Part 1
I read Cat’s Cradle in its entirety on yesterday’s flight to New York and spent the remaining hour daydreaming ominously about Ice-Nine while passing over what I think was Lake Huron. If you read the book, you’ll know what I mean.
My fellow newbie-Beard Larry stepped up to say hello on the same flight. Later, my seatmate, a middle-aged woman traveling with her husband and her mother, asked me if my friend and I were traveling to New York on business. No, I replied, I’m in a choir called the Conspiracy Of Beards. “What a name!”, she exclaimed. “Yeah, we’re a men’s chorus who do Leonard Cohen songs.” Her mother, who looked to be in her 70s, lit up. “That’s so great!” Leonard crosses all age boundaries.
We convened at the 14th St. PATH station and took the train to WFMU in Jersey City, where we did a live-on-the-radio spot on Billy Jam’s show. I remember Billy Jam from the Bay Area where he was a hip-hop DJ on the radio back in the 80s. He’s still playing hip-hop, but he also has crazy men’s choirs belting it out live in the studio, or at least this one. The station was a homey little hipster haven full of astonishing oil paintings of famous villains like Donald Rumsfeld, Osama bin Laden, and Phil Spector; great kitschy old album covers; back issues of zines like Roctober, XLR8R and Motorbooty; and (buried somewhere deep in their library) some of our label’s Content Providers and X-tal CDs. Call ’em up and request them sometime.
Much stretching of limbs and limbering of voices in the green room as we warmed up by doing vocal imitations of the Asteroids game in the room, then did lots of songs before our director Daryl Henline showed up and put us through our paces. Daryl is great at kicking your ass and putting you at ease in the same moment, a true example of leadership. There is a version of “The Window” we do that is arranged for octet and solo voice, with the rest of the group bursting in on the choruses. In rehearsal, it was exquisite.
Time to go on. We strolled upstairs into the performance room while Billy and his assistant watched from the other side of a window. We rolled through “First We Take Manhattan”, hit a snag when “So Long Marianne” morphed into “The Window” in the first few bars, and got our groove back with “Famous Blue Raincoat”, “If It Be Your Will”, “A Singer Must Die”, and the amazingly arranged (kudos to Ruben Fonseca for this…various choir members write arrangements for the group, each with his own style…it makes for fun and challenging singing) “Is This What You Wanted?” I really think the Beards need to do a good studio recording of that last one. It’s a hit, man!
It’s amazing to be part of this THING that happens when the hard work pays off and this diverse group of imperfect voices suddenly meshes into a powerful musical force. I was a fan of the Beards before I joined, and I am a fan now. It’s a thrill to be here doing this.
On the PATH train back to New York, the boys collected in one end of the car and sang “Chelsea Hotel #2”. I grabbed the camera and shot a crude movie of us performing, until the conductor yelled at me, “Hey you! Didntcha HEAR ME! You can’t take pictures on the train! Put it away or I’ll call a cop!” Fortunately the song was already over. I think I caught an awesome moment. Hooray for spontaneity.
This evening, it’s off to the Stain Bar in Brooklyn, where we will be doing our first live show of the weekend. I think it’s going to be great; WFMU was the perfect warmup. Wish me luck. Gotta run.
Part 2
The Stain Bar is a cozy little joint a block away from the Grand St. subway station in Brooklyn. On this night, they had a special on mulled wine, which was nice for the throat before singing. The courtyard is decorated with a giant sculpture of a quarter, with George Washington’s profile fashioned from what appears to be old auto parts. To the left, various artists (or is it one artist with many moods?) have contributed to a graffiti mural (which may still be a work in progress) with fire-breathing monster men, sultry mermaids and more. The room itself is full of comfortable couches you can sink into. Behind the bar is a turntable on which the bartenders spin old vinyl by the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, and Lou Reed.
Gradually, the place began filling with people: Beard friends, relatives, and sweethearts; and, most gratifyingly, strangers who showed up because they read about it in the listings. There was a good write-up in the AM Metro that helped bring the people in, though Daryl was disappointed that the writer used all of his least favorite interview quotes in the piece. That’s a Murphy’s Law of journalism one should always allow for: they will always end up using your worst quotes, so be as brilliant as you can to journalists (without trying too hard…that can bring on the lameness if you’re not careful). With L. Cohen on tour right now, excitement about his work is running high, which makes it a good time for the Beards to be on the road.
We did a full set, including some smaller group pieces like “Suzanne”, the arrangement of which was changed again, just before the show. (And what an arrangement it is, a quintet with Daryl himself as lead tenor and staggered wordless harmonies that actually sound like boats rolling along the river!) We also laid out while various small groupings did “In My Secret Life” (my first time hearing this) and “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On”, a supremely ridiculous, rollicking potboiler from Death Of A Ladies’ Man, Leonard’s ill-fated, lush & lusty Phil Spector collaboration. Later after our set I brought up the over-the-top doo-wop ode to adolescent hormones, “Memories”, my favorite song from that same album which is currently in rotation on Ear Candle Radio (there’s also a very sparse voice/piano version by the Extra Glenns on their Martial Arts Weekend album) and was told more than once “You should do an arrangement! You can get some help from some of the others if you need it!” to which I said, “that’d be fun, maybe a ways down the road, when I feel ready.” It would certainly bring down the house to have the Beards do THAT one.
