BOOK REVIEW: Clapton's Guitar - by Allen St. John

CLAPTON’S GUITAR

By Allen St. John

Reviewed by Tom Carrico

This paperback caught my eye as it sat in the middle of the non-fiction new release table at the Short Pump Barnes and Noble for one reason and one reason only.  There is a spectacular looking acoustic guitar on the cover.  Although at first glance it appears to be a vintage Martin, the headstock does not have the usual squared off end.  Additionally, the name across the headstock was not Martin, but Henderson.  What’s a Henderson guitar, you ask?  Well, read Clapton’s Guitar to find out.

            Wayne Henderson is a retired rural postman in Rugby, Virginia.  Rugby is in Grayson County, south of Marion and has a population of 7.  Wayne has been building guitars out of any and all available materials since childhood.  His guitars are built one at a time and on no particular timetable.  Wayne is an artist.  He is very eccentric, but he is an artist.

            The story of the book is that Eric Clapton, who has defined rock guitar wizardry since the 1960s (The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, etc…), played a Henderson guitar in a collectible guitar shop in New York City and fell in love with its tone and playability.  He had to have one.  He placed an order with Wayne and, about 10 years later, Wayne got around to building him one.  He actually built two almost identical guitars, one for Clapton and one to be auctioned for charity.  Enter Allen St. John, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend section and guitar freak.  He is a friend of the shop owner who introduced Eric Clapton to Henderson guitars and promised to deliver the instruments once Wayne had actually made them.  The author then travels to Rugby and observes the master luthier at work and records his observations.

            The resulting book is not about Eric Clapton.  Nor is it just about Wayne Henderson, although the reader gets to know Wayne and his neighbors, fellow musicians and friends very well.  The book is really not just about guitars, either, although there is a wealth of guitar history included here, and many details regarding the proper construction of an acoustic guitar.  No, Clapton’s Guitar is really about craftsmanship, attention to detail, pride in doing things the right way and not taking short cuts.

            Humor abounds in Clapton’s Guitar.  Wayne Henderson has a disarming sense of humor and a humbling simplicity to his life.  When Eric Clapton suggested that it might be difficult for him to come to Rugby to pick up his guitar because of the crowds which he would attract, Wayne replied: “Aw heck.  I didn’t even know who you were till last year.  And there’s only six other people in Rugby and none of ‘em even like your kind of music.  I suppose that we could walk down Main Street buck naked and I reckon nobody’d care.”  Wayne's guitar shop is frequented by what he refers to as “General Loafers”.  If they do something which particularly annoys him, they are busted to “Colonel Loafers”.  Wayne tells the author that he doesn’t put much stock in religion and refers to himself as a “Buzzard Baptist”.  He only goes to church when someone dies.  There are practical jokes throughout as well, including Wayne's pride and joy: a remote control flatulence machine which he hides around the shop to surprise visitors.  Wayne is over ten years behind on orders for his guitars and people will do anything, it seems, to move up on the list.  Wayne is susceptible to bribery and homemade pies seem to get your guitar built quicker than just about anything else.  After reading this book it would appear that many more dogs live in Rugby than people.  There’s always someone’s dog in the shop or running around the yard.  Even though Wayne is an expert guitarist, has performed all over the world (including Carnegie Hall), and sponsors his own guitar festival and competition each June, the author notes that he is “only truly at home in the guitar shop, where the cast of characters is familiar and most problems can be solved with a band saw, a penknife, and the right piece of wood.”  The author includes some fascinating anecdotes surrounding vintage guitars which themselves become characters in this book.  One pre-war Martin made its way through several famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) guitarists in the 60s and 70s being pawned, sold, given as a gift and finally residing with a collector.

