Stay Loose

One Song with Randy

One night long ago, Randy Meisner joined my band onstage for one song.  It was an event I'll never forget, and it was the first thing that came to mind when I learned that he had died recently.

Our band was performing at a restaurant in Glendale, California called the Rusty Scupper.  The band was Jeff on drums, Mark on guitar, Joe on bass and yours truly on guitar.  It was an upscale place where you could get a good meal and then hang by the bar in hopes of meeting someone.  On this fateful night, most of the crowd's attention was focused on trying to meet someone, not on our music.  

Randy had quit the Eagles and started a solo career. We had just finished the song Hearts on Fire from his first solo album and gotten what would generously called "polite applause."

From out of the crowd, two young women were pushing a skinny guy wearing a t-shirt that said "Nebraska" towards the stage.  He smiled and said "Hey, guys!  Thanks for playing my song!" Yep, it was Randy Meisner.

I asked him to sing a song with us and he agreed.  After a short consultation, he decided to sing the same song we had just completed.  As soon as he started to sing, it seemed that every eye in the place was on us.  This was the unmistakable voice of the guy who sang Take It To the Limit for the biggest band of the decade.  It cut through the air like a knife.  People were dancing up and down to the upbeat shuffle song.  When it ended, we received what could only be called "tumultuous applause."  Same song, same band....different voice.

While the crowd called out for more, we huddled again.  "Do you know any more of my songs?" asked Randy.  No, we did not, to my everlasting chagrin.  So he said "Thanks, guys" and bounded offstage.  Now there were five or six women tugging at him as he ran for the door, like John Lennon in a Beatles movie.

We played one more song.  Polite applause.  We decided to wind up the set and regroup.  I took a sip of my drink and asked my bandmates "Did that really just happen?"

We had just seen an example of an A/B test, and we'd witnessed the power of style.  Now, when my buddy Doug Morgan sings Take It To the Limit with Phil Maneri and me backing him up, I think about that night.

Rest in peace, Randy.  Your memory is indeed a blessing.

Homage to Croz

I’m not sure why I was watching C-SPAN that day.  Maybe I was bored and spinning the dial. I saw something unexpected.  There was David Crosby, the man whose name came first in one of my top-five favorite musical groups, being interviewed by a gentleman in a white shirt, tie and jacket who had a serious bone to pick with Croz.

 

Why, asked the interviewer, did rock stars like Crosby think they had the right to use their celebrity, and the wealth it created for them, to push their political viewpoints (presumably liberal ones) on their fans and anyone else who would listen?  Croz simply would not take the bait.  He smiled serenely as the interviewer asked him the same question over and over again in slightly different words.

 

Finally, Croz said “look, man, you don’t understand.  Money is fine, and power is sweet.  But time: now, that’s the ultimate currency.”  The interviewer had no comeback for that.  The discussion was over.

 

That, I thought, must be a couplet from one of his songs.  I spent the next few hours listening to his music and trying to find it.  When I failed and gave up looking, I decided it was too good not to be in a song.  So I did what T.S Elliot recommended that great poets do: instead of borrowing it, I stole it.

 

One of a songwriter’s goals is to write a second verse that builds on the first verse and chorus, rather than one that restates what’s been said before.  It sounds easy, but it happens rarely for me.  Now, whenever I sing my song called The Present Tense, I think of Croz when I reach the end of the second verse.  That’s where his words found a home in one of my songs.

 

I sometimes fantasized about sharing this song with him.  And now it’s too late.   A musical hero is gone, and my imaginary conversation with him about his role in a song that is special to me will have to wait for another time and place.

 

Though I was not a fan of his personal life off the stage, and I winced when I read about the continued rifts between Croz and two of his thee bandmates in CSN&Y, I admired his musicality and stage presence.  As a life-long student of harmony singing, I marveled at his ability to find just the right parts to sing in between the melody and the high harmony.  As Stephen Stills said in his eulogy, Croz was the glue that held their vocal sound together.

 

On March 8^th, I’ll take the stage at Natalie’s Music Hall to sing with my comrades Doug Morgan and Phil Maneri.  Our stock in trade is to sing the songs of CSN and bring back great memories for our audiences.  I’m pretty sure we will be learning Long Time Gone for that performance.  And we might even sing The Present Tense.  Maybe I’ll be able to get through the second chorus without choking up.

