Dreaming of Iceland

August. The dog days. I'm dreaming of Iceland. Our little air conditioner is over-matched. Friday afternoon, how to beat the heat?

I end up over at the coffeehouse, with an iced coffee, sitting in the shade in the sidewalk cafe out front, strumming my guitar with another player, an old-timer named John. John is 67 but you'd never guess it, his Chinese Leopard tattoo, bright colors, fine detail, is just a little over a year old, and his little silver ear-ring flags him as a hipster of the first degree. John is not an old guy.

John has a dog named Homer and he sits quietly at John's feet. If someone told me Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey I wouldn't be surprised. Homer is a totally mellow, supremely dignified little critter. He doesn't call much attention to himself. He looks at you with those bright, world-weary brown eyes and tells you with his self-contained silence that he has seen it all.

John has brought a pile of songs with him. Most of them are written by Johnny Cash, but there are a bunch of songs by Hank Williams, June Carter, Waylon Jennings, The Kingston Trio, Bob Wills too. Most of them are in the key of E or C. All major chords. The lyrics are specific and funny, and all so human.

These songs, even if you took each page and burned every one, or took every recording and tossed them in the ocean, these songs would live. They are burned into us. This folk music, these country and western tunes, these funny sounding songs are inside us. John does most of the singing, he sings low, kind of whispering to the strings, his voice is kind of sweet. Not at all what you think would come from this gruff dude.

We play for a couple of hours. I mean it seems like we're sitting for a few minutes and later I look at my cell phone and realize the afternoon has flown the coop.

"Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry, cry, cry
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River.
Then I'm gonna sit right here until I die." - from Big River by Johhny Cash