attendance would be just about equal. And in the third year, those people would also bring their friends and it would form the nucleus of my future audience. The fact that some of my songs were more than twenty years old wouldn’t matter. I’d have to start at the bottom and I wasn’t even on the bottom yet. There was nothing evolutionary about what I was about to do, no one could have expected it. Without knowing as much, I had a gut feeling that I had created a new genre, a style that didn’t exist as of yet and one that would be entirely my own. All the cylinders were working and the vehicle was for hire. I definitely needed a new audience because my audience at that time had more or less grown up on my records and was past the point of accepting me as a new artist and this was understandable. In many ways, this audience was past its prime and its reflexes were shot. They came to stare and not participate. That was okay, but the kind of crowd that would have to find me would be the kind of crowd who didn’t know what yesterday was. My fame was immense, could fill a football stadium, but it was like having some weird diploma that won’t get you into any college. Promoters didn’t want to touch me, either. They’d been burned often in the past and the anger hadn’t gone out of them. “I’m all for you,” they might say, “but I can’t do it.” In reality I was just above a club act. Could hardly fill small theaters. There weren’t any alchemic shortcuts — critics could dismiss me easily, too, so I wouldn’t be able to depend on them to tell my tale. Most music journalists had become nothing more than a public relations staff anyway. I would have to rely on word of mouth. I’d rely on that like my life depended on it. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire, doesn’t take “no” for an answer. I wished I was at least twenty years younger, wished that I had just dropped on the scene all over again. But what could you do? I would have liked some help, but I didn’t expect any. I’d been around too long for things like that. I was going to do like Roberts had said — wait until spring. I’d go home knowing that I was on the threshold of something — maybe not as pure as heaven’s rain, but something anyway, and that whatever I was on the threshold of was going to deepen as the years went on.
Spring seemed like a long time to wait, but I can be patient. Maybe I should bring something to read. There were plenty of days coming when it would all come together. My destiny was shining silver in the sun. Life had lost its toxic effect. I had nothing more to bitch about…then it hit me.
Returning from the emergency room with my arm entombed in plaster I fell into a chair — something heavy had come against me. It was like a black leopard had torn into my tattered flesh. It was plenty sore. After being on the threshold of something bold, innovative and adventurous, I was now on the threshold of nothing, ruined. This could be the last turn of the screw. The trail had come to a halt. Only hours earlier things had been pretty wholesome and methodical. I was anticipating the spring, looking forward to stepping out on the stage where I’d be entirely at once author, actor, prompter, stage manager, audience and critic combined. That would be different. Now I was staring into the dark where all things seemed to be coming from. Like Falstaff, I’d been heading from one play into the next, but now fate itself had played a nightmarish trick. I wasn’t Falstaff anymore.
My bright eyes were dull and I could do nothing. All I could do was groan. Here’s why. Besides my devotion to a new vocal technique, something else would go along with helping me re-create my songs. It seemed like I had always accompanied myself on the guitar. I played in the casual Carter Family flat-picking style and the playing was more or less out of habit and routine. It always had been clear and readable but didn’t reflect my psyche in any way. It didn’t have to. The style had been practical, but now I was going to push that away from the table, too, and replace it with something more active with more