Roadie Report 55 - The End of 2010, Grand Ole Opry 1968 & 2010-by Camilla McGuinn

Today is the first Saturday in the third month of the year 2011. The past month was filled with filing the tax return, reading so many contracts that I felt like I should have gone to law school and unpacking suitcases. I woke up remembering that we always called the last day of the week “creative Saturday.” Our travels have kept us away from my desk for so long, that notes were coming in from the fifteen readers of the BLOG urging me to get back to work. My excuses are now over...it is time to write.

I loaded all the pictures in my camera onto my computer. The pictures remind me of our adventures but while perusing the snapshots, I couldn’t remember how far back to go. There was only one choice. I had to do something I seldom do – I had to read the BLOG. Then I found myself reliving all the stories, so I gave up the idea of writing today and decided just to load the pictures.

Well, it was a short lived decision. Time had come for me to reflect on the last months of 2010 or they would be lost forever in the cobwebs of my mind.




2010 began with Roger sharing stories, aka lectures, on the cruise ship, The Queen Victoria while traversing through the Panama Canal. The work year ended in November with another cruise through the same canal on the Crystal Symphony. The sister ship of the Symphony, the Crystal Serenity, was the first ship that invited Roger to give his lecture, “How Folk Music Took Me to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” Guests of the Crystal Cruise Line are treated so wonderfully, they will take a voyage whenever their schedules allow. On board, we re-acquainted ourselves with several couples who had sailed with us to Lisbon. It felt like a joyous family reunion. They appreciated the new stories Roger had added to the lectures. He realizes fans love to hear the same songs and stories but really enjoy the slight changes he always tries to add to each concert and lecture.

A highlight of this trip for me was zip-lining through the trees in Caldera, Costa Rica. Less the 30 folks joined the adventure, but I was totally impressed with a couple in their 80s. The wife was the only one of us who had previously experienced the tree zip.

After we were suited in our harnesses, the guide gave us our safety lecture. It was then I began having second thoughts. Especially when he said we had to stop ourselves on some of the lines and we should remember not to hold on to the wire, lest we lose our arm. Yikes…what if I forgot to let go? No one was anxious to be the first Tarzan or Jane. After the 80 year old lady bravely stepped on the box, I gulped and followed. By the end of the eighth zip-line. I was fearless and vowed to fly through the trees any chance I could get.


After the ship docked in San Pedro, California, a car drove us to downtown Los Angeles. Roger had been invited to an evening of conversation as a fund raiser for Live Talks Los Angeles . We were pleasantly surprised by the downtown development of Los Angeles. When we lived there, we never ventured to the city neighborhood. Now it has some wonderful restaurants and is beginning to feel like a place meant for walking. Los Angeles has always been a city for wheels, not for feet.


On the second day of adjusting to solid ground, we boarded AMTRAK's Coast Starlight for San Francisco so we would be close to Pleasanton, the location of the next concert. Our enthusiasm for our January experience in the early 20th century condo we rented was infectious enough to cause two friends to join us in the building to celebrate the Thanksgiving feast. It felt like a college dorm with cooks running between two condo kitchens. The aroma of roasting turkey wafted up the few steps that separated our condos to the scent of the baking pumpkin and apple pies.


The concert at the Pleasanton Theater on the Sunday after Thanksgiving was delightful. The only sad part was watching the people who had hoped to get tickets for the sold out show, leave without hearing the music.


Early in the morning of Nov 29th, we found our compartment on the California Zephyr train to Chicago. Once again, we were re-tracing our January trip, but this time we were spending four days in the windy city. Roger was returning to his alma mater, the OLD TOWN SCHOOL of FOLK MUSIC, for a concert and a fund raiser.

Living in the San Francisco condo for a short time gave us a feeling of being city residents. Even though Chicago is Roger's hometown, we both wanted that city resident feeling again so we decided to rent a condo in Chicago from the same website. The condo was perfectly situated on the 57 floor of a building and even had a Whole Foods Market on the ground floor. The weather was cold and snowing. It gets real cold in Chicago when the wind blows, but we never had to leave the building except to go to work. Our city resident experience became very vertical.

