Living in coronavirusworld: All we can do is keep singing

7/2

We are all in this together

Last night my computer began acting in random and uncontrollable ways so with a major ZOOM concert coming up, I knew I had to do something. None of the recently reopened Apple stores had appointments  until well into next week.  I had to find an alternative. I found an authorized shop in Chelsea. Thus my first venture into Chelsea in many months. Throughout the neighborhood shops, stores, restaurants still festooned with rainbow flags from last weekend’s covid-muted Pride  celebration.  I found the shop. And thankfully after a few hours and some bits of new equipment and not too  money spent, I’m ready for tonight’s concert though it looks like my computer is slowing down with age, that built in Apple obsolescence. 

sidewalk art

even on bikes

Walking back to the subway, I note the sidewalk art in Chelsea. The ubiquity of the Black Lives Matter slogan. The President’s effort to paint BLM as a hate organization, or Marxist or even terrorist organization is just not going to fly wit the vast number of Americans. 

Mornngside Park

Food for all....

There are ducks on the pond in Morningside Park. The egret has not returned. On Fredrick Douglass, a volunteer from World Center Kitchen’s relief operation hands me a bag of meals which I accept. (All bowtie pasta with meat sauce..) As I walk by, I notice that Melba’s soul food kitchen is a supporter of WCK. 

But the big event of the day is my USA2020 showcase with  my friends Paul and Lindsey.  (https://www.facebook.com/robert.l.brashear/videos/10158227321768361/)   We’re all three members of the Peoples Music Network as “cultural workers” and the Peoples Voice Cafe where both Lindsey and I worked with Paul on sound.  Paul’s band once joined me at the late lamented Sidewalk Cafe and Lindsey’s been a guest in my band.  Paul, nationally known for his nightly “emergency accordion” 7PM stoop concerts brings an old school sound from somewhere between the Lower East Side and the streets of Brooklyn. Lindsey brings deep and rich original music, especially backed by her Human Hearts Band. 

We all bring our voices to the eve of July 4th in the USA 2020. Because of recent events, I’m moved to open with Take Me Back to Tulsa by Bob Wills (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wills) with his unexpected  last verse…

The little bee sucks the blossom, the big bee gets the honey

Black man picks the cotton white man gets the money. 

Would I go back to Tulsa, you bey your boots I would

Leave me off at Archer, I’ll walk down Greenwood.

Thus name-checking the Negro Wall Street of America, destroyed and looted in  the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.  And Bob’s after hours visits to the clubs and jukejoints of Greenwood with his buddy Bobby Blue Bland among others. He didn’t come up with Texas swing by himself…..)

To which I add: 

The President’s comin to Tulsa, he’s a viral fool for sure

We’ll tell him get your ass out of here and don’t come back no more…

We finish by swapping verses on Woody’s “This Land is your land….”

After the show, we hang out the ZOOM room…Lindsey wants to know our old white man stories. Paul was on the radical side in the sixties, mainly running the copy machine. Until the 2016 Republican Convention, I had not played politically since Kent State with National Guards looking down on me with their guns.  What’s different she asked? And for me it’s the beginning to question our core story. At a deep public level.  That is new. And has promise. All we can do is keep singing.