Dear Friends of Switchback,

​Summertime is here and with it, comes my annual list of things to do around the house. As a traveling musician, I watch as the items languish through most of the year.  The fence in the front yard that is slowly de-constructing itself. “Well, that can wait until Summer,” I tell myself. The peeling paint on the house that is screaming to be scraped and repainted.  “Summer,” I tell myself. The tree whose limbs are in need of being trimmed, not to mention the half dead peach tree that needs total removal. You guessed it. Summer. The list and that mantra, “Summer” sustains me through the winter.  I can look at the dead garden in January and see myself planting and weeding in Summer. The peeling paint in wintertime is not so awful. I tell myself that mother nature is helping me scrape and so I will be that further ahead come Summer. 


And, I can keep on with the list.  It is a slowly expanding list of things that are not all centered around work.  The bikes that sit under that porch that we are supposed to ride as soon as I drag them to the bike shop to get overhauled.  The fishing pole strung with old fishing line and a tackle box buried somewhere. Even the simple pleasures somehow are imbued with a sense of urgency.  June 21 and already the days are starting to get shorter. By the time my birthday arrives, Summer is almost half over.  

At this point is when I stop myself to look around and marvel.  Yes, more than half the things I am supposed to do this Summer, work and play, will not happen.  And those that do, the suppers outside, watching Annie paint a mural along Lake Michigan, mowing the lawn, (then the neighbors lawn just to be a good neighbor). sending pictures of the blooming flowers that somehow managed to bloom and receiving garden pictures from my business manager Sue, seeing Aine engage in the midwestern ritual of catching fireflies and even the fact that the other day I actually saw a hummingbird use our hummingbird feeder! All of those are small celebrations of being alive during this most enjoyable time of the year. 

And I have to remind myself that my self imposed angst about the list of things I need to do will never match the joy of the things I choose to do and observe this Summer.   So, I encourage you to get out there and enjoy this special time of the year. I know I am going to...as soon as I belt sand some old paint off the south side of the house.

Dear friends of Switchback,

Over Memorial Day weekend I met up with John and Dave, my two best friends from grade school and high school.  The one thing we shared through those years of growing up was a passion for fishing. 

Fishing, technically, should be where one casts a lure from a fishing pole into the water (or you can use natural bait, like worms) and thus “lure” a fish onto that lure.  A hook generally secures the fish (well, should) and one reels the fish into a boat or onto a pier or shoreline. 

For us, fishing was more than catching fish.  Primarily because we were never that great at it.  OK, maybe I was never that great at it.  My two friends call me “Snagmaster” because it seemed that I would lose all the lures in any tree.  And once I lost my lures, I would borrow Dave and John’s lures.  And lose them, too. 

The old pond on Dave’s grandparents' property in Richmond, Illinois, were ringed with trees that glittered in the sunlight festooned from all those lures.  Commercial planes could probably see their glints of light from 30,000 feet or more.   Almost a work of art, it could be argued.  Well, at least I argued that point.

John was not the best at casting.  He once took a cast and I caught his line in the nick of time as he had successfully hooked my ear.  He once caught his cast in a tree over the creek in early April.  Shimmying out over the stream on that branch, he managed to break the branch and landed in the icy water.  

Dave seemed to be the most adept at getting his lures, his line and act together.  However, even he would sometimes end up losing a big catch just shy of the boat.  Or drop a net in the water.  It was always “You should see what I almost caught,” with Dave.  The fish would get bigger and bigger with each re-telling of the story. 

It seems we talked more about catching fish than actually catching fish. We once fished the Nippersink Creek in high school.  It is a nice, wide country creek that meanders through north-east McHenry County.  Being summer and warm,  we waded in our underwear into the middle of the creek to avoid getting our lines snagged in the overhanging tree branches.  We headed along, the three of us concentrating on fishing for bass.  All of a sudden around the bend, came the girls' bible study class from the Richmond Methodist church paddling in the opposite direction with barely enough room to pass us.  We caught a lot of strange looks, but no fish.  

No, fishing was more a metaphor about being together.  We were three friends who used the idea of fishing as a catalyst to connect and reaffirm our being friends.  So after a decade or more of not being together fishing, we decided this was going to be the year.  We chartered a boat out for the Long Island Sound, close to Dave’s home in Norwalk, Connecticut.  The boat’s captain was a professional guide whose job was to get us to the big fish.  

Our first guide promptly sent us to another guide as he couldn’t get out on the water that day.  Perhaps our reputation preceded us.  I shook off the thought that perhaps this was some sort of bad luck, a sign that we wouldn’t catch fish.  A jinx. You see, fishing is part praying, part superstition.  Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no atheists when it comes to fishing.  Any change in the weather, any small correction, getting bumped from one boat to another,  could jinx the day. 

And once out fishing, it comes down to talking to God about letting one little fish get on the hook.  The apostles had Jesus guide them to cast on the other side of the boat.  He was the ultimate fishing guide and so a prayer to Jesus with every cast is not uncommon.  Whether or not Jesus is listening is another question. 

Morning came early for the big day.  We were up at 2:30 a.m. to meet our guide and his mate out on the Sound.  We got into Dave’s car to head to the docks.  Dave, the best prepared of the three of us, had a plethora of snacks, beer and even a jacket or two for the adventure.  The only thing he forgot were the directions to where to meet the boat.  So we drove around the docks of Norwalk, looking for what would be the most likely place to find a boat at 3:45 in the morning. 

Finally, Dave got a text off to the captain.  He was out in the Sound, picking up bait fish for the day.  A sort of fish they call "bunker fish. " These are inedible to humans, but larger than any fish we caught when we were kids.  The captain told us where to wait for the boat.  And we waited, and waited.  Finally, around 4:30 a.m., the boat came into sight.  And we were greeted by the mate in his underwear.  We didn’t take as a sign of bad luck as everyone knows that fishing in one’s underwear is a perfectly legitimate practice, even if it is 52 degrees outside.  Turns out that the boat got snarled in a rope that some yeehaw left dangling in water outside the Norwalk Yacht club.  The mate had to dive into the frigid water and cut the rope in order to free the propellers.  He quickly excused himself and ran to his car, passing a cop who was sitting in his cruiser.  The fact that the officer didn’t question a man running at 4:30 in the morning in wet underwear is a testament to Norwalk still being sort of a fishing town. 

Once the mate returned, dressed and somewhat warm again, we commenced out before sunrise in search of the big striped bass.   Dave said, “Now that the boat is free of rope and we’re actually on the boat, we are sure to have exhausted any jinxes” and thus jinxed us catching any striped bass. 

We started fishing for the bass. They were on the fish finder.  A fish finder is sort of a highly technical sonar, created by someone to help torture fisherman.  Because on the sonar, the blips and blobs indicate big schools of fish passing by large lunkers of striped bass.  They are down there in large populations, swimming slowly as if they know they are on camera.  Taunting us to try to catch them. 

We furiously dropped our jigs baited with freshly cut up bunker.  

And we got….nothing.  

The cold of the early morning, just before the sunrise was aided by a nip of the creature (that's whiskey for you uninitiated) and a cup of coffee.  We chatted a bit  and watched the sun slowly come up as our bait hung 100 feet below, in front of striped bass who had other plans.  And even though we were not catching any fish, we were having the time of our lives.  Reunited friends, having an adventure. 

Finally, the captain decided that enough was enough and the mate reeled in the bait.  We changed plans and went to catch porgies.   Porgies, according to Wikipedia, belong family Sparidae. They are also called bream. Porgies live in shallow temperate marine waters and are bottom-dwelling carnivores. Most species possess grinding, molar-like teeth. They are often good eating fish, particularly the gilt-head bream and the dentex.   

And sure enough we started catching some of them on strips of clam.  We had a set up with two hooks off of one line and they would gently nibble at the bait until the pole would shudder with the fish taking the hook.  We’d reel in fast and occasionally two would be on at the same time.  

Dave, being Dave, had to catch something different and so caught a sea robin or two.  It was my first time seeing such a fish.  According to Wikipedia, Triglidae, commonly known as sea robins or gurnard, are a family of bottom-feeding scorpaeniform fish. They get their name (sea robin) from the orange ventral surface of the species in the Western Atlantic (Prionotus carolinus) and from large pectoral fins, which, when swimming, open and close like a bird's wings in flight. The mate told us how good sea robin is to eat.  I looked at the prehistoric creature and shrugged my shoulders.  In it went along with the others and soon we had 35 good sized fish sitting in the hold. 

Being Snagmaster, I managed to get my rod and line snarled in the only net on the boat, which was 15 feet from anyone and almost beyond the laws of physics for one to snag.  The captain and mate, having been told earlier by Dave and John about “Snagmaster” laughed at me along with John and Dave as I tried to cast the entire boat into the sea.  Thus, secure in my humiliating title, I allowed them to cut me free and eventually resumed fishing. 

We went after the sea bass again, but they eluded us.  The mate showed us a picture taken from Wednesday prior on the same boat.  A grinning guy holding up a 45 lb. striped bass.  We looked at it, but not for long.  Nothing hurts as much as the one you never caught.  Not even “the one that got away.”

Eventually, our time ran out and we slunk into the harbor.  Not skunked of any fish, but certainly not overwhelmed by catching the big one. 

But what we did catch was another chance to be together.  In that odd male way, not saying much, sipping coffee, looking at the tip of the pole for any wiggle, testing the pressure of the line and staring out over a beautiful wide open water.  Older yes, but not too old to pass up a chance to get out on the water.  You see, fishing is never about catching fish, but about catching up with my friends and making sure they are not “the ones that got away.”

I write this from Evergreen, Colorado.  We just had a great weekend, flying out our drummer, Nick Hirka and Brian’s nephew, Paul Russell, who is our fiddle-mandolin-twelve-string-acoustic player.  Joined by our good friend, Karen Savarese of  Aurora, Colorado who played flute, wooden flute, recorder and pennywhistle, we were indeed a “five piece band, 1200 miles west of Chicago.”

We had several dance shows this weekend with the band, and what struck me is that a lot of people these days don’t dance.  I don’t quite understand the reluctance to dance, especially to good music.  But little did I know that dancing might be a sign that one is a highly evolved human being. 

Yes, highly evolved.  Live Science, an online publication mentioned in it s March 22, 2010 edition that: The answer to why we dance – and even why some people are better dancers than others – can be found in evolution. A study published in the Public Library of Science’s genetics journal in 2006 suggested that long ago the ability to dance was actually connected to the ability to survive.  According to the study, dancing was a way for our prehistoric ancestors to bond and communicate, particularly during tough times. As a result, scientists believe that early humans who were coordinated and rhythmic could have had an evolutionary advantage.