 

Rest well, Mr. Crosby, and Godspeed.

A Day To Remember

John and I had been playing music together for a year or so.  Great guy, great drummer, great practice pad in his basement.  What could be better?

Better was when he invited me to play golf with him and a couple of buddies.  We decided to play a municipal course in our hometown that I’d always wanted to play.  It had a couple of legends associated with it: formerly a private club, designed by a famous golf course designer, private club moved out to the suburbs when the “city” grew up around their course, city bought the course and took it over, now the highest-rated city course.  But the biggest legend of all involved a story about a famous person about town who was robbed at gunpoint on the 14^th tee.

When I told my wife we were playing said course, her reaction was “are you crazy?  You know that someone got robbed there?  Are you going to leave your wallet in the car?  Will you call me when you are finished, please?”  Of course, that only increased the challenge and stoked my ardor to play this course.

We teed off at 4 p.m. on a sunny late-August day.  The course played as advertised; we had to use every shot in our bags to navigate around the front nine.  Sure, it had seen better days, but the greens still ran true.  I even put a tee shot on the par-3 hole number 5 within a foot of the cup.  We were sailing around the course with no one behind us and no one in front of us.  That just about describes paradise for a weekend golfer.

We made the turn about 6 p.m. just as the shadows were starting to lengthen on the course and the temperature was starting to drop.  Play slowed down a bit and we noticed a police helicopter circling over the neighborhood next to the course.  My buddy John crushed his drive on the 13^th tee and carded an easy birdie with a one-putt.  As we drove down the long cart path from the 13^th green to the 14^th tee, he leaned over and said “remember, this tee ahead is where the guy got robbed.  But that was a long time ago.”

That’s when we saw the Guy in the Red Shirt walking towards us.  This Guy was not a golfer, or at least he was not dressed like a golfer.  And he did not have any golf clubs.  We avoided eye contact as we drove past him on our cart.

When we reached the 14^th tee, we were surprised to see two foursomes waiting for the foursome on the tee to finish their drives.  We took a detour on our golf cart down to the 14^th green and asked the guys coming off the green about the holdup.  They said “Did you see the police helicopters flying over here a few minutes ago?  There were four guys who went running across the fairway over there and that really slowed things up on the course.  The police over there must be looking for them.”

He gestured down the cart path, and there we saw two police cruisers and four police officers.  We drove over to see them and asked one of them what was going on.  He said “We’re looking for four guys who went running across the course a few minutes ago.”  When I asked him what they looked like, he described the Guy in the Red Shirt.  “I think we saw one of your suspects walking briskly up the cart path between the 13^th green and the 14^th hole.”

When I tried to describe how to get back to that spot, I could see that the officers were confused.  So I said “it might be easier for me to just show you the spot.”  They took me up on my offer.  “Get in the back of the cruiser, and don’t worry about the seat belts.  There aren’t any.”

There I was, riding up a cart path at a golf course in the back of a police car. (The seats in the back are hard plastic, which makes you wonder what the jailhouse beds are made of.)  We got to the spot where we saw the Guy in the Red Shirt, and of course he was long gone.

My buddy John said to us “Hey, the sun is really starting to sink.  Since the back nine is clogged up, how about if we go back and play holes 6, 7, 8 and 9 again then call it a day?”

We got to the 6^th tee and my three playing partners all teed off.  It was a long, narrow tee box with a big drop off down to the fairway.  (Look out for the dogleg right and the thick woods over there!)  As I was getting out my driver, I saw a police officer at the very back of the tee.  Lying on the ground beneath him was a guy with his hands tied behind his back.  It was the Guy in the Red Shirt.  O….kay!

The officer did not instruct us to leave immediately, and it looked like he had the situation well in hand.  There were no guns and nobody was bleeding.  So I did what any golfer would do in this situation: I teed it up and got ready to drive the ball down off the tee onto the fairway (while avoiding the woods on the right.)

Just as I was getting ready to start my backswing, I saw a second police officer coming up the left side of the tee box from the fairway below.  This officer had his back to me and his gun was drawn, though it was pointed away from me.  I guess he was looking for the three other guys.

Without thinking, I took a mighty swing at my ball and it sliced right into the woods, never to be seen again.

