- Susan Herndon - Blog

I'll Have Another....

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:15:06 -0700

'Dr. Dre' and I went to the hospital to see a friend who has cancer. Hang out, play a few tunes. Her sisters were there and brought food, some bruschetta for her. She asked for some Van Morisson. Wanted happy songs. "Happy~Happy" she kept saying in the twilight as the nurse brought some more pills for her.... "Happy~Happy." Her sister asked if she wanted some more bruschetta. "Yes, I'll have another...."

It's amazing we're here. Let alone, alive and well, if we are. Planet earth, the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, the universe. I mean, what are the chances? And how many things can go wrong to ruin our chances? It all seems like one big giant amazing game and gamble at risk.

So then, to gamble on top of it all, seems redundant to me.

I, myself, don't gamble.

There was one year, just minutes before the Kentucky Derby, I glanced at the names of who was racing, and I had a complete and shining hunch that Giacomo was going to win it. He was a long-shot. His odds were 50-1. But I just knew it. I told my husband and he said that he'd place the bet for me. It was about 20 minutes before the race and we happened to be in a casino where he was performing. Naw. I don't bet. He tried again, just 20 bucks. No, my gosh, blow 20 hard-earned dollars?!

Giacomo won.

After beating myself up for the next six months, I swore to myself that from then on I would take a lot more risk in my life.

I wanted to place a bet this year for the Kentucky Derby, but the race snuck up on me, and in the mad scramble to take care of the few people and things I love and care for, in between my gig Friday night in Tulsa and my gig on Saturday night in Norman, and then the hustle to stop by my home and water the garden, since it had been several days of heat since I'd been there-- there was no time to place the bet.

It really would have been a symbolic bet anyway, in honor of my father who loved the horse races. He wasn't a big-time gambler, at least we didn't think he was since no one ever came to re-possess the cars or the house; but when he finally retired, every day he would study the racing forms, do the handicapping, and go place his bets at the fairgrounds where they run a simulcast of the races from all over the country.

It seems that just about everyone in my family gambles in some way: the horses, the stock market, football games, the lottery.

For me, playing music for a living is about the biggest gamble I can make.

And then there's the gassing up of your car.... should I get gas at this convenience store or can I make it to the one down the highway, closer to the Keystone Pipeline where the price of gas is less expensive?

The last thing I did gamble my money on, and took a big risk, was late one summer. It was nightime. It was a Sunday. I was at the house all alone. I turned the tv on. There was that infomercial for the Time/Life Soul Train DVD collection. Damn. It had been awhile since I'd last seen this thing. Maybe two years prior, and I had wanted to purchase it back then. Four easy payments of $29.99, they assured me. I was depressed already. I had no money. Plenty of bills to pay. Not to mention the zillion other things that were just plain not right in my life. But gosh, "Betcha By Golly, Wow" by The Stylistics; "Everybody Plays the Fool" by The Main Ingredient; "Have You Seen Her" by the Chi-Lites; "The World is a Ghetto" by War; and Marvin, and Stevie, and Smokey, and the Staple Singers, Lou Rawls, and the Jackson 5, and Al Green, and Luther, and Sly, and on and on and on. Geezus, I HAD to have this collection. My life would be better if I had this in my possession, I just know it.

I called the number on the screen. Duane answered. He spoke in a deep and re-assuring, calm voice. He took my order and would I also like the CD collection that goes with the DVD collection?

I said, no.

He persisted.

No.

Duane said, "because you'll want to listen to these songs in your car, too, while you're going down the road."

Gosh, he was right.

"And now it's only six easy payments of $29.99."

I asked him if they could take out the Lionel Richie songs, but go ahead and leave the Commodores in the collection.

Actually, even though I should probably have spent my money on health care instead, I did win big in that transaction. And the O'Jays, and Gladys, and Bill Withers, and the Isley Brothers, and all of the Soul Train dancers, and the Afro-sheen commercials, and especially Don Cornelius often remind me of what a great investment I did make.

Bless Don Cornelius for such a great creation and how sad to hear that he was found dead by a self-inflicted bullet-wound to his head this past February.

Life is hard. But here we are.

And "I'll Have Another" won the Kentucky Derby this past weekend.

Tits and a Vagina.

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:38:36 -0700

Two musicians are talking, one says to the other--"gawd, I just got back from Jersey, played this club up there. The gig sucked: four hours, only two breaks, no complimentary food or drink, it only paid 200. bucks and then the check bounced." "... oh yeah," the other musician says, "and who books that?"

***********************************************

I'm heading back to play a place that I haven't played in about a year. It's on the way to a festival I'm playing and there's another gig on the way. So, in a way, it makes sense....