            The author defines a little recognized new disease.  He defines it as G.A.S., or “Guitar Acquisition Syndrome”, a disorder which I readily recognize in myself.  A victim of G.A.S. “sees a guitar, and immediately becomes fixated on it the way a two-year-old obsesses about Naughty Diesel from Thomas the Tank Engine.  Somehow, possessing that guitar will bring joy to his world (victims are almost always male), cure him of his ills, and make him whole”.  Admitting that he is also a victim of this malady, Mr. St. John states: “We seek a better guitar in the vain hope that it will make us better players.”

            The real reason to read the book, however, is to gain an appreciation for a man who takes genuine pride in his artistry.  Wayne Henderson takes no short cuts.  He bends his own guitar sides, inlays his own abalone into his own fabricated fret boards and hand carves each strut which supports each specially selected and hand cut top.  He tests each piece for resonance.  The end product is much better than the sum of many very excellent parts.  That is the magic of a Wayne Henderson guitar.  Mr. St. John goes further than this, however, noting that the quality of the musical instrument reflects the quality of the individual who built it.

            This book has something for everyone.  It is part Appalachian home-spun humor, part guitar building 101 and part paean to a time when musical instruments were constructed by master artisans who took genuine pride in their creations.  This book was a hoot to read.  I learned a lot, I was entertained, and would I ever love to be on the list of people waiting for their own Henderson guitar.

           

Clapton’s Guitar by Allen St. John is available in trade paperback from Free Press.  There are several excellent web-sites which make the book even more enjoyable including the author’s own (www.allenstjohn.com) which contains links to Wayne Henderson recordings.  (Note:  This book is best read while listening to “Unplugged” by Eric Clapton or the soundtrack to “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou”.)

Capital Punishment and The Executions of Troy Davis and Dominique Green

    

     Reading the news accounts of the State of Georgia’s execution last evening of Troy Davis (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/backers-of-troy-davis-put_n_976809.html) reminded me of a similar story, chronicled so brilliantly by author Thomas Cahill in his 2009 book A Saint on Death Row.  The similarities in the two cases are amazing:

-          Persistent and unwavering claims of innocence by the executed

-          The recanting of testimony by multiple key witnesses casting doubt on the original verdict

-          A long, drawn out appeals process with failed last minute pleas to the U.S. Supreme Court and the President

-          International support for clemency, including Desmond Tutu in the Dominique Green case and Pope Benedict XVI in the Troy Davis case

     Capital punishment, in my opinion, certainly qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment and should be abandoned.  State sanctioned killing is still killing.  The following is an article I wrote in July of 2009 on this topic and was published in LamLight, the physician newsletter for the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine.

A Capital Conundrum: Considering the Death Penalty

(Books reviewed or mentioned in this article include: A Saint on Death Row:  The Story of Dominique Green by Thomas Cahill, Ultimate Punishment:  A Lawyer’s Reflection on Dealing with the Death Penalty by Scott Turow, Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell, The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer and The Green Mile by Stephen King.)

     Capital punishment is an issue which I have struggled with personally over the years.  As a college student in the early seventies, I was ardently opposed to it.  My years at the Medical College of Virginia, however hardened me to the fate of the capital felon.   Two incidents in particular helped change mu opinion.  The first was my brief encounter with one of the infamous Briley brothers.  The three Briley brothers and several accomplices terrorized Richmond, Virginia in 1979, committing incomprehensible crimes in a robbery, kidnapping, rape and murder spree which lasted seven months.  They were finally apprehended, tried, convicted and the older two Briley brothers (Linwood and J.B.) were sentenced to die.  In 1984 Linwood and J.B. coordinated a six-convict escape from the Mecklenburg maximum security prison in Boydton and were recaptured in Philadelphia and executed the same year.  I had occasion to treat one of the Brileys (as a prisoner) in the Emergency Department at M.C.V. and remember him as eerily quiet with a menacing presence.  I felt I had come face-to-face with pure evil.  I made sure that plenty of security personnel were with me when I went into the treatment room.  Thankfully I’ve never had another experience like that one.  I recently had the occasion to talk to the now-retired Richmond detective who arrested members of the Briley gang.  He told me, “When you looked in their eyes there was nothing there.”

