Tomorrow Night

....It was either that song title or "I'll Stay Out Tonight" the problem being, of course, that tomorrow night is the night in question, not tonight. I don't want to tax anyone's attention spans at this time. Even Silent Mike has nearly lost track of the days.

Sidebar: [MIKE! WE'RE LEAVING OUR HOUSE A LITTLE AFTER SEVEN!! BE THERE TO GET YOUR TICKET OR THE WHOLE THING FALLS APART!!]

Well, we can hope the message gets through. Hard to tell.


Back to the matter at hand: It is, of course, our Personal Pre-Summerfest Misbehavior Management Seminar and Boozy Careen, otherwise known as Free Hot Lunch, otherwise known as Wa-Ha! A thursday night show, warming up for the biggie in Madison on Saturday night, and being a decade or two older, the band has graciously afforded a day of recovery between.

A FHL show is not to be missed. I last tried to describe it here; reading back, that was actually pretty good. The local music scene has been poorer without these three guys roaming about; but everybody moves on and can't begrudge them for piling it in as a full time band after giving it a real shot.

They hit the ground running with their first album, WaHa Music. Although the production of the album tended toward workmanlike folk, as a live band they play much more brightly (and stripped down, doing the unplugged thing years before MTV) keeping it to a couple of guitars, mandolin, banjo and some a capella songs. Not to mention _oh, please let's don't mention!- the ionteraction between band and audience.

The first album also birthed one of the WaHa classics: I Hate To Wake Up Sober In Nebraska:

As you travel through this world
Many roads you will ride
some are long, some are steep
Many will not treat you kind

But the longest and most boring
stretches 500 miles
from Omaha Nebraska to that Colorado line

(chorus) I Hate To Wake Up Sober in Nebraska
Them miles and miles of empty range
Shake my sense of time
So pass me up a cool one, light the pipe, turn up the stereo
It's 5 hours more to Oglala
and 300 miles to that Colorado Line

From Omaha to Lincoln
Grand Island down to Lexington
It's the flattest piece of highway man or god has ever made.
No trees to block the sunrise,
No hills to mar the landscape
'Cept for liquor stores and truckstops
every mile looks just the same.

(chorus)

Now if I had a beer for every time I drove I-80
I might get drunk enough to pack my bags and leave tonight.
But I'd probably wake up red-eyed,
just the other side of Omaha
with a case of empty bottles (Point Beer)
And the sun about to rise.

(chorus)

and I got Jack Daniels on the dashboard
in case my Jesus lets me down

The song, done in a giddy bluegrass stylee, was strong enough to garner an excellent review in Playboy magazine, (which oddly enough does not do as well promoting music as you might think). But the album also compiled a hit list of WaHa setlist stalwarts: Tequila Sheila, My Wife And My Best Friends Girl, Trees In Love, Mambo Man, Reiba's Cantina and the a cappella epic Sailor's Prayer (I'm gonna include those lyrics too, just to get Zelmo so wound up he won't be able to work the rest of the day):

Though my sails be torn and tattered
And the mast be turned about
Let the night wind chill me to my very soul.
And though the spray might sting my eyes
And the stars no light provide
Give me just another morning light to hold.

Chorus:
For I will not lie me down
This rain a raging
No, I will not lie me down
In such a storm
And if this night be unblessed
I shall not take my rest
Until I reach another shore.

And though the only water left
Is but salt to wound my thirst
I will drink the rain that falls so steady down.
And though night-blindness be my gift
And there be thieves upon my drift
I will thank the fog that shelters me along.

Chorus

Though my mates be drained and weary
And I believe their hopes are lost
There’s no need for their bones on that blackened bottom.
And though death waits just off the bow
We will not answer to him now
He shall stand to face the morning light without us.

Chorus

That one is done in wonderful harmonies, and is usually the last encore. Brings a tear to my eye when they do it.

Well, Playboy notwithstanding, the album did not make them the Nation's neo-folk/bluegrass/country fun loving troubadours, so they kept slogging it out in the fun and games of the music lifestyle. I know it created marital frictions, certainly (although now all three members have beautiful wives who assist in the occasional FHL giggery). They next released a live tape, which got closer to the mark, and a couple of CDs eventually.

I've been going to see them every opportunity since I saw them by chance in 1983; it must total nearly a hundred times by now, because we'd see them do several sets each year at Summerfest, including some truly weird locations. Of course, we've also gone to see them in Florida and Hawaii.

Through it all, regardless of the other music I like, they've remained one of my favorite bands. And it's not just the tequila! Jeff, John, and Jeff, your music helped twist me into the oddball fuck I am today, and I love you guys for it. See you tomorrow night.

Oh, and Wa. Ha.Tomorrow Night