Tah Mee Kah

I have an Australian tour and recording session planned for Dec-Feb.

I also have a very good friend in LA named Frank Perricone. I never get to see Frank as often as I'd like and it has been years since we had a chance to write and record together.....so Frank and I decided to tack a week of hanging/recording at Frank's studio on the way to and from Australia. Frank kindly offered to use his SkyMiles to fly me to LA. This was great because then I only had to worry about getting myself from LA to Australia and back.

Anyway, I left Mobile this morning to begin this first leg of the trip. My mom and Leon drove me to Pensacola to catch my first flight (Pensacola to ATL).

Boarding goes easily and quickly.

But

The flight to Atlanta is running late (leaving me less than 30 minutes from the projected landing time and departure time to deboard, run to the escalators, get on the tram, travel to another concourse, run up the escalators there, ALL the way to the other end of the concourse and board the Atlanta to LA flight.

I'm amazed and out of breath but I arrive just in time for my flight to LAX. I'm in the second to last row. After a while a boisterous, Bronx fireball of a woman sits next to me and immediately starts telling me her life story. She has Diarrhea of the mouth with that gruffness only truly perfected by New Yorkers. She also informed me (an everyone within 10ft of us) that she needs the barf bag because she hates flying. As we begin take off she hyperventilates into the barf bag. Oh brother. After a bit of that joy, She is right back rattling off a barrage of anecdotes and commentary about life in her deep New Yorker "ghetto dialect" (as she called it) .

I think it's kinda funny so I chat her up. She tells me all sorts of stuff about her kids and virtually everything else under the sun. I try to keep up with the conversation and somewhere along the way it comes up that I am a musician. Then she asks me all about different aspects of the music industry (ie "What does a producer do?") I explain as best I can. We continue small talk about music for a good while. She then says she likes to sing from time to time with some friends (and asked if I thought her stage name "Tah Mee Kah Sanga" was a good).
I didn't but of course told her it was interesting and she should call herself whatever she liked.
She said that she tries to write too and that she usually jots down her ideas in a notebook. From that point on, she (of course) continues blabbing about totally random topics but simultaneously seemingly subconsciously doodles something on the page. At first I don't see it because im not trying to invade on her privacy but after a while it catches my eye.


WHAT THE HELL?!?!


I look over to see the words "birds sitting on a wire" scrawled along with a few other unrelated lines and a doodle of two telephone poles and a line of birds perched upon it.

WAIT WHAT ?!??

I say , " You have to be kidding me!". Then I show her my CD and tell her the most notable song on my new album is called "Bird on a Powerline" and actually we had just released the video yesterday.

I'm astonished and she seems taken aback by it too. She said , "Wow. I must be psychic".

Her writing is just enough different that I am amazed but able to believe it to be a coincidence. Plus she just keeps jabbering so the oddity I had just seen got kinda swept under the rug.
At this point my spidey sense is tingling but I continue anyway.
The lady just crashes forward with reckless abandon from one topic to the next so its hard to do anything but respond.
This hectic conversation continues for about half the trip (2.5 hours).
In order to slow the frantic pace of talking I pull out my iPad and fire up a game of Scrabble.
This seems to slow her down slightly plus it was just a fun way to pass time.
We play a couple of full games, while she is still just spewing out information and attitude (using words like "ignant" and "trifling").

At this point I start getting pretty hungry. I realize that I have dinner plans with Frank as soon as we land at LAX, but I think I would like a snack before we arrive.

I say, "I think Im gonna ask the flight attendant for a menu"
To which the woman replies forcefully, "UH UH. We are going to eat together when we land".

I looked straight forward thinking , "Oh damn. Did she really just say that? This woman is crazy."

I would pay money to see a picture of my face at this moment because I had to look like I just got an unsuspected ice bath.

I stare out of the window trying to gather a response.

After a good bit of silence (which has been rare on this trip) she says ,"We have more in common than you know"


A cold chill runs down my spine now. This chick is now way passed innocent loud-mouthed and boisterous, she is full on crazy. She's gonna stab me. I wanted to yell "SECURRITY!"

I have this ghetto Bronx woman now insisting on eating with me (which isn't gonna happen) and she thinks she we have some destiny or connection.

She then shoves her phone in my face and I see a picture of.......






Frank in the studio.

My friend Frank in the studio I am headed towards.

Then it all floods in and I get it.


Frank got me. Frank got me good.

Frank set the whole thing up. He got my seat with his miles. It was no problem to have gotten her seat with his miles and arranged this "chance meeting".

