(July 17-18, 2012) NEW YORK CITY to BELLEFONTE, PA — True story: “Bellefonte” is French for “Helvetica.” Look it up.
With my arrival tonight in Bellefonte, PA, part one of the Jazz Or Bust Tour is officially complete. In case you missed the numbers the other day, here they are again (updated with NYC & PA figures):
- Total miles traveled: 5,225 (through July 18). This is probabaly quite a low estimate. I used Google Maps to figure out the mileage between each city I went to. However, my route was longer than the Google Maps route because the buses stopped many times and often traveled miles out of the way.
- Days on the road (through July 18): 48
- Homes stayed in: 15
- Shows attended: 29. This isn’t counting any of the second lines in New Orleans, which weren’t official shows.
- Interviews conducted: 21 (plus two interviews for a freelance project)
- Interviews given: 8
- Poetry readings performed: 5 (You can listen to them here.)
I’m housesitting in Bellefonte till the end of July, then staying in State College for a few weeks in August. The tour will resume again on Labor Day weekend, probably at the Detroit Jazz Festival.
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I’ve been conducting some freelance interviews for an education company, as I mentioned back when I was in DC. Yesterday I spent time in the Garment District, where there’s a giant sewing needle:
And also a statue in tribute to garment workers, erected by the union I used to work for:
Both my interviews were canceled, though, so it wasn’t a productive afternoon.
I spent my last night in New York hanging out with the person whom you all must have figured out by now was my girlfriend for the past 10 months. We’ve been dealing with all my travel and its impact on our relationship, and we both have separate plans to travel in the months ahead. So it was a bittersweet night, realizing that we can’t really stay together, but don’t want to part either. Life seldom provides clean exits or transitions.
It wasn’t all sadness and moping, though. For example, we took a short cab ride (something we’ve never done together in New York) with a driver who was playing solitaire while driving:
And we heard some of the worst cover-band music ever wafting across the river from Hoboken. Three of the four songs we heard in ONE SET were “My Way,” Cee Lo’s “Fuck You,” and “White Rabbit.” It was like a set list programmed by a cat walking across a computer keyboard with iTunes open. Lots of long guitar solos, too.
Today I went back to the Garment District and managed to squeeze in one of the interviews that was canceled yesterday. Then I made a quick dash to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to catch a Greyhound bus. I went first to Philly, transferred there to Harrisburg, and transferred again to State College. My host picked me up in a red convertible and he was playing Stevie Wonder. Good start.
I’ll still be posting here while I’m in PA. I have more things to process about the tour, and I’ll be writing poems, too. I’m working on scheduling a poetry reading in August, and I’ll let you know about that, too. Meanwhile, head over to thejazzsession.com to hear all the interviews I conducted during part one of the tour. Thursday’s show, for example, will feature drummer Scott Clark from Richmond, VA. I recorded a lot of interviews and it will take me until nearly the end of August (and episode #400!) to post them all.
I’m gearing up for part two of the tour now. If you live anywhere west of the East Coast, I need places to stay, places to read my poetry, and people to interview. Let’s do it! You can email me at jason@thejazzsession.com.
(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.)
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