Suck and Blow

by John Popper

  I have Libertarian leanings because ultimately I want to be left alone since I believe in my moral conscience and I’m willing to trust other people’s moral consciences, by and large. The problem with being a Libertarian is that it becomes a utopian exercise, where you fantasize about a world in which everybody can handle it and does. I see every other party as an overreaction to the people who can’t handle it, who always seem to be on the other side. I think the Democrats wring their hands too much and the Republicans put on blinders a bit. Both are ways to avoid reality, and reality isn’t something I think the public would vote for. But I am not concerned about legislating for a crazy person—crazy people don’t follow the rules anyway.

  The other answer is to do nothing and let people fend for themselves. I don’t think that’s right either, but I just know for a fact—at least in my bones—that there is nothing worse than a government-run program. Hopefully because Obamacare is a fact of life, it’ll get better, but I look at what’s going on with the VA, and I’m not impressed. I would rather have things suck than have things suck while an official comes and tells me that I missed my mandatory dental appointment.

  34

  HOOKS

  As Blues Traveler approaches our thirtieth anniversary, I’m not sure whether I’m surprised or not. We’re a high school band that had no reason to quit, and I can’t quite imagine doing anything else entirely.

  I am looking forward to some new adventures with marriage and fatherhood. I have a wonderful partner in Jordan, and we are going to build a wonderful life together with a new generation of Poppers. God help all of you.

  At this point in my life I wasn’t expecting to have a kid, but as I approach fifty, I really feel I am ready. I think I never would have been the good father I’m hoping to be if I hadn’t devoted my energy to my career when I was younger. I would have thought, stupidly, Man, the kid’s holding me back. But now I think this is the next thing for me. I am just discovering this feeling of, Wow, I gotta be a better me. I can do what I want, but I better mean it. I can go off and slay my dragons, but I better bring home some dragon meat, whereas before, my thinking was, I didn’t get anything off this dragon; I’ll get the next dragon. You can still tilt at windmills, but you better bring that shit home and build a windmill in your yard.

  Lately there have been some changes in my professional life as well, in particular that after a quarter-century of dutiful service, Gina decided to move on. I think she wanted to do things on her own, which is funny because she was doing things with us on her own, but she felt so much like family that it didn’t feel that way to her. I get that. She wound up running the Central Park SummerStage. Although we all knew she could do it, what was a wonderful surprise was that all those years with us did count toward her professional résumé that she could use to get the job. She finally gets to do what she’s good at and stay home in New York and develop a life of her own. We love her so much and are so happy for her.

  I think I’ve been through more craziness with her than with any other person—the motorcycle accident, incidents with the police, my weight issues, Bobby’s death. Hers is the only number I have memorized. I don’t know my own phone number, but I know Gina’s number because in an emergency, she’s who you call.

  Her titles would change over the years. At one point she got sick of the road and wanted to work in our office with management. Because she was Gina, management understood her value and let her come in—she was still interacting with the fans through our mailer. Then eventually she wanted to get back on the road at a time when we needed a real tour manager, and she stepped up and did great.

  Finally, after twenty-five years, she wanted to be a tour manager and now a production manager on her own terms, and it does my heart good to see her out there doing that.

  Gina started unprofessionally with us and became a professional with us, and sometimes you want to take that out and see what you can do with it. That’s why I like to go and do side work. I have this problem in my band in which we’ve know each other since we were seventeen and get into fights like seventeen-year-olds do and don’t get to see each other as the full musicians we are.

  I think that’s why I enjoyed recording and touring with Jono and Brothers Keeper. Scott Rednor was in Dear Liza, a group that our original crew member Dave Precheur managed for a few years. They were a good bunch of guys who grew up in the town next to Princeton. Scott moved out to Colorado and eventually came to own the Shakedown Bar in Vail, where he put a band together with some guys who play with John Oates. They were one of these really great cover bands, and then Jono and I went out there and I told them about my Duskray Troubadours experience. So we ended up taking the same approach, with them as a power trio focal point, for what became the Brothers Keeper album, Todd Meadows. It turned into a five-way writing seminar, and Jono and I were brought in to effect it.

