Now it’s winter on the river, and a cold swift swollen tide meets a warm southern breeze from the gulf of memories.
Every year, around the 9th of October, I fall into a funk. This blue mood is a complete mystery to me until the part of myself that’s been trying it’s best to keep the date from me will lag, inevitably exhausted, and it will hit me. Oh! Right. That. The day that my father left this lousy place for good. The day that changed everything. The day that was so swollen with uncontainable sadness that even now, all these years later, it still will not be contained.
I have another tough week in the spring. Another mysterious doom. “So?” Steffe’ll ask, pensively. “How are you? You always get down whenever y’know… me too. I miss him too.” And then it’ll hit me. Oh. Right. That. The week that our friend Paul had a heart attack in Florida, while shacked up with another poet on a houseboat.
Souls have a secret calendar of agony.
The Robot fades to black every year ’round labor day. The holiday serves as a hard-to-suppress reminder of the weekend his cousin/ little brother/best friend put a gun to his own temple. He was drunk and fighting with his girl friend, suddenly desolate, momentarily stupid. Maybe he meant to mash the trigger, maybe not. Those kind of over-wrought emotional moments can color the future with what is really just a temporary explosion of too too much. I keep a close eye on RB as the holiday nears. He wouldn’t do something so drastic but still, the date itself is a reminder of how hopelessness can swallow a grown folk whole.
Like a snake eats an alligator.
The gator goes down easier than you’d think.
(Though I did see a story where a python tried to eat an alligator and the snake exploded… so that’s oddly comforting.)
These last few days, I was hit by another mysterious gloom. It began with three days of insomnia — I was amped & aimless, annoyed with TV, avoiding the computer –followed by 15 hours of boulder-like sleep. It was a sleep-monster Saturday: ’round 4, Robo put me down like a toddler in need of nap; I reluctantly dozed off at the approach of 6; woke up at 3am to finish/post the gospel but mostly spent 2 hrs staring vacantly into space; then came Gospel!? We don’ need no stinkin’ gospel!; at 10am the Robot woke me with my favorite breakfast. I’m still annoyed and considering sending him back for reprogramming. It wasn’t until I finally got online that I ran smack dab into the Oh. Right. That.
Katrina.
There, on the wordpress dash sat a letter from a reader/ friend, bummed about the anniversary of Katrina and wondering where-o-where was the Sunday AM Punk Rock Gospel? Ah. Arggghrr. (That’s an argh that becomes a grr.) In a split second of watery blinking, I decided to forsake my previously planned song in favor of another song which we played constantly in the wake of that fateful & fatal storm. Before too, but so so often after. This song has meant the world to myself and the loverman (why, he was just a little robot, maybe 8 or 9, when he first started reading The Times Picayune; wishing he could get into the city, good old Big Easy, to see Black Sabbath at City Park.)
We played that record ragged. That album was our refuge in the storm. That smoking Piggie was a good gentleman friend to us. The song is “Smoke Bend.” The album is The Gourds 2002 release “Cow Fish Fowl or Pig.”
Yes, I know we’ve just done The Gourds recently but we’re talking about Katrina today and for me, there is only one Katrina song.
“Smoke Bend” by the Gourds with Dollar Bill Johnston.
Dollar Bill Johnston joins The Gourds on stage
Dollar Bill is the father is the father of Gourd, Max Johnston (also of Wilco and Uncle Tupelo.) Interestingly, Max’s sister and Dollar Bill’s daughter is singer/song-writer Michelle Shocked, who I love.
They’re sandbaggin’ the levees
They’re shovelin’ night and day
It’s the year of ’27
Gonna wash us all away
This song was not written about Katrina. Which in my mind, for my purposes, makes it better. Rather it’s about the ever-present worry that the levees might break and if so, then what?
The levee gonna bust
On your side or mine
A little dynamite on your side
Help the river make its mind
It’s about the day that you hope never comes. It’s about the risks we all take in life whether it’s living in the basin of New Orleans or loving even when you know know how much losing is gonna hurt.
Folks left that west bank town
Left it all behind
Start life on higher ground
Gonna get out just in time
I didn’t grow up in New Orleans, but I was worried by my own what-if’s.
Even as a small child, my attachment to my father was so enormous that I was haunted by his mortality. This what-if stayed with me through-out my life. In college, laying in bed one night, I tried to picture the cruel day and could imagine no future for myself beyond it. I saw myself in my messy closet, tucked in the fetal position, refusing to come out. Ever. By the time it happened for real, that closet was long gone, and I was living in Austin, but I could still find the fetal position.
It must’ve been crazy growing up in New Orleans in the shadow of what if?
After all, that’s was the place I wished to be.
I’m a corn-fed midwestern girl (by way of A! I! Ohio!) so I’m not native to the south. But I wanted to be, oh I wanted it so badly, always, and I think that counts for something. It always made sense, jived with my version of self. I’ve kinda secretly way-down-deep-in-me thought of myself as the Delta Lady, the epitome of southern eccentricity. When I was very young, probably too young to long for such obscenity, I’d listen to Joe Cocker’s “Delta Lady” and think “That’s me! There I am! Standing wet and naked in the garden.”
