Lennie Loftin

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my mom cooking in the kitchen, patting her thigh and swaying to the songs on the Country radio station… songs like "Ode to Billy Joe", "Tall Dark Stranger", and "Coat of Many Colors". Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and The Who were more my style… but the hick-soul sounds that cried out of our little counter-top radio were undeniable. Both genres influenced the way I write songs today… howling dogs… love found and lost… and the things that go bump in your mind. I grew up next to the railroad tracks on a dead end street in a tiny North Carolina tobacco town. My mom and dad weren’t happy together. At age eight I knew I wanted to be an actor. I started doing the little kid roles in the local high school plays. I needed to be out at night, out in the world, even then. Maybe it was the tension at home. Maybe I was just born with an acting jones. I don’t know. But, I wanted more… more attention… more everything. I never felt like I choose acting. It chose me. I had a chatty little monkey on my back. I loved music and played in bands in high school… but by college I was sure that acting was my real ticket out. Skip forward four years… The day I graduated, I got into a car and drove six hundred miles north to New York City. In eleven years, I only had two different Manhattan addresses: Amsterdam between 95th and 96th, and 9th Avenue at 44th. Those neighborhoods were like exotic, tight knit small towns dropped onto an urban concrete grid. There was protocol among the locals. There was opportunity or danger at each corner. Ever see the film “After Hours”? It was just like that, I swear. The streets were populated with pizza shops, stockbrokers, painters, swank restaurants, rats aplenty, pimps in dive bars, doll-faced prostitutes… and the pregnant one with the cigarette clamped in her teeth and a halo brace screwed into her skull. There were con men, cops on horseback, cats in alleys, needles on my doorstep… and there were actors… actors everywhere. They came. They went. They worked… or, they never did… the barmaid from Montana who came seeking fame but only found another place to disappear. Without my friends from college, I may not have made it there two years. Who knows? But, I stayed and I worked on the stage, and I worked in restaurants. I flourished and I floundered. It was home for a while. In 1993, I landed a job in the film The Quick and the Dead. I can’t completely tell the rest of this story without mentioning my buddy Russell Crowe. I already know that he would prefer that I simply talk about the music… but our friendship and our connection through music definitely influenced this project… We met on the movie set, the scene where Russ wakes up shackled to the fountain in the town square. My dirty hand reaches into frame. I strike a wooden match off his grizzled beard, light my cigar, and challenge him to a gunfight… We worked all day until just after dark, then rode back to Tucson in a film company transportation van. With the radio blaring, our conversation naturally veered towards music. He told me about his band, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts. I told him I had played and written songs in high school, but nothing since… and I told him about my brother, J.K., a monster guitarist with his own recording studio in Wilmington, N.C. We ended up having a couple of pints and talking about work and music all evening. Over the next few years, I hung out at a couple of recording sessions with the Grunts as they tracked their albums. I sang backing vocals on The Photograph Kills and Swept Away Bayou. That time in the studio got me itching… In late 1997, a song popped into my head out of nowhere. That Christmas, I asked my brother to grab his guitar and help me work on the song in his studio. He did. The next Christmas, I had a few more songs. This time my brother gave me his old Alvarez acoustic and told me I should learn to play again… said my songs were pretty good. In 2002, Dave Wilkins (Grunts) and I sat down a couple of evenings and talked about my songs and about the instruments I imagined inhabiting the arrangements… “Acoustic guitars, sweeping pedal steel, and a lot of Hammond B3 organ… something between Willie Nelson and Pink Floyd.” He agreed. I worked on the film “Daredevil” that June and July. In August, we went to record at my brother’s studio for a month. I could yammer on and on about how everything came together, but maybe it’s time to shut my pie hole and let you check out the tunes. I’d like to mention a couple of the main players first: Terry Nash learned to play keyboards on the Hammond organ. He’s a wizard. Donny Wynn (Robert Palmer) and Jon Blondell laid down drums and bass respectively at Willie Nelson’s Arlyn Studios… Amazing! Clyde Maddocks, a local N.C. pedal steel and Dobro player bent some tasteful, twisted notes… check out Tarantulas Dancing, Rat on a Wheel and The Deadest Man Alive. Rupert Oysler is WANTED in four states for slaying audiences with his harmonica. Unfrickinbelievable! Derwin Hinson, the singing Ebanjolist did it all. My brother J.K. squeezed every ounce of life out of his guitar on Freddy’s Got a Shotgun and Naureen. Dave Wilkins, Billy-Dean Cochran, Dave Kelly, Stewart Kirwan, and a few other talented Aussie’s fill out most of the rest of the musicians. Dave Wilkins produced the sessions. J.K. Loftin co-produced and was the recording engineer (mix on "Freddy's Got a Shotgun"). Paul Lani mixed the album. Their work is clean and beautiful. You can download tracks here, NOW! If you like it… please tell your friends. Tell the world…LennieThe Cape Fear Sessions song list:1) The Deputy of Galveston – I was listening to a lot of Jimmie Rogers at the time. I just needed to write a good killin’ song. Dave Wilkins recommended we create a chorus with the Bridge cord progression. Russ recommended I lock myself in a room for two days and come up with some better lyrics. 2) The Deadest Man Alive – Vacant storefronts… Main Street in my hometown. Some people live there well. If I’d stayed… 3) Naureen – I think the crookedest/wicked/sweet smile line came after seeing Patricia Arquette as Alabama in True Romance on cable one night. I changed the lyrics about a million times. I remember driving around L.A. going nuts running the points and counter points through my head again and again. 4) Big Bear – The Big Dipper and Little Dipper crawling across the sky at a snail’s pace… cigarettes and burning cedar… someone to share the night. 5) Sweet Salvation – Peeling away the layers of personal baggage and getting down to the gospel of love. Three long time friends from a church choir came in to do the backing vocals. They knew each other so well and they fell right in to it. They just started wailing away. It was fantastic. 6) Rat on a Wheel – Having fun, but wearing my shoe soles thin on the treadmill of my life. 7) Bittersweet Hotel – “Oh, my darlin’… our sweet love has gone to hell.” Cracked myself up with that one. 8) Freddy’s Got a Shotgun – My friend Freddy got a shotgun from his uncle for his 14th birthday, Valentine’s Day, 1973. He blew a hole in the dining room floor while his mom relaxed and smoked a cigarette at the table after a long day at work. He almost blew my foot off. She grabbed a broom and whacked him in the head screaming, “He’s crazy! He’s crazy! HE”S GOT A GUN…!” as she chased him out of the house and around their backyard. Every few steps he’d turn the gun on her, warning, “Get away from me Momma…” but, she’d just smack him in the head and he’d run off again. That’s where I started. But the song wrote itself after the first line. It poured out. Took fifteen minutes. 9) The Road Less Traveled – “Man, I’ve seen some things along the way.” I fell in love and wrote this song. I thought, “Thank God I ended up here.” But, I started thinking about where on earth I might have ended up if I had zigged instead of zagged… as a child… or as a young adult. “Every single thing I’ve ever done has led me here to you.” Out of all the random events and choices in my life… some not very wise or graceful… a sense of purpose, clarity, commitment, and order. 10) Tarantulas Dancing – The title came from a play I saw in New York in 1990. It stuck in my head. Dark. But, I was in a great mood when I wrote this. I had the music in my head for a year and a half, before I came up with the first verse and chorus after a night out with friends. Got home around daybreak. My neighbor cranked his car and drove off to work. I picked up my guitar… 11) By and By – Promise. Hope. A thank you note. This is for my friend Kim Lutz. She left this world too soon.Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening and for your purchases. BUY individual tracks above through Snocap or CLICK "Buy the CD now!" to buy the entire CD at CD Baby! Giving a friend or loved one an online gift card? COMING SOON to Napster and other online music outlets... I'll let you know when it's available on each of these on-line outlets.AVAILABLE NOW at iTunes. Load up your iPod! Ringtones, too! Wanna turn someone on to The Cape Fear Sessions? Click "Gift This Music" beside the CD cover and send a song or the whole album to someone you know who just loves weird, dark Americana! Perfect for a day at the beach... GIVE THE GIFT OF MUSIC!!! ALSO AVAILABLE at Amazon.com!GIVE THE GIFT OF MUSIC! I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V4.4 (www.strikefile.com/myspace)