One of the Old Town School guitar instructors invited Roger to come to his class on our day off. The guitars were almost bigger than some of the students. We walked into the classroom while three of the older girls were getting settled in their seats. I began telling them that Roger had so diligently studied and practiced the guitar that when he was 17 years old, he began his professional career. That was 50 years ago. I noticed a blank stare and thought they weren’t comprehending the 50 years part of the story. I explained that 50 is one half of 100. They shook their heads and slightly rolled their eyes.

During the class, Roger played his guitar solo to Eight Miles High. A teacher overheard one of the girls whisper to to her friend, “He’s awesome!” The other replied, “Well he’s been playing for 55 million years!”

The train ride home from Chicago had a change in Washington DC with a 6 hour layover. As we were getting off the train, we met an interesting lady who called herself, Miss Lucas. Someday I might write about that encounter.

The Washington train station is one of my favorite transit places to spend a forced amount of time. The historic train station houses numerous tourist shops and an upscale shopping mall. We spent a delightful afternoon in a lovely restaurant tucked away in a corner of the station.





When people ask Roger to name the guitar players he most admires, Marty Stuart is at the top of the list. Marty plays guitar in the same intricate style of Clarence White and even owns one of Clarence’s guitars that he played in the BYRDS. Marty is a regular on the Grand Ole Opry and has always felt Roger should make a return appearance to bring a peaceful closure to the ill fated BYRDS’ performance in 1968.



1968
CBS records had enough clout to get the rock group the “BYRDS” on the mother radio of country music WSM’s, Grand Ole Opry. The group had broken with the rock tradition and recorded a whole album of country music. It wasn’t the BYRDS first foray into the country sound. They had previously recorded songs in the country vein on “Turn,Turn,Turn, “5D” and “Younger Than Yesterday,” but never devoted an entire album to the genre. Even Roger’s “Mr. Spaceman” embraced the country beat. The “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album marked the first time a rock group dared to venture wholeheartedly into the country realm.

The live radio format of the “Grand Ole Opry” makes timing a critical element. At rehearsals, stop watches are marking every second. During the afternoon rehearsal of the show, the BYRDS sang two songs from “The Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album. The chosen single, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and another tune on the album, a song penned by Country music legend Meryl Haggard, “Sing me Back Home.”

The band was serious about the authenticity of the album and even cut their hair to appease the country audience. The first song the group sang on the live show, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” came off without a hitch but it was the second song that got the group blackballed from the Opry. Just before they began the count for the song, Gram Parsons walked up to the microphone and made a very bold statement. “We were suppose to sing a Meryl Haggard song, but my grandma has been listening to the Grand Ole Opry all of her life and I want to sing a song I wrote for her.” With that departure from the script, Gram began singing his song “Hickory Wind.” Roger looked to the side of the stage and the director looked like he had just swallowed something very disagreeable. Skeeter Davis was the only smiling face when they left the stage and walked out of the Ryman auditorium to the trailing echos of, "They'll never be invited back."


December 10, 2010:
The Grand Ole Opry show moved from the Ryman Auditorium to the Grand Ole Opry House in Opryland on March 16, 1974. During this Christmas season, it moved the radio show back to the Ryman because the Rockettes were performing on the Opry House stage. It was a poetic moment on the old Ryman stage when Marty Stuart announced his special guest, Roger McGuinn. They sang “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,”“Turn, Turn, Turn,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Roger still hasn’t had a chance to sing that sweet Meryl Haggard song, “Sing Me Back Home” at the Opry, but he now sometimes delights audiences with this story and sings the song in his concerts.



Just before Christmas, a film crew from the BBC came to Orlando to interview Roger about the influence of the British invasion on America … the musical invasion. The show should be released in the United Kingdom before Roger’s concert tour there in October 2011.


In January, we were counting our blessings. The Crystal Serenity invited Roger to lecture on the first leg of its world cruise. There was one problem, we had to fly from Orlando to Los Angeles to board the ship, then fly home from Tahiti. We’re not fearful of flying for ourselves, but we have had guitars that didn’t fare to well. Have you seen the video “United Breaks Guitars?” It is not only United Airlines who breaks guitars. One airline promised to treat our luggage with “kid gloves.” Roger has laughingly mentioned that the only kid gloves that were used with his guitar were the ones the baggage crews were wearing when they drove a fork lift through the guitar case.

Our guitar dilemma was solved when author Greg Iles showed up at a Rock Bottom Remainders gig rolling a large guitar case. It immediately caught our attention and within weeks, we had four cases made for Roger’s working axes. We could now fly with a guitar.