But the last time I played there, just as I was leaving, saying goodbye to the soundman, he tells me, "You were great. And hey, everyone here loves you, the managers, the people who work here, and everybody who comes in. It's just the guy who does the booking, he doesn't like you because you have tits and a vagina." :-)

Austin, Nashville, Memphis, Austin.....

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 09:04:58 -0700

It's not yet April and I've been down to Texas to play five times since January.... and to Nashville and to Memphis and next week to Arkansas. And I'm wondering if it's time to move.....

SXSW and Folk Alliance.....

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:08:58 -0700

Both of them, a blast. If you get a chance to go~ GO!

"Some humans ain't human, some folks ain't kind...." (john prine)

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 08:19:19 -0800

It was such a beautiful day today~ I took Tootie, the puppy dog, for a nice long walk at the dog park. We were about to get in the car to go, when I answer a call on my cell phone from a friend. Just then, a youngish woman walks by us and scowls, "you need to keep your dog on a leash." Tootie is pretty well behaved, but I answer politely, "oh, i'm sorry, did she do something....?" "Well, I had to pick my dog up," she snapped. I look behind her at the acres and acres of empty park, wondering about this encounter, when she then exclaims, "And get off your phone!"

Wow.

Ten years ago, in my politesse, I would have sucked this up and let it all go. But I'm older now, less calm and more cantankerous, have not been doing much Yoga lately, and very little meditation. In fact, I've been completely stressed and under quite some duress in my life, so I let this self-appointed-cellular phone/doggiepark policewoman have it.

***

I really hate conflict and thank goodness things like this don't happen very often. But it did make me think about an incident that happened about five years ago when I was on a gig in Tahlequah at Roxie's.....

It was a song swap with a bunch of guys and a girl comes out and assaults me and then she goes around slandering my name. In hindsight, I think I was so stunned-- first of all that this person did not even live in that town, had driven however far to get there, and then attacks me-- I did nothing. I went home, told my husband about it and a few friends and just chalked it up to her being crazy and to steer clear. I took what I thought was the high road.

But then a few months later I hear that she had started a rumour and spread a lie about me..... and then a few months later I learn that she's trying to malign people in the musical community against me. I'm suspecting this at first, but then I find out for sure when my best friend forwards me a message that this girl had sent to her where she's pretty much trashing me. My brain just does not wrap around someone doing this. Still, I do nothing. I'm thinking: this girl is a sociopath.

In the meantime, I'm getting a flood of messages from the sociopath and she's wanting to be my friend. And more and more, there she would be at the same social setting where I was, being sugary nice to my face and in front of other people, while all the while i knew she was trying to screw me from behind...... Still, I take the high road and just keep to myself and keep going about my business.

(...the problem, I've found out now, five years later, is that NOBODY IS ON THE HIGH ROAD! Everybody is down on the low road dishing the dirt. Even God. Or so it seems. And if you don't say anything~ you're doing yourself and the world a disservice.)

Look at Hitler and Nazi Germany. How stupid humans are! Look at all of those people, in their herd mentality, following this insane little man.... slowly taking over 1/3 of the world, killing how many people.... and not until a chunk of the world rose up was this evil defeated. How scary and frustrating to the spirit when some weird fraternal order goes about imposing its exclusionary beliefs on society.

And that's what really creeped me out about this particular little vignette in my life-- almost more than the hungry-ghost behaviour and evil-doing of this girl, although that was pretty creepy, but-- that anybody would believe her. A dear friend of mine (from whom, come to find out, she'd stolen some stuff) kept telling me~ "Be glad! She's doing you a favor weeding anybody who would believe her out of your life to begin with! You wouldn't want to be friends with them!"

But it was creepy, nevertheless.

I would gig someplace, she would try to gig there. She would hear my song about the roads in Oklahoma, next thing i know, she's got a song about the roads. I go to look at the trailor a friend is selling, she hears about it and goes to look at it too. I get a short hair cut, she gets her hair cut short. I become friends with some obscure person, the next thing i know she coyly seeks him out and befriends him. I schedule a show or event, she would schedule something similar at the same time. And on and on and on. It was getting a little freaky.

Again, in my mind, the universe is infinite and expanding~ like at the doggie park~ there are acres and acres of universe! There's enough for everybody and more! But, things are also finite and you go down your chosen path and it's a lot of hard work and sacrifice to make music for your livlihood-- did she, who's been given a barn to live-in and apparently doesn't really understand what it means to work for a living, have to come around and try to tear down what I've worked hard to build? Did she really have to come stealing after something in my life? And do people really believe her crap? As big as the universe is~ it's also a small world, after all....

And in it, my little ego wants an apology from this damned souless and sinister creature of evil for coming after me.....

Of course, I won't get it. ( For that matter, I doubt she's apologized to all of the wives and girlfriends of the guys she's blown.)