Other than my dissatisfaction with my part on “First We Take Manhattan” (I’m switching from the low baritone part to the high one; there may more guts in my voice in that range, I think), the set went swimmingly. We had our first successful live version of “Land Of Plenty”, and I think we’re all feeling like we got over a big hump there. It was a sweet evening, and the subway got me back to Chelsea like a charm. Then my darling rang my cell phone just as I opened the door to my room. Perfect.
Woke up early this morning and jumped on the southbound E train to keep my promise to check out Ground Zero and videotape what’s there now. What’s there is a well blocked off construction site surrounded by blue fences and barbed wire to keep out the snoopers, while cranes diligently raise and lower themselves and cement trucks pass through the security entrance. The area is dotted with camera-wielding tourists, myself included, all seeking some sort of epiphany. Across Liberty St. is a museum devoted to 9/11, but the walking tour did not fit today’s tight schedule. But being present there did conjure up the same “is that all there is?” feeling that ends Wim Wenders’ Land Of Plenty, which I can now draw from my memory banks when the choir performs the title song. At least the scene hasn’t been turned into a grotesque monument to patriotic kitsch yet. Overall impression: New York has moved on, thank you very much. And if you’re gonna just stand there gawking, you might as well come in and buy some memorabilia already.
On to the Highline Ballroom, where the boys have an afternoon show. A nice mid-sized rock club it is too, perhaps analogous to Slim’s in SF. (Maybe a bit smaller than the Great American Music Hall.) We share the bill with Peter Whitehead, a former Beard doing a solo set playing folkish music with instruments he created and built himself like a 10-string sort of guitar-mandolin hybrid. We performed two sets, served by a good sound system, which compelled us to lean towards subtlety. I did my best to blend and not stick out. There were some beautiful moments.
The audience was seated at tables, a bit polite at first, cheering and whooping by the end. (Do I need to tell you how good that feels?) They went wild for “Hallelujah”. Of course, who doesn’t love “Hallelujah”? I really appreciate that in our arrangement, we sing “do ya” and not “do you” in the first verse, unlike most interpreters of the song. (Jeff Buckley, please rise up from the grave so that you may receive your well-deserved spanking!) [UPDATE: Leonard himself sang “you” at the Paramount on April 15! I still prefer “ya”, though.]
Next on today’s busy agenda: the Bowery Poetry Club, followed rapidly by a loft party in Brooklyn. Zounds! I should know these songs pretty well by the time the night is over.
Part 3
Today’s earworm: the la-da-da-da chorus from “A Singer Must Die”. Bursts from the throat and rolls off the tongue like honey.
The street crazies in New York are louder, scarier, and way more entertaining than the ones you find in San Francisco. This morning, a youngish black man with blazing, enraged eyes and a receding hairline was running around, pounding on restaurant windows, bellowing something about Obama, and marching into the street on red lights. (Striding purposefully into oncoming traffic is something all New Yorkers do well, but this guy was a master.) I expect to spot him again soon as a token black pundit on Fox News making a special guest appearance on the Glenn Beck show.
Yesterday, on the Bowery, a disshevelled, wide-eyed fifty-something white man was communing intensely with his headphones, stomping briskly through the crowd, and providing edgy, enthusiastic running commentary: “These guys! Were GENIUSES! Back then they made MUSIC! Not like this TECHNO PUSSY SHIT you hear now!” He would take breaks from his tirade to leer at all the hot, sharp-dressed New York women who wisely gave him a wide berth, then he’d resume his riveting rock criticism. Maybe Christopher Stigliano was visiting New York this weekend too.
A conversation I had more than once this weekend: “So, you’re an all male choir, you don’t have any instruments, and you only do Leonard Cohen songs?” “Yeah, that’s right.” “And that’s it? You guys don’t do anything else?” “Well, it’s good to have a focus, don’t you think?”
Actually, there was a moment yesterday that broke the instrument barrier. Deron, our most extroverted member, the one who throws his head back, contorts his face and visibly feels every second of every song with the utmost intensity (if you’ve seen the Beards, you know who I’m talking about) is also an ace harmonica player, and there is a trio arrangement of “Stories From The Street” which employs two voices backed by Deron blowing a humungous chromatic bass harmonica. One day I hope to see this performed for myself; unfortunately, this was the opening number while we were all sequestered in a tiny (literally) green room behind the stage at the Bowery Poetry Club last evening, so I have only experienced the audio so far.
The Bowery Poetry Club felt tiny after the Highline Ballroom, a long narrow corridor of a venue with a busy little deli up front and a bar and seats in the back room and paintings of great New York poets on the wall above the bar. The set was exciting, possibly the best performance of the weekend; the audience up close, noisy, and engaged. We pulled off the best version of “The Window” yet. David Bentley’s solo vocal is tear-jerkingly beautiful on this song, one of Cohen’s most cosmic, universe-embracing spiritual pieces ever; I am in awe when we do this one.