We arrived in Los Angeles the day before the ships departure to be available for another BBC interview. The theme for this interview was "guitars" and thanks to our new rolling case, Roger was very happy to have the Roger McGuinn Martin HD7 guitar sitting on his lap. I understand this show will also air before the October 2011 United Kingdom tour.


The Crystal Serenity’s voyage to Tahiti had one stop in Hawaii where we enjoyed lunch with a dear friend. The rest of the time we were on the open ocean until the mountains of Moorea appeared on the early morning horizon.

Roger spent 13 days without checking email or getting telephone calls. Wow … he didn’t even miss it! Maybe I shouldn’t have written that comment - his reputation as a “techie” could be in jeopardy. Oh well, anyone 55 million years old doesn’t really have to worry about his reputation.

Roadie Report 54 - 100 YEARS!

Dorothy McGuinn

Even with the heat, this summer in Florida has been wonderful because we were here for a lot of it. The garden received care, the closets were purged and best of all, the sound of music was coming from Roger’s studio. The Jolly Roger decided to compile a CD of his favorite songs of the sea. But before summertime living kicked in, there was a westward drive for a few concerts and most importantly, Dorothy’s 100th birthday party. Dorothy is Roger’s amazing, emailing mother!



The first stop was at the Summit Road Studios in Parker, CO to visit Linda and Don Debey, before we went on to Denver for a concert at the L2 Arts and Cultural Center on July 24th. Wild Bill Cody arrived early to help man “the lemonade stand” and friends from Ohio, Linda and Bill, joined us for a quick reunion.

Driving south to Tucson was fun because there is a favorite Mexican restaurant that has real tacos with shredded beef in Albuquerque.


Our arrival in Tucson was the day before the big party. Folks were coming from England and from all over the United States for the celebration. Even though Dorothy didn’t want to be involved in the details, she insisted on an expedition to a Mexican restaurant to taste the food that would be served to her guests. She wanted the Out-of-towners to experience a good Southwestern meal.

Cousin Carolyn arranged for the venue. Brother Brian and son Patrick procured the soft drinks, beer and ice. Celia and Jim supplied the sound system and we were in charge of appetizers, flowers, decorations, champagne and music.

On the day of the party, I felt like we were contestants in a reality TV show. Roger and I needed to buy all of the decorations and food in the morning before the venue was available for us to prepare food and decorate at 1pm. On the way to get helium tanks for the balloons, I took a wrong turn, which put me in an unfamiliar parking lot. I was about to turn around, when my eye caught the silver reflection of something in a store window. It looked like a good decoration for the tables, so I parked the van and ran into the store. Roger went into a neighboring store to find a Hawaiian shirt because Brian thought it would be a good idea for both of them to wear one at the party. It turned out that there were a few other similar shirts worn at the party.



The silver sparkling pieces were perfect, but I couldn’t find the price. At an appropriate moment I raised my voice to ask the clerk if he could tell me the cost. Suddenly everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and stared at me with a very strange look. Even the clerk looked puzzled as he hesitantly replied with almost a question in his voice, “A dollar?” Then I got it…I was in a DOLLAR STORE! I had never been in one before. Everything was a dollar! I felt like I was the winner of a big prize.



When Roger walked in victoriously with his new shirt, my cart was filled to overflowing with wonderful decorations for the party. We filled our van with the finds of the century for the centenarian, but there was one more a strategic stop for food and all the yellow flowers we could find. We arrived at the venue right on schedule.

Dorothy’s favorite colors are blue and yellow, so Roger began filling 100 balloons in those shades with helium. I began to panic. He would be busy for a long time. There was just me and Karen, Cousin Carolyn’s roommate, fixing the appetizers for 70 people. Thankfully, Phil, a Florida neighbor who knows I always need help when preparing for a party, showed up and began helping Roger fill the balloons. I found myself getting envious of the laughter that was coming out of their corner.

With Phil’s arrival my anxiety level lessened about 1% but I began thinking that my plans were bigger than my abilities. I left a note at our hotel for another couple of Florida friends to come to the venue for sound check as soon as they checked in. Bruce Kula, a close friend and gifted musician, was going to join Roger in serenading Dorothy at the party. The note was the first time he heard that his talents had been conscripted. Cynthia and Bruce arrived before Jim finished installing the sound system, so there were two more chefs in the kitchen. Over the years, the Kulas have grown accustomed to my propensity for drafting all available hands for any job that needs to be done.

