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Bob in Buffalo
77 Plays8 months ago
I used to do something kind of crazy when I was young ...
I'd follow Bob Dylan on tour and sing LONG VERSE, old-time ballads in exchange for tickets to the show.
One night, a meathead-fratboy-bro started heckling me. My response surprised the hell out of me! 😆
Enjoy the story in Episode 4 of Life's F'n Nuts.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome, friends, to life's effing nuts. I am JR, one man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside down world.
Self-Mythologizing and Audience Engagement
00:00:15
Speaker
Basically, I just tell these punchy little stories from my lived experiences that aim to capture relatable truths about life. You know that I love, I love to mythologize myself. It's like probably one of my favorite pastimes to mythologize myself.
00:00:33
Speaker
Now, listening audience, I want you to raise your hand. Yeah, you, I'm talking to you. Raise your hand if you too have any element of this where you like to mythologize yourself. Or am I the only sick, conceited, vain, grandiose bastard out there? Raise your hand. Don't be shy. Okay, so here's the story. Here is the story.
The Dylan Connection: Music as Identity
00:01:02
Speaker
It started in November 2004 on an autumn evening in Rochester, New York. So most of you know that I was obsessed with Bob Dylan's music when I was younger.
00:01:21
Speaker
I should really do just a straight up Bob Dylan episodes at one point. It would probably be like a four-part episode. I got a lot to say on the matter, on the topic. But the short Cliff Notes version, because this story is not about that, but I still need to give you a little context, is that most of my life, up until the age of 14 when I first heard Bob Dylan, felt very disconnected.
00:01:50
Speaker
I was like, you know, the way I was raised, I was taught to behave, be obedient, be respectful, be presentable. Those are the things that I was taught. And I feel like I did a fairly good job learning those things. But I was not, I was not taught or either that, or I missed the fucking memo. I was not taught.
00:02:18
Speaker
how to express myself, how to question things, how to figure out who I was, what I stood for, what my identity was, what was true for me. Never taught any of that kind of stuff.
00:02:41
Speaker
And so basically, I guess, you know, a really simple way of saying it is that like, I was almost entirely going through the motions for the entirety of my life up until the age of 14. Maybe, maybe not when I was a baby, like, I guess when I was younger, probably like toddler, things like that. I don't remember having consciousness or self-consciousness. I think, you know, I just, I was who I was, but as I developed more of this sort of like conscious cerebral protective identity based self,
00:03:14
Speaker
it was almost completely inauthentic. It was just this sort of defensive persona that was sort of like an anonymous kind of guy who didn't really rock the boat, who tried to be who I thought others wanted me to be, et cetera, et cetera. So in that way, my life felt very fake.
00:03:43
Speaker
Didn't feel real yet. There's no way I would have had the words for that back.
00:03:51
Speaker
during the actual time. I can only say that in retrospect now. And then I heard Bob Dylan's music when I was 14 years old.
Flow States with Bob Dylan
00:03:59
Speaker
And at first it didn't register that deeply. I was like, it hit a particular nerve. I was curious about it. It tickled me in a certain kind of way that I couldn't necessarily scratch. I couldn't scratch the itch of the tickle that it created. How's that for language? I couldn't scratch the itch of the tickle it created. That's funny.
00:04:22
Speaker
And over time, I started to have some really powerful experiences where the music stirred deep, deep, deep feelings and emotions in me. You know, I don't ever really remember crying until I heard, you know, but there was times when I heard the music and I would just weep, just straight up weep from the bottom of my soul.
00:04:48
Speaker
And there were experiences I had with the music where my mind would get so clear and I understood myself and ideas in ways that I previously had no access to.
00:05:04
Speaker
I guess, I guess, you know, popularly it's called like flow state. I would, I would enter into intense flow states while listening to the music sometimes. And so I was having these very peak experiences with the music and the deeper the peak experiences I had, the more I sought them out.
00:05:24
Speaker
And the more I sort of glommed on to anything and everything, Bob Dylan, including all the authors who influenced him, all the musicians who influenced him. So I entered this sort of world, this other world that became my power source, my life source. Nothing else really made sense to me in the world except for this music, this lineage, this tradition, this tapestry.
00:05:54
Speaker
And so I was in that way, I was pretty like devout. And I think I was also like, I would hold on to it very tightly because it was like the first thing in my life that made sense. And like, if somehow it got shaken, or if like an alternative reality was presented to me, it would sort of like shatter my
00:06:20
Speaker
it would shatter the sort of foundation that I had been building of some sense of solidity and sense. I'd spent my whole life sort of really feeling foggy and not having a clear conception of anything really. And then I stumbled upon this music and suddenly there was something solid in my life. And I sort of put my blinders on because I didn't want that to be threatened.
