Annual Tom Waits festival
Don Schantz
I'm not going to get into any legal trouble for passing it along verbatim, but I wasn't around
this NG when this came out, so I don't know if any of you folks talked about it or not. Can
anyone here tell us more about this event? I might have to plan a vacation next January if
this is still happening. It sure sounds like a good time. I got the article from a search
service that catalogs the Times.
- Don
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- The opening bars of Tom Waits's 'Closing Time'
bellowed out around Salt Lick Farm at 5:45 A.M.:
Now the sun's coming up,
I'm riding with lady love
About 25 bleary-eyed people soon staggered into the kitchen to join
their hosts, Ted Ferguson and Sean Griffin, on Jan. 14 as they kicked off
the annual 24-hour Tom Waits festival with a 6 o'clock shot of Scotch. Mr.
Griffin, dressed in a muddy-green Salvation Army suit and porkpie hat,
called the guests to prayer: 'Give us this day our daily splash.' Then the
group tucked into a breakfast of bacon and eggs accompanied by coffee and
cigarettes.
For four years, dozens of people have gathered each Martin Luther King
Jr. holiday weekend to celebrate Mr. Waits, 45, the
singer-songwriter-actor whose beat-derived songs are awash in a romantic
sea of hangovers, emotional haze and despair. It began as a small party in
the founders' railroad apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and in 1993
moved 80 miles north to the Ferguson family's Dutch colonial farmhouse
near Poughkeepsie.
While the Waitsian world is one of sorrow, darkness and demons of the
mind, it also celebrates dreams, deadpan humor and human oddities. To
some, the idea of having a round-the-clock party in honor of an artist who
is known for an inimitably gruff voice, broken soundscapes and haunting
lyrics, who has not toured since 1988 and who was last seen on film
playing a well-tanked limousine driver in 'Short Cuts,' may seem strange.
For Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Griffin, both 29, it was the obvious thing to do.
'He's a really American writer, and that's what America is: 24 hours a
day, always open, always there,' said Mr. Ferguson, a graduate student in
English at the University of Texas at Austin. 'You don't know who's going
to walk in or why. We hate the way normal parties go, where people don't
really get to know each other. There's no way you can maintain that
pretense for 24 hours.'
Accordingly, previous Waits festivals have included Make-Your-Own
Dennis Hopper Doll competitions and Junkyard Orchestra jams featuring a
cacophony of kazoos, sheet metal and plumbing appliances.
This year's antics were no less unusual. By 8 o'clock, just as the
morning fog was beginning to clear, a crowd had gathered on the back porch
to shoot BB guns at an assortment of beer bottles, coffee cans and a
Michael Jackson record perched on a sawhorse.
At 10:30 A.M. everybody convened in the front room for a seminar on
'The Art of Pacing,' or how to last the entire 24 hours. 'You should stay
just sober enough to sound more intelligent than the person next to you,'
warned Mr. Ferguson's sister, Jen.
For those who were perhaps hard of hearing -- or learning -- the rest
of the day may have drifted into a haze of cheap beer and tobacco,
macaroni-and-cheese and TV dinners. But then Tom Waits without cigarettes,
alcohol and tasteless cuisine is a little like Ben & Jerry's ice cream
without sugar.
Dana Hagstron, 26, a cabinetmaker from Port Chester, N.Y., has been to
all five festivals and was, he said, smoking Kents all day 'for that last
bent butt,' in reverence to one of the bard's songs. 'This guy has been
touched with what a changing America is like,' he said. 'It's a diner
culture of an Americana that is slowly being lost.'
While a ukulele group named Humuhumunukunukuapua'a played Hawaiian
songs on the front porch, Ms. Ferguson and friends embarked on cave
painting in the basement -- a mural of hieroglyphic graffiti whose only
legible sign by the end of the festival was one that read 'Love Chaos.'
Ms. Ferguson, 27, a painter, said: 'The whole party is nice, not only
because we get to see our friends but there's a creative element to it.
It's not just blind homage.'
One group congregated at the kitchen table exchanging Magic Marker
tattoos. Others ventured a ride in the dump truck of Uncle Bob, as Mr.
Ferguson's father, who owns the house, is affectionately known to everyone
who walks through his front door. 'Tom Waits I know nothing about,' Bob
Ferguson, 53, said approvingly. 'As far as I'm concerned, he's a great
excuse for my son's party.'
By late afternoon about 70 doctors and lawyers, teachers and
architects, television writers and literary agents, artists and musicians,
students and unemployed aficionados in their mid-20's to mid-30's had
descended upon Salt Lick Farm.
'Let's be realistic,' said Tim Conroy, 34, who works in
communications. 'We do kind of terrorize the house.' He arrived late, he
said, because he had moved from Toronto to New York the night before.
Besides, he is not a huge Tom Waits fan. 'I mean, the guy's all right and
all that,' he said, 'but what I like is that I get to do things I'd never
think of doing on my own, such as Spam carving.'
The exact link between Mr. Waits and a tin of Spam may have escaped
the outside observer, but that did nothing to allay the industriousness of
this year's artists, who offered such entries as 'Bart Spamson,' the
minimalistic 'Spam Unplugged' and the winner, 'Spam Lantern,' by Thomas
Joseph, 28, who lives in Madison, N.J., and who calls himself a slacker.
