This is the story of how I am slowly turning into a preacher.
Airline travel is starting to kill me.
If my 29 year-old self, touring out on the road in a shitty van for 3 months, and heard me say this, that 29 year-old would have punched me square in the face and spit on me.
But it’s true: since I teach during the week I often have to dash off just after a class in NYC, do the 3-hour ordeal of the modern airport, sprint up to some boarding gate and rocket off to Edmonton or Quebec City or London or wherever. I know, this sounds very glamorous, but when you’ve done it 127 times, trust me, it isn’t.
And then, after having no time to enjoy anything about the new city I find myself in, I’m shoved up on stage. I use my plane-dehydrated vocal chords, now positively crawling with the inevitable plane-acquired germs (cold/flu/whatever) to scream into the microphone for 90 minutes. Then I try to get some sleep in some unfamiliar time zone, usually waking at some ungodly hour as my confused brain tells me that it’s time to get the child ready for school, even though I’m nowhere near the child.
For all of these reasons, these days I wake up on Day 2 with a broken brain and a damaged voice, then it’s off to another city where I do it all again, and then again the next night, then home to my job where I try to lecture to students with an utterly shredded voice. Van travel doesn’t do any of this to me: Van travel is fun, camraderie, the open road with tunes and amazing friends, maybe some of whom are sneaking hoots of gin from a flask in the backseat. Airline travel is really starting to fuck me up. Don’t worry, 29-year old. You’ll understand when you’re older.
So at a recent Sunday gig in Edmonton, I arrived at the bar late because they’d cancelled my flight home the next day and I was on hold for two hours. I arrived sick, exhausted, voice damaged, and spoke to a few old friends who looked slightly alarmed at my red eyes and husky voice. I shambled up on stage. I was fucked. I was genuinely fucked. Worried about the show, I had no energy, I had no ideas, everything was just going wrong. My brain felt like a pile of ashes in an old cigarette bin.
So I stepped up to the mic and sarcastically said to this messy crowd of northern Canadians: “Hey, how’s everybody doing tonight?” They didn’t get the sarcasm. They cheered, raised their glasses, smiled. My face contorted into an ugly scowl. Something was about to rise up from those cigarette ashes. Here’s what I said:
DON’T… fucking lie to me!
(a few gasps, the room goes silent)
I see you. I see all of you. Behind your smiling faces I see a pair of empty, soulless eyes. I see the bleak emptiness in your soul. I SEE the sadness and the despair you have brought to this house of ill repute. I SEE that your miserable little life is bereft of meaning and searching for purpose that JUST. ISN’T. THERE. Am I right????
Nervous cheers. At this point many people are starting to get genuinely weirded out. I have no idea what I’m doing. There is no plan. I quietly ask myself: hey man, uh, what are you doing? There is no answer from this wall of flame that has suddenly posessed me and which appears to be verbally brutalizing the audience. So I keep shouting:
Friends, I have NEWS for you. We, the Dreadnoughts, are here to bring you BACK from the abyss! To cleanse your souls in holy water, to steeeer your ship back on course, to bringgg you back into the land of the living. We are here to return you to your rightful place in this world, as those who live and laugh and love through POLKAAA MUUUUSIC!
Eyes are widening, and I quickly shout:
CAN I GET A HALLELUJAH!!?!?!
In all our shows, I’ve never seen anything like it: the entire bar, even some of the bar staff, raise their fists as one and shout: “HALLELUJAH!!!!!” I continue:
we are HERE to bring the magic of sea shanties, so lost to the world for so long, back into your lives, connecting you to your ancestors and shining the light of the lighthouse into the darkness that plaaaaaagues you! Can I get a HALLELUJAH?
(*HALLELUJAH!!!!*)
I did this a few more times, we kicked into “Polka Never Dies”, and there was absolute mayhem. The energy level that night went to 11. Potato Man, our bass player, said it was the best show he’d played in years, even though he plays with legendary morgue-punks The Crabshack.
So I’ve been doing something like this at lot of our shows. Our show intros have often been funny, good, maybe awkward, maybe kinda silly. But they’ve never been like this. And I know that I’m playing with something interesting, something actually kind of dangerous. Oratory is a tool; in the right hands for the right ends it can work wonders, in the wrong hands it’s not a good scene. And this little bit I’m doing is basically just the southern baptist preacher, who combines firey preaching with call-and-answer-singing and music. It’s the same energy that The Greatest Band Leader of All Time famously brought to his greatest performance:
(By the way, it’s no coincidence that Somebody to Love is basically a Gospel song.)