So those who can get up and dance, freely express themselves are more inclined to out-Darwin the non-dancers.  And obviously dancing does have health benefits that include the boosting of mental well being.  

CNN reported a study from Australia that showed that music (i.e., things like a Switchback show) and dancing usually result in happiness.  The article from March 31, 2017 stated: Researchers at Deakin University in Victoria analyzed 1,000 interviews with randomly chosen Australian citizens to see if there was a connection between their self-reported music consumption and happiness levels.

Sure enough, they found that people who actively engaged with music through dancing and attending events like concerts and musicals reported a higher level of subjective wellbeing (a more scientific way of saying "happiness”.
​
Hmmm, highly evolved? Happy? 

We played a festival in Northglenn, Colorado and I noticed that aside from a few (and obviously highly evolved) humans dancing, there was a group of humans who had no problem dancing: kids.  I watched a two year old child make her way toward the stage, doing an amazing dance.  And everyone who saw her was instantly smiling and filled with joy.  And there was another person I observed, an autistic young man, who swayed smoothly to every rhythm we created.  It was joyful to watch him caught in the music and open to expressing his happiness.

So, it seems that most people have an inner dancer and that somewhere along the way, for some, something stopped that dancer.  Perhaps part of it is that taking ourselves too seriously.  Those people who get up and dance usually seem to not have a care in the world.  And for the band, they supply a wonderful stream of energy.  That connection creates that cycle of energy that literally charges the evening.  

Today, we played a retirement home in downtown Denver.  Once the music started, a wonderful lady got out of her chair and started to dance.  “Go boys,” she shouted as we played away.  And that’s when it hit me about dance.

To dance is to participate in the moment.  It is a way of tapping into the cosmic channel of Joy.  To vibrate on that level is about being in touch with being alive.  From the two year old to the 85 year old senior, the main thing was the surrender of the self.   We need to get out and get to a dance...our happiness as a species needs it.  Our very lives depend on it.

It was years ago, 1979 to be exact, when I would take out the album at night.  The next day was to be an invitational cross country meet.  Our team, the Marian Central Hurricanes (why we were the Hurricanes in the Midwest, I never quite understood) was a high ranked team.  We had one of the top runners in the state, the great Daryl May who led our pack.  I was a toward the back of the pack, a pusher in cross-country parlance.  In other words, I pushed our runners to get toward the front of a race by merely trying to outrace them. 

I wasn’t the slowest runner, but I wasn’t the fastest either.  But I could worm my way toward the front of a race if I just could keep a steady gait.  That was why I would take out the album, the Chieftain’s #9, Boil the Breakfast Early.  I would listen to the title track over and over to get myself ready for the race.  There was something about it that just reacted with my Irish DNA, that sound of the bodhran and the fast pace of the pipes that made my legs do what they should do.  

Walkmen were not yet invented, so I had to play that melody in my mind.  Which I did; as soon as the gun went off, I would race with the Chieftains.  As the years went by, little did I know that I would someday be performing with the Chieftains.  And so, last Saturday, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, I had the honor of playing with my heroes.  

[Our friends Martin and Brian have asked me to drop the old phonograph needle on some of their tunes, perhaps some lesser known, and report back to everyone.]

Love and lack thereof are perhaps the most common themes in popular song.  However, there is also a jukebox full of what-if-this-whole-music-thing-doesn’t-work-out-for-me? numbers.

Switchback takes a turn at career doubt on “The Has-Been That Never Was” on their American Roots and Celtic Soul, LIVE – Volume Two.  From the stage Martin McCormack will tell you the song was inspired when he and Brian FitzGerald saw an old kudzu-shrouded cabin down south.  But I suspect there is a dash of bad dream in there, too.

“On a bowl backed mandolin / And on a porch all broken / Strums the has-been / That never was” begin the melancholy lyrics about a played-out player looking heavenward, playing for possibly the only fan he has left.

It’s often in these tunes’ later verses that we learn how music-biz failure was resolved.  “Tulsa Time” was a hit for the late, great Don Williams.  The song has him heading west from Oklahoma to be a star but soon admitting, “Well, there I was in Hollywood wishin’ I was doin’ good . . But they don’t need me in the movies and nobody sings my songs.”  He is soon eastward bound, telling us, “Gonna set my watch back to it / ‘Cause you know I’ve been through it / Livin’ on Tulsa time / Livin’ on Tulsa time.”

In a bit of coincidence both the scene and the theme of “The Has-Been That Never Was” are wonderfully covered by a daughter of Switchback’s favorite producer for their albums, Lloyd Maines.  Natalie Maines and her Dixie Chick partners sing “Long Time Gone” about a country singer whose wings got clipped.  “Now me, I went to Nashville / Trying to beat the big deal . . . Living from a tip jar / Sleeping in my car . . .”  The song even starts on a creaky porch, just like Switchback’s, but ends happily with the singer back home “singing every Sunday / Watching the children and the garden grow.”

American Roots and Celtic Soul, LIVE – Volume Two was recorded at Chicago public television station WTTW and in their famous Sound Stage Studios.  Its 16 cuts draw from several Switchback CDs and were performed with a live audience.  The album makes a fine companion to Volume One.  Those dozen tunes were recorded in venues small and large across the U.S. and Canada.  So Volume One has that boisterous frisson of on-the-road live while Volume Two has an excellently pared down crystal-clean sound even with its bigger band.  (“The Has-Been That Never Was” originally appeared on The Fire that Burns and can be found also on one of the discs in Switchback’s Twentieth Anniversary Collection.)

In film the has-been character perhaps hit its comedic height in 1965’s Cat Ballou starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin.  At the famed Hole-in-the-Wall hideout, an elderly gent approaches Marvin’s Kid Shelleen character and says something like, "Hey, Kid, you remember me?  Old. . . old. . . old. . ." Then he just wanders off shaking his head.

Doug Kamholz is an itinerant washboard player who has freelanced for the New York Times, Washington Post and many lesser media.  His most honest work was as a pig farmer in central Illinois, where he now lives and occasionally makes dinner for Switchback.

I just finished having the largest meal of crow in my life.   As of writing this, I have finally managed to get the pin feathers of that dark and unappetizing creature from between my back molars.   I look at what remains on the plate and have to admit that I deserved every bite of the meal: beak, claws and all. 

What happened is the collision between my Irish temper and the 21st century.  The vehicle involved being that modern contraption known as the cell phone.  It is not my friend, I am beginning to realize, but rather, some sort of impish devil at best or just a deliberate device to self-inflict humiliation and pain by shooting oneself in the foot.

I was frustrated with getting things settled for our tour to Ireland and Iceland.  We were down in Arizona, playing concerts, with potential folks to jump on board, but no information to give.  

Our tour coordinator, Jeanne, is a good, decent, hard-working person.  She joined us on the last tour to Ireland and I still think we have a good relationship.  But that wasn’t going to have any bearing on my anger when, finally, it looked like everything was in order to go forward with the tour. I double checked on the time for our folks leaving Iceland; I just had a sense and it proved right that it would have been a 3 a.m. wake-up for a day of traveling from Reykjavik to Dublin to Chicago.  I'm pretty sure it would have gone over horribly with those travelers.

I decided to vent this frustration to our business manager, Sue, who for about 20 years now has been able to talk me off the ledge. I ranted to her about how I felt our agent couldn’t really be thinking of that flight for our merry band.  Except, I didn’t really say it quite that civilly.

I didn’t go full Irish, with the various adaptations of the F-bomb or uttering of “feckin’ eejit”, that makes Irish ranting almost an art form, but I came close.  Again, for me, it was the situation more than anything.  I ranted about that, ranted about a lack of ticket sales for our show in Woodstock and ranted a bit about Brian because that is always therapeutic to do.  Without another thought, I fired the email back to Sue.

Except it didn’t go to Sue.

I was headed out with friend Norm for a rare day of relaxation and a chance to allow my mind to go numb in the mountains of the Tonto State forest outside of Payson, when the cow cookies hit the fan.

"ATTENTION MR. MARTIN McCORMACK," the caption of the email read.

Suffice it to say, Jeanne’s boss, alerted and enraged, wrote a wonderful email dressing me down.  I read it at first with a sense of “What is this?”  Slowly it dawned on me that my Irish rant went to the wrong email address.  And to make matters worse, Norm and I just got past the last cell tower and into the land of NO SERVICE.

I read it to Norm.  

“Wow, he told you,” he said.  “That has to be one of the best reprimands anybody ever gave anyone.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I am impressed and I’m the one getting flayed.”  

“Well, what can you do?  You went on a rant and sent it to the wrong person.”  
 
“Boy, do I feel like an ass,” I said feebly. 

“Yeah,” said Norm.  “You are an ass.” 

Nothing feels so stupid as to read your own rant being quoted back at you by someone thoroughly angry with your rant.  And so, now with my buddy Norm offering his condolences, I attempted to make amends once we got back into cell service.  I called Jeanne and told her that I was very sorry for being on a rant, being an ass and that next time I would dig a hole and yell into it.   For her part, she was very professional and understanding.  Her boss, seeing that I was apologizing for my rude behavior was also understanding. 

I could only imagine the joy of that email of mine, going round the office, to spouses, to friends perhaps.  “There but for the grace of God,” perhaps one would say.  Or “Man, good work on putting stuck up musician boy in his place.”  That sort of thing.   And I of course deserved it.  I deserved it for not learning from my hero Abraham Lincoln.

People don’t know it, but Lincoln had a temper as well as a great knack for sarcasm.  And he was also under stress way more than most humans, dealing with a little thing called the Civil War.  Sort of makes everyone else’s worries look wimpy, including a musician like myself ranting about the wake-up time in Iceland.  

I suspect he perfected it after what would have been a 19th-century “wrong-address” incident.  That was an editorial he wrote in the Sangamon Journal, excoriating a fellow politician by the name of James Shield.  The state of Illinois went bankrupt (yes, Illinois, we did it before, we can do it again!) and Lincoln, then a rising political star and lawyer, chastised Shields for supporting the notion that people could just pay in gold and silver instead of paper money.  Pretty silly notion, sort of the “let them eat cake” mentality. 

Thank God such foolish thinking isn’t around today.   

Lincoln didn’t use his real name, but that didn’t stop Shields finding out by strong-arming the editor into revealing who was behind the nom de plume. According to American Battlefield Trust, Shields wrote Lincoln, “I have become the object of slander, vituperation and personal abuse. Only a full retraction may prevent consequences which no one will regret more than myself.”

