It was the best concert I've ever attended, that I will probably ever attend. I took my friend Lori's 14 year old daughter, Wren. It was her first concert and she has good taste in music. She really enjoyed "Kicking Television" and her mom got her the Jeff Tweedy ticket for Christmas. I made the poor girl drive out there two hours early. Silly me, I thought there'd be a line.
The staff wasn't even there yet. We got a scone and some tea and sat outside the venue, talking for like an hour. When people started to gather, we finally ventured into the line. Got front row, a little to stage left of the microphone. It took forever for anything to happen and I was telling everyone how it was Wren's first concert- what a great first concert!
The opening band was painful. Repetitive riffs, boring lyrics, monotone voices. Usually a good sign that the next act will be amazing.
I spent the two hours of Tweedy constantly recovering from chills. One incredible song after another, most I had never heard before: New Madrid, Gun, Black Eye. It was just him and 8 guitars. We talked, he and me. Three or four times through the concert. He played Muzzle of Bees for me (originally asked for Handshake Drugs because it's Wren's favorite but he said it would sound like one hand clapping without the whole band and sonic ending). Then I remembered this code he gave for next year's re-entry and he said I'd be the only person allowed in. *sigh*
I didn't hunt down an autograph for my poster or try to meet the man. I was excited just to be a fan in the crowd who got to yell occasional things at him. I don't do well around famous people face-to-face; just make an ass of myself. Ask Adam Duritz and Pat Green.
Then, getting to listen to it again tonight, I realized having a recording of the show enabled it to be a soundtrack for important life turns. The first song he played, now on Sky Blue Sky, was Allen through and through (Be patient with me). The second song, Remember the Mountain Bed (lyrics by Woodie Guthrie) I played on repeat while destroying what was left of our Airstream pad, garden and fences. I kicked and pulled and threw and screamed and cried all to the open mountains of our desert home.
"I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears;
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here:
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain;
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again."
Gun he sang unplugged, and if you know Tweedy's music, you know how raw with emotion it can be. I've used it as a crutch in a few emotional moments. He stood at the end of that stage and screamed it into the audience. Fuck. Fuck. Amazing.
I can't believe I have it back. I can't wait to share it with other Tweedy lovers. I want to stay up all night and listen to it again and again. I think I'll copy it onto the computer, put a copy on my iPod, make 400 copies of the cds and send them to everyone I know, bury some in the backyard, hide some in the attic, tuck a few into my books and take another with me to Boulder, just to make sure I never lose it again.
As my friend Jed so wisely commented :
"I have a music/soul crush on this man, this husband, this father, this fucker. Damn him, I wish he'd stop singing my life, and tellin all my secrets. He has a way of sayin things, no?"
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Full Lyrics to Remember the Mountain Bed
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds:
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves, face, breast, hips and thighs,
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes.
Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled woodvines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.
Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky,
As your fingers played with grassy moss, and limber did you lie:
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there.
Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away:
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go.
There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The People laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die.
The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown,
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim, but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...
I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams,
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands.
I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears,
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here:
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.
All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breasts of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again.
WORDS: Woody Guthrie (1944) -
MUSIC: Jeff Tweedy/Jay Bennett (1999)
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