Raspberries, Strawberries: The Good Wines We Brew

I don’t think I really woke up until we were arriving in Basel, about eight o’clock and just getting light. Luckily someone had told us where to look for the Auslander exit that took us to another part of the station that is in France. There was no one to stop us or look at our passports when we walked through. We found the train and our car with reserved seats and sat down. Condensation, or perhaps a thin wash of white paint, obscured the view. The train was practically empty. “I see not one Swiss person,” Edith said as we began to move.

I must have dozed again. A service bar man came round and I ordered a beer and a Fanta. The train rocked on into a grey world with low-flying clouds. There wasn’t much to see through the cloudy window. That was okay, my mind was on Paris. I thought of all the images that name conjured up: Picasso, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and the lost generation, and George Orwell, who had written of the down-and-out. That scarcely scratched the surface. I’d been in and out of Paris half a dozen times, but this was my first time to play the City of Light. Die Stadt der Liebe, Edith called it, the City of Love. I thought of an old Kingston Trio song. There were two I remembered, one with a spoken part: An old man returns to Paris, as every old man must. He finds his…have disappeared, his dreams have turned to dust. Never mind that one... but The Seine, the Seine, When will I again meet her there, greet her there on the sunlit banks of the Seine. Ah, that was more like it, from high school days when I played left-handed air-guitar.

Venturing forward to the front of the car I tried one restroom door and found it locked. The other opened to reveal a stopped toilet dangerously close to the top. Grateful for the height and elevation gene, I pissed in the sink, taking care to rinse it before returning to my seat. “Don’t go there if you have to use the toilet; try another,” I warned.

Hervé Oudet, the promoter of the Acoustic in Paris concert series, was at the Gare de l’Est to meet us and take us to the Hotel Studia on the Boulevard Saint-Germain just a couple of blocks from the gig. We rode by Metro, emerging at street level near the Notre Dame cathedral, a few blocks away. Hervé got us checked in and the receptionist gave us a key. Our room was up six floors in a tiny elevator. “Close and romantic, honey; kiss me, this is Paris.”

“It is made by Schindler; that’s a Swiss firm.”

“Is that right? They must have been in business a long time.” The elevator took awhile ascending, at length creaking to a stop. We emerged by the stairway and found our room at the end of the hall, a corner room. Hervé came up a few minutes later and drew us a map to get to the club, called Le Pomme de Eve. Sound check would be seven o’clock. When he left I looked around to check out our acommodations. The window gave a view of mansard rooftops with clay chimney pipes, a parade of pedestrians on the sidewalks below. A match of old and new, the room had high ceilings, stucco walls, a white marble mantle with a gilded mirror above. Tiled, with a pattern of fishes, the bathroom was a later addition. Happy to find good water pressure, I took a steaming hot shower. We both went down for a nap, awaking in the late afternoon.

Setting out with gig bag and a rucksack with gear and CDs, we followed Hervé’s directions, heading up the hill away from the boulevard for three or four blocks before turning left. Away from the main street the bars and cafes were smaller, and the prices posted on the menus in the windows more reasonable. There seemed to be a lot of young people around, university students I guessed. We found Le Pomme de Eve by a wide wooden door. The club was closed, but we had a fix on it now. Circling back around we began looking for a place to eat, finding in that neighbourhood alone a choice of French, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Ethiopian restaurants. It was early for dinner but I wanted to eat in plenty of time before the show. We found a bar called Zig-Zag that served hot club sandwiches, a popular and crowded place. Two pretty French girls were studying in a corner. A group of six came in, occupying the tables just behind us. I wished I had better Swiss-German so Edith and I could talk anonymously. American college students on their semester abroad, the young men talked of fraternity drinking binges, while the girls spoke in a kind of singsong cadence, beginning every sentence with like. “Like…it was so weird…”

Returning to the club we found it open and followed a set of narrow stairs down into an ancient cellar with vaulted arches and a long bar on one side, a stage facing an array of tables and iron chairs. The sound was set up and several musicians had arrived for the evening, billed as Richard Dobson, homage à Townes Van Zandt avec Johan Asherton, Ian Kent, et Terry Lee Hale. I shook hands all around. Willie Nelson says always make a point to remember everyone’s first and last names—and he’s not the only one—but so help me, I’ve never been good at it. Johan Asherton, a soulful guy with long hair—and the only Frenchman on the bill—asked me about a t-shirt I was wearing, a picture of Townes from the Old Quarter in Galveston. Fronting a band with upright bass, guitar and fiddle, Ian Kent was dark haired, tall and thin. Terry Lee Hale was born in Texas but had spent his formative years playing in the Seattle area. They all had the look—boots, leather, crowfeet around the eyes, nightclub pallor—and you would likely take them for musicians anywhere from Austin to Zagreb. Talking with Terry Lee, I discovered that he was in fact familiar with Croatia, and had recorded his latest CD in Slovenia. He had even heard of the mad Berislav, our one-time agent. I thought of all the generations of American artists who had come to Paris. Here was yet another; expatriate Americans with guitars. I wondered how many American musicians were living in Europe overall. I had met a few in Germany: Billy Goodman in Heidelberg, my sometime duet partner Mark Wise who lived in Schopfheim, near Basel, and most recently, Geoff Steinherz I’d met at the Townes tribute in Koetz a few weeks before. I had met an American bass player in Como, Italy. I knew there were American musicians living in Barcelona. They all had a good story; and the thing the stories all seemed to have in common was a European woman.