At 3pm Brian and Patrick arrived with the beverages and the ice. Patrick volunteered his mother’s services to pick up all the forgotten items on her way to the party. At 4:30 the sound check was complete and by 5pm, Roger and I were smiling! The room was ready for the Special Lady’s arrival at 5:30!


Dorothy always loves to have parties last into the early hours of the next morning. Around 10pm, the room was closed, but the party was to continue at Dorothy’s house. Friends who had flown great distances were invited back for what they thought would be one last glass of champagne. What they didn’t expect was that Dorothy insisted everyone stay until midnight! She wanted her 100th year and her 101st year to end and begin with a party.

The next night, John and MaryAnn along with Janice and Barry, a BYRDS’ fan who had kept in touch with Dorothy ever since she was the head of the BYRDS fan club, came over for one last visit. Roger and I were departing early the next day, so we left at 9pm. Dorothy insisted everyone else stay until midnight. That special woman has been known to wear out even the energizer bunny!



From Tucson, we drove to San Francisco for some meetings, then on to Napa for a few days of quiet catching up with the business that is always waiting. We stayed at the home of Andrienne Graves (Roadie Report 51). She joined us two days later when she took us to the boutique vineyard, ELAN.



The Elan Vineyard is about 10 miles up the very narrow Atlas Peak Road in Napa. Our first glimpse of the house mentally transported us to Tuscany. The beautiful house was surrounded by the vineyards. Patrick and Linda, the proprietors, prepared a wonderful Italian dinner to share with us under the stars in their courtyard. We ate, we laughed and Roger sang all their favorite songs while playing his 7-string guitar. I kept looking around for evidence of movie cameras – it was a perfect scene and it was hard to grasp that it was real.




Monterey is a wonderful stop when driving from Napa to Southern California. This was the first trip that we ever took the time to walk for miles enjoying the coastline, the unique trees and the sea lions.





















On October 13, Roger was invited to open the show for Joan Baez at the Queen Mary Park in Long Beach, CA. The park is next to the original Queen Mary which has been converted into a hotel. We spent two lovely nights on the ship, often reminiscing about our recent trip on board the Queen Victoria.



The Queen Mary is a lovely Art Deco walk through history and it also has a wonderful restaurant that I had visited in 1971 to celebrate loved ones birthdays. After the concert I took friends on a tour of the decks. I think Mackenna and Hayden, 13 & 14 years old, we more smitten with Blake, a Florida neighbor, and his friends than they were with my dissertations of history. They did find it amusing when their beautiful, six foot tall mother and I played hopscotch on the shuffle board.

Roadie Report 53 - PBS Taping & WSM - 1968 & 2010 - and Space Explorers by Camilla McGuinn

The month of May held three more adventures before summer vacation could commence. The first one was in Pittsburg to tape a concert for a PBS fund raiser. This was a gathering of friends; it definitely didn’t feel like work. Laughing with Barry McGuire and John York was delightful.


The producer of the show, T.J. Lubinsky, arranged for the group Ju-Taun to sing harmonies with Roger. These good looking men had all the female staff buzzing. I felt privileged that the young ladies confided in me which singer they picked as their favorite from the group. The guys were young enough to be my sons, so I picked all of them as my favorite.

From Pittsburg, we crossed the mountains for Nashville.


As we drove to our downtown hotel, we noticed big disaster relief trucks. The flood didn’t get as much media coverage as the damage warranted. Lives were lost, countless homes and businesses were significantly affected by the early May flooding. National landmarks including Opryland, The Country Music Hall of Fame and the beautiful Schermerhorn Symphony Center all had disaster relief trucks parked in front of them.

When we are in Nashville we try to connect with the amazing guitar player, John Jorgenson. John recorded on “Back From Rio” and “Limited Edition.” This time, John was in California for a “Desert Rose” reunion with Chris Hillman. While John was riding down Interstate 5, he texted Roger the story of coming home from touring Europe and finding his guitars covered in mud, diesel oil and sewage.
Many musicians lost not only their treasured instruments that were stored at Soundcheck Instrument Storage, but also their cars that were parked there while they were away on tour.

But with all the horrific happenings, Nashville was not whining. Nashville was rebuilding and the people were all pitching in to help their neighbors.
Roger had a concert scheduled at the Belcourt Theater and even though we offered to postpone the evening, the audience was happy the show went on.


