ME AND MR. JINX

I’ve never been in a casino before, but I’m spending a few nights in an immense one in Reno.  It’s the end of several weeks of touring and I’ve met up with my boyfriend for a last few shows in Nevada.  The time is way past midnight and we should be in our room watching cable TV but instead we’re in the lounge with Mr. Jinx.

Mr. Jinx is not your average lounge band.  Then again maybe they are, but having nothing to compare them with I think they’re excellent. They play from 11:45 PM to 3:30 AM six nights a week in the middle of acres of slot machines and craps tables, several feet above a bar made up of more slot machines.  The first night we sit down in front of them we do so with an air of condescension, but that quickly gives way to enjoyment and then complete admiration.  Maybe it’s the way they slide effortlessly from “Handle With Care” to “Just What I Needed.”  It could be how the drummer sweats and strains, giving his all on a completely synthetic drum kit.  In fact everything is at a very low volume, and very few people are paying any attention.  But Mr. Jinx play as if they were on a Zeppelin-worthy stage, imbuing each song with humor and some kind of nonchalant passion.

There’s a lesson to be learned here somewhere, and when I’m a little less burnt-out I think I’ll decide what it is.  For now I’m content to watch the short guitar player, who looks like he wandered out of a John Hughes movie (dark spiky hair, little round glasses and new wave shirt) trade riffs with the tall guitar player (gaunt 70’s rocker with a possibly non-ironic shag), and listen to the frat-rat bass player sing harmony with the raspy voiced neo-Romantics drummer. “Keep your eyes on the road, and your hands upon the whee-el!”  All night long.

* * *

It’s several days later and I’ve had the chance to reflect a little on Mr. Jinx and what sometimes feels like my own personal squad of gremlins.  Part of the appeal of this bar band is the fact that they soldier on night after night in bizarre circumstances, in front of people whose main focus is trying to beat machines that will in the end, never really let them win.  That kind of describes my life out on the road.  The circumstances tend to vary wildly (and that is part of the frustration, and the charm, of touring on a very small level) and the machine is life.  The odds of anyone winning are pretty slight, but if I can make someone look up from the game for a minute and laugh, or remember something, or forget something else, then I’m a working musician whose bad luck isn’t earned but merely part of the job.

Ahem.  Now that I’ve taken the gambling metaphor somewhere even gambling shouldn’t be asked to go, I’ll recount a little of the past few months…

NY Passport Office – Take the most disorganized people in the Northeastern United States, give them all children and plane tickets to other countries and put them in a line, then another line, then a large room without food and water, so they can get their passports in a day.  A good way to remember why it’s great to be an American - because we get to do stuff like this by choice. 

My daughter Hazel is traveling to Ireland and the UK with me.  Last year she enjoyed being on the tour bus in Europe with her dad and Steve Earle, but my intention is to show her the other end of the touring spectrum so she’ll maybe have second thoughts about being a musician. I suggested that we could sing a few songs together, and instead of politely begging off (as I expected her to do), she’s eager to perform.

We do our first show together with my brother Michael’s band at Otto’s Shrunken Head lounge on East 14th Street in New York City.  Appropriate somehow, as Hazel’s original home in NY was less than one block away.  We unloaded the apartment when the building went co-op in the late 80’s – I think our buyout was…gulp – a couple thousand dollars, approximately one month’s rent for this neighborhood now.  Oh to be young, poor and stupid again!  Wait – forget the poor and stupid part.

Otto’s is filled with old friends who’ve stopped by to cheer Hazel on and it’s a touching scene.  At the same time, I’m aware of the fact that I’m hanging out in a bar with my teenage daughter, and will be doing so for the next few weeks.  Men are talking to her, and there’s alcohol around.  But when I was her age I was doing the same thing…only without the music and my mother had no idea where I was.  This has got to be better.

The trip overseas is uneventful but then thanks to Ryan Air’s “bargain fares” we have six hours to kill in Gatwick Airport.  You’d think by now I would have learned to gauge my travel cost cutting measures better.  Sure, the flights to Dublin were only one pound each.  But factor in the taxes, fees, and overweight luggage (basically anything over a carryon bag) charge, and the extreme discomfort of spending several sleep-deprived hours on a public sofa a few feet away from smokers and ear-shattering arcade games, and what have we really saved?

When we finally do arrive it’s great to be in Dublin, a city that appeals to me more each time I visit.  The only drawback is the high prices on virtually everything, except free rides on the brand new light rail system which according to a taxi driver is “a fookin’ train to nowhere.”

We devise a complicated baggage carrying system.  I have my guitar on my back, messenger bag diagonally across my chest, duffel bag of clothing on one shoulder and rolling suitcase with my CDs in the other hand.  Hazel has a forty pound knapsack, rolling suitcase of clothing and snare drum in a soft case strapped onto her rolling suitcase.  I get the nagging feeling on this trip that I’m too old to be touring like this!  Maybe it’s the presence of my daughter, a constant witness to the continually trying circumstances I put myself in in order to play a gig.  On and off trains, standing in long lines, up and down stairs, in and out the wrong doors.  On second thought, it sounds similar to commuting from Long Island, only the pay is worse.

Still, we have a good time in Ireland.  We enjoy Cork, a lively and colorful city.  We indulge in the after-gig ritual of eating unhealthy food, in this case the appropriately named “Hillbilly Fried Chicken.”  The next morning I manage to drive a car out of the city center, admonishing Hazel “Do not laugh or comment at anything I say or do in the next few hours,” having never driven on the other side of the road before.  I can see her biting her lip as I shriek and wail my way through the first roundabout.

It’s a long way to Sligo town (Grange, more specifically), but the scenery is lovely and the locals charming in a disheveled way.  This is one place, along with Alaska, where I can actually imagine settling down, ambling into town occasionally in a poncho or something to buy whiskey.

Our Irish idyll is eventually disturbed by discerning thieves who break the window of our rental car one night outside of Limerick (“the armpit of Ireland” we learn, too late) and steal Hazel’s snare drum and my suitcase of merchandise out of the trunk.  I sob into the arms of a soft-spoken gardai who shakes his head and says “Who knows?  Perhaps this’ll be the start of great things for you in Ireland.  Look on the bright side - this may be the best distribution your CDs get!”  And Hazel, herself being one-third Irish, chimes in “And we’ve got less luggage to carry now…”

So to any members of the Irish underworld currently reading this, thanks and see you next time.

Coming soon, Hazel and I meet some of our punk forebears…