When he mentions the considerable fees I will earn I am reminded of the old Sid Caesar (as Progress Hornsby) line: "Well, that's a little steep, but I'll try to come up with it," I reply.  He laughs and the wheels are set in motion.

AMSTERDAM, NL, July 24, 2002 - - On the flight over I sat with a 28-year-old fruit juice drinking, Birkenstock-wearing Dutchgirl who works at the Max Planck Institute. Barbara is a psycholinguist, with all the interesting lore that that entails. We talked about the great apes and Barbara informed me about the bonobo, a recently discovered subspecies of the orangutan.  Seems the bonobo, unlike orangs, is not a solitary creature, but lives in tribes. When a bonobo is orphaned, the surviving tribe members adopt it, while in other great ape societies the child is abandoned or killed outright.

Further, bonobos are distinguished in that they are affectionate in sex, as opposed to merely being driven by nature to reproduce.  "They fall in love," she says.  Barbara's specialty in the study of psycholinguistics is language acquisition, and the bonobos stand out in Kenze, a young bonobo who, while not being directly taught sign language, learned it by hanging out with his mom.  We arrive in Amsterdam at 10:30 am local time, about 3:30 back in Nashville.  We check in at the Hotel Prinsengracht, which turns out to be about a block away from my unclear family's old digs on Noorderstraat. We took naps and at about nine headed out, walked the red-light district, had some Argentine steak.  I had hoped that I would be able to get Billy Joe and Jerry
Hollingsworth, the other (and KILLER) guitar player to the Pollux (the hippest bar in Amsterdam, don't go there, you'll spoil it) and we lucked out.  Most of my Pollux
friends, Frits and Tonya, Andy and Tanya the Babe, not to mention Tanya's Babe cousin Christina from Canada were there.  Frits has also hired a couple of girls to dance and they slither the disco pole quite becomingly. I have to extend my pulsating, throbbing, vermillion-headed heartfelt thanks to Tanya and the other Pollux babes for
making my friends from Texas feel welcome.  Nothing like a little innocent flirtation to make a ole white man (or two) feel good.

We checked out a couple of other Amsterdam attractions and went back to the hotel. I dropped Billy Joe and Jerry off and headed out to MaloeMelo, said hi to Patrik and Jur and Sem Van der Tien and then crawled home myself.  THE GIG AT WITTE PAARDEN, Netherlands.  Next day about 3 pm out host Rob Dokter from the Witte
Paarden Country Club and Steakhouse showed up to ferry us out to the gig about 100 kilos north of A'dam (Note to Dave Olney and Guy Clark: You're gonna love this gig when you play there).  After dinner (the Prime Minister steak) and a rough sound check we adjourn to our hotel for a nap, still trying to adjust to local time.  The show was received well by the nice folks in Witte Paarden, but my new guitar sounded thin to me, so the next day, on our way to Oslo, we stopped in at my Amsterdam friend Peter Boelen's shop De Plug and I bought a Fishman pre-amp lest I suck at the remaining shows as well. Thus fortified, we headed out to Schippol Airport and on to Oslo.

Oslo, Norway, July 26, 2002 - -
We arrive in Oslo and are picked up by Guy, our driver, who tells us that we have a three-or-four hour drive ahead of us to Seljord, where tomorrow night we will play at the largest country music festival in Norway. We drive in a northward fashion thru Oslo and on toward Seljord.  The Norwegians around Oslo seem to be fascinated with the concept of the tunnel, as as often as seems possible, we go through every type conceivable: under rivers, through mountains, under lakes, under other tunnels.
We pass through Drammen, still pointed North. Between Oslo and Drammen is a butte, though Shaver and I dispute whether it is a butte or a mesa. ("Look at that mesa." "Yeah, ain't it a beaut?" "No, it's a mesa.")  North of Drammen, I see more of these humped up flat-on-top land masses, one of which actually is a butte.  On the other side of Drammen the highway narrows to two lanes, and while it is like nothing so much as driving through small towns in Norway, there are strong memories of little roads in West Virginia with every turn.  It is 11:30 pm now, which up here means it is nearly dark, just a small strip of light blue sky somewhere off to the South. Or maybe the North. Yeah, the North: it is noon in Japan right now so the sun is over there across the North Pole from where we are.