Unlike yours truly,  quickly trying to make amends,  Lincoln basically gave Shields the Victorian version of a poop-emoji in response.  Shields, now doubly humiliated, decided that only a duel could solve his besmirched honor.   Missouri allowed dueling (and maybe we need to bring it back with our politicians today?) and so Bloody Island, right outside St. Louis, was chosen as the spot.  Lincoln, having been the one challenged, was given the choice of weapon to duel.  He chose heavy, long cavalry swords. 

"I didn't want the d—-d fellow to kill me, which I think he would have done if we had selected pistols," said Lincoln.  Being over six feet tall, Lincoln had the reach and height advantage. Shields stood about as tall as me --  5’9”.  

Thankfully cooler heads prevailed and the day of duel: the seconds stepped in and along with the bystanders made Lincoln and Shields end the farce.  Today, it would have been livestreamed on Facebook by someone and I am sure the two would have gone swinging away at each other.  It would have had 10 million views, been retweeted and re-edited to make Lincoln look like a homicidal maniac, shown on the news and would have been dissected by sixteen op-ed pieces written in support of and against the dueling duo. And even a couple more impassioned pieces would crop up, saying how Bloody Island is a bird sanctuary and should be left alone for the rare dooga bird.  Ah, 19th century, how much we miss thee.

Lincoln learned his lesson.  This served him in later years when as president, he would witness true blunders made by his generals, resulting in thousands of deaths and very nearly the destruction of the United States.   

An Irish temper would not have served him.  Rather, he developed a policy of writing a letter, and ranting.  Then setting aside the sealed letter with the words “never signed, nor sent” scrawled across it.  For him, that little space, that hole in the ground was enough to help his stress and keep him from truly hurting others' feelings.

When Gen. George Meade, having won Gettysburg, had Robert E. Lee’s forces trapped by a flooded Rappahannock River, he could have ended the Civil War two years early just by pressing that advantage.  But Meade chose to wait.  By doing so, he allowed Lee to build bridges and get his army back to the south.  

Lincoln, apoplectic and nearly insane with rage, wrote the following “scathing” letter:  

Executive Mansion,
Washington, July 14, 1863.
Major General Meade

I have just seen your dispatch to Gen. Halleck, asking to be relieved of your command, because of a supposed censure of mine-- I am very -- very -- grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg; and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you-- But I was in such deep distress myself that I could not restrain some expression of it-- I had been oppressed nearly ever since the battles at Gettysburg, by what appeared to be evidences that your self, and Gen. Couch, and Gen. Smith, were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle. What these evidences were, if you please, I hope to tell you at some time, when we shall both feel better. The case, summarily stated is this. You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours-- He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him, till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possible that he had received a single recruit; and yet you stood and let the flood run down, bridges be built, and the enemy move away at his leisure, without attacking him. And Couch and Smith! The latter left Carlisle in time, upon all ordinary calculation, to have aided you in the last battle at Gettysburg; but he did not arrive-- More At the end of more than ten days, I believe twelve, under constant urging, he reached Hagerstown from Carlisle, which is not an inch over fifty-five miles, if so much. And Couch's movement was very little different--

Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape-- He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with  our other late successes, have ended the war-- As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more then two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it--

I beg you will not consider this a prosecution, or persecution of yourself-- As you had learned that I was dissatisfied, I have thought it best to kindly tell you why.

[ Endorsed on Envelope by Lincoln: To Gen. Meade, never sent, or signed.]

At this point in his life, Lincoln had mastered not only how to channel his emotions, but mastered the use of the technology of the day.   Still, General Meade had heard that Lincoln was angry about his dawdling, but no bother, it was not directly from him.  And Lincoln never showed his hand to General Meade.  Instead, he vented, but vented his anger to a letter never intended to be sent. 

For myself, I apologize again to Jeanne, our tour coordinator. I did indeed, by my own doing, hurt her feelings.  I pretty much think she could best me in a duel, too.   And perhaps like Old Abe, I should sit down, take the time to channel my feelings properly and put that email in the “never signed nor sent” file and give the angel of my better nature a chance to flap her wings. ​

Dear friends of Switchback,

There are days when I find myself at home asking out loud, “Who is this little human that lives with us and where did she come from?” Áine turned five years old on Monday. For me that is something both amazing and sad to behold.  The sad part is obvious, in that it means that I too, am five years older. It also means that gone for good is that little baby girl, toddler and ultra portable kid.  Now, there is this little human. With little human observations.  

For example, her enjoyment of the Hamilton official soundtrack.  Áine listened to it just two times and started singing the songs around the house. Annie gave her the blow-by-blow as the album played and employed a history lesson using American currency. At night Áine's prayer became, “God Bless Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, those three other men, and the Schuyler sisters.”  And then after a brief thought, “And please bless a little bit King George and the soldiers, even though they were kind of mean.”   

As her compassion to King George and the redcoats show, she remains very sensitive to the plight of other people, consoling her fellow classmates at school. During the Nativity play last month, Aine was cast as Mary.  When her best friend (who was dressed as an angel) started crying because she didn’t see her parents, Aine shifted the baby Jesus under one arm, then pointed out to the crowd and said, “Look! Don’t cry, they’re right over there!”  

Annie's mother gave Annie and myself a crystal Waterford “make up bell” some years back. For those who never have an argument in their relationship, this is a bell you ring to break up an argument and encourage the parties “make up.”  Áine discovered the meaning of this bell and now, even discussions about filling the bird feeder are interrupted by the tinkling sound of a bell, rung by a smiling girl.  I have found myself much more careful in how I approach topics with Annie, as I always see Áine reaching for the bell. 

Thankfully, she still enjoys playing at parks.  She has travelled to numerous parks around the north side of Chicago and into Evanston.  The fact that she comes alone doesn’t normally faze her, for there are always new friends to be made.   “Hi friends,” she says, “will you play with me?”  She is blind to any differences in people that us older folks are unfortunately far too aware of. To her, a kid is nothing more or less than a potential friend.  Usually she is able to take on the older kids and keep up running and playing tag.  Her own joy in connecting with people is infectious and allows her Papa the opportunity to connect with the other kids' parents.  Many a wonderful conversation with a stranger has been started by Áine wishing to play with their kid.  She has made me more open to saying hello to people and putting the feeling of joy into practice. 

The world does creep in and already she has picked up that girls and boys are different. She is aware that other girls talk about looks and clothes.  It’s hard to run interference on it and allow her to not start down that path already.   The joy is that she is still a kid. 

She does have a crush, on a little boy in her class named Max.  She considers him cute.  “I’m going to marry Max,” she once said.  I froze.  For now, she is still Papa’s girl, thankfully. 

And, she surprised me when she announced she wants to be a singer.  Already Áine has composed several songs and shows an interest in instruments.  Where she goes with this is up to her.  

It is hard to wave goodbye to the toddler, the baby girl and start making room for the young girl, with young girl ideas.  Already there are times when I will glance at her and see the future young woman.  In the meantime I thank God for each day I can hold her, carry her upstairs at night and still have that great feeling of a little daughter, peaceful and sleepy with her Papa.  

[Our friends Martin and Brian have asked me to drop the old phonograph needle on some of their tunes, perhaps some lesser known, and report back to everyone. This month is a tangent.]
 
Folks who follow Switchback see occasional dates on their schedule marked “Outreach Program.”  Let’s go close-up with one of those, one that happened in October in Springfield, Illinois.
 
The Hope Institute for Children and Families provides educational and residential services to children facing extraordinary cognitive, physical and emotional challenges.  Switchback came for a week-long residency, everything from one-on-one engagement to an all-school concert to the finish their time there.
 
This outreach program was quite different from a one-show gig.  To plan their time, Martin McCormack and Brian FitzGerald worked with Hope’s music therapist for months leading up to their week at the school. Alisabeth Hopper helped the band create a curriculum, a compendium of lesson plans to be piloted at her Hope Learning Center.  Full of details, activities, aims and goals this “HopeWork” is designed to be used in part or whole at other facilities by other musical performers.
 
Then, of course, there are all the fun parts.
 
About 30 youngsters arrive in a smallish space along with half a dozen staff.  Marty and Brian have met all these folks earlier in the week, and most of today's songs have been sung in smaller classroom rehearsals.  With the band plugged in just a few feet from the front row, first up is a medley of sing-alongs working off the same tune.  It’s “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” easily oozing into “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” with a smooth segue into “The ABC Song” where Marty asks Brian if he’s truly confident of the lyrics.
 
Songs throughout this half-hour session start and end gently, the idea being to stimulate but not over-stimulate Hope’s students.
 
Next up, so to speak, is “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” with full-throat audience participation on the “One, two, three strikes you’re out!” line.
 
Marty then reminds the students they are working on “White Christmas” for their upcoming holiday show so they should give that one a try.  The room is full of singing and signing the familiar December-dream carol.  Later the audience is asked for a song suggestion.  It’s “Jingle Bells” with bells handed out and enthusiastic response to the shouted “Hey!” with Brian upping the tempo each time around on his new mandolin.
 
Most of us have witnessed Switchback absorb energy from their audiences.  That is not different here with the youngsters’ encouragements ranging from small to dramatic.  One Hope staff member commented that among performers at the school Brian and Martin are clearly more interactive and that they listen for what the students want.
 
Switchback did an instrumental so the audience could be the percussion section, slapping out beats on their thighs.  It was just a strum-along, but Brian, always the creator, started whipping off licks on his Taylor M4-CE that would fly on any stage.
 
With the end near, Switchback led the singing of that tender and saucy tale of an errant meatball sneezed into oblivion - “On Top of Spaghetti” - to the delight of all.
 
After a few small-group photos with much hugging and many smiles, Switchback finished with Hope’s traditional good-bye song and its lyric “Music is over until next time.”  Then Marty signs off with a warning about the next day’s closing concert:  “There might be dancing!”
 
Here is the full disclosure section.  My lovely wife Sheila Walk heads our Springfield Area Arts Council which funded this whole wonderful week by hiring Switchback and Hope’s music therapist.  Back years ago when I first met Martin and Brian, they were fresh from a half-day at this same Hope Institute.  Over lunch Marty said Switchback wanted to be “the house band for Hope.”  Pretty damned endearing.  Sheila says it took a few years and a generous bequest, but this year she made it happen.

Doug Kamholz is an itinerant washboard player who has freelanced for the New York Times, Washington Post and many lesser media.  His most honest work was as a pig farmer in central Illinois, where he now lives and occasionally makes dinner for Switchback.
​

 Dear Switchback friends,

I am writing this from my hotel room at the Grand Majestic Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. Last week we traveled to Ireland with 60 friends from coast to coast, north to south of the USA (plus one from Japan).

