, hanging with my musician friend Hawk, and then later on I drove back to the seaside where I gazed west and began to wish that I was leaving. This was the day for it, I could feel it. The full moon had come up and changed us, and then gone back down the other way again, and the energy had gone with it. The air had changed, and yesterday what was full felt empty now, and it was time to go away from Mendocino town.

Of course I didn’t go. I wanted one more hang with Capitol D, or at least the chance to say “Adieu”. I didn’t really know where I was going to go away to anyway. So I resolved to stay on one more night in The Warehouse That Had The Flu. And here is where this story begins again. Not that there was an ending just now, but looking back on the decision to sleep another night on the couch under the big window, it’s hard to reckon if the decision to stay, on the day when it was time to go, was, in fact, right or wrong. The future at this point was unwritten, and what happened next kicks out into a twisty turn of a story all it's own.

I sat that evening back at The Warehouse That Had the Flu playing guitar on a curb next to Capitol D’s bus. I saw her for one more moment as she zoomed in from somewhere where she had been, and then was leaving again for the community meeting. She asked me if I wanted to come to the meeting, but I didn’t really. So Capitol D told me to have a good night, and smiled, and looked at me for a moment as I looked back, and I smiled back at her, and I haven’t seen her again since. When she was gone, I went back to playing guitar sitting on the curb next to the bus and staring off into the gathering twilight. I think it must have somehow felt safe there next to Capitol D’s bus. This bus was the bus that belonged to my friend, and that fact somehow made the bus my friend also. When the evening got damp I sat there feeling somewhat discouraged, then went inside, said an early goodnight to Lovingly Sneeze who was just going out, and climbed the steep stairs to the couch below the window and my sleeping bag.

I lay there and watched the moon come up again but this time the light was all different, and what had been full the night before felt empty now. And where the night before, the full moon’s light was orange and full of love, the light tonight was cold and didn’t look back. It was the evening of the day when it had been time to leave town. And I was still there.

I’m not sure really, what time it was when they came in, but they came in anyway. A car or two drove up, and the door to the warehouse kitchen opened, and the light flipped on and someone belched, and a trio of loud voices, two drunk, and the other I’m not sure about, entered. I never met these boys, or even saw what they looked like, but I know who they were; why they were none other than Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors. That’s who they were. I’d know them anywhere. I stayed hidden in my sleeping bag up on the balcony trying not to move, while Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors made themselves at home. They talked real loud, and hit the “play” button on the stereo that had been though the war. The album was none other than Dark Side of the Moon - on cassette - through really horrible AM radio sounding stereo speakers. Then Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors racked up the pool balls on the table, smoked a bowl, continued on in real loud drunk talk about a girl at the bar where they had just come from, and apart from that, I don’t remember anything much else they said. Not yet anyway. It was pretty unbearable though. It was just one of those things - when you are a guest somewhere and sleeping in a common area, it happens that sometimes you just have to cover your ears with your sleeping bag and hope nobody finds you so you won’t have to talk to them. The scene downstairs went on for ages; pool, smokey bowls, drunk talk, and Dark Side of the Moon, all courtesy of Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors.

The energy of those days in Mendocino had, at this point, now all fallen apart completely. I lay and looked up at the moon through the small pane windows above the couch, but all it did was remind me that I had stayed on when the day had come that it had actually been time to go. I resolved that I was going to do what I already knew I was going to do, and that was that I would leave first thing in the morning. Early. Just kindof make a quiet slip of it. Away from the Warehouse That Had the Flu, and back north up the coast. First though, the evening wasn’t quite done yet.

Like most everyone in and around Mendocino, everyone seems to know everyone else, and Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors were friends with Capitol D. They, especially Corporal Useless, had begun talking about her from the downstairs. Seeing as though what was about to happen hadn’t happened yet at this point, I don’t really remember anything in particular that was said. I do remember though what happened when, at some point later on, Capitol D came home. She returned and greeted Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors, and then was a bit of “How you doing?”, and “What’s been going on with you?” back, and then as if on cue Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors decide it’s time for a cigarette outside and they split. Capitol D and Corporal Useless continue talking for a little while and then he makes his move.

