Even if he wanted to, Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb couldn’t repeat himself. Just watch him sing sometime; the guy’s got two vocal mics, one distorted, one clean, and he doesn’t make up his mind which one he’ll be singing into until he’s halfway through his line. Tucson (Fire), Gelb’s latest release (credited to Giant Giant Sand), is named after his Arizona hometown. He will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Gelb: A solo performance is a lit fuse. You have exactly the length of your set to figure how to get out of there before your brain explodes.
Well, it’s a know fact that it’s a matter of time before the listener’s ears will grow weary with your limited accouterments. It’s a danger, a gamble, a challenge. If you are going to tour solo, I recommend hating listening to other solo performers. Only then will you be savvy enough to try and raise the bar on your own set.
It can’t always be helped, pulling it off all right every night, but that instigated gamble is an integrated spice; you keep wanting to get it more and more right, but at the same time, you drip with deconstruction, too. Like any good spotlighted human, you resemble dichotomy. If you can figure it out you need to try it, it is like nothing else on the planet.
Now there are several ways to tour solo. One way is to tour as a duo, another way is to play as a trio when you’re solo, but I recommend actually being completely alone out there: no tour manager, no crew, no nothin’. You will be immersed in a world between worlds, a place where very little applies from those other worlds you are between. It’s rather similar to being dead, floating to wherever it is you are thinking about going, especially by train. The dead often take the train.
After years of living in some isolated places before taking on a family, a solo tour would then offer the only new isolation. Certain thoughts that take three days to assemble without interruption now come into focus in less then two when solo. It should also be mentioned the odd ease of making decisions without anyone else to confer with becomes an addiction.
It should be noted that it is possible to splash in a puddle of madness when the evaporation of your own backwash forms a cloudy promise from dark currents sloshing up from the depths to toy with your misplaced sense of humor at the very moment you realize you have been lost for more than an hour and have no idea where the venue is. Probably never to be found again.
There will be severe bouts of loneliness, but it’s best to enjoy those rare dollops of random nothingness, like zen drops. But also when solo, you often become more approachable, and although this can’t always be a good thing, it does allow for friendships and an information exchange that otherwise would never have had the chance of becoming treasured.
Mostly, it’s very easy to disappear in a phantom world between worlds. A place where songs love to come in and readily pester you into writing them. Plus, the human connection is unlike any other kind of travel or touring. When you reach the weary end of the daily trail, there is usually many a verbal embrace, a sparkler smile, an energy to offer, maybe a good coffee. These kinds of elements are usually impossible unless you are alone enough to see their detail and reflect the charity of clarity.
Maybe some of us are scatterbrains by nature and such nature only allows our attention span to kick in when we are not diverted by constant companions. Truth be told, that nature is a jealous mistress; she demands our attention every so often just to have you stare into her eyes unceasingly and then to the other travelers on the train.
We are just there sleeping with our eyes open.
Video after the jump.
