Turns out weed makes Method Man nice, both on the mic, and in real life.
At the newspaper in Florida where I worked as an assistant in the late 90s, none of the real reporters wanted to cover rap shows, so the editors gave me all-access passes to the Hard Knock Life Tour to write aboutJay Z, DMX, Redman and Method Man.
I remember sitting on some dead speakers side stage, looking straight up at Jay Z 10-feet above me, and finding him boring to watch, especially on such a huge stage, up there in a puffy jacket, grabbing his nuts as he walked back and forth. He’s really grown a lot as a performer, since.
Anyway, several songs into Jay Z’s set, rapper Method Man stepped out of the backstage area and came and sat right beside me. He said hello and I shouted in his ear that I liked his set with Redman. He gave me pound. Then he, of course, busted out a big bag of weed and proceeded to break open a gar in his lap. Maybe he had it all on a clipboard or at least a piece of paper, but I remember it as him balancing the gar on his knee as he sprinkled in the crumbled weed. It smelled delicious.
Just then, this hot young lady walked right up to Method Man and, without warning, plopped her baby (?!) down right in his lap — right in his weed. I don’t remember if the baby wore ear protection, but that loud-ass arena was no place for a baby.
Meth took it in stride though. He didn’t shout or get pissed. He did shoot me a smile like You believe that shit? but otherwise pretended it didn’t happen, and just floated a peace sign for mom’s camera flash. After the woman gave him a fan hug, took her baby back and walked away, Method Man and I laughed together as he wiped the remains of his aborted blunt from his lap onto the floor.
Then he took his bag of weed back out and started over with a fresh gar.
For a few years, I wrote many cover stories for AntiGravity magazine. I believe one year I wrote eight out of 12. It always provided a thrill, seeing my story blown up on that extra-large front page. Those cover stories also introduced me to many interesting artists. In 2011, honored as hell, I met and picked the brain of Cash Money Records’ beatmaker Mannie Fresh — and later felt deeply embarrassed by the resulting cover…
AntiGravity editor Dan Fox and I met Mannie Fresh upstairs at the Maison on Frenchmen Street. The man responsible for almost all of New Orleans’s most famous rap songs wore a fresh but simple maroon Polo shirt and jeans. I forgot to check out his shoes, but I doubt they were solid gold. He looked like a guy who’d make fun of rappers with silly diamond teeth, when in fact he played a huge part in building many of those rappers’ careers.
Mannie and I got along great. He could see how much I respected him, plus I asked a lot of technical questions about gear, and about the different genres of electronic music he’d studied. “I heard when you were starting out,” I said, “you worked in Chicago on house music tracks with Steve Hurley?”
“Yes, someone at the record company mentioned to Steve Hurley that there’s this kid from Louisiana and he can program drum machines like nobody else,” Mannie was happy to tell me. “At the time, Steve Hurley was signed to Atlantic. He invited me to Chicago to try some things. And I was like, ‘What is it that you do?’ and he said, ‘House music,’ and I had no idea what the hell house music was. So he plays me some of his songs and I ain’t gonna lie: I thought it was the dumbest shit I ever heard… He said he wanted something different, so I made these house beats, but I put snare rolls in em and I raised the hi-hat up on em. Back then everybody programmed at 1/16, and I’ve always programmed at 1/32. And he was like, ‘That’s the edge that I been waiting for!’
“I have always thought your bright synthesizer sounds reminded me of house and techno,” I admitted.
“Yeah, my techno side definitely comes from house. House was really experimental back when Steve Hurley was doing that; you could use Moogs; you could use, I don’t know, organ. It would just be two chords [mimics house music keyboards] and it’d be a huge house hit. You’d use some synthesizers with arpeggiators that just went crazy and everybody loved it. So I learned that from Steve Hurley and was like, ‘I’m gonna incorporate this into rap.’ And it pretty much worked.”
Near our interview’s end, I pulled out my Zoom Streetboxx drum machine, hoping he’d autograph it. “Oh man I have this same machine!” he declared, uncapping the Sharpie I handed him. I used that drum machine, signed by Mannie Fresh, in my rap class for many years, until a thief stole it from my car.
