I’m quitting my job. I really like it, but I’ve got to follow my dream. I’m going to follow the Frost.
Robert Frost, that is. I love that guy. I really like his sound – it’s something you can really get down to, you know?
I used to be a big Burns-head – Bobby Burns, that is. But we all grow up, I guess. His hard-hitting, thrash poetry sound was fine when I was a kid. Rolling into town with a leather jacket in a Mustang convertible, some Burns blasting out the rolled down window – “The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft awry!” I used to smile inwardly (sometimes outwardly too if no one was watching) to see all those prudish neighborhood women watching this young punk and his Scottish poetry sweep through town like a tidal wave from hell.
Now, though, now I go for some Robert Frost. He gives a great show – what can I say? His edgy poetry can take me from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of maudlin introspection. So many memories.
I had my first kiss during the 18 minute harp riff that comes in the middle of “The Road Not Taken.” I broke my arm during a bloody brawl started during the adrenaline pumping finale to “Fire and Ice.”
It’s the little things when you’re on the road with the Frost that make it so special. The way he’ll stop in a town and sit on a corner and wail out “Stopping By Woods” until he picks up a few hookers and takes them back to the bus. And I’ll never forget the first time I heard the live version of “Mending Wall” – ‘And as I looked over the wall and the fields of waving grass, I turned to my neighbor and said you can kiss my ass.’ I almost teared up when I heard that, but I didn’t have to worry with the Frost around. Just as he had seemingly taken my soul to its lowest depths, he brought it screaming back when he smashed his guitar on a speaker.
Yeah, I guess I’m a big enough Frost fan to give it all up and take it on the road with him. A lotta folks say he’s dead, but folks say a lotta things. I know the Frost won’t let me down like that. Not like Maya Angelou and her ill-fated “A Rock, A River A Tree ‘Til you Drop!” Tour in ’96. But we don’t speak of that. Not anymore.