Brook Pridemore (of Brook Pridemore)

Tumblr just seems like my pre-teen inner monologue pushed onto the internet and commented upon by strangers.  I don’t quite get it.

Look, there are a lot of little bands in Brooklyn.  Probably a thousand, at least.  And they all have a bunch of songs that their friends love, and they play a couple of shows a month, and it’s a big fun drunk party.  And nobody outside that band’s little circle of friends ever really notices the band, but it’s okay, because they have their friends, and they have each other, and that’s more than enough.

Huggabroomstik was, and remains, one of that thousand little Brooklyn bands.  A few people outside of its’ periphery are aware of its’ existence, but even its’ most legendary exploits-the European Tours, theNighthawks at the Diner-style live albumIntimate Huggabroomstik, etc.-are only really legend to a select few who hold the band dear.

I joined Huggabroomstik at a difficult time for both the band and myself.  Dashan and Johnny had both quit the band, leaving them without a timekeeper, and without one of their founders.  All of my bands had broken up in acrimony.  I was pretty good friends with Preston, and had known the others decently well for a few years.  I called Neil Kelly and asked if I could have a shot at being their new drummer.  We had one rehearsal together, the night before my first show with them (and if memory serves, my old band, the Valley Cubs, played that show, too).

It was messy, and sloppy, and fun.  Huggabroomstik was always a mess, in one way or another.  Part of the charm of that band, for me, was that it always seemed that, the worse time the audience was having, the better time the band was having.  And, indeed, Neil pulled me aside before one of those first few shows and said, “Don’t worry about getting every beat exactly right.  I don’t even know what’s going on, sometimes.  That’s kind of the point.”

That has always been the thing about Huggabroomstik, for me.  The band exists primarily (almost exclusively) to entertain themselves.  The audience is ancillary.  When you consider, though, that a good sixty of us gathered at Goodbye Blue Monday last night, that Dibson T. Hoffweiler flew in from California to be with us, that probably three quarters of the people who gathered together last night have been members of Huggabroomstik at some point, the audience part of the band.  Anybody who watched Huggabroomstik from an outsider’s perspective can say, “Jesus. Ican do this bullshit better than these guys.”  And they can.  And they often do.

That’s the difference between Huggabroomstik and every other little Brooklyn band that plays with, for, and to its’ friends: inclusiveness.  A true community, a true revolving door.

I have only ever wanted to play music, but even as a musician, I felt on the outside, looking in.  Huggabroomstik welcomed even me, and I (and most musicians I know) have Dashan and Neil, and the other fifty or so people who have been in the band, to thank.

So, thank you.

Tonight, I was waiting on the M train, heading home, this is just a couple of hours ago, I have been carrying my ukelele, because I seem to always have a song on the tip of my tongue.  These things come in waves. 

I was singing on the platform when the M train arrived.  I know how long the train sits there, before it heads back to Metropolitan.  The answer is: a while.  I was playing with this quartet:

Notes trickle down from above,

That I don’t know nothing, know nothing about love.

We all saw the brackets come out of the shelf,

but I’m a proponent for Do-It-Yourself,

and I can’t change.

Two cops on the Manhattan-bound side saw me step into the M Train, still singing and still playing, as the doors to the Manhattan-bound side closed.  I stopped more or less abruptly as I reached my seat.  I grabbed out my camera, took a picture of this Hitchcock-in-Mohawk picture that caught my eye, and took my seat.

The cops came up onto the Jamaica-bound platform, as the doors were re-opening to let arriving passengers aboard.  I was beckoned over by the cops.

“You’re not supposed to pass between cars.”

Me: “I didn’t.”

Cop: “Yes, you did.”

This went on for about a minute, and the cop walked away.  I sat down, confused.  I was doing something that warranted him ticketing me.  He chose to order me not to do something I hadn’t been doing.

The best answer is to not be doing anything illegal, of course.  I don’t do illegal stuff anymore, not really.

Something makes me wonder if that matters, in the end.

The other day, I was playing ukelele in the park near my job.  I was trying to kick start new songs.  I haven’t written a new song in a little while. 

A homeless man approached me, started his Elton John spiel (I get “You look JUST like Elton John,” a lot, these days).  Mid-spiel, he noticed the South Of The Border sticker on the bottom of my uke, and beamed: “YOU’VE BEEN TO SOUTH OF THE BORDER!  I WAS BORN SIXTEEN MILES FROM THERE!”

I asked him where he was from, he said, “Florence, South Carolina.”

Elton John dig aside, I gave him a dollar, and sang him a song.

Everybody wants to play the big cities.  That’s the problem with big cities: everybody plays there.  I have my routines in big cities: burritos and Amoeba Records in San Francisco, Cheapo Records and Barton Springs in Austin, etc.  But the little towns, done right.  These little places are the real reason I’ve stretched myself so thin to stay on the road, throughout the years.  And Florence, SC is the epitome of the small town phenomena.

Pat the Bunny and I rolled into the 511 House for the first time in January 2007.  We were greeted in the huge, parking lot-esque backyard by a woman who looked like a young Catherine O’Hara and a man who looked a little like Sweetums from the Muppet Show.  The 511 House is a big old beast: it has a screened-in porch and would look more appropriate situated on a plantation, though the fact that you can see a Waffle House from the back door seems apropos.

I went into that show thinking it was going to be a bust, but I always walk into shows thinking they’re going to be a bust.  Over the course of the night, we started this weird band in the kitchen, a homeless archaeologist peed on one of our travel companions, there was a something delicious cooked for our pasta-weary stomachs, and I smoked probably a pack of cigarettes.

Oh, and.  We played one of the most memorable shows of a very memorable tour.  Kids danced, we sold records, but, most importantly, we made friends.  David (he who looked like Sweetums) booked my next Florence show before we left.  Carmen and Tony had a band called the Mountain Yellers, which expanded and contracted over the next couple of years. I remember the name and face of everyone I met that night. 

I went on to play something like eight shows at 511 House before February 2010.  My last stop at the house to date will be my last stop at the house, forever.  Tony and his girlfriend Kelly (they met that first weekend Pat and I were there) moved to Charleston.  David and Carmen, married in April 2010, moved to Dallas last year.  There are punks in Florence, still.  I promise myself, and them, that I will see them again.

I’ve been in the city a long time.  I need a town for a day.