Through the Open Window Tonight

 My friend Jim Bessman passed away suddenly this week; it was a shock and a huge loss to the music community.  He was a fine writer and paid attention not just to the celebrities among us, but to the more obscure and less acknowledged.  Not a week ago, he'd offered to review my new book, although poetry was not his bedfellow.  Over time he'd accumulated a massive body of writing; to pay homage to his legacy, it occurred to me to memoir-ize an old friend.

Recently I've heard from several people that a book is being written about the late John Campbell.  I would doubt I'd be any kind of prodigious source... but these things slip through our mental fingers before we know it.  Jim's death reminded me of the fragility of even the staunchest friendships.  

The first time I heard John he played solo at some kind of Delta blues event.  It was maybe early or mid-80's and he was at the front end of a series of performers.  I seem to recall it was maybe a Sunday afternoon...  at Under Acme or some such vanished place... maybe not. Anyway, he had recently moved to the city and among us downtown regulars he looked and spoke like a new arrival. I sat at a front table and I could see his thin fingers trembling with nerves.  I'd never heard his name at that moment, but his approach to blues was undeniably unique-- delicate and sure at the same time. I hung on the notes... I can remember, nearly 40 years later, the sound of his guitars.  Sometimes blues goes straight to your heart; you recognize it. 

The next time we met was backstage at a John Lee Hooker concert at the Bottom Line where I was lucky enough to be the bass player.  I was still a novice musician--not yet comfortable on the gig and a little overwhelmed by the backstage celebrity crowd.  John Campbell introduced himself... praised the simplicity of my playing in a way that convinced me.  He told me I was the first bassist with JLH that he could stand, lol.  He gave me confidence.  I had a kind of voice but I hadn't known it then.  

Later on we met at the old Lone Star on 13th Street.  He repeated his praise... told me I was part of the dream band he wanted to create-- me and the late great Charles Otis, one of the groovingest drummers New York ever saw... with strong NOLA roots.  Charles and I played many gigs together.  I loved the guy.  I can't recall who was playing that night, but we drank upstairs with some of Muddy Waters' former band members.   I remember the bartender buying me a burger; the old Lone Star was like a home for its regulars.  John also introduced me with great respect to Ronnie Earl, a fellow guitar hero and friend.

Later on I played in a band with Zonder Kennedy, Mark Grandfield and Bob Medici... a regular gig on Houston Street I think. John often came by and sat in with us on the tiny space we used as a stage.  I loved that band.. those gigs.  As always, John's playing was unique and soulful and passionate.  The little dream band never happened; John was becoming a star, I'd moved to London part-time, got married, etc.  One night I was playing bass downtown with a huge pregnant stomach, setting up... and he in his southern-gentleman accent blurted out that he wished he could help carry the baby for me-- I looked so burdened with my gear.  He blushed, I didn't.  

When my son was about 10 months old, I went down with a date to see the record-deal signed version of John.  He was still absolutely killing on his guitar... special... but he was on the edge of rockstardom... he was super thin-- wiry and fragile but somehow strong.  I took my date ( a well-known writer) backstage where John spoke to us with mad enthusiasm and energy that was a little worrying.  

The last time I saw him was in a casket at his wake underneath a guitar-shaped floral arrangement at the ironically named Campbell funeral home.  It was around this time of year-- early summer.  The Hell's Angels were there in the crowd with their bikes illegally parked on Madison Avenue; the security detail was jumpy.  The funeral the next day (I fictionalized it in a novel) was at a church filled with musicians, family and a slew of beautiful women.  It was tragic.  

Fortunately John left a daughter behind, and a catalogue of recordings... but I fear he was never canonized the way some of his heroes were.  He was not just gifted but 'charged'.  He also had the manners and courtesy of an old-world  southern gentleman, so foreign in the hard-drinking and drugging music scene of the 1980's. More than anything, he gave me a bonafide blues 'crown' I wore from that moment on.  He complimented and acknowledged me at a time when I felt a little lost in the crossfire of the 1980's New York City music scene.  Charles Otis and I kept up a friendship until he passed a few years ago.  We often spoke of John and felt somehow connected as part of the 'dream trio' we never executed.  Charles, too, made me feel 'real'.  He surely was one of a kind. 

I'm sure I contributed nothing here to the legacy of John Campbell. The performances and recordings spoke for themselves, and hopefully the forthcoming book and people like Zonder will fill in the rest.  If Jim Bessman was still here to finish our interview I might have shared with him that I was thinking about John when I wrote : 

'Through the open window tonight

I can sense Mississippi dirt-- 

thin-necked fingers tapping softly

on plantation-wood coffins…

your old Gibson buried 

with hot reptilean cravings, 

cooling at last in delta mud…'

But this was not to be.  Rest in Peace John Campbell, Jim Bessman, Charles Otis.  The list will sadly go on, until one day it won't.  

The Cost of Everything

Watching the mayoral debate tonight, I listened to nearly all candidates fairly confidently offering their solution to the least curable of all chronic urban ills: poverty.  One of them spoke of the high cost of being poor-- something I am well acquainted with, having worked with underserved populations-- begging and pleading with mothers, often, to change their habits-- with little success.  Good luck to all of these candidates; the problems are slippery and the recovery paths are lined with red flags and splinters.   