You see, Corporal Useless thinks it’s really good to see you. And Corporal Useless always has felt really trusting in your friendship, and when Corporal Useless has had a hard time of it sometimes you have really been there, and Corporal Useless just wanted to say thank you, and well, this is another one of those times, and Corporal Useless is feeling vulnerable and was just thinking that maybe it would be alright if he joined you in your bed and just lie together and hold one another, because Corporal Useless has always thought that you are just such an amazing person. You are, you know, just - so - totally - amazing.

With the move in full swing Capitol D responded, “No, see, I feel people’s energies really strong when I’m close with them, and it’s hard for me to sleep, so it’s better if I just sleep alone”. (OK, if you didn’t catch it just right there, that was a woman politely saying “NO”. That’s what that was). Undaunted, Corporal Useless presses on, and he is just feeling real blown out right now, and just needs that healing touch, and it’s not about sex, it’s not, you can - just be together there, in that space, and he was just thinking about being close, and this goes on, and then the unimaginable occurs. Capitol D relents and says yes. “Well, OK. OK, You came come out to the bus”. And out they go. The door closes, and I’m left with Pink Floyd on the crap stereo that had been through the war, and pale moonlight laughing down at me through the window above the couch.

At this point Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors come back in, and one changes the music from Pink Floyd to Bob Marley and turns up the song “Easy Skankin” on the stereo that had been through the war. They rack up the pool balls, and the party is on. I lay in my sleeping bag on the couch below the window looking up at the moon, and felt myself suddenly in some half-flu netherworld. I tried to think up some kind of a thread to think about but all the threads were broken. So I just lay there, wondering where the hell I was going to go in the morning.

Maybe it was fifteen minutes later, maybe it was twenty. But the door opened again, and in returned a defeated Corporal Useless. “Ya” he said, “She kicked me out.” There were a couple of “sorry’s”, and then one of Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors offered the understanding, “Ya, she’s a cunt.” At which point the second one of Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors offered the somewhat more philosophical, “She’s just really fucked up”. At which point Corporal Useless himself took his lumps and rose above the fray with the brilliant, “Ya, she’s fucked up because she just doesn’t know what she wants”. There was an understanding silence for a moment, and then someone said “Lets split” and Corporal Useless, and Your Cousin’s Two Jackass Neighbors headed for the door. I waited until the sound of the car engine or two had faded away, then crept down and closed the door behind them, turned off the stereo that had been through the war, flicked off the light, and returned to my sleeping bag, on the couch under the window where I looked out and said “Fuck you” to the moon, re-traced the heart on the fogged up window from the night before, hoped I wasn’t coming down with the flu, and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up early. Quite early. This was the morning that I was leaving but I still had nowhere to go to, or any idea at all about what I was going to do. I left my note of thanks to Lovingly Sneeze on the wooden industrial kitchen table, washed whatever dishes there were left unwashed (my friend Mavis told me years ago, she said, “We’re traveler people. We stay in people’s houses. If you want to always be welcome back again, all you have to do is wash all the dishes in the kitchen before you leave, and don’t ever mention it”). Mavis is right, and washing the dishes wasn’t about me, it’s just the rules of the road. If it was about me, in some small way, it was about closing the time, my two nights, in the Warehouse that Had the Flu, and leaving clean and clear, and driving away with no idea of where I was going to.

I left my note of thanks on Capitol D’s school bus door, loaded my sleeping bag, guitar, and what ever else, into Spoofer, and left as quietly as I could.

I headed south, back into Mendocino town for a coffee. Gassed up Spoofer, and then, well, drove away. I had decided that “north” sounded good. I figured that I’d make for Garberville. I had friends there whose phone numbers I realized I hadn’t got, so no real plan emerged. And I was feeling that if I called someone up that it might seem imposing. Everyone I know in Northern California is busy all the time, and I didn’t want to ask any favors. Plus I felt like I was going to get sick. That morning the coast was beautiful though, and the day was clear, and I was about as free and clear as a person could be. So I said a private “Adieu” to everyone I knew in Mendocino, and headed north up the coast.