We stop for coffee, then we drive relentlessly on through the midnight Norwegian twilight. Guy, our driver, has promised that it will only be three or four hours until we
get to Seljord, and true to his word, four hours after we arrived in Oslo we get to Seljord, only to learn that we have another half-hour drive to the hotel. We finally
arrive and are in our rooms at 2:00 am.  The Man is tired, the even-tempered Jerry is a little edgy, and I have definitely gotten in touch with my inner bitch myself.  It occurs to me that, massive talent to the side, there are other reasons I'm getting the big bucks here.

This is a no-smoking hotel. I make a mental note to add an ashtray to my next road trip gear, open the window, and ignite a rocket.  I will not sleep.  I will wait for the sun to come up so I can see in the light these huge rounded mountains whose silhouettes I have seen in the near-Arctic dimness on the way up from Oslo. I have never been so far North, this is a completely alien latitude, and even "Bundy" on the one channel available can't arouse me to my usual sadly-less-than-Buddhistic splenetic splendor.  I am further North than is Scotland.  I am a man with a life blessed pronounced with two
syllables, and I cannot believe my luck to be a guy who is actually gonna see Norway in a couple hours.  The guitar big juju for me.  And I also can't help that there is something other than luck at work here.  Well, it IS a Shaver tour, after all.
Here comes the sun.  Dootndoodoo!

THE SET AT SELJORD
For all two gazillion of you Shaverheads out there, here is a rough approximation of the set...there were some more tunes played because our set length got increased at the
last minute, so don't be thinkin' it's Gospel:
Love Is So Sweet
Georgia on a Fast Train
Honky Tonk Heroes
Black Rose
Woman is the Wonder of The World
Restless Wind
Sweet Mama
Thunderbird
Old Chunk of Coal
When the Fallen Angels Fly
Bottom Dollar
Live Forever
Blue Blue Blues
Ride Me Down Easy
You Asked Me To
Tramp On Your Street
Try and Try Again

As for the set itself, it went very well.  Many Shaver fanatics came, and a good time was had by all, but especially by your humble reporter.  "THE CRADLE OF THE SKI" We got back to the hotel, and the two sensible members of the band turned in to rest up for the drive back to Oslo tomorrow morning at 8 am.  The insensible member (and you can figure out who that might be) stayed up partying in the hotel bar.  Billy Joe did pay me a brief visit and I turned him on to Laphroaig Scotch (makes Jameson taste like Old Overcoat), he had a sip, pronounced it very good, and went to bed. I did some in-depth research into the drinking habits of the American guitar player.

The town the hotel is in is called Morgedal (means "Morning Valley").  It is, as it turns out, "the cradle of the ski", although "the cradle of the modern ski" would be more accurate, as my new little Norwegian girlfriend Ellin tells me that skiing really goes back thousands of years; the Vikings were avid ski-ers, just that their skis were
different somehow.  I dunno: maybe they had spikes and stuff hanging off of theirs.  But, be that as it may, a local boy invented the modern ski here some hundred plus
years ago.  Ellin tells me he made the skis narrower in the middle so they'd be easier to turn.  The Viking dudes would just go in a straight line, I guess, and whomp whatever got in their way.  Well, it's a very interesting thing: they have these old ten-foot-long wooden skis hanging on the wall, maybe even the very first pair of "modern" skis ever, who knows.  And some pictures of a 1930's-looking couple lighting an Olympic torch.  Ellin, who picked me out to have a conversation with and is therefore very bright, tells me that the key to living in these here parts is to be very patient with the fact that not much has ever happened here since the invention of the ski.
I can tell that not much is gonna happen here tonight, either, so I go to bed.

Morgedal, Norway, July 27, 2002 - - Morning comes and Billy Joe, Jerry and I have a little buffet breakfast and pile into a car for the four-hour trip back to Oslo.
I will mention in passing that, though the roads at night are reminiscent of West Virginia, by day this section of Norway is more like Colorado; the mountains are beyond huge, there are waterfalls careening hundreds of feet down barren slopes to rich farmland floodplains below.  It is some of the most spectacular scenery ever.
We get to Oslo, get on the plane, fly to Copenhagen and take the train across the strait to Malmo, Sweden. Check in at the Radisson.  The Radisson is a marvelous place to
stay, pricey, too, I figure.  But one thing about this kind of high-dollar enterprise, though, is the fact that it is all business, and so after I take a walk, get lost, find my
way back, take a nap for an hour, then we're off to the KB Club for a sound check, then back to the hotel for more sleeping.  We are slated for 10 pm.