With the exception of a few, everyone had seen us play.  And of those who did, they remembered the moment they decided that their relationship with our band should be something more than just being a fan.

Joining us on this tour was perhaps a subconscious effort to seal the friendship. And, certainly for Brian and myself, making real friends who support our music has always been paramount, and a conscious effort. These folks become part of our “Waygood Family.” As Sue Arnold, our business manager put it best, “Good friends make good family.”

Which brings me to Thanksgiving, the holiday that we are celebrating in the United States next week. In some ways, people either love or dread this holiday because of the idea of family.

Some people look no further than their DNA to determine who is family and who is not. Here in Prague, we tourists discovered one ironic display of blood (perhaps bloody?) family at Saint Vitus’ Cathedral.  According to local legend, the beloved Duke Wenceslas was slaughtered by his younger, power-hungry, probably jealous, brother. Posthumously, Wenceslas was not only declared a saint but also king... so I guess that made everything OK. (Pictured above is Wenceslas with his grandmother, St. Ludmila, who was also assassinated. By whom? Wenceslas' mother!)

Sometimes blood family takes for granted that family are also friends. But when one looks at true friendship, there is a commitment to service unbound by blood obligation.  Obviously this can take many forms, but at heart this is a surrendering of one’s own interest for the other.

I think of my own friends and the simple displays of love and self-sacrifice we have shared through the years. The only time I have lost a friend was when that friend decided that his own interest superseded mine.

The original idea behind the holiday of Thanksgiving was to give thanks for the many blessings we have received. As blessings go, true friendship is very rare. And only true friends can become family. However, it is very rare for blood family to become true friends.

That doesn’t mean that somehow every friendship is equal or that every friend rises to “family” status.  What does exist is the potential to surrender to that notion.

If we believe the Thanksgiving story, the Native Americans extended their own generosity so that the English could survive. Their donations of corn, squash and turkey suggested, “We could have friendship.”

What went wrong was that at some point the colonists’ own personal interest superseded that of their newfound friends. It’s a good illustration of the complexities of family and friendship. Good friendship has to be practiced in order to create good family.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful especially for the fans who become friends, and later, family. Here’s to many more shows, tours and meals shared between us in this WayGood World of ours!

​

Dear friends of Switchback,

Though my hometown is Woodstock, Illinois and will always be, I reside (when I am not travelling) in Chicago.  Rogers Park, Chicago to be exact. It is the second time in my life that I have lived in this neighborhood. The first, when I was a student at Loyola University from 1981-1985.  It was then, as now, “real city living” with a lot of people of all walks of life, walking around. A place where the undergrads rubbed elbows with the underprivileged. Where all sorts of shops and stores beckoned to the curious to explore.  I bought my first bass guitar at the local music store, Flatts and Sharpes. And, I had my first professional haircut (yes, I had my hair cut at home until college) in Rogers Park. 

So, it has been a place where I entered adulthood, and upon graduation, I was convinced that would be the last of Rogers Park.  As a person who loves wide open spaces, and the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, Rogers Park offered neither. I was weary of the winter along Lake Michigan and the dirty, dog poop-festooned snow.  I felt that the reality of so many people crowded my spirit. I thought, “This will be the last I will see of you, Rogers Park,” as I moved away and on with my life. 

Rogers Park had the last laugh. 

It was with some surprise that I found myself living back again in Rogers Park.  As much as I had changed, it had as well. It was still the gritty, melting pot of cultures and people, cheek to jowl.  But now, setting some roots in the neighborhood, that diverse-city that is Rogers Park became beautiful to me. 

The Cambodian grandmother in native dress, smoking a homemade cigar on one block, only to be replaced by the Pakistani woman in full burqa on the next.  The improbable visuals of big city living, such as seeing Nigerian families in their vibrant Sunday best, walking past a plump señora at her taqueria, busily selling carne asada tacos to famished Bulgarians. 

And now, as a homeowner, it was I who was raking leaves, picking up after dogs and late night revelers' Modelo bottles. I was now a part of Rogers Park, a homeowner and not some college-aged observer.

Digging a ditch to bury some electrical cable some years back,  I found a 300 year-old clay pipe that was discarded at what must have been some 18th century lakeside camp for a Pottowatamie Indian or Voyageur perhaps.  Now it was my backyard.  Amazing how this place had and still changes.

The lake still is the main attraction, with its deep blue on summer days with huge thunderheads towering over it.  It was and is the edge of a watery wilderness that Chicago and Rogers Park in particular is perched on. I came to understand that this great finger on the hand of the largest freshwater deposit in the world was indeed our Rocky Mountains. 

And slowly, slowly, I have learned to enjoy the life of being in a place of people, in one of the most diverse communities in the United States, home to over 80 different ethnicities. 

City living can be tough.  The homeless man who liked my driveway for a bathroom.  Occasional prostitutes wending their way along Clark Street, gaunt-faced and twitchy as they drink from their extra large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups. Young gang-bangers hanging outside the market, nervously eyeing oncoming traffic.  The human condition is on full display. And this shadier element somehow exists with the other, more beautiful part of being in Rogers Park. 

Last week, on a tree-lined street not far from my home, a killer at point blank shot a 73 year-old man walking his dog.  A day later, at a popular Rogers Park beach, the same killer struck down a runner. And since it was in Rogers Park, it was no surprise that the victims were as diverse as the neighborhood.  An elderly gay man, and a young hasidic Jew. Killed by some guy wearing a scarf across his face and probably from an equally diverse background. Having not been caught yet as of this writing, I don’t know who or why or what would prompt such reckless disregard for life in such a rich, diverse-city.  

Being on the road and viewing it from the perspective of Evergreen, Colorado, that place, my home, looked like it was menacing, ugly and dangerous.  The sort of place where most people would decide, like I had in 1985, to gladly see the back of. Surely there must be a less risky locale. I worried for Annie and Áine and felt guilty as the worst thing happening in Evergreen that day appeared to be a jaywalking bull elk. 

To leave would be wrong.  There is a certain responsibility to being part of a neighborhood, to celebrate the good and endure the bad.  To run is to submit to the fear that the bad will win. Why should others who can’t run be left behind? It seems unfair. 

At the same time, heroism is the furthest thing from my mind.  I would love to see this guy caught. I would love to see the gangs disbanded.  I would welcome the end to the hookers, dealers and petty thieves. But in an odd way, that “gentrification” of sorts would take away some of the parts that makes Rogers Park what it is. The attempt to sanitize the city would only sweep the human condition under the carpet.  It would still be there, just pushed to another neighborhood or even the suburbs.

Better in some ways to face it.  To walk the same streets as the killer and acknowledge the hooker and homeless.  Shop the market where the gang-bangers gather and embrace the honesty that is living in a modern city, with its sins and sinners.   

So, we neighbors look out for each other.  We learn to be street smart and cautious in our ways.  But still, we gather for the festivals and linger along the lake.  Our very existence, in the face of danger, real danger, is an act of defiance in and of itself.  Perhaps it is foolish, but I believe seeing the full human condition is important for Áine, important for myself.   

 For as bad as things can seem, Rogers Park is always filled with light and beauty by virtue of its residents.  In my little block alone there’s Áine’s babysitter, Ana, who came from Portugal and shows nothing but love to our daughter. Our neighbors across the street, Dee and Walter, old hippies and artists who have witness the neighborhood transform several times over since they moved here in the '70s.  And down the street live Nadia and Sandeep, awaiting the arrival of their new baby who will combine the beauty of his Mexican and Indian genes. Around the corner there's Dusty and Jason, both college professors and like us, seasoned veterans of our little block. Or the newest couple Chance and David, moving back into the home David’s great-grandfather lived in.  And of course, just a 10-minute walk away there's Annie's best friend Chandra, who knows just about everyone in Rogers Park, and who for Annie is probably the number one perk of moving here seven years ago. 

 I could go on about the diversity in the beauty that in its daily simplicity outshines any darkness. And, I am grateful for the rich tapestry of people. For as beautiful nature is, it is the nature of the beauty in us all that actually makes this world remarkable. And for that reason, I do find Rogers Park a beautiful place to live.

Martin McCormack
WayGoodMusic.com​

[Our friends Martin and Brian have asked me to drop the old phonograph needle on some of their tunes, perhaps some lesser known, and report back to everyone.]

There’s hardly a genre in modern U.S. music any wider or more inclusive than Americana. McCormack and Brian FitzGerald have a stake under that big tent.

We listeners come to this music looking to hear familiar sounds: strummed guitars, harmonizing and beats we’ve known forever. We also come to hear earthy details, placenames and histories that resonate in our lives.

Switchback treats us time and again to these cultural snapshots, these short stories that long linger in the telling of our time. On their 2002 The Fire that Burns (re-released on their recent Twentieth Anniversary Collection) we get several. One is “The Farmer Leaves the Dell,” a sad update on a song many of us sang as children. This time there’s no Hi-ho, the derry-o; now it’s failed crops and poor credit, our farmer “hoodwinked in a desperate sell.”

Brian’s clear voice tells this farm-crisis tale. His story rings all the truer and rings all the closer to our hearts because it rides on American musical history, the very essence of Americana. Still, for all the misfortune, Brian’s vocal spins a tale not with all hope lost for all time.

Martin joins in on the chorus. Here their harmonized voices make the farmer’s plight into something more universal, surely a trait of this genre as well as others. They sing: “When you don’t know which way to go / It’s a lonely road.” And what would Americana be without its much-used image of the road?

My own September is wonderfully full of this kind of music, first Jason Isbell leaning toward the country side and then the Avett Brothers’ grungy bluegrass. Next month it’s Switchback taking a local stage. I can’t wait to revel in more well-told stories, sound-paintings to help us see ourselves and frame the fascinating world around us. 
                                                         
 is an itinerant washboard player who has freelanced for the New York Times, Washington Post and many lesser media. His most honest work was as a pig farmer in central Illinois, where he now lives and occasionally makes dinner for Switchback.)

Rick Kogan Contact Reporter Chicago Tribune


They are road warriors with the gentlest of souls, these two musicians named Martin McCormack and Brian FitzGerald who are the band Switchback. And they will tell you that there remain great adventures and special joys after nearly 30 years of playing and writing and traveling together.

“One year we decided to log the miles we were driving. It was more than 35,000 and we decided never to log the miles again,” says FitzGerald. “Now, if I wanted to be a melancholy Irishman, I would tell you that there is a semi out there somewhere with our names on it. We’ve been very lucky.”