I said to my partners: “Guys, I’m thirsty.  Why don’t we call it a day and I’ll buy the first round.”

When I wrote John later that night to thank him again for the game and for an unforgettable golfing experience, he replied “I bet you’ll never play golf with me again!”  My reply: “Are you kidding?  That was the most fun I’ve had playing golf in a long time!”

It was a day to remember.  The only way it could have been better is if that tee shot had gone into the hole at number 5.  Maybe next time!

 

It's Really Me. Really!

I've been gratified to get lots of compliments from people who have listened to my new CD.  The most common question I get from them is this: "Is that really you singing, Parker?"

Yes, it really is me singing all of the songs!  I listed the co-authors of the songs on the back of the CD, and some people think that those people are singing the songs instead of me.

What do you think?  Talk to me!

CDs and Downloads Now Available

I'm happy to report that CD hard copies and downloads of my new recording, The Present Tense, are available by clicking on the gadgets on the left side of my homepage.  You can also download songs from The Present Tense on iTunes.  My apologies to anyone who tried to order from my webpage from August 9 through 16 and encountered a glitch in the ordering process.

I'm also happy to report that the CD release concert on August 11th was a rousing success.  We introduced the new songs from the CD to a sold-out house at the McConnell Arts Center of Worthington.  I enjoyed performing with long-time musical friends as well as new friends.

Thanks very much for you support of this music.  Enjoy!

Parker

CD Release Concert August 11th

I invite you to join me for an evening of music to celebrate
the release of my first album in 27 years, The Present Tense.

Parker MacDonell and Friends will be performing
at the McConnell Arts Center in Worthington on Saturday, August 11^th
at 8 p.m.  Three of the friends who’ll share the stage with me
that night are Doug Morgan, Rob Mottice and Jim Cunningham of Captain Morgan
and the Pep Boys, the band I’ve been playing with around town.  You’ll
also hear talented local musicians Phil Maneri, John Bellas, Matt Michalski and
Rich Bradburn.  Please visit http://www.mcconnellarts.org/wp/archives/8944
to learn more about this concert and to purchase tickets in advance. 

We’ll be performing the ten songs from the new CD as well as
songs from my first two recordings, Home to the Heart (1983) and Looking
for You (1985.)  Maybe you’ve heard some of the new songs, like Elvis
Imitators, Mississippi Lawyer and Veteran’s Day, at the Pep Boys
shows.  I recorded the new CD, The Present Tense, in Los Angeles
this winter under the care of veteran producer and studio guitarist Joe
DiBlasi.  The new CD will be available for sale for the first time at the
August 11^th concert.

The McConnell Arts Center is a community arts center at 777
Evening Street near the corner of 161 and High Street in Worthington.  It
has a 220-seat auditorium in a beautifully restored, 100-year old Frank
Packard-designed school building.  You will enjoy the excellent acoustics
in the theater, the beverages and snacks, and the art show in the gallery
across the hall from the theater before and after the show.

I look forward to seeing you on August 11^th.  Thank you for your
support!

The Present Tense

Twenty seven years after the release of Looking For You, I am planning to release a collection of ten new songs on a CD entitled The Present Tense. The recordings should be available in early August in both CD and download form. I’ve resurrected independent record label Fayerweather Records for the purpose of releasing The Present Tense.

Most of the recording was done the week of February 6 through 10 at the Los Angeles studio of Joe DiBlasi. My musical brother-in-arms Jim King contributed great bass and keyboard tracks; my great friend David Sheils lent background vocals. Fellow Pep Boys Doug Morgan and Jim Cunningham sang background vocals once I returned to Columbus. Producer and musician extraordinaire Joe DiBlasi played the rest of the music, including smoking guitar parts on some songs and beautiful orchestral arrangements on others.

Seven of the ten songs are originals. I co-wrote three of the songs with friends Matt Munhall and Jeff Dressler. I wrote one of the songs as far back as 1986 and the most recent one in January 2012. Two of the three non-originals are published by Writer Zone Music, the Nashville publishing company I helped to start in 2003. And it’s not out of the question that Elvis may make an appearance…on this CD!

Please stay tuned for updates on the project. I look forward to sharing this music with you!