I'll never forget, years ago~ I was waiting tables one night at a place called Pinks and I stop at the bar to fill a drink order. Paul, sitting there, turns to me and says with that great smile-full-of-wonder, "You know what I don't understand sometimes? Why does God let some people exist? You know? Why does He even have them in existence?"

Hahahahahahahahah!

I've wondered that same thing since then, myself.

Ain't too proud to beg, Sweet Darlin'....

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:12:15 -0800

Gliddy glub gloopy

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:16:15 -0800

There's a warrant out for my arrest....

I sent a check in to pay for the speeding ticket, but i guess they didn't receive it in time, so i'm an outlaw.

We were on our way to play Good Folk Concerts in Fayetteville, Arkansas for Emily Kaitz's birthday party and we had a great time. Of course the ticket was for 9 dollars more than what i made at the gig, and with the warrant it's a whole lot more now, but of course, one doesn't play music for the money.

When I played out in San Francisco in August, I got a parking ticket and that sucked because i came out more than 50 dollars in the red on that little venture. But it was good to see Guy and Sofia whom I'd met in Okemah last summer at WoodyFest. And they had come over from Santa Cruz so that was cool.

On our way to Fayetteville we stopped off in Tahlequah to see a friend, Bill Erickson. He has a ton of great songs, and one that we want to cover he put on a CD for us to take. Which also really came in handy because Emily has so many great songs, but some that stick in your head, ~not that that's a bad thing~ but one in particular that she sang this night we absolutely could not shake the entire first half of the drive home.... "Mamma, what happened to Suzy Rosen's nose...." we kept singing it over and over in that particularly Jewish mode, laughing and groaning hysterically. In an effort to remain sain, we tried to occupy our minds with other things but then there it was, popping up again: "Mamma, what happened to Suzy Rosen's nose...." We remembered we had Bill's song on CD. Quickly, we stuck the ammunition into the CD player.... "Katy was a beauty, had to have her...." Ahhhhhh..... we spent the second half of the drive listening to that song over and over working on memorizing it..... by the time we got home, somehow, "Mamma, what happened to Suzy Rosen's nose" had finally slipped out of our minds and the speeding ticket was just a piece of paper I had forgotten about.

Such was not to be the case with "Gliddy glub gloopy."

I was in a department store, and there it was: "Good Morning Starshine! "....gosh, I always loved that song. It had been YEARS since I'd heard it. I didn't know any of the words, didn't even know that first line or that that was the title, but the music and that curious melody are so infectious~ I wandered the aisles happily thrown back into my childhood humming along.... forgot what I was doing there, that it was the dreaded holiday season, that I had things to buy, that i was in a hurry.... until the song was over, and I snapped out of it, went back to being about my business~ somehow feeling a little lighter, and thought it would probably be years before I'd hear that song again.....

But then, there it was again.

It's about one week later, and I'm driving down to Luckenbach, Texas for the "Piano Sessions," a gig that wonderful singer~songwriter, Bill Lewis has invited me on, when my traveling companion (who shall remain nameless in an effort to not musically incriminate him,) all of sudden breaks into song: "Good Morning Starshine, The Earth says hello, You twinkle above us, we twinkle below!" It's THAT song~ and he knows all the words! I can't believe it. I can't believe it's that song again. And I can NOT believe that this person knows the words, not only to the entire first verse, but also slightly knows some of the words to the chorus, which I had no idea what they were. But, wait. He's mocking the song. How could he mock this song? I love this song! He actually googles the lyric on his phone to mock it some more, and he reads it out loud like a secretary might read the minutes of a boring meeting: "Gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy la la la lo lo Sabba sibbi sabba nooby aba naba lee lee lo lo tooby ooby wala Nooby aba naba Early morning singing song." "That's just someone giving up completely on songwriting," he states. I can't believe it! I'm just thrilled, argue that it's perfect, can't believe it's this great song AGAIN, can't believe THIS person knows the song, and truly, am in utter disbelief that THIS is the actual lyric. "Genius," i say! The nonsense perfectly conveys that feeling. And anyway, I never even knew the words; it might just be that the music is more important. "One of those one-hit wonders," he scoffs. "Yeah, maybe, but it's almost 50 years later and we're googling and singing the song!" We go back and forth, and now, for real, i can not get the song out of my head. It's there when I go to bed that night. It's there in the morning when I wake up.

One week passes. It's still there. "Good Morning Starshine...."

Now I'm starting to get scared: "... the Earth says, 'Hello'"

Seriously, ......what if it never leaves?

