Blue Guitar Highway

Barbeque and Blues

  BARBEQUE AND BLUES In the fall of 2005 I had a meeting with the general manager at Famous Dave’s. I had been working there since 2001. He told me that I would just be receiving one check instead of two. I was getting one check to play and one to book the club. The downside was that they were going to have to start taking taxes out of it, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise . (Instead of turning my couch upside down to try and find enough change to pay my taxes on April 15, I would start to get a refund instead.) It gave me less walking-around cash, but I was still taking home more than 1,100 a week. The upside was that I was going to get full health and dental benefits, and two weeks paid vacation, a term that in a musician’s world is either an oxymoron or simply doesn’t exist. I was also supposed to get thirty days’ notice in case I was terminated. He wrote it on a napkin and handed it to me. Hell, over the years I’ve done most of my business over a handshake, so the scribbled napkin felt formal. (I still have it.) The accounting department called me at the end of November and told me that if I didn’t take my vacation by the end of the year I would lose it. I got online and found the best seven-day flight/hotel deal that I could find and would soon be bound for Florida, the state where Jack Kerouac died. It was my busy time of year and I wasn’t able to use all fourteen vacation days, but I was happy nonetheless. Kelly, my best friend from the Range, lived in Tampa, so apart from a few days in Orlando, printed T-shirt capital of America, I would get a chance to see him and his wife, Mary. Life was good. I chose a hotel that had a sauna, a Finnish tradition that I had grown up with and that over the years had flushed out enough toxins from my system to kill a team of lumberjacks. I bought the new Woody Guthrie biography, packed a suit and a killer pair of fake green alligator shoes I had bought on sale that had Florida shuffleboard written all over them, and was off. My goal was to read, sauna, sun, and hang with my best friend. I arrived at the airport and took the tram to the shuttle bus. While I have been able to travel and do gigs in New York, Austin, Miami, and Boston, I have never had enough disposable cash, or the wherewithal BARBEQUE AND BLUES   to tour around the country in a way that I would have enjoyed. It was part of the price I paid for the life of a musician who lives gig to gig, paycheck to paycheck. I looked out and saw palm trees swaying in a humid breeze, standing beside people dressed for a July in Minnesota. I got to the hotel, checked in, and made friends with the older Jamaican fellow named Cartwright who ran the ground floor operations. He saw my guitar and told me that Johnny Cash had stayed here several times before. Cool. We bonded and I was home. I was looking forward to filling the hotel room’s refrigerator with fresh fruit and ran into two problems. There was no refrigerator in the room, and I was soon to find out you can’t find fresh fruit in Orlando to save your life. The refrigerator would cost an extra 20 a night. I asked Cartwright about it, and he told me to tell the front desk that I needed it for my medications and they wouldn’t charge me for it. I told them a little white lie and said I needed it for my “diabetes.” The lady I spoke with had probably heard this song and dance before but sent one up anyway. Though I have always believed that you can lie to booking agents, bar owners, and occasionally your mother, I felt a little guilty about this charade . I should have. Two months later, utilizing my health benefits in my new contract arrangement, I took my first complete physical in years and found out I did indeed have diabetes. Damn! It was the first week of December, between tourist seasons. For...