Worcester and Jamaica Plains, Massachusets

in worcester. awesome. fucking great show. we remembered to have fun again, and upped the ante. we’re starting to find our groove i feel, it’s falling into place. mike cried after the show. brian ellis and simone came from boston for the show which was pretty sweet. i wanted to hang out afterwards, cool folks, cute girls but i had to leave the gang and ride back to boston with brian so i could fly out to charleston the following day for the naca south conference. brian and i spent the ride talking about poetry and him telling me about his job at this gourmet grocery store where one of the guys is an wine and cheese enthusiast and was so pumped about brian being a poet that he had brian share work at the wine/cheese class he teaches, to add to the experience for the participants. it was pretty funny. also brian shared with me about how with truffles, truffle buyers keep secret the truffle hunters of tiny truffle towns from other truffle buyers and there is all this intrigue with it. i’m relatively anti-foodi, but that sounds so fascinating i want to research and write a story about it.
upon arrival in boston, we headed to jamaican plains and to brian’s home, the Whitehaus, which is a 3 story abode houses 11 individuals and a shitload of instruments, musicmaking, creativity, and love.
i slept on one of the several couches, in the main living room that houses the house’s weekly event “The Hoot,” short for hootenanny, where crowds of folks show up to participate and enjoy and share a myriad of things from music playing to poetry to fire breathing to puppetry to whatever, sky writing. in the cradle of a drum kit, a rhodes organ, 4 electric guitars, two acoustics, a couple basses, some toy pianos and a glockenspiel, and under a white comforter i fell into a lovely sleep.

the next morning brian was already gone for work so i walked into the kitchen and met kate, adam, brian, and john deuce. kate was making french toast out of old scones and they invited me to join them for breakfast, which i did, which was delicious, and which amongst that john had a guitar and kate a ukulele and the two of them started harmonizing on a song of john’s called don’t cry mama which was beautiful and which adam came in later on a flute. we then moved into the big room and kate jumped on the rhodes piano and the started working on a different song of john’s. unfortunately i needed to hightail it out of there to catch a plane, so i packed up my bag walked to the train and rode it to the logan airport to fly to charleston, completely in love with my first experience of the whitehaus.

Oneonta, New York

again gorgeous countryside we drove through. huge sweeping valleys to the left of the van as we curved through the land, withe mountains scattered with orange and red leaves through the green trees. upon arrival at the school we headed to the house we were staying in. it was sweet. next to the dean’s house, it’s an old school place filled with lime green shag carpeting across the bottom floor, and cute rooms upstairs, everything decorated from with fifities furniture, and a world map painted on the upstairs wall.








my room.


good show. we remembered to have fun and we scrapped the story transitions and smoothed out the show and brought the energy and handclaps to the opening. shorter show, cuz of time restraints but still successful. afterwards we went to a party at somebody’s house and the fellas got snackered. we also had a freestyle session in the van consisting of the chorus: balls balls he sucks his own balls.

it was interesting, the party. the bathroom was filled with pictures of jeff goldblum.

one forgets that there are kids out there that really respect and adore one’s work. we’re all just, as derrick puts it, guys trying to make the rent. and we were just chilling post show with some cool kids, but these kids were telling us thanks for one of the best and happiest nights of their live and it was “thanks” but we’re all just folks hanging out. but i realized that if when in college after i first heard jeffrey mcdaniel read, if jeff had come out and hung with me and my friends afterwards, yes that night would have been forever ingrained in my head as mad rulage. it’s just weird to realize that to some people out there, one is their j. mcdaniel. that feels weird to write that down.

when we left the party and headed home, there was a drizzle in the air, shine on the streets and between the sky and the streetlights, the night was an orange blanket, still. a whisper. a closed library with no walls. a sleeping book, a stack of them. we are all growing up.

the following day we went to the baseball hall of fame. our friend ben couch works there and got us in for free. i'm not a big baseball fan but it was still pretty interesting.



honus wagner, one of the first five inductees said:
"There ain't much to being a ballplayer, if you're a ballplayer."