I felt excited that I’d connected with Mannie Fresh — until the magazine came out, with his name spelled “Manny” on the cover in the biggest letters possible (see photo above). The Q&A inside remains maybe the best interview ever with Mannie Fresh, but the cover kicked it in the balls. It almost made me cry. It definitely made me laugh. I wondered when Mannie Fresh would call, mistakenly thinking I’d designed the cover…
Later that year, while walking down Frenchmen Street, I saw Mannie Fresh standing some feet from the curb, sipping a drink, smiling huge while accepting hi-fives and hugs from fans and passersby. I’d had some drinks myself and walked up to him like an old friend, “Hey Mannie Fresh! Good to see you again. You remember me?”
When he turned and saw me, his huge smile went flat. “Yeah I remember you,” he mumbled.
My students looked up to New Orleans rapper Magnolia Shorty.
Magnolia Shorty was the undisputed queen of New Orleans bounce rap. From her days as the only female Cash Money crew member to her more recent “My Boy” duet with young Kourtney Heart, Magnolia Shorty pretty much owned New Orleans since before she was even a teenager.
I met Shorty in 2010, when Young Audiences paid her to come perform at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art with my summer music students, who‘d written a handful of original rap songs. This thrilled my students, who all loved Shorty’s kid-friendly local radio hit “My Boy,” and couldn’t wait to tell their friends and family that they opened a concert for the Queen of Bounce.
Shorty wore her sunglasses throughout the event, in and out of doors She was super sweet to everyone, especially the kids. The event was a huge success, as evidenced by this video (story continued below):
So I thought, after that experience with the kids, Shorty and I would have a great, loose interview for AntiGravity magazine. Though her answering service featured an original outgoing message from Birdman, interviewing her by phone was my mistake; Shorty was soft spoken, preferring to let classic songs like “Monkey on the Dick” and “Smoking Gun” speak for her. Nor did she seem particularly in the mood for an interview on the day I called. She talked more to whoever was there in the room with her. I couldn’t understand half of what she did say for all the racket in her background. A great illustration of the importance of conducting interviews in person, I give you the following “conversation,” which goes down in history as Magnolia Shorty’s last interview ever:
MPW: So how did you end up putting together this November show at The Saint with local rock band, felix?
Magnolia Shorty: Well I met (Felix keyboardist) Thomas through the bar he worked at, and he told me he was a rock band player. And he asked would I be interested in doing a concert with him, and I told him that would be a good idea.
MPW: Have you ever performed at the Saint before?
MS: No, I haven’t.
Have you ever been there?
No, I haven’t.
OK. So. What else are you up to currently in your musical career?
I have an album about to drop December 12, it’s called “Miss Bossy.”
OK. Can you tell us a little about that? What can we expect from this album, and how will it be different from your other records?
You can expect a lot of motivation, a lot of music to dance to, some stuff that’s sexual. I have 16 songs on there. It’s more maturity. A little different lyrics.
Is it not as explicit?
Oh it’s very explicit, especially “Birdman’s Daughter,” “G Strip,” and “I’m The Greatest.”
What are your plans for the album and who is releasing it?
I am releasing it independently and just gonna see how it does.
You mentioned Birdman, and I heard him on your outgoing message. Is he on the album? You still hang out with those guys?
Yeah, I still hang out with those guys. (laughs)
OK. How do you go about writing your songs?
I sit down and I just write what’s on my mind.
OK. Well. So. Tell us about the “My Boy” single with young Kourtney Heart that was impossible to get away from this summer.
It was actually a new version of a song I had already done; Kourtney remade the song. We collaborated and I rapped on her version.
How did you meet Kourtney Heart?
I know her from her manager; he called my manager for us to do a song together and we went in the studio together.
Did that “My Boy” single open up a new audience for you?
It affected me real good. It got a lot of radio play and people loved it. We did a couple of shows in Houma, Thibodaux, a couple of places.
Seems like maybe you would have some worlds colliding there, with Kourtney Heart teen pop and “Monkey on the Dick.”
Well it’s all still bounce music. It’s just a little different beat. But it’s the same kind of music to me. I been out there since I was 12 years old, so basically I brought Kourtney out. People already know about me actually, and what to expect from me because I’ve been out so long.
How was your pioneering show bringing bounce to South by Southwest, in Austin? Tell us about that.
You know it was good, a lot of people, very promotional to get the music out there. But they really loved it.
What type of crowd was it? It’s usually all white rock’n rollers at South by Southwest.
