When I started my job at Tri-Met one of the good things about it was the opportunity to interact with and observe all sorts of people. Now that's the bad thing. At least some days. I see more and more that the state of the culture is very poor these days. I mean, you can turn on a TV and understand that by inference, but a saturation level of encounter with the public really makes it clear. Ignorance and bad manners are rife. Maybe I'm just old. There seem to be vast numbers of young people who are slovenly, vacant, and inarticulate. Lost in their magic new iPods. Raised on sugar, graduating to Meth, diet of Coke and Doritos. Barely literate enough to read the Rider Alerts I hand them. Do I sound elitist? Whatever. I know societal decline when I see it.It cuts across all ethnic and racial lines. There's lots of bright people and endeavors too, but that's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about the ant-like swarm of ignoramuses who would sooner trample you on their way to the latest sale on "Grand Theft Auto" and slave-labor Reboks at Wal-Mart than turn the boob-tube off and undertake 2 minutes of creative thinking, let alone join you in building the new age. But hey, we'll build it anyway, right? They'll wake up when the gas runs out. We'll *all* wake up then, brothers and sisters.
Someone tell me, how do you maintain an optimistic, upbeat take on life when you're convinced that civilization is not only about to collapse, but is already in the process of doing so? In the larger scheme of things it is probably just as well, and at any rate inevitable, but still... I'm rather used to things like electric lighting, tropical fruits in winter, and Belgian chocolate. Oh, and coffee. All things that will no longer be available when it all comes crashing. On the other hand, if I and my friends can survive the starving-time, I hear you can make a tasty porridge from Camas Root.
Y'know what it needs to do? Rain. I love any given sunny day but this drought thing has gone on long enough. This pattern we've been in is drier than Reno. Think rain.
This Thursday, 2/17, I will be playing a short opening set for the Drizzletown Jubilee at Mississippi Pizza Pub. My "band" is the Mudbone Orchestra, known in this incarnation by its original name, Mudbone Jugband. The following is the official band biography of the Mudbone Jugband/Orchestra:
The Mudbone Jugband was originally formed in 1952 by
the brothers Bobby Joe and Delmar Hotchkiss of Enid,
Oklahoma. After several years of obscure toiling on
the roadhouse circuit they scored a minor hit in 1959
with the song "Gertie Got My Gumball", the B-side of
the otherwise little noted classic "Halfway to
Eureka." Bucking the urge to move to Nashville and pen
songs for more photogenic stars, the brothers indeed
moved to Eureka, California in 1961, dropping out of
the commercial music business and partnering in one of
the first back-to-the-land communes of the 60's,
Mudbone Farme. Legend has it they coined the term
"hippie" during a week-long party in 1963 when, in
retort to a drunken comment by Jack Kerouac about the
length of his hair, Delmar replied "listen up, ya old
beat down beat, enough of your lip lip lippie, my
hair's to my hip hip hippie, take it or zip zip
zippie." At which Kerouac promptly stormed out and
began his final years of bitter exile, while Alan
Ginsberg and several others in attendance immediately
began dancing in circles chanting "Delmar's hair's to
his hip hip hippie, hip hip hippie. hippie! hippie!"
And an era was born.
During the 60's the Mudbone Jugband lived on as the
ever-evolving "house band" of Mudbone Farme. Still
usually anchored by either the workmanlike guitar
playing of Bobby Joe or the rock-steady yet playful
bucket-drumming of Delmar, the band was host to a
steady stream of musicians both famous and obscure who
came to the Farme in retreat from the excesses of the
time. Johnny and June Carter Cash spent two weeks
there after their trip to visit soldiers in Vietnam in
1969.
In the 1970's and 80's life on the Farme became a
simple struggle to grow crops and pay bills. Fewer
musicians came to call, although it is said that
Willie Nelson bailed the brothers out of bankruptcy by
writing one generous check in 1988, only to himself be
hounded by the IRS several years later for failing to
keep proper financial records. In the 1990's the
brothers, then both in their 60's, reinvigorated their
lives and those of the other aging members of the
commune by playing host to groups of idealistic
tree-sitters seeking refuge from harrasment by
timber-company goons. At the same time, both Delmar
and Bobby Joe were well known and loved by locals at
several of the watering holes frequented by loggers
and their families. This lead in 1999 to the
declaration of Mudbone Farme as a "Redwood Country
Neutral Zone" at which participants on all sides of
the timber battles came to relax and party.
In 2003 into this zone came, quite by accident, two
young musicians on a coastal bike tour. Totally
without any prior knowledge of the Mudbone Jugband
(which at this point had not actually performed
publicly for over 25 years) Enrique Bronkowski and
Bruce Orr rolled into Humboldt county in April 2003
toting a traveling guitar and a bucket drum, funding
their trip by busking old country songs for tourists
along the coastal highway. While playing a rendition
of "Folsom Prison Blues" next to the Paul Bunyan
statue at the Trees of Mystery near the town of
Klamath, Delmar Hotchkiss himself drove past in his
1958 Dodge pickup, then doubled back and yelled "well
boys, I think I know where you're headed, you wanna
throw those bikes in back and I'll drive you there?"