Dreams and Destiny with Dylan
00:06:51
Speaker
And I got really, really, really, really, really, really deep into the music. And I mean, I just devoured anything written about Bob Dylan, anything written about any of the people who had influenced him, et cetera. Like I said, I really went down the rabbit hole of this whole world.
00:07:14
Speaker
And in 2001, I saw him for the first time at Antelope Valley County Fair on August 25th, a few weeks before the World Trade Center was attacked. And then I went to a few shows after that. If I recall,
00:07:34
Speaker
I also was fairly delusional when it came to Bob Dylan. I had so many really intense, vivid dreams with Bob Dylan. I mean, I'm talking dozens and dozens and dozens of really, really soul-shaking, earth-shattering dreams that I would wake up and I would just be flummoxed.
00:08:02
Speaker
be this intense tidal wave over my system, these dreams. And they would just happen so regularly, so frequently. And so in some ways, I felt like Bob Dylan had had a similar experience that I was having with him. Bob Dylan had a similar experience with Woody Guthrie. And I like this sort of intense orientation around
00:08:31
Speaker
someone's music, someone's life, someone's aura. And Bob Dylan followed it all the way. He went to Greystone Asylum in New Jersey to meet what he got to be, basically on his deathbed, almost. I guess not quite. He wasn't on his deathbed, but he was in this asylum because he had Huntington's disease.
00:09:10
Speaker
And so I sort of felt like it was my destiny, too, to do the same thing with Bob
Following Dylan's Tour
00:09:15
Speaker
Dylan. And I'm sure there are thousands and thousands and thousands of other young men and maybe some women in some cases who felt similarly. I'm sure I'm not alone. I was not alone in this. But at one point, I found out that he owned this coffee shop in Santa Monica. And just for kicks, I sort of hung around there for a while, wondering if I might see him, things like that.
00:09:39
Speaker
And then I sent him a letter to the coffee shop at one point in 2004. And I also religiously followed his tour online. There's a website called boblinks.com, which posts all the set lists and reviews for every show.
A Poetic Exchange for a Concert
00:10:03
Speaker
And it's the first one, this first website to report
00:10:07
Speaker
new tours that are being announced, et cetera. And so I was on there every single day. And I had seen that there was a show, Bob had a show listed near Rochester. It was like, it was a, I can't remember, it was in a town I'd never heard of. It was like an hour, hour and a half away or something like that. And I was planning on going. And then I had written this letter and I didn't explicitly ask him to come through Rochester, New York, but I did,
00:10:34
Speaker
mentioned that I was in Rochester, New York, and then I checked the website onedayboblinks.com and I saw holy shit. The other show that was planned for New York is no longer there. Now he's coming to play in Rochester. He's going to play at the RIT Rochester Institute of Technology Auditorium.
00:10:56
Speaker
And in my little delusional brain, I mean, I wasn't like completely like, Oh my God, he read my letter and he's coming to Rochester just for me. But I was like, huh? Like, like, wow. I wonder. I wonder. And so who knows? I mean, it seems very, very far fetched that that could be the case, but who knows? You never know. What if he, I mean, he did own that coffee shop. And so I.
00:11:22
Speaker
I just titled the letter or addressed the letter to Bob Dylan and maybe someone passed it along to him at the coffee shop and maybe he found the letter fascinating or liked the letter and said, hey, I'm gonna play a show in Rochester. I have no idea, no idea. But he was playing a show in Rochester RIT in November and something came over me the day of the show and I just decided that I was gonna go to the show
00:11:50
Speaker
And I had just recently written this epic sort of Allen Ginsberg-esque poem for my poetry class. And I thought it was one of the best things that I've ever written. And the whole class just adored it and loved it. It was great for my ego. And so I decided I was going to go to the show with my poem in a cardboard sign and say, like, I will trade an original poem for a Bob Dylan ticket.
00:12:21
Speaker
I don't know where that idea came from. That impulse. I don't know. I'm not sure. But I did it. I think I walked down Genesee. Maybe I took my bike down the Genesee River to RIT. I'd never been to their campus before. It was like up the river a couple miles.
00:12:41
Speaker
And I went to the show and I stood out there with my little sign. And generally I was like a pretty socially, I shouldn't say pretty, I could be incredibly socially awkward person back then to the point where sometimes like I would shake when I was around others, I would start sweating. I always remember the famous story of being at the Chabad house with
00:13:10
Speaker
with Marcel and the rabbi turned into me and shaking my hand and looking at me very intently and wanting to know about me a little bit and me just starting pouring sweat. And then Marcel looks at me. After the conversation was done, he's like, Marcel was from Hungary. He was just one of the best people I ever met in my whole life. He was like, said something like, rabbi made you sweat, huh?