Yeah that’s the kind of party it was: white rock’n roll.
#56. DJ Jubilee (2019): I’d glimpse the King of Bounce Rap — author of “Jubilee All” and originator of “Back That Thang Up” — headed through the toll booth, leaving the West Bank, where he and I both taught for years — yet we never met. We met eventually at the 2019 Cash Money Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. After I’d interviewed Baby and Slim, I recorded a great interview with Jubilee about his history with the turkey event, and with the Cash Money crew in general, including some juicy ups and downs. But not a week later, that digital recorder crapped out on me before I could transcribe our discussion.
#57. EYEHATEGOD & Mike IX Williams (2003–2014): New Orleans’s downtown public library where I worked before Katrina served as a homeless people’s learning center, and I first took Mike IX for another homeless person using the computers almost daily. I didn’t recognize him from when I saw EHG back in Tampa, 1993, opening for Jesus Lizard and Helmet. Stuck at an odd job once in Bumfuk, Michigan, I noticed the name EYEHATEGOD in the town’s listings, went down to the club and introduced myself, told them I was from New Orleans, and became friends with Mike IX, and since-departed drummer and noise musician, Joey LaCage (EHG performed great in that little po’dunk Michigan town!). Mike and I later did some readings together at several book events, including a night I curated at Ogden Museum of Southern Art (his poetry book Cancer as a Social Activity, comes highly recommended). I’ve seen at least a half dozen great EHG shows here in their hometown, close up. Legendary shit.
#58. George Porter Jr., bassist of The Meters (2004): Our car’s battery died outside of Whole Foods. I got out and walked down the line of parked cars, hoping to find someone sitting in their car, who could use it to give us a jump. I walked along and saw the driver’s window of a big grey van open, and a big guy sitting behind the wheel. I remember I chuckled because I first saw dude’s big dangly earring: a miniature silver bass guitar! I knew this guy would jump us, even before I realized it was Meters bassist George Porter, who did pull his van around and get us going again. Legendary shit.
#59. Hurray for the Riff Raff: Just after Katrina, our Bywater neighborhood became bombarded with scruffy traveling kids, many of them living off the fat of the Katrina land. Some people called them fauxbeauxs, as in false hobo. So when I interviewed Alynda Segarra for an AntiGravity cover story, it may have come off like an interrogation of her authenticity, and in some lights could’ve seemed sexist. After the cover story emerged, someone told me it made Alynda cry, and so I immediately called her and apologized. I still think it was a smart interview (if I did quiz her, she certainly passed!) and my line of questioning especially relevant to Bywater at the time, just before it would be fully co-opted by hipsters and all that.
#60. Irma Thomas: I interviewed Irma Thomas as she helped a small theatre company stage a tribute to her life and music. As I usually do to any Louisiana native, I asked Irma if she fished. Irma Thomas told me she and her late husband used to go fishing with her late guitarist, Eddie Bo. Irma described the fishing spot and how to get there, and eventually agreed to let me take her there on my boat, and record it for a fishing show, maybe for NPR radio. I ended up recording episodes with singer John Boutte and historical geographer Richard Campanella. But when I circled back to Irma months later, she ain’t wanna fish with me. Buckwheat Zydeco did the same exact thing!
#61. Katey Red: I first interviewed Katey Red for AntiGravity in 2009, long before I knew anything about bounce rap, or trans people. I learned about both by interviewing Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, and Katey Red. Katey and I first met for daiquiris. She spoke in that beaucoup open New Orleans way. Later, I remember being backstage the night she and Freedia and Nobby performed at One Eyed Jacks for the first Valentine’s Sweethearts Ball, for their first mostly-white audience. Katey after that agreed to be interviewed, live, by comedian Mark Caesar at a book party of mine, but then she didn’t show up, and never again answered her phone.
#62. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu: Louisiana Weekly offered me the honor of covering the New Orleans premier of the movie 12 Years a Slave, at the Civic. Somehow the premier’s guest list included my name but the venue hadn’t set aside my tickets. The event’s PR person recognized me, however, and walked me past the Press section, up into the VIP balcony. A nice surprise! I glanced around the balcony and didn’t recognize any New Orleans celebrities except, three empty seats down from me, then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu! A few years back I’d rented a large, affordable apartment from his brother Mark Landrieu! Mitch and I had never met, but we were practically buddies! “Mayor Landrieu! I’m covering this for Louisiana Weekly. May I snap a quick photo of you?”