Hiram, Ohio

driving to hiram was gorgeous. the sloping green banking the roads. i wanted to buy a house and some land out there and stay and eat and write and stare and live.
a big blocky house with white paint peeling and the bones of wood scraping out from underneath its skin, keep company with ghosts. pick apples. play the guitar. run through the rain kiss outside climb trees stay up till dawn getting drunk on candles and pots catching leaks. build a fence around nothing.

our show was way off. it was in a small ballroom for crowd of maybe 30. in an attempt to craft a story of solomon sparrow to weave through the evening, we have shaved off time for so much poetry, and the energy lags, and felt like sloppy community theatre, and with a low energy crowd, we weren’t too happy with our show, but we learned a lot from it, and folks still enjoyed it.
after bringing stuff down to the van, the sky opened up and poured it iself all over the streets. POURED itself. buckets. we sat in the van and three shirtless jocks jogged past like smiling phantoms while a man stood across the street from us, still as a statue which we thought he was till he turned and freaked us out, standing there getting soaked. we went and got some grub with a couple of teh student organizers, will and jenn. burgers for a buck with a beverage purchase. sweet.
we stayed in the hiram inn, supposedly haunted. a sweet house inn with tasty old school dark wood four post beds and robes. derrick and i pimped out in them. baz and dan's room however looked like the beach house room of a seven year old girl decorated by her grandparents, with one large bed with a pink peach bedspread, yellow pastel walls, and white wicker chairs. our room however had beautiful victorian looking wallpaper with green illustrations of crests and huntsmen and lions and hounds. slept beautifully.

West Virginia

day off today. we headed to ohio by way of west virginia. stopped at cracker barrel adn stayed the night in charleston. last time i stayed in charleston west virginia, it was after one of the worst nights of my life.

two years ago i was on tour and sarah was with me. we were in west virginia and we were planning on calling an early evening, staying in the hotel and watching tv till we fell asleep. it was gonna rule.
so we stopped probably 100-150 miles before charleston but we couldn't find a room at the exit we took, and could not find a hotel room anywhere at said exit cuz there was some car race in the area that night. so we hopped back on the highway and took the opposite side of the exit which took us way off the interstate, still couldn't find a room, so we continued on one of those small highways like 19 or 20 that took us to another small town and another hotel that was full. by this time it was 2 hours after where we originally wanted to be and we weren't quite sure where we even were.

we then tried to find our way back to the road but couldn't, winding deeper into deep w virginia, came across a convenience store that seemed like some shady shit was about to go down in right before we came in. they gave us directions, telling us the entrance for the highway was just down the road 15-20 minutes away. we thanked them then proceeded to drive for the next 45 minutes through the dark ass hills curving through lightless black with no signs and nothing to tell us we were going the right way except for the hope of that man's directions, while wondering if they were faulty directions in order to be waylayed. it was a horrible hour of fear and tears and confusion and not having any fucking idea if we were heading straight or further into the abyss. we finally came upon the highway hopped on and kept on driving till we made it to charleston, saw a motel 6 lied about how many people were in our room, stumbled into it and feeling like little pieces of tired shit, fell asleep.
the following morning we did have a great and cheap breakfast though.

nothing like that this time. we stopped at the cracker barrel for dinner. drove a little further to charleston and called it a night.

Greenville, South Carolina

good show in greenville.
the space was little and felt like a one room church in the south. partially the crowd partially the pews for seating.
it felt like it was beginning to be a revival, handclaps, umhms, shadows of amens scurrying through us all.
there was also a q and a afterwards.
fun was had.

soooooooo.... there are these dares that we do.
they are not spoken of. whoever is in the postition to pass on the next dare, writes it down and passes it to someone. the dares are more subtle then one's usual dare, they are not to be justified, not terribly crazy, done so it may be something tht actually happened. derrick taking off his shirt in the savannah bar was a dare. in atlanta, dan took off his shirt and lotioned his chest in the middle of a conversation. backstage before the show, derrick passed me one that said i had to ask some people where the belt shop is and talk about how loose my pants on and i need to eat more, then in the conversation my pants have to drop, i am embarassed and apologize. noted

afterwards we went to this sweet basement bar named meathead’s that had OFFICIAL paper football, with the football triangle actually stitched leather and tables with a football field on them and portable end zone goal posts.



people come in there in the afternoons to practice for their leagues apparently. also super cheap and super good food.
i went upstairs to talk to sarah, she got a tarot card deck and is going to read my future over the phone. also across the street at the karaoke bar, sounds of someone that seemed like they may be a frat broh was belting out jump by kriss kross.

back downstairs, mike karate chopped buddy's chilli dog. it went everywhere.
before we left i talked with some folks and asked them where the belt shop was. they knew of none, one of them suggested, bless his heart taking twine from the bar and using that. i had difficulty with the pant droppage, asi don't wear baggy pants anymore, so i had to have them sit below my ass holding them up wiht my hand and wiggle my body out of them till they fell, i sheepishly apologized and pulled them up. then we left.
on the street dan derrick and buddy dropped their pants and walked the block in said state. we hopped in the van and headed to the hotel.

