FROM THE MEMOIR: "Year of the Horse: Wild Ride" (Patreon)

Friends,

Tomorrow, July 19, is the 20th anniversary of both an ending and a beginning. It was the day Dave Carter died. It was also the beginning of my road as a solo artist, legacy keeper, writer, and more.

This bit of writing takes us back to 20 years ago TODAY, July 18, 2002, when we were still a duo. I'm aware it needs editing/fine-tuning and I'll get to that... but I thought you might like to see it anyway. I've included the Dave & Tracy demo recording of "Phantom Doll," also 20 years old today, which you may have heard elsewhere but which may feel a bit different in context.

I have not shared here what happens when we get to the hotel, partly because it involves a conversation around Dave's transgender issues. The attitudes 20 years ago were so different that I'm almost embarrassed by our dialogue and yet: it is what it is, accurate to the time. Perhaps tomorrow I'll share that if you're interested.

Thank you for your love and support. This year I am celebrating the end of two rather arduous decades of searching, struggling, and slow unfurling. The feeling is one of triumphant arrival; of burdens carried and set down at last; of clarity, buoyancy, and joy; of fruiting, focusing, and freedom. 

Blessings and best wishes on us all. xotg

YEAR OF THE HORSE: WILD RIDE

When Dave and I got the invitation to play a Saturday evening set at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in 2002, we knew we had scored the coup of summertime festival slots. Falcon Ridge was the place where we had been “discovered” by east coast audiences just two summers earlier, and the response had surprised us. Autograph lines swung around the merchandise tent following our afternoon sets and workshop appearances. People stopped us as we walked the grounds, to say hello or see if we’d pose for a photo with their kids. Fellow performers crowded around, most of them songwriters, angling for a few moments with Dave to discuss influences and find out where we were from. It seemed to most that we’d appeared out of nowhere, fully realized and primed for the spotlight, a folk music Athena sprung from the head of some mysterious Zeus. Each year we played Falcon Ridge, our names were written in larger type on the program, and by 2002, we’d achieved big-font headliner status. Such swift ascendance was unheard of at that festival, or any other, and no one was more surprised by it than us.

          Later I would say that all this happened the way it did because we didn’t have time for the usual climb. Dave was spinning like a top, picking up momentum and preparing to lift off. I didn’t see the spinning then, not quite. I just knew that the old saying, “It takes ten years to become an overnight sensation,” did not seem to apply, because it had only taken us three.

          After we’d signed the festival contract, our first thought was: how awesome would it be to invite our dream team – George Javori on drums and Byron Isaacs on bass – to be our band for our biggest show of the summer? We played together with Joan Baez and over the course of that five-week tour, under those compressed circumstances, we’d become a kind of band-family. I had spent as much time giggling over their drunken bad boy lunatic twenty-something antics as I had admiring their solid, mature musicianship. When we parted ways in Orlando in May of 2002, the four of us agreed to look for opportunities to play together. When Dave called with the invitation, they jumped at it; the reunion gig was on.

July 18, 2002. Nine days before Falcon Ridge. Rehearsal day. George was on the stoop sweating in a white tank top and smoking an American Spirit when we rolled to a stop in front of Byron’s Brooklyn brownstone. George snuffed his cigarette, set it on the ledge and called into the house. Byron popped out of the front door grinning, his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest. I hit the emergency flashers and blew air kisses from the driver’s seat. Dave jumped out of the van and opened the liftgate. As a whoosh of hot air poured into the van, Dave looked around half-expecting to be mugged, forever as fascinated by the city as he was afraid of it. The boys grabbed cases and roller bags of gear and hustled them into the house, even stuff we didn’t need for rehearsal. “No sense tempting fate,” said Byron. Just before I pulled away to park the van, I looked back at the boys. It made me happy to see them all together. Byron clapping Dave on the shoulder. Dave grinning from ear to ear with a hand on the wrought iron railing. George settling back on the stoop, re-lighting what was left of his cigarette.