She says "I'm Adrianne. I'm so sorry. Frank made me do it." She was obviously hoping I wasn't actually mad.

I said "Oh no. I'm kickin you and Frank's ass. Or better yet, plotting revenge."

Then it hit me...,,she's Adrianne. I don't know her but have known of her for years.

Adrianne is a very talented session singer that I had heard sing many times on recordings Frank has done. However I had never met her in person. Frank was obviously flying her out to be part of the sessions this week.

Adrianne's Ghetto slang and head snapping melted away instantly. She went from Bon Qui Qui to a normal person who happens to have a New York accent.

We used the last 1-1.5 hour of the flight laughing and actually discussing music and specific songs we will be recording this week.

Anyway, the flight arrives safely in LA. We get our bags, meet Frank (who says ,"Oh, you two have met?" With his devilish Frank grin), then we ate and called it a night.

Im not sure if the writing/recording we do this week will be Grammy worthy or not.

But if we fail to receive a Grammy for our efforts, rest assured Adrianne could easily win an Oscar for her performance on that flight.

Hey Barkeep! May I Have Another Flight?

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

Whenever someone asks me if I want water with my Scotch, I say I'm thirsty, not dirty.
-Joe E. Lewis




I am a traveler. I can't seperate myself from being a traveller any more than I can seperate myself from being a musician. It's who I am.

As I have grown older I have embraced that fact and my life is for this acceptance. Here's why:

I have acquired a taste for the worst parts of traveling. I used to try and block out the bitterness so that these parts of the travel were hardly even noticable to me. Things like spending days in airports or traveling in less than ideal conditions had become almost subconscious to me. I couldn't dwell on them because I had learned to ignore them. But as I matured into a more seasoned veteran of motion, I realized that these little inconveniences aren't to be discarded or ignored. They add character and complexity to the journey. The best way I can think to describe it is to relate travel to a glass of scotch. I have a feeling that most everyone's first handshake with Dewar's (or the like) is an unpleasant one. At that moment most everyone, myself include, wondered why anyone would drink such poison. It is harsh and abrasive to the virgin palate. However, once (or IF) scotch has been given a fair chance a drinker usually finds that there are a plethora of amazing subtleties and characteristics to Scotch that the drinker had initially overlooked.

For me, this is analogous to travelling.

Don't misunderstand me, There isn't anything specifically wonderful about sitting on a stuffy airplane for 17 hours next to a snoring British man. There isn't anything inherently great about having to nap on a sidewalk because the airport is closed for the next few hours and there is no where else to go. But these things are part of the whole. And the whole is vital to my life and my happiness.

These travel woes have a bitterness to them that is unmistakable, but now that I have lived with them for so many years I see that they actually enhance the experience. (If for no other reason they enhance the experience because their juxtaposition with the fun parts of travel, makes the fun parts seem all the more wonderful.)

I have been fortunate to see so many unbelievable things around this world and it looks like I will be seeing many more very soon. I leave in three days to go overseas for a month. I will be playing in the Marshall Islands for two weeks then I will be playing a string of shows in Belgium and Germany. These destinations are reason enough to be excited. But I look forward to the travel itself too. I look forward to it because I know I will inevitably experience things along the way that I could not have even dreamed would happen. They may be pleasant surprises or horrible surprises, but they will be surprises nonetheless. And this uncalculatable variable is part of what gives my life its vividness and excitement.

I travel. I love to travel to destinations I've never been to. But reaching destinations aren't the only joy I get from traveling. I have established a veritable need for travelling. In the same way my mouth involuntarily waters at the scent of my favorite foods, my soul is effected by the act of movement. The experiences I encounter while travelling (involoving myself with different cultures, people, foods, drinks, music, geography, etc) are what actually sate my need, but the motion is a prelude to all this. It alerts my soul that an adventure is afoot. Much like my watering mouth, my soul anticipates the reward.

Without motion, any direction in life is merely a solitary vantage point. With motion, any direction in life is an adventure.

In the next 4 weeks I will cross the International Date Line twice, I will cross the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, I'll be in 4 different countries, I'll be on 27 different flights, I'll have 88 hours of layovers. And I'll be smiling the whole time.

I know a "normal" person may dread so much motion. They would likely try their best to congeal all the travelling together, take it like a bitter pill, and then get to the enjoyment which is waiting at the other end.

But again, for me, this trip is (as all trips are) a nice Scotch........and you don't gulp Scotch. Scotch is intended for slowly sipping.

"Cheers"