The road east from the coast connects with Highway 101 just south of Garberville, and it’s quite the drive. It’s many miles of up and over, and around, and back down, and then up again, and then around some more, and this goes on for ages as the two lane highway makes it’s way through the coast range. It’s a hard drive and it seems to go on indefinitely.

At some point on the twisty and turny, up and down and then back up again road in from the coast, as Spoofer and I were driving up and over, and around, and back down, and then up again, and then around some more, I turned on the radio. I can see the bit of road in my head; I turned on the radio at the crest of a hill at the beginning of the descent. But if there was a station to catch I had missed it on the way down the hill and out of range, and the radio would have to wait ‘til we got up and out of the valley that we were just rolling down in to. The strange thing of it was, is that I didn’t turn off the radio when it was just blaring station static. I just turned it down a little. I have no idea why I didn’t just turn it off, but I didn’t. Maybe the station static fit my mood. Maybe I was between stations myself. Or perhaps after the last day or two out on the coast all my insides were static. I’m unsure of the moment, but I do know that I was driving in static station noise. And then a funny thing happened. As Spoofer hauled myself, and a guitar, and the gear, and a backpack, back up the twisty other side of the hill that we had just come down, a station began to come in on the radio. It was whatever the last station was that I had been listening to before it faded away in the mountains on my way out to the coast in the first place. It was crackly, and mostly noise but it was coming back. So I turned the volume up again. Climbing the hill the signal got a bit stronger, and it was musical, and then I thought that something in the noise sounded familiar. And then I realized it. It was me singing from the radio. Thank you KMUD, K-M-U-D, broadcasting at 91.1 FM, from Garberville, California, for supporting independent artists. Thank you KMUD especially when one of those artists is lost in the wilderness, and searching for a signal about which way to go. The song I was singing out of my radio in the car was an old song that I wrote years ago called “Tough Reckoning.” The signal started to fade away as the road dipped, and then came back stronger up the other side. I was still singing, but I was almost done, and then I finished up, and then my friend Woo Hoo Sue came on the air and announced that it was me who had just sung the song that I had just sung, and then I thought to myself “A-ha! At this very moment I know where exactly one good friend of mine is"! Woo Hoo Sue has a show on KMUD once a week and I just managed to hit it right. And so I resolved immediately to drive hard for the KMUD studio in Garberville and go see what was up with my friend. I’d have to hurry though, Sue was only on the air she said for another 40 minutes. I figured the drive to be closer to 50 minutes or an hour.

Turns out that I was a little wrong in my drive time forecast, and after the long period of up and over, and around, and back down, and then up again, and then around some more, the highway I was on joined up with the main highway 101 and I started to pick up some time.

I pulled into the gravel parking lot at KMUD with about ten minutes to spare before Woo Hoo Sue was off the air. I went inside and smiled through the thick glass window of the control room door, and Woo Hoo Sue saw me and even though she was live on the air making an announcement, she held up both arms and made the universal sign for someone playing a guitar, and then pointed at me, and then pointed at a microphone in the studio, then shook her finger telling me to hurry. So I did, and came back to the studio with my guitar, and Woo Hoo Sue said “How ya’ doing?” and introduced me to this fellow Spark Addy who was also there in the KMUD control room. Spark Addy had dropped by in the closing minutes of Woo Hoo Sue's radio show to make a quick plug for a concert that he was promoting in town that evening. This all happened on the fly, I sang something live on the air, Spark Addy pitched that everyone should turn out to see Country Joe and the Fish at the Mateel Center that night, Sue said “Thanks for listening” to whoever was listening out there in radio land, and then she was off the air.

