Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Plain

Writing this now in the lobby of the Days Inn in Claremore Oklahoma, not too far from Tulsa (maybe 10 minutes, definitely not 24 hours from...)(thank you Gene Pitney)...

I'm here to play a show for my friend Prof. Hugh Foley, who used to be the music director at WNYU FM back in the days inn which I used to hang out down at their mad lab on the 6th floor of the Tisch School of the Arts on Broadway ('sfunny because the late Larry Tisch--he of the Tisch dominated Loews Corporation-- was just then presiding over the mass downsizing/dismembering/bloodletting of CBS Inc., where to be "tisched" was a synonym for you-know-what--and it was at CBS Records where Tisch was rumored to be stalking the corridors/sharpening his butcher knife that I was still semi-gainfully employed in the late 80's... just about the same time I was playing under Tisch's absentee patronage on WNYC FM, and launching my solo career at the Knitting Factory, more on that later)(Don't fear the reaper, indeed!).

Hugh was the program director there for awhile and a major fan of my work, he used to play my earliest recordings frequently on the air when they existed in only cassette monitor mix forms (especially "King Strong", a fiery instrumental track which eventually got written up in Billboard due to his relentlessly playing it, a track I cut with Keith LeBlanc and Skip McDonald from The Sugarhill Gang, later Tackhead)...

He also invited me to play live in the NYU studio, which is where I first encountered Jonboy Langford and Sally Timms from The Mekons, former-Fall guitarist and current BBC Music6 DJ Mark Riley, The Sugarcubes en masse, and great WNYU folks like Colleen Murphy (now DJ Cosmo, my fellow collaborator in a new DJ project called Wild Rumpus, Colleen and I performed in London and in Hyderabad India last summer), Jason Candler, who's played alto sax in Gods and Monsters for almost 10 years now, Leigh Lust, Marlene Goldman, a whole slew of cool people who comprised my earliest support group in town until I started gigging regularly at the old Knitting Factory on Houston Street, which became my base of live operations in NYC for many years...

Think it was June 11th, 1988, the night of my first ever gig there (basically did this solo show on a dare, after securing a booking from Michael Dorf, who thought it would be a coup to have "Beefheart's guitarist" play his joint)... and sure enough, the signs and augurs didn't bode well once I made the booking, they handed me a Tuesday at 9pm slot, not a great time to debut, and somehow my name was mysteriously left out of their ad in the Village Voice that week... but I persevered, bootstrapped myself, rehearsed like a madman and put posters around Downtown...

and I'll be damned if I didn't sell the joint out! They turned Matthew Sweet and Skip McDonald away, the audience loved it (Verna Gillis was there--hi Verna!), I did three encores and they handed me 6oo bucks off the door...

and that night was a honest to God turning point in my life...I went home elate, and determined from that point on to hit Music as hard as I could...which I did...

and at my next Knitting Factory show a month later where I played as part of their "What is Jazz?" Festival, a rep from the New York Times was present, and a feature review ran shortly thereafter the headline of which was "Guitarist of 1000 Ideas"...

shortly therafter I was invited to play the Berlin Jazzfest, where I stunned the audience into silence, and then cheers, with an impromptu solo guitar fantasia entitled "Verklarte Kristallnacht" after Schoenberg's "Verklarte Nacht"...it was a piece I decided to play once I got to Berlin and realized that my performance coincided with the 50th anniversary of that dreadful event--a musical statement of first principles, as such-- it caused a scandale (lots of dirty looks from some folks)and yet received an ovation--and it went out live over WDR radio... the next day the Berlin Morgenpost ran my photo next to a live review and the caption "It is Lucas!" And thus I began working regularly in Europe...as the lone stranger, and also as part of several Knit Fac barnstorming package tours with folks like Blood Ulmer, Thomas Chapin, the New Klezmer Trio, Hasidic New Wave...the Knitting Factory definitely helped get my career going, God bless.


And so it was delightful to revisit and commemorate and pay my respects to the "old Knit" at Town Hall last Thursday night... while Bill Clinton and Bono were chowing down at the The Spotted Pig about a block from my house in the West Village I was uptown on 43rd Street at Town Hall hanging with "the mishpocha" as John Zorn put it, schmoozing with old friends I hadn't seen in ages, and digging great performances from the aforementioned Zorn and Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Ikoue Mori, Lee Ranaldo, DJ Spooky, Marc Ribot, Calvin Weston, Steve Bernstein, Jennifer Charles, former God and Monster Oren Bloedow, Rebecca Moore, and many others, I jammed with Medeski, Martin and Wood (well, Trevor Dunn subbing for Chris Wood, who had family matters to attend to) near the end, it was big fun and there was a really good party upstairs afterwards, there's a clip on Youtube of the ad hoc Sgt. Pepper theme/jam at the end which gives a flava--a damn good night, a benefit for The Stone, with lots of good memories of past gigs and those crazy European tours (each a little novel in themselves), some of which I shared with Michael's brother Josh, who I hadn't seen in years, and also Ed Greer, Michael Dorf's right hand man for years, without whom the whole thing (the tours, the club in general) would have literally fallen apart in the old days--I remember Ed helping to schlep a 16mm projector for me on trains and planes and up and down venue stairs when I performed with my 16mm print of the silent film "Der Golem" in 23 cities across Europa as part of the first JAM tour in 1993...

Nowadays I carry the film on DVD (much easier), which is what I'm going to play to tomorrow night, as by an eternal ricorso I find myself here now in Oaaaak! La Homa!, my homies, ready to play at noon tomorrow for my man Hugh at the Will Rogers Auditorium (visited the Will Rogers museum today, also saw actual ghost town remnants/revenants off a dirt road on the way over from Stillwater, where Hugh lives with his lovely wife Geri and his son Nokose and in the beautiful stone Rock House where I bunked last night, Hugh making me feel quite at home with his 24/7 pirate radio station busting out Gary Lucas music all night to his neighborhood to commemorate my visit)...

also visited the tennis court in Yale, Oklahoma where photographe/director Bruce Weber faked a sequence with Chet Baker's kids for his documentary on Chet, "Let's Get Lost" (when oh when will this ever come out on DVD??); also checked out Cain's Auditorium in Downtown Tulsa where Bob Wills ruled the roost for many years,great faded old photos of Hank Snow and Roy Acuff and a permanent beer aroma hanging over the oaken dance floor on springs-- Yo La Tengo are coming in there April 10th)--

after the film tomorrow I'm scheduled to lecture for Hugh's Introduction to Cinema class on making music for films (btw, my pal Judd Ehrlich's film "Mayor of the West Side", which I scored, is up for an Emmy this year for Best Documentary), then perform a solo concert at 7pm (guy's got me singing for my supper for sur... but hey I don't mind, as I love playing out here!)

Returning to NYC Thursday night before heading off in the opposite direction Friday to play the Bergamo Jazz Festival in Italy, thanks to Uri Caine who is curating the festival (and invited me to bring my Golem with me)...

Almost 9pm now and time to head out for some Barbecue at the Rib Crib down the road apiece, ribs so succulent and fine you can smell them almost in this antiseptic lobby environment... I'm quite looking forward to my trip to Austin Texas next week to play SXSW with both "The Golem" and Gods and Monsters-- not just for the music and cameraderie...

but for the 'cue!

Cue end titles...

xxLove

Gary