Jazz*Fest

I’m down with the quasi-new Steve Earle album…except for his rendition of “Down In The Hole.” (He really shouldn’t have tried to record that. I don’t care how good of friends he was with Townes Van Zandt.)

Anyway, in this photo I give you the Iowa City Jazz*Fest. Yesterday we dug the many groovy sounds of the Jazz*Fest and talked about how sad it was/is that Jerry Garcia died. This after making the acquaintance of a bunch of displaced hipster burnouts sitting in a circle, buzzing along on psilocybin (it would seem) in a sea of Midwestern folks n’ families, working out the archaic issues of Man In Community. “Man, your daughter is awesome!” the Queen Bee chirped, a Marloboro dangling from her lip. These crazee kids were kind enough to hold our spot/watch our stuff while we ducked out, ran errands, got lunch, etc., etc. And the Leader Of The Pack, a funny young shorthaired guy named Ben, kept wanting to shake my hand in some kind of psychotropic ascertainment of Original Okay-ness. I told him, “It’s cool, Ben. Everything’s cool.” He agreed, then offered me a whiskey shot out of a Dasani bottle. “Nah, I’m cool, baby. But thanks.”

Today Lesley watched EB for 3 whole hours while we (me & The Missus) cavorted around on Bicicletas de Amor, hiked in the Midwestern wood, and ate mulberries fresh from the tree while bullfrogs darted from ‘neath me feets. “I hope Ben made it out of that trip alive,” I thought more than once today, then laughed and tossed rocks up to heaven while Eleanor laughed at Beguiling-Crazy-Wicked-Fine Ol’ Mama Earth.