Western Swing & Texas (and Other Punchy Thoughts) - II.
II.
Beyond the full cycle of one day and I have yet to close my eyes. The two hour drive from Weyburn to Regina Airport didn’t allow for a pit stop at the house, my bag still packed from tour. I’m through security and finding my seat beside a gentleman from Pakistan. I can see in my periphery that he hasn’t broken a stare for a couple minutes and I cock my head a fraction, keeping my eyes under the brim of my hat to extend a hello.
“I like your hat,” he offers.
“Thank you, sir, it’s a cheap one.” I disclose, clearly without filter and deprived of any executive decision making due to my ongoing lack of sleep.
He is returning home for the funeral of his mother. He is gentle in his mannerisms and shows a desire for connection asking me about my life and excited in my replies. His rolling dialect, calming, as I feel the relaxation my mind so desperately needs by simply holding conversation. I remove my hat and place it on my lap as I recline my seat the two inches it allows, his eyes still fixed on its brim as it sits upside down, sweat-stain exposed.
“May I wear it?”
Even the most Ignorant are aware that such a request is taboo, especially that of a Cowboy’s hat. Usually, the request taking place at a merchandise table through the aggression of the opposite sex. In an earlier life, my generosity was an act of courtship but without any such desire for years, I virtually always decline with a mood shift to boot. Annoyed and short. Exceptions occur as a surprise, sometimes removing it and popping it on the head of a child in tandem with my yellow aviators.
“Of course,” I answer, lifting it from my lap and placing it on the gentleman’s head.
It is the joy he needs as I offer to take his picture. He beams in his moment of fiction, his dark skin and thick black mustache. I consider giving it to him but accept as he hands it back knowing I’m to be in the hot Texas sun for two weeks and this hat is my saving grace. Our conversation continues above the clouds of spun sugar as we descend into Detroit. The plane bounces twice on touchdown and travellers remain quiet, we both reminisce as to when applause would fill an aircraft upon landing. Another forgotten act of appreciation.
A quick lay-over and I’m back in the air with a row of seats to myself. Lifting the armrests and removing my cowboy boots I stretch out as I would on the couch or the back seat of the old touring van. The fatigue threshold has been crossed and I’m wide awake, shifting. Back looking out the window, attempting to break up clouds after reading of the practice on a psychology Reddit thread - a pseudo-reality exercise, the idea that we have the ability to dismantle the chemical make-up of clouds...with our mind. I stare through a small one in the distance and as clouds do, it disappears. I finish the remaining chapter of the first Game of Thrones book and cue up my Audible. Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday - it’s basic but wholesome, anecdotes of Greats who accessed a calm mind in times of turmoil. The lights of Austin pull us downward and I give a few measured claps as we come to a stop. The passenger across the aisle sends a focused frown in my direction as if my head is a cloud and she just learned how to “bust”.
It will be a week until I get my rental truck. It would have been a wasted expense sitting outside a recording studio but with the distance from the airport to the property, my problem lingered in an unanswered text. At worst my night would be inconvenient and fortunately, five hours into an audiobook on stillness, I was given another perspective on accessing the tool. Instead of frantically getting caught up in how I was to get an hour southwest of Austin at 10 o’clock at night I grabbed my duffle bag from the carousel, brushed my teeth and changed my clothes in a bathroom stall before wandering outside the terminal to escape the air conditioning. The humidity alone felt like a reward having escaped the already icy October back at home. With a film on my tongue, I’m dehydrated yet comfortable sitting up against an outside wall invisible and watching a slow stream of travellers. With my duffle behind me and my leather satchel hugged, I drop away from my desire to find my way and feel a flirtation with asceticism. The drifting lifestyle is a thread among many religions; Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam all with their ascetics free of worry, roaming and in pursuit of enlightenment. I pull my cowboy hat down on my face in a banal manner and am about to catch up on three days of sleep on a patch of cement as my first night in Austin, Texas.
My phone picks up the network and startles me back to consciousness, a symphony coming through in a rush, notification alerts interrupting each other in a continuous mess of beeps and blips.
Where are you?
Have you landed?
Hi Sweetheart, (emoji)
You back from Nebraska yet?
Sorry there’s bad service here.
Berglund, you alive?
Beau is coming to get you.
Hey, Beau here, I’m on my way.
Beau Smith.
In the wake of The Speedy Creek Band fallout two years ago, I remained in Texas as my performance commitments were fulfilled. Colter and his crew wrapped up their last week of tour dates and I accepted an invite to spend a few days ranching and tagging along with a character introduced to me in Dallas. A couple gigs worth of small talk lead to a willingness to take me around, shake me some hands and show me some sights. As I’m typically without guidance, the time spent with a punchy Texas cattle rancher seemingly connected to the greater musical community felt a worthy deviation of plan. We spent a week bouncing from BBQ joint to drinking hole, Beau calling in favours to get me on stages and put a few bucks in my pocket. Nights without a paid impromptu gig was a paid-in-beer three song set, chumming with local twangsters Mike and the Moonpies, happy hour at Gruene Hall, antichucos at Mozies or tracing George Strait’s old haunts. Every mile paired with sing-a-longs to obscure country superstars, Johnny Rodriguez, Johnny Gimble, Hillman Hall. We rolled up to his ex’s empty house, littered the truck box with beer cans, he howled Dean Martin and Rick Nelson’s “My Riftle, My Pony and Me” and I crashed the couch.
Hey, Beau here, I’m on my way.
His ranching truck growls as it soon appears following the onslaught of texts. I throw my duffle bag into the box. What would be a foreshadowing sound of it crunching scattered beer cans, I haven’t had a drink since the night Colter played Regina Folk Festival - ironically anticipating Jason Isbell’s headlining set as I’ve connected to his story of sobriety, our afternoon beers with The Scary Prairie Boys spilled over into an evening without food and the downing of Colter’s Maker’s Mark while he entertained Victoria Park at capacity. Spooked back into abstinence, this trip is to be a challenge.
Beau’s smile stretches under his villous mustache and reaching goatee. He pulls the collective straight down in a grooming manner as he throws another hand at me to both greet and pull me in the truck.
“The boys called for some beers, worked out well to grab you, man. You staying out there this week? Good to have you back in Texas,” his thick charm and rhinal accent. “You eaten? We better get you a burger.”
I’m famished at the suggestion. Falling asleep on the sidewalk, I planned for a champion breakfast but assuming I was to continue into the thirtieth hour I had best get some food in my stomach. I wolf down a box of onion rings with my milkshake before touching my cheeseburger, the bacon grease, medicinal. I’ve somehow reached a point of immortality and am as spry as a newborn heading into a week on the Blanco River with the Plain-to-see-Plainsman and his wooly outfit about to capture their tightness from a few hundred shows to tape.
continued…
————————————————-
Hey y’all, if you aren’t following my Instagram you are only getting half the story. I thought it would be fun to make the stories as a type of appendix for these entries…gotta bunch of photos, a little deeper insight, videos, etc. Just head on over to the Instagram and follow @blakeberglund - I got ya. Hit that link.
www.instagram.com/blakeberglund
BB