Carmaig de Forest and I did three tours in the 90s we shared cars, gas, bookings and places to crash. He lived in San Rafael, I lived 45 minutes past Hamilton in an old blacksmith shop where eventually I produced his record El Camino Real, what a pleasure. Carmaig had provocative smart poetic and political material which he performed on ukulele and sometimes the situations we entered were not dream audiences. I would alter my material but Carmaig would bravely plow through any other crowd, none of his material changed. Being a chicken shit it’s very exciting to be in the company of someone so brave, but then again I’m ok to not deal with unwanted hostility.
One strange tender moment somewhere near a tornado in Minnesota we heard the news that Jerry Garcia died. Didn’t mean anything to me but Carmaig was a child of California. One of thousands of stoned circle dancers in his youth..he needed some pause time for Jerry. We drove in silence through that concrete ribbon, ominous clouds at the sides and I thought about Truckin’, the only Dead song I knew from a groovy jukebox in an earlier dishwasher job I had in grade 11.
Carmaig wrote some brilliant memorable inspiring songs. Crack Is No Worse Than The Fascist Threat comes to mind. We played the Hotel Utah in San Francisco four times. They served spicy bloody Marys with horseradish – has to be sipped to be believed. I saw Dan Bern for the first time, there was a buzz about him. Dan and Carmaig were 5 or 6 years older than me. When you are breaking your ass doing all that touring, performing and losing money, fueled by some big dream, it is encouraging to see people older than you still trying to achieve it. Makes the meaning behind the continued effort a little more worthy. But now, it’s like that Sandra Boynton book I read to my daughter….one tour, two tours, three tours …oooops.
The last time we spoke, a year ago, we had a disagreement about political stories. Odd that both of us saw our view as the correct one but I suppose it is not too different than how we approached the stage.