I stood to take the photo as he turned and shouted “NO!” at me — mean as he could. I sat back down. He looked over his shoulder to the back of the theatre, and made eye contact with a large Black man in a suit. Landrieu patted the empty seat beside him to call over his bodyguard, as one would a small child. The huge guy came down and took the seat between me and Landrieu, and then we watched 12 Years a Slave.
Louisiana Weekly offeredme the honor of covering the New Orleans premier of the movie 12 Years a Slave, at the Civic. Its director Steve McQueen had done a few low-key movies, but its stars weren’t yet big stars, and audiences were not yet aware of this movie’s brutality.
Somehow the premier’s guest list included my name but the venue hadn’t set aside my tickets. The event’s PR person recognized me, however, and walked me past the Press section, up into the VIP balcony. A nice surprise! I glanced around the balcony and didn’t recognize any New Orleans celebrities except, three empty seats down from me, then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu! A few years back I’d rented a large, affordable apartment from his brother Mark Landrieu! Mitch and I had never met, but we were practically buddies!
“Mayor Landrieu! I’m covering this for Louisiana Weekly. May I snap a quick photo of you?”
I stood to take the photo as he turned and shouted “NO!” at me — mean as he could. I saw back down. He looked over his shoulder to the back of the theatre, and made eye contact with a large Black man in a suit. Landrieu patted the empty seat beside him to call over his bodyguard, as one would a small child. The huge guy came down and took the seat between me and Landrieu, and then we watched 12 Years a Slave.
Though immediately embarrassed and a little angry that Mitch had yelled at me, I accepted that I hadcrossed a line by trying to commit press atrocities in the private VIP section. No one had warned me not to do that, but it shoulda been obvious. Still, you (Mitch) should never yell at your boss (me), even when you’re off work. Dick.
Anyway, I wasn’t ready for 12 Years a Slave, a film that churns your guts like a horror movie, with the added affect of making white people feel excruciatingly guilty. While very good, 12 Years had me fucking crying by the end. In the VIP section. A few seats from the Mayor who’d yelled at me.
I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. As the credits threatened to roll and before the lights could go up, I ran down the theatre stairs past the Press section and out the back door, trying to stop crying. Through teary eyes, I fast-walked down the block and around the corner to my truck (the same truck John Oates rode in). Against my truck leaned director Steve McQueen, actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (who I’d just watched as Solomon Northup), and the angel of perfection, Lupita Nyong’o. They all rested against my truck, drinking, smoking, laughing, listening to the audience’s applause from outside, and getting ready to go in and speak about their film.
I only saw Lupita though, because she glowed fucking angelic, but also because I’d just watched her be brutalized seconds ago, for like two hours. She turned and saw my crying face and said, “Oh!” and jumped off my truck. Everyone else stopped laughing and stood up straight. “Sorry about that!” she added.
“No! No!” I cried out. As they backed away from my truck I could only think to plea with Lupita, “Are you OK?”
She nodded her perfect head, seeming a bit worried. I must have looked insane, jumping in and driving off into the night, wiping my eyes to better stare at her in my teary rearview.
Uncle Luke Skywalker of 2LiveCrew helped Tampa strip club impresario Joe Redner teach me a very important journalism lesson.
When I first spoke to Uncle Luke on the phone, he’d recently ditched the 2LiveCrew (who I would meet a year later). Though I’d just begun my journalism journey, I somehow got Luke to explain to me exactly when and why he became a misogynist: “This girl I really loved broken my heart. She left me for a guy with a fancy car and lots of money. It sort of made me distrust women for a long, long time.”
He seemed to really open up to me. We got along extremely well. I now suspect a put-on. But he was damned good at it.
We got on the topic of strip clubs: “You would really like Mons Venus,” I told him. He’d never heard of the famous club. “It’s full nude, so crazy. The owner, Joe Redner, is always getting in trouble with the local authorities, and defying their attempts to reign him in — not unlike you. And you both ran for local office…” Every Tampa musician decorated their amps with the famous “Leave Joe Alone” bumper sticker.
“Man, that sounds great. I need to meet this guy. Help me set up an event there!” Luke exclaimed.
