So It Goes: Nick Lowe and the power of live performance

A fantastic night with Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets reminded me again of who I am and why I need great music.

“Low Down and Dirty is a one-man music magazine.” - Ted Drozdowski, Premier Guitar.

I walked into the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro, Mass excited to see Nick Lowe. Though he has never exactly been a core artist for me, he’s written some songs I rank as all-time greats and I’ve listened often to his masterful 1994 album The Impossible Bird. I’ve been wanting to see him with Los Straitjackets, the surf band he has been touring with for years, and our schedules finally aligned.

They walked out, he said a few words of greeting and they launched into “So It Goes,” the cheery upbeat power pop song I always lived but really barely knew. And I teared up. What? This caught me off guard.

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“So It Goes” is a song I never really think about and wouldn’t have identified as a favorite, but it’s so instantly recognizable and it’s so good. And he was playing it and singing it so well that it just inspired me, moved me, made me happy to be alive, to be exactly where I was at exactly that moment. That’s what great art can do; strip everything away and focus you on the moment and the emotion.

Maybe because I spent the whole day writing about Bobby Whitlock’s passing and interacting with people about it, maybe because I’ve been playing all these shows with Jaimoe and am acutely aware that he is the last surviving original member of the Allman Brothers Band… but I’ve had such an acute awareness that the era of music I took for granted my whole conscious life - led by the greats a generation older than me - is coming to an end. Obviously, it can’t go on forever, but it’s becoming so clear that we are nearing an end of something. And Lowe is such an avatar, such a master of songcraft and a consistent presence on the road for as long as I’ve been paying attention to such things, that I was overcome with emotion and felt truly blessed to be in this special place sharing the space with him inside the tent packed with fellow music fanatics. I was sharing a table with Victor and Elise, a lovely couple who had come up from New Orleans for this show.

From the time I walked into Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena to see Supertramp in 1979, live music experience has been central to my life and my understanding of who I am and what the world is. Then I went to college and started working at Ann Arbor’s Rick’s American Cafe and threw myself into the beauty of small venue music - too crowded, too hot, too loud, too drunk - but everything just right. The Payomet, a non-profit venue inside a decommissioned military base on a national seashore, scratches that itch, and walking in with no hassles or metal detectors or bag searches is kind of nice, too!

And the hits just kept coming….

Los Straitjackets and their Mexican wrestling masks and vaudeville schtick of speaking in bad Spanish with the drummer translating may seem on the service like a weird fit for Lowe - but they are a great band, and they backed him sympathetically, energetically and expertly, including superb harmony vocals. I’d go see them on their own in a minute.

Where else are you going to hear such pure surf music these days? I saw Dick Dale and am happy I did. This scratches that itch I didn’t even know I had.

Lowe introduced “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love And Understanding” by noting that he hopes it becomes redundant some day soon. The song was made famous by Elvis Costello’s version, and the massive royalty check Lowe received from its inclusion on the smash soundtrack for The Bodyguard was a lifeline for the songwriter, a well-earned annuity for a lifetime of brilliant tune-smithing and dedication to the craft and art of rock and roll storytelling.

I walked out of the tent and headed towards my car floating a little, my heart full, my spirit lifted and ready to re-engage with a world that is increasingly divisive and confusing, a country I used to think I understood and increasingly do not. I don’t write about it much for a variety of reasons, but i am truly distressed, pained and furious about things happening in our country. I see some people from my side online criticizing any kind of enjoyment, any venture into art, beauty, celebrating greatness in whatever matters to be a distraction, a sell out. I reject this profoundly and aggressively. We have to remember who we are, why any of it matters. We need beauty and art. We need to stir our souls and remember who we are. Music does it for me, and probably for you too if you’re reading this.

So thank you Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets and Payomet Arts Center. My only disappointment was that Lowe did not play “The Beast In Me,” which I think is an all timer of a song. It is so excellent that it was brilliantly used as the credits rolled at the end of the pilot of The Sopranos, the greatest TV show ever. I may have cried full on if he played it, so perhaps it was for the better. I got in my car and listened to “The Beast In Me” three times as I drove away into the inky night, twice the original and once the spare cover by Nick’s ex-father-in-law, Johnny Cash. Here it is in the Sopranos. Watch the show again. It is more relevant than ever. Go see some live music. Take nothing for granted. Remember who you are. See you soon.

Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s was my third straight book to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book was Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band. It was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer who fronts two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.