(June 29, 2012) ATLANTA, GA to AUBURN, AL – Everywhere I go there are cool poetry audiences and good jazz bands. That’s got to be a hopeful sign, right?
I started my day in Atlanta. Matthew Kaminski tried hard to arrange for me to meet Colonel Bruce Hampton, whose music I’ve loved for nearly 20 years. It almost happened via a friend of Matthew’s, but the scheduling didn’t quite work. Next time.
We picked up Matthew’s wife, Kathleen, and went to lunch at Rainbow Natural Foods, a very snazzy market with a dining area in the back. I made a salad that looked a lot better than this strangely tinted photo:
Afterward, we took photos outside. In the one taken with Matthew’s camera, we’re both smiling. For this one, I requested serious faces:
After lunch, we took Kathleen back to work. She’s a speech pathologist at a VA hospital. My sister is also a speech pathologist, and I met another one in Nashville and an occupational therapist in Knoxville. All cool people doing good work.
Matthew took me to the bus station, where I boarded the bus for Columbus, GA.
A guy named Damon sat next to me on the bus. We got to talking and he asked me about myself. I told him what I was doing. As soon as I finished, he took out his phone and called someone, then handed me the phone. The guy on the other end was also named Jason. He organizes poetry readings in Pensacola, FL. I gave him my email address and he said he’d send me information.
The woman across the aisle also turned out to write poetry. She said she’d been doing it since she was 12. I got her email and sent her a link to my site right there on the bus. I think she’s studying to be a dental hygienist at a school in Texas.
The bus ride was short and uneventful. As I got off the bus, my Twitter pal Patrick McCurry was there to take my picture:
Then we walked to his car, which had this in the back:
Insert your own Friday the 13th joke here. (In all seriousness, Patrick is an amazing guy. I have a feeling we’re going to be friends for a while. Unless, of course, he disagrees.)
Patrick drove me from Columbus, GA, to Auburn, AL, where he lives and where I’m staying for a couple days. We took a quick trip around the Auburn University campus, which was very pretty. I like campuses that look like campuses. And Auburn’s does.
Patrick dropped me off at the home of a woman named Rachel, who has a spare room where she houses many visiting performers. Patrick and his wife Susan have three kids, so he thought it might be easier to have me stay with Rachel. Rachel has three wonderful dogs and a very eclectic house. And her guest room is made for me – it has both a Buddha statue and a copy of Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams.
I relaxed for a bit, read more of Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley In Search Of America, which I’d started on the bus. It’s a fascinating book, but reading it as someone trying to do travel writing is like a saxophonist listening to Coltrane. I can’t tell if it’s inspiring me or making me want to quit. Given that I’m writing this diary, I guess it’s the former.
Just before 6 p.m. I left Rachel’s to walk through the 104-degree heat to Patrick’s house for dinner. It was a nice walk, past a park with gently rolling hills:
Patrick and Susan decided that we’d go out for dinner. Susan left to get us a table at a restaurant near my poetry reading site, and I hung out with Patrick and one of his sons, John, while they got ready for dinner. I first learned about John months ago, when Patrick tweeted me to tell me that his 2-year-old son, while riding in the car, said, “Put on The Jazz Session with Jason Crane.†Is that not the greatest thing ever? Another of Patrick’s sons, Charlie, was genuinely concerned that I wouldn’t make my fundraising goal last year and that the show would end. These kids rock.
Patrick and Susan and John and I had a nice dinner at a place called, I think, Amsterdam Cafe. Or something with Amsterdam in it. I’m a terrible reporter. It was right next to The Gnu’s Room, the bookstore/coffee shop/art space where I was reading.
When I arrived at The Gnu’s Room, it looked like it might be a very tiny crowd. But like all things these days, folks have a way of showing up. By the time the reading started, a very respectable gang had gathered. One of the attendees was a woman named Maria who’s on the board of the Robert Creeley Foundation. Because she was there, I read “Creeley’s Balloon,” a poem I hadn’t intended to read. I also talked two twentysomething women, Raven and Allison, into staying. And later bullied two other twentysomethings into sitting and listening, even though they’d only come in for coffee midway through the reading.
I read with a stopwatch again, cobbling together a set on the fly from my book and the things on my Kindle. I’m critical of poets who don’t have their act together before they start. I can only say that I’ve done live radio for so many years that putting together a reading on the fly is extremely easy for me and not, as far as I know, apparent to the audience. Whenever I need to find the next poem I just tell jokes or stories. Then again, maybe I look like an idiot and people are too polite to say.
I read for 45 minutes then took several questions about the poems and the tour. I sold all but one of the books I had with me, which was very exciting. The next shipment of books is on its way from FootHills Publishing to New Orleans right now.
Following the reading, I was interviewed by Kyle Gassiott, a radio producer and interviewer whose work has been featured on NPR and many other places. He asked me about the tour and The Jazz Session. He’s a good interviewer. On Saturday, June 30, I’m headed back to The Gnu’s Room, where Kyle will interview me in front of an audience. There’ll be live music, too. Tonight’s interview was more of a trial run in controlled conditions to make sure he ended up with good tape.
Then I walked up the road a ways to the Piccolo, a club in a nice hotel that’s attached to the campus. I’d heard there was live jazz happening there tonight. The band was made up of a young players from Auburn and Atlanta, all solid and all very obviously into the music. They were Jonathan Lynn on piano, Sidney Simmons on bass, Taylor Kennedy on saxophone and Jared Lanham on drums. They played mostly tunes from the Real Book, plus a few that Kennedy showed the band on the spur of the moment. I particularly enjoyed their take on “In Walked Bud†and a beautiful reading of “Body And Soul.†And I thought Simmons’s solos were especially musical.
Patrick came from a rehearsal to pick me up and take me back to Rachel’s, where I’m writing this diary at nearly 3 a.m. Because I’m an idiot.
(If you’d like to support my tour, you can make a one-time donation and get great thank-you gifts HERE. If you’d like to become a member of The Jazz Session and make recurring monthly or yearly payments, you can do that HERE.)
Thanks to Patrick McCurry for the photos from the reading.
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