     The second event happened in 1987.  I was in private practice of Plastic Surgery in Richmond by then, but was still an associate clinical professor at M.C.V.  I picked up the “Richmond Times-Dispatch: on my front porch one morning and was shocked to see on the front page that a neurosurgery resident had been murdered in her home off of Semmes Avenue in South Richmond.  I had known this young surgeon since medical school days (she was one year behind me) and she had been a surgical intern when I was a junior surgical resident.  My wife knew her at Douglas Freeman High School and we had been guests in her home.  Needless to say, we were shocked beyond anything words could express.  This young lady was a brilliant and talented surgeon and a wonderful person.  She was the third victim (out of an eventual five) of serial killer Timothy Spencer, dubbed “The Southside Strangler.”  He was eventually apprehended, convicted and sentenced to death.  He was executed in 1994.  As an interesting aside, the Timothy Spencer trial was the first time in which DNA evidence was used to convict in a capital case.  “The Southside Strangler” was also the basis for Patricia Cornwell’s first crime book, Postmortem, which was published in 1990.  The other interesting twist to the Timothy Spencer case is that he committed his first murder in Arlington, Virginia, four years before the killing spree in Richmond.  Another man had been convicted for that murder and was incarcerated for five years before DNA evidence proved that the killer was Timothy Spencer.

    

      During the past two decades, debate over the death penalty has, like many other moral and ethical conundrums, become polarizing and politicized.  A candidate for public office who is against the death penalty is branded as “soft on crime” while one who favors it is often seen as heartless or harsh.   Our own Governor Kaine had to answer this question repeatedly during the last election because his church (Roman Catholic) opposes the death penalty.  He deftly answered that he would be elected to uphold the laws of the Commonwealth and would do so despite personal and religious objections to capital punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court has waffled on this issue as well.  In 1972 the Court declared in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional.  This decision overturned all existing death penalty laws and sentences.  In 1976 the Court reversed itself in Gregg v. Georgia.  The first execution in ten years occurred in January 1977 when Gary Gilmore was killed by firing squad in Utah (a story made infamous by Norman Mailer in The Executioner’s Song, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.)  There have been many opinions since which further define what constitutes a capital crime and some restrictions have been placed.

     

     My personal opinion has now gone full circle.  I feel that capital punishment is wrong.  The two books I am about to review defend that position.  The most important concept which helped me reach my current opinion of the death penalty, though, is the principle preached by the late Catholic Cardinal of Chicago, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin.  Cardinal Bernardin taught a “consistent ethic of life.”  The three main ethical issues confronting society in this arena are abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.  Cardinal Bernardin contended that a person should support life “across the board” and it was inconsistent to be anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia and pro-capital punishment, for instance.  You can’t pick and choose.  Human life is sacred and should be defended in each of these arenas.  My purpose in still reading and deliberating on this subject were very well put by Scott Turow in Ultimate Punishment.  In describing why he accepted a position on Illinois Governor Ryan’s Special Commission to Study the Death Penalty, he stated: “I did not hesitate when asked if I would like to be considered (for a spot on the Commission.)  It was important work and would offer me the chance to systematically contemplate an issue thag had long divided me against myself.”

     Thomas Cahill is a Fordham University-educated philosopher and historian and has been the director of religious publications for Doubleday Publishing.  He has written five wonderful books in a series he calls “The Hinges of History” (The Gift of the Jews, How the Irish Saved Civilization, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea and Mysteries of the Middle Ages) as well as a tour guide book to Ireland and a biography of Pope John XXIII.  His most recent book is A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green.