00:13:40
Speaker
It's a very simple line, but it sticks out to me for all of eternity.
00:13:58
Speaker
So yeah, I was incredibly socially awkward, but for whatever reason, being out there with that sign in the sort of center of thousands of people, I wasn't feeling shy or awkward or afraid at all. I felt incredibly at home, incredibly grounded, incredibly confident.
00:14:17
Speaker
and lots of people sort of acknowledged the sign and came and talked to me and it just felt good. I guess it was like sort of performance art, even if I wasn't gonna get into the show, the experience felt like I was following my artistic instinct. Eventually I did get into the show and I was fucking thrilled. It was an amazing feeling. I was like, holy shit, it worked.
Ballads for Tickets: Trials and Triumphs
00:14:45
Speaker
That's what I was thinking in my head, but on the outside,
00:14:48
Speaker
I kept it calm, cool, and collected. But I was like, yeah, holy shit. I'm a fucking magician. That's how it felt. And so it was kind of like a revelatory experience for me. Another one of these peak experiences that sort of guided the way forward. And Bob was playing a show the next night.
00:15:09
Speaker
in Binghamton, my grandma's old hometown. And I hopped on a greyhound and went and did the same thing again and got into the show again. And that was the beginning of my whatever you want to call it phase. Street performing, I don't know what you want to call it. But I started to, over time, hone my craft.
00:15:30
Speaker
And I got better at interacting with the crowds. My writing got better. And eventually I decided I don't really want to trade writing. I want to fucking sing. I want to sing. I can't remember how many shows I did this for before I ended up in Buffalo. Bob was playing a show in Buffalo April 13th, 2005. I still remember the date. Burned into my brain. And so I'm not sure had I only done this twice at those other two shows.
00:15:59
Speaker
Or had I done it another time? I can't remember. Maybe I'd only done it twice. Maybe this is my third time ever doing it in Buffalo, perhaps. I'm not sure. Pause for a second, though. During this time, I also... I guess this is another great story that I should record. But...
00:16:17
Speaker
I had a record player. I had a little studio apartment in Rochester. It cost me $315 a month. It was a red brick building and the apartment was on top of the sandwich shop and it was hardwood floors in the apartment. And I was living like, I guess like a bohemian or like even beneath the bohemian because I guess bohemians were more social and had friends. I was like very solitude-ness. And I had a mattress on my floor. I can't even remember. I think I found the mattress.
00:16:47
Speaker
And I had a sleeping bag, and I had a desk that I found, I think as well, and a chair that I found. There's like a very just basic wood desk and chair. And that's all I had for furniture in this little apartment. But I bought a record player on, I think on eBay.
00:17:03
Speaker
And it was one of these old fashioned portable record players that sort of folded up into like a briefcase. And I guess they were popular maybe in elementary schools in the 70s or 80s or something like that. So I had the record player and I started going to, there was a couple of record shops in Rochester. My favorite one was called Record Archive on Mount Hope. I would spend fucking hours in that place. I was on like a underworld quest discovering all this music and it was,
00:17:32
Speaker
I mean, I could tell little stories about, I could tell a whole other podcast episode just about record archive and my time spent there in their basement. They had fucking wall to wall vinyl and I would just be there for hours on like snowy afternoons in the fall and in the winter and shit like that. And very, very romantic times there. So I found some really great fucking records, really, really, really records that just blew my fucking mind.
00:18:01
Speaker
And they were my closest human connection as those records. I mean, I would listen to them again and again and again and again and again. And the records were the sound of America, this American tapestry to me. I would get folk records.
00:18:17
Speaker
anthologies of folk records. So I'd have the whole gamut of folk musicians from, you know, country blues singers to gospel singers to Scottish ballads, like the whole fucking gamut. Really, really good stuff. I still have the records to these days, to this day.
00:18:47
Speaker
And at some point I just said, you know what, I'm gonna memorize. I especially love the long verse ballads, the long verse murder ballads.
00:18:55
Speaker
I really loved him, like the song Barbara, I heard Joan Baez sing Barbara Allen on one of the records and it was like this eight or nine verse and there was this other song called Brown Girl. Who sang it? I think Heedy West, I think, if I recall. Heedy West sang it. I think that's how you pronounce your name. And that one had like 16 verses and I decided like, I'm gonna memorize these. I didn't know why, I was like, I'm gonna memorize them. So I memorized them and then one day I was at an open mic
00:19:26
Speaker
like the only hip coffee shop in all of Rochester and downtown. And I just decided I was going to sing. I actually want to do a separate podcast for that because that was probably the coolest moment in my entire fucking life. I'll tell you, it was good. But that's a story for another day. The point being, I started singing acapella, these old ballads.
