Long time gone

Ok so there is some catching up to do: I read my new solo piece, Like a Sack of Potatoes, at the Fringe this year. Nice turn out and everyone loved it. Felt very good. I treated it as a performance with script in hand so I took a mini set, chair, crate for a table, a few tomatoes for props. People loved it. Read it again a few nights later for some friends in their living room in Nyack . . . they raved as well. The one thing that may have been nice to add in Woodstock would have been a talk back at the end. Talking to some people after they really enjoyed hearing the root of some of the stuff in the play . . . but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. And . . . there was a sizable chunk of the audience that was there to see me! Based on seeing Old Hickory last year! One couple even went so far as to say they are 'fans'! I told them they better watch saying that kind of stuff in public . . . but self-deprication aside . . . it was an amazing feeling.

Bette and I went back up to Woodstock last weekend to see Steve Earle at the Bearsville Theater. I had never been to the venue before but it is now my favorite place to see shows. Nice vibe. Beautiful space. And 250 seats! Very intimate. Now, this may sound strange, especially in retrospect, and especially since I never mentioned this to a soul, but I always sort of hoped for/felt like I would get the opportunity to talk to SE some time and tell him how much his album (ok ok CD) The Mountain meant to me as I was writing my coal miner plays. I played it a lot and felt it was an important work and still do. I even . . . get this . . . thought of taking one of my plays with me . . .just in case . . . but I didn't. I was there to enjoy the show . . . and besides . . . shit like that doesn't happen. Does it? So. After the show (the amazing show)my wife and I make a bee line downstairs to the facilities before the drive home, and saw SE and his wife go into a door marked private (they were making tracks though, after a three hour show I'm sure the dressing room sounds pretty inviting) So I do my business and figure to wait for Bette, and I figured as good a place as any to wait is at the foot of the winding staircase that leads to the lobby . . . and oh . . . I was right outside the door marked 'private'. I was not stalking however. Just waiting for Bette. Out of the way. In hindsight it may seem like stalking but the fates are funny sometimes. How funny are they? Well, as I'm waiting there the door marked private opens and who should step through it but Steve Earle. He was looking for someone I think, but I didn't miss a beat: I went up to him and shook his hand, introduced myself and said that I'm a playwright and that his album was an inspiration while I was writing my plays. He could have turned and walked off, said 'Isn't that nice or some such' but he didn't he asked me the names of the plays (I almost blanked on one of them) and if they were produced . . . chatted for only a couple of seconds and then I basically excused myself with a 'I just wanted to tell you that' and the last thing he said was 'You're the best man'. I don't know what must have gone through Bette's mind when she came out of the facilities and saw me talking to himself, but I'll tell you what, I was pumped. It was one of those moments that mean so much and to not blow it was a huge relief . . . I can't imagine how it would feel if I had said what I said but it came out sounding like kissing-ass or gobbledygook or something. It was a very nice moment. I asked for nothing and expected nothing but the opportunity to say my piece.

Then, in the car Bette mentioned sending him a script . . . and I allowed as how that had crossed my mind . . . his agent is mentioned in his new album so I called him yesterday, and the guy answering the phone, after I explained that I met Steve and he seemed interested (well ok maybe that is embellishing a tad . . . as my friend Boyd Carr used to say via his cartoon character O. Hector Lee: Sometimes I call a spade a shovel). Anyhow, I asked if I could send an email and get the message to Steve that way, so he gave me the email address for the agent and I sent one; figuring maybe it would be something to read on the tour bus. Of course, I expect nothing to come of it, and if anything did it would just be introducing my work to an artist I respect. But that's enough in its way.