  Then, in January 2015, I went on tour with them and was reminded just how pricey it is to run that kind of operation for a band who’s starting out. We were in a glorified bread truck, and because I didn’t fit into any of the tiny bins, they had a floor bed for me. Scott brought some of his wife’s patio furniture pillows and we put some sheets on them. At my age and with my knees, that was fun.

  I had started seeing Jordan seriously by then, and she wanted to come along. I wasn’t sure if she could, but she toughed it out. I’d never take a girlfriend on tour before. Not only was it flat-out fun, but as the band kept getting hungrier and hornier, I had that all taken care of. Plus, Jordan was a real asset. She sold T-shirts, and a lot of the tour felt like going back in time to the good old days. It was a great blast from the past for me, but I knew I could not do it longer than a month because I would be dead. I’m too old for this shit. I’m Danny Glover all over that.

  Given that experience, though, I suppose it’s only fitting that my wedding to Jordan took place in the midst of a mad scramble while on tour. With our daughter, Eloise, due in November, Jordan and I had wanted to find a date when we could get married before the baby came because we figured that once Eloise arrived, there would be an absolute monopolization of our time between the baby and work. In September we were together on the East Coast, on tour with Blues Traveler, and although we thought about New York City, which is important to both of us and we have friends and family nearby, we couldn’t get a marriage license in time. But we learned that in Virginia you can get a marriage license and get married on the same day. At first the timing seemed somewhat sane because we could do it the day before Blues Traveler played in Maryland. I was also going to sit in with Bill Kreutzmann’s band Billy & the Kids at the Lockn’ Festival in Virginia on that day off in Virginia, but it seemed like it could work.

  But on the day we were to be married, a tropical storm swept through Virginia. Lockn’ was postponed, and the Billy & The Kids gig moved to Charlottesville. So now we had to sort out the marriage license and the marriage ceremony in the middle of Charlottesville with no warning in the middle of a storm.

  I said earlier that you don’t ever want your fiancée to drive when she gets a new ring. Well, another lesson I’ve learned is when your bride-to-be is determined to get a wedding license and then make it to the sheriff’s office in time to meet the justice of the peace, then strap in, because she’s going to drive at a breakneck pace. It was quite reckless (although no necks were broken in the process), and she did all of it. I was afraid for my life many times.

  Of course, we were late because of the traffic and the hazardous weather conditions, but we made it—barely. Then while Jordan changed into her wedding dress in the car, I waited outside in the torrential rain because we didn’t want to see each other before we got married. Luckily it all came together, and Jordan Popper was beaming.

  From there it was straight to the Billy & the Kids gig. Again we were behind schedule, but somehow we walked in with a few minutes to spare. The gig was really fun because I had forgotten what a great drummer Bill is. He plays like two drummers all
by himself—it’s a really cool thing to see. They had me sing “Hard to Handle,” which I found amusing because it’s Chris Robinson’s big song.

  Then when we came out after the show we discovered that our car had been towed. So we had to figure out where it was, find our way there, fork over $100, and then get in our car and drive two more hours to our hotel in Lynchburg. We finally arrived, beyond exhausted, and who is in the hallway talking real loud at the end of this surreal night but Chris Robinson himself. He was in the middle of a story, and I was interrupting him because I was walking through with our luggage. This was the first time I had seen him face-to-face since the airport, and he was perfectly friendly. I didn’t quite recognize him at first.

  I explained we were newlyweds, and he offered his congratulations, but Jordan and I needed to get to sleep. Of course, when we walked in the room there was a steak dinner my family had bought and a bouquet of flowers. We tried to enjoy the steak, which apparently was the finest that could be found in the state of Virginia, but could only muster one bite apiece. We were too tired to eat, let alone have a real wedding night.