********************************The Carson Story, Pt. 1 By Lennie Loftin Registered WGA *The following is an eight-part essay based on actual events. I have changed the name of the antagonist, as I wish him no ill will. In saying this, let me also say that I will not be calling to invite him over for dinner...EVER! But without our antagonist...there would be no story to tell. For this fact alone, I am truly thankful. Are you sitting quite comfortably...? ********** ********** ********* So, after six years in New York, I finally get a chance to do some Shakespeare...

Summer in New York. A great time of year if you have an air conditioner, and defective olfactory senses. Without these luxuries...the living ain't so easy. You take a shower and towel off, only to find that you have to towel off again once you reach your bedroom, just three steps away...a thick, humidified paste of carbon monoxide and soot and sweat, mix to wrap around you like dripping papier-mâché. Why did you bother to shower? You towel off again and cover yourself from head to toe with Ban Roll-on in an attempt to stay dry. It doesn't work. Nothing ever works. 
 You leave your apartment and hit the street, and then the street hits you. The sun bakes you from above, the concrete bakes you from below, and just as your building's door slams shut behind you, the funk from the garbage of a thousand restaurants, and apartments just like your own, lands firmly on that little spot you missed shaving, just below your nose. A street sweeper brushes past, and crushed cigarettes and stale beer and vomit and dead rats are re-animated for one brief moment in a macabre swirling mist before dancing away on a hot burst of wind from a subway grate. Why did you bother to bathe? No one would ever know the difference. 
 You take twenty steps down into the inferno of the New York City Transit Authority. The train tunnels have become a living orgasm of hot air and perspiration. Damp clothes drape across your form like a spent lover in a New Orleans attic, in August. You step into the frigid bliss of a sub-zero subway car... and as you start to shiver, you feel the skeletal fingers of a summer cold unbutton your soaked shirt, slip under your skin, reach through your ribs, and scratch at your lungs. In ten days your nose will be running as a cough settles in. You exit the train, climb the twenty steps up to the inferno of the New York City morning, walk three blocks to work and enter the air-conditioned pub with an, already, dry and scratchy throat. You set up the bar. You cut enough lemons and limes to cure a worldwide epidemic of scurvy, because they have to last, not only through your shift, but also through the night shift as well. You do this because you’re the day bartender, you are scum, and it's your job. Then your first customer comes in. He's a regular. And he brightens your day... 

 It's the Summer of 1989. Steve Beckley's in town. Tom Alden is back from his first California stint with Tony and Tina's Wedding. Steve and Veronique Carter are living on West End Ave. in the 70's. And I'm working at T.J.Tuckers Restaurant at 59th and 1st. It's the summer that I did Shakespeare with Harold Brockston, and dragged Steve Beckley and Steve Carter down with me into Harold's living hell. 