        We set up and started running the set. The boys had done their homework. Byron added innovative, heart-thumping bass lines. George brought rattles, bells and deep hand drum grooves. It was rare that we could afford a band and we loved the depth a rhythm section brought to the songs. Nevertheless, Dave and I hardly spoke during the rehearsal. It’s not that we were unhappy. We were actually thrilled. But we were also exhausted. Outside temps were peaking at 95 degrees, the humidity was stifling, and Byron didn’t have air conditioning, just two beat-up box fans pushing the air around. By the second song, my bow was gummy and my fingers were sliding off the fingerboard. My sweaty arm stuck to my mandolin during “Tillman County.” Gunk flowed down the back of my throat when my sinuses let loose, trashing my vocals. 

          George wiped his face with a bandana from the back pocket of his black jeans and nodded to let Dave know he was ready for the next song. We got through the list making sure the heads and tails were tight but Dave didn’t bother detailing the songs because he couldn’t muster the energy. The boys had to leave for another rehearsal at four o’clock, so it was just as well. Red-faced, with a guitar-shaped sweat stain spreading across his chest and belly, Dave tipped back the last sip from his small glass of water, wiped his mouth, right to left with the right hand like he always did, and hunched over to play the last tune. He was sloppy with the chords. Afterward, he gave me a long, strange look and shook his head slightly. Too hot, I thought. He’s delirious and dehydrated. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this hot myself. I wiped the sweat from under my eyes and nodded back at him. Let’s get out of here, is what I wanted my eyes to say. We’re done. We still had a three hour drive ahead of us to the hotel in Hadley, Mass.

          I was zipping my violin case shut when I remembered a conversation Dave and I had in the van about sharing his latest tune. “We forgot about ‘Phantom Doll’!” I said.

          “Phantom what? What’s that?” said Byron.

          “Only his awesome new song,” I said, deplying my best Valley-girl lilt.

           “It’s NOT folk,” Dave said, chuckling and slicing the air with his hand. 

           “Definitely not,” I said, as if “folk” were a dirty word. George and Byron didn’t care, folk or whatever, but we didn’t know that. We were trying to appear urban and multi-dimensional, trying to impress our New York City band mates. The truth is, folk was the genre that embraced our music, but Dave in particular was terrified of being pigeon-holed there. In interviews, he made it a point to name drop Jacques Brel, Mozart, Merle Haggard, Carlos Castaneda, and Joseph Campbell so that people would appreciate the breadth of his academic and artistic foundations. Me, I liked to name drop Neil Diamond and John Denver because it made Dave cringe. 

            But I digress.

          “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written,” Dave said. “It’s jazzy, it has some trick chords, and it’s got ghosts.” He laughed at himself and wiped his nose – a tic when he got excited. Talking about new material always got him going. 

          “Tracy and I were kind of hoping we could all play it at the festival but Byron, I know you guys gotta go and it’s all complicated and, I dunno, we’re all pretty wiped out and I just don’t think there’s time to work it up.” 

          Byron and George traded glances, then looked at us. I smirked at Dave and he raised his eyebrows. The gauntlet had been thrown, albeit passively. 

          “Why don’t you at least play it for them?” I said. “You know you want to. Byron, do you have time, do you guys want to hear it?” It was practically a rhetorical question. George and Byron told me many times over the course of the Baez tour that they adored his writing. Of course they wanted to hear something hot off of Dave Carter’s proverbial press. Of course.

          Dave pulled a wrinkly printout from the belly of his guitar case and handed it to me. The song was so new we still didn’t know which of us was going to sing it. I smoothed the paper and held it in front of him and he sat on a stool and began to strum. He was so excited but so hot that his fingers slipped around and he laughed and choked on his words till he found a groove. When the sweeping cabaret-style choruses came around, I sang with him. Byron nodded to the beat and George snapped his fingers and the two of them grinned at each other after the first chorus like, “Yeah. We got this.” 