“Hell yeah!” It sounded like great fun to me. How awesome would it be to cop backstage passes from Uncle Luke to write about his event at Mons Venus?! Luke gave me a number to call him back once I’d sealed that deal for him.
I rang Joe Redner and told Joe I wanted to help Luke set up an event at Mons Venus. I rolled out my entire proposal, and Joe Redner listened. When I finished he chuckled and asked, “So you’re telling me that you want to set up a story that you’re then going to write about?”
Hearing it that way, I froze. Redner knew my occupation better than I did. I’d just started learning journalism’s rules, and he’d mastered them. I’d almost stepped down a mine shaft. I deeply appreciated Joe saving me from myself, letting me back out of it quietly. My paper hadn’t always been kind to Joe, and Redner could have easily accepted my offer to set up the event, then publicly announced that a St Pete Times writer had contacted him, trying to create news stories to cover.
Redner really spared my ass. Forever after, my favorite guitar’s case wears a “Leave Joe Alone” sticker.
A photo from that night at Dragon’s Den, in New Orleans, when Keith rapped over his own backing tracks.
In 2001, just after moving to New Orleans, I watched legendary perverted New York rapper Kool Keith pack the big room at New Orleans’ House of Blues with a mostly white audience that included Trent Reznor a few feet to my right. Keith wore a cap, and threw out porn magazines, and little baggies full of chicken wings and juice boxes. I didn’t meet him.
Eleven years later, just days after Mardi Gras 2012, Kool Keith played a last minute 2am New Orleans show at the tiny Dragon’s Den on Frenchmen Street, on his way out to a bigger performance at the 5th Annual Arizona Pornstar Ball industry function. He rapped over his own songs with vocal backing tracks, a pet peeve of myself and many rap purists (I could imagine Black Elvis dissing other MCs for rapping over their own vocal tracks) but Keith made the show entertaining.
In the 150-capacity Dragon’s Den, 125 or so mostly white kids lost their minds to career-spanning Kool Keith hits from Dr. Octagon, Sex Style, Black Elvis, even cuts from Critical Beatdown byhis 80s group, Ultramagnetic MCs. Backing tracks or no, fans of the slightly touched Freudian rapper treasured this rare intimate throwdown.
The next morning, Keith met me for a breakfast interview. I barely got “Hello” out, before Keith said, “I want to get some waffles.”
“Keith wants waffles,” his handlers repeated.
“You know where we can get some waffles?” Keith asked me.
“Yes, of course,” I assured. “I can make waffles happen.”
“With whipped cream?”
“Definitely, that’s a French Quarter specialty.”
“And like, some strawberries sprinkled on top?”
“Something like that. Let’s go.”
As I led Keith past Checkpoint Charlie to the Magnolia Grill by the river, we talked about New Orleans. We floated theories about why Lil Wayne probably moved away from New Orleans, and agreed he musta feared getting shot. Keith, a much professed fan of the Black female form, had never heard of New Orleans bounce music. “Oh man, some of that would make 2 Live Crew blush,” I told him. “You would love it.” I told Keith all about bounce, with emphasis on the popular trans rappers Big Freedia, Katey Red, and Sissy Nobby. When Keith promised to research bounce dancing on You Tube, I suspected I may’ve changed his life.
At our open air table beside the French Market, Keith settled for French toast, with whipped cream but no strawberries. He was fine with this. The multiple-personality-disorder MC acted mostly down to Earth whilediscussing with me his very intimate concerts, his inverted sense of humor, and his gig the next day: “I am going to perform at a porn convention tomorrow in Phoenix,” Keith said. “I’m into porn a lot, I collect a lot of movies. I became a porn icon by, I put it in my music with the lyrics and the skits on Sex Style, and it just built up a whole persona like, ‘This guy has this pornographic art mixed into his whole music career.’ It’s like, wow. Luke Skywalker was more ‘Pump that pussy,’ but people know me as a sexual rapper. Luke is more like a chant artist: ‘Pump that ass, pump that pussy.’”
“That’s how New Orleans bounce music is, with the chanting,” I pointed out.
