Closer All the Time
Essay from last Night's SongbookPDX
Last night was the April Edition of SongbookPDX, where I read the piece below. SongbookPDX is a reading series where authors write a piece about a specific piece of music.
My Song was The Arrow Flies Close, off of Elfpowerโs 1996 album When the Red King Comes.
All things mostly tru-ish.
Late Mornings & Early Afternoons in the Cancer Loft went like this. Iโd stop by around 9 or 10 to see who wanted to go get breakfast.
Coffee and cigarettes were offered.
Chip had already smoked 7 even though heโd only been up for an hour.
He picks up that acoustic guitar of his thatโs never far away, a cough, then the chords begin.
A round or two, Chipโs early morning rasp is undercut with his honey whiskey voice. The words he sings are not his but of one of his best friends, Andrew Rieger, its to his song, The Arrow Flies Close
I feel like Iโm in Danger,
Distracted by all that I see.
In the Fall of 1991 I started college as a freshman at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. While there I met three people who would have an immense influence on me., Andrew Rieger, principal singer songwriter of the band Elf Power. Chip McKenzie, who still lives in Athens and Jay Carson, often referred to as The Angel Boy.
Andrew Rieger and Chip grew up together in Greenwood, SC, friends since elementary school. Greenwood had a college, Lander, where Jay and Chip met โin โ90 or โ91โ according to Chip. Jay grew up in Beaufort, SC. from a family who were like โsomething out of leave it to beaverโ
Chip Iโd meet briefly off and on in Greenwood whenever I came into town. Those first few years at Carolina, there was this parallel world of bands in Greenwood similar to ones we had in Columbia. Once a year weโd drive the two hours away to a field fest and see bands all day, see Chip and his band Skankus, Chip, singing with a fresh bouquet of flowers, always with a fresh yellow crepe paper wrapped bundle strapped to the mic stand, drink all day off of the copious kegs that were part of the five dollar entrance fee, and at the end of that night, if you were sentient, you could pass out wherever you found a clear corner.
The next day Iโd return home to Columbia in a Dodge Caravan, or back sore in the back of a Toyota pick up, greasy Hardeeโs breakfast sandwich in my stomach, sweet tea and unlimited Cigarettes. Health wasnโt exactly a priority for me back in 1992.
When I hung out in social situations way back then, Iโd get real torrent oโ babble to whoever was in earshot.
The year is 2012. I logged into Facebook. Tim K has tagged you in a post. Two clicks and there I am, the video footage is garbled VHS, the colors oscillate in their quality. It might have been โ92 or โ93. Even though the video is old. One thing is evident upon my first viewing of this video. I am crystal clear intoxicated. It is evident in my delivery that little of what I say has any staying power. I am a filler of time and space with empty words, unsure of which direction to head so I head in all of them. I do cool handshakes, pats on the back, I might have even said whatโs poppinโ homie g?โ
All of that information came to my brain all at once, I couldn't process any of it.
I didnโt know I had ADHD at the time.
As the world grows weary of me
Iโll Cast off this sense of belonging
And slip into memory.
So I drank until I couldnโt speak or maybe so I wouldnโt be able to speak, in that way I let
Other people took center stage,
Even with my actorโs training
I didnโt know how to be in a room
So I was the furniture, I was the wallpaper.
Jay moved to Columbia in โ94.
Chip followed suit in โ96.
Jay had facial reconstructive surgery on his face after a drunk driver destroyed the car he was driving. With the settlement money he could have put a down payment on a house, instead he started a record label, Angel Boy Records.
Angel Boy Records put out 7 inch 45 records from my art rock friends Imp, from Greenwood bands called Margo Sells Cargo, later shortened to Margo, Bleedhole, and the Butthole Surfers-obsessed Platypus Pug. One time Jay got a letter from a fan of Margo that lived in Latvia, apparently people couldnโt get enough of Margo there.
โOne of my bands is big in Latviaโ Jay used to say, with that high pitch kid laugh that always followed fake bragging like that. His bragging was justified, Iโve spotted that Bleedhole / Margo split CD in Leeds, Amsterdamt, and Berlin.
Jay Carson showed me one can be an artist by organizing other peopleโs art, putting out their records and going to all of their shows. Some nights Iโd go to see a local band and the only folks there were Jay, the band and myself.
Jay and his eternal presence at gigs, leaned up against the back wall of whatever backwater dive bar or hot dog stand. Jay always with a cigarette and a beer leaning against the wall, Jay that smile, and those canines.
The term Angel Boy came from a dream Chip had years ago, 1991 when all of the band members of Skankus lived together in a house on Grey Street in Greenwood. . In this dream Jay was somehow previously known as the Angel Boy looking out for everyone in their friend group.
โWe Belong Togetherโ is what Angel Boy said to his friends in the dream.
Jay wasnโt a typical musician, he figured out a way to integrate found sounds, samples, bits of dialog from old movies, heโd cue them up on stage with headphones on whenever Skankus played live, heโd be there lining up the next quote from Paris Texas. His contribution to Skankus was his contribution to our friend group, he was the glue that brought everyone together, or in our friend group, maybe he was more like nicorette gum.
Chip & Jay lived together for several years in Columbia, SC, in an upstairs apartment called the Cancer Loft. Named so for the amount of 2nd hand smoke one would consume just by sitting there.
This was back in 1997 back when I worked in Marketing at South Carolina ETV, two years before Iโd move to Portland, OR.