          When Dave landed the last chord, it was high-fives all around. 

          “Hell YES!” said Byron, pushing his glasses up, all grins and gushing, while George, typically stoic, said in a thicker-than-usual Hungarian accent, “We have to play this.” He gestured toward Byron, who began fumbling around a desktop, looking for something. When Byron turned around again, he was inserting a tape into a mini cassette recorder.  

          “How about this,” he said. “Play it again, and we’ll study it over the week. Right George?” George nodded. “We’ve got nine days. We’ll be ready, man.” 

           I could already see the four of us at Falcon Ridge under the bright lights, killin’ it. Still needed a good violin solo but I knew Dave would help me write one. He always did. What really got me in that moment was Dave’s transformation. So exhausted just ten minutes earlier, he was giddy as a schoolgirl now. We all were. 

          Byron pressed a button on the recorder and gave us the nod. We tilted our chins toward the tiny machine and sang in unison this time, two voices on the melody all the way through, like one person. When it was over, Byron rewound the tape a little, hit PLAY, and we all leaned in. Barely detectable over the fans in the room, and sounding as compressed and staticky as AM radio, there we were, singing Dave’s newest song together for the first time.

          We didn’t know it would also be the last.

- - -

City-driving made Dave nervous, so I took the keys and he read the map, directing me through the swelter and sway of New York City traffic, through the rush-hour crush of drivers who seemed extra cranky in the heat, till — some two hours later — we reached the Hutchinson Parkway. I knew how to get to our Hadley, Massachusetts hotel from the Hutch, so I suggested Dave go to sleep, only to look over and find him slack-jawed and dreaming already. A U-shaped fleece pillow kept his neck upright. His interlaced fingers rested on the atlas in his lap. He hadn’t bothered to recline; he was probably too exhausted to think of it.  

          Nearing New Haven, dark grey clouds overtook the skies and forced an early twilight as we closed in on a weather system to the north. By then, temperatures outside had cooled some. I had the back wings open on the van because I liked to keep the air moving, and in the absence of radio, which I never played while Dave slept, I liked road sounds. But the middle-darkness made me drowsy and I needed to be spelled. Plus the string cheese and Snyders Nibbler’s weren’t cutting it anymore. I needed a meal. I pressed my flat left hand onto Dave’s breastbone to wake him.

          “Hey baby,” I said, “you hungry? I’m sleepy as a beepy and I need some eats.”

          It took him a minute. He rubbed his eyes and pinched dehydrated saliva crud from the corners of his mouth. “Sure baby,” he said. “We ain’t et all day, seems like.”

          I took the next exit and drove directly to an open parking space one block from The Great Wall. Even exhausted, my intuition was remarkably intact. We dragged our raggedy selves inside, sweat-sticky and stinking, and collapsed in a padded booth. Tea came. David filled my cup, then his own. But we didn’t toast. Neither did we speak. We didn’t have the energy.

          The restaurant was dark with brisk air conditioning. The décor was typical. Paper lanterns. Gold and black lacquered tables. Carved wood. Buddhas. After we ordered, I read about Monkey and Dragon on the red paper placemat. Monkeys like me are said to be selfish and self-involved but lovable for their trickster ways. Dragons like Dave are beloved for their charisma and intellect. I had a Theodora Lau book back at home that said Monkey-Dragon was one of the strongest pairings in the Chinese zodiac. Despite everything that was going on between us, I still believed this to be true. On balance, ours was a powerful, if unorthodox, partnership. Despite everything, he was still my favorite person on the planet.

          We were in the Year of the Horse. Horse years didn’t look good for anyone. Sweeping success would meet disabling misfortune. We’d already known a bit of both. When bad things happened to us, like the time our blue van ended up in Vancouver with two busted windows after some dudes took it for a joyride, we shook our heads in resignation and consigned our losses to the stars.

