I wake up in America. The sun is blasting in the bus windows and we are in a huge parking lot in Buffalo, somewhere near the Canadian border. A highway passes alongside the parking lot and cars whoosh by. We are in the middle of nowhere.There are no buildings near us. In the distance is an office building and, to the left, our hotel.
Women in identical suits are watching a Powerpoint presentation in a glassed-in room. A man is walking the lobby, loudly explaining a marketing situation into his headset. Americans are focused, intent, bent on self-improvement and enlarging their market share. The papers show the Army attacking a mosque and the magazines show hooded Iraqis being tortured and abused by U.S. soldiers.
The Salvation Army is setting up tables by the conference rooms. The ladies all have Burger King cups.
The guest rooms are about 1/4 mile away.
Last night we played a song on THE David Letterman show. It went fine and it was fun, but it was all over so fast.
They had a segment called "Is That Anything?" Tonight they had a woman gyrating in a giant slinky, a guy jumping up and down with springy things on his head, and a familiar-looking woman in a metal outfit dancing and stoking herself with a power tool, which emitted showers of sparks. Malu and I saw her later. It was Kiva, whose wedding we attended at Sideshows By The Sea in Coney Island. At that time she was mainly a snake handler, but she went on to do a cabaret show featuring piercing on stage to electronic music and probably more I don't know about.
The busses roll at midnight and we have been joined by Suzanne, who will do lights. Her husband(?) Smokey drops her off. He plays with Mauro in the Forro band. It's a small world.
Daniel, the tour manager, who was on my last tour, has joined us as well. His stint managing Lucinda Williams is over.
Juana Molina, our opening act, introduces herself, along with her accompanist Alejandro. They're traveling with us, too. I volunteered that since there are only 3 of them (Chris is their all-around tech sound guy) they could save money traveling with us, as Jim White did. Her record Segundo is one of my all time favorites, so I'm curious to see her live.
After arriving in Buffalo, Mauro asks how far the falls are. I check a map and it seems like 10 miles or so - not more that an hour's bike ride, maybe less. So we head off for Niagara.
It's a weird ride. We're not on a highway but almost. The road is, as Mauro points out, filled with stores that are all chains. Nothing is local, peculiar, or specific to this area. Everyone is an employee of some anonymous corporation. They probably are only allowed to make small decisions and they have no stake or investment in the place where they work. Of course, we can't see any of these people; there are no people visible anywhere, just cars pulling in and out of parking lots as we inch along.
Which is exactly what I say to myself every time I have a cup of coffee.
Occasionally, there are falls information joints. Then further on, motel after motel. I tell Mauro this used to be a honeymoon spot. Now it's a little hard to imagine honeymooning here except in an ironic way. An ironic honeymoon? Anyway, who would want to honeymoon plopped down on a highway that looks like it could be anywhere in America?
About 10 miles down the road, there is evidence of the massive electrical power generated by the still invisible falls. (This was where Tesla proved that alternating current could be transported.) We're feeling weird, hot, and a little tired. This landscape tells a story. Somewhere in the distance is an amazing and awe-inspiring natural phenomenon, but the reaction here seems to be: how can we exploit it and turn it into industrial might? Land not industrialized is abandoned. An egret stands in a muddy stream among old tires and bits of signage. Power, industrial and electrical, flexed its muscles and was proud. Now the mostly closed Lockheed plant "looks like a jail," says Mauro.
The town of Niagara itself is a peculiar ghetto of black and Italian immigrants. Italian grocery stores, hair salons and liquor stores. We stop for a sausage sandwich and Gatorade. A pale woman of maybe 70 sits in front of an ashtray overflowing with buts, leafing through a Country Stars magazine. I suggest she might get sunburned. She snuffs and ignores that hint and instead shows me a photo of Alan Jackson in her magazine. He's her favorite - "this year," she says.
The falls are truly amazing. The air is cool all around them - like the whole world is air-conditioned.
We are hot and spent and it was way more than 10 miles so we call Todd and ask if he can send the local runner with a van to pick us up.
The show goes incredibly well, though twice there are power failures in the middle of the set. Luckily, Graham and Mauro, the only ones whose instruments can be heard when the power cuts, play on, and the audience keeps singing "we're on a road to nowhere." If it's a serious problem we'll have to take a break, loosing momentum, but the power suddenly comes back on and we finish the song.
Juana's set before ours is beautiful and strange. She tells a story about one song – doing the voices of herself and her mother. Her mother was coming to visit in LA. They planned to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright, Neutra and Schindler houses together - but the mom wants to hit the 99¢ store. All this gets worked into the lyrics.
After our set she appears, teary-eyed, to tell us she was moved by the strings on "Lazy." (The beginning, I imagine.) I knock on their dressing room door so she can tell them herself.
