Throw this love down the highway, see where it takes you.
I just wrote about Jay Farrar a few days ago, and I wondered if I would have anything to say after seeing him again tonight. Answer: yes.
This was my first visit to City Winery, a chain of wine/food/music venues. It’s like World Cafe Live kicked up another notch on the white privilege scale. Odd place to see Jay Farrar, but it turned out well if a bit surreal. The lovely young lady at the merch table asks if we need anything. Got it all…wait…is that a wine bottle with a Jay label? We’re offering a Jay Farrar Zinfandel tonight. Uh…hmm…not sure how to process that.
Who the hell is Dow Jones anyway? He’s the guy paying for our scallops, cheese plate, lobster spaghetti, and Smuttynose IPA. Don’t think I’ve ever had a $200 tab at a Jay Farrar show. The privileged class is here in suits-suits not flannel at a Jay Farrar show. Hard times…these hard times…hard times come again no more.
The opening act is a guy named Chip Taylor. This guy’s got a story, and he’s here to tell it. He’s from Yonkers. His brother is John Voight. His other brother is a world-renowned volcanologist (cool). Chip’s bookie was Meyer Lansky. Chip is a songwriter. He hung out at 1650 Broadway, and if you think the Brill Building was the thing, nope, 1650 Broadway was really where it was at. Chet Atkins once told Chip’s publisher he wanted to see everything Chip wrote. Hey, at pretty much exactly this time a week ago I was hearing Jason Isbell telling his own Chet Atkins story. Chip Taylor wrote Wild Thing. THE Wild Thing. And Chip Taylor is Jay Farrar’s friend. Of course, this is all we need to know. Also if we go to his bar, Parnells on 53rd St. on the east side and he’s sitting on the first stool drinking Laphroaig and we say hey, Chip, we saw you with Jay, he will buy us a drink. This may prove useful someday.
Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby. Chip don’t actually sing much, Chip talks, and interrupts the fun storytelling once in a while to play one of his hits, which also include Angel of the Morning. This makes him the exact opposite of Jay Farrar. Jay speaks through his music or basically not at all.
Talk to me, Jay! pleaded one well-dressed guy a couple of tables away. Yes, please.
Except tonight Jay is talkative. He not only mumbles “how you all doing” his requisite once, but later he says it again! He says he’s glad to be back, and he seems to mean it. He intros one song. Chip, and maybe the idea of having his own personal Zinfandel, have brought out happy Jay. Maybe even he is charmed by the sight of the privileged class enjoying its privileges. Or more likely, resigned to it at this point. (I have a minute of deja vu about that word, then I realize I’ve used it to describe Jay before. See Seasons On The Road)
When we’re all passed over, the rhythm of the river will remain…
He also seems to be resigned to the legacy of Trace, from which he sampled heavily along with Honky Tonk. He finished the show with Tear Stained Eye and Windfall and they didn’t seem throwaways, like the old days when he would rush through them while seeming to want to replace the lyrics with I’m only doing this because I know you’ll burn the place down if I don’t but I don’t know why, which to my mind says he accepts the fact that to many people these may be the two most perfect songs ever written, and maybe he’s finally at peace with that. Wanting change but also being a bit resigned and at peace with stuff is what this music is about, after all, and we all get that.
Never feel alone, you’re really not alone…
Music as the great equalizer…you can stand in puddles of Coors in dingy halls in your holey flannel shirt or you can sit at swank tables in suits and diamonds slurping lobster spaghetti with saffron and fennel tomato ragout. But you will still fall into a rapture and sing quietly, or whisper, your eyes wide or closed tight and thank your god or nature or the muses or just Jay Farrar that these songs exist to make us sad, contented, more whole, and…at peace. I look around the room as I sing and they sing and we smile. Can you deny, there’s nothing greater?
Setlist: The Picture, Live Free, Hard Times, California Zephyr, Bakersfield, Wild Side, Brick Walls, Seawall, Strength and Doubt, Barstow, Highways and Cigarettes, Hoping Machine, Methamphetamine, Grindstone, Down the Highway, Back in Your World, Route, Afterglow 61, Hearts and Minds, a cover I don’t know, Tear Stained Eye, Windfall, Still Be Around.
The View from the Porch 