“Yeah but me, I was more like lyrical porn. I’d say, ‘I’m fucking this chick in the butt, blah blah…’ Then there was a lot of groups that came after that rapped like that. But I was a nasty lyricist, a nasty kinda artsy writer. People was like, ‘You like gross shit.’ You might write a song, a normal rapper, going, ‘Baby shake your titties, baby, baby, shake your titties.’ But I was more like, I write a song, taking about it in a skillful way. That’s what made me more popular.”
“What are you expecting from this porn conference in Arizona?” I asked him. “Is it a freaky scene?”
“It’s kind of normal and down my alley,” he answered frankly. “It’s not like I’m someone who just got into porn. All my songs got porn in em. Ninety million people will write a song about ‘Let me cream you. Let me powder your cake. Let me love you, let me bring you flowers.’ Sometimes I might write a song, ‘I’m not taking you to dinner, I’m not paying for shit.’ I might write a song like, ‘Pay for your own shit.’ I might write a song called “Girl With the Boney Knees,”… Everybody’s programmed to write a song, ‘I love you, I care for you.’ Sometimes I might make a song called, “Baby Your Legs Look Fucked Up,” or “Stripper With the Fucked Up Knees.”… I might say a song, “The Bitch Has A Big Eye,” or “That’s An Ugly Bitch.”
I asked Keith, “As a New Yorker and porn aficionado, you must be disappointed at the way the city went from being a porn and peep show capital to whatever clean thing it is now.”
“They just moved em,” Keith assured me of the porn shops. “I know where they at. … It’s not on the route with the McDonalds tourist attractions next to… Hello Kitty. It’s on another block. They pushed it into the cut. Everything’s in the cut. There’s tons of them out on the road now too. It’s like buying jazz records.”
As a Floridian, I knew exactly what he meant: “They’re all out in the boondocks, right off of exits, in big barns.”
I saw the Breeders open for Nirvana in 1993. But that doesn’t count as meeting Kim Deal.
Years earlier, my high school friends and I, including the girl who played bass in my band, all drove from Ft. Myers, FL, two hours north to the 1000-plus capacity USF Special Event Center, in Tampa, to see the Pixies. I rode in the open, windy back of my friend Andy’s pickup truck, covered with a blanket. We showed up several hours early for the show. With nothing to do but wait around, my bass player and I snuck into the Pixies’s afternoon soundcheck.
We hid up in the balcony, far from the big stage, and watched the band members trickle in. I remember guitarist Joey Santiago walking nervously around the stage with a roll of tape and his guitar. He would carefully distance himself from his amplifiers, then play a recognizable Pixies lick that involved a little feedback, and if it didn’t sound right, he would move to another spot and try it again. When the feedback finally sounded exactly like it did on Doolittle, he would stop, tear off some tape, and lay an X on the floor, so he knew where to stand when playing that particular song. We thought that was cool as shit — because it was.
A few meticulous licks later, security spotted us and escorted us out.
With nothing else to do, and like eight more hours until showtime, she and I figured out how to sneak back in. By now, the whole band had shown up, with the addition of keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman from opening band Pere Ubu (and formerly of Captain Beefheart’s band!). To test their gear, the Pixies played a great, heavy rendition of Metallica’s newly released, first-ever radio hit, “Enter Sandman.”
When security finally nabbed us a second time, Kim Deal waved goodbye to us from the stage. But that doesn’t count as meeting her.
Afterward, with nothing to do and hours left to wait, we continued wandering around outside the huge venue. On one aimless lap past their tour bus we saw, about 200 feet away, Pixies bassist Kim Deal walk out the venue’s back door. We froze, and stared at my bassist’s idol. Just as Deal began climbing aboard the bus, she spotted her gawking teen fans, stepped down from the bus, and began walking across the parking lot toward us. “Hi guys!” she smiled and waved, and walked right up to us and hugged us.
Kim Deal gave my bass player some words of affirmation, then headed back onto the bus. One of the first famous people I’d ever met, Deal gave me the wrong impression about how encounters with one’s heroes often go…
Do writers even get famous anymore? Jonathan Ames is famous to me. It’s almost awkward for me to write about him, because Ames has remained a sweet friend and gracious supporter of mine for over 20 years. At the newspaper where I spent the late 90s, I first received a copy of Ames’s essays, What’s Not To Love? which led me to perhaps my favorite novel, The Extra Man — all of that long before he created the beloved HBO mystery comedy show, Bored to Death. Below I’ve written a brief timeline of my adventures with Ames over two decades:
Tampa, 1998
I wrote to Ames out of nowhere. In emails he came off lonely, though maybe I projected that onto him, having read lots of his thoughts on loneliness in his books, and in his NY Press column about his life and perversions. When I met him, he’d recently won a Guggenheim fellowship, still he spoke of drowning in student loans. Somehow, we became passionate pen-pals.
