Marcia Ball sat for me three times Sunday. The first time, ok, she was sitting at her piano, cross-legged in a skirt, flapping her flip-flop sandal to the beat, her fingers flying across the board, like two acoma hawks herding a flock of hummingbirds, for me and 200 others, at her Mother’s Day Show per se at Redwood City’s Little Fox. And she was singing, and leading her band, of course, in concert, so it was hardly my sitting. And it was hardly sitting, with all that action going on.

Texas-Gulf-Coast-Cajun blues legend Marcia Ball, rocks the 88 in the 650

After the two-hour set she signed autographs and then chatted up we two final suitors, (myself, and a man named Paul “Dainuri” Rott, father of fiddle player Hamilton Rott) not unlike Scarlett O’Hara, for another 45 minutes or more. I then asked her to pose for “Plastic Alto”, although, with even more chutzpah, I might have asked for a more candid shot, or not asked at all and just aim-and-shoot, perhaps as she wet her whistle with her red wine from a plastic cup. I wonder when was the last time someone asked permission to shoot her feet? Let’s not read too much into this; suffice it to say it was a pleasant surprise to learn that Marcia Ball is so accessible. With such fearsome talent.

Four hours into her Sunday “evening with” Marcia Ball looks ready for another rocking’ set.

For the third shot, she indulged me and this digression into silver jewelry. She told a story about her habit, custom or hobby of seeking out Mexican silver cuffs to try to replace a family heirloom her 80-something mama wore for 70 years or more until, like a lot of things, it gave, or gave in. She told me she also has a set or collection of Navajo silver from her Santa Fe sojourns, hair clips, pins or barrettes to manage or control her formerly trademark long hair, compared to the less-fuss-and-muss short style she has rocked in the near term and last night. Because I am such a nut about Santa Fe, I imagined her shopping a particular spot off the Plaza (of Santa Fe, not Los Gatos, but we did also talk about Los Gatos and their excellent downtown shows).

Marcia’s cuff

My girlfriend Terry Acebo Davis the visual artist and former helicopter flight nurse shot this enhanced view of Marcia Ball et al but I kinda like my crappy blur-jobs from my “stupid cell phone” i.e. not a “smart phone”.

Our birds eye view, from the first row of the balcony of Club Fox –an annex to the historic Fox Theatre per se — was picked by my big sister Linda and her husband Mark Moulding, who plays keyboard for a local cover band. Linda is learning her way around a kit drum. (My brother Rick calls her a “skills junkie”: juggling, cooking, baking, tax prep, judo, tai kwon do, bullwhip) Fittingly, Marcia’s guitar player Mighty Mike Schermer, of Bonny Doon before Austin i.e. Santa Cruz, sang lead on one he wrote (and has recorded) called “My Big Sister’s Radio“.

I had been carrying an image of this flyer — talk about old school, or mix of new and old — and at our Mother’s Day gathering Linda saw the ad in the paper and I said: “we have to go!”

As David Shields might say: when I shoot Marcia Ball or her poster, I shoot myself; which reminds me of the line, don’t shoot the piano player

Anyhoo, that’s as much about the Weisses as The Marcia Ball, so I’ll have to add to this later to fix that.

Marcia Ball is a national treasure and we hope her upcoming recording, at Wire Studio in Austin with Tom Hambridge, a drummer  and songwriter, who produced Buddy Guy’s cd, brings her the acclaim she has truly earned. Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio?, o.k: Marcia Ball is the player to be named later, Alligator, in our pantheon of American heroes, or to solve our hero deficit.

Her writing is excellent throughout, you can hear in her concerts, but my ears perked up to her versions of the Randy Newman chestnut and Ball’s tribute to fellow Cajun Bobby Charles (Robert Charles Guidry, 1938-2010), “Party Town”.

She said “Redwood City is party town” which made this Palo Alto impresario want to shake both his money-maker and his metaphorical tomahawk, to go back to war for arts and artists here, here-here in North Santa Clara County, Palo Alto, the 94301.

“It’s not like it’s a college-town or anything” Marcia quipped, later, and noted that, when I asked, she didn’t believe she had ever played here. (Although I’m fairly certain she played New Orleans By The Bay at Shoreline in Mountain View, and she played Los Gatos).