 So, as I said...I'm working at the bar and this guy, Carl? (close enough) comes in. It's not a great day. It's not a bad day. Don't worry, that will come later. He's drinking and we're chatting. Carl says, "Hey, you’re an actor aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"You ever do any Shakespeare?"

Little does he know that I'm a classically trained actor, and that I attended the North Carolina School of the Arts… 

"Well yeah. I'm great at Shakespeare." I replied with more than a touch arrogance in my tone of voice.

So, Carl tells me he's involved with a group of people doing this staged reading of Antony and Cleopatra at the Riverside Shakespeare Company, and they need some more actors... for pivotal roles... and would I like to meet the director? 
Would I? Would I? 
So, he goes to the pay phone (remember those) and calls the director to make sure he still needs actors. The director tells Carl that, indeed, he needs more actors, and tells Carl to give me his name and number... and that I should call him that evening. Carl comes back, gives me the good news and asks for a piece of paper. I give him a pad of paper we use for placing food orders, and he scratches down a name and number and slides it across the bar to me.

"Call him when you get home tonight. His name is Harold Brockston. He's got a lot of experience and he's brilliant with Shakespeare."

"Harold Brockston."

"That's right. Harold Brockston..." ----------------------------------------------- The Carson Story, Pt. 2 By Lennie Loftin Registered WGAWhat were all of the circumstances that brought this about...?

I was born. My head popped out, and I looked around and saw this man standing there with his hands stretched out towards me, as if he was awaiting a ball from a rugby scrum. Next thing you know... At the age of seven I did my first High School play. I played in rock bands and did more High School theatre between the ages of twelve and eighteen. My band Noize broke up just before I turned eighteen. At that time I was applying to colleges, so I decided to stick with the acting thing. I auditioned for the North Carolina School of the Arts and was rejected because I'd stayed-up the night before partying with the drummer from my former band, and thus, I gave a lousy audition. Maybe I just sucked anyway. I went to the NCSA Summer Session, auditioned at the end of the six weeks of study, and was accepted to enroll for the regular college session. Four years later, I drove to NY with my friend, Steve Beckley. It was our college graduation day. I worked at the South Street Seaport for eight months with several of my college classmates, then got a job uptown at a restaurant called Noodles. One of the bartenders at Noodles was Jerry Lubacky who later managed T.J. Tucker's. Three years down the road, Jerry hired me to wait tables and tend bar at Tucker’s. Then one day, Carl...no, his name was Curtis, comes into Tucker's, and tells me about this staged reading of Antony and Cleopatra. The next thing you know a phone is ringing, someone answers, and the voice on the other end says...

 "Hello?"

 "Hi. This is Lennie Loftin calling for Harold Brockston."

 "Yes, Mr. Loftin. This is Mr. Brockston."

 CONTACT. It was Harold. The Genius. He even sounded the part. His voice was like a foghorn bellowing in the night... dramatic... foreboding. You could just tell he was a part of the grand theatre tradition. He asked me questions. My age. My height. My training. I told him everything. I told him things I wouldn't normally tell a stranger... but I had called him, so it was all right... Right? I was fearless… self-confident. And I wanted to do Shakespeare at the Riverside Shakespeare Company. What a reckless fool. Hungry for work, I had forgotten some of life's simple lessons... NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS... and when your hear a foghorn blowing... STAY AWAY FROM THE SHORE! NEVER GET OUT OF THE BOAT! Harold told me to read Antony and Cleopatra, and to look at the role of Octavius Caesar, the third lead. He respected my training and could tell by my self-assured manner that I was right for the role, but still he'd like to meet me in person the next day at 3pm to read a couple of scenes just to make sure. So I read the play and prepared two scenes. The next afternoon I went to his apartment (which was just around the block from my place) at the Manhattan Plaza Towers, a subsidized artists’ residence on 43rd Street, between 9th and 10th. He buzzed me upstairs. I went to the 19th floor, found his door, and knocked. From inside the apartment, I heard a chair scrape the floor. In my mind's eye, I could see him pushing away from a table… but I only saw him from the waist, down. It was like an eerie shot in a horror film. I couldn't picture his chest, neck, or face. I just saw his withered trunk, tattered trousers, and disembodied hands floating slowly through space. I heard a voice within me plead..."Get out of the building."... but to no avail… Like a mindless boob in a bad horror flick... I stayed. Then, that sound... THUMP-THWAP! THUMP-THWAP! THUMP-THWAP! THUMP-THWAP! After that, a dead bolt. A chain latch. The door lock. And finally the knob turned and the creaking door swung open.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Loftin."

Boy, he was tall! Say...six foot, four inches tall. And thin. Really thin. If he stood sideways you might miss him. He looked like a cross between Ms. Jane Hathaway (from the Beverly Hillbillies) and “Dr. J” ... Julius Erving of the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers. Veins bulged beneath the taught brown skin that stretched across his sinewy arms and legs. AND THOSE FEET! THOSE GARGANTUAN BARE FEET! That was that strange noise just before the locks turned and the door opened. THUMP-THWAP, THUMP-THWAP, THUMP-THWAP! The heel sounding, before the remainder of his flat foot landed on the wooden floor. 
The voice was pure James Earl Jones. He was an imposing spider of a man in his red short-shorts, his faded pink t-shirt with the neck cut out, those sunken eyes, and the bloody stain of red wine on his lips. This, you could tell, was thespian... you could smell it. You could see the backstage dust settled into every line on his face. 
He invited me into his humble abode with a grand sweeping gesture, and I made my way to the table with an edition of the Riverside Shakespeare opened to Antony and Cleopatra. A half-full glass of red wine sat beside the opened canon. (I choose the term "half-full" because Harold's glass was ALWAYS half-full... of wine, of shit, of what-have-you.) He offered me wine. I declined.