     Dominique Green was a young black man convicted in Texas of murder in the commission of a felony (robbery) and sentenced to death.  The author details the harrowing childhood that Dominique experienced.  His mother was drug-addicted, his father was mostly absent and always abusive and he lived in abject poverty.  He was physically abused by his mother (burning his hands with cigarettes was standard punishment) and sexually abused by a family member and subsequently by a clergyman at a private school.  By ten years old, Dominique was involved in drug trafficking in Houston, mainly to have money to buy food for his younger siblings.  By sixteen he already had had many brushes with the law.  When Dominique was eighteen he and three accomplices attempted to rob a truck driver.  The driver pulled out a knife in self-defense and in the ensuing scuffle, one shot was fired and the driver was killed.  The only independent eye witness to the crime could not identify which of the four boys shot the driver.  One of the four involved (the only white one) identified Dominique as the shooter.  Incidentally, the white teen was the only one of the four robbers never charged with anything.  There were no African-Americans on Dominique’s jury and his court-appointed lawyer had no experience in capital trials.  He was convicted of capital murder.   His appeals were denied repeatedly.

     Dominique’s time in prison was truly incredible.  He became self-educated, wrote poetry, read voraciously and was inspired by Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness.  This book helped Dominique overcome his self-hatred.  He used the lessons in this book to help other inmates confront their own actions and accept responsibility for what they had done.  He became the focal point for an anti-capital punishment campaign waged by the Italian Community of Sant’Egidio, a group which works for social justice causes.  The apex of Dominique’s death row years came in March, 2004.  Thomas Cahill was able to arrange for Desmond Tutu to visit Dominique at the prison in Huntsville, Texas.  That visit was apparently inspirational for all involved.  After leaving the prison, Desmond Tutu was interviewed by the press and said: “I was very humbled to be in his presence, because I felt I was in the presence of God.  This is not the monster that many would expect or think, but a human being, a human being who has grown…  I’m glad I came.  I come away deeply enriched from my encounter with an extraordinary man.”  On the issue of capital punishment he said that “it is not a deterrent.  I think that it is an obscenity which brutalizes.  As a believer, I find it the ultimate giving up, because our faith is a faith of ever new beginnings.  If you execute them, you say ‘I close the possibility of them ever being able to repent or change.’”  Tutu made it a point to shake the hand of every prison guard.  He stated: “They were some lovely people, but I just wonder what effect working in that environment can have on people.  It’s so destroying – for everyone there.”  This is a theme which Stephen King developed very well in his novel The Green Mile.  Towards the end of this short but incredibly moving book, Thomas Cahill states that the question is not whether or not Dominique was guilty.  He very well may have been.  The question in this author’s mind is:  Did Dominique Green receive a fair trial?  He deftly describes the flaws in the case.  Each of these flaws is generically described in Scott Turow’s book The Ultimate Punishment.

     The state relied on testimony from an accomplice.  This was an accomplice that had a tremendous amount to gain by providing this testimony (his own freedom.)  Dominique did not receive adequate representation.  His original jury had no African-Americans.  His appeals were not handled in a proper fashion because he did not have the money to hire appropriate attorneys.   By the time he was being helped by the Community of Sant’Egidio too much time had passed.  There was zeal on the part of the prosecutor to convict Dominique, in part, because he was involved in a tough re-election campaign.  Thomas Cahill wrote notes after his first meeting with Dominique Green.  In those he wrote: “Dominique is where he is for two reasons only: he is poor and he is black.”  Dominique Green was executed by lethal infection in 2004.

     In Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty Scott Turow elaborates on what he feels is wrong with the current capital punishment system.  First and foremost, he points out the number of convicted capital felons who have subsequently been found to be innocent.  Since 1976, for every seven executions (486 in total) one person on death row has been proven innocent.  Turow says: “But when it comes to an institution as idealized as justice, I doubt most Americans are comfortable with the trade.  For the majority of us, the prospect of executing someone who is blameless casts a special pall over the death penalty.  The fact that capital cases are uniquely prone to error calls either for safeguards we have yet to institutionalize – or even fully conceive of – or for renewed reflection about whether to proceed with capital punishment at all.”

