SEANCHAI

NO APOLOGIES

i write. i tell stories. those are two similar things, but not always the same thing .

i have been telling stories in and around bars and nightclubs forever. just whatever pops up reminds me of something and i am off to the fucking races .

then, i settled in to write a book. and, two seconds after i did THAT , i started getting up in front of people in some really cool places to tell stories. sometimes stories i wrote, mostly just stories from a shared past with my spin on it. a pretty good amount of the time, i combined both. a little reading from the book or a work in process, and then an hour or sometimes more of just stories .

the stories are historical non fiction/fiction. my history. your history. a history we are extremely lucky to share. a time and place we inhabited that was filled with amazing people,art,life,politics whatever. it was an amazing time to be alive and part of any number of “scenes” at one time.

it was fucking magic.

and it’s never coming back.

thing is, i share these stories and it feels like gathering around a campfire and reliving history with my tribe .

because that’s what it is.

but in my head, it’s just my friends being nice and listening to me ramble . because, like EVERY human i know, i have a pretty good case of imposter syndrome going. we used to just call it self doubt, but that wasn’t ominous enough for someone, i guess.

it gets pretty strong amongst people who create things i hear. we try to make something, or even just THINK about making something and here comes the self hate and doubt.

that’s what writers do. fuck, it’s what EVERYBODY does, we’re just fucked up enough to tell other people about it.

anyway…..i like to post memories independent of the book stuff on facebook from time to time. sometimes, it is part of something i’m trying to hammer into the book.

and, when it’s something about the shared past, my almost life long friend Judith responds and calls me Seanchai. a Celtic word that translates roughly into “bearers of lost lore”

Seanchai have been travelling the world for hundreds of years,from town to town,village to village and the people gather to hear tales told of times past. the lands past.the tribes past. distant and not so distant past. before written words could be shared easily,the Seanchai would keep history and tell those gathered the stories. in ancient times Seanchai were second only to royalty in importance of the Clans .

so,basically,an Irish fella walks into a room and starts talking.

sounds like me.

except for that old imposter syndrome thingy.

anyway,Judith has seen me in almost every fucking situation good or bad through the years,and i was pretty fucking bad sometimes. she just fucking slogged on being my friend. laughing at or with me, commiserating when needed, in general just being fucking awesome . so, i always loved when she called me Seanchai, but i never felt i could own it even a little.

but, the world is fucked up all to fuck,and you know from the news the level of absolute human garbage we have running us into the ground and stealing with both hands while giving license to the worst hatred imaginable.

so, between that shit show and really fucking cool people like Panick,Martin and The Handcuffs asking me to open for them and cool as fuck bands like St. Divine now part of my performing family i think it might just fucking be time for me to fucking own it.

below is a story from the new book in rough form,i said i would share things like this here,so here it is.

it’s a story about a strong funny fierce woman who may have had imposter syndrome,but she would have split your lip if you had suggested it. she lived hard,she wrote amazing poetry,she was my pal,and way before i got up and started telling dark stories in dark places ,she took the bull by the fucking horns and made her bitch.

i’m honored to be a part of the Seanchai tradition. especially the Chicago version. it fucking kicks ass.

EXCERPT FROM FUCK YOU WE’RE FROM CHICAGO

I’M LIKE A ROCKSTAR, ONLY SMARTER !!!

Here’s the thing, she’s not the woman you think you know. Hardly anyone ever is. But, since she died way too fucking early, everyone puts a weight on her that isn’t true or fair or even close to real. She was real though.

Very.

And I was lucky enough to be her friend for a short time.

Phil asked me to write something about Lorri Jackson a while ago, and I was touched to my marrow about that. It’s a big fucking deal when a musician and human you really admire asks you to contribute something to a project. An even bigger deal, if you’re me. I’m not a musician. I write. That’s it. I try to make the words make sense to other people. I have worked in the music world as a roadie, bodyguard, tour manager for years. Never played. I fight with the words. And these words took literal years after Phil sent me a note asking for something about Lorri for the anniversary of Chemical Imbalance. Yeah. The record she read her poetry on. The voice coming off the vinyl with that sweet yet menacing little girl out for revenge twang to it. Sheer fucking poetry in motion. It took balls to just read poetry on the first industrial/metal/rap mash up. She had them in spades.

But, before there was that voice sending us on a late night road trip looking to find love while drinking warm beer in a beat up muscle car, before the outright fuckery of the Skatenigs putting this tiny woman in a reform school boys locker room to break balls and hearts, before the awful end, before ANY of that …there was the words. And the love of the sound they made clanging together to tell us beautiful, ugly things. fearless words. She loved them.

I had heard of her from friends I worked with at Exit soon after she came to Chicago. But it was more of a “hey you write, Lorri writes cool poetry, I’m surprised you haven’t met yet “ kind of deal. And then, one night, I’m sitting outside, working the door and this tiny girl walks up to me and says “Hey . I’m Lorri. I hear you’re a writer. What kind of shit do you write? “ I tell her I want to write something that seems like a continuation of where Kerouac left off with the Beat Generation falling apart and punk sort of reenergizing that whole space. She rolls her eyes. I say, “well at least it’s not some shitty poetry only five people will like “ she stares at me for ten full seconds. Silence. Then, she just starts laughing her ass off and punching me in the arm as hard as she can. We were friends from that second until she died. And she was more than you think you know, but , through both our good and bad times, we were always all about the words.