"Beer?"

I accepted. Maybe this was going to be pretty cool. Just from his voice you could tell he'd had plenty of training, and yeah, he seemed a little eccentric, but so what! Everyone I know has some kink in their chain. 

 Maybe this was going to be like (The Bartender's Guide to) Shakespeare-The Tragedies... a private tutorial class that Steve Beckley and I had taken under the guidance of Charlie Frohn, junior year of college. We read the plays, went to Charlie's place, drank scotch and talked about the plays. A great class. A great man. Two credits. Thank you, Charlie. Rest in Peace. 

So, Harold and I read the scenes, and he offered me the role of Octavius Caesar on the spot. Damn, I was good! And getting a little bit tipsy, too.
Then he told me of his DREAM... in a speech which was something between Lear on the rocks, a weeping willow in a storm, and a Twyla Tharp dance piece performed in a lava flow.

"Mr. Loftin, for twelve years I have dreamed of doing a staged reading of Antony and Cleopatra, and now I have finally taken the steps necessary to bring that dream to life on the stage of the Riverside Shakespeare Company. You will be a part of that dream. I will direct you and a few select others in one of William Shakespeare's finest historical tragedies, and in the process... make my dream come true."

The speech went on. And then on a little more. He was demonstrative and passionate. And a little drunk, too. I didn't realize that at the time. I just thought he was, you know, eccentric. Boy, would I learn how "eccentric" he could be. 

He had a few other roles to fill and asked if I knew of any other actors who were well versed in the Bard. I did, and was more than happy to introduce them to him. Ah, Steve and Steve... will you ever forgive me. The two Steve's took the bait and were along for the trawl. My roommate, Tom Alden, was not so easily persuaded. Harold came over to my apartment a couple of nights after our initial meeting. Tom was there. We sat, had a few drinks, and Harold talked about Harold's DREAM. Harold offered Tom a role, but Tom said he might have something else in the works, and that he would have to let him know. Harold departed, and I asked Tom what he thought...

"He's a freak!"

"Well, I know he's a little eccentric..."

"No, he's a freak. You can do it if you want to... but, I think I'm going to have to pass."

Tom was always good at quick evaluations of people and situations, though he would, sometimes, still plow headlong into a potentially damaging scene, like a bighorn ram during the rut. One of his favorite phrases was, "When the going gets weird... the Weird turn Pro." Not this time. Tom Alden saw this train wreck coming long before the train ever jumped the tracks. 
Not me, mister. I bought a round trip ticket on a one-way trip to Palookaville. I took the ride, daddy. I "...turned Pro." ---------------------------------------------The Carson Story, Pt. 3 By Lennie Loftin Registered WGA Antony and Cleopatra in three weeks... Fifteen years ago, I was caught in a terrible storm... a mass of confusion, the likes of which I’d never known before. I was like a six-foot lightning rod, standing in a puddle of myself. And the God of Thunder was about to wage war. THE STORM: Harold Brockston was waging war on himself. He was directing this staged reading of Antony and Cleopatra, and for the next two weeks, he drank before and during rehearsals. His eyes were constantly glazed over with a thin film, bloodshot-gray. His speech was slurred and exaggerated as he ranted and raved for three-quarters of each rehearsal about his half-score-and two-year DREAM! He thrashed about like a man drowning in a cesspool of his own cantankerous rage. And there, at the dank headwaters of the river Styx... he had amassed a group of wandering players to drag down with him. The rehearsal sessions were murderous. You could ALWAYS count on the DREAM speech... that booming voice, and those arms, flailing, like a crane vainly trying to escape the rigid jaws of an Australian water dragon. If two or three people were scheduled to rehearse, you could possibly catch a break... someone might come in and announce that they had booked a last minute commercial audition, so you'd get a chance to escape early. How I prayed for those afternoons. But, truly dreadful were the one-on-one appointments with Sir Drinks-A-Lot. His DREAM. His fucking date with DESTINY! If I had a dime for every time I heard that speech... So, what did I do? I “...turned Pro.“ I took the hand of the Devil and I joined him. We sat at a table and drank while we rehearsed and discussed Shakespeare. I drank anything that was available: vodka... cold beer... warm white wine. I didn't do it for fun. I didn't do it for laughs. I drank to torture myself. I wanted a blazing hangover by 8 o’clock, PM! I was “putting out fire with gasoline” to quote Mr. Bowie. And through that haze of booze and Roman posturing, I looked back across the Sea of Time and wondered how on earth I had ever landed myself in this messy situation. What was the turning point? Where had I gone so wrong? What was my critical, mental flaw... that smelly brain-fart, on which, I'd drifted to this lowly bank across the river from Hades’ fiery furnace??? And then it came to me. That moment. And it wasn’t a turning point. It wasn’t a critical flaw. It was simply a moment... a whitecap on the Sea of Time. That moment when my head popped out and I saw the man standing there with his hands stretched out to me. And now, here I was... a muddy little football in the slippery rugby scrum of life. So, I drank some more. I drank to dull my senses to the teetering Titan whose unfettered voice made the welkin ring with grandiose ramblings about his DREAM. His dream of directing a STAGED READING, not a full performance, but a STAGED READING of Antony and Cleopatra. In his mind, a STAGED READING would not be about the “production“, but about the WORDS. This would be a heart-felt salute to Billy The Bard from Cap'n Harold The Souse and his ship of fools. As I stepped on the barge, I looked across the water into the Abyss. I could hear the ferryman’s cold laughter as he pushed our boat to that sullen shore. ------------------------------- During one of those dismal, private sessions with Harold, the phone rang. It was the Managing Director of the Riverside Shakespeare Company. It became plain to me that the two had had words before, as verbal scuds were being lobbed across the phone lines. And I could tell that the Managing Director did not want us... or more specifically... did not want Cap’n Harold The Souse to do the reading at the RSC performance space. He wanted us do it at the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument in Riverside Park, a location five blocks from the space and miles away from any real association with the Riverside Shakespeare Company. Cap’n Harold The Souse told him to go fuck himself, and “how dare” he fuck with Harold and with Harold’s fucking DREAM?! He was quite the diplomat, that Harold. Well, I had already made up flyers and sent them (to my growing horror) to friends, and agents, and casting directors. Would I, now, have to send out a whole new batch? “Not to worry...”, I was assured by Mr. Brockston. And yet... I did not feel so very fucking assured! Do I sound bitter? Cynical? Caustic? Unmoved by Harold’s plight? Fuck Harold. And fuck the horse he rode in on! About a week before the performance, Harold lost all (as if he ever had any) control. There were seven of us at his apartment for a rehearsal, and he was completely blotto. The Two Steves were there, along with the guy who played Antony, who happened to be a long time friend of Cap’n H. The entire session was a catastrophe. The train was about to derail. After rehearsal, the Two Steves and I escaped downstairs. We stood on the corner in the still summer night... sweating, pale-faced, and dumb. I broke the silence and apologized, and suggested we drink. We found a bar and drank to our misery... then, we went our separate ways. I was ready to quit. I truly thought I now understood what it meant to slide down a giant razorblade into a pool of rubbing alcohol. But... the next day, the guy playing Antony called and told me he’d had a long talk with Harold... and he assured me that everything would be all right. It was the second time in just a couple of days that I had gotten assurances about something to do with Harold... And I believed it. Rowing... without an oar... up a murky stream... ---------------------------------------- I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V4.4 (www.strikefile.com/myspace)