          “Year of the Horse,” Dave said. 

          “Wild ride,” I answered, almost like a mantra. 

          Somehow, this softened the blow.

          Still, I could not think of a time when we’d sat down to a meal together too spent to speak. My eyes crossed in the half-light and I was drifting to sleep when the waiter arrived with two plates of food and two bowls of brown rice.

          It was all I could do to pick up each long, steamed green bean with my chopsticks and bring it to my lips. All I could do to hold the rice bowl and shovel a few grains into my mouth. I didn’t even have the energy to lift the teapot to refill our cups even though it was my turn. This level of exhaustion wasn’t just from the heat. We were stretched thin by months of non-stop touring, stresses on the personal front, and never enough money to make any of this feel like it was worth it. Our manager had us running to do triple A and folk conference showcases, early morning radio interviews, and openers that were supposedly “good exposure,” but none of them paid. Our fellow troubadours advised us to accept all of the dates offered by our new high-profile booking agency, regardless of the quality or the routing, because they had a reputation for dropping artists who didn’t work enough. 

          The van was in need of a transmission, were feeling cut off from our friends at home, and, my hips and back were on fire from long hours in the van. Most importantly, though, Dave wasn’t getting enough time to write. And he was so, so unhappy. 

          The only reprieve we could see in the immediate future was that in a matter of a couple hours, we’d be checking in for two nights at the Holiday Inn Express in Hadley, Massachusetts, our favorite hotel on the east coast. I booked us into a suite so we’d have a fridge and microwave and an extra bed for spreading out. Dave would go for a run on his favorite bike trail. We’d eat healthy organic food and maybe buy a soy candle for our room at Bread & Circus, the high-end grocery across the street. I might go to Old Navy or Wal-Mart, see if I could add something to my $15-or-under stage dress collection. All we had on the docket was one radio appearance. Non-paying, of course, and an hour north, but the 19th would be an easy day, all things considered.

          Dave moved pieces of his steaming eggplant dish around with his chopsticks. After a solid ten minutes of silence, he eyeballed my beans, looked me in the eye, and sighed, sounding utterly defeated.

          “Yours always looks better than mine.”

          I pushed my plate toward him. “Have all you want. You need to eat.” 

          He tried one bean, then another, then took several. He made a little “mm” noise as he ate, and finally just took the plate. I didn’t mind. I sat back and closed my eyes and dreamed of a shower. When we got back to the van, Dave agreed to drive. He was better at night anyway. I tilted the seat back, threw the truck stop blanket over my legs, adjusted the neck pillow and was almost out when Dave patted my hair with his open palm and said, as he always did, “My beautiful Tracy. You rest.” With my eyes still closed, I found his hand, kissed the back of it, and held it to my heart. 

          “Thank you, baby,” I said. “You’re my hero.”

          I slept hard, harder than I’d ever slept in the van. And I slept long. I dreamed someone was throwing rocks at our windshield and when I peeled my eyes open halfway, I saw we were in the middle of a raging thunderstorm, the dense, blinding kind you get down in the south. Dave was hunched forward, his face lit up green by the dash lights. The windshield wipers were in spazz-mode but were no match for the downpour. The water on the road was so high it obliterated the lines. 

          “Omigod,” I said, not quite coherent. “What the hell? Can you see? Are you okay to drive?”

          “I’m okay,” he said, tight-jawed and clutching the wheel. “You rest.”

          Drivers were weaving and drifting and everyone was going too fast, Dave included. Brake lights, rooster tails, hydroplaning, heavy lightning, and all that water on the windshield reflecting light from every direction – Interstate 91 was an absolute mess. 

         Worry wouldn't fix it; besides, I didn't have the energy. Tension in my body dissolved. I became curiously calm. Maybe Dave knew how to drive in this kind of chaos from his Texas and Oklahoma days. Maybe he didn't. It didn't matter. I was absolutely certain we were about to die. And I was okay with that.

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