A musical journey, fraught with peril

My cousin, Bull Handy, emails me he’ll be coming to Sioux Falls from Chicago to play bass with his former mates in the Daddy Powers’ Band. The two guitar-playing brothers know how to do Neil right and I can boogie along to a Hank Jr. song or feel the explosive power of T.N.T.

My brain’s reward circuit lights up just thinking about it. Thanks to years of continually rewiring my brain, my amygdala also lights up. “Warning: Here there be dragons!” Worse, Slick, the evil twin of my pre-addiction, survival-enhancing, inner reptile is lurking there. You can be sure that the low-life little bastard is paying close attention, wordless plots beginning to form as he senses an opportunity to attack a weakened lock on the cage he’s been banished to for over 30-years.

Time for a little chat-with-self: Yes, you can control yourself in a bar these days, if you remind yourself as you hit the tavern door that you are there for the music and to socialize with the band and their avid followers from your former hometown, who will also be making the trek. Nothing else. You hear me, boy? “Sir, yes sir! Not to worry! Furthest from my mind!”

With that settled, I RSVP my cousin and continue on with my busy life, amending a travel plan already made, to coincide with the band’s rare reunion appearance.

Two weeks later and a hundred miles down the road, my speakers are blasting “There’s a reckless feeling in your heart as you head out tonight” and I’m feeling it big-time.  Adrenaline is rushing through my system as my car rushes down I-90 towards Sioux Falls, my speedometer edging closer to the route number than to the speed limit signs. My brain is forming an inchoate “yeah!” As always, “furthest from my mind,” doesn’t mean “furthest from my brain.”

Fortunately, years of deliberately reprogramming all three levels of my brain have caged Slick, my un-killable, consequences-be-damned, addicted circuits in my vital-but-selfish inner reptile, locking him down securely enough that my rewired reptilian, mammalian and logical circuits are able to contain him.

Time to reflect just a minute. Let’s not get completely carried away. Don’t forget who you are, where you came from and where you are going, besides to a bar to hear your cousin’s band play several hours of the music you love. You are going for the musical experience. You don’t want to miss that and possibly destroy the rest of your life with a drunken blowout. The best that will come out of that will be a crippling hangover. Any other scenarios are all downhill from there. Tonight, a million years of brain evolution dissolved in a dozen beers. Tomorrow, the unraveling of 30 years of recovery likely to begin.

In the background as I type, JJ Cale sings “we gonna chug-a-lug and shout.” Music. The emotion-multiplying, double-edged sword of my life. And Eric’s. Some say Clapton credited the song for bringing him back from musical limbo. The attitude it glorifies nearly killed him.

Ease off on the pedal. Let the music continue to blast. Bob’s story backs up my decision as the fire inside consumes the “you.” Yes, I’m ultimately headed for the same “dust and disarray,” but no longer any faster than my natural-born, time-traveling rate of one metabolic second per second, one day at a time. No longer the multiplying effect of “drug years,” operating like “dog years,” to age me beyond my chronological years. Time to remind Seger’s “you” that I’m feeling younger at 70 than I did at 40 and I have some good miles ahead of me if I don’t detour onto that “muddy road ahead.”

Back in the bad old days, I’d have hit the bar, “just to help the band set up…” have a few beers, keep drinking, rising higher and higher, climbing towards that elusive emotional goal that always seems to be just “one more,” away. By the time the band begins playing, the unsustainable peak would be trending down, senses dulling, kidneys flooding me out of my stage-front position, pissing my life away again.

Tonight, I hit the motel for a short nap and arrive at the bar early to spike a music-enhancing close-up space for the evening. No sweat. The crowd takes a full set of music to down enough alcohol to give them the guts to start joining the old man gyrating a few feet from the guitars. Towards the end of the second set, the dance floor is packed, the stage-front now elbow-to-elbow with the bodies of healthy young animals and one healthy old geezer, swaying to the amplified sound. A gal young enough to be my daughter, okay, granddaughter, throws a hip into mine.

