that's the goop i don't f*ck with
When I was little, my grandfather made me an offer: If I could make it to my twenty-first birthday without smoking, he would give me one thousand dollars. It was remarkably generous by any standard, but, to my eight-ish-year-old mind, it was unfathomable. It was enough money to buy a house. And all I had to do to get it was continue not doing something I had never done. This would be a cakewalk.
He extended the same offer to my brother, Andy, who I think forfeited his prize somewhere around the end of middle school. I held out though. I didn't smoke anything- tobacco, weed, banana peels, you name it. It helped that I took up the saxophone in seventh grade. Despite a fair amount of cajoling from my friends in high school (is there a term for that? Like, when your peers are trying to pressure you into doing something? There should be a term for that), I always had an excuse to pass. My twenty-first came and went in an ungodly deluge of shots and vodka/Red Bulls and cheap beer. A few days later, I received a birthday card from my grandfather with a note applauding my herculean self-control and a check enclosed.
After that, I never had any reason to bother with smoking. Gone were the days of cohort coercion(? There HAS to be a term for this). By the time I reached my twenties, most everyone I knew who smoked regularly seemed to resent it on some level. Many of them actively warned me away from it. I'm not going to pretend to have an unblemished slate with regards to chemical experimentation, but to this day, despite years of touring the festival circuit, tens of visits to Colorado, and the occasional confused bro swearing up and down that we shared a doobie in the alley behind the Boogie Buggy Bar-B-Q Blues Bar in Dorglesville, Arkansas like three years ago, I have never smoked anything in all my life. I try not to be all high-and-mighty about it, but I do consider it an accomplishment.
Why am I talking about this now? Because today is day one of the Outlaw Music Festival Tour, a three-day itinerant musical lovefest starring Willie. Mother. Fucking. Nelson. I am beyond excited. In addition to his staggering contribution to the Great American Songbook, Willie is a folk hero and a counterculture icon. He represents a unique blend of country and hippie and boasts near-universal appeal. He is also- and I don't know how else to put this- a marijuana superhero? What I'm saying- and I'm saying this here and now- is that if, at some point over the course of the next few days, I have the opportunity to smoke with Willie. Mother. Fucking. Nelson, I will take one puff. If all goes according to plan, this will be the one hit of my entire life. He'll probably call it "grass-" how cool is that?
Bear in mind, this is all hypothetical. I have no intention of seeking it out or forcing the issue. If it happens, amazing. If not, no big deal. I will remain immaculate. Either outcome could, in some way, be considered batting one thousand. For the record, I'm guessing the odds of this actually happening are about four-to-one against.
Come to think of it, aren't odds weird? It's kind of a paradox- we do our best to asses how how likely something is to happen, but in reality, either that thing happens or it doesn't. Think about sports betting. Before a game, bookmakers will determine odds: the home team are three-to-one favorites, for example. If you take the ostensible safe bet and the visitors pull off the upset, you'll be kicking yourself, thinking, "I should've gone for the big money." But should you have? Sure, in hindsight, it turns out there was a 100% chance the underdogs would win, but was that actually true a few days ago when you placed your bet?
When does at get locked in? At the final buzzer? At halftime, when the teams adjust their strategies? When the coaches design their respective game plans in the week leading up to the game? Two years prior, when the winning team hits pay dirt in the draft? Decades beforehand, when some star player's parents lock eyes for the first time and feel sparks? One disconcerting interpretation of the big bang theory states that, since all matter in the universe was set in motion in an explosion at the beginning of time, that single event ordained the entire trajectory of the universe: collisions between atoms and space rocks and proteins lead to the formation of our solar system, the evolution of life on Earth, and the eventual existence of human beings- these immeasurably complex, self-aware lifeforms whose thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and actions are (if you subscribe to a particular school of thought) determined by a combination of the chemical reactions in our brains and our circumstances- which themselves are dictated by other environmental factors and the actions of other people, and so on, etcetera. So it's possible that Super Bowl LIII was always- since the literal beginning of time- going to be a joyless slugfest between a monolithic dynasty and a bunch of undeserving frauds who couldn't muster a single freaking touchdown (not that I'm still bitter or anything).
Clearly, it is time to change the subject.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, after a handful of sit-ins, I embarked on my first tour with The Revivalists. It was five of us in David's decomposing Chevrolet van, with all of the gear and luggage in the back. I wasn't officially a member of the band yet. Ed and Michael weren't even there. George had to stay in New Orleans and take one final course at Loyola to finish his degree, so our friend Al Small (who now plays with a fun group called The Quickening) was filling in on bass. We drove late. We set up our own P.A. We argued over whose turn it was to lay down in the back bench, which we had taken to calling "napgun." I played through the entirety of Pokémon Red. We ate fast food and drank too much. We slept on floors. In Charlottesville, after the last show of the tour (opening for Andrew's older brother Chris' band), we stumbled into a karaoke bar that was about to close down and ganged up on a spirited rendition of "Tiny Dancer." I think Zack and I were standing on tables at one point. The bar staff loved it.
I often compare my time in the music industry to an endless march through a trench. I'm not trying to evoke the grim misery of World War I (maybe I should call it a "pleasant stroll"), but rather to illustrate that I never feel like I have much of a frame of reference for our progress. It's a long journey, and from inside the trench, you can see no landmarks, no milestones, no horizon- all you know is that you've been walking for a long time and you're going to keep walking, hopefully for an even longer time. Every once in a while, you poke your head out over the side, and you look around, and you realize the scenery has changed: pastures give way to cities give way to mountains, spring becomes autumn, your hometown, which once loomed behind you, is now a mere speck on the horizon.
Today, ten years later, I'm looking around. We're on tour with Willie. Mother. Fucking. Nelson. (And a whole bunch of other great acts!) Things are different. We own houses. Some of us are husbands and fathers. The band is eight strong. We have a (spectacular, incredibly patient) road crew. We're on two buses. The shows are bigger. The travel is easier. The beds exist are nicer. But it's still the same job. Other than the other guys in the band, I can't think of anyone else my age who has stayed at one job for a whole damn decade. What were the odds I'd end up here? Was it fate? Karma? Luck? Moxie? Did I even have a hand in it? Or was it all just the inscrutable machinations of a bunch of bouncing space dust?
Whatever the reason, however it happened, I'm grateful for the last decade. I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I can't wait to see what the next ten years will look like.