They have also been very good. “Fighting against being pigeonholed,” as McCormack puts it, they have powerfully mingled the genres of American roots and Celtic soul, writing and playing songs that have created a distinctive and engaging body of work.

They have produced, through their independent Way Good Music label, more than a dozen albums as well as three PBS specials and some concert DVDs. For three years in a row, the pair was named the Top Irish Group by the Irish Musicians Association. They have opened for Jethro Burns, John Hartford and Leon Russell, shared stages with Gaelic Storm and Chicago’s fiddle-playing wonder Liz Carroll.
Praise has come easy, as this from Music Connection Magazine: “The words ‘American Roots & Celtic Soul’ only begin to describe this unusual act, whose vocal prowess is as pure as it is unique. There is no denying the stunning vocal blends that are achieved by this duo."

Then there is this from the liner notes for their 2005 album, “Falling Water River,” a tribute to fallen soldiers in contemporary wars, written by former Chicagoan Ron Pen, who was a music professor at the University of Kentucky: “(This) is an astonishing ramble through the heart of Americana soul, a love story redolent of Walt Whitman’s lyrical verse. … It is the sound of America itself.”

But there are, on a consistent basis, subtler rewards.

“If you really want to make music for a living and for a life, you have to get out there and play everywhere,” says McCormack. “We will share our music through community outreach. We play retirement homes, we play churches, we play schools and we play prisons.”

“It is a good thing to get off the beaten path,” says FitzGerald. “There are a lot of small towns where people have a real hunger for live music. There is something almost religious and something certainly magical about a live performance.”

They told me that five years ago and they told me that again a few weeks ago when they stopped here to play this year’s one and only local appearance.

“We are still at it. Two hundred shows a year and there are a lot of other artists doing the very same thing, toiling away, driving from place to place to share their music,” says FitzGerald.

Their road began in the mid-1980s at the corner of Bothwell and Wilson streets in northwest suburban Palatine. This was the location of a tavern/music club named Durty Nellies, and still lively at 180 Smith St., its home since 2003.

McCormack was on stage with some brothers and a sister. There were 10 kids in his family, a brood that made up, as McCormack puts it, “the von Trapp family of McHenry County.”

He was wearing a green V-neck sweater while playing bass, guitar and singing. FitzGerald, who has eight siblings, was in the audience and was eventually lured on stage to play guitar and mandolin and sing. He and McCormack hit it off and would play together for some ensuing years in a band called the Wailin' Banshees, which focused energetically and effectively on traditional Irish music.

“As a rebellion against that, Marty and I started writing our own songs and playing them between sets. That basically alienated the others in the band,” says FitzGerald.

They absorbed all manner of sounds and words at FitzGerald’s, the Berwyn bastion of musical eclecticism conveniently owned by Brian’s father and two of his brothers. “Our music and songwriting were so deeply influenced by being there so much,” says McCormack. “It was our musical finishing school.”

In 1993 they formed Switchback and have been on the road ever since.

Somehow, during all the shows and all the miles, they find time to keep writing songs as well as a lively blog and newsletter. McCormack has also written a very good book about his growing up in Woodstock. Titled “Rose Farm Road,” it is now making the rounds of publishers.

Sunday they are performing at a place called Shep’s Riverside Bar and Grille in Lansing, Iowa, roughly 250 miles from Chicago and where FitzGerald lives with his wife, Maggie; they have two grown children, Chris and Siobhan. McCormack and his wife, Anne Baudouin de Courtenay, live in Rogers Park with their 4-year-old daughter, Aine.

Switchback’s schedule then takes them to Virginia, Florida and Colorado. In November, as they have for more than a decade, they will be leading a group on a tour of Ireland. Then in February they will embark on their third group trip to Costa Rica.

That Central American country is 3,500 miles from Chicago. You could drive there, of course, but Switchback and the 20 some people who will be joining them will be flying (there are still spaces available; more at www.waygoodmusic.com).

“It’s an amazing country, a tropical Ireland, filled with people who have a genuine kindness and sense of humor and an eagerness to get to know you,” says McCormack. “We do wind up doing a bit of driving there and the roads are pretty rugged. But there have always been good angels looking out for us, and if you are going to hit potholes, why not do it when it’s 75 degrees outside and there’s a bar on the bus?”

rkogan@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @rickkogan

Chicago band Switchback keeping musical options open »

Dear Switchback Friends,

Fall has arrived. Technically, it still won’t be here until September 22. And the weeks have been hot here in the Midwest. I know firsthand from driving the Golden Eagle, the Switchback minivan that has lost its air conditioning. The van still chugs along and over Labor Day, I drove it across spectacular Iowa countryside, heading south to our concert in Keokuk.

The GPS had us whipsawing across one and two lane roads. We had just passed through a small town, when I saw one.

It was making an almost suicidal march across the asphalt roads heading from one side to the other for no reason whatsoever. I sighed, looked across the fields on the 90 degree day and sadly recognized that it was now Fall.

I am talking about the Woolly Bear Caterpillar. And when it arrives on the scene, for me personally, it is the one single harbinger of Autumn. In Chicago, they are not around, and it has always been rambling across the backcountry roads when the Woolly Bears make their appearance.

I never knew what they would turn into. I mean obviously they become some sort of butterfly or moth, but all these years of seeing them, I just didn’t know. And so, this time, driving along Highway 218, erratically dodging the little beasts, I thought I should look up what it is I am trying to not run over.

For those who have not been graced by the presence of the Woolly Bear, they are, well, sort of cute. About an inch and a half long, they possess fine long hairs, with a band of burnt ochre brown in the middle, and two black bands making the front and rear. They look like a pipe-cleaner gone wild. And the speed that they progress at across the road is somewhat impressive for something so small.

So, exploring on Wikipedia, I was surprised to see its scientific name is Pyrrharctia isabella, and it becomes the Isabella Tiger Moth. Now, I don’t know if I have seen an Isabella Tiger Moth and so this was another revelation. But I have seen the tan, velvet pouches from which they have emerged. I just hadn’t known that it belonged to the Woolly Caterpillar.

As a kid, we would pick them up alongside the road. They felt soft and immediately they would roll up into a ball in an effort to protect themselves. (Only now, years later do I read that their fine hairs can actually cause dermatitis. Ignorance is bliss.) I would make sure they got into the field and they would unravel and head off on their business.
 
But what is their business? I never really understood. According to Wikipedia, they like to eat herbs and leaves, especially alkaloid bearing leaves. A poppy plant, or such will be eaten and scientists have determined that they do this to get rid of internal fly parasites. 

Now, that’s depressing that even a tiny woolly bear caterpillar has to deal with the parasites, let alone one with such a disgusting name. But scientists are pretty hyped up about this as they believe this is one instance in which an insect is actually medicating itself against an insect. So, that is a pretty amazing fact.

Perhaps they are running across the road, because they are high and trying to eradicate a parasite. I guess I would probably cross a hot early fall road a bit out of it if I knew I had an internal fly parasite too.

The Woolly Bear was described by Sir James Edward Smith in 1797. He was the first European to describe them. This was of interest to me and delving into the life of Sir James Edward Smith, I found out that he was the publisher, of the Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia. Which must have been a bestseller. Did Sir James ever see a Woolly Bear? Nope, he was just describing what John Abbot saw and describing whatever Abbott looked and drew.

Wait a second, I can hear you asking, who is John Abbot? Glad you asked, for he was the guy who, was supposed to be a lawyer, but devoted his life to studying insects instead. He was a skilled engraver and his illustrations apparently became the foundation of a lot of studies on North American insects.

Now, before you write him off as some eighteenth century slacker, I’ll have you know that Abbot served in the Revolutionary War in the Third Georgia Continental Battalion. No doubt, marching down the lanes to meet the British, Abbot saw these crazed, stoned caterpillars crossing the road. Apparently, Abbot felt that Sir James needed to let the world know about the Woolly Bear Caterpillar. One cannot keep such revelations to oneself.

If that wasn’t fascinating enough, folklore has it that the larger the band on the Woolly Caterpillar can indicate the severity of the winter.  If the Woolly Bear has a wide band in the middle, it means that we will have mild winter. And the opposite means a severe one. Which really gets me as I always thought it was the other way around. So for nearly half a century, I have been predicting the weather wrong.

At this point, you are probably asking me, what is the point?

And the point is this. It is so easy to dismiss life. Dismiss the little things that dangle and dance their way in front of us. Brush through the spider web, half listen to the bird song or the cricket chirp. It is way easier to keep the phone open, download an app, and tune out of this amazing life.  

Yes, this little critter I have been dismissing and driving around for years, but I didn’t really know what it was. And probably still wouldn’t have, except I asked Brian “did you see the caterpillars crossing the road?”

“What caterpillars?” said Brian.  And I had to describe the Woolly Bear caterpillar to him.

And what this means for me, is that I need to stop at times, listen, absorb and acknowledge the moment. Marvel and appreciate the fact that others have witnessed, scrutinized, and categorized good old Pyrrharctia Isabella. And yes, it does mean that Autumn is here.

Before you think that I am the only one smitten by the crazed, high, parasite eradicating, weather predicting Woolly Bear, consider the fact that places like Vermillion, Ohio and Banner, Kentucky have Woolly Bear festivals. They are complete with costumes, races, and odes to the little critter. The winner of the race is the one to predict the winter.

I can only guess that John Abbot would be proud.


​~Martin McCormack​

Dear Switchback Friends,

Brian and I log over 35,000 miles a year driving.  Probably more, but like our shows, we never like to count too closely as that means greater accountability to our wives.  And so we guesstimate to a degree. 

While we are driving, we tend to listen to AM Radio.  There has always been something wonderful about that particular medium.  Especially in the early days before cell phones, the AM dial still was Lord of the Darkness.  We could easily dial up a million stations from across North America while driving from Denver to Chicago.  The French-Canadian stations, the Mexican stations and all the other stations stretching from New York to as far as Houston.  These distant stations, with their familiar ads for things you’d have in your neighborhood, except it wasn’t your neighborhood, but a neighborhood some 1400 miles away.   And then, there was the late night talk.  Good late night talk.  Non-political, but mind challenging, sometimes spooky, designed to keep you awake late night talk.  That was the talk of Art Bell on Coast to Coast. 

Art died a couple months back, but he had been off the airwaves for a while.  He had a voice that would keep two musicians awake after a long night playing gigs.  It was alert, warm, funny, and always bringing up topics that would have you reflexively reaching to turn up the volume.