On the other side of the poverty coin is its economic bedfellow: wealth.  As opposed to poverty, which is well defined by government standards in dollars and cents, wealth is amorphic.  Its definition lies somewhere in the gap between 'what you need' and 'what you earn'. For the poor, their earnings or income are pre-sold to some ruined version of future, things beyond the necessities of existence which they have every right to covet or need.  My friend Tyrone managed to get an address for receiving his stimulus checks.  Far from using this for food (he gets SNAP benefits), he paid a huge fee to cash the thing at some storefront, and the rest of it went toward cigarettes, liquor, scratch offs...  a few grams of weed.  I suppose this contributes something to the economy; he's doing his job, as opposed to me who squirrels it away for a future maintenance payment. 

My English grandfather told me once if I could not die with a million pounds, I must die owing a million pounds.  His million pounds would be a billion pounds in today's money.   But according to my country-raised father, there was nothing worse than debt.  To be $10 overdrawn on my student checking account was a crime worth a visit and a massive threatening lecture.  Like murder, one infraction was nearly as bad as several.  Something in his tone warped me, and though I could never get his approval, I could avoid his wrath.  I'd also discovered independence was crucial to my life-dream... and debt, in my understanding, was a kind of slavery.  

Sure I had my years of 'plenty', of partying and generosity and expensive clothes and hotels and restaurants... but finding myself at 36 with a baby and no support, I quickly altered my outlook.  There was actually very little I required.  I figured out how to navigate the city on less than $5 a day... how to live, to get some footing... and yes, my requirements by any standards are uber-minimal... so while I am designated poor by government standards, what I need falls just far enough below what I manage to come up with. 

And yes, I am fairly smart, educated... I know I could have some kind of job if I sold out but I managed to exist with my weird priorities and occupations.  Among my friends who consider themselves middle class, many live with massive credit card debt, doling out a monthly minimum which does little to help their situation.  Meanwhile they spend masses on rent, various monthly subscriptions, quasi-compulsory activities like Hamptons weekends which half of them don't even enjoy.  

Several of the mayoral candidates want to give money to the poor... one to children, yearly, so they accumulate a reservoir for education later... or maybe, I'd suggest, the option to use this to buy some housing security.  I still find it strange they teach sex education but not much about personal economics in middle school when even kids have a choice and are still malleable.  

But the poor are stubborn.  Their habits die hard and who can blame them?  Certainly not me who has tried and volunteered and failed, even with my own kids.  What mayor will fix these things in a city of millions where the wealth gap is measured for some in acres-- in billions, in cyber-trillions? 

Last night I got to play live in a studio-- loud, plugged in, with my old bass that sounded like a motherfucker to my damaged ears that craved the assault of drums and guitars for so many months.  My strings are old, my cord is taped up-- my gig bag is cheap and light... I rode down in the elevator with another woman bassist who had an expensive instrument-- a good looking case, salon-dyed hair... who knows?  I could feel her condescendingly assess my worth on the descent.  I got paid $40 to rehearse.  Touched me.  Did I buy myself a slice of pizza?  No.  I walked home.  No subway fare.  That $40 goes into an old tin box where I keep my monthly money.  The city was sparkling in the late-spring night.  I kissed the proverbial sidewalk on 6th Avenue.  The band sounded whole.

On Madison Avenue above 60th Street the blocks are festive with sidewalk restaurants serving $800 bottles of champagne-- packed. People are well-dressed... it is impossible to tell the seriously wealthy from those that masquerade as such... the difference between millionaires and billionaires is measured in how many are trying to sidle up to that person.  They have beautiful friends-- people who can afford to sculpt themselves if they were not born that way.  I felt a little ugly and primitive.  Invisible.  

Passing by the Richard Prince outpost at Gagosian, a small cluster of men emerged... they were watched by security men dressed better than any of my friends ever are; they looked rich... but as I passed, the distinct stench of fresh vomit was overwhelming.  Irony? Further up, in nearly every retail doorway, there is a little 'bedsit' set up by various homeless.  It's relatively safe up here and they seem to have reached some agreement of territoriality.  Their blankets and quilts and cardboard arrangements are like works of art-- they are the sculpted figures of these building niches.  They are urban art personified.  

One of them is an older man who has been squatting on Madison for years.  He does this charming sort of naive artwork on pieces of paper. A few, touched with the magical inspiration of a kind of schizophrenic genius, verge on brilliant.  He sells them, although there was little business going on at 11 PM... he doesn't take the platinum credit cards used by the men who would receive their Richard Price souvenirs by messenger in the morning.  I could have spent a very small piece of my $40 on what I know is real Street Art.... but he was asleep.  

Twenty-four hours later I still have my $40.  It will cover almost one day in my place here... my home of nearly 24 years which has nearly everything... windows, kitchen, full bath, instruments-- a library, computers, a TV which allows me to watch the candidates duking it out on NBC, trying to manage the range of issues in a huge city which is maybe recovering from a sort of fairy-tale evil spell, waking up to the same reality of economic inequality, the rich who have everything and the poor who want more than they can afford.  The overserved and the underserved... and the hungry and the overfed... the restaurants tossing uneaten caviar and sushi, the 'niched' men with their styrofoam containers and their itchy swollen limbs.  Blocks away a building is burning... two men shoot an innocent bystander as they rob a Bodega uptown.  In Brooklyn Kevin Durant has 49 points.

There are things to celebrate here.  Rock and roll.... free museums for the poor even though it's too high-maintenance to make an appointment... and what's in there anyway? My friends even though I rarely go out for a drink these days, or even a coffee.  Kevin Durant. I have everything I need--- the tools to create and invent something, and a safe place to do this. Is this not what all New Yorkers want? Not, apparently.  Melissa Russo has never looked so beautiful asking these questions.  I believe in her.  The mayoral candidates?  Kathryn Garcia just mispronounced 'mayoralty'; not a good sign... But I am hopeful.  I will vote.  

Go Brooklyn.