The Carson Story, Pt. 4 By Lennie Loftin Registered WGA Gray skies are gonna clear up... When I was ten years old, a hurricane blew through my hometown in North Carolina. It wasn’t the first one ever, but it was the first one I remember. The wind blew and the rain fell, and the tall pines that surrounded my house, bent waist high in supplication, like samurai before a feudal lord. At times, the gale would falter, but soon a wall of God’s breath would BUMP the rear of the house, then slip around, and away, with a mischievous “WoooOOOoooooo...” Suddenly, the constant roar of rain on our roof became a pitter-patter, and the wind no longer played the needles in the trees like the reeds of a million moaning bassoons. Sunlight peeked through the blinds, and Conway Twitty’s voice chirped through the static on the radio and soothed a thousand lonely hearts. I called my friend Freddy and told him to meet me with his bike in the street in ten minutes. Then, I asked my Mom if it was O.K. to go outside. I wanted to play in the eye of the storm so I could brag to my schoolmates of my reckless abandon and steadfast courage in the presence of the blustery foe. With a sigh, my mother opened the front door to survey the damage, and to eye the power lines up and down the street. The front yard was moat-like, and tangled with branches and twigs. The air hung moist and heavy, like the breath from a panting Dog. In her beautiful, thick southern accent she said, “Linnie... I don‘t know.” “PLEEEEASE...” “All right, you can go outside. But, be careful... and come back in win the wind starts to blow agin. The tail ind of the stoe-orm will be much worse than what we just wint through.” Boy, she said a mouthful there... THE EYE OF THE STORM: Harold Brockston was a prince. The guy who played Antony (let’s just call him Antony) had had his little talk with Harold and had gotten his message across. Harold stopped drinking before and during rehearsals and concentrated on the task at hand. The next five days were wonderful. Through all of the madness of the previous two weeks I had worked diligently on the role of Octavius Caesar, and now, all of the pieces were falling into place. What BLISS! What an exhilarating opportunity to speak the words of The Bard! No more grand speeches from Harold. No more tragic ballets. No more DREAM. Well, a little... but it was bearable. Dr. Jeckell was no longer toiling in the laboratory... he was now directing Shakespeare... and doing a damn fine job, I might add. All of the players were making an effort, as well, and it showed. Even the weakest links were starting to shine under the guidance of the Di-Rec-Tor. The weather was great that week. The air was hot, but not oppressive. Tom Alden, Steve Beckley, and I went to Central Park one fine sunny day. We sat in the Sheep’s Meadow, and hailed the wandering BeerMan for beverages all afternoon. The grass was greener than green, and the bikini-clad beauties were tan and brown. I was really feeling good about the prospects for the reading. This was the first thing I had worked on since my NY State Lottery commercial a couple of months earlier, which was outstanding (not to mention that it paid my rent for a year and a half) but the job only lasted three hours from start to finish. This Shakespeare, however, was something of substance. I had worked hard, and on Friday, we were only two days from the scheduled Sunday performance at the Soldier‘s and Sailor‘s Monument. I started to tingle within. As I’ve said, I sent out a lot of flyers to my friends and to business associates and my levels of excitement, clarity, and confidence seemed to multiply, tenfold. I was doing fine work... DAMN FINE WORK! Could this be... would this be that moment in time when all the stars align and the elements of “right place-right time,” and “who you know,” and craft, and God-given ability come together to MAKE a career. Would I finally be rewarded for all of my years of struggle and hard work? Rewarded for all of the crummy restaurant jobs I had endured, and for all of the lousy tippers I chased down the street in vain? Was this the end of the days of Ramen Noodles never-ending? Would Joseph Papp be in the audience to see me stake a claim to my rightful place on the NY stage? Tony Randall? Mary-Lynn Henri? It wouldn’t matter really. Certainly every one of them would hear about it. Bells would ring... and there’d be a parade... and soon I’d be the toast of Broadway, my name in shining lights! New York was a taxi, and I was the driver, and in two days, the rest of the world would be trying to catch a ride. Late Friday afternoon, I took a walk down Broadway to psyche myself up, and to get one last glimpse of the theatre district through the eyes of someone whose amateur hour was all but over. I turned at 44th Street, and headed west towards my apartment on 9th Avenue. A bead of hot sweat rolled down the back of my neck, followed by a chill that rippled across my shoulders. I could see all the way down 44th, to the river, and beyond to New Jersey where an embankment of dark clouds rolled over Weehawken like a murder of black crows. Apollo’s Chariot sank into the clouds and disappeared. As I passed the corner of the Minskoff Building, a gust of hot air roared through Schubert Alley and almost knocked me to the curb. My eyes burned in the vulcan wind, and tears streamed from those tender orbs as they dried in their sockets. In the deep recess of my mind, I heard the beautiful lilting tone of a Southern woman calling my name. It sounded like it came from the depths of a well, into which, a dropped rock blindly searches and searches to find