There are 2 types of musician in this world:  bartenders and cabbies.  Both types have some great opportunity just around the corner that’s going to change everything, if they just hold on another week.  Last week, while riding into Venice, I asked a Russian cabbie if he likes driving better in California.  “What, do you think I like my job?” he said, “Cabbie is cabbie, no matter where you go.  All my life I kept holding out for something better, and now I’m 55.  You know how long I’ve been cabbie?  23 years.”  So, I guess for him, the only thing around the corner is just more roads.

My head looked downward at the freeway rushing passed us.  I started thinking about my old manager who was always telling me to pass up opportunities and hold out for something better.  Is it pragmatism to hold ones breath, sweating and stitching away time in some data entry position, or delivery job?  Is it tenacity to slave away for less than minimum wage, all holding out for some 45 minutes on a corner stage in Westchester, PA?  In my business, you get to meet a lot of bartenders –   seems they all have day jobs ass well, lately.  Tattoos fade, and suddenly it’s 25 years later, and we sit half doubled over as Alice Cooper sings over the Jukebox, “Lines form on my face and hands.  Lines form from the ups and downs.”  Songs seem to linger in the ether, laughing at our wooden, arthritic hands – like fleshy trees.

After 3 hours and 18 minutes flight time from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, and still trying to remember what it is I forgot to pack. It’s only a five day trip, and the more I travel, the lighter my bag gets. Someday I’ll be such a pro that I’ll travel only with my pajamas on. And be traveling until that final business trip…death! – that convention of souls, where I wont even pack socks. I like to think that’s why we’re born naked into this mess, cause souls travel light.

I knew a bartender, who was a songwriter, and I could never figure out which was his passion and which was his obligation.  Whatever it was, something about him was always broken down.  He talked about a fifty dollar car from his uncle, and how that too was broke.  His cousin committed suicide in 1994, and his aunt hadn’t left the living room ever since.  She only got up off the couch to change channels, even this was too much change some nights. so she would die silently in 2002, on the same couch her son was conceived on.  “My uncle couldn’t keep the couch,” said the bartender, “understandably, because it was too emotional to have in the house.  But it was too nice to just throw in the garbage.  So they donated it to the Salvation Army.  Which is why I only buy new and not resale.  And I never pay too much for it, cause I always wanna feel okay to throw it away, if, you know, somebody dies on it.”