And while Jay and Chip were musical obsessives, it was Andrew with Elfpower who would break out and start to get some national attention for his bandโs work.
Elfpower still puts out records and tours around the world.
Chip, Jay, and the rest of our misfit weirdo scene. These were the people I met when I came to Columbia, SC as a refuge from all things Florida related.I hated the state of Florida with every fiber of my being and Columbia, SC with people who said hello to you when you walked down the streets. That had weirdos coming out of every nook and cranny when I visited the campus with my dad.
I could see myself being friends with all the smoking weirdos who hung out outside coffee shops or the Student Union. I would no longer be a solitary freak, but a freak with friends.
Meeting Jay was like meeting a missing appendage I didnโt realize I was missing,an ancillary arm or finger, something tucked just under the thumb, oh look there it is.
That personality, that sense of humor, that depth of knowledge of literature and music and art and philosophy and dumb stuff, Jay was a dance between the esoteric and the low brow. Phillip K Dick and fart jokes.
Jay and I in the summer of 1996 flew to England together. He was dating someone I knew in the international housing buildings I lived in. We were housemates, his girlfriend Jo and Jay and I lived together in a bargain three story flat in Leeds, England.
Weโd smoke outside, sometimes there would be sheep. โHey,โ Jay said one time, check out the size of those dingleberries, on that fluffy sheep over there,Jayโs signature laugh. A laugh that didnโt just mean something was funny, but that the entire universe showed us just how absurd life in general could be in that moment.
That he was named the Angel Boy is what sent the cold chill of mortality down our shoulders that day in 2002, when I got the phone call, that he had died and I was too new to a brand new town Portland, OR, I was day laboring for rent phase, I wasn't in the I can afford a plane ticket back home phase.
Then to my friends, I'll be gone
And they'll gather and put me away
I hope Jeff will sing me a song
And everyone else will play
Jay was found dead in the cancer loft one winter morning. I never did find out how he died. He went into his bedroom, lay down in bed, and didnโt wake up the next morning.
Our Angel Boy was gone. Jayโs funeral and tribute was the place I most wanted to be in the world. But I was out West, trying to make sense out of a life that would eventually be the life I couldnโt live in Columbia, SC. I didn't get to see Chipโs Band Skankus reunite in Columbia as well as Margo Sells Cargo, Bleedhole, even Platypus Pug, all in Jayโs honor. On the stage there was a bg Angel Boy Records Logo and a huge poster that said โWe Belong Together.โ
These three,Andrew and Chip and Jay, when they felt something they did something about it .For Jay it was running a record company, for Andrew it was starting a band and turning that band into 30 years and 14 albums worth of material. For Chip it was the courage to turn his life around and quick a thing that almost killed him. If Chip hadn't quit drinking when he did, he would have died in just a few months.
How sobriety can be the most wonderful thing. Like a long time single person finding real love, the fact that I could ask Chip questions for this piece, and the stories could come out and he could enjoy telling them, that he told me he had have internalized Jay completely to the point where anything that happens to him I can hear his reaction inside of Chipโs brain.
Now as an adult I can ask Andrew from Elf Power about Elf Power songs like when I thought one of the songs awas about Jay it wasnโt but it got us talking about Jay even if only from remote chat windows.
Iโd seen Elfpower in Columbia a few times but once they came with friends, Neutral Milk Hotel, & The Music Tapes.
Several bands shared band members; the keyboardist for one band would be the zanzithophonist from another band. They all played together at the new Brookland Tavern in 1998. And while my memory of that night is rather hazy, I do remember Chip being pulled on stage to sing with everyone for the encore, Andrew, Chip, and Jeff fucking Magnum.
That night the two bands went back to Jay & Chipโs & partied until dawn.
The day after I stopped by the Cancer loft to see who wanted to go breakfast, everyone was crashed out in various poses on various floors, but Jay came out and had a cigarette with me.
He put a song on, by Elfpower, The Arrow Flies Close.
โItโabout this guy, the guy who is singing, he is picturing what his death is going to look like, how he knows it's gonna come so heโs prepared for it, you know?โ Jay said.
But at that moment, that cigarette, band members tucked into corners and spare beds, sleeping bags Or a pile of laundry. We had one last moment of glory before I moved away.
Even though it was about 18 was months later I moved, but there was something in the air that morning, like I could feel the world moving away from Columbia, SC. It took folks coming in from Athens GA to show me there were places where artists lived, artists who could dedicate their lives to art.
We were all so young, it was hard to believe that within 4 years I would move out west And Jay would become spacedust
Andrew, Chip, Jay, the way they lived for art and self expression, the way they said what was on their mind, these three people helped me be who I am now, and while I wait for my own arrow to come closer every year, I prepare to receive the Angel Boy the way I always do, I see Jay in friends of mine who run small presses, or a student of mine shows me photos from an underground punk show, Jay would have loved Portland, loved our writing scene, would have flipped for the salon rouge. I see Jay in all the DIY places. I see Andrew in the songs I hear in my head but have not yet written, I see grace and confidence and the slow and steady control over oneโs art when theyโve stuck with their art for decades no matter what.
Those times, the 90s, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Cancer Loft, all of these things have left us, but the song Arrow Flies Close is there as it always is, to remind us how important it is to not waste time, to start chasing your dreams now.. While weโre here, letโs use what we have, letโs be good to each other, as the angel boy once said We Belong Together.
There's a knot in my throat
And the arrow flies close
Closer all the time
Closer all the time