I think I can vouch that I won my wife Annie’s heart by Art.  After a late night show, I was driving Annie home when I turned on Art Bell.  You couldn’t get him in Chicago; you had to dial WTAM over in Cleveland and hold your arm out the window to help the antennae get the right reception.  Here was this guy talking about aliens, interviewing some “expert” in the field and though his skepticism was just below the surface, the plausibility of things was enough to keep one awake without any stimulants.  People would call in from across North America.   

“West of the Rockies,” Art would say and “click” - there would be someone with some story about how they were driving down a lonely road and all of a sudden….you can imagine the rest.  “East of the Rockies,” would boom out Art and then another caller would come on with some cockamamie story that Art would immediately quash.  Art was no dramatic pushover.  Art wanted truth, even if it came from the most improbable sources and mythic legends out there.  Loch Ness.  Bigfoot.  Aliens. Ghosts. Chaupacabra.  Annie was hooked and became a bigger Coast to Coast listener than me.  To this day she listens to old broadcasts on the computer, especially the interviews with Malachy Martin, the priest who was a demon hunter.  Scary stuff.  Enough to keep one awake and alert and make the miles go by. 

One night, Brian and I heard Art Bell interview Eric Burden, the lead singer of the 60’s group The Animals.  It was just great radio, with lots of insight into the music business and the struggle to continue to be relevant.  After a day of outreach programs and an evening of playing a noisy, smoky bar, that was manna from heaven for our ears.  

Art kept us awake, alive, connected with our fellow human beings.  He joined people together from across Canada and the US.  It was like belonging to some big club. 

One night, we drove from Rochester, Minnesota to Lansing, Iowa.  We were heading along the river around 2 a.m., listening to Art.  He was interviewing a ghost hunter who had made EVP recordings of spirits in a house.  An Electronic Voice Phenomenon recording is done on a handheld device, sort of a memo machine that when played back can have these eerie voices of “spirits” talking.  When they answer the questions that are posed to them, it gets your attention.  Such was the case and we were just about to hear this disembodied voice say some scary thing when a big barn owl flew right into our windshield.  We both yelled at the top of our lungs as we lurched to a stop, calmed only by the voice of Art, asking another question. 

Last month, I spun the dial as we drove from Cincinnati to Chicago.  

AM radio is now dominated by businesses that prefer to push political screed over the Bermuda Triangle. What they are pushing should be as impossible to believe.  Except by the constant anger, they want us to not think about the fantastic, but the fanatic.  The tiki-torch lit world of just enough subtle hate.  Not that this spewing is a specific party doctrine either.  Nope, the Party of the Elephant and the party of the Donkey are just so much red and blue. This is about your neighbor. They want you to be riled up and ultimately to look around with fear in a world of black, white, and red.

Music in my opinion is here to bring us together.  And so should be talk radio.  These blowhards that represent “Opinion Entertainment” are so shameful that they should, like Alex Jones and his lies, be taken off the airwaves.  Our airwaves that belong to “We the People.”   The right to free speech is only a right if it is used with the responsibility every right granted demands.   These guys are nothing new, just a revamped Father Coughlin. 

I miss the fun of AM talk radio.

I miss Art Bell.

Martin McCormack
WayGoodMusic.com

Dear Switchback Friends,
 
July 16 is my birthday.  I happen to turn 55. For my birthday, my mother-in-law gave me an Ancestry.com DNA kit and the results came in.  I am 53% Irish, Scottish, Welsh, 31% from Great Britain (meaning there may be some English, but again Irish, Scottish, Welsh) and 13% Iberian Peninsula, which takes in France, Spain and Portugal.  This is not too surprising as most Irish descend from the Milesians (or the son of Mil) from the Iberian Peninsula. However in there is my French. French-Canadian to be exact. So, it is doubly accurate.
 
The biggest kick is the “low confidence regions” which are 1% each of Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe.  My Austrian forebears must be rolling in their collective graves as they have been bred out by the Irish. But that 1% Viking!   Low confidence, indeed.
 
For the most part, I am a Celt.  Which is fine by me. My daughter Áine will have so much more fun with her DNA than myself due to her Asian lineage.  And according to Ancestry, I am related to my brother Peter, which completely kills the hope that he was an aberration in our family.
 
So, here I am, 55.  And I struggle as I reflect on the successes and the failures that so far have been part of this life.  And though I now know with some certainty of what I am made of genetically, I always feel that pang of doubt as to what I am spiritually.  I feel sadness as summer hits her height of glory and another year goes by.
 
However, such struggles lead me back to another July, years ago, when I was working as an usher at the Woodstock Opera House.
 
Richard Henzel, that great Chicago journeyman actor, was doing a one man show and I watched spellbound as he transformed into Mark Twain.   
 
It was 1981. Henzel took the stage dressed in the iconic white suit and clenching a cigar, his blond hair powdered white and wrinkles drawn in with an eye pencil.  Magically, for two hours, Twain was in our presence.
 
Henzel was a journeyman, like I was to become in my practice of music.  And he would hold court over our audience of 150 members.
 
I now wonder if he ever felt like he, too, was struggling with the idea of whether or not he was doing everything he could do with his career.  And if his career was the sum and total of who he was. And, most of all--did it matter? Hal Holbrook was already a cigar-chewing Twain and people flocked to see him.  Here was this workingman Twain at this tiny Midwestern opera house on a hot, humid night in July. If he thought any of those thoughts as he assumed his character, I would not have known.  
 
For the final act of the night as Twain, Henzel gave one of his most wonderful speeches.  I can still remember the room getting quiet as Twain’s scratchy Missouri voice said:
 
Many & many a year ago I read an anecdote in Dana's book, "Two Years Before the Mast." A frivolous little self-important captain of a coasting-sloop in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade was always hailing every vessel that came in sight, just to hear himself talk, and air his small grandeurs. One day a majestic Indiaman came plowing by, with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks and yards swarming with sailors; with macaws and monkeys and all manner of strange and romantic creatures populating her rigging; and thereto her freightage of precious spices lading the breeze with gracious and mysterious odors of the Orient. Of course the little-coaster-captain hopped into the shrouds and squeaked a hail: "Ship ahoy! What ship is that, and whence and whither?" In a deep and thunderous bass came the answer back, through a speaking-trumpet: "The Begum of Bengal, 123 days out from Canton—homeward bound! What ship is that?" The little captain's vanity was all crushed out of him, and most humbly he squeaked back: "Only the Mary Ann—14 hours out from Boston, bound for Kittery Point with—with nothing to speak of!"
 
I remember laughing with the audience, and though I knew what would come next from Twain, as it did with every matinee and evening performance, it always came refreshingly new and beautiful. It was a lesson that I had drilled into my subconscious.  
 
That eloquent word, ‘only’ expresses the deeps of his stricken humbleness.  And what is my case? During perhaps one hour in the twenty four-not more than that-I stop and I humbly reflect. Then I am humble, then I am properly meek, and for the little time, I am ‘only the Mary Ann’ -fourteen hours out and cargoed with vegetables and tinware; but all the other twenty three my self satisfaction runs high, and I am that stately Indiaman, ploughing the seas under a cloud of sail and laden with a rich freightage of the kindest words that were ever spoke to a wandering alien, I think, my twenty six crowded and fortunate days multiplied by five; and I am the Begum of Bengal, a hundred and twenty three days out of Canton-homeward bound!
 
For my career, I have been the Mary Ann, heading to little ports of call around the world, bringing my wares to folks who have been most kind in accepting and, at times, even paying for them.  The rusty little minivan instead of a huge tour bus. Schlepping my own equipment and with the eye on the clock, realizing that perhaps I will always be the Mary Ann. It is indeed humbling.
 
But during those shows, the love I receive and the friendship I have earned has made me feel, like Twain, as the Begum of Bengal.  My own freightage carrying the years of stories, joy, laughter, love and support to the point that it overflows the hold, sits on deck and even hangs from the rigging.  At those points, singing on stage, I need no other satisfaction, no other reassurance that I am on the right path. At that point of joy I, too, am the Begum of Bengal. Fifty-five years out - homeward bound. 

Martin McCormack
WayGoodMusic.com

Dear Friends of Switchback,
 
Someone recently asked me why we are so enamored of Costa Rica for tours.  And in talking to that person, I realized that a lot of folks don’t really know much about this country.  For Brian and myself, we love Costa Rica for what it is and what it isn’t.
 
What it offers our fans is the opportunity to travel inexpensively during the height of the cold winter months in North America to a country that is a three hour flight from Fort Meyers or Houston.  Compared to traveling to Hawaii, one has more time experiencing the adventure and less time traveling to the adventure.  I personally love the fact that Costa Rica is on Central Standard Time. That means no jet-lag. Being on the Pacific Ocean on Chicago time is a pretty nice feeling.
 
Costa Rica is situated in Central America.  The country is a democratic one, with a newly elected president this year.  One of its main boasts is that it did away with its army in 1948, being one of the only countries in the world that does not have a military.  Instead, it focused on putting that money into education and healthcare for its people.  That is a pretty impressive move for any country, let alone a small country in Central America.

Dear friends of Switchback,

Jet-lagged and grumpy, I received the text message from my best friend Dave Heuvelman.  His son Dominic was enrolled in a “fun-run” at school. The school hired a company to help organize the run.  

“C’mon, Mack,” Dave said. “John (our other buddy from high school) has pledged, and you are not going to let him outdo you, are you?”   

I rolled my eyes.  Since the days of Socrates, sitting there with all of his students around him in Greece, there has been the concept of the fundraiser for schools.  “If we raise enough drachma, kids, I am going to drink this poison hemlock,” said Socrates. “And we will do it by selling chocolate!”

We’ve come a long way, baby. Now there is a flashy video program and a whole team of professionals that descend upon the school to help create what is called fun-run.com.   The idea is simple:  put on a healthy run around the school and people can pledge for a child per lap with a total of 35 laps. The company that runs this event is called Boosterthon. It was started by a couple who earnestly pitch the story about how their passion is making a better fundraising experience for schools around the country.   That made me think about how the old days were.

Back in the day, which for me was 1969, I had my first chance to go fundraising for Holy Cross School in Deerfield, IL.  It was before my family moved to Woodstock and I was in first grade. The fundraiser for the school was brilliantly simple.  We sold plastic bags of candy before Halloween. The bags were made with an image of a ghost with a pumpkin head and could double as a puppet once the candy was exhausted.  My brothers and I hawked the goods from door to door and learned the valuable lesson of entrepreneurship: rejection from little old ladies.

That lesson was duly embraced by my siblings who all went into secure nine to five jobs later in life.  For me, I guess I am still learning.

The second aspect was that about a month later we would be going from door to door, this time dressed up for Halloween.  We would get back that candy from the little old ladies we sold to in the first place. It seemed unfair.