At the very least, we should remedy that! (Or so says me, the Earthwise promoter with 200 or more concerts under his conch belt, including by Pinetop Perkins, The Magnolia Sisters and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and who can name four rooms downtown in which I have booked bands but are now office space and realtors: yuck! Double yuck!).

But watching Marcia Ball and her energy, her grace, her power, her spirit, her stamina, got me pretty darn jacked up and wondering what else I could do, in imitation, to rock the world.

To shake my spear, so to speak, to whoop and holler and howl, arhoolie et wah hoo wah.

But even the quirkiest, most free-form and self-referencing Plastic Alto treatment of a Marcia Ball show would be remiss not to mention her excellent band including Schermer, “bass player for life” Don Bennett (from Del Rio, where they shot “No Country For Old Men”, and his middle name is indeed Bass), and drummer Damien Llanes, all of whom are featured on “Roadside Attractions” from 2011. I think the sax player was Thad Scott from the New Orleans Saxophone Quartet; either way, he did rip some killer solos and harmonize on bass and lead lines with a pro’s touch. I’m sort of teasing myself and the artist about the good and bad about The Talent drawing too much attention from zealots, especially 2,000 miles from home, but these guys I am certain have her back. (One thousand seven hundred thirty two miles, from Austin to Palo Alto, by car, last time I checked and since I am adding thoughts parenthetically, can I mention that the son of the man who made my Navajo cuff, I was telling her about, was in the movie Don Bass Bennett mentioned was about his home turf?)

The fete was a baller, but, over the course of two hours the moods did vary, as you might imagine. Going from Randy Newman’s “Lousiana 1927 (six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline/ they’re trying to wash us away”) to her moving family history, “This Used to Be Paradise” was sobering and inspiring, and smart. I was imaging we could say similar things about the conversion from Santa Clara Valley to Silicon Valley, dragging our nets, picking our cots, what is inevitable and what we can control, who has a say, and more. I kidded her that she deserves a Nobel Prize but maybe if she grows the audience for her laments, she could be the Pete Seeger of the Gulf Coast. A Grammy win and a Pulitzer would be more realistic, my small fish Aquarius Year of the Rabbit says to her prodigious Pisces.

And who said that they only want a revolution if it has a dance beat? Amen, y’all. I’m with her, or them.

edit to add: Ms. Ball, a.ka. “Her Tallness” did tell us this story, and out of both laziness and respect to journalist Margaret Moser, I am lifting a paragraph:

Hope Mouton, whose sisters were named Faith, Love, and Charity, kept a tight rein on the house; Marcia observed a bedtime curfew until she went away to college. It was a quiet childhood; even with the uneasy rumblings of the civil rights movement, Ball recalls a coexistence not understood by those outside the South. She’s a good ambassador, and teaches as much by her deeds as the words. 

1. The New York Times today had a feature on Cher who is pretty darn close to a contemporary of Marcia Ball; suffice it to say that Marcia does not need to wear feathers to get across to her fans.

2. I have at least another 1,400 words as I ruminate our conversation, or the show itself, or if I go back thru her catalog hear via the electronic wonder box. Most of it is little bits and pieces, as opposed to a long arcing but obscure entree into her world via by quaintly bad photography. For instance: she says her agent Tom Gold was at the show, and did I see him. I said I believe we’ve met but I did not recognize him. I had asked her something about Mike Kappus, the founder of Rosebud Agency in SF, who had recently announced his retirement (and dissolution of the firm) after about 40 years. In that bit of riffage, it took me a few milliseconds to compute that when she said “John Lee” she was talking of Kappus’ former client John Lee Hooker. When I mentioned doing a show with Pinetop Perkins, meanwhile (that thought, plus or minus about 40 others, names-dropped or spirits conjured), I believe she said “My boyfriend” — Pinetop was 86 when he played Cubberley and kept gigging until he was 95. I don’t think that Marcia and Mr. Perkins actually dated, but I could imagine him charming her in various ways. Compared to hearing Bonnie Raitt speaking at Hooker’s memorial, up on the hill in Oakland, and her describing her friendship to the blues guitar great, and expressing some kind of still smoldering Heat, as I took it. (My impression is that women were viscerally impressed by the charisma exhibited by John Lee Hooker, for the first five or so decades of his life. I only saw him once live in his 80s, and probably do not have the apparatus to register his appeal the way Ms. Raitt does or did; I wonder how many people besides me, sneaking back to point via the back door, kinda sorta slightly confuse Bonnie Raitt with Marcia Ball: more than confuse Ball with Jon Cleary, clearly. And I’l just say that we also talked, Ms. Ball and me, of Ann Savoy, whose book we both own, it seems).

