Amy and I wanted to make a night of it by going to our favorite Sushi place first. This would be Shiroi Hana in Wrigleyville. Forgetting about the Taste of Chicago, we fought our way through downtown to get to Lake Shore Drive. Then the question was whether a Cubs game that had started at 1:00 would be long-enough over to leave the streets around Wrigley fairly calm at about 7:00. Nope. So that was traffic snarl #2, in the face of which we folded completely, deciding just to try for one of those Indian places just west of Uncommon Ground on Devon. This turned out to be traffic snarl #3, as we’d forgotten just how insane “Little India” could be on a weekend night. No. Parking. Anywhere.
It was an inauspicious beginning to an important night. Still, I found a spot on Western, and we stole a few decent moments chatting and noshing on nan at the Viceroy. It was one of those nights where Amy looked extra-pretty to me, a calm pool of water in the middle of this potentially stressful evening… It was too close to gig-time for me to want to eat much, so all too soon we boxed up my butter chicken and hit it. Got to U-Ground a little late, 9:15 when it should have been 9:00. Seemed crowded. Bill Fox was nowhere to be seen, but I was getting texts from his buddy/manager, Tim. They were across the street at an “Old Style” bar, and I walked down to meet them. I faintly recognized Tim, was introduced to a guy named Nick and of course, there was Bill Fox. Right off the bat, he thanked me for hooking up the show, and I thanked him, and it was silly (but nice). Now, I’d met Bill for a second when playing at the Happy Dog the spring before last. I’d literally just stepped up to him, shook his hand and said something like, “You have some really good songs.” Understatement City, as I came to learn in the following months, but whatever. I didn’t want to stammer around the guy or make a big thing out of his big talent. Clearly, from his notorious musical shyness, he’d prefer it that way, too.
I quickly got the sense that Bill and Tim and crew were in town to party a little (or maybe even a lot), and that the vibe at U-Ground was not ideal for their M.O. True, the beer there is excellent but expensive, and the waitstaff (with the exception of our waiter, who was pretty cool) can come across as…keyed-up. What I think it comes down to is that Uncommon Ground has a difficult time towing the line between being a restaurant on the one hand, and a music venue on the other. Indeed, you’re encouraged to come and have a nice dinner, but then sometimes (understandably, to me), you might want to show up without a reservation and not even eat anything, just drink and listen. I mean, it’s a (folk) rock show, isn’t it? Anyway, people get confused. But from where I’m standing, the clash feels completely unnecessary. I mean, people just want to hear some music; no-one’s trying to be a jerk. In fact, I think people are likely to tip better when the staff has to deal with all this music-room craziness. It’s a nearly unavoidable win-win, can’t we all just relax?
Anyway, I understood why the Cleveland crew preferred the corner bar across the street, why they’d rather stay there until the last possible minute. Peace be upon them. Meanwhile, I went back to soundcheck, and I had trouble locating an electrical outlet behind all the billowy curtains on the small U-Ground stage. I asked the sound guy where I could find one, and he said, “everywhere.” My nervousness must have blinded me because, honestly… Ah, there was one behind the piano. I had a bourbon sent to the stage. The place was really filling up. I’d say about a third were “my people” (most of whom are Bill Fox fans, too), a third were younger Bill Fox fans, and a third were old-school Bill Fox fans. A good mix. Whatever the breakdown, the place was jam-packed, and I was nervous. So I started how I always do when terrified, with an a capella version of George Jones’ “She Thinks I Still Care.” Then I did:
Johnny Without June / Lisa Pruett Will Have Her Revenge on Coventry / The Creak of the Landline / The Condensation / Caleb’s Conclusion / Jay / Spirit of 91 / Do You See the Rifles? / The Oldies Station / The Next Thing You Know / Terrible Things / Chumming the Ocean [Archers of Loaf ] / West of Western
I don’t think I really got comfortable until about halfway through. With all of the “performance theory” I’ve been indulging in lately, I feel like I’m hyper-aware of the complete chaos inherent in each and every moment. I mean, the whole thing really could go down in flames at any second. I could flub or forget a line, or a waiter could drop a tray, or my songs just might not be as good as I thought they were the day before. At the risk of sounding corny, this really is the blessing and the curse of doing this in front of people, the sheer immediacy of it. Which is fascinating and all, but now I have to find a way to honor that, give it a nod…and then forget it completely and just play.
Having said that, I actually think I held my own, basically. I’d been drilling the setlist obsessively for weeks. “The Oldies Station” was a surprise highlight, and my new secret weapon — a cheap delay pedal, sparingly used — was a hit, especially on “Caleb” and the Archers song.
I will admit that when Tim told me Bill was too freaked out to’ve caught any of my set, that he’d stayed in the green room the whole time…I was a little crestfallen. Who wouldn’t be? Then again, I just spent a paragraph describing the terror of playing music in front of people. I think Bill might have a similar wariness, only magnified as the result of dropping two amazing records in the late 90′s and never, as of this writing, following up on them. He has what I can only imagine is an unfair and almost unconscious weight of expectation placed on him by losers like me who stoke the mystique out loud while downplaying it in our heads. (A more succinct criticism of what I’m talking about was written by The Reader’s Monica Kendrick the day before the show.)