The day before the concert our schedule was jammed packed with radio interviews at WSM, Sirius Radio and the live radio show “Live at the Loveless Café."


Radio station WSM is temporarily being broadcast from an original building by the radio tower because it was flooded out of its Opryland studio. Roger was hoping he would recognize it as the same studio he walked into in 1968, but it wasn’t the same building.







1968:
The Byrds always appreciated a country beat. Their albums ,“Turn,Turn,Turn,” “5th Dimension,” ‘Younger Than Yesterday,” and “Notorious Byrd Brothers” included a country influence with the tracks “Satisfied Mind,” “Mr. Spaceman,” “Time Between,” and “Girl With No Name,” and “Old John Robertson.” It wasn’t until, Chris Hillman met a young rich kid in a Hollywood bank that the Byrds knocked rock’n’roll out of the studio for a moment and headed to the home of country music, Nashville, Tennessee.

Roger and Chris were looking to hire a few more musicians. Roger wanted to take the BYRDS into the world of John Coltrane as he did in “Eight Miles High.”
When Gram showed up at the rehearsal studio, Roger asked him to play piano. He played a rhythm similar to Floyd Cramer. The performance didn’t blow Roger away but he felt they could work with Gram. Then they all got stoned.

Gram Parsons wanted to be Hank Williams more than Chris Hillman wanted to be the Bakersfield sound or Roger McGuinn wanted to be Pete Seeger. Gram’s desire was infectious.

After a musical change of direction was orchestrated, Gram’s dream was closer to reality when Nashville became the recording target for the next album. Cowboy hats were purchased, along with a black Eldorado.

It was a common practice for the Byrds to record a Bob Dylan song. The twang of Mr. Dylan could pass for a mountain kid or at least a hobo and sure enough he had a song to sing for this country inspired album dubbed, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.”

The studio was filled with some of the best pickers in town. Earl P. Ball on piano, Lloyd Green and Jay Dee Maness on steel guitar, John Hartford on fiddle, banjo and guitar and Roy M. “Junior” Huskey on bass. There was also the six-string virtuoso, Clearance White, who later became one of Roger’s closest friends.

When the single was released, Roger made a journey to the famed WSM studios in hopes that the biggest country DJ in the country would play the chosen single from the album, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.”

By then Roger had cut his hair and was trying to look respectable for the country gentleman. Mr. Emery played the single on a preview turntable, listened to the first verse, then turned to Roger and adamantly said, ‘I’m not going to play that on my show.”
“Ah..why not?”
“What’s it about?” Ralph flatly demanded.
Spellbound, Roger shrugged his shoulders and answered, “I don’t know. It’s a Bob Dylan song.”

Ralph grunted, and then proceeded to change his voice with a twang that would encourage the truckers driving down the highway to buy themselves a Clark truck seat.

A few months later while sitting in a London hotel room, Roger and Gram were reminiscing about that DJ who wouldn’t play their record in Nashville. They were roaring as they were mimicking his “trucker’s voice.” Ralph wasn’t a trucker… he was more like a drugstore truck driver, in the same vein of drugstore cowboys. That night a song was born, “Drugstore Truck Driving Man.”

2010












The “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” was a recording disaster in 1968. It was shunned by the rock and country stations. Time has healed the blow; it was listed as #117 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of all Time. The humor of the time is now welcome. The DJs at WSM, Bill Cody and Charlie Mattos, encouraged Roger to tell the “Sweetheart” stores for their country music audience. No one is offended anymore about a bunch of Los Angeles hippies who wanted to play in the country music mecca. The sounds have all blended.

At noon, Roger recorded an interview for the Sirius radio show Deep Tracks.

That evening, we went to the rolling countryside outside of Nashville to the Loveless Café. There Roger sang three songs as a guest artist for the radio show recorded live to an enthusiastic audience. One of the songs he sang was "Drugstore Truck Driving Man." During the performance, he began to feel remorse about a line in the song and didn't want to sing it. The line “he has him a medal he won in the war. It weighs five hundred pounds and sleeps on his floor.” slipped out even as he was trying to skip over it. The internal editing didn't happen soon enough.