A SMALL DIATRIBE OF THE TYPE YOU'VE COME TO EXPECT:
Do not get me wrong: I love Scandinavia and its various Scandinavians.  Scandinavia as far as I can tell, consists of Norway, Sweden and Denmark.  I don't think Finland fits in there anywhere.  Though there are three countries, there seems to be some
defining unity.  None of the three went for the Euro, for example.  To Scandinavians there is Europe and there is Scandinavia.  Norway and Sweden share a peninsula, and the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian royals are all related closely.

 Anyway, coming into Malmo today we passed a sculpture of a handgun with a knot twisted in the barrel.  I gotta stop and think here: here is some official-seeming exhibit
against armed violence, and it is true that Sweden has managed to stay out of "European" wars for well over a century, the home of the Nobel Prize- blahblah, hasn't been like a major bellicose contender since they took on Catherine the Great, a very peaceful nation, que non?  Yet one of its most profitable exports is war materiel.  Saab
makes a mother of a fighter plane, comparable to stuff we crank out in the States, and Sweden's full-auto weaponry rules the roost.  There's something fishy here, for a nation dedicated to the idea of peace to be profiting from third-world conflicts. Scandinavia is aloof from the world's problems, but eager to make a buck: Sweden makes tanks, Norway hunts whales, Denmark is a center for child porn.  On the currency in Sweden are the faces of writers, scientists and singers: Karl Linnaeus, Jenny Lind. It is a dichotomous world up here in the North. A guy in a bar says to me, "You simply do not understand." "Exactly," I reply.

THE SHOW TONIGHT AT KB
Tonight Shaver tossed caution to the winds and called tunes we have not played. Before a packed house. My friend Bo and Karl-Erik, the proud possessors of the only two copies of "HomeGrown" in Sweden, turned up.  Shaver has some true believers here in Sweden who hang on his every word, and why not?  I been doing the same thing for years.  I relaxed into the now and Shaver, Jerry and I played in total sympathy to each other, there was immense attention to dynamics and the crowd had a great emotional roller coaster ride. ("My, oh my, how those egos they do fly...") It was a
magic night where the music played the players.  So now I'm sitting in a bar suddenly aware that Swedish chicks aren't all that tall, after all. Couple of little babettes see me scribbling in the corner and come over to write in my notebook their e-mail addresses. Time to go back to the hotel. It's London or bust tomorrow.
 

London, England, July 28, 2002 - - Well, forget about Swedish hospitality here in Merry Olde.  After another buffet breakfast we climbed on a plane and flew into Heathrow.  We arrived at 3:30 for a show to start at 9:15.  No one met us at the airport and we ended up taking a taxi and going the Great Circle route to the tune of 53 pounds.  Get to the club, do a quick sound check.  The management is nonchalant to say the least...they do not seem to realize who they have booked in here...doesn't matter, we will kick ass and prove it and have our revenge, but that comes later.  After sound check we set out to find another cab and end up with a gypsy taxi dude named Trevor who takes us to the hotel.  London is roasting this day, and of course there is no air conditioning to be found anywhere.  Trevor, sensing an opportunity for another ten
pounds, returns faithfully to take us back to the club at 7:30.

A BIT OF ENGLISH DIGRESSION
Nowhere on this trip have I seen squalor as in London.  Hell, nowhere except in Seoul in 1965 have I seen such squalor.  This is poverty, slim, and I understand now why
all my English musician friends in Amsterdam have relocated.  The English class system is rigidly in place; there must be good food and accommodations available
somewhere, but I see none of it.  London seems to me to be a powderkeg.  Why these masses haven't come boiling up out of the slums long ago I cannot understand.  Well, yeah I can: it's the same old divide and conquer routine.  Keep 'em at each others' throats and they'll not snap to where the real oppression is coming from. I'm glad I'm not English. It is a complicated and maybe not so subtle means of governance, is the class system, but its ramifications are to be found on every street.

THE SHOW AT THE UNDERWORLD
This is the fourth of our four gigs on this tour and, Jerry and I, who have not played together ever before are now, after last night's success in Malmo, relaxed and confident in each other. We are old chunks of coal rapidly becoming diamonds, and the Teacher himself is increasingly happy with the homework we're turning in.  The crowd, which includes quite a few Shaverhead stalwarts, absolutely loves the show.  Billy includes as a matter of course, a couple of tunes with just himself and guitar and
even a couple of a capella tunes.  We end the set, take our leave, and the crowd begins stomping, clapping and yelling "Sha-ver! Sha-ver! Sha-ver!"  It has dawned on the
management that three guys with acoustic guitars are sometimes a force with which to reckon, and they come and say, "You know, you could do one more..." which, as the
pandemonium increases changes to "Will you please do just one more?"  Shaver and I grin at each other like wolves, we three return and close the night with "When the Fallen Angels Fly".  Shaver signs autographs for his friends and fans, and by
11:30 we're outside looking for Trevor, who doesn't show.  Probably found himself a rock," says Jerry.