He didn’t introduce himself, just set some levels and got on with it. Bill’s songs are such pure distillations that unless you’re a hardcore folk fan, it’s hard to tell which are his, and which are, say, Carter Family or Dylan covers. After five songs, none of which I recognized from recordings, I asked Tim, who was right behind me. He said four out of five were new songs. (I felt myself beaming one of those unfair, unconscious rays of expectation towards the stage: “Please record these!” Ah, well.) For the rest of Bill’s set, Tim was a discreet and well-appreciated guide to what I was hearing, old cover or new original. At the same time, I got to quietly horse around with Amy and our friends Kim and Pete and Shyni, and the bourbon was definitely starting to mellow me out. Just before Bill’s last song (which I’m pretty sure was called “The Story of You”), Tim leaned over and said, “Oh, this one’s insane. It’s got like ten verses.”) And indeed, it did seem to go on for a long time — not that I wanted it to stop. Every time Bill wound back around to the phrase “the story of you,” it felt like when I first heard “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” all wistful and widescreen, and somehow already in my blood…
We screamed and shouted for an encore, but we wouldn’t be getting one. The room broke up into many bouquets of conversation. I talked with Tim about old Cleveland bands like the Revelers and Jehohva Waitresses, and he claimed to’ve actually seen my old-old band, Rotary Ten! I also got to catch up with Christine and Justin. But I also felt in a rush to get my gear out of there so Amy could head on home. Initially, there was a possibility that the Cleveland crew would be crashing at our place, but when I asked Tim how “the troops” were feeling, he said, “The troops are pretty rowdy.” At which point I had to make a decision: Go home with Amy, or hang with this crew and see what happened. Tim suggested there might be more music-making involved, so I figured I’d better ride this out. And I’d taken a long strategic nap that afternoon, so…
Part of the crew were Caren and Sneza, whom I knew already, so it wasn’t like I was amongst total strangers. And I really did get to like Tim quite a bit. Plus, at the same Old Style bar across the street, I talked a lot with a fellow bike enthusiast named Jennifer. She said she heard Bill Fox many years ago, playing a show in Boston. I chatted with Sneza, she of the Adaptations and Good Apples, about how we aim to take over the Chicago music scene (snort, chuckle). We closed that bar as I accidentally caught a glimpse of a clock that read 2:30. Like I was still in my twenties. We had to head towards the crash pad of the aforementioned Nick, who lived around the corner from the Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonald’s in…River North? Whatever, it was a long drive down LSD, six of us crammed into Tim’s smallish car.
After we secured parking for him, someone in our party led us to a whiskey bar that was still open. I bought a round, and it was then that I actually got to talk to Bill a little. He said he’d heard some of my stuff online, “From Cleveland to Eternity” in particular, and that he liked it. He also asked where I came up with the name Zapruder Point, and I was drunk enough to offer the long, honest answer. Though my ramble had to do with my “falling in love with a four-track machine,” I knew better than to try and steer from there into HIS recording process. Instead, I got occasional word from Tim that, yeah, there are new recordings, some solo, some with a band, but who knows what’s going to become of them?
Next thing you know, Tim said the hootenanny was on, and we walked across the street to Nick’s apartment. I was well in the bag at that point, and I really wanted to hear Bill play a couple more songs. But I also could tell that I wasn’t going to get that unless someone else got the ball rolling. So I grabbed Bill’s guitar, false-started a couple Simon and Garfunkel songs that I was too drunk to handle, then went ahead and screwed up one of my own rock-simple things. I tried to hand the guitar to Bill, but he deferred, so it went to Tim, who played some standard that Bill harmonized on. Their voices went well together, and everyone in the room got glassy-eyed. It was nice. Bill took another pass at the guitar, and so it went back to me. I did an okay version of “The Short List” that earned a little round of golf claps. Finally, Bill was ready. He took a request from Tim, and then he did a newish song of his called “Heartbreak City,” which, after “The Story of You,” was my favorite song of the night.
Around that time, Caren made the mistake of alerting everyone to the fact that the sun was coming up. She even started to open the blinds, but someone stopped her. I was really fading fast, and completely shocked that I’d made it that long. When was the last time I’d puled an allnighter? I couldn’t even remember. Tim played a song he wrote which I think was about a breakup, and it was really pretty. I was squatting in the corner, lids heavy. I had to say my goodbyes and thank you’s, and Bill and Tim thanked me back, and I thanked them, and it was just silly. This was going to take a couple days to recover from. Weaving my way down to the subway, I texted my brother: “I am a total idiot.”
The next day, after sleeping until noon, I loaded my amp back into the basement. One of Bill’s guitar picks was stuck to the top of it — some kind of signature Cheap Trick pick with a picture of Rick Nielsen. Perfect.
