Blues, Trains and Travel
A brief return to the road
A portmanteau of travel thoughts, returning from a long weekend on the road:
Peter Wolf’s “Waiting On The Moon” is a fabulous memoir, captured as a series of essays and stories about blues musicians, the emergence of blues-based rock in Boston, his life as an artist and Hollywood husband (he was married to Faye Dunaway — I had no idea), and the ups and downs of the J Geils Band.
Life outside of the enterprise (F1000 companies) means much less business travel. I’m prepared to sacrifice my United Airlines status (for what that’s worth, I’m barred from ever being a Global Services member) in exchange for better sleep and breakfasts in New Jersey. Music tourism (ie, Phish tour in the Pacific Northwest) took me to the upper left of the United States last week — three shows in three nights, seeing old friends, new venues, and taking a lot of pictures.
The Seattle Monorail and I went into service at about the same time. Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle gives you a free monorail (or other public transportation) ticket if you are going to an event; you link their app and Ticketmaster and it does wonders for managing traffic around the venue. It was a prelude to a good train service.
I’d had the Cascades Amtrak route as a bucket list item, although clouds and topography precluded any good shots of Mt St Helens. Amtrak is still the best and fastest way to travel 200 miles between major cities; you walk into the station 15 minutes before boarding and walk out to daylight in under five minutes. I can’t recommend their coffee or breakfast sandwiches (sorry, Jersey BEC wins, always) but I made the Seattle hotel to Portland OR hotel run in four hours flat - not quite the Millennium Falcon, but close enough for jam band tourism.
Closer to home, New Jersey transit is a microcosm of the aging infrastructure on the East Coast. Train service that belongs in a blues song, not travel to see the blues. Now that the weather is getting warmer, the usual overhead wire issues and disabled trains turn the morning commute into a game of delay whack-a-mole. I defuse train tension with some good music — lately it’s been Talking Heads “Remain in Light” (Adrian Belew and Jerry Harrison are touring this album again with most of Belew’s Power Trio), a surprising amount of Mr. Mister (bonus points for any reader who ties those two together through lateral relationships in musical family trees), and some classic Haken. I’m broadening my prog rock sensibilities, and/or looking for another excuse to buy a five string bass.
Finally, the musical interlude for this morning’s NJ Transit ride was brightened by a Patreon post from Miguel Falcao, a/k/a MiguelBass, who shares his analysis of Chris Squire bass lines, his own jazz trio, and other bottom lines from Iberia. Today he shared his discovery of the music of Guinga, and when I pointed him to Natalie Cressman/Ian Faquini’s recent collaboration with the great guitarist, I closed the circle of fourths of bass teachers.