The Country Joe and The Fish show at the big community performance hall in Garberville, was a show that I had been hearing about. Country Joe is Country Joe Mcdonald, and the “Fish” is Joe’s buddy, Barry “The Fish” Melton. They were a big act in the late 60’s in San Francisco, and if not the biggest band of the era, Country Joe and The Fish have a legendary quality for sure.

Woo Hoo Sue and Spark Addy and I stood talking in the control room at KMUD for a few minutes, and then the second funny thing of the day happened. Spark Addy asked me if I was coming to the Country Joe show that evening. I didn’t have a ticket but covered and said, “Sure I am.”

“Oh, good,” he said said, “Because I was just wondering if you would like to open.”

“Open? Sorry?”

“Ya, open the show. I didn’t get it together to figure out an opening act, and it would be really great if you could play like about 45 minutes before Joe….What do you think? We’ll give you dinner…”

This was an interesting turn of events. Of course I’d play. Spark Addy said to be at the hall at 5 PM for load-in and sound check, and I walked across the gravel parking lot back to Spoofer, with an odd, bemused smile on my face. Woo Hoo Sue walked up behind and gave me a bang on the shoulder and a smiling “Way to go dude” and then we laughed and shook our heads for a minute, and then she was off for errands around town.

I ate some kind of lunch or other, and then kicked it around Garberville a bit passing the time. At 5 O’clock I wandered over to the Mateel Center to load in gear. Joe and his son, and Barry “The Fish” Melton showed up and introductions were made. I thought I’d give a stab at a conversation with Barry as he is a friend with a good friend of mine, the Seattle songwriter Jim Page. “Heya Barry, Jim Page says hello.” Barry didn’t take the bait or even look at me, but kept walking answering with a rapid fire “Jim, ya, ya, Jim, Jim Page…” He was back a couple of minutes later though, carrying an 8 ½ by 11 black and white photo to show me. He held up the photo real close to me, and there was an 18 or 19 year old Barry Melton, and two other fellows who I knew by sight. “See, see, here, that’s me, and that’s John Chipolina of Quicksilver Messenger Service, and that’s Spencer Dryden there. Spence is the drummer for Jefferson Airplane, and that’s me there. Ya? Amazing eh?” Barry walked away shaking his head and smiling, and it was time for dinner.

Showtime. The evening after I had left a place early in the morning with absolutely no idea of where in the world I was going to go. Lights, an introduction, and there I was opening for Country Joe and The Fish. I remember playing well, though I don’t remember what, exactly, I played. I do remember that I closed with “Tough Reckoning” the song that had found me in the mountains.

I got done playing my unexpected set and stepped outside. Someone passed me a smoke, and I looked at the trees, and then I joined the Mateel Center crowd groovin’ to country Joe and The Fish. It was a lovely night. After the show there was a long table set up with all of the stuff that was for sale for sale on it, and a line of people waiting to get their CDs, or one of the beautiful color posters from the show, autographed. Joe and Barry were sat there, and I was just sort of standing around with a smoky head a little ways away across the room. That’s when Spark Addy, came up along side me and said the unexpected, “What are you doing just standing here?” and I think I replied, “I think I’m just standing here.” But Spark was having none of it, and pushed me over to the table and sat me down in a chair next to Joe and Barry. And there I was, signing posters with Country Joe and Barry “The Fish” Melton. I remember thinking just how strange the whole moment felt. That morning I had woken up in the Warehouse With the Flu, and left, with absolutely no idea whatsoever about what in the world I was going to do, or where in the world I was going to go. I was just going to go. Somewhere. And here I was come evening time, signing posters after a gig with a couple of psychedelic rock legends in a lovely hall in a town filled with friends. And that’s how it all went down.

The after hours party was up the hill at Big T’s I think, and I never did get the flu, and I didn’t make it home for another two weeks. But those two weeks are another story. This story, is just about what happened when I had to go away, but had nowhere to go away to. I had to go though, it was just that simple. So, I would have to leave where I was, and make up someplace to go. Turns out that I didn’t have to make it up very far really, ‘cos Where To Go came and found me from the radio. So I went there. And that’s what happened.