     Secondly, Turow raises the issue of whether the state should be allowed to kill its citizens under any circumstance.  Historically this has obviously been misused by many governments.  Thirdly, Turow addresses the rights and wishes of the victim’s families.  It is assumed by many that execution of the criminal “brings closure” or that the criminal deserves it (death).  The Illinois Commission sought data to support this premise, but found mostly just the opposite.  Interviews with family members of the Oklahoma City bombing after the execution of Timothy McVeigh gave quite mixed opinions.  Some family members felt that the pain of losing a loved one was not affected by the execution of the perpetrator.  There are actually some studies that show that survivors only experience more emotional turbulence in the wake of an execution.  The victim’s family in the Dominique Green case actively worked to have his sentence commuted to life in prison.

     Turow then dismisses the concept that the possibility of execution can act as a deterrent to serious crime.  The data clearly show that states with the fewest executions have the lowest levels of capital crimes.  There is no deterrent factor.  Turow confronts the issue of racial bias.  The Illinois Commission hired a research firm to establish the validity of the common opinion that racial bias plays a role in the death penalty.  Turow writes: “There was indeed a race effect, it turned out, but not what popular beliefs might suggest.  Killing a white person made a murderer three and a half times more likely to be punished with a death sentence than if he’d killed someone black.”  One of the justifications for the death penalty is always that it is cheaper to go ahead and execute the prisoner than keep hinm in prison for his entire natural life.  The Illinois Commission also analyzed this argument and found that if you factor in all of the costs associated with mandatory appeals and court reviews, the cost of the death penalty is actually greater than the cost of life imprisonment.  Finally Turow brings up the concept of “Moral Proportion.”  That is, is it just for someone such as Dominique Green, possibly guilty of an unplanned act of homicide, to receive the same punishment as a John Wayne Gacy or a Richard Speck (premeditated serial killers)?  Is this justice?

     There is an excellent seven-minute video at the web-site www.thomascahill.com which has interviews with Thomas Cahill and Dominique Green and summarizes Cahill’s book quite effectively.  I suggest that you watch it.

     In writing this article it was not my intent to proselytize or change anyone’s opinion.  I think it is important, however, to continuously examine our own opinions regarding moral issues such as capital punishment.  Those of us that are physicians are often thrust into positions of community leadership and, rightly or wrongly, our opinions on issues of life and death are held in high regard.  I hope that at the very least I’ve given you reasons to think about the role of the death penalty in a modern society.  Both Cahill’s A Saint on Death Row or Turow’s Ultimate Punishment are great places to start this contemplative process.   

Pat Robertson and Alzheimer’s Disease as Justification for Divorce

Pat Robertson has uttered another outrageous commentary during a “700 Club” program on the Christian Broadcasting Network.  He advocated divorce if a spouse became incapacitated by Alzheimer’s disease, citing the disease as a “kind of death.”  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/pat-robertson-divorce-alzheimers_n_963305.html)

Pat Robertson is a native Virginian (born in Lexington and a graduate of Washington and Lee University) and founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia Beach.  He attended law school at Yale, was ordained as a minister in the Southern Baptist Church and ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1988.  When he ran for office he relinquished any church affiliation.  He remains, however, a prominent spokesperson for the “Christian right.”

I have had many patients over the years that have Alzheimer’s.  I have watched patients progress through the stages of this cruel disease as their personality was removed layer by layer like an onion peel   These patients also have other problems including vascular and heart disease, diabetes, etc.  The Alzheimer’s adds another dimension of risk because of the difficulties with compliance (remembering their medications, for instance), mobility issues and confusion.  These patients often exhibit fairly radical personality shifts as well.  A sweet, cooperative elderly gentleman can turn into a combative and argumentative patient very quickly.  I have been amazed over the years by the supportive, caring and loving spouses that often accompany these patients to visits.  They have more than likely been “covering” for their spouse for years, helping them stay organized and functional.  They are present when their loved one says something spontaneous which is often embarrassing or silly.  These spouses suffer social isolation when other folks stop having them over.  First and foremost, they watch as their partner for decades dissolves in front of their eyes.  They lose that companionship and support which is the hallmark of long standing relationship.  They lose life as they knew it. 