We wind up in the hands of Abdul, yet another gypsy driver, who takes us to the hotel, where we sleep for five hours and then meet outside with Abdul's cousin Mohammad at the wheel of Abdul's Vauxhall.  Mohammad takes us directly to Heathrow, avoiding the Great Circle route for considerably less poundage, we make our connection and begin to fly home.  We have none of us had eight hours' uninterrupted sleep since the Netherlands, and it is starting to tell on us.  Billy Joe is, of course, very tired, what with his recent operations and all.  I am not that far behind Shaver in the number of years misspent and new leaves turned over, and even Jerry, who is by comparison a kid, is looking ragged.

On the plane I manage to collapse into a sleep in which I dream I am flying across the Atlantic Ocean in a plane.  We have flown the entire tour on United and SAS, who share the same in-flight movies, so we already saw them eight days ago on the flight over to Europe.  Somehow nine hours goes by and we find ourselves back in
Newark.

"WE ARE EVERYWHERE..."
When we get to Newark we have to claim our bags and go through Customs. For some thoughtless reason I am wearing my by-now-faded tie-dye shirt with the Grateful Dead bears walking in their happy little spiral. Customs guy lamps it and says, "So, been to a couple of shows, eh?"
Oh, shit, I think. "A few," I admit.
"I went to almost a hundred," he says and then proceeds into the Deadhead reverie of the shows he saw and where and when, the tunes The Boys played.
"What's your favorite tune," I ask.
"Tennessee Jed," he says.
"Stella, fer sure," I say.
"I really miss Jerry," the Customs Deadhead says.
"We all do," I reply.
"Anything to declare, brother?" he asks.
"Afraid not," I say.
"Oh, well," he says, and we pass beatific smiles back and forth and I move on.
Shaver, Jerry and I get on a plane to Denver.  Then we get on a plane to Austin.
In Austin we are met by Billy Joe's formidably talented regular guitar player, Bob Brown.  Shaver and I check into the Red Roof.

Next morning we check out and have lunch together and Billy Joe drops me at the airport, on his way to Waco to see his dogs he inherited from Brenda.  I move into the bar.  The young woman who serves me has that Texas look about her, looking eerily like Eddy Shaver.

It has been a very short, hectic, grueling trip, "a miniatour", said Shaver.  I left Nashville last Sunday, today it is Tuesday, nine days later, and I am going home
today.  In the space of only five days out of the country we played four dates in four countries.  Jerry Hollingsworth and I, under the stress of no rehearsal, rapidly learned to trust each other as players and emerged as a pretty good rhythm section.  Billy Joe was able to take his songs to the people, some of whom have waited as long as twenty years to see him, with a competent, professional and passionate back-up band.  I bought this little notebook in Amsterdam and have filled it up in bars under the influence of various intoxicants, the most heady of which has been sheer joy in living and in playing Billy Joe Shaver tunes again.
 

We go back a long way, Shaver and I...I've known him more than half my life now and he has been a fixed point to me, even during the years in which we had no contact.  We are still able to communicate in a straight, blunt, no-frills way, with a mutual respect for each others' private natures.  And in this trip he and I had numerous conversations, but nearly all were of a private nature and not to be repeated.

HOME AGAIN HOME AGAIN JIGGETTYJIG
Arriving at the Nashville International (yeah, right) Airport, the city's monument to itself, I walk the unnecessarily long quarter mile route from plane to terminal to claim my guitar - the only piece of non-carry-on luggage I have had the whole trip.  There at the bottom of the escalator stands the good Captain Midnight, whom I have known almost exactly as long as I have known Billy Joe Shaver, and beside him stands my faithful Indian companion, Peppermint Patty, her sweet heart a beacon to my wandering soul for even longer.  I am home again.

"We are wayfaring, wandering gypsies alone

Looks like looking for is where we'll always be

Cursed to born as serious souls

No one will take seriously."
 

"Serious Souls" by Billy Joe Shaver circa 1972


                                                                                                     panama red


Visit Panama Red's website

Editor's Note:  Panama Red is an independent music artist, story teller and songwriter based out of Nashville.  He has written songs with Kinky Friedman and others of note.  Panama Red's "Homegrown" CD is pure genius in my opinion.  He's just a misplaced Texan I do believe.

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