First of all, I absolutely hate flying. Like hate it more than when people floss in front of me. So getting me on a plane that isn't taking me somewhere like Berlin or South Korea (my parents live there) is a hard fucking thing to do. But Haley's always worth it, and the idea of being out of LA for the 4th is always appealing.
Although my trip was a vacation, it felt more like a slumber party with my best friends. My buddies Justin Kane and Faye McCauliffe were also with us. They're my favorite power couple: Justin's a cinematographer (check out his awesome films here) and Faye is an interior designer and amazing chef (she is You Are the River and runs Bread and Water catering with her sister). Being with everyone in the beautiful Pacific North West was the best time ever.
But of course, in typical Mayabean fashion, my favorite part of the entire weekend was spent record shopping. I mean, can anyone with any fragment of music interest go to Portland without visiting Mississippi Records? I bought too many to name, but found one that literally took my breath away. You know when you see a record at a small shop and gasp because you didn't even know it ever existed in vinyl format? Being a DJ, my gut instinct in every purchase is to always buy something I can inevitably play for an audience and make them go oooooh. And when I know a song exists that I'd die to play for someone but absolutely can't find anywhere (online or otherwise), a part of me cries on the inside knowing that I'll never get that affirming oooooh. Well, that record I gasped and peed my pants over is Townes Van Zandt's In The Beginning (note the Wiki page doesn't even give you any information on this album that's how fucking rare it is). You can buy the CD on Amazon and the digital files on iTunes, but the LP doesn't exist. Or so I thought.
Townes Van Zandt is maybe my favorite singer/songwriter that has ever lived. More than Leonard. More than Dylan. More than Francoise. More than Plant and Ozzy and Lee and George. Townes speaks to my soul in ways others don't. It's simple. I adore him in ways I can't express, and his music is tantamount to my creativity and the key to my emotional cave. But I can't always DJ Townes because his songs are slow, often considered "depressing" or "sad," which infuriates me, but part of being a DJ is understanding the flow of a room and acquiescing to a certain vibe, which means people at bars don't always want to cry in their whiskey sours just because you do.
So I pilfer through his faster songs, the "upbeat" ones that resonate in rippling harmonica rambles. Like Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold off High, Low and In Between. Or Snake Mountain Blues off Our Mother the Mountain. But if you look at In The Beginning, there are at least four songs on there to choose from, all upbeat, all fast, all still laden with misery and underlying sorrow, but pepped enough to DJ.
"Hunger Child Blues"
"Black Widow Blues"
In the end, Townes was worth the entire weekend.
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