00:19:45
Speaker
And so then for that show in Buffalo on April 13, 2005, instead of saying, I will trade an original poem for a Bob Dylan ticket, I said, I will sing an old time ballad for a Bob Dylan ticket.
00:20:01
Speaker
And so I was standing out there and it was sort of spring, late winter, early spring in New York. It was cold and Buffalo, it's kind of a weird town. Like the vibe was different and like something felt a little off.
00:20:18
Speaker
And I was not getting the same amount of like, I didn't feel the same level of gravity in my bones as I stood there compared to how I felt the time before at RIT or at Binghamton. And I was looking at my clock. I had been, you know, I was out there for a few hours. I was looking at my clock and show was about to start. And I'm like, fuck man, I took a Greyhound all the way down here, Buffalo, and not gonna get into the damn show. And
00:20:50
Speaker
Pretty much like, I think the show started at eight, like 7.55. This, this fucking prick. Excuse me. I don't know why I'm swearing so much in this episode. I've never really sworn before, but I guess I'm in like a little bit of a funny surly mood. This guy, he was like sort of like a fucking frat guy or something. He's fratish. And he seemed like he was sort of drunk and he seemed very irreverent.
00:21:19
Speaker
And he just came up to me, looked at me and saw my sign. And he was like, huh, okay. Sing me a ballad or something like that. And I just did not like his energy or his vibe. I felt disrespected, demeaned. And I was like, nah, I'm not. No, I'm good, I'm cool. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, you got the sign.
00:21:48
Speaker
Sing me a ballad. And I was like, no, man, I'm cool. Just like, let's move along. That's good. I'm cool. And he was like, come on, man, just sing me a ballad. And on the third time of him asking me something just snapped in me. I stared him right in the fucking eyes. I said, all right. I just kept staring him really intently.
00:22:19
Speaker
And then I sang this song, The Brown Girl by Hedy West. I think, well, she didn't write the song. It's an old murder ballad. It's the 16 verse ballad that I memorized. And I stared him in the fucking eyes the whole time. And I just sang it with fucking a killer's conviction. I'm just staring this guy in the eyes. We're probably like two feet apart.
00:22:46
Speaker
And I'm just singing like the words are a fucking machine gun. And I never averted his gaze once. I stared to the bottom of the fucking soul. And I sang the whole fucking ballad, 16 fucking verses. And at the end, he just looked, he was looking at me and he seemed like very,
00:23:13
Speaker
Who knows what he's actually feeling, but in my mind, in my own personal mythologizing, it was like he was humbled or defeated, and he reached into his pocket and grabbed a $50 bill, and he was like, here, man, take this, here. And he just put it in my hand, and he just slumped his shoulders, and he just walked away.
00:23:43
Speaker
I took the money and I quickly tried to find a scalpel or something to get a ticket, but it was too late. I didn't have a ticket. And...
00:24:06
Speaker
I think it was one of the only shows ever. I went to at least 20 Dylan shows and got in by singing in this fashion.
Perceptions of Dylan and Personal Mythology
00:24:17
Speaker
And that was one of the only shows I didn't get into. And I remember I sat, there was like this little concert hall or whatever, I sat on the stairs outside, I sat down next to this guy and I started to try to talk to him.
00:24:31
Speaker
And he was like, shut up, shut up. And I was like, what? And I guess he had this wire, and he was wiring a microphone under the door so he could get a recording of the show. And I was like, OK, got it. But I still remember sitting on the steps with him. I just sat there quietly for a little bit. I could hear the music inside a little bit. And then this other guy walked by who was not there for the show, and he was like,
00:24:58
Speaker
He's like, huh, I don't know if he looked at the marquee or if he asked me who's playing. And in this very sort of condescending way, he was like, oh, the great Bob Dylan or something. I can't do that. That's not exactly the tone of his voice. It was more condescending. But I just found that so fascinating that here I was like, for me,
00:25:22
Speaker
The music, the scene, what it represented, the lineage, the history, the tradition were like as important as like the Bible or fucking Moses on with his tablets or something, whatever. I don't even know the fucking biblical shit. The tablets were the Ten Commandments, whatever it is. And then it was like this little moment where I was like, oh yeah, like,
00:25:49
Speaker
Other people have different realities and whatever. That's just a small little thing that I remember from sitting on those steps. But yeah, I guess the main story of singing that ballad and staring that guy in the eyes. I love that. I love these little moments from my life.