Pete, We Hardly Knew Ye

Pete Fornatale died today in New York City. He was a radio personality on the New York
City music scene from the time he was in college until his last Mixed Bag radio
show on WFUV FM on April 14th. You can read about Pete and his accomplishments at http://www.wfuv.org/blog/pete-fornatale-1945-2012.

Pete had a profound influence on my life as a musician. He got a copy of my first record, Home to the Heart, from his friend Dick Cerri in Washington, DC and started to play a few of the songs on his weekly Mixed Bag show when it was on WNEW-FM, the biggest rock station in NYC back in 1983.
That led me to bookings in folk clubs in Greenwich Village. On one of my trips to NYC, Pete asked me to come by the studio and do a live interview with him. I played three songs and he asked me great,
insightful questions. After the interview, we had lunch together at the AutoMatt Restaurant around the corner from the WNEW studio. He was warm and down to earth and I felt like the luckiest guy on earth that day.

When I put out my second record and moved from Los Angeles to Connecticut for graduate school, Pete asked if I would volunteer to help out with his Hungerthon telecast on New Year’s Night 1986. Would I ever! He broadcast live from the lobby of the United Nations building for 24 hours straight to raise money for World Hunger Year, a non-profit organization founded by Harry Chapin and carried
on by Pete and Bill Ayres after Chapin’s untimely death.

There I was in the lobby of the UN Building at 1:30 a.m. with no crowd to listen and respond to – just the millions of people I imagined who were listening to their radios around the NYC metro area. I got to the UN Building about 30 minutes early and was delighted to learn that I would be going on just after one of my heroes, Jesse Colin Young (“Get Together”). I was just as delighted to see one of my other heroes, Marshall Crenshaw (“Cynical Girl”) walk into the lobby while I was singing to take the spot after mine. For a kid from Lima, Ohio, I was in pretty tall cotton between these two giants.

That was the way Pete planned it, I’m sure. Though he was on a first-name basis with the very biggest of singers and songwriters, he was always promoting up-and-comers like me. Whether he was interviewing Paul Simon or a nervous first-timer like me, he never talked up or down to the performer. He was always on the level with his guests and with his audiences. Sure, he was a fan of the music, but he did not pander to his heroes or try to trick them into saying something they’d later regret. He was that great friend who was knowledgeable about music. Everyone who listened to
his shows must have felt a little bit closer to the lightning in a bottle that causes all of the music to be created and heard.

Pete had written a couple of great books about his experiences, including one about his insights from backstage at the Woodstock Festival. The last time I talked with Pete on the phone, sometime in 2011, he told me he’d send me an autographed copy of the book. So he did. I can’t bear the thought of looking for it tonight for fear that I loaned it to someone forgotten and will never see it
again.

I can’t help but think that Pete had a lot more to say on the air and on the pages of books that will never be written. Fortunately we can listen to his Mixed Bag shows in the WFUV archives. And we can
all honor the people who have redirected our lives by doing the best we can with the gifts we’ve been given.

The Swiss Way

Here is a recipe for a great way of life: Low taxes.  Lower government regulation.  Abundant public transportation.  A strong currency. Low unemployment.  City along a temperate lake.  Mountains for hiking and skiing one hour away. Financial center of the world.  No buildings over six stories high.  The best shopping in the world for shoppers without a budget who seek the highest quality goods.

This is Zurich.

It is also true that prices of everything are astronomical.  (A Big Mac is $15 and a hamburger in a fancy restaurant can be $72.)  People seem to smoke in public a lot (or maybe that’s just a consequence of using public transportation, because people who smoke need a hit just before they get on the tram and just after they get off.)  It’s hard to get someone on the street to return a look in the eye, much less to smile at you.  Everything is very precise, so when something does not go according to form, the wheels can come off of the tricycle of the locals pretty quickly.  (Because I left my luggage cart in the wrong place, I incurred public scorn from the small man in the big uniform who checked my passport at the airport.) Because everything is precise, you’d better be on time….or else.  One suspects that the precision of the place just might have a little impact on the creativity and individuality of its citizens.

A friend and I spent three days in Zurich recently.  Our goal was to learn how the financial services industry works there.  We got to meet a number of highly professional bankers, attorneys, accountants, venture capitalists, family office managers and financial advisors.  My favorite visit was with two of the partners of Emerald Technology Ventures.  The business community there works like a Swiss watch, if you’ll pardon the use of an obvious pun.

