Happy Birthday Jack, here's some Fisheye Brothers for you. Everybody wins!

I was born in Lowell. Never lived there, but I was born there. At Saint Josephs Hospital which was later absorbed by Saint Johns, a different Catholic hospital in Lowell and that amalgamation is now known collectively as Saints. Saint Josephs was deep in the heart of some of Jack's territory. Pivotal scenes from Dr Sax take place virtually across the street at this insane sort of drive-thru Stations of the Cross. If anyone is interested in touring some Jack places, message me. It's been awhile since I've had a willing victim and it would be fun.

Once I got to college my friends and I visited Jack's grave regularly, often skipping classes to do so. One after hours visit involving a bottle of Wild Irish Rose led me to make some shaky decisions. First of all, do not visit Kerouac's grave on the anniversary of his death. It's way too high profile. And take it from me, do not ever use the hood of your car to boost yourself over a chain link fence when you are wearing round toed hightops. Naturally, this was the night the cops showed up and we had to make a run for it. There was no time to spare and after some spastic high speed windmilling I managed to make the top of the fence. Hmmm...top of chain link sharp! I have a scar on my inner thigh that I can say was the result of a leopard attack and be believed by an otherwise reasonable person. Thanks to the Wild Irish Rose it didn't hurt a bit. Until I had to explain what happened when I got the tetanus shot. All things considered it was so worth it. I mean really, what a great scar to have in reserve to show to Willie when I met him in another year or so.

Willie's a big Jack fan and I just fell in love with his song Kerouac when I heard it. To me it was such an intensely local song and that's one thing I really love about Willie's work to this day. His deeply detailed and compassionate homages to people or places that he knows up close are still fascinating to me now and sounding better than ever. This Fisheye Brothers project I've posted here is something that Willie collaborated on with one of the drummers he works with, Jim Doherty. Jim has recently opened a recording studio in downtown Portland Maine. For these songs, Willie sang from his notebooks and played piano and Jim took the tapes home with him and added all the rest. I hope you like them as much as I do.

Here's a photo I took of Willie one summer in front of the Stations of the Cross drive-thru.

Old e-mail to Ra about Kennie.

This picture was taken on Martha's Vineyard, the last time I saw Kennie. We stopped at the liquor store on the way home from the airport and she bought a gallon of vodka. She drank it mixed with Gatorade, rarely slept and ran the television constantly. We couldn't get her to go for a ride to the beach, but we did go out to dinner one night at the Harbor View Hotel, also pictured above. We sat on the porch afterwards as night fell, looking out on the tiny harbor and light house. For some reason we started talking about The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and it came out that she felt like Joan Baez had done the definitive version. I made a sound like I'd been shot and started choking and sputtering about the Band. Laughter from the street made me shout out "Baez or Band?" and harumph with satisfaction when "Oh BAND!" came back in retort.

A message dated June 1, 1999

Hi, how is everything? It is so fucking hot here I am sweating like a whore...it's embarrassing. I was at the studio doing my chores and I was just dripping, and I was only standing around yammering.

Spoke to Kennie Sat. night. She sounds well considering what she's been through. She's convinced the nurses are taking her meds and I wanted to say well, they're junkies and all they care about is getting high, but I thought the better of it. No sense in reminding her of better times. ha ha.

One thing I have to tell you. She was talking about how she ended up in the hospital. I couldn't quite understand where she said she'd been. (And I wrote this down at the time I was so blown away.) "I only got a little cut on my foot. They had this little fountain and I was walking through it and stepped on a broken champagne glass." I just love that she's having all these fabulous visions. Like I told you before, I wouldn't take it so much to heart that she asked for her 'birthday bourbon' as she isn't totally coherent yet anyway. She seems like she's still in that half awake and yet still dreaming kind of state. I LOVE IT when that happens.

I wonder where Jeri-Ann is?

Love QT

Ra went through so much taking care of Kennie and being there for her. He can never be thanked enough. We later found out that Jeri-Ann was hopping freight trains and riding aimlessly around the country. God, I miss my friends...

Beachcombovers

I suppose if you're a Beachcombover the surf is always up, but for you 'normals' out there it looks like this weekend will be a good time to haul out the old Woodie and dust it off and get down to waxing those boards. Spring is still officially two weeks away but I know you're all gonna jump the gun today so here's some inspiration for you.

I know there was talk of adding a singer and/or keyboards so the line-up may have expanded but these are the credits for the video that I lifted off of YouTube:
Beachcombovers at the "Church" nightclub in Boston, MA USA 8/21/08 play Nokie Edwards
"Surf Rider"
Tommy White - Surf Guitar
John Cahill - Surf Drums
Bruce Scott - Surf Bass