'Tom would be very proud of the concept,' Mr. Joseph said, 'as it's a
common product used in an artistic way.'
Mr. Waits, who is sent an invitation each year at his home in
California, actually telephoned the hosts after the inaugural festival to
bestow his blessings, said Mr. Griffin, a china importer who lives in
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. 'We asked if he could go 24 hours listening to
his own music. He says, 'Well, listening to your own music is kind of like
having tin foil on your teeth; it's not a completely enjoyable
experience.' '
He even mentioned the idea of attending the festival, Mr. Griffin
added. 'But we can't have Tom Waits show up,' he said. 'He'd clean up on
the trivia contest.'
This year, Mr. Waits maintained a safe distance from the festival,
refusing even to respond to calls from a reporter.
In interviews, Mr. Waits has expressed a fondness for such instruments
as 'farm machinery' and for 'hearing music wrong.' He would not have been
disappointed with Hevy Floe, a three-piece punk band who provided the
late-night entertainment dressed in gas station overalls, and who
constructed a drum kit from a 1972 Jeep grille, gas tank and hub caps.
Mr. Waits is perhaps best appreciated at that time of day when so many
of his songs are set, after hours. He was once asked where he hailed from.
'Bedlam and Squalor,' Mr. Waits replied, a fitting title for Salt Lick
Farm at 5 A.M. the next day, when the last games of pool and bridge were
winding down and the nonstop loop of records and videos had run its
course.
Outside, as the embers from the night's bonfire flickered and the
diehards sang in the improbably mild January air, two courageous souls
took to running barefooted across the coals.
'I had always heard about these people through tales,' said Ellen
Anspon, 32, once a neighbor of Mr. Ferguson's, who had flown in from St.
Louis to attend the festival, her first. It turned out to be something of
an epiphany for her. 'Now I know why there's a whole day,' she said. 'I've
converted.'
Caption:
Photos: Sean Griffin, a host of the Tom Waits celebration. (Susan
Harris for The New York Times)(pg.35); Jordan Sommer, center, joined
other ukulele players on the porch at the party. (Susan Harris for The
New York Times)(pg.37)
PACO 5
and found out where they lived and went to their farm and made it there
just in time for the festival if they would accept me, you, any one of us
with open arms. I'd like to think so.
Dionysus
Joseph Bair
Hey everybody - here's an article from p. 35 of the NY Times
from Sunday Jan 22, 1995. I hope I'm not going to get into any
legal trouble for passing it along verbatim, but I wasn't around
this NG when this came out, so I don't know if any of you folks
talked about it or not. Can anyone here tell us more about this
event? I might have to plan a vacation next January if this is
still happening. It sure sounds like a good time. I got the article
from a search service that catalogs the Times.
>
> - Don
>
> POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- The opening bars of Tom Waits's 'Closing Time'
> bellowed out around Salt Lick Farm at 5:45 A.M.:
> Now the sun's coming up,
> I'm riding with lady love
<snip>
Don-
Nice work! Ted and Sean do not know this now but on Martin Luther
King Day 10,000 drunken fucknozels will appearing at his doorstep in Salt
Lick Farm at 5:45 AM in 1997.
joe
Don Schantz
>from Sunday Jan 22, 1995. I hope I'm not going to get into any
>legal trouble for passing it along verbatim, but I wasn't around
>this NG when this came out, so I don't know if any of you folks
>talked about it or not. Can anyone here tell us more about this
>event? I might have to plan a vacation next January if this is
>still happening. It sure sounds like a good time. I got the article
>from a search service that catalogs the Times.
>>
>> - Don
>>
>> POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- The opening bars of Tom Waits's 'Closing Time'
>> bellowed out around Salt Lick Farm at 5:45 A.M.:
>> Now the sun's coming up,
>> I'm riding with lady love
>Don-
> Nice work! Ted and Sean do not know this now but on Martin Luther
>Lick Farm at 5:45 AM in 1997.
>joe
Okay, this illustrates a problem with written communication. Are you just laughing at the idea
of all those people showing up, or are you chastising me for basically advertising an annual
party at someone's house to a bunch of people they may not want around? It almost sounds like
the latter, but I hope not. I'm pretty new to the Net and not fully aware of all the
intricacies of Netiquette, so I hope this was not out of line. After all, it was originally
published in the NY Times! If I shouldn't be posting stuff like this, someone let me know in
clear unambiguous language. I don't want to be rude or ignorant.
Meanwhile, I'm going to assume you (Joe) have the same smartass sense of humor I do and are
just joking around. It is kind of an amusing thought. Having never seen a TW show live, I'm
curious about what a cross-section of Waits fans looks like, especially ones who are that
hard-core. Which reminds me - has anyone ever noticed that although "Big Time" is obstensibly
a "live" film, you never see a single audience member anywhere in the entire thing? Not that
I've spotted, at least. What the hell do you people look like?!?
- Don
P.S. What's a fucknozel? Is that Yiddish?