2. St. Petersburg, 2000
I talked my bosses at the St. Petersburg Times newspaper into booking Jonathan Ames and Neal Pollack for the St. Pete Festival of Reading, and putting them up in a beachfront hotel. Jonathan read multiple times that weekend and tried his damnedest to woo this redhead girl I’d fallen for. But what I remember most is we all stopped for drinks on the way to the authors’ hotel. I didn’t drink, but we all smoked a little, and after leaving the bar I got so fucking lost. My friend Lance sat beside me up front in my sister’s car, which I’d borrowed because it was nicer, and Ames and Pollack sat in the backseat, drunk and loud, while I drove all over St. Pete like a stoned moron. I finally pulled over to a gas station, and left everyone in my car to go bother an attendant during his smoke break outside. As the attendant gave me detailed directions, I looked over his shoulder to my sister’s car and saw Jonathan Ames standing before the open trunk, holding a golden sword above his head. Not a toy sword. Not plastic. A heavy gold and silver real sword. In the middle of the guy’s directions home, I bolted away across the parking lot to the car to stop Ames. “Hey! Hey put that down!” Was that sword in his luggage? I wondered. Turned out, my sister forgot to warn me about the sword on board.
3. New York City, 2002
Jonathan wrote a blurb for a little pink collection of my writing called Commonplace, published just before I moved to Louisiana in 2001. Once I reached New Orleans, McSweeney’s.net published a piece I wrote about my Bourbon Street restaurant job, which I turned into my first novel, The Donkey Show. Jonathan Ames hooked me up with his literary agent, and also wrote a blurb for my novel, a copy of which I mailed to the McSweeney’s shop in Brooklyn. Eggers’ lackeys contacted me to schedule an event at their comically tiny bookstore. But when my friend Jonathan Ames agreed to read with me, McSweeney’s moved our big shebang to the large, trendy event space, Galapagos, where I read and played music in front of hundreds of Jonathan’s fans. The reading turned out so well for me, that I forgot it was also my birthday until after the show. It started to snow just as Ames led us all on foot to a swanky (but affordable!) Thai restaurant, where late into the meal, he stood on his chair, made an elaborate toast in my honor, then got the entire restaurant to sing to me.
4. New Orleans, 2004
I was very excited when Jonathan returned to New Orleans with his new novel, Wake Up, Sir! “Don’t loan this out to your friends,” Ames told me upon gifting me one of his first copies, hot off the press. “Make sure you tell people to buy it.” One of my only prized possessions, that copy of Wake Up, Sir! got soaked in Katrina’s floodwaters, because of course I did loan it out. Ames crashed on our couch that night, and the next night we performed together at the old Mermaid Lounge, where my artist friend Johnny T acted out a performance art piece that involved a gross prop: his own long turd on a plate. But my strongest memory of that visit was the intense, sweaty-as-hell, mid-summer bike ride Ames and I took across most of New Orleans. Over the course of seven hours, the sun burned fucking brutal as I showed and told Ames everything about every neighborhood — just before Katrina would swoop in and fuck everything up. Not many of my friends could have survived that ride, much less enjoyed it like Ames did. They don’t call him The Herring Wonder for nothing.
5. New York 2005, San Francisco 2006
I vaguely remember eating pizza slices in New York with Ames, while we were locked out of New Orleans after Katrina: the same NY trip when someone broke my car window and stole every piece of my clothing. Later that same refugee year, I watched Ames read in a San Francisco bookstore. I remember after his reading he said to me, “You seemed pretty tuned out,” as if his performance had let me down. “It was really good — you’re always good — but I had already heard you tell that story a couple times.” After his reading, we walked to a Latin diner to have coffee with (recently-MeToo’d) author of The Adderall Diaries, Stephen Elliot.