According to Pat Robertson, this is the time to punt and run.  Give up.  In his own words, when asked by a viewer of his “700 Club” program if it was alright for a man to see other people if his wife was incapacitated with Alzheimer’s, Robertson said “I know it sounds cruel, but if he's going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her.”  Cut your losses, start over, live a little.  Really? 

Where’s the honor and dignity in that?  Leave aside all religion, scripture and Beatitudes and look at it from a strictly moral point of view.  Is that really the right and moral thing to do?  Is that what you would want your spouse to do for you were you to become incapacitated by Alzheimer’s or any other disease?  Why limit it to Alzheimer’s dementia?  Extrapolate this thinking to stroke victims, people with multiple sclerosis or debilitating diabetes.    What’s next, euthanasia?   When did spouses become disposable possessions to be discarded when they don’t work like they used to like an old VHS player? 

I’ve got news for Mr. Robertson.  Everybody gets something.  Everybody dies, and before they do, they usually have some sort of illness that limits them.  It’s the rare bird that lives to a ripe old age and dies in their sleep without ever being seriously ill.  I, for one, am very grateful for a spouse who I know has and will be with me every step of the way, wherever that might lead.

Book Review: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

Lord of Misrule

By Jaimy Gordon

Reviewed by Tom Carrico

                Lord of Misrule is the third novel by Jaimy Gordon.  It won the 2010 National Book Award for Fiction.  It is a wonderful novel which explores the world of “small time” horse racing on out of the way tracks in West Virginia. The strength of the novel lies in its colorful characters.  On page 1 we are introduced to Medicine Ed, a veteran groom who is the “glue” that holds the story together, even though he is not the main character.  He is a veteran of the racing life, has seen it all, and provides keen observations throughout the entire novel.  The main characters are Tommy Hansel and his girlfriend Maggie Koderer.  Tommy owns several horses, none of which would be mistaken for a thoroughbred.  They are, however, good enough to be entered into claiming races in rural West Virginia.  In a claiming race, any owner can claim another’s horse prior to the race for a $5,000 price.  The original owner takes the horse’s winnings and the five grand but loses the horse. Tommy hopes to parlay his group of horses into a hefty sum using some chicanery and deception.

                Maggie, a former recipe writer for a small town newspaper, initially doesn’t know much about horses.  She does know that she loves Tommy and follows him to West Virginia.  She has contributed a modest inheritance and sold her mother’s antique dining room table to help underwrite Tommy’s plans.  She becomes very good at handling the horses, coming under the tutelage of Medicine Ed as well as a trainer named Deucey, described as “a buzz-cut crone” and “a dilapidated hull of a woman with wrestler’s muscles and a bulge at the waist of her filthy undershirt”.  These characters, as I mentioned, are colorful.   Veteran horse trainers in the area catch on to Tommy Hansel’s plans and concoct a scheme of their own.

 Each chapter culminates in a race.  During each chapter new characters are introduced, including veteran horse trainer Joe Dale Bigg, a loan shark with mob ties named “Two Tie” (he always wears two bow ties simultaneously) and a blacksmith named Kidstuff.  Complications ensue when Joe Dale becomes attracted to Maggie, Tommy seduces a woman in another town in order to acquire more money and Two Tie decides to foil Tommy’s get-rich-quick plans by bringing in a “ringer” horse named Lord of Misrule for the final race.  Tommy and Maggie (with the help of Deucey) have prepared their best horse, Pelter, for this high stakes claims race which now includes Lord of Misrule.  Bettors line up on both sides of the battle and the race is run with surprising results.    