They thought he meant Arcata, and since it was
threatening to rain again for the 15th day in a row,
they accepted the offer. They nearly panicked when the
truck instead turned up an old dirt road in the dark
woods. After several minutes the confusion was
straightened out. Delmar was understandably amazed
that, despite their instrumentation and choice of
songs, it turned out that Enrique and Bruce had never
heard of Mudbone. He insisted they come to the Farme
and spend as much time as they liked. It was a quiet
time of year and the now 70-something brothers were
happy for the company. Enrique and Bruce ended up
staying at the Farme for over a month that spring,
helping with the planting and engaging in what
amounted to a musical apprenticeship with the
Hotchkiss Brothers. Indeed, it was not long before the
brothers knew they had found the heirs apparent to the
Mudbone Jugband legacy. In an informal but heartfelt
ceremony at the Farme's May Day party, Delmar and
Bobby Joe told Enrique and Bruce to henceforth freely
use the name "Mudbone Jugband."
So for the rest of their bike trip down the coast,
thence back home in Portland, OR early that fall, they
billed themselves as the Mudbone Jugband. Upon their
return, the many demands of town life slowed their
musical output for a time, as Bruce founded the Mudeye
Puppet Company and married his Italian sweetheart
Carla Forte, and Enrique toiled for a time painting
memorial portraits for the local funeral industry
under the alias Dan Reed Miller, and starting a
successful blog of fiction and loosely based
reportage, www.travelingdan.com. But the muse still
called them, and realizing that Portland's wealth of
creative talent was too great to not exploit, the
Mudbone Jugband was reborn yet again, this time as the
Mudbone Orchestra, a shifting ensemble of 2 to 18
members playing everything from Bucket drum to trumpet
to bean-rattle. They play now regularly to
appreciative audiences from the inner East Side to the
near North Side. Tonight they will be joined by Paul "Pinball" Nama on harmonica and Liza Jane on Harmony Vocals. They will reprise a couple of
country classics from two of Delmar and Bobby Joe's
best friends, Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins, plus one
or two dark-edged Bronkowski originals.
-----------------------------------------
Last Wednesday after a late rising post Mardi Gras morning I headed out to Eagle Creek and hiked the 6 miles into and past Tunnel Falls. I hadn't been to the wilds in awhile, and never before as far along Eagle Creek as Tunnel Falls, so it was time to do it. Eagle Creek, as those of you have been there know, is one of the most beautiful river canyon and waterfall type places in the whole world. And Tunnel Falls, wow. And that next falls up from there has this amazing crisscross-over-itself thing. So it was all lovely and breathtaking and heart-lifting and soul becalming. All those good reasons I go hiking. But when I got home I slid somehow very easily from a calm peacefulness into a black depression. For a variety of reasons or no reason, but somehow, ironically, it was the hike that triggered it. Like, having this wonderful experience of primary reality, nature in its wild beauty, but then a feeling of the vast ironies of living divorced most of the time from this reality, and driving a world-destroying car to get back to it for a few short hours, and returning to my electric lights powered by the drowned salmon and villages of the preceding society. And in the next moment a simple black melancholy and my life is meaningless and what the hell am I doing anyway? What the hell am I doing? Well, lots of things, little and big, and within 24 hours it was more or less turned around as I engaged again in my activities, volunteering at SCRAP and going to work (yes plain old work) and throwing some more mud and tiles on my bathtub wall. No doubt I think too much *and* feel too much both. Its just part of who I am. Now its the day before Valentine's Day. Oooh. Yikes. Luckily I'll just be hanging out low key with some friends.
I made that observation over a year ago the first time I really checked it out. Now for the past couple of shifts at work I've been riding the route 89 bus getting people's reactions to a possible cut in service, and I say again, and more emphatically, not only is Beaverton a shithole, it is the perfect embodiment of everything that is wrong with the auto-oriented pattern of development that has destroyed so much of the American landscape. Beaverton is truly nothing but a frightful and vast collection of strip malls, office parks, and hideously ugly subdivisions and apartment complexes, linked by overcrowded roads that may have been fine when it was all still pastures and woods. Now the pastures and woods that are left are nothing but scraggly lots and sad little swamps surrounded by the nightmare of suburbia. And when I say nightmare, I really mean it: living out there would, to me, be a living hell. The architecture is all ugly all the time, there are no sidewalks except within the confines of individual subdivisions but not along the hell-roads that link these tumors together, hell roads that god forbid you might want to ride a bike on to get to the store, which will be, at best, a Safeway or a Marie Callendar's Pie House or Hollywood video, so you might as well surrender and drive your car to buy so much as a quart of milk, and if you don't own a car out there? God help you. You're in the wrong neck of the woods. Move to the city where we have things like sidewalks, a comprehensible street grid, and good bus service. Because Tri-Met service out there on the westside is sketchy at best. I feel sorry for the poor souls I've been talking with on the route 89. They ride it because it is their only mode of transport, and here I am informing them that Tri-Met is proposing to cut the already poor service to once per hour and ending at 7:30 PM. Honestly, there was real anguish at the prospect, and tales (which I duly noted on piles of report-sheets) of lives and livlihoods that will be upended by such a calamitous cut in service. I actually totally enjoyed talking with all these folks, it is fascinating, but by the end of it I was convinced that the transit-planners, and even Mr. Fred Hansen the Tri-Met general manager himself, are the ones who should be out there telling these people that their bus service may soon go further into the crapper. But Tri-Met has a budget shortfall, so someone's gotta take the hits. So they target the "low-performing" routes, which really means routes that have low ridership because service is already bad, and its out in the traffic-choked dystopia of the anti-portland, where people are appendages of cars and the houses are garages with attached slave-quarters.
Thank Goddess I live in Portland! Portland isn't perfect, but experiencing Beaverton makes me appreciate it SO much.
Of course what I really love about Portland is the people: I love you! You wonderful Portlandians! I get all mushy just thinking about you and the community here. It's great and keeps getting better. We're rich here in a new way.