Through the Haze

After all these years, (41?) I had an email from Marty Baum, the leader of Natty Bumpo. I had joined the band in San Francisco, and traveled with them to Washington D.C., their home base. They'd recorded an LP for Mercury with another female singer, and I had to learn the material by listening to the record over and over. This occurred after they had appeared as the opener for Jimi Hendrix during his first gigs back in the U.S. from England in the fall of 1967. Jimi was in fine form with the Experience, and while I was not with them at the time, it had been a major life-and music-altering influence on the band.
When we first got back to D.C., the home of Marty, the drummer, Stephen, the bass player, and Junior, the guitar player, we stayed in the former servant's quarters of an antebellum mansion in Virginia. The daughter of the family was a music fan, if a bit loopy. She was a friend of Jim Morrison's longtime girlfriend, Pam. We rehearsed in what had been the stables/carriage house. Once when it rained, I got a bad electric shock on the lips from the mic after stepping into a puddle on the floor from the leaky roof. The appliances in the house did not work, so I cooked meals in a popcorn popper. We gathered our loose change ---- we weren't gigging yet --- and bought bags of rice and split peas, carrots, onions, etc., and I cooked nourishing, cheap food for us. Hippie mama I was; after growing up in a family of nine, I knew how to cook in quantity for cheap, although the popcorn popper was a challenge. It took quite a bit longer to get things done, but it was no worse than camping at the 11,000-foot level in the Rockies waiting for Kahoutek to land and wipe out the West Coast.
When the band started playing, we had a variety of gigs, from outdoor concerts sponsored by a radio station in Maryland to being the house band at the Showboat on 18th and Columbia Road.
When the band had a gig at a national librarian's convention in a hotel ballroom, it was a very hot, humid day, and the beer was flowing. The librarians were dancing on the tables. I was singing "Purple Haze." Marty's drums were set up on a small riser, and the cymbal was not screwed down well. It came off its moorings and flew through the air like a flying saucer. I had my eyes closed and didn't see it coming. It knocked me out cold and sliced my nose open. I was lying on the floor, still out, when a friend/male groupie of mine (an older guy named Dan, who had an antique store featuring brass beds) came in the door as everyone was standing around wondering what to do. He scooped me up and tossed me in the back seat of his convertible and took me to an emergency room. It was too busy with knife fights, etc., so he took me to another hospital. The intern said he didn't want to sew my lip, and put on a butterfly bandage instead. I was instructed not to talk or sing for something like 10 days, and not to eat anything that couldn't be ingested through a straw. Dan took care of me, keeping me in milkshakes and combustibles. I still have a small scar that is showing up more as I age, along with the scar on my upper lip from a VW crash a couple of years later.
One gig at the Showboat especially stands out in my mind. We did the regular gig, then the after-hours part. Everyone was tired. It was my birthday, and my friend Karen brought me a turquoise satin skirt she'd stitched up. While most everyone else was drunk, I had ingested something mind-altering before the after-hours set. When it came time to play, Marty was on the B-3 rather than drums, and I think Junior was on the drums. The club started filling up. I particularly remember Willie the Pimp and his ladies, dressed in long gowns in graduating shades that matched their hair. I remember improvising the lyrics to a long blues.
The band broke up when it turned out payments hadn't been made on critical band equipment.
I worked for a time as an underage cocktail waitress at a club around the corner from the Showboat called The Bridge, which had formerly been the best French restaurant in D.C. (I believe the bakery is still there --- I recognized its name this year when I was there for the Inauguration). The bartender was 17, the head waitress was an underground abortionist; the maitre d' had a PhD in biophysics and had been a bodyguard for Malcolm X. I worked for him for a time, transcribing tapes for a book he was writing.
The club was owned by a player on the Redskins who was kicked off the team for gambling. It went into receivership. We were all owed back wages, so we ran the club for a month or so, doing music, poetry readings, and buying groceries at the local grocery so the French chef who was throwing knives at walls could earn his way back home, too.
I applied for a job with UPI as a copygirl, and had gone for the second interview when I got a call from home that my sister had been hit by a truck, and if I wanted to see her, I'd better get there. That was the end of my sojourn in D.C.
After the Inauguration, I took the Metro around to various places I vaguely remembered. I bought groceries at an international store near 18th and Columbia Road and cooked an awesome dinner for my hosts.