Act IV: California Stars

So this is what my guitar wants to play before I fall headlong into a sentimental flashback: California Stars, words by Woody Guthrie, music by Billy Bragg and Wilco.

Tonight is your birthday salon. We have enticed our friends to come over with promises of veggie lasagna, carrot cake and wine. In exchange, everyone must perform. It is your house party, your artist salon, a hoe down in the Brew Town. So we all must bow down to your birthday bossiness.

After a piano performance from my beautiful and talented comrade and wife (Act I), Diego’s parents rocked the mike with full-on bomba and zampoña (see Act II). An amazing puppet show followed (Act III).

(Last weekend, I was going to write about the puppet show (ie Act III) but I gave up coffee. I stumbled around muttering to myself and generally was a nuisance to my nuclear and extended family, and the whole of Bay View. At one point I woke up from a nap just so I could take another nap. That’s right fan(s) of Life at 33 1/3 rpm (Hi Mom!), no java elixir, no blog. Sorry puppeteers. Your show really was great!

Now, this weekend I have given up drinking green tea. I took up green tea to give my mouth something to do when it wasn’t drinking coffee. Now I have given up green tea because my mouth is busy having a great big smile because I am drinking coffee again. This is a good time to say…)

Now it is my turn to perform for my beautiful and talented wife’s birthday salon. I step up to the mike and say “check check” which sounds terribly official. It feels so good that I say, “Hello Milwaukee!” really loud like it’s Summer Fest. I get some squeaky feedback and everyone groans and covers their ears.

“Hello Milwaukee!” I say again a bit more softly this time, hoping, since this is suppose to be a birthday present, that my performance improves. I start strumming.

“This is for my wife,” I say. “It’s about the place where we first met. The place where our children were born.” I go around the chord cycle once, from the one to the five, to the four and then back to the one. How many great songs have been written with this magic chord progression. Woody Guthrie made a career from it.

I open my mouth to sing but I feel myself floating back to San Francisco, back to that that night that we sat on the bumper of my pickup, on a cliff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the city lights. We ate chicken and drank Tecate beer with wedges of lime shoved in the can.

Earlier we had been on the phone. There was this terrible silence, this pause, a terrible hesitation….

And…

And…

Next week our hero falls headlong into Wilco-Gutherie inspired sentimental reverie.