3. Coinky-dinky-like, I also screened via the magic of not-tivo, the first ten minutes and three songs of the 1978 biopic about Buddy Holly. It takes place in 1956, when Ms. Ball would have been about 7 or so. I wonder how much of an influence he would have been on her (as compared to, say, Jerry Lee Lewis)? Lubbock to Orange, TX (where Ball was born, before drifting, like a continent (but not the Continental), to Lousiana, and true Cajun territory , is about 100 miles. No, check that, as I did: Orange, Texas, the easternmost city in East Texas, is about 600 miles from Lubbock and only 35 miles to Lake Charles, Louisiana. (I am just guessing that they actually call it “Er-onj” or something with two syllables. People drew the borders wrong to put it with Texas). And what I saw is known as the Roller Rink medley, of The Buddy Holly Story, including “Rock Around With Ollie Vee” which is about a lady from Memphis, which is about 600 miles from Austin, since we are measuring. And that scene made me also wonder about “bop” and “boppers” as in The Big Popper, and “be-bop” before it meant jazz, when it was more like what became rock and roll. From “bopper” to “baller” so to speak, literally.  And: teeny-bopper. words. 3.1 And Orange is part of a triangle with Port Arthur and Beaumont, Tx, which reminds me of local musician Michael Pitre, of Bohemian Knuckleboogie, who I met in front of Jack’s or actually John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room. I didn’t realize until now that he was written about in the Chron. 

4. Times today, the New York version, the The version, had a story, not completely unrelated to a discussion of Marcia Ball, and her social conscience, about how Texas is proud of the efficiency of its capital punishment program, at least compared to Oklahoma (who doesn’t rebuild but only reloads). Reminds me that I met Sister Helen Prejean, at Sedge Thompson’s electronic hoedown, speaking of Emile Zola. I had also, and this Texas-like California heat — 96 degrees F — has my synapses firing in an atypical array, perchance, made a poster once for a John Doe Show (someone I am certain has no connection to Marcia Ball, except via me perhaps, here), that utilized pictures of about 50 people who had been killed in Texas by we the people, all of whom were defended by we the people as well, i.e. they could not afford an attorney. Sorry for digression and the way my mind works; I doubt Marcia sings too many murder ballads. 4.1 footing my footing, Sister Helen Prejean is from Baton Rouge and her mission has offices in New Orleans and Chicago, although I do not want to pretend that Marcia Ball endorses her or their is any connection anywhere outside Plastic Alto. For follow up, but under a different post, there is a woman at DePaul who coordinates theatrical treatments of “Dead Man Walking” for the schools market, check back about, or suss for yourselfs.

5. We did not discuss but I do refer back time to time to Rick Koster book on Texas music.

6. Our conversation about her upcoming session had me side-surfing for Buddy Guy stories, Jimbo “Hambone” Mathus compared to Hambridge, and people who have played for the president (as compared to, like Ball and I think Lightning Hopkins, played with his poodle). Ms. Ball says she is pals with the former governor or senator from Kansas who is in the Obama administration, something downright social, Kathy Sibelias maybe? Y’all check back to see if I clean up that mess. As in:

Gary’s love of music and his frequent travels to musical events has put him on a first-name basis with some noted jazz and blues artists, including Marcia Ball, who over the years has entertained at several fund-raising events for Kathleen Sebelius (the former Governor of Kansas, 2003-2009 and Secretary of Health and Human Services (2009-2014 or a couple weeks ago), including one held the final weekend of the gubernatorial campaign.

By coincidence, a few weeks after the election, Ball was recording at a studio in Austin, Texas, when Gary and Kathleen arrived to attend a National Governors Association seminar for new governors.

Gary dutifully attended several sessions designed to help spouses of new governors adjust to their official roles. But he admitted skipping a session on how to manage the official residence to listen to Ball record.

I could picture them friends, Sebelius and Ball