Roger didn’t mention the problem until later at the hotel when I told him that all of a sudden during the show; I was hoping he wouldn’t sing that line in the song. I was thinking about my father’s medal from the Viet Nam war which was given to him because he came home on a stretcher, The Purple Heart. It certainly doesn’t sleep on our floor. That’s when Roger confirmed he didn’t want to sing the verse either. He now felt that he and Gram were too flippant and stoned when they wrote that line. What seemed funny for years, no longer did. He declared he wasn’t going to sing that verse again.


The Astronauts Hall of Fame ceremony was held on June 5th. A few hours before Guy Bluford, Jr, Ken Bowersox, Frank Culbertson, Jr and Kathy Thornton were inducted; we were invited to join a group of astronauts to tour the hangar where the space shuttles, Atlantis and Endeavour were being worked on.

Whenever we are blessed to be in the presence of Astronauts, we always try to be flies on the wall and that means that we are always at the back of the bus. We were the last ones off the bus for the tour of the hangar. The group was separated into five smaller groups. Since we were the last group, our guide asked which shuttle we wanted to see. I heard a voice behind me quietly say, “Endeavour.” I knew the voice of Hoot Gibson. He was the pilot of the 1992 Endeavour mission. The opportunity to closely view the space shuttle with him prompted me to say loudly, “Endeavour!” And so it was with great excitement that we walked around, under and over a space shuttle with an astronaut who had piloted it acting as our family photographer.


The month of June was gone before I had even unpacked or planted a lot of summer flowers. Today, I’m packing again. Tomorrow we are headed to Denver for the July 24th concert at the L2 Arts and Cultural Center. From Denver, we go to Tucson to celebrate the Special Lady’s 100th birthday! After that special celebration, Roger will have a re-union with Joan Baez as he opens the show at The Queen Mary Park in Long Beach California on August 13.

Come say hi to me at my “lemonade stand.” I love hearing your stories.


All photos by Camilla except the one by that Space Explorer as noted and the album cover of "Sweetheart of the Rodeo."

Roadie Report 52 - The Moon, Wordstock, Woodstock & Friends by Camilla McGuinn

The weather was perfect on Easter morning 2010. While the sun was shining and the birds were chirping I looked out into the garden and noticed that the Easter Bunny had left eggs and balloons scattered under the bushes and flowers. That silly bunny didn’t realize that the only neighborhood kids lived next door. Thankfully, Mia and Bryce came over and picked up all those eggs filled with candy and toys. While they were busy finding baskets full of goodies, the grown-up neighbors were busy munching and catching up on the times we missed with them while we were away.


The invitation for The Apollo XIII 40th Anniversary event, scheduled for April 9 arrived to shouts of joy. That mission was NASA’s most “successful failure” and immortalized in the Jim Lovell,Jeffrey Kluger book and the Ron Howard film, Apollo 13.







On the night of the anniversary, I laughed and cried as I listened to Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Gene Kranz (project engineer) and Charlie Duke (the Lunar Module back up pilot who inadvertently exposed the rest of the crew to German measles) re-live the mission. Words cannot convey the sense of awe that we had that evening in the presence of our space heroes.

We had another reason to be on the Space Coast. The Gold Tone Banjo factory had repaired a 'bandolin' for Roger. Gold Tone was founded by Wayne and Robyn Rogers. Our first encounter with their banjo artistry was at the 2009 Folk Alliance conference when Roger was the Keynote Speaker. The banjo was the stringed instrument that landed Roger his first professional job with The Limeliters. When he saw the OT-800 Long Neck Gold Tone, he felt it was time to add another ax to his tool chest.

It was lunch time after we toured the craftsman factory, so Wayne and Robyn took us to the famous Dixie Crossroads Seafood Restaurant on Garden Street in Titusville. Wayne had gone to school with the gregarious owner, Laurilee Thompson. The fresh shrimp she served was enhanced by the stories she told us about her days as a shrimp boat captain. As she spun her tales of the sea, I envisioned the movie of her life.

On April 15, we paid our taxes, packed the instruments in the van and set the GPS for the stage of the beautifully restored 1939 Art Deco Theater now called the Don Gibson Theater in Shelby, NC. The theater was named for the local boy who penned the Ray Charles hit,”I Can’t Stop Loving You.”

Washington DC was the second stop of the tour. Roger was invited to join The Rock Bottom Remainders for the first concert of their 2010 “Wordstock Tour.”

