I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby…

June 6, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Thanks to a tip from singer Tamar the night before, I ended up going down the stairs of Sophia’s on 46th Street last night, and it was like time travel, stepping into another era. The Nighthawks, an 11-piece band dressed in tuxes playing music of the 20s and 30s, and were they good! The dancing was spectacular. There was a tuba. A guest singer, Ginger Something from LA came onstage and did I wanna be loved by you, boop-boop-ee-do to perfection. The crowd 50s, 60s, even a few ancient 70 year olds. Dancers younger. Room full, fine ambience. Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Kate Smith (Fine and dandy, sugar candy), Gershwin. I had clam pasta at the bar that was excellent.

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’30s Music in Brooklyn Last Night

June 6, 2012 at 12:13 am

I read about this group in Time Out mag and took the F train out to Barbes, a small club with a great selection of beer and single malt scotches (had Taslisker, with smoky flavor, umm-mmm good). Warm and homey neighborhood club and Brain Cloud, (“…(whose) brand of western swing draws from the New Orleans-meets-Texas. strings-meet-horns, jazz-meets-country sound that Bob Wills perfected on his mid-40s  radio broadcasts…”) plays there on Monday nights, with Tamar Korn doing vocals. After them was Feufollet, a Cajun band from Lafayette, Louisiana, and it was hard to hold still. In between groups I walked a block to the Han Noi Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. Later I talked to Tamar at the bar about the Mills Brothers, who used to do horns and trumpets with their voices and she told me about The Nighthawks, playing tonight at Sophia’s at 46th and Broadway, so off I go right now. And oh yes, I did go the the Book Expo today and made all my appointments on time, I am such a responsible business person.

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When She’s Good…

June 4, 2012 at 12:27 pm

I got into my hotel in Manhattan around 4 PM yesterday after 3 hours sleep the night before, and when my plastic key didn’t work twice, I asked for a different room and could it be up high? Well the angel at the desk gave me a suite on the 26th floor and to my amazement it had a large balcony with deck chairs, best room I’ve ever had here. Thank you lord. The climate is perfect, a bit of rain, shirt sleeve weather, a comfortable 70 degrees. I hit the streets about 6, headed downtown (I’m at 31st & 7th), got some Japanese bubble tea, ran into this wonderful group of people in Union Square doing the Argentine tango, had a great Vietnamese meal at the Saigon Shack (114 MacDougal), cappuccino at Cafe Reggio, wandered shooting pics, watched the last 4 minutes of a great game between the Celtics and Lakers (those guys are so beautiful!), walked into the Bitter End just as a powerful little singer, Sirsy and her band were doing a rock and roll version of Johnny Be Good, and was it good! I listen to mostly blues, also bluegrass, “outlaw country,” 50s R&B, and Vivaldi, but there’s just something about rock and roll. Thrills my soul.

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Mother Earth News Fair A Winner

June 4, 2012 at 11:21 am

The Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup was outstanding. To tell you the truth, I was a bit leery. The Green Festival, which I’ve attended over the last 5 years, has seemed increasingly weak. Sorry to say so, but true, and I feared the same might be true here in Puyallup, Washington. But Cheryl Long, Mother Earth News editor-in-chief and my buddy, talked me into coming, and am I glad she did. If  I’d known how good it woud be, I’d have hung around for the 2nd day, instead of flying to NYC Sunday.

   There were animals: chickens, goats sheep, pygmy pigs, small-scale cattle, alpacas. A great selection of electric vehicles. There were all kinds of things that interested me in contrast to the same-old, same-old Green Festival stuff. Demos of shake-splitting and log-squaring-off, a completely different type of composting toilet, soapstone woodstoves, roofing materials, a beautiful copper still made in Portugal, a complete building dedicated to fiber arts, an array of solar devices, the Emmrod compact fishing rods…

   A guy had a tattered copy of an early printing of Shelter and opened to the last page, where there’s a picture of a hobo/buddha Jack and I ran into in the Nevada desert in 1972, and said, “I think about him every day.”

   I had several hundred people at my presentation, and it was a sympatico crowd. They were with me. Plus, Mother Earth announced they were giving me a lifetime achievement award. Ulp! It went well and afterwards I signed books for about an hour. A nice looking couple, surfers, came up and told me they read my blog daily, and said, “We came from Hawaii to hear you talk.” Wow.

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Early Morning Latte and WiFi in Puyallup

June 2, 2012 at 4:04 pm

Another Puyallup place where you couldn’t tell what it was like until you came inside. Score! Anthem Coffee & Tea (210 W. Pioneer Ave.), interior done in recycled wood and corrugated steel roofing, great coffee and a perfect almond/bran muffin combo, fast wifi (so handy for the on-the-road nerd), opens at 5:30 AM (I don’t even know a connected place in NYC that opens that early), cool workers and clientele.

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