This is a writers round, or a songwriters circle, or three guys taking turns singing original songs in a bar. It's the first fruit of my joining the NC Songwriters Co-op.
The other two songwriters, as Norma Rae is trying to tell you, are Matthew Crowe and Gordon Gross.
I met Matt Sunday at an open mic at the Fainting Goat in Fuquay-Varina. I figured I'd check out the town rather
than just going there cold on Thursday. It's a nice town! If you're near it you should come out. Note the early start time. You can get dinner at the Brick too. 213 Fayetteville St. in Fuquay-Varina. But you knew that.
Matt is a multi-talented singer and
instrumentalist. I saw him play guitar, mandolin and drums, and I suspect if there'd been a tuba and a glockenspiel sitting around he'd have been able to play them too.
Song of the Newsletter: Kathy's Launderette
You're just going to have to take my word for it that I've been making up songs because this is another old one, though it's a new performance.
It was recorded Saturday at the Huron Stage Music Venue, which if you're anywhere near Durham, North Carolina, you should go to. A guy named Josh Glasson built a stage in his backyard during the pandemic and started hosting shows there.
He added another performance space in the basement for cold
weather or rainy-day shows, and that's where this one was. It's a great space, and beyond that, a great community, the kind of DIY, warehouse-show vibe that I started out in. My friend Wayne Norman shot the video.
Kathy's Launderette is a song that never worked
out the way I wanted it to in a full band, but it's behaving very nicely for me as a solo song.
I made it up using what I consider the four essential tools of a song-makerupper: Sleep deprivation, coffee, alertness to euphonious phrases and having no access to
pen, paper or any kind of recording device.
Have you ever been on magic mushrooms — wait. Let me back up.
I was walking home from a graveyard shift on an extravagantly gorgeous sunny morning in San Francisco when I saw the sign for Kathy's Launderette. I want to say it was a hand-written sign but I'm probably mixing it up with a sign I once saw on Turk Street in the heart of the Tenderloin: Palace of Fine Junk.
That's a good name for a junk shop in San Francisco.
Kathy's Launderette, I know from the one reference to it I've ever found online, was on Eddy Street.
If you've ever walked along Eddy Street in the Tenderloin, you'd think no one would ever see a sign for a launderette there and think "That must be the most magical place in the world."
You'd be wrong.
Remember, I was exhausted and hungry, I'd drunk about 20 cups of industrial-grade office-coffeemaker joe in the last couple hours, and it was the most beautiful day in history. You might remember it.
When those things all come together just right — well, that's why I asked you if you've ever been on mushrooms. It's not like being on mushrooms except that it's just like being on mushrooms.
The sign stopped me as I glittered my way down the sidewalk. I rolled those words around. Kathy's Launderette. Not laundromat. Not washhouse. Launderette. I pictured Kathy. I don't know what I pictured but given that it was 1990 or so I bet this wouldn't be too far off.
Kathy's dryers won't turn your
drawers to ashes She's behind the counter, batting her lashes
The song started sloshing around in the coffee puddles in my mind, and by the time I got home, which wouldn't have been long, it was a solid idea and maybe even a finished
song.
It's another one I've had to update for the times.
I send group texts to my friends out of town Then I sit and watch my clothes spin around
That used to be:
I write letters to my friends out of town
I did two smart things after I saw that sign. Eat something and take a nap? No.
The first was in that initial moment, when I didn't walk in to Kathy's Launderette to see what it was like. The second was never going back there to see if it really
was the magical wonderland I'd imagined.
I never saw it again, and have since found no record of its existence other than a one-paragraph story in the Tenderloin Times in 1985, which I found while writing this newsletter. It's about a bust for receiving stolen goods. Kathy and her mom got pinched. I don't know how it turned out.
Other Stuff
Welcome to the first Corrections section for this newsletter.
I told you in
an earlier edition that I might sometimes lie in this newsletter, but it won't be about anything important. And if I make a mistake, as opposed to
lying, I'll let you know.
Last week, while telling the story of I Love You (But Your'e a Lyin' Sack of Shit) I told the tale of two bandmates collaborating on an earlier song called You Left a Burnin' Bag of Dogshit on the Doorstep of My Heart.
Wayne Haught, the artist formerly known as Wankin' Wayne of the Wankin' Teens, wrote to say that the guitar player of our busking band, who I didn't name because he's a schoolteacher and it might
not be good for it to be online that he wrote a song called You Left a Burnin' Bag of Dogshit on the Doorstep of My Heart, didn't write it. So his name is Karl.
"J P Collins, wrote it," Wayne says. "A friend of mine you must have met, because he came out to hear
us play it a few times."
I don't remember. Sorry J P. Did I mention the sleep deprivation?
Here's another thing I have to walk back a little, as they say in politics when they mean pretend I never said that stupid thing and try to get you to believe I never said it.
The subject line of
another recent edition of this newsletter was "We await the first great pandemic song." Since then a few people have sent me examples of good pandemic
songs, I've seen Steve Poltz sing one at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, and my friend Vito Dito went out and wrote one.
I don't know about great ones but I'm going to try to collect as many good ones as
I can, and I'll tell you about them in another Other Stuff section.
If you like anything I do, you can help me out by forwarding this email to at least one person who you think would also like it
Photo of my guitar and mitt in this
newsletter's header by Savion Washington.
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