6. New Orleans, 2011
Jonathan had nailed down a TV deal for Bored to Death, and was dating Fiona Apple. I felt exhilarated by my friend’s success. Ames was really doin it! Dying to share his newfound money, he bought rounds of drinks at any bar where we ran into my friends, even though he himself wasn’t drinking. He graciously bought softshell crab po’boys for my family of three (even the baby). One afternoon, back at his nice St. Charles Ave B&B (no more surfing my couch), Ames told me, “I have a surprise for you. I have Fiona Apple’s new album. It hasn’t come out yet.” Ames plucked the burned CD from his bag. “It has a song called Jonathan.” For some reason, as he messed with the CD player, I chose that moment to give Jonathan a TED talk about the dangers of leaked albums. “She hasn’t had a new album in years. That’s a really big deal to have that. If anyone got hold of that CD, and leaked those songs. Man…” I think I really freaked Ames out; in the end he didn’t hit PLAY. He put the CD back into his bag as we moved on to other topics. Idler Wheel…, incidentally, went on the become maybe my favorite album maybe of the decade — though that “Jonathan” song kind of creeps me out.
Since last I saw Ames, he moved to Los Angeles, created the Patrick Stewart comedy, Blunt Talk, and the novella You Were Never Really here, recently turned into a very good Joaquin Phoenix movie. Ames and I usually catch up via phone once a year or so, and I always love talking with him. Jonathan Ames has always been a good friend.
The duo of Hall & Oates sold over 80 million copies of their 21 albums, with 34 top-100 hits, making them pop’s most successful duo of all time. Also, personally, I love the shit out of them. Hall & Oates were one of the very first musical acts that my sister (9) and I (13) both loved simultaneously. One Christmas, when she was in love with Daryl Hall, she asked Santa Claus for the Big Bam Boom album. Then she got mad when I asked for it too and Santa brought us both copies. More than twenty years after that controversial Big Bam Boom Christmas, I fronted a Hall and Oates cover band. I played Daryl.
So twas a great thrill and honor when John Oates himself, visiting New Orleans to perform and write some new songs with the Preservation Hall Band (a collaboration I dubbed “Preservation Hall and Oates”), agreed to let me pick him up from his hotel, conduct an interview, then drop him off at “work” in the Quarter.
That interview turned out great, and you can read it HERE at Vice. He was as smooth and pleasant as his duo’s tunes, which I assumed to be the reason he could so graciously play second fiddle to Hall. I told him, “I am very interested in the psychology of the sideman — you’re not a sideman, but are often perceived as one. It seems like it’d be easy for you to get fed up with that. I’ve always felt it’s a testament to your personality that Hall and Oates have never had any kind of public rift. How do you navigate this perception of yourself as being, maybe, second fiddle?”
Oates said, “I am OK with it because I don’t think of myself that way. Other people may, the world may, but that’s fine. I kind of look at it in a more Zen way: you can’t have a beautiful sunset without a horizon. Also, we’re like brothers. Daryl has a very specific personality, but it’s also very consistent. We’ve been friends since high school, 45 years. So nothing he does will ever surprise me. And the coolest thing about it is, I respect his idiosyncrasies and he respects mine. He’s a very in-your-face person when it comes to performing, and he has a tremendous voice. And the fact that his voice became the signature sound of Hall and Oates is just the way it is.”
The funniest part though, came before we went inside Preservation Hall. When Oates and his signature mustache stepped out of my truck, I stopped him and asked, “Could I take a photo of you beside my truck? I want a photo of you and my truck.”
“Sure,” he shrugged. “Why?”
“Well, I’m about to sell it on Craigslist, and I think I could get more money for it if I said…”
“If you said ‘These seats touched John Oates’s ass,’” he joked dryly. “Sounds like a plan.” He gladly took the photo below, which I treasure. And I did indeed get a more than fair price for that truck.
As we parted ways, Oates said to me, “You work for VICE — I really want to do that Guitar Moves show. There’s a guy who does this thing online…” He meant Matt Sweeney, former guitarist from Chavez, and the band Soldier of Fortune featuring my boy Brad Truax from the band Home. Very killer, Matt’s my Twitter buddy. “Yeah. I saw a few episodes,” said Oates, “and thought, Man, I gotta do that show.”
Oates gave me his cellphone number (always a treat to scroll through my Contacts and see John Oates), but that episode of Guitar Moves is still yet to be filmed.
New Orleans: the Underground Guide 