Friendly's

Last night I gigged out in Berwyn, IL with Erin O'Toole. Friendly's Tap is a small, workingclass juke-joint with a pool table, a poker machine, homemade deviled eggs out on the bar fresh from the walk-in cooler, and a handful of patrons eying the baseball game and nursing their drinks (i.e., my kind of place).

My friend Kris Nichols came out and got up to do some tunes. He did his originals "Criminals From Texas" and "Guantanamo", songs that either punch you in the face or give you a hearty slap slap on the back depending on where you stand. But then again as Bob Marley said, "One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain."

During "Criminals" one guy muttered "bullshit" and left, another hollered, "play 'Criminal from Arkansas'!" But for the most part the tunes were welcomed. As I tossed in my licks while the songs reeled out, I anxiously ran through a mental list of good-timey songs to shift to in order to lighten the mood--"King of The Road", "Rockin' Pneumonia", "Dead Skunk"--something. But the mood, actually, was fine.

"Play 'Colour My World'", hollered Mr. Arkansas. "Who needs this political crap." But the old folksinger in me recognized that Kris was performing an age old tradition of singing songs about who and where we are, and for the most part the handful of souls were listening--maybe even grateful. I've done songs like "Sam Stone" out before in various watering holes and there's always someone for whom the song is not a bygone relic, but a living, breathing acquaintance who contains shared memory and can take them someplace. Songs like that can be more than songs to some; they are connections.

I did my blues, my ballads, my good-timey feel-goods. I chased Erin around on everything from country-western to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. I played originals; I played harmless novelty tunes. I never connected with the audience the way Kris did, however. Kris asked the question, melodically and soft-spoken, "where do you stand?" The folks out in Berwyn are ready to answer. When music doesn't ask anything from the audience, it no longer breathes. It becomes irrelevant. Leadbelly didn't let people off the hook when he sang "Bourgeois Blues", Dylan doesn't when he sings "Masters of War". A few chords and a point of view can be a visceral thing. It can work on your insides. Songwriters are supposed to engage the audience and speak to circumstance.

Still, in a joint like this I have a hard time hauling out my "political" songs. I guess I get confused as to how to work them in and not unnecessarily offend, but Kris performed a public service last night by giving the folks around the bar something to chew on. Politics became a recurring theme throughout the evening. I couldn't help but notice that the guy requesting "any songs about cigars or about the Criminal from Arkansas" was one of the last to leave. He didn't climb on his Harley until the music was done.