So it’s no surprise that this secret self-appointed Delta Lady found herself a mint julep of a southern gentleman.
The Robot’s often spoke of the hurricane parties people have while weathering out the storm. They drink hurricanes, play cards and hope like hell. His stories were always punctuated with “Oh, you’d love it. You especially would love it!” ???
A hurricane party?
It did sound like something I’d adore — the enforced play, the mandatory leisure; the tendency towards hedonism or at least too many hurricanes; the chaotic familiarity of community and iffy festivity of gatherings; kids running wild, adults divulging secrets; all that human energy, all that snap crackle pop, and over-top — the bristling electricity of sky & fear.
But after Katrina, I dunno… it sounds too… scary.
Robotboy grew up in Mississippi, just outside of New Orleans, so his family was hit. The eye of the hurricane passed directly over the family home. It was scary and it was scary even for us, waiting to find out if everyone was okay. They were. They lost a roof and few 100 year trees, a prized pecan, but our people were all very lucky. But then they weren’t depending on the levees…
“Smoke Bend” is about the day that we hope will never come, and yet we know it will, and still that changes nothing.
Now there’s mint juleps at Oak Alley
There’s poison in the air
There’s new dangers on the river
It’s so good to be from there
We continue to love whatever it is we’re so afraid to lose. Once we’ve lost out, the love goes on. That’s another little something we can count on.
{{MP3 17 – Part II – Smoke Bend}}
Smoke bend
CHORUS:
Now it’s winter on the river
And a cold swift swollen tide
Meets a warm southern breeze
From the gulf of memories
Missouri and clear Ohio
Give their currents to the tide
Now the river’s Louisiana’s
For the willow tree-lined ride
From cruel Angola down to Venice
Scatterin’ horseshoes everywhere
The river’s Louisiana’s
With no glory or bank to share
If the river had its way
The Atchafalaya’d be its home
Straighten out them horseshoes
Find another bank to roam
There’s cane fires up the bank
Of that horseshoe of Smoke Bend
The smoke was double thick
And the fog was rollin’ in
Tie your boat to a willow tree
Climb the bank so high
Above the blanket on the river
See every star in the sky
Smoke fog and family
Kept to that west bank town
Smoke and fog would burn and blow away
The folks they’d stay around
There was catfish with the Kingfish
And a culture spice gumbo
There’s coonass music playing
On a glowin’ radio
Klan and crackers on the side
At the Last Chance Cafe
Crawfish etouffee
Warm red river Beaujolais
CHORUS
They’re sandbaggin’ the levee
They’re shovelin’ night and day
It’s the year of ’27
Gonna wash us all away
The levee gonna bust
On your side or mine
A little dynamite on your side
Help the river make its mind
Folks left that west bank town
Left it all behind
Start life on higher ground
Gonna get out just in time
Now there’s mint juleps at Oak Alley
There’s poison in the air
There’s new dangers on the river
It’s so good to be from there
CHORUS
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Stay ahead of the snake, y’all, don’t get swallowed up cause really that’s silly, a gator in the belly of a snake, c’mon? Even a python! C’mon! And it’s not safe for the snake either. So just lift yer snout outta the swamp n’ hum a little cajun tune or maybe that one about the river, who did that one? The potatoes? The parsnips? The Gourds! With Dollar Bill Johnston!
So whaddaya say, alkies, got a hankerin’ for hurricanes? Well, why’ont you whip us up a pitcher!
Thank’s to Mike — fellow Austinite, who grew up in Chalmette — for documenting his own (from afar & helpless) vigil during the storm and subsequent obsession with the recovery of his homeland. See his story and more of his storm photos (like above.)
Immerse yourself in gourdy goodness at the band’s sweet sight, complete with wood round rekerd playa.
If you’re in love with “Smoke Bend” (and you should be) the song can be downloaded for 99 cents. A great song for the price of a candy bar. The album “Cow Fish Fowl or Pig” available on amazon. If you’re not ready for the I couldn’t nor wouldn’t begin to suggest where future aid should be sent so I open comments to suggestions.
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Today’s edition of the Sunday AM Punk Rock Gospel is dedicated to everyone who saw Nola through that storm as well as to those who continue to be with her now. To those who lost lives, loved ones, homes, schools, churches, haunts. To those still healing and still helping in the aftermath.
My heart aches for all of you, for your families wherever they may live, and for every one who had their heart mangled by that hurricane (even if “only” in an an empathic human way)
Today was hard for people, people’s hearts are still hurting. Even those not directly affected by Katrina, even those hearts are clenched like angry fists. In a strange sad way, Katrina became a shared trauma, a throbbing dated ache that yearly seizes up. Katrina blew through our TV screens and flooded our family rooms. Which is not to diminish the unfathomable experience of being in New Orleans both during and after that storm; nor the losses borne by other areas hit by Katrina.