With the first part of the evening devoted to Townes songs, Ian and his group kicked off the evening with ‘Tecumseh Valley’ and ‘Waiting Round to Die’. Accompanied by Ian on dobro, Johan Asherton sang a song he had written called ‘Ode to Townes’, and ‘If I Needed You’ with the fiddle player. Terry Lee played solo versions of ‘The Tower Song’, and a chilling version of ‘The Snake Song’. I followed with ‘Come Tomorrow,’ the first song of Townes I remember hearing, and ‘Rex’s Blues’. We all joined together in a rousing version of ‘White Freightliner Blues’. Later when I did my set I included more Townes songs: ‘Two Girls’, ‘Snowing on Raton’, ‘Loretta’, ‘Pancho & Lefty’, and ‘Dollar Bill Blues’. Seized by a case of nerves, I felt like my playing and singing was a little stiff at first, but I warmed to the task and began to enjoy myself. That’s how it is: when you quit worrying about mistakes, you tend to quit making them. I played a long set that was over almost before I realized; the best ones always go that way. I did a four-song encore, and that was my night in Paris.

Coming off the stage my t-shirt ringing wet, I changed to a dry one and gave the Old Quarter shirt with Townes’ picture to Johan. “I’m sorry this is wet, and no chance to get it cleaned, but I’d like for you to have this.”

In the morning we rode the elevator down for breakfast of fresh croissant, bread, and coffee with milk. Fortified, we set out for a walking tour to explore our surroundings. We walked first to the river where we found ourselves at a point just opposite Notre Dame, and on a hunch turned right, taking some stairs down to the water’s edge. You always go for the things you like best: I was instantly fascinated by the river boats tied up there, built long and low to pass under the bridges, they looked like commercial craft that had been modified into house boats, with potted plants and lace curtains in the windows of the wheelhouse, and one that had a hatch cover converted to hold a patch of lawn. Others had been turned into floating bars and restaurants. We walked on, crossing under two or three more bridges, passing an encampment of homeless people with cooking fires and clothes hung out to dry. The Clochards, or modern day versions. I didn’t know if the word was still in use. George Orwell had written about them. You could find them in Nashville, Houston or New York, or Santiago, Chile where they were called Rotos, the broken ones.

Emerging on street level we crossed over the Seine and began walking back the direction we had come. Grey, windy, not too cold, a fine mist was blowing. I had forgotten that the cathedral is built on an island in the middle of the river. Crossing over we spent an hour walking inside among the throngs of visitors. Outside we watched a man feeding sparrows that climbed and hovered around him. I thought I saw one of the American college students from the café the day before. Crossing back over the river, we walked on where vendors were beginning to open booths selling old prints, cards, and posters. We turned left, wandering through a warren of narrow streets chockablock with shops and more restaurants, finally stopping for lunch at Ristorante al Solito Posto for Calamari Neapolitan and risotto, while Edith had pasta with red sauce. With a beer and a glass of red wine, the bill came to around 28 Euros, about the same we would pay at the Pizzeria Campanella in Gailingen across the river from us back in Diessenhofen. We had been on our feet all morning, not counting the half hour at lunch. A nap beckoned and we made our way back to the Studia and rode up in the creaking little elevator.

I wanted to write a song about Paris but the muse never visited. The afternoon, what was left of it after we awoke, we devoted to shopping for shoes. With so many elegant women around there had to be a places to buy shoes. Sure enough we came upon the shoe stores in the area of St. Michel and worked our way through three or four until she found what she was looking for: gold sneakers, o-la-la. Then it was time for café surfing and more window-shopping. Deciding it was too late for dinner, we returned to the Zig Zag where Edith had seen onion soup advertised on the chalk board. If I couldn’t come up with a song, I’d had it half in mind that we might find some kind of music happening, but all we had seen was a kind of touristy cabaret advertising jazz. A bottle of wine up in the room seemed the better option. Make that two bottles, since this was Paris, and half a joint I had saved. There was even an ashtray in the room. Clearly the French were not taking to heart all the anti-smoking legislation going into effect around Europe. The non-smoking section of a Parisian restaurant was a single table by the door.

The next morning Edith regarded not two, but three empty bottles of Fonvenue Vin du Pay in the waste basket. “I wonder that they will be thinking when they see these?”

“They will think we had a heck of a party.”

“Yes, I suppose.” We both felt that extra bottle. Clearing out the room, we rode down a last time in the tiny elevator. Down in the reception area waiting for Hervé we talked with the clerk. Lots of American musicians stayed at the Studia, he said. He mentioned Peter Rowan and Kevin Welsh, old friends from Nashville. It felt good to be a part of that thin but far-reaching network of American artists. I said we had very much enjoyed our stay, and gave him a CD. Leaving our stuff in the lobby we walked to the corner where a market had sprung up overnight. We bought another bottle of Vin du Pay to take with us back to Switzerland.