Ghost Hands

Ghost hands played the keys on the piano last night,
At first it sounded like a wind chime,
Or the cat walking up and down the keyboard,
Maybe the wind blowing through the door now opened for Spring,
But it didn't stop and then
A discernable melody
Softly repeated chord progressions
A sigh
The eerie sound of the incessant melody
off key with the minor chords
the highest notes played more insistently
an apparition
at the piano.

Rainy Day Dylan No. 11

This could be the last time
Baby the last time, I don’t know
-Rolling Stones

The last time I was in the Midland Theater aside from last night was to see Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and, if I may indulge you all for a bit, it was there that at the literal height of the Sugarplum Fairy’s pas de deux some fool’s cell phone went off. Tickets have always been pricy at the Midland probably because of its exquisite décor which sadly is in a state of deterioration: Ragged seat backs, dusty chandeliers, crowded aisles and passageways, and seats crammed under some acoustically challenging architecture. The dusty construction around the theater caused some concern as access to the event was only allowed from two directions, but all of this “wrecking ball” ambience, as one writer for last night’s concert alluded to, fit the occasion just fine. Merle Haggard’s dusty old crew and Dylan’s dusty old songs melded right into the building and the crowd.
Merle’s set justified the price of the ticket as the man from Bakersfield played pure country gold. His sound engineer hit the acoustics just right bringing out the vintage characteristics of his voice and the country charm of his band, The Strangers. A couple of times during the set he would stop the band cold and say something to the audience. “Wait a minute, fellas, wait a minute. Hey I want all you people to know that we are an old bar band and we aren’t used to playing this early. Where are all the drunks? I haven’t even had my orange juice yet. OK fellas, start over.” He has a lot of drinking songs and those are ostensibly fun to hear until you absorb the sadness and reality of what he is singing about. “I think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink” and “Working Man’s Blues” were good but my favorite of the night was “Going Where The Lonely Go.” Merle and the Strangers got a standing ovation and “As Time Goes By” was as fitting an encore as any.
Bob should have hired Merle’s sound tech because it was obvious that his own was as acoustically challenged as the daunting cavern the Midland presents to those who must try to satisfy each and every ear. Sometimes the sound was clear and Dylan’s voice or harp or keyboard would penetrate every space and sometimes it was muddy and you had to struggle to recognize the song at first and then continue to struggle along with it. It must have been nearly impossible for those who were not familiar with the songs to even begin to appreciate them in this venue. The young mullet-headed man next to me slumped in his seat for most of the night while his ‘50 ish parents sang along with most of the songs.
There was a strange situation with the stage setup and Bob could possibly have billed this one as Bob Dylan and the Stranger, the Stranger being Stu Kimball. Picture the stage as a rectangle with Denny Freeman, Tony Garnier, George Recile, and Donny Herron on the back side with Bob in front of Donny, the six of them in a relatively tight grouping. Now picture Stu up front in the corner, stage left, by himself several feet away from Bob. His monitors are turned toward him and away from the rest of the band. He is playing rhythm guitar all night, watching Donny take nearly all of the leads and rarely getting the nod from Bob. At one point my rider, an astute musician in her own right, says to me, “Somebody is seriously out of tune.” Stu is then seen furiously trying to tune his guitar, stomping on the foot control and shutting down twice before literally throwing the guitar into the rack and grabbing another. He was obviously distressed. Was this a setup, could he have picked up the wrong guitar? Who knows, but I will venture to make a bet that he does not finish this current tour with the band. The weird thing was that he was so very out of tune but nobody in the band, Bob included, acknowledged the fact.
Before the encore, Bob introduced each band member in a sing-songy fashion and at the standing ovation brought them all back out to acknowledge the accolades of the crowd and giving a thumb’s up before exheunt stage right. For me it was a good concert, not a great one, and, who knows, this could be the last one.

Stephen Darjeeling
Louisburg KS

Ghost Hands 

Burning The Prairie

Alma Wamego moved into town,
She waited until her yard turned brown,
Then she set fire to it,
Just like she had done
Her pastures out in Western Kansas,
She didn't understand what the neighbors'
Fuss was all about,
She just stood there with her rake,
Watching the fire creep toward the chain link fence
That was her new property line,
"If you don't burn you'll have weeds!"
She yelled out the window of the squad car
As they drove her away,
Then she settled back in the seat and straightened out her blouse,
Reminding herself, "Tomorrow is chick day."

Organic Beef

They loaded the Hammond B-3
Into the pickup bed,
Cinching it up tight against the cab,
Running the electric cord
Out to the Honda generator,
She sat on the piano bench
While he climbed into the driver’s seat,
She fired up the generator,
He fired up the truck,
They sneaked into the pasture before dawn,
When the sun came up the cattle were lowing,
New baby calves hid in the brome grass
Not knowing what was coming next,

She played all the greats,
Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, and Groove Holmes,
By eight o’clock she was into Booker T. Jones and Gregg Allman,
They drove around the cows and calves
Serenading them with the jazzy sound,
When she stopped playing and he stopped the pickup
They were all looking at her with that forlorn look,
She stood up and called out to them,
“There is another truck coming this afternoon,
“Don’t get into it.”

A Model Citizen Of Sorts

He always wanted to be known as The Town Drunk,
In a little Kansas town,
East of Edna,
He found his niche,
After being kicked out of Johnson County,
Told not to come back by The Powers That Be,
But he had studied his new job well,
He would be like Otis on Andy Griffith,
Let himself into the cell on Saturday night,

As a teenager he had understudied with
Louie The Drunk and Homer The Bellringer,
He had lived in scroffy apartments above taverns,
He swept up after they closed the joint,
Drinking the dregs and getting paid off in sixpacks,
You could smell the alcohol oozing out of the pores of his skin,

When he first came to town they had no tavern,
So he went to the town meeting and told them,
“How can I be The Town Drunk if you don’t have a tavern?”
So they voted one in and he went to work.

Sleeping it off in the jail or the gutter,
He served his purpose well in the little town,
Elevating some folks to higher positions in society,
Becoming a role model for what the town kids shouldn’t become,
And the raison d’etre for the pastor’s Sunday sermon.

Artist Friend

He shows up at the house from time to time,
Stinking of wine and beer,
Falling over the furniture and offering apologies,
He’s an artist, you see,
So we make certain allowances,
Like listening to his Zen koans that develop into
Diatribes
That progress to
Dissertations
Which ultimately proceed to
Theology
And then he asks if we have any beer,
We know what’s coming next:
Dropped behind enemy lines,
Worked for the CIA,
Has secret contacts all over the world,
Personally knows so-and-so and so-and-so,
Was involved in this-or-that,
And just wait until you see what happens next,
Then he sits down at the table where we keep his paints,
And he paints the most beautiful landscapes
That he sees in his head,
Then, when he passes out, face down in the paint,
We put him off gently to bed,
In the guest room,
Where we set a cold beer on the nightstand,
It’s what he has for breakfast.