2003-05-15 - 11:08 a.m.
March 29
We meet at Skehan’s to head to Catskill, NY. We’re playing a festival up there at a Borsch Belt resort called Friar Tucks. I wander around. It’s a labyrinth. It’s a little beat. A broken palace of memories of faded glory. As I go in search of our rooms the hallways are pungent with the smell of good gangha. Oh I get it. This is a stoner convention!
The music is taking place in 2 different rooms. RRE, Max Creek and others are playing in the Palace Theater (the grand ballroom). A similar room but 1/3 the size was the home to other bands of the hippie, jamband variety. Vendors were festooned about both rooms selling the usual fare. Glass pipes, jewelry, incense and what have you. Food is served cafeteria style in a large room above the room we’re playing in. It’s a lot like eating at Morrisons. Veggies steamed to within an inch of their lives; over done chicken. Meatballs!
We play a set that is not as long as we would like it to be but we are well received. My friend Tad shows up just before we go on. Phil Void shows just after we start. These are two of the guys I went India with and they came over from Woodstock. They both witnessed the epiphany that led to my becoming a Buddhist. Tad leaves after the show but not before he gives me a CD of a song he wants me to pass along to Chris Thiele. I’ve heard it and it would be a perfect vehicle for Nickel Creek. Tad’s a very talented songwriter with whom I’ve written a number of songs with including “Flowers Between The Stones”. Phil, of course, is “His Voidness”, the leader and writer of and for “the Dharma Bums”. Phil and his wife Zoe hang out with Andy and I during Max Creeks set and have a couple of drinks. Max Creek has been around forever! I remember them playing at the old Lone Star Cafe when the Sparks played there back in the late 70’s! They’re good but not my cup of tea.Phil and Zoe leave before the end and Andy and I hit the sack shortly after they’re done.
A frightening side story unfolds during Max Creeks set. At the beginning of their show the guitar player jokingly says how much trouble his 14 yr old daughter is going to be in if she doesn’t show up in front of the stage soon. After a couple of songs he says,”If any of you guys see my daughter, tell her to get her tattooed little ass up here now!”. When I got home on Monday and checked the Earthboard, there was a post stating the daughter of Max Creeks guitar player was still missing from the festival! That means she was missing for more than 48 hrs! The FBI was called in and sometime late Monday she was found in Maine in the company of a 24 yr old male who’s in some big-assed trouble Thank the universe that she’s all right. Too many times stuff like this ends badly.
