Folsom, The Earth Moves, and Lights Out

The week went pretty well here until Thursday. Joel and I started out Sunday in NYC with Russ, the Rubber Rebel, holding a booth at Folsom East. The usual suspects were all about, and the day was perfect. For a change, no mad downpours to drive everyome off and make me lunge for plastic, book protecting tarps.

Two days later, we were swaying back and forth to the music of Carole King and James Taylor, who brought their reunion tour to Philadelphia. We had pretty nice seats and the revolving stage made the view perfect. While Taylor's voice remains as silky smooth as every, King's has gained a rasp, but still sounds great. They played for about two and a half hours and the band was legendary. Danny Korthcmar, Lee Sklar and Rusty Kunkle on guitar, bass and drums, respectively. If those names seem at all familiar, it's because just about every Cali-rock album of the seventies and early eighties probably had them on it.

Even though her voice has aged a bit, King was the rocker of the pair. When she belted out "I Feel The Earth Move," she really came off strong. She also had a highlight of the show by singing "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman." James Taylor was almost a jukebox; "You've Got a Friend," "Country Road," "Sweet Baby James," "Fire and Rain"...he hit all the classics. There was one more pair of great duets, when they joined together for "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and the lone unexpected surprise, highlighting King's songwriting legacy by performing "Crying In The Rain."

Little did I know that, as she was performing "I Feel The Earth Move," Teutonic plates somewhere in Canada and the northern USA where preparing to shift the following day. And the day after, a sudden storm would drop me and Joel off the grid for over a day. A storm system that ripped through the area in about 45 minutes, whipping up peak winds of 75 MPH and subsequently knocking out power to about 200,000 people. Including me. From about 3:30 in the afternoon Thursday until about 8:30 Friday night, the elements had us at their mercy.

Oddly enough, Friday morning and less than a mile away, the power was on. By 7:30 Friday, I got tired of sitting in the heat and went to a movie ("Jonah Hex" was the only thing starting within my arrival time, it was pretty dreadful, even with Josh Brolin and John Malkovich). The traffic light a block from my house was on, but not the one three blocks way. With all the uprooted trees and downed tree limbs, I guess the campaign was block by block.

But the electric was on when I got home, so a cooked dinner was worth the wait. Now on to catching up with the weekend.