Floppy Like a Manta Ray

Standing in the snow the other night in Chicago, talking to smart, funny, good people outside Schuba's after the show, I was amazed at the number of times I was thanked, just for playing. These incredible people -- willing to drag their asses out of their apartments and into the freezing night, miss dinner driving around looking for a parking space and part with hard earned cash just for the privilege of standing in a smoke filled room smushed up against other people -- were thanking ME for showing up and doing what I would be doing anyway. Someone actually said, "What you do is so hard!" and I thought, "No...everything ELSE is hard; this is easy."

If you ask my youngest son, who is three, what he wants to be when he grows up, he replies, "Floppy like a manta ray". If you ask him why, he says, "Um, 'cause I would be happy-floppy."

For those of you who've been told that music is hard and musicians are tortured, here is proof that at least some of us are "happy-floppy". These are actual real-life emails my string players, The McCarricks and I exchanged before our London show last month:

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11/7/05
Hi there BillyO and Kitten Hell,

Hope this e mail finds you guys happy and grooving to whatever it is you guys groove to.

Can you give us any info on these 4AD 25th anniversary shows at the Scala? Will there be rehearsals? We hope so. Are we playing anything we haven't yet worked on? We hope so. We know it's a few weeks away, but any info will be mucho appreciated. We are so excited. Can't wait to see you. Can't wait to play together again.

Love to all,
McCarricks

P.S. Set list?

11/9/05
Hello, darlings. We get to play! We get to play! We get to PLAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's my set list:

Highway to Hell; Jukebox Hero; Candy Man; Candy Girl; Cinnamon Girl; Yesterday; Tomorrow; Sunrise, Sunset; Sunshine on My Shoulder; Good Morning Starshine; Good Morning; Morning Girl; Candy Girl; Cinnamon Girl...

'kay?

K

11/10/10
WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Kim has offered to talk to the audience this time around. We feel that that part of the show all too often gets left to you and it isn't fair. So she may tell some anecdotes, but most likely she will just "cry" and remind the audience of how much your music has meant to her.
xoxo
McCarricks

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And then this exchange after the shows:

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11/24/05
Help! Billy and Kristin are gone! We'll never forget your tear stained faces, waving goodbye from the window of a black cab and screeching away into the rainy darkness...

Seriously, though: oh no! Now we can't play anymore. Now we are sad. Now you must book an American tour with us. NOW.

Love,
The McCarricks

11/25/05
I want to fly back to London and bang on the doors of the Scala until somebody lets us back in -- or else take the "tube" to your "flat" so we can keep playing there, at least.

Don't you miss the best drug in the world?

xoxo

K

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Merry Hannukwanadon & Happy New Year every one of you -- and thank you for listening to records and coming to shows and making me floppy as a goddamn manta ray. Hope to see you all soon, somewhere.

Love,

Kristin

Thunder Thighs in Thunder Snow

Got a minute to say something to you all, 'cause Billy's playing drums, of all things. And, seriously, all talk of cuteness aside, he is so adorable when he plays drums: he goes cross-eyed, his tongue sticks out really far, and he grips the sticks with a very sweet white knuckled kind of panic. He's going to delete this, I can tell already.

So now we're in Stage 3 of studio life. The first thing that happens when you make a record is: you play songs very politely and professionally because that's all you can think of doing and, after all, you are a professional musician. This is Stage 1, the "Boring Stage". Next, though you continue to play and record music, your hair begins to reflect the realities of unusual hours, unusual sleeping positions and the fact that nobody around you cares what you look like. This is Stage 2, also known as "Ocean Madness". In Stage 3, though, you begin to hand instruments to other people in the room, be they husbands, Fed Ex guys or dogs, mostly just to hear what happens, but also so you can sneak off and eat pie. This is also known as, "Sucking".

Also? "Thunder Snow" can happen! Did you know this? Did you know there even WAS such a thing? Yesterday, the sky just lost it for a few hours -- all of a sudden, it was snowing sideways and there was thunder and lightning and 75 mph winds and the horses in the stable where I record were yelling and running around and then there was white out snow and then power outages and then it cleared a little and there was a crazy golden light on the black and white landscape. It was absolutely amazing. We had to stop working while Rizzo ran around taking movies and opening doors so we could smell the ozone scented snowy air. And oddly enough, the song we had on a loop was "The Thin Man" which repeats the words, " in the ozone snow" over and over and over. Not as creepy as it sounds, but it was still cool.

Meanwhile in hell: Bernie was pushing his thunderous thigh muscles to their limit. The US National Cyclocross Championships are being held at Roger Williams Park in Providence, RI this weekend and Bernie's here riding in 2 races, one on Friday (yesterday in the "Snowicane" and one on Sunday, tomorrow). Last week he finished half a wheel length out of first place in the California "class B" championship. Yesterday, he finished, like 63rd, in a race chock-full of guys getting paid to mostly cyclocross. His hands and feet and even eyelids (yes, eyeLIDS, not eyelashes) froze. He had to physically look at his hands to see if they were even moving when he wanted them to shift gears or something. If you're around Providence tomorrow, come watch a rested and defrosted Bernie race more!

We're so proud of him. If he actually lives through this weekend, maybe he'll play bass for 50FOOTWAVE again.

Love,
Kristin

Beast Machines

Three days ago, we returned home from tour to the screaming, jet engine-like sound of many large machines running at top volume in our busted house, as if cyber-creatures had colonized it in our absence. There's this very impressive pulmonary system of sorts in place, running tubes full of dry air from the giant robot king into our damp walls and floors and what is left of the ceiling. There are lesser, but still impressive, cyber creatures positioned around the house, all screaming in different tones, most of them clustered in the basement. The basement, from the way it sounds, is a place into which I will never venture again. Something like having your very own 747 in a basement hangar. Neato!

We have been instructed to keep the heat at 75 degrees in order to help the drying process along (we usually keep it at 55...We don't thrive in temperatures higher than that). Factoring in the heat that the screaming robots and the stressed out humans are generating, I figure it's about 85 or 90 in here. We wear shorts and t-shirts in the house, then drape ourselves in winter gear to go outside where it's like...20. Then we pelt each other with snowballs 'til we feel better.

I briefly entertained the idea of keeping my sense of humor about this: covering the beast machines in Christmas lights and pine boughs, maybe having the kids draw faces on them. As it turns out, that's not very funny. Or maybe it is; I just can't THINK with all this NOISE!

So a few hours ago, Billy and I looked at each other in the shimmering heat of the kitchen and something in my expression made him mouth instructions to dress the kids in their outside gear and put them in the car. He then drove us to a civilized restaurant where we shared civilized conversation over a civilized dinner and decided to make a run for it.

The upshot being, I get to go back to Rizzo's and go back to work on my record! Score! That's a million for Kristin, ZERO for the dumb ass home invading cyber-creeps! Now I won't forget the new song I wrote at the beach (it's called "The Thin Man", in case I do forget it -- then you tell me), now I won't forget the piano and guitar overdubs I wrote on tour, now I can point at Elizabethan gourds hanging on Rizzo's wall and say, "Steve! Tune it, I think I can play it!".

Just like old times...

Love,
Kristin