field trips

Throughout the former half of this semester I had very long breaks between classes, and being new to the school as well as a commuter I didn’t have much to do with that time. If I had a break before 1 pm, I would eat somewhere and sometimes I would walk past the benches at Dwinelle and hear John Fizer playing some really nice songs on his guitar. Many times I would sit down next to him and listen to him play, or wait to see if he would play, depending on how many people were around him, and accordingly, how out of place I would feel sitting there around a large group of strangers. I still sit there, but less often as my schedule changed after a while. Everyone around there smokes and I hate cigarette smoke, but I would breathe it in, listening, or waiting for an opportunity to listen. I really enjoyed the music he would play, and I had never truly been introduced to folk or bluegrass music before so I was very curious. I would ask him about what life was like back in the seventies around Berkeley and then I would sneak in some questions about what artists were good to listen to. In whatever book or reader I was holding I would jot down the names that he mentioned, waiting a few seconds after he said them as to not make it too obvious that I was writing it down and to not seem as ignorant as I actually was. When I got home I would look in my textbooks and try to make out the names written in the hasty, sloppy handwriting. I’d then go on the internet, look up the work of each artist, and within the next few days I would have a new record to listen to. Since then, my already frequent daydreams have been about living the lives that these artists talk about; mainly leaving all the books and studying behind and living a life of risk, wandering the world, or “ramblin.” Throughout the semester, two of the main artists that I ended up enjoying by way of this process were Tom Paxton and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Very coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I was doing more research on a bunch of artists and I discovered that Tom Paxton would be playing at the Freight & Salvage on November 30th and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott would be playing at the same venue the very next night. I bought tickets to both.

My friend and I got to the venue, off of San Pablo Avenue, pretty early – only two other couples were ahead of us, both of which were in their forties or fifties. We sat in the cold for a good hour and a half. Demographically, this pattern remained the same as more people got in line for the sold out show. When we got inside I noticed how beautiful the place was as well as the cabin-like feel of the place. We sat at the front and drank some hot cocoa that the venue was selling as we waited. A half hour passed and the sixty-something year old man came out, guitar strapped around his neck, along with another, even older guitar player who was to accompany him throughout the night. It was pretty interesting to see him in person because the videos I’ve watched of him are from the fifties and sixties and are in black and white. He’s gained a little weight, but it is still possible to see his younger self in him. As the night progressed I watched the fingers of both their fretting and picking hands, imagining being able to play or write like that, and trying to remember the chords, knowing damn well I wouldn’t be able to remember any of It when I got home. He didn’t play my favorite song of his, but some highlights for me, and for everyone else I’m sure, were “Ramblin’ Boy” and “The Last Thing on My Mind.” Both of these songs are very mellow, but also very sweet - descriptions that are accurate for a lot of his catalogue. His voice has aged, but it is still nice. I felt very satisfied and grateful when I left, and also with an anxious feeling for the next night.

We got to the venue at just about the same time, but this time we were the first in line. I was more excited for Ramblin’ Jack than Tom Paxton because I had more recently picked up his latest album I Stand Alone which is oddly one of the best musical recordings I have ever bought, plus his music has an attractively playful, rugged, western swagger to it. The crowd was slightly younger this night with some twenty-somethings like me scattered around, which is somewhat interesting because Ramblin’ Jack is seventy-five. His music is pretty universal among age groups; he is widely known as a great, humorous story teller, he is known as an innovative picker, plus he was friends with Woody Guthrie, and Bob Dylan credits Jack to be one of his most influential teachers. We sat in the same seats as the night before and drank hot cocoa again. Actually, the cocoa was disappointingly warm, not hot. Ramblin’ Jack took the stage by himself, cowboy hat and boots on. He told some pretty interesting stories throughout the night and he had us all laughing and smiling. Mostly I was paying attention to his guitar work; he plays music that just looks incredibly fun to play. One of the only reasons why I would want to live to be seventy-five is for the prospect of living long enough to learn how to gain control of an instrument like that, and to be able to tell the kind of stories that he tells in the way that he tells them. Throughout the last fifty years his trademark nasally voice has adopted a very rugged, coarse, and wisdom-filled nature to it, but it’s beautiful for the type of music he plays and sings; it kind of legitimizes songs about death, suffering, and losing people, and overall it provides a different, genuinely reflective feel to the music. Crazily, out of the probable hundreds of songs he knows, he played three of the four or five songs that are particular favorites of mine from his latest album. Two of those were “Arthritis Blues” and “Call Me a Dog.” At the end of the night, he bowed and raised his hat in gratitude as we all applauded. I noticed how he had grown shorter compared to the pictures that I had seen of him from years ago and various thoughts about life and time ran through my head. I closed my car door after I had gone inside. Listening to his CD on the drive home, I continued to fantasize about living the stories told in the songs.