When we moved to Woodstock, I thought I had ditched the last of fundraising for the school.  But at St. Mary’s School, I came face to face with the Morely Chocolate Company, a company that was founded in Detroit in 1919.   The company was known for its “Bumpy Cake,” which is still considered a delicacy in Michigan. But the sinister side of the company was the enslavement of grade schoolers to push the product in the name of fundraising. The company would deliver boxcars filled with boxes of chocolates which were then brought to the school to be sold by us kids.  Door to door. To little old ladies. Turtles, mints, peanut butter clusters. A whole arsenal of chocolate at our disposal. The competition was fierce, with the kid who sold the most getting a prize, which was usually a Schwinn 10-speed bike.

It was pretty tough for us McCormack kids, as we were competing against each other selling boxes of chocolates in the chocolate-saturated market that Woodstock quickly became.  Because we lived out in the country, we had to be dropped off in town to sell the wares. Once again, the valuable lesson of entrepreneurship was there for the learning: “band together and sell the chocolate so one brother wins the prize, and you can all then share that prize.”  

However, my brothers and I never learned that one as our parents had raised us to “be individuals.”  And so we flailed about town, lugging our cartons of chocolate and competing against our classmates and each other.  

My dad, being a dentist, was never too keen on the whole idea of selling candy.  Mom did her best to buy what she could in an attempt to be fair with her sugar-selling brood.  And it was far easier to surrender to the chocolate and just eat what we should be selling. For about eight weeks we would feast on various boxes of chocolate that never made it to the neighborhoods of Woodstock.  

However, this too eventually lost its luster and we would have to lug back the unsold cartons and hand in whatever money we gleaned.  The prize would go to the kid whose parents wrote a check to buy the whole lot of candy he or she was selling. That kid learned a valuable lesson in entrepreneurship:  “It is good to have patrons, even better if they are your parents.” The 10-speed Schwinn bicycle would be paraded in front of the rest of us sullen kids, who were coming down from a collective sugar high.  Life was unfair.

When I went to high school, it was the World’s Finest Chocolate Company.  We would have a big pep rally in the gym with the cheerleaders doing routines out on the floor.  The boxes of the World’s Finest Chocolate (which was debatable) were piled up on the floor, a stack for each class.

Our principal Mr. Hartlieb would make an impassioned plea about how important it was for each student to sell, sell, sell and help Marian Central buy sports equipment.  And once again, we would lug the bars of candy back to the farm and go about attempting to sell chocolate between chores, homework, and running cross country.

Disheartened by the chocolate-hating little old ladies, we would then despondently eat the bars of chocolate, further sending our family into debt and diabetes.  My father would shake his head as he wrote the check to cover the candy we ate. We would then lug back the unsold boxes and be humiliated as the kid with parents who bought the whole shipment would get the Schwinn 10-speed bike.

So when my buddy Dave reached out to me in the attempt to help Dominic achieve his goal of a zillion dollars, I immediately saw turtles.  I sent off money to him and warned him that “what goes around comes around.”

And it did, about five days later.

Aine came out of class excitedly wearing a paper crown that was festooned with directions for enrolling in the fun-run.  A group of bubbly college-age students wearing blue shirts were busy loading up the van with speakers, banners, and a vast propaganda machine to promote the fun-run.  It took me about  half an hour to comprehend what was going on at Our Lady of Perpetual Fundraising. It was back again, but this time in 21st century slickness. I sat stunned at my computer as the video with an excited announcer’s voice mentioned how much this helps the school, the children, and the community.   

And so here is the link to Aine’s pledge page.  And yes, it will please me to no end to have folks pledge and raise money for her school.  It is a good school after all, and Aine is soooo excited that this event is about to take place.  And yes, I do think Boosterthon is on to something positive here.

I don’t know how many laps she’ll run.  Perhaps it is a good thing not to send our children into the community to sell chocolate anymore.  Perhaps running around a track levels the playing field and eliminates that spoiled kid who gets the 10 speed bike because his parents bought all the chocolate.  Perhaps.

I think I will go eat some chocolate now. 

~ Martin McCormack

​WayGoodMusic.com

​Dear Switchback friends,

As I write this, the sounds of the Pacific come in through the screen door.  Out the other door are the highway sounds, cars going by at 30 miles per hour, heading off to the Polynesian Cultural Center for a luau.  By the look of the brochure costs, it is the tourists who are once again to be eaten alive.

The north shore of Oahu is a great place to “hunker down” with my family.  We just finished a dinner of pompano fish, freshly caught by a young father and his three sons out by the coral reef.  Aine watches “Wally Kazam” on television.  As I look at Annie’s laptop monitor, it reads 1:16 a.m. back in Chicago.  One more weekend and we will be back in the Midwest, where spring will welcome us with her freezing rain and straining daffodils, yearning to be warm.  I shut that thought out of my mind and wonder, “Will that dog be back again?”

When people land in Hawaii, the pilot usually says, “Welcome to Paradise,” and in so many ways, the pilot is right.  Even the threat of storms here means that there might be some rain (a Hawaiian Blessing as it is called), followed by a lot of sunshine. The weather is not like the storm forecast in the Midwest that shows an unbroken front that often stretches from Manitoba to Texas, snowing in some places, flooding in others, and generally making half a continent miserable.  Here, even miserable is tempered by sunshine.  The rain falls warm and forgiving.  It is Paradise. 

But, every morning outside my lanai, there it was.  A deposit made by a local dog, strategically located to ensure that the unsuspecting tourist will step in it.  This dog revealed itself on day two of our stay here.  It is a big, chunky black Lab.  The owners appear to be native Hawaiian and are affable enough as they go chasing down this dog.  “Oh, there you are!” the dog’s owner declared, deftly sidestepping the mound of Mahalo it left.  The lab wore a thick red collar, at least the first day, when the owners reunited with their dog. Later, it went commando.

“Are you going to say something to them about the dog?” Annie asked me.  I was immediately defensive.  First of all, the idea of any confrontation over dog poop is something to be avoided when on vacation.  I saw the owners bundle the overweight dog into the pickup truck where it waddled to the tailgate and looked at me with its big yellow unblinking eyes. 

It was sizing me up and I could tell the dog was laughing.  “I’ll be back to alter your Aloha, haole,” was what he was saying to me, as the truck turned and zoomed off at 10 miles per hour, which for Oahu is making a statement.

The dog was gone, but there remained his calling card.  Now there are a bunch of staff guys at this rental property.  Their neon lime green polyester work shirts attempt to create a jovial vibe as they walk around the property, occasionally with a rake in hand, but most time, it seemed they were just walking around the property.  

“Sir,” I said to the guy who slowly walked within striking distance of the Lab-lava, “this black Lab was running around and he deposited this big business outside my lanai.”  He rolled his eyes toward heaven and sighed. 

“Yeah, we are trying to get that dog. Don’t even mention that dog,” he said as he walked off, pleading to the Hawaiian gods with his hands outspread.  The dog doody was still there, a prodigious bit of island in a sea of short green beach grass.  

“All right,” I said to my family, “I am going to clean this up.”  I found an old dustpan that was used to empty coal ash from the grills and walked over to the pile.  Dressed in my swimsuit, with my very pale skin glistening with 500 SPF lotion, I slowly attempted to coax the poodle-strudel onto the coal ash dustpan.  I felt like I was on a curling squad.  

I pushed against the resisting beach grass and tried not to roll this canine-cannoli across the entire yard.  Finally, I had the object of my annoyance in the dustpan and took it to a nearby trash container.  

I felt like I did a good deed for everyone there and even rinsed the grass down for good measure.  

The next day, after waking up to a glorious Easter sunrise and watching the deep blue rollers crossing the reef at high tide, I sipped my Kona coffee and counted my blessings.  

Then the dog came back. Commando.

He ambled to the exact same spot where he done his job the day before and squatted.  I ran out onto the lanai.  “Bad dog,” I said, “get out of here.”  The dog looked at me with his yellow unblinking eyes wearing a blank expression.  All my yelling and gesticulating were part of his entertainment as he made another Magnum-oh my.

As I was rounding the gate to shoo him off the property, he was done.  He smiled at me, quite happy that he showed me a bit of “hope you are enjoying your holiday” and for good measure squirted around the palm tree where I had planned to hide Easter eggs for Aine. 

The Lab ambled onto the beach and walked away as I waved down another guy wearing a neon lime green polyester shirt. 

“That black Lab was back,” I said to him as he walked around without any rake. “He did his business back in the same spot.”  

The guy looked at me, and perhaps because it was Easter, refrained from saying anything other than, “We know about that dog and are getting it under control.”  

“Well, I don’t want my daughter to go running across the lawn and step on some ‘under control’,” I said, trying to be light about it.  He looked at me and turned away. 

I decided to go to Church and pray about it. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I figured. He might work on this, too?

Back from church, I was surprised to see that no one had moved that Waimea-watchit.  It sat, baking in the sun.  Barefoot people walked obliviously around it, heading to the beach, sauntering over to the grill and arranging lounge chairs.  Any sense of civic duty ebbed with the low tide.

I sighed and thought that at least on this holiest of days, I should humble myself and move the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak.

So I armed myself with the dustpan and once again went canine-curling across the lawn.  Everyone ignored me wearing my bright red sand shoes, hunched over, my back showing the areas that I missed with my 500 SPF lotion, my long hair dangling over my face, muttering to myself as I rolled something that was definitely not an Easter egg. 

Rinsing down the lawn after another successful attempt, I was happy that at least all the kids looking for Easter eggs would not pick up a dud with me on patrol.

The next day, no sign of the dog, but a sign that the dog was there.  I was incredulous.  
“This dog has it in for me,” I said to Annie.  “Does he have GPS in his lower intestine?”
Sure enough, a guy in a neon lime green shirt with no rake was walking slowly toward the ocean to see if it was still there.  It was. 

And I said to him, “Sir, this dog just dropped another puppy pile in the exact same spot.”  The guy looked at me, noticing that I had failed to completely sunblock my skin and that I had a beet red patch of burn that looked something like the map of Antarctica forming on my stomach.  “Okay,” he said, not even looking at the gigantic rover-range that was blocking my view of the ocean.  

And seven hours later, I gave up and took the now trusty dustpan and expertly got the Oahu-uh-oh into the trash.  

People splashed in the ocean.  Retirees with platters of burgers walked over the lawn in bare feet to the grill.  A little boy rolled his ball as his mother shed her shoes and padded across the lawn. She gazed open mouthed at the ocean as the kid trotted back and forth over the scene of the crime.