But this new thing feels vaguely political. We are refusing to just throw a party, we are throwing a healing party, something that actually starts from the premise that people are actually kind of fucked up these days and that they desperately need music that brings them together in communal, interactive joy.
People have been coming up to me after shows and saying things like: “you know what? You were right, I was kind of sad when I came here tonight. And now I feel great!” And most of the way through that strange, glorious night in Edmonton, I shouted:
My friends, do you feel cleansed now? Do you feel pure? Do you feel the power of the community in this room? Do you feel the devil driven out of your souls by the magic of the polka train? Of the sea shanty? Of the klezmer dance?? DO you??
And these polite Canadian mostly-atheists all shouted as one, without prompting: hallelujah.
This all works because it’s true. Because many people are actually sad and because a night of communal folk dancing, of making connections to fellow human beings while a traditional beat courses through you, actually is the most ancient human healing ritual that there is. Its slow disappearance from our lives and replacement with screens and video games and stadium concerts where everyone stands and holds their phone up is not a good thing.
So maybe we are a political band now. And maybe it’s time to run for Polka President. Can I get a hallelujah?
HALLELUJAH!!!
This is verbatim the conversation I had with my buddy before the 1/13 show in Cleveland:
Me: You still down for the insane plan of driving 2.5 hours to be transformed through the magic of polka?
Him: Ive been on the fence but Im pretty sure that will be the thing I need that day. A friend of mine died last week and their memorial will the morning of the 13th.
And we went. He had a bemused, dazed look on his face for the first part of the evening. He had been crying while driving through a snowstorm for the better part of 4 hours. Dinner was a truly awkward affair.
But then the music started. And we had a blast. The people in the room were mostly sad because the Browns lost. My buddy had a deeper kind of sadness, the kind that lingers through seasons instead of weeks. And I watched his whole demeanor gradually light up like a kid on Christmas morning. I was half-joking about being transformed through the magic of polka, but it ended up being oddly prophetic. He was so fired up after the show that we refused to call the night quits and ended up staying up drinking, singing and shooting the shit until almost 3:00AM.
You'd better believe I was hung over, dehydrated, exhausted, with a completely shot voice from loudly singing along all night. And I had to catch an 8AM flight, and the line at Cleveland Airport for security went the length of the building. Truly a miserable experience.
And yet, as I was waiting to go through security, I was watching the videos I took on my phone grinning ear to ear like some kind of sicko that gets off on airport security lines. Texting back and forth with my buddy who was on the road back to Detroit. Our net takeaway was: zero regrets, so happy we did this.
It may come across as shtick when you're doing it as an intro, but for some of us it's all too real. And this is why I stand by my weird hero-worship moment at St. Vitus, saying stuff like "thank you, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart" and "I can't tell you how much this music means to me."
It's a slog. Airports suck and they've only gotten worse. Illness sucks. Timezones suck. Lack of sleep sucks.
But don't ever doubt for a second that what you do matters to a lot of people, and don't ever doubt the genuineness of that hallelujah.
We oddly don't have that guy on the random street corner with the cardboard sign yelling out to no one in particular in my town...especially if he's bringing the light of the polka/shanty/klezmer/punk salvation to us all! Just sayin', the job's apparently open...
In all seriousness, our group of friends that attended your Pittsburgh and Cleveland shows have all mentioned how we really needed that weekend. One of the cars travelling from Erie to Pittsburgh was totalled in that snowstorm on the way to the show - no one was hurt and every single person in that car said "we're still going, right?" and carried on. We collected them and their gear and made it to the winery just in time for the "sit down, eat your dinner, and drink your beer" opening, LOL
Every single person on that trip got sick afterward, go figure - 10 people, 2 cities, 2 concerts but not a single person said they wouldn't do it again exactly the same way because - "What a great energy and vibe - I think we all NEEDED that".
Of course, we committed all of the sins of the overly excited fans and bugged you guys after the show with drunken, endless messages to come drink, etc. but I guess we were going all out because our souls NEEDED that.
Please preach on, and thanks again.