  The next day was September 11, and I had agreed to open the day at Lockn’ with a version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” alongside some first responders before driving off to the Blues Traveler gig in Maryland. Due to the previous day’s postponement, there was a lot of traffic we had not anticipated. Again Jordan was behind the wheel, driving like she had the prior day because perhaps I gave her some crap about it—“See, we shouldn’t have squeezed a wedding in there.” But finally we made it to the police escort. We hustled in, I played the “Star-Spangled Banner,” shook hands with the first responders, and expressed my appreciation for all they do.

  Then we had to drive another four hours to the Blues Traveler gig in Maryland, where we met my parents and my brother for our first proper dinner as newlyweds. After supper we hurried to the Blues Traveler show, where Jordan tossed her bouquet and we ate the wedding cake the band provided, which read, “Congrats on getting knocked up and hitched!”

  From there I got on a bus and drove away. That was Jordan’s wedding—rushing to gigs and then me getting on a bus and leaving. I have to give her credit—she was a trooper the whole time and did most of the driving. That is not what every woman dreams about, and I’m really grateful she still said, “I do.” I think we even snuck some fast food in there.

  I should mention that Lockn’ was special for me not only because of what took place but also because it was founded by my former manager and H.O.R.D.E. partner Dave Frey along with Pete Shapiro, who took over for Larry Bloch at Wetlands and has since opened Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas, and Brooklyn Bowl London and reopened the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester (he was also the animating force behind the Fare Thee Well Grateful Dead reunion shows).

  I remember being proud of him for continuing what Larry Bloch was doing, but it was later, with Brooklyn Bowl, that he really impressed me. With Wetlands he had a model, but with Brooklyn Bowl, Pete put in his own flavor. The first thing I noticed is that people could bowl and see the band, which reminded me a bit of Wetlands, where you could smoke downstairs and still hear the music because the sound was so good. Brooklyn Bowl is geared toward the audience experience, and that’s something Bill Graham would have appreciated. Pete is always concerned with everybody having a good time, and he takes on the same characteristic that the Grahams did in that he’s never really relaxed because he wants to make sure everybody else is okay. He’s always working on some cool aspect of the show, so I’ll see him moving through, he’ll check in, and then he’s off on something else. I would give $5,000 to see him sit still for three hours at a given show, but he could never do it; he has too much going on up there.

  He told me about this really elaborate plan he had for a zip line from the hotel across the street to the band room at Brooklyn Bowl. I said, “Good luck getting that through zoning,” and he had this look in his eyes like he was going to do it.

  I think some of the reason he took the Brooklyn Bowl concept to Vegas was to see what other applications it had. We finally had a chance to play Brooklyn Bowl Vegas, and that room is really fun. I know what he has in mind there, and it’s a really cool idea.

  I feel like he’s the heir apparent to the Fillmore tradition. That’s my view of Pete. Bill always had this bug up his butt about modern-day concert promoters. He believed that when they see people, they see dollar signs. Their enemy is the fire code—“If I can somehow get a legal precedent that allows me to cram two hundred more people in there, then I’ll win that much additional money.” It’s all about getting them in, getting them out, offering very little entertainment beyond the band itself, and then selling them an overpriced T-shirt of inferior quality.

  What Bill always wanted to do in contrast was to consider the entire show an experience. When audience members come into a place, it should feel like their place. It should be comfortable, and it should have really nice fixtures and a really good staff who know what they’re doing and know how to take care of everyone. The staff has to be disciplined, and it’s all to make the experience entertaining.

  I think Peter has taken that to heart, and he’s taken that very seriously. He looks at a show and thinks, If I were an audience member, how would I feel about being here? I think that is a rare thing. Bill would be really proud of him.