Inner reptile, “yeah!” Logical brain, “at ease, Grampa. Sweet invitations are history. Flirtations are not a sign they desire you. They are freely thrown because they don’t fear you. Besides, you took a vow to kick any common-sense-stealing sex to the curb to join alcohol and other drugs. No more ‘wine and women.’ Get back to the music.”

I already had a thirty-year run of adolescence. That will have to do. I smile at her and return to encouraging the band with various screams and hollers. For electric music, the louder the audience, the more enthusiastic and venturesome the band becomes.

On this night the band hadn’t played together for some time and they had little time to rehearse, so it was no surprise that it turned into a bit of a ragged jam at times. A friend of the band responded to calls for her to sit in on the drums. She protested she had already had a few too many beverages, but clearly wanted to whale. As it turned out she had indeed over-corrected and couldn’t keep her rhythm going. She laughed and gave up the sticks.

I hark back to 1969 and the female drummer of the KC-based Stoned Circus and my girlfriend hurling accusations when she finds one of her broken drumsticks in my ‘67 Mustang. I had just picked the stick up off the floor to beat on the dashboard of my poor abused little pony. I think the drummer was actually in a relationship with John, the guitar player, while Nancy Lake, the vocalist, was involved with Butch, my good friend and sheetrock partner. I was there for the music and we followed them up to Waterloo for their next gig on the flimsy excuse we were looking for work there. 
I loved John’s work on Comin’ Home Baby and was deeply disappointed to find it dropped from their playlist the next year when they hit The 505 Club in Des Moines. I believe I first heard of BB King when John played and sang, “Why I sing the Blues.”

Before going back to Des Moines, the three of us took a side trip north to the Cities to see Johnny Winter at the Guthrie. I think it was when we returned home that the still-married Butch left for Kansas City with Nancy, as the Stoned Circus was catching on big in that market. My girlfriend laughed and said, “Butch went to Kansas City to see where his responsibilities lie.”

Another friend of the band, who always does the vocals on T.N.T. for them, gave out his usual strong performance, including his enunciation of “I will ex-plo-ohhhhh-oh-duh” that AC/DC would do well to emulate. And the brothers still knew how to make those guitars blaze. As always the crowd was heavy with faithful hometown fans who became part of the act, so the enthusiasm never waned.

Closing time. Amps still “ringing in my head.” No need to grab an over-priced package-six to stretch out the night and enhance my morning misery. 
A light rain is falling, no biggie in itself, but the downtown streets reflect neon lights in long smears, blurring the lane-lines. Cops cruise by, grateful for the quota-filling opportunity to catch someone driving in two lanes, or suddenly swerving back into one. As I approach the turn  to my motel the six lanes I’m in become eight line-blurred lanes to the left in the unfamiliar cross street, the center island set back too far to be helpful. Which lane is mine? Don’t wind up on the wrong side of the island!

As I anxiously navigate the turn, I feel a flood of gratitude for the recommitment made as I walked into the bar. “Music, si! Alcohol, no!” Right now, I’d have my own figurative neon sign hovering over me, a finger pointing down, “Pick me! Pick me!” flashing signals to the watchful eyes of the police with every hesitation or wobble.

As always, I do not dismiss those feelings as soon as I am safely sliding down the center of my intended lane. Years of rewiring my brain can be for naught if those connections have been loosened by the heady sounds and sights of the evening, the scent of sexual-tension pheromones hanging so thick in the air they are “dripping off of the wall.” The rewired circuits need to be checked and reinforced right now, while my reward circuits are firing in response to my useful decision to honor my decades long commitment to recovery.

Back at the motel and on the road in the morning, I continue to play out the worst-case scenarios inherent in any impulsive “one-won’t-hurt” decision. A DUI would be the least of my problems. The life I had spent all those years rebuilding would be teetering on the edge of a chasm waiting to re-engulf me, as Slick lies in ambush, trying to look nonchalant, choking back the drooling that might give him away, coiling to strike in the morning with another evil suggestion to have “just the one to take the edge off before you proceed on to the Cities…” 
One for the figurative or even literal ditch. No, thanks Slick. I’m not your slave anymore. Here, let me replace that lock on your cage with this new model. You’ll look good behind it…