THEN THERE WERE THESE stiff old hands on guitar and slide and mandolin, still not whispering pull over, stop here. Play fewer notes and chords maybe, play more sparely and sweetly. And warm up first. But whatever you do don’t quit playing. Tunes from the car radio wafting over the back seat where the baby clown lay with night lights swooping over, big band jazz and pop, crooners and yodelers and mountain breakdowns to the engine’s rumble, all that crackly hit parade. The hands had long ago learned to surprise him with what they remembered of what he hardly knew he knew from folks in the parlor and those late-night backseat rambles, where they went wandering in the dark without his sayso, without even his eyes, what they stumbled on and fell in step with, soon went humming and thumping alongside. He would start snatches that would some way finish themselves, noodle through a dark windy thicket clear to some kind of finale.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 16:04:33 +0000