For the second time that day, we did “Bird On The Wire”, two rows of dudes swaying like happy drunks with our arms around each other’s shoulders. It seemed like every baritone singer was singing a slightly different part, but this time, rather than straining to figure out what was correct I just threw my voice in the mix and relied on my sense of harmony. Turns out, according to Tom, one of the wise elder Beards, this is the appropriate approach to this song: the more somebody tries to tighten up the arrangement, the more divergent versions are created, which then end up all being sung at once. But why argue with success, when all this disagreement results in such a mighty sound? Other songs benefit well from precision; “Bird” is magnificent “midnight choir” chaos.
Larry and his cousin converged at the bar the same time I did, and Larry bought us all a round of Guinnesses. Generous. And delicious. As we all gathered to plan how we would all get to the loft party that night, Sloan, one of our bass singers who was leaving and wouldn’t be joining us there, passed me by and cryptically shouted, “Arrange memories!”
“What’s that now?”
“Arrange ‘Memories’! That song we were talking about!”
“Oh yeah! Thanks!” I kind of like the way I misheard it, though. “Arrange memories.” That is what I’m doing right now in this Chelsea internet ice cream parlor, actually.
Larry’s cousin led the way to the L train, walking faster than anyone I have ever tried to keep up with, and I always thought I walked pretty fast. If I lived here, I would no doubt be getting an aerobic workout every day of my life. When we got to the Bedford Ave. station in Brooklyn, he steered us to Driggs Pizza, where we had some real New York style slices. Now I like some of our local pies, and am especially loyal to our good friends at Eagle Pizza on Taraval (a really friendly, funny, and down-to-earth couple who make some of the best food in San Francisco), but Brooklyn pizza is a category all its own that must be experienced.
On to the party. Williamsburg is going through the sort of transition that SF went through during the original dot-com boom, where live-work spaces moved from being a raw pioneer experience for arty types seeking cheap living and freedom to being a status symbol for the upwardly mobile, (“the hedge fund managers are pushing the artists out now”, we were told) but the transition is not fully complete, and you can still find cool, progressive, artistic young people living in well-furnished storage-locker-like digs in highrises that look foreboding on the outside and teem with life on the inside.
The party was a maelstrom of noisy, shouting conversation with faint sounds of Beirut coming off of a laptop. (I always liked Beirut OK, but I was curious as to who actually listens to them. Now I know.) The acoustics were so live, and sound carried so well, that everybody kept talking louder to hear their own conversation. Some of the younger, more hippie-ish Beards were arguing strongly that we should all perform with our shoes off, but the sound of breaking glass quickly put a damper on any such notion. I milled around, drinking Cabernet and locating pockets of interesting conversation while we waited for Daryl and his wife and adorably trouble-seeking two year old son to show up.
The woman hosting the party came up to some of us. “I think it’s about time you guys got started.”
“OK, but we’re still waiting for our director.”
“He’s not here yet? OK…”
“You’ll recognize him when you see him. He’s a bit shorter, wears glasses and a mustache, and radiates an aura of calm authority.”
“Well, I hope he gets here soon.” In another corner, Ruben had already seized the reins and was putting a set list together in case we had to go it alone. Happily, in came Daryl and family in the nick of time and we assembled. I recruited Tim’s (a Beard bass and excellent vocal arranger) sister Allison to videotape us as we performed. Thanks, Allison!
It was a loose, fun singing session; now all the pressure was off and it was time to just indulge in the fun that we all got into this thing for. Several party guests called out requests for great songs we have never done like “Tonight Will Be Fine” and “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye”. There’s plenty more material for us to do in the future! As usual, everybody loves “Hallelujah”. That song touches something deep in people; even atheists and agnostics relate to the theme of just opening your heart to the universe and singing “Hallelujah”; no explanation or justification necessary. It’s nothing more or less than all our humanity coming out, rejoicing that, in spite of everything and no matter what your circumstance, it’s such a goddamn gift to be alive.
That may be the central message, if there is any, of Leonard Cohen’s mission: a deep, ecstatic, yet clear-eyed inquiry on what it means to be alive. Even when he has written and recorded songs like “Dress Rehearsal Rag” or “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” that confront with terrifying empathy how it feels to be driven to suicide, every word and note from a Leonard Cohen song is full of the sheer wonder of life. And if that sounds corny to you, you have some growing up to do.
Anyhow, after our set, the party changed its tone, and suddenly the music got louder and more rhythmic as Beards and other guests went wild, break-dancing and ecstatically throwing one another around the room. As I was just saying, here it is: the wonder of life.
I have been on enough tours in my time to know full well how reality has a tendency to bash you on the head with a hammer once you get back home and return to your regular routine, but I feel regenerated by the last few days, and have a strong intention to stay that way. Next week, we will be seeing Field Commander Cohen himself in person in Oakland, so I know this feeling will not be passing quite so quickly.
Now, a long shuttle ride, a longer flight, and a reunion with my girl await. Your correspondent is signing off for now. Cheers.