its voice... “LINNIE! Come on home, now! The tail end of the stoe-orm is about to hit. Come on home, now, hunney. Don’t make me call you agin.” Splash... please splash. It rained all Friday night and on-and-off all of Saturday. We had our final rehearsal at Harold’s place at 3pm Saturday afternoon. I arrived at about five till Three. This would be the first time that the entire cast had assembled for a complete run-thru. I was excited! I knocked on Harold’s door and one of the other players let me in. The air-conditioner was on, but still, it was warm and moist inside from the close proximity of so many people. Nineteen actors, in all, jammed into the three small rooms of Harold’s apartment. All of the pieces of the play had been worked and were in order. Now we simply had to string it together. I saw familiar faces, all smiling as they nodded “Hello.” There was Steve Carter. A quick nod and a wave. There was Steve Beckley with his ever-present smile. A quick nod and a wave, then on to the next... Wait a minute... Was Beckley's smile pushed a little taut at the edges? I looked back to catch his eye, when the guy playing Antony (oh, that’s right... we’ve agreed to just call him Antony) walked by and rolled his eyes as he passed me. Harold stood off in the corner and waved... “Mr. Loftin!” And with a great flourish, he bowed at the waist until his hands touched the floor... then swayed and nearly fell forward as he tried to stand erect again. Oh, God... It was Mr. Hyde! Our good doctor had been in the laboratory mixing strange concoctions, and swilling them with tiny umbrellas in his test tubes, no doubt. Off the wagon, he was stumbling apace in the opposite direction! The remaining actors arrived, and we were all met. (Pat. Pat.) Then, Harold gave the inevitable DREAM speech, which was followed by a pep talk. He started to work himself into a real lather. Rambling, he assigned a specific number to each player (without giving any reason) and then mumbled something about a bass drum that he didn’t have with him, but that he would have for the next day’s performance. He paused briefly, as if unable to follow the course of his own chaotic thoughts. His eyes bounced spasmodically to-and-fro (think Gene Wilder in "The World's Greatest Lover") as he traversed a mental minefield slippery with vodka, and fraught with severed circuits. Trembling, he grabbed onto a popping synapse, and when it sparked to life, he instructed us that the number given to each player was the order in which we would come out for our bows at curtain call. The drum would be used to introduce all scenes, and to announce the entrances of certain prominent characters: Four beats between each scene; eight beats for Cleopatra; seven for Antony; and six for Octavius Caesar. Our Captain was drunk, and he had a captive audience... and he went on for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES! Oh, the Violence that tore at my soul truly longed to make Harold the object of its passion. Everyone was just dying. I pressed my back to the wall in hope that I might pass through it like some faint spectre, only to be glimpsed again in an old school auditorium, or by a fog enshrouded railroad crossing, swinging a lantern by a chain. When he finished, I told our fearless leader that I didn’t agree with his idea for the curtain call. It was a reading, and we should all bow together... OR... not at all. He didn’t agree with me... “Of course the audience will want to reward your individual efforts.” “Whatever...” I shut my mouth. Why waste time arguing with this delirious Fuck? Finally, it was time to get on with the rehearsal. As our Bandleader didn’t have his drum, he informed us that he would pronounce the sound of the drum... VERBALLY... to prepare us for the rhythm of the entrances... for the rhythm of the entire performance. That bastard! Four “BA-BOOMS” in that booming voice between scenes! Eight for Cleopatra. Seven for Antony. Etcetera... We started at 3:45pm and ended at 7:15pm... with a break for intermission. Three and a half-hours. Actually, that was not too bad. It WAS Shakespeare after all. After a five-minute break and then a final speech about “professionalism” we departed at 7:45pm. Harold was still drunk. It was “just a last minute case of the nerves,” I told myself. He got the jitters. Twelve years in the making, his big moment was less than a day away. He was going to be fine. Just fine. Tomorrow... he would be fine. I mean, who wouldn’t be nervous? I certainly was... ---------------------------------- The Carson Story, Pt. 5 By Lennie Loftin Registered WGA I passed on my 10-Year High School Reunion for this... At the beginning of the Second Punic War, Hannibal of Carthage left his homeland in North Africa, and led a great army against the forces of Rome. Hannibal was an ambitious man. He had a dream of conquering Rome and ruling the world. After sixteen years of fighting, he was defeated at the Battle of Zama in North Africa... back where he first started. Mark Antony was an ambitious man. He, also, had a dream of conquering Rome and ruling the world. But, he and Cleopatra were defeated in a naval battle off Actium by Octavius Caesar, in 31 B.C. Harold Brockston had a dream... THE TAIL END OF THE STORM, Pt. 1: The rains of the last two days had drifted out to sea, and now there was little moisture left in the air, for it had fallen as precipitation into swollen storm drains, and into the open mouths of the slumbering, homeless horde, unawares. It was warm that Sunday morning, and the cerulean sky was dotted with puffs of clouds that looked like a slow migration of great white buffalo. I