The fucking words.

So, we both walked around with army surplus store medical bags holding books and our writing bits over our leathers and talked for hours about writing, who we loved to read and how we could make writing our living. We both were fans of John Cooper Clarke the “punk poet” from England. He was a hero to both of us. The guy wrote biting, hilarious, nasty poetry. He was skinny as fuck, wore black mod suits, had huge jet black ratted out hair and did the thing we dreamt of…he stood fearless in front of punk rock bands and read his poetry. All alone. Just him and the words. And it fucking worked!! He hung out with and opened for the biggest bands in the UK at the time. He lived this crazy poet life filled with excitement and music and got on television to read poetry that no one expected. We obsessed over him a lot. But, to us, that was not just a dream, it was an impossible dream. Then, Lorri became a punk rock goddess.

One night, I’m at the door of Exit, and she comes by. Late. She’s high and smiling and tells me she is going to do it. She got a gig opening for a local band at Dreamerz. Another punk bar in the Wicker Park section of Chicago. Holy Fuck. So, of course I tell everyone after we close that we have to go and see her open for the band. And it ends up being be and Mad Dog the only two employees from Exit that show up. We get there kind of early, and the three of us are drinking and snorting and laughing and just generally happy as fuck. Mad Dog was a great guy, he had no interest in poetry or the band that was playing, he came to support Lorri like I did. But I was filled with the idea that maybe, just maybe, Chicago could do what no one else in the states could do. Marry poetry, literature and punk rock. I wasn’t a poet, but I had dreams someday of reading stories on stage , but here was Lorri, doing it tonight! So fucking cool. We were just hanging at the end of the bar, sound guy does the last microphone check and walks off stage. The band walks outside, and Lorri says, “ shit , that’s my cue , I’m on !” and, she jumps onstage and stands there all alone , pulls her notebook out of her bag, and reads her poetry. In that fucking voice. There are probably twenty people in the joint including Mad Dog ,the sound guy ,the bartender and me. And it’s silent as she rips through four of her pieces in machine gun fashion. She doesn’t race through the reading, but she doesn’t stop for anyone to respond or even catch their breath between the readings. And then she stops ,closes her notebook, and as she’s stuffing it into her bag, the place goes crazy! She stands frozen in time at the mic stand , smiles that prankster devil smile, and hops off stage, grabs me and Mad Dog for a hug and then we all run out the door so she can get some air and calm down from the adrenaline. As we are smoking and talking about everything but what just happened, I finally have to ask, “ how did that feel?” she looks me straight in the eye ,doesn’t skip a beat and says “ better than fucking the prom queen with a ground glass dildo.” Stares at us . takes about a half a breath, she starts laughing and punching and we just generally can’t believe she just started something as cool as this in Chicago.

I saw Lorri Jackson open for local bands at Dreamerz and Exit a total of five times including the first night. I believe I saw every live reading she did opening for bands.

Here’s the thing though…..

After the third show, she told me “not one of these motherfuckers ever said it was ok .they flat out told me to go fuck myself” she just fucking got up and did it ! she waited until last sound check, and turned a mic back on and went at it. No one knew she was going on, the sound guys just went with it because it wasn’t any extra work for them, and the band members were usually gone after soundcheck until it was time to go on.

SHE JUST FUCKING DID IT.

PUNK AS FUCK.

And then, Phil asked her to read on the record that became Chemical Imbalance. And the world shifted . what a fucking honor to be asked to be part of that, because of your words. Your heart. When she told me it was happening, we laughed and cried and celebrated how we always did. And she ran off to join the circus and put her words on a record. I left on a tour with some band, and life just kept spinning.

I never saw her again. I miss her. The world lost a voice it really needs. But I miss my friend I could talk about words with.

It took years after she passed for me to admit to anyone writing was my dream. First date with my wife as it turns out. I just blurted it out and felt free. She helps me ,she pushes ,she leads me to the keyboard. So,I tried to write again. It took awhile. Some wounds heal slower than others. My wife got me through to the first book and everything after.

Twenty five years after Chemical Imbalance was released, I drove to St. Louis with my wife on our wedding anniversary. to tell a story before the Skatenigs played. I told a story called cocaine pinata . it was recorded and some cool folks have used bits of it in songs they have mixed. I tell stories or read from my first book before bands play now. I need to point out, I have been invited.

My DJ friends will spin between my reading in some cool, dark ,punk rock joints. I open for Riotfest shows sometimes. Words have taken me some interesting places. They usually come pretty easy these days, but two years ago, Phil asked me if I could write something about Lorri for the anniversary of the record. And the flood of feelings and the roadmap to how this all happened is crazy. And here I am two years later, finally able to say something about her. About Phil and the music, and the words.

Words and Music.

Fuck