                This novel definitely has its merits.  The characters are superb and the visual images the author creates are very well done:

                “And now Tommy was backing Pelter out of the van – he was a long horse and had a long way to come.  His shoes screeked on the diamond frets of the aluminum ramp and she pressed her hand on the warm rump to steady it, raising a hand-shaped dust mark on the velvety nap.  Pelter had the commonest coloring for a racehorse, which was, to Maggie, also the most beautiful:  dark bay, a dense nut brown with black mane, black ear points and tail, and gleaming black knees, ankles and feet.”

Lord of Misrule has been criticized by some reviewers as being “good but not great” and unworthy of the accolades it has received.   My only complaints are that the author wrote all of the dialogue without quotation marks and often it was difficult for me to decipher who was speaking.  The plot also gets buried at times in all of the lush description.  The pace of the book is slow until the race scenes appear and then the writing gallops along with the horses.  Lord of Misrule is a very intriguing read.  If you are a horse person you will definitely enjoy this book.  If you are a fan of well written prose, this is your book.  If you’re looking for a real page-turner, however, look elsewhere.  This is not your book.  Whether this is the best fiction work of 2010 probably is debatable, but the National Book Foundation is very good at picking exceptional books, so I’ll trust their judgment that Lord of Misrule  represents the best of the 302 novels they considered. 

                

John Hiatt and the Combo at the Shaftman Performance Hall (Roanoke, VA)

  John Hiatt and the Combo stopped in Roanoke on Friday evening (September 9, 2011) on their tour supporting their new album "Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns."  John was in his usual good form, belting out mostly old favorites and several new selections.  He was very animated and chattered quite a bit between songs.  His songs (both old and new) have such great lyrics and funky beats.  It was an interesting crowd.  Some were there specifically to see the opening act, Big Head Todd and the Monsters.  They played an energetic set and have an interesting sound.  Here are some photos of John Hiatt and the Combo:

and several of Big Head Todd and the Monsters:

John Hiatt and the Combo

Jefferson Center – Shaftman Performance Center – Roanoke, Virginia

September 9, 2011

 

                                                SET LIST

Perfectly Good Guitar

Your Dad Did

Train to Birmingham

Open Road

Cry Love

Down Around My Place

Drive South

Thing Called Love

Adios to California

Damn This Town

Slow Turning

Tennessee Plates

Memphis in the Meantime

                Encore

Have a Little Faith in Me

     The highlights of the Hiatt portion of the show for me were many:  opening with "Perfectly Good Guitar" was one.  The others included "Your Dad Did" and "Slow Turning," old favorites which I had never heard him perform live.  The best of the new numbers was "Down Around My Place", which apparently was inspired by the 2010 Nashville flood.  I would have liked to have heard some more of the new album, particularly "I Love That Girl", but he has so many great songs that he can't play them all.

     The Shaftman Performance Hall at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke is a fabulous venue with great acoustics and comfortable seating.  It is relatively small and, therefore, a perfect venue for Mr. Hiatt.  This concert was a rockin' good time and I hope that John Hiatt comes back to Central Virginia soon!

Tallahassee: Gators, Po' Boys, FSU and the Dance Band on the Titanic

   Although we had been to Florida a lot, we had never been to Tallahassee.  Our son is now a graduate student in Religion, Ethics & Philosophy at Florida State University.  Our daughter-in-law is teaching in the French Department at FSU while completing her PhD Dissertation in French Literature at Emory University.   They moved from Atlanta to Tallahassee in early August.  We were anxious to check out their new surroundings and explore Tallahassee.
  We arrived late on Friday, Sept. 2 (http://tomcarrico.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-long-long-way-to-tallahassee.html).  We went to their new apartment in the Southwood area and were amazed at how organized, unpacked and settled in they already are!  We drove about 45 minutes to the south to Wakulla Springs(http://www.floridastateparks.org/wakullasprings/).  This is a river which is fed by a large underground spring which is part of a 300 mile under gound cistern system of caves.  There is an interesting lodge there and a public park with a beach.  We took a boat tour of the river and saw quite an abundant wildlife population, including gators, manatees, birds, spiders and fish.

