Santa Fe's summer brought home the music that started it all.
"Someday it's gonna rain, someday it's gonna pour, someday that old dry river won't be dry anymore."-Dave Alvin
In American music, everything begins at the crossroads. The crossroads is where legendary blues musician Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil so that he might master the guitar. Language got lost in translation during the middle passage, however, and not enough people know that it wasn't the devil at all, but Papa Legba who Robert Johnson met. Legba is the African trickster god of the crossroads. He is invoked before any ritual of importance takes place. It was to him that I made a prayer as I hit the highway to come back to Santa Fe from Los Angeles, where I've been living for four years.
I left Santa Fe after the driest season, after chopping down 26 trees on my land that had been destroyed by bark beetles. I came back to visit occasionally, only to find that my favorite clubs had closed and many friends had grown distant. This August was
***image1***
different. I looked on the weather map, and the only places in the country with rain were Santa Fe and Wyoming. This was the summer I made a new friend and patched up relationships with two friends I thought I'd lost. It was the summer I was told on many occasions that I was talking in my sleep about highways, crossroads and busses. It was the summer Honeyboy Edwards came to Santa Fe, Thirsty Ear scored Patti Griffin, and both James McMurtry and Dave Alvin sang "Dry River." It was the summer I knew I would never leave Santa Fe-not for good, anyway.
My August was made by the music. It seemed like all I had to do was walk outside at night to hear the songs I was obsessing over on my iPod, played live. Music can make you a little crazy-a song comes on and you think it's just for you. I got pretty out there because the music never stopped and I didn't want it to. Here are some of the highlights and MATTPOHT (Moved Almost to the Point of Hysterical Tears) moments:
Honeyboy Edwards
, who's over 90 years old, playing early in the day at the Thirsty Ear Festival, to an audience of mostly white people doing the tai chi two-step. Honeyboy Edwards was at Robert Johnson's bedside when he died of possible poisoning.
Rodney Crowell
at Paolo Soleri performing his reworking of "Walk the Line" with his guitarist perfectly impersonating Johnny Cash. MATTPOHT moment: Crowell singing "Wandering Boy," about the death of his twin brother to AIDS.
James McMurtry
at Frogfest at the Santa Fe Brewing Company, performing under a sky full of heat lightning. MATTPOHT moment: "Rachel's Song," about an alcoholic single mother who crashes her El Camino.
A
Second Street Festival
MATTPOHT moment: The train going by during the set by Hundred Year Flood.
KRS-One's
MATTPOHT moment: When he gave an entire course in black history in one song.
Dancing at WilLee's
to any band, on any night, with anyone, especially "Juicy" from Brazil.
My friend Michael Ventura has said, "The edge is where the magic is, but it can also kill you." This "edge" can also be considered a metaphysical crossroads, and we all know what it did to poor Robert Johnson.
Keeping this in mind, I went to the Thirsty Ear Festival with the understanding that the concert would be my last night in the middle of my own personal crossroads. After that, I would gently find my way back to a less extreme state of mind and lifestyle. Patti Griffin sang "Don't Come Easy," and I swayed with my arms around my friends as the sun set. Later, Dave Alvin came on, and once he sang "Ahgrove," I was gone, about as
in
the music as I was ever gonna get. Getting that far
in
the music can also get you backstage pretty easily-that and smiling real pretty at the guitar player. Anyway, I got to hang out with Dave Alvin for a while. I kept asking if the band members wanted to come back to my house for a hot tub, and they politely declined, perhaps fearing they might never be seen nor heard from again. There was a lovely woman in the room in a prim black cocktail dress who bore a striking resemblance to the writer Jane Bowles. She was blind and was accompanied by her black Labrador Retriever. We got into a conversation and I asked her what brought her to the festival.
"I'm studying the crossroads," she said.
"I am too," I replied, perhaps after I uttered the word, "Whoa."
I went home and talked in my sleep again about highways, crossroads and busses. That was the last time it happened. I doubt it will happen again, until I decide to go back to where the two roads meet. I hope that place is still Santa Fe.