We were sad but not surprised to learn that for most of the people we met, the United States is an afterthought for business.  The emerging markets of Asia and Africa are where capital is flowing right now.  In spite of the political uncertainties in those markets, especially compared to the relative stability of the American political and social scenes, capital is flowing to markets where it can get higher returns.  That’s probably because those markets are starting from a lower point and so the percent growth rates can be much higher than in the developed economies.

On our last night in town, we finally saw a different side of Zurich.  After attending the opera we headed for the piano bar at the Hotel Widder.  After waiting a few minutes for a table, one opened up in the corner.  I plopped down on the red leatherette and proceeded to upset the table cards on the table of the two women sitting next to us.  They got a large charge out of this and that’s all it took to start a conversation.  (Maybe the fact that they were on their second or third drink helped a bit?)

We discovered that both of them are self-employed.  Maria is a photographer who helps advertising agents show their clients’ products and people from the best angle possible.  Eva is a tailor.  They are both doing what they want to do and have moved to Zurich from the small towns in Switzerland where they grew up.

They explained the kinds of things that we would have learned if we’d met them during Language Study Abroad in our sophomore years of college.  What kind of music did they like?  Why in the world do men and women kiss each other three times on the cheek when coming and going?  How could they possibly find a place where they could afford to live?  Do the natives really eat the melted cheese dish called raclette or is it just designed to slow down the tourists who eat it?  How often do people get to ski in those ever-present Swiss Alps?

After three days of laughing only between ourselves, Fred and I finally got to laugh with the natives.  And even the short but unpleasant encounter at the airport passport check couldn’t ruin that laughter.

Reunions

I never miss a reunion.  It could be college, high school, graduate school, my mother’s cousins and their children or my mother-in-law’s siblings and offspring.  There’s something irresistible about having all of these people together in one place at the same time with the sole intent of reconnecting with each other.

The most recent reunion I attended was for all of the living alumni of the men’s a cappella singing group from my college years.  We get together every three years in Hanover, New Hampshire just as the long winter is starting to turn to spring.  In northern New England, this equates to the weekend containing the first Saturday in May.  One of the wide-eyed freshman in the current group is recruited to run the reunion under the tutelage of a wizened senior, who himself was the freshman in charge three years ago.

This a cappella group was the center of my universe during those four years of college.  I had times that were good, bad, scary, exhilarating, intoxicating and everything in between.

During my four years of college, I shared time in this singing group with thirty five other men.  Some of them only shared the group with me for one quarter.  One of them joined the group when I did, in the fall of our freshman year, and we went across the finish line together four years later when we graduated.

At our recent reunion, twenty of those thirty five people returned to Hanover for the weekend.  As a cohort, we constituted over a third of the total attendees.  What caused my contemporaries to show so strongly, I wondered?

A few of them told me that the singing group was their true fraternity in college.  They skip the reunions of their college class but not the reunions of this singing group.  Others live close enough to be able to attend for a day or two and see a select group of old friends.

At the end of the dinner on our last night together, we all stood in a large circle on the porch of the college skiway and sang the group’s signature song with our arms around each other.  The song is Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” and it is arranged in a way that is moving and resonant.  Ever since it was added to the group’s repertoire in 1968, it is the song that the group has used to welcome its new recruits during a 3 a.m. visit to the new recruit’s dorm room.  (“There’s a place for you, somewhere a place for you.”)

As we prepared to sing this song on the last night, I blurted out “hey, you young guys: take a good look at us.  This is what you will look like in thirty five years!”  That’s when it hit me: I have more yesterdays than tomorrows, as Bill Clinton famously said on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday.

So, why keep coming back to an event that shows you in stark terms just how you are aging?  Do you do it to slow down the hands of time?  You do feel younger when you go back and recreate your past, or at least try to recreate it.  But maybe you’d be better off to avoid the reunion and ignore the signs of aging.

I go back time after time because memories of shared experiences are one of the most precious things in life.  With luck, we will know the people with whom we shared the stage in college for sixty or seventy years.  That is longer than most of us will know our parents, spouses or children.  Only our siblings will know us longer than these friends.  That’s why we call it a brotherhood.