The energy these authors exude always amazes us. They are up early doing all they can to promote these charity concerts. They don’t slow down until security knocks on the hospitality suite door in the wee hours of the morning telling them to lower the music and go to bed. They even steal time for sightseeing trips. This tour was no different. The two days in DC were hit with a barrage of radio and television interviews, an evening conversation panel directed by Sam Donaldson, receptions, a rehearsal at XM studios, dinners whenever time permitted but most of all fun!

We woke up one morning for one of those early TV interviews. Listening to Scott Turow and Roger tell stories during the morning DC rush hour was worth the blurry eyes. We arrived in the green room of the FOX-WTTG TV show just as the tag for the interview was playing on the monitor. David Tauler, another guest on the show with the band “House of Echo ,” ran to the TV screen, pointed at the picture of Roger and declared, “Hey! He’s going to be here!” The look on his face was priceless, when Roger walked up to him, smiled and said,”And here he is now.”

We escaped for a quiet lunch to fortify ourselves, and then we met everyone at the NPR studios for a Tiny Desk concert in their offices. It was a good thing Roger remembered to bring his acoustic guitar; he was the only one with an instrument. There had been no rehearsal or even conversation about what was happening, so when Roger walked into the room, there was a quick huddle to come up with a song that was in the public domain or one that had no copyright issues. Fortunately, Roger had recorded “The John B's Sails” aka “Sloop John B” with Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson and Gregg Iles on the Folk Den Project a few year earlier. Everyone remembered the words and the live performance was recorded. Dave Barry gave a wonderful introduction. Let’s hope this link stays up on the NPR site for a long time.

The Rock Bottom Remainders left Washington DC on the rails for Philadelphia; we left on the highways for Rockwell Hall at Buffalo State University in Buffalo, NY where Maria Sebastian opened the concert for Roger.

Two days later, we met up with John Sebastian (no relation to Maria) in Tarrytown, NY at the Tarrytown Music Hall. Roger loves going back to his childhood town but this time was even more special with not only a re-union with John but one with his “Thunderbyrd” producer, Don DeVito.

A week before the next concert, we checked into the Sheraton Lincoln Harbor hotel in Weehawken, NJ. The hotel was the base for radio interviews and meetings. It is so easy to catch the ferry right out of the front door of the hotel to New York City. After several days of business meetings, we enjoyed an engaging dinner with Patrick, Roger’s oldest son.

1958 was the year Steve McQueen made his debut performance on the big screen. It was that performance I saw while sitting in the back seat of a 1956 Ford sharing popcorn with my brother at the drive-in theater in Beaufort, SC. It was the first horror movie this 7 year old had ever seen. Steve McQueen’s performance in the “THE BLOB” could not mar the fear I felt for years when I had to sleep in a room with a heater vent on the wall. I think the only reason I don’t close the vent now is because it is on the ceiling.










Well, our next concert in Phoenixville, Pa at The Colonial Theater was the very same theater that “The Blob” oozed out of in 1958. I moved my “lemonade stand" close to the door just in case I heard screams coming from the auditorium. Roger thought my disturbed thoughts were so funny, that he told my story to the audience during his show.

Roger and Pete Fornatale, a New York City DJ, became friends many years ago. Every year Roger would go to WNEW for the annual Roger McGuinn update on Pete’s show ‘Mixed Bag.” Pete probably knows more of Roger’s history than I do. His latest book, “Back To The Garden: The Story of Woodstock” is filled with stories of the musicians who were at the 1969 gathering on Yasgur’s farm. Pete also presents a video lecture about those times and that is how he delighted the audience prior to Roger’s concert in Morristown, NJ.

This tour developed a theme of its own...Wordstock, Woodstock and old friends.

On the way to Valparaiso, IN, we stopped to see more friends in Dublin, OH. They always fill us with meals meant for kings and lots of loving memories.

In February 1898, John Phillip Sousa conducted his band through the doors of The Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso, IN. The stage has seen Vaudeville greats, including the Marx Brothers. On May 8, 2010, the stage was gracefully set for Maria Sebastian to open the evening for Roger McGuinn.


Next Blog: A visit to WSM Radio station, Nashville TN- The past -1968 and the present- 2010:-) I'm on summer vacation, so the next BLOG will be up sooner than normal.I'm not rushing around trying to pack for the next tour. It is great to have time in the summertime!
All photos by Camilla