Two weeks pass, I'm lying on the couch. I think I've got the flu or something. I fall asleep watching "THIS," the movie channel... it's some pleasingly cheesy long-haired hippy film from the 70's that's on, but i'm not paying much attention. I'm feverish, like somehow I've possibly been slipped a hit of acid.... the next thing I know, half-asleep, half-awake, I squint my eyes to see, and there on the tv, all these hippies are riding in a car down an open road in the early morning sunshine. I hear them first, though-- and there they are, all of them singing: "Good Morning Starshine, you lead us along, My love and me As we sing our Early morning singing song, Gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy la la la lo lo Sabba sibbi sabba nooby aba naba lee lee lo lo tooby ooby wala Nooby aba naba Early morning singing song!"

I am crazy. There's no doubt about it.

But without these songs, I would be completely insane, and I'm even more sure about that.

the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon (...a re-dedication, nevertheless.)

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:51:51 -0800

For a number of years, my dear friend, Jim Tilly, used to produce the Holiday Harvest CD which was a compilation of seasonal songs from artists around the region. Proceeds went to the Community Food Bank. It was a really wonderful tradition he had going. ....One year I wrote a Hanukkah song for it with the traditional Ma'oz Tzur liturgy. My Hebrew's not so great, but here it is:

So, last night I made a fire for the Winter Solstice.... thankful the days are growing longer now, finally.... (there's something to just plain and simple paganism. Especially this time of year ;-)

But religion is great and useful, (...unless, of course, you're killing because of it,) and just after my Boss RC-20 Loopstation, it's my most favourite tool, I've done some form of Yoga all my life, and probably the best thing i've ever read are The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. (Andrew, my Ashtanga Yoga teacher gave me the book a long time ago.) But, I was happily raised Methodist ("faith without works is dead"), had some experiences with speaking in tongues in my early teens (thanks to some Charismatic friends), slowly became an athiest (late teens) but grew miserable, so switched to agnosticism, which led to studying existentialism, which led to Buddhism, which in turn led me to some time at Plum Village in France (where I found myself one winter doing a hundred deep prostrations face and body all the way to the ground, along with about one hundred other people from around the world in celebration of New Year's Eve...and that was a memorable turn of the year.)

Found it hard to practice Buddhism after moving back to the States.... (I think the drive that it takes for the ego to maneuver around this 'culture' plus not finding a sangha with which to practice made it difficult.) So, while being deeply entrenched in a Catholic community, I began having a series of dreams of a Torah procession....which led me to visit the Synagogue in my neighborhood, which eventually led to my conversion.... which has led me full fool circle back to being a pagan....

And so this week, I'm lighting the Chanukah candles, back to practicing Yoga and doing sitting meditation, back to finally learning the Band's, "This Must Be Christmas Tonight", and back to walking around the Medicine Wheel and the Winter Solstice Fire.

L'enfer,

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:39:00 -0800

c'est les autres.

~Jean-Paul Sartre

"... the Earth is made of molten rock..."

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:13:05 -0800

There have been at least a half a dozen earthquakes in Oklahoma in the past few weeks. A geology professor here says it's absolutely not from fracking, that the quakes have appeared at depths significantly deeper (approx. 3 miles) than deposits where fracking takes place. But who knows really? Even though he does study the Earth, it's not like he's spokesperson for the Earth. After all, it's all just one big rock that we live on top of ...and he does work at a university that's in partnership with the petroleum industry.....

Last night i had a dream that we were having another pretty big earthquake.... it was very real... but then when i woke up and checked the USGS site~ nothing.

Maybe there's still a big one yet to come....

I wrote the following in September, which, now that we're having these earthquakes so frequently, is kinda funny in hindsight....

Evidently there was an earthquake in Red River when i was playing out there the other day. Something like 4.5 on the Richter Scale. It happened in the middle of the night and i was sleeping so didn't feel it.

I've always been a little bit afraid of going out to California~ (having the feeling like that line in Steely Dan's My Old School, "California~ tumbles into the sea!") but then, when i was playing out there last month, the big earthquake happened not on the West Coast but on the East Coast in the D.C. area. Come to find out though, there was an earthquake in the San Francisco area right after i played there, I didn't feel that one either-- i think it happened after i had left the next morning. Getting to the desert that afternoon, just east of LA, someone said so matter of factly, "oh, yeah, we have earthquakes here all the time." And i swear, the earth was undulating beneath me all the while i was out there....

About 9 years ago, i was in an earthquake right at home, (which isn't so unusual, as we've been having them a lot lately, due, they say, to fracturing.) This particular one happened around 3 in the morning or so. At the time, I didn't think it was an earthquake. The guy in the apartment above me cooked meth. And i was pretty sure he had finally gotten around to blowing the enitre complex up, so i tore out of the apartment house and down the street, still asleep and in my nightclothes....

Later, the news was, we had indeed had an earthquake, on the line there at the edge of the New Madrid Fault that runs through Missouri and Arkansas.....

All this to say, you just never can tell. The Earth is Alive.