Thanksgiving. My life is good. My heart breaks a little every time I turn on the news, though. Maybe if we all just loved a little more, a little harder it would take up some of the slack. Remember all those pictures of kids putting flowers into the barrels of soldiers' rifles?
Yeah, I'm afraid there may be too many ants in the colony. Make love your mantra and hang on.
It's easy for me to teach folks who don't think they can play an instrument to tear up the keyboard. I sit them down on the bench, get the band to wail in the key of C and instruct the nervous student to hit any of the white keys any time they feel the urge. Pretty soon the new guy's wailing- dying to quit his job and hit the road, touring.
What can I say? I'm a born teacher.
My secret? There aren't any secrets. People make too much of everything. Hey, it ain't brain surgery, Ben.
My preaching runs the same course. Anything that I missed in Sunday school I can learn from bumper stickers and t-shirts.
"Jesus wasn't a Christian. Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. Mohammed wasn't a Muslim. They just taught love."
"Just be nice."
"Practice random acts of kindness."
Well, it turns out that I don't much believe in black and white. Kids don't either. Neither do blind people. Yeah, I'm glad that we finally got a good pope. Honestly, though, it's just a really sweet guy who got the good hat and the good job. He would have been a fine presbyterian or Hindu.
I do believe in good and bad. You get to choose. It's all about the love. Just hit the white ones. Keys, that is. Just hit the white keys.
Why aren't there love terrorists? Why aren't we out on the streets recruiting for love, for kindness? Is anybody really attracted to evil? Shouldn't it be easy to make peace and love fashionable?
That smell of alcohol and nitromethane mixed with burning rubber and a metallic odor of brake dust- that's the stock car races from Phillips Field when I was twelve years old. Oh yeah, cigar smoke and roasted peanuts.
Joy? It may be easy to call it up but keeping it handy can be tricky.
Last night I sat through three sets of perfectly crafted versions of music from the sixties played with all the skill and all the soul and all the mastery of my pals in Coo Coo Ca Choo. It doesn't hurt that they're some of the finest people on the planet. Plus I was with my Kentucky friends who have brought me all the joy I can handle for the last several years.
Yeah, so the music and the joy; that's the secret. For me. I suppose I've known that since I was about twelve.
Grow up. That's what's expected of you. Tie a ribbon 'round your neck and wipe that smile off your face. Unless you need it to close the deal. Move up. Get your share. Take some more. You'll feel better about yourself. Choose a side.
Well, sir, I just want to play rock'n'roll. That's where the joy is, remember?
Well, then, get famous. Get rich. That's the ticket. That's where the real joy is.
Oh, you mean like Elvis. Like John Lennon?
Well, I've tried. Off and on. Half heartedly. You have no idea how many wonderful friends have stepped in to "manage" me only to pronounce me "unmanageable" after a short stint. Every one of them has had great ideas and good intentions. None of them ever wanted to be a manager.
Here's to the ones who can't be managed. Here's to the ones who found their joy.
I played a show in Hull, in the north of England, ten or twelve years ago. My opening act was a local guy by the name of Mike Greaves. All of the folks in the venue clucked their tongues and shrugged and spoke in sad tones of his lack of success. His near misses. I wasn't fit to carry his guitar case. I doubt he was much worried about failure or success that night. We hit it off and we shared some songs and some joy.
I had to make up this little video because you can't really find much Mike Greaves stuff out there. I play him on the radio every chance I get.
Here's to the fifteen year old writer. Here's to Mike Greaves. Here's to the joy and the love.
My ticker just won't stay on the leash. There are other things that I should probably share before they are wiped from the lobes. For example, life is too short for brown guitars. Fashion doesn't excuse excess. Remember when young African Americans first began sporting "naturals," "afros?"
No, of course you don't! That was a very long time ago. I do, though, and it was a positive trend. For awhile. There was a certain pride factor built in and society agreed that it was all good. Of course they expanded in size until thin young men everywhere looked like great big tootsie roll pops from a distance. Naturally, pardon the pun, the fashion quickly spread to young caucasians and they all looked ridiculous from the get go.
That usually happens when white culture attempts to appropriate black culture. Everything hep around here began with darker folks. You had the majesty of Little Richard with "Tutti Frutti" blasting out of the little Japanese transistors. Then you had Pat Boone's flaccid version, suitable for Sunday school picnics.
That example serves so well that I really don't have to go on, ranting about Vanilla Ice, crooked caps, pants d
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If it were up to me, and yes I know very well that it's not, white people wouldn't dance in public at all. Well, I suppose that I would make exceptions for Donald O'Connor, Eleanor Powell, Fred Astaire.
Let me get down from my racist soapbox where one side has Duke Ellington and the other sports Eminem, and get right to my sexist views. I believe that I've written here before that women are superior to men. That is undeniable and I will stand on Hugh Hefner's coffee table in my boxers and beatle boots and tell the world.
My side has Dick Cheney, Adolph Hitler, that guy who raised the medicine prices.
The other team, the good one, has Brigitte Bardot, Joan of Arc, Aunt Jo and all of the ones that I have attempted to mail ears to. They smell good. Of course they have Ann Coulter. The usual unkind attack is that she's really a man. As a man, I resent that. It's probably true.
So I remain lonely over here in my own prejudiced domain, right as rain but terribly out of fashion. The emperor has no clothes. Remember who told you.
Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war. Grandma taught me to end my prayers with that thought. She was one quarter Creek. Don't get me started.
If the world is perfect, and who am I to suggest otherwise, why is there suffering? I look around and see enough food to feed the planet and yet I see children starving. It's obvious to folks like me that there is medicine to ease pain and cure disease that is withheld from sick people due to greed.
There are foreclosed properties in all our major cities, empty houses. Those same cities teem with homeless men, women and children. Mentally ill men, women and children are among them.
We destroy dogs and cats by the thousands every day while we sell puppies and kittens with papers at pet stores in malls.
We interfere with governments around the world if we perceive that our economy is compromised. In the meantime we arm both sides in skirmishes all around the globe.
In our rush to dominate nature we push the planet beyond precedent. Before I'm gone we're likely to have seen our last polar bear, wild elephant, tiger, panther, white rhino. At the same time we destroy our atmosphere with methane from cow flatulence on inhumane farms. We degrade our water quality with runoff from nightmarish pig farms.
Our culture puts enough food in dumpsters every single day to feed everybody who needs something to eat.
Now you try to tell me that all this and all the rest can't be fixed with love.
Now, I'll admit that Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens never called me for a drink. I'm more the type who tends to believe everything. We would have fought. At least Hitchens and I would. Richard seems like a very sweet guy.
It does seem odd to me that strawberries have "whiskers." Shouldn't that have been caught in the design process?
We have an entire festival coming up in Plant City when the season for picking the things rolls around in February. Most of the undocumented laborers who take care of the harvest will be priced out of the carnival. The governor will be on hand, of course. He's one of us! Well, to be honest, if you're rich, unscrupulous, ugly, mean and crazy, he's one of you. Whatever I am, I'm not one of those.
You've probably been wondering here lately, "What's become of Ray Stevens?" I know I have. Well, here ya go- he'll be headlining the Strawberry Festival in Plant City this year. I wish I had the imagination to make stuff like this up. Can you imagine the grandstands swaying with the wave of inter-married hillbillies singing along with Ray at the top of their voices, " Let me tell ya 'bout Ahab the Arab..."?
The arena will empty out to make way for the tractor pulls and pig races before the stage crew sets up for the evening show.
I'll be at the hoochie coochie show and the monkey races waiting for the legal excuse to take off all my clothes and run up and down the bleachers singing along with "The Streak."