took a shower, and brushed my teeth. As I grabbed a towel from the rack, my mind drifted forward a couple of hours into the future. My visions were quite overwhelming, and I had to catch my breath. My long awaited triumph. The clamorous crowd franticly trying to squeeze closer to the new object of their omnifarious obsessions’. The sound of a siren wailing down 9th Avenue brought me back to reality. I finished drying off, dressed, grabbed my Bard and my bag, and went downstairs to hail a taxi uptown. The Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument is located in Riverside Park between 88th and 89th Streets at Riverside Drive (just a few blocks away from The Riverside Shakespeare Company's performance space, which is located in the balcony of the West Park Presbyterian Church at 86th and Amsterdam). The Monument sits atop a massive pedestal and is comprised of a large cylinder surrounded by Corinthian columns, with an ornate domed roof. In front of the monument there is a large brick patio. Cement benches have been erected there for the quiet contemplation of the memorial. The patio would be our stage. It was 11:20am when I got out of the cab at 88th and Riverside Drive. I paid the fare, gave the cabbie a dollar tip, and walked into the park. The reading was scheduled for 1pm, but Harold wanted us there an hour and a half early for a group warm-up, staging of the curtain call, etc. As I approached the Memorial, I could see that most of the acting troupe had already arrived. Harold was across the patio talking with one of the other actors. And he had THE DRUM beside him. It was huge. This was not a drum you might find in an elementary school music closet with recorders, finger cymbals, and triangles. On the contrary... this was the kind of drum you’d see in a college marching band strapped onto a six-foot, two hundred and fifty pound guy named Waddy, who wore coke-bottle-lens glasses, and who spent a lot of time alone reading the letters to Penthouse Forum. The Two Steves (Beckley and Carter) were sitting on one of the cement benches. They waved. I saluted to greet them... “Gentlemen.” Harold heard my voice and turned towards me. He was wearing his red shorts, a dancer-cut t-shirt, and brown leather sandals. Tall and thin, he spread his arms wide. He looked like a malnourished albatross about to take flight. “Mr. Loftin, thank you for joining us.” OH, NO! In the struggle between Good and Evil, Mr. Hyde had gotten the upper hand and pressed the shiny, red, candy-like button marked SELF-DESTRUCT! Now, the damned villain stood before me sweating from head to toe. The fermenting stench of his liquid brunch wafted across the patio, and filled me with dread. He must’ve been swilling vodka and cheap wine since sunrise. Malnourished or not, I could feel the weight of this bird around my neck, and he was bringing me down. THUMP-THWAP, THUMP-THWAP, THUMP-THWAP...he walked a remarkably straight line towards me. He put a hand on each of my shoulders and leaned in close./P “Isn’t it a wonderful day to perform the Bard on the boards, Mr. Loftin?” His eyes were yellow. I swear they were yellow! His breath was like a furnace stoked with cow chips, crab apples, and last week’s pork. He was so dehydrated that a sickening line of pasty spittle traversed his cracked lips to the downward wrinkles at each side of his mouth. When he opened his gob to speak, the paste stretched between his lips at random intervals, but never broke. Ferme la bouche. Ferme la bouche, si vous plait! My stomach lurched, and a stream of obscenities bubbled like hot vomit at the back of my throat. I bit my tongue and hissed, “Bricks. Not boards. Today we are on the bricks.” “Whatever you say Mr. Loftin. Whatever you say.” The last couple of cast members trickled in, and Harold addressed the troupe. The DREAM speech. The pep talk. Professionalism. By now, you know the drill as well as I do. Then, a quick run-through of the curtain call. Harold asked us to take our places on the side of the patio where we would make our last exit during the performance. He called out our numbers... One through Nineteen. When he reached seventeen, I ran to the center of the stage, barely bent my knee as if to bow, and ran off to the side. Harold brayed, “Mr. Loftin! If I was you and I was playing Octavius Caesar in a reading of Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare I wouldn’t bow to my audience like that...!” He walked to the side of the playing area, and demonstrated for me. He threw his hand into the air above his head. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, he lifted his chin, and took long... deliberate... painfully slow strides to center stage. “... I would graciously accept their applause, and appreciation of my performance.” Eyes wide, he turned to the imaginary audience, bent at the waist, and dropped his raised hand to the bricks in grand style. Then he stood up straight and turned to me. “Now, Mr. Loftin... I’d like for you to try it again and this time...” “Harold! I get your point. But you can’t bow for me. I’ll bow the way I bow.” “Mr. Loftin...” “Harold, don’t worry about it. When the time comes, I’ll take a bow. I get what you’re saying. But, for now, let’s just move on... please.” “Very well.” My skin was hot. My palms started to sweat. I can’t really describe to you the roily inner tempest, which stretched each membrane of every molecule of my watery body to bursting. But, I knew I was not alone. Everyone else was in the same heinous predicament, and everyone was scanning the crowd to try to determine who would spook first and start a stampede. I wanted to