   We ate at a wonderful Greek/Lebanese restaurant where we tried a bit of everything, including four different types of baklava!  After dinner we pillaged the local Borders Bookstore which is closing and everything was 70-80% off.

   Sunday we dodged rain showers from Tropical Storm Lee all day.  Tommy and Abbey gave us a great tour of the FSU campus (we avoided the campus on Saturday because there was a home football game).  We ate at Po' Boy's, a Cajun, New Orleans style restaurant (http://poboys.com/).  We toured the Mary Brogan Museum of Art (http://www.thebrogan.org/) where we saw a traveling  artifact exhibit from the Titanic.  We were each given a ticket with a passenger name and at the end of the exhibit we could look up and see if we survived.  Ellen was the only one of the four of us that survived.  I, however, was the leader of the dance band!  So, I died but apparently was a great musician.

  We went to the IMAX theater and saw a terrific movie on the Galapagos Islands.
  We finished the evening at a Tallahassee landmark: Momo's Pizza (http://momospizza.com/) where their motto is "Slices as big as your head" which is, in fact, true.
   Monday we visited a bit more, said our good-bye's and will depart for Lynchburg this afternoon.
  We had a great visit with our kids and are glad to see them so happily settled in their new home.  We learned a bit about Tallahassee, which is much different from other places we have been in Florida (a possible retirement destination?).

It's a Long, Long Way to Tallahassee

  We planned this trip to Tallahassee about six weeks ago to see our son and daughter-in-law's new home.  We were surprised at the great flight connections from Lynchburg through Charlotte on USAir.  Leave Lynchburg at 2, arrive in Florida by 7.  Not bad.  We'd probably get there in time for a late dinner.

  The flight from Lynchburg was uneventful - it even left on time.  We arrived in Charlotte with a planned two hour layover.  We found our gate and then went and had some delicious fish and chips (note sarcasm) and returned to our gate.  We apprehensively watched the clouds roll in as the clock approached our boarding time. We boarded the plane quickly and the plane moved out on to the tarmac.   The plane stopped and we realized that the wind had picked up and was gently rocking the plane.  The pilot came on and announced: "We're going to pull over for a few minutes and let this weather blow through.  It's a small storm and we should be moving again in a few minutes."  Okay, not so bad.  Then the pilot came back on and said to conserve fuel they were going to shut down the engines.  Hmmm.   As the engines shut down we heard a loud "Clunk".  Funny sound for engines to make.  After a few minutes, some emergency vehicles approached our plane:

   The pilot then announced that a truck had struck our airplane!  They were going to have to take the plane back to the gate and assess the damage.  Swell.  He then came out of the cockpit, opened the plane door (isn't that illegal?) and looked towards the wing.  He retreated to the cockpit and announced "A truck has hit the wing and the damage is significant.  We will have to evacuate the plane since we can't move it."  Super fantastic.  The "small weather event" then turned into a full fledged rockin'-sockin' thunderstorm and they couldn't evacuate the plane for safety reasons.  The steward, a gregarious fellow, told us there was so much Rebar in the tarmac that lightning strikes on the tarmac are problematic.  Even better!!
   They finally let us off the plane:

  Here's what actually happened:  An unsecured luggage cart was blown down the tarmac by the wind and it struck our plane where the left wing attaches to the fuselage of the plane.  I need my second son, the statistician, to figure out the odds of that happening.

   They returned us to the terminal by bus, found another plane and we finally departed Charlotte at about 10 PM.  We arrived safely but exhausted, found our Springhill Suites and collapsed.  This morning we were telling the story at the breakfast area in the hotel and people came over, shaking their heads and asking "What did you say happened?"

    So there you have it, the story of The Rogue Luggage Cart.  Stay tuned for more adventures from Tallahassee

Zapata Falls, Colorado