  As for life on the road with Blues Traveler, my biggest gripe now is that because of our longevity, when we play live gigs we end up being custodians of our various eras. I feel like a museum curator in a way. It can become harder and harder to do new things because we also want to include the old things and only have an hour and half or two on stage. When I’m making a set list I try to include one song from every album, and we can still just about do it.

  I remember that when we opened for Jerry Garcia, his crew told us, “Don’t play any of that heavy-metal music you guys always play.” That was the first time I ever heard our music referred to that way. I didn’t know we were heavy-metal music, but we were speed demons, so I could see where, if you were an old hippie, you’d think it was heavy metal. Of course, the heavy-metal guys thought we were hippie music. Every genre thought we were something else.

  We won the New York Music Award for best blues band, which was hysterical for me. What I noticed when we accepted the award was that there were all these different factions of musicians—rap, metal, folk-rock, prog-rock, and even electronica—and they all seemed to know us and had respect for us. There were probably some really deserving blues musicians who wished we would die, but it was pretty fucking cool.

  I’ve always felt like we were trying to straddle a fence. Back when “Run-Around” was huge, all these twelve-year-olds would come to our shows, and the hippies would tolerate them (barely). The twelve-year-olds would be bored by the rest of what we were doing, which the hippies were all into. Then we’d do two songs, and suddenly the twelve-year-olds would be the vocal majority, with these little kids screaming, and all the hippies would be horrified. They would later tell me that it felt like we were leaving them.

  The twelve-year-olds had no idea about any of our other songs. But those twelve-year-olds are now in their thirties, and they’ve listened to us since they were twelve, so we’ve become their institution. We were sort of the hippies’ institution before that, but these were the hippies who were around in the sixties, who adopted us at the tail end of the eighties. There was an audience who left after Bobby passed away, but we also have an audience who started listening after Tad and Ben joined the band. So we’ll get these weird clusters of fans. We’re this band of several identities.

  I was really struck when Emma Stone had a lip sync battle with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show and she chose “Hook.” Rolling Stone reported that she had managed “to make Blues Traveler the coolest band in the world again.” Then I responded in kind by donning a feather boa to lip sync my version of her “Knock on Wood” performance in Easy A. We probably lost the t
itle.

  The band fun. played some of “Hook” on a radio appearance when they were asked to identify “the very first piece of music you bought with your own money.” I was genuinely appreciative (even if fun. may be the least fun way to spell fun) because they were really trying to be nice and say they liked the song, but they got the words wrong. I wanted to complain, but who was I going to call? And then I started feeling like I should be muttering to myself and shaking my fist, complaining about the trouble with kids these days and telling them to stay off my lawn.

  I’m sort of put in that same spot when people ask for my opinions about other harmonica players. I never want to be one to say “too many notes,” even though there are plenty of talented harp players who are faster than ever. I’m thinking of people like LD Miller or Will Freed. I don’t want them to come to me to vanquish or to be vanquished. At times I think they have some trouble with melody, but rather than too many notes, I want to say, “Take those notes somewhere.” I want to set a good example, though, so they get there on their own. What these kids really need is somebody who gets it and says, “Yes! Play weird!”

  If I had chance to talk to myself when I was a kid, I might have something to say about “Hook.” I wrote it when I was twenty-five when I liked to make the point, “Look how high I can sing, everybody! Look at me! Look at me!” I had no idea that for the next twenty years I might like to go back in time and punch myself in the face—“Do you understand what you’re going to be doing?” I’d probably respond, “Shut up, old man! You’re not my father!” and I’d get into a fight with myself. (Given the weight trouble I had as a younger man, I think I could take the younger me. The key is to sweep the knees. If I sweep my younger knees, I think I’d have a real advantage. Of course, younger me would probably know that older me would do this and would do something to protect the knees and attempt to fall on the older, more bone-fragile me in an attempt to crush my ribcage. But I would know that I really love my testicles and would try to stab my testicles with my thumbs jutted out like some sort of makeshift shiv. It would be a very close fight, but I think I could do it because older me knows more.)