run... but I could not. I would not. We had all dedicated ourselves to the project and to each other. And we were professionals to the bitter end. At 12:15pm, Harold called for a half-hour break. We would reconvene fifteen minutes before the 1pm performance. I grabbed my shoulder bag and dashed to Riverside Drive. I looked north... then south... then east... across the street. I spotted my prize on the southeast corner of 88th Street, and dodged a speeding taxi as I sprinted toward yon gleaming phone booth. I tore into my bag and retrieved my New York Survival Guide and turned to the address book contained within. In the side pocket of my shoulder bag I always carried some small bills and spare change for subway fares, a slice of pizza, Grey’s Papaya hot dogs, or what-have-you. It was that “always-prepared” Boy Scout within me, who now came to my rescue. Faster than a speeding bullet, I flipped through the pages of my address book, punched the telephone keypad, and dropped quarter after quarter into the insatiable coin slot. For each number I dialed, I reached an automated answering machine, though in one instance, I left a message with an operator at a good-old-fashioned answering service. “...Please leave a message after the beep.” “Hi, Ellen. This is Lennie calling at 12:20 on Sunday. Um... I'm just calling to say, that... please don't come to my reading today at 1pm. I know this is short notice, but I just... I… please don’t come. God, I hope you get this message. Um... I hope you’re not already on your way. And, I’m really sorry if you scheduled anything around this. But, this is not a joke. I am absolutely serious. Don't come. PLEASE... don’t come. I... um... I hope you get this message.” Then the next phone number... and the next... and the next... After my last call, I hung-up the phone. I was numb. And for a time, I just stared at the coin return. It was about 12:45 when I crossed the street and walked back up the path to the monument… No one was there. No audience. No actors… No Harold. Not a single trace of anyone, anywhere... not even a shoulder bag in sight. Was this a joke? Was this a dream... (one of those horrible actors’ dreams… onstage… mute… nude… just floppy leather boots and a script in your hand because you don’t really know your lines…). Had our performance been canceled…? Had everyone dispersed and gone their separate ways? Was I in the wrong place…? I panicked! I couldn’t get my bearings straight. The world started to roll like a boat over steep ocean swells. Across the patio, an old man with a walking stick was laughing to himself as he hobbled off in the opposite direction. Gooseflesh covered my arms and the back of my neck. I knew that laughter and I had seen that face... but where? WHERE? I couldn't breathe. Why couldn't I breathe? In a flash, the world became a white-hot limbo, then it reformed before my eyes... Suddenly, I was on the oily banks of the river Styx, watching the crooked old ferryman push his barge to that distant shore; his laughter was flat and solitary. My feet began to sink into the mud. I took a step backwards, towards higher ground, slipped and dropped straight to my ass. A searing bolt of electricity shot up my spine to my brain, and my teeth began to ache in my skull. Ripples from the ferry’s wake licked at my feet. The river started to bubble and boil, and with a united thrust, a hundred cankerous hands reached out of the depths to pull me below! “Lennie! Lennie! I’ve been looking for you.” Was that Steve Carter? “Lennie, Harold is moving the reading to the church. We’re going to do it at the performance space, after all. Come on!” When we reached 86th Street, we saw the parade of players ahead of us, near Amsterdam Avenue. Like Hannibal’s army crossing the Alps, they marched forward to storm the gates of Harold’s “Rome”... the Riverside Shakespeare Company. Steve and I caught up with the troupe, and some twenty or thirty audience members, at the steps outside the church. The door was open and Harold was conversing with a man who blocked the entrance. “Harold... we agreed that you would do the reading at the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument. People are going to be expecting you there.” “WE never agreed to any such thing. From the beginning, my plan was to do the reading of Antony and Cleopatra at the Riverside Shakespeare Company. I have dreamed of this day. I have twenty-five audience members in tow... some of them quite elderly. Are you going to tell them that they now have to walk back to the park? Some are from your subscription audience. Are you going to tell them that they can’t sit in the comfort of your theatre to watch our performance?” “Harold, you shouldn’t have brought them here.” “And you, sir... should open these doors to your audience.” Poor bastard... he was between a rock and a hard place, and all eyes were on him. He opened the doors. What else could he do? Harold bellowed over the group, “Curtis, would you please go back to the monument for fifteen minutes and direct anyone else arriving for the performance to come to the church. Don’t worry... we’ll wait for you!” Curtis said he would, and hurried off. Steve went up the steps ahead of me. As I edged my way past Harold, a gleaming grin spread across his countenance, and the corners of his pasty lips nearly touched his ears. When he spoke, his breath hit me like a pair of dirty underwear soaked in an oxygen-choked pond, brimming with dead fish... “I told you... the boards, Mr. Loftin. The boards.” I couldn’t speak. I didn’t dare speak. I entered the church and climbed the steps up to the loft. It was about to begin...