And I wonder, when I leave, what will happen?  Will the Lab look around and say, “Well, where did he go?”  Will a neon lime green shirt guy finally decide that it isn’t beneath him to scoop up a Honolulu-how-do-you-do?

Or will some other guy, sitting in his swimsuit on this lanai, his pale skin slathered in 500 SPF, look out at Paradise, turn to his wife and say, “WHAT is that dog doing?” 

Martin McCormack
WayGoodMusic.com

Dear friends of Switchback,

Welcome to the High Holy Season of the Year!  No, not Easter, but St. Patrick’s Day Season, which for us began in February and will not end until around April 10th. We are pretty busy at this time of year, celebrating our Irish heritage through music with as many people as we can.  And we are pretty far-flung these days too, heading across the Midwest and on to Arizona and ending up playing Kona and Oahu in Hawaii.  It could be argued that our season never really ends.

But at this time of year I always go back in my mind to the early days before Switchback, when Brian and I were with the Wailin’ Banshees.  This was in B.R.D. time (Before River Dance) when there really was no such thing as the Irish pubs we see in abundance today. Yes, there were Irish pubs in Chicago, but they were pubs that had Irish in them.  They had names like The Abbey Pub, Sixpenny Bit, and The Goalpost. And there were Irish cabaret-style places like the Irish Village, which would have dances and bring entertainers over from Ireland. The Irish Heritage Center on the north side of Chicago was still a vacant high school, and Gaelic Park on the south side didn’t have the hall and pub it has today.  It was a park for Gaelic football. 

In those days during the mid-1980's, you were identified as being either a “greenhorn” which was an Irish-born immigrant or a “narrowback,” an Irish-American.  Irish dance and certainly Irish music were still an “ethnic” thing, not the form we see today, embraced, celebrated, and often played and danced by people without any Celtic blood.  And that is a good thing, in my opinion. 

Still, as a band that was comprised of one greenhorn and three narrowbacks, the Wailin’ Banshees was an unusual group.  That we also were four people, two of whom were 40 years our seniors, united in the love of Irish music was also unusual.  We made for a fun but slightly dysfunctional Irish band, acting more like a family band than anything else. 

Some of the pubs we played were only for greenhorn Irish.  And in those days there were pubs that leaned heavily toward the IRA.  And I don’t mean places that just sang rebel songs either. As narrowbacks, Brian and I were not always welcomed and always viewed with suspicion.  But with Galway-born Bert McMahon along, with his easy demeanor, glint in his eye, and fantastic banjo playing, we were safe. Some pubs and events were more politically oriented.  These were places where Irish aldermen held sway, and their lackeys would uphold fealty to the point of obnoxiousness. 

I remember Brian and I once played a fundraiser for a northside Alderman.  We were hungry and went to where the food was being served. As musicians it was customary to be fed at such events as part of the deal.  We got two plates of mostaccioli and chicken (which people don’t realize is really the food served at all Irish weddings and events, not corn beef and cabbage) and were about to sit and eat when a crowd of angry looking men gathered around us. 
 
“You bettah make a donation for the alderman,” growled one.  “That food ain’t free.” 
“Well, if it isn’t free, I ain’t eating it,” I retorted. 
“Oh, you’re going to eat it,” replied one glowering lackey. 

So Brian and I, hired to play and already playing at a discount for that alderman, literally ate with a circle of people standing over our table.  In came our fiddler Mary McDonagh who was known and respected by many in the Irish community, greenhorn and narrowback alike. She snarled at the pack surrounding her boys and they skulked off.  But we got a lesson in Irish politics that day:  always bring the alderman with you. 

When Jayne Byrne ran for re-election as the first (and to date only) female Mayor of Chicago, our band was hired to supply the music.  And since it was an Irish event, Jayne had to prove her own fealty to the homeland. She made a rousing speech and soon someone was yelling, “Sing with Marty, sing with Marty!”
​  
I was pushed over to the microphone where Jayne stood. 
“Do you know ‘The Town I Love So Well?’” Jayne asked. 
“Sure,” I said, knowing that the song is about 20 minutes long and totally uncertain why she would ask for that song.  But we did it. 

We were standing eyeball to eyeball around a microphone, Jayne belting out every word as we went through the whole story of Derry.  Perhaps for her, as Mayor, it was symbolic of her aspiration to make Chicago a better town. “I can only pray for a brand new day for the town I love so well,” goes the last line of the song, which is beautiful, except it comes 19 minutes and 45 seconds down the pike.  Jayne wasn’t the best of singers, but enthusiastic. Her singing was better than her re-election campaign though. Still I smile when I think back on her and those narrowback politicians. They thought like Irish and fought like Irish. Jayne allowed the filming of the movie The Blues Brothers in Chicago, and for that she should have a statue erected to her.  But in true Chicago fashion, something better has been done:  the automotive interchange that unites I-290 and I-90 and spins off I-55 a couple miles south is all named after her. Thousands of swearing truck drivers, scared visitors on their first foray to the Windy City, and I-Phone reading commuters hunker down at that spaghetti bowl of roadway every morning and afternoon.  Jayne would have loved the chaos, I figure. 

It was St. Patrick’s Day that put the Banshees into high gear.   For at that time of the year not only did the regular pubs want a band, but the Knights of Columbus groups, the country clubs with their WASP-ish take on the holiday, and the odd tour boat filled with St. Patrick’s Parade revelers would be vying for an Irish band.  And a lot of bands fought to have a slice of the St. Paddy pie, Irish and non-Irish alike. There was a group, whose name I can’t remember, that had the right idea to dress up as Germans for Oktoberfest, Italians for St. Joseph’s Day, and all in green for St. Patrick’s Day.  But for the places that wanted a bona fide Irish band, we were a good choice and the phones would start ringing to hire us in January. 

A typical St. Patrick’s Day would consist of four or five gigs of one or two hours, with a lot of driving between.  There were no cell phones in those days, so I wore a watch and had to call each venue the day prior to confirm the start time, save a parking spot for us to quickly park, and most importantly supply some food to keep us going.  It was supposed to be pulled off with military precision, but never did that happen. 

We would try to dress well for the shows.  In the early days we all wore different outfits.  Brian would have an Irish cap on. I would have a vest and white shirt, and Bert would wear a jacket.  Mary always wore a lovely green flowered dress. Later we got wise and had the three lads all decked out in matching Kelly green Arnold Palmer jackets with grey slacks.  It was a good look and set us apart even more from most groups. We were an odd outfit:  part Irish showband, part bluegrass group, part family-band, and part traditional Irish, and we didn’t give a damn what others thought of us.  

The first gig would be playing on the boat the Spirit of Chicago.  We would all pile into Mary’s Crown Victoria and put the sound system and our instruments into the trunk.  Down to Navy Pier we would roll, and we would trundle out the sound system and set up for the early revelers.  A group of excited step dancers, released from grade school for the day, would also be on hand to help us celebrate.  These kids would have simple Irish outfits on. It would be several years before we would start seeing the result of A.R.D. (after River Dance) with the $1000 glittering, bejeweled dresses and bouncy curl wigs. 

Down the Chicago River we would sail to where the river was dyed green near the Michigan Avenue bridge.  Revelers would be out early, wearing loud green hats, scarves, and huge sunglasses. The deck of the boat would be swarming with Irish-for-the-day types, having green beer and enjoying the view of other revelers lining up over the bridge. 

We would play several sets and then play for the step dancers.  I would look nervously at my watch, for we had to keep moving to make our next stop at WGN Radio.  We would do a radio interview and play a tune or two for Kathy O’Malley and Judy Markey. They both loved Bertie.  Bert was a handsome man, with sparkling greenish grey eyes and snow white hair. His soft brogue could charm any lady within hearing distance of it.  So Bert would chat with them and then we would play a couple of traditional Irish tunes.  All the time, I would be checking the clock to make sure we would make our next stop on time. 

And soon it would be on to a pub for another two sets.  Depending on which pub hired us, that could be a dash out to Palatine, Illinois for a stint at Durty Nellie’s or over to Grandpa’s in Glenview for their St. Patrick’s celebration.  Soon it was two o’clock and we were only halfway into the day. It was a tradition to play at FitzGerald’s, and so we would run out to Berwyn. There we would wolf down corn beef sandwiches and play another two sets.  Paul and Mary McHugh would play for the step dancers, then we would get up and play. Finally, we would vacate the stage for the big act of the evening, the Dooley Brothers. 

All the time, the clock is ticking.  Now it would be close to 7 p.m., and I had already sung “Danny Boy” four times.  We all are tired and Bert, not wishing to be rushed, would be seated at the bar having a beer and a shot of VO.  Brian would be off securing some food for us to eat as we drove to the next show. Mary would be pacing nervously, her fiddle packed and her jacket on.  And I would be trying to get paid. Somehow we would make it back to the Crown Vic, maneuver the big hulking beast out of the crowded parking lot, and running late, hightail it back out to the suburbs to a country club for their St. Patrick’s affair.  Nothing ran smoother than Mary’s Crown Victoria after I got it up to 80 miles an hour. St. Patrick’s Day was the only day of the year that the car had its speedometer over 25 mph, and as I hit the gas, a puff of carbon would kick out of the tailpipe. Mary would nervously say, “Oh no, Marty, too fast.”  But we had to get to the next show and set up. 

Thankfully, the country club gigs would be rather subdued events. The manager would always look at us like we were savages brought in from the wild.  And I guess in some ways we were. We would be set up in a far corner, and the general rule was to be “heard but not seen.” No drinks at the bar. Bert would have to get his beer on the sly.  

The members of the club would come politely dressed in green in complete contrast to the hooting and hollering hordes that were crowding the bars 40 miles to the east.  The whole evening would consist of us playing background music as they dined. We would have to dive into Irish-American standards like “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” And I would be asked to sing “Danny Boy.”   It was never too long of an evening, and the great pay made up for us missing all the fun going on back at the clubs. But by this time the whole band would be exhausted, and there was a huge relief that all the clubs and obligations had been met with no hiccups.

After the last number was played, the guests would vanish like a receding floor.  The manager, assured now that the band he hired had delivered and free of the need to maintain appearances, would invite us over for a drink at the club bar.  And we would head over to the bar and have some drinks. Slowly we would pack up one last time for the day. We would all pile back into the Crown Victoria and rumble back into the city at a respectable 55 miles per hour.  It would be about midnight when we would get to Bert’s girlfriend Eileen Fleming’s house. Eileen would have some tea waiting, and we would sit around laughing about the day and not really wanting to let the excitement of St. Patrick’s end.  

Martin McCormack

WayGoodMusic.com