Savannah, Georgia

instilled on the road today was roadstop buddies where we each have a buddy that we trade off each roadstop buying gifts for. mine is dan.







it started with mike getting derrick a hackeysack hat












and then derrick getting mike an FBI cap.
Firm Believer In JESUS.

our original show here in savannah was cancelled due to lack of ticket sales and/or promotion, but the promoter got us a show at a smaller venue, the coffeehouse the sentient bean, which incidentally was the place i had my last and farewell show before i moved away from savannah five years ago, and was also the place that i last read in savannah when last i stopped through 3 years ago.

when we hit savannah my heart was beating and warming turning smiling and slowly dancing, opening it’s eyes with smiles to enter a city that i know where to turn and to see what and know directions through and i recognize as arms that held me though long ago, for o so long. the trees dripping low and the familiar streets i biked through for hours that bled into days letting the ink of that city soak into me, writing what is was all over my insides. how i love this city.

though a smaller show, it was great, we had a lot of fun, warm audience, sold merch, got free good food. hallie, allyson’s friend, was able to come out for the show, which was nice as she’s cool. and funny. and cute.
also ray and barbara rudolph, two Baha’is of the savannah community, came out with their granddaughter lily, who’s father martin had only just been married, when i left. it would have been nice to see martin, but i got to meet his wife the following day at devotionals.
after the show the sparrows met up with an old high school friend of dan’s and her friends, who all go to savannah state or armstrong, i forget.
got a cold slice from vinnie’s and this made me very happy! !!!
then i remembered that my friend tiffany lives here and i had forgotten to call her. i left a message, we headed to a bar, then i got a text from tiffany asking where i was, told her, she called me, told me she was in the alley coming towards the bar i was at, i went outside, saw a silhouette approaching a couple hundred feet away, i ran towards it and there was my old friend tiffany reising, who i worked at the mellow mushroom and who i went on a date with and who would spend many a talk with thinking and talking about art and what it meant to us and how we were trying to find it and we hugged and it was wonderful to see her, particularly as i found out, she no longer lives in georgia but in nyc and only happened to be in savannah only for tonight and was flying out at 7 am back to ny, how deliciously serendipitous! we talked in the alley, and then she went back to join her friend and i went back to join mine. this thing we stumble through is sometimes so nice.



we hung out for a spell, derrick took off his shirt and swung it around, we headed out, ran into tiffany again and walked her part of the way to her hotel, jumped in the van and headed to my boy darrell’s house. he’s a savannah Baha’i and my brother. we went to brazil together and he opened his home to all of us. it’s so great to see him holding it down, he’s a real estate entrepreneur and has 10-14 properties now, but more then that he’s doing it by helping out impoverished folks in danger of losing their homes.

the next morning he, and i along with derrick and buddy went to devotionals at the Baha’i center. it was so wonderful to be there. derrick was feeling under, so buddy and i shared a couple of poems each, and when i did shake the dust, i could barely make it through it, i had started crying so much from giving it to a body of people who were so important to me for so very long and after so very long, it felt like i was coming home, but for only a short while, as right after we had to book it and get on the road.


the sun is out. we are driving through the south. there are small highways and telephone wires kissing the sky. this thing i love. warm breeze like a naked arm. a window down. trees bleeding behind us,

Atlanta, Georgia

first show
a little clunky, pretty good, some work is needed though
saw stephanie, which was nice
hung out with allyson and slept on the couch at hers and jay’s house. it was fantabulous getting to see them.
their house and dog are super cute.



derrick introduces us to sandwich karate: any “sandwich” or rather any main course you eat with your hands, burger, burrito, taco, fried chicken, pizza, etc., is open for chopping and punching. once the eater touches any part of it, it is fair game for Hiyahs, unless the eater has shielded it. a shield can consist of anything, a napkin, a bottlecap, whatever, so long as it has been vocally dubbed a shield and placed on part of the meal. this protects the food from being chopped when not in the eater’s hands.