Last Friday I decided to give my weiry mind a less than deserved break, by heading up the Maine Turnpike, to hear an old friend I haven’t seen that much of in many years.

I was first introduced to Mister Morrissey by a cornet playing parochial school janitor, by the name of Frankie Houlihan, back in my home town, when Frankie dragged my willing butt over to Al’s Tavern, before it became Al’s Place, for reasons only known to old Al’s entrepreneurial minded offspring, to hear a little guy yuk it up about how Meldrin Thompson encouraged butt fucking, by forcing young and verile petty criminals to stamp out plates that said Live Free or Die on them, between wonderful songs about small towns, and how if you wanted to go to Pittsburg you have to get your ass on a bus and go. But that was a long time ago and Bill doesn’t go in for that wholesome kind of entertainment as much these days, but he can sure muzzle load your back end to a wall with an insight or two, after you pick yourself up off the floor from his latest routine.

So back in those days if we weren’t watching the Walton family live the good life on their mountain, we were over to the Polish American Club, where old Bill thought he was doing you a grand favor by spotting you 19 out of 21 points in ping pong, while sucking on a Pabst Blue Ribbon or three, and he would mostly win, but he was sporting about it, given it was usually your turn to buy the round when he would offer the game anyway. And when you went back to the house you would talk about Ray Carver and Dave Van Ronk, while Bill diddled on his guitar, because he couldn’t talk to you in those days without his guitar in his hand, which was only one of the ways he used to get it all just right, so that it would carry him all these years.

But that was then and we went our separate ways, me and the wife to Tulsa and kids and such, and Bill to Carnegie Hall and all points west, only to meet these many years later in an airport, saying how I would look for his next gig, only to discover that good olde Bill was at the beginning of a downturn in health that Bill mentions a few words about on his Turn and Spin website.

But feisty is as feisty does, and even something that had been working Bill over good for many years can’t keep him down for the count, not a guy who should have been a welter weight champ, and would have been if the divinity hadn’t been sucking on a bong that day fifty-eight years ago, when things rock’n rolled in the Morrissey household enough to bring the man on to the scene nine-months latter. But Bill had the last laugh by taking what he was given and shaping it into the finest songster of his generation.

So after laying things in at the La Quinta on Park Ave, I headed over to the corner of Congress and State and got pointed to a little cellar dressing room, where that Irish Polish American sage and a young guy (relative to everything else), by the name of Mark Erelli, were rehearsing a fine duet of “Copper Kettle” for the close of the show. When in backup mode, Mister Erelli plays a humble guitar that knows just how to accent every Morrissey eccentricity and wiff you good, with his high and beautifully outside voice. Seeing these two craftsman at work was a treat worth the trip all by itself.

So I head to my seat with a couple of good folks who know Bill in the same haphazard way I do, and Mark comes up for a very fine set that deftly meanders in and out of insightful commentary and just sweet love song making, with a voice and guitar that takes you the whole range these things are built to take you, from a song that nails the notion of those holy American men and women, whose badge of honor in war and peace is that they volunteered, to a song about making the long trip home from a gig in the middle of a storm to be snowed in with the woman you love. Now how Effing great is that? Effing great, that’s how. 

So Bill makes his way to the stage, and the mike placement brings up the notion of how tall Mark is compared to the would be boxer, and Bill immediately counter punches with how his guitar is bigger than the Italian guy’s one is, and with all the innuendo securely in his corner, he proceeds to undo the missed plugging of the cables into the wrong guitars, deftly blaming the sound man, while at the same time knowing you know it was him all along, and with the second punch landed he goes for the knockout with the songs themselves. This is classic Morrissey, but as with good vaudeville, the humor is as much visual as verbal, and you just have to be there to truly appreciate it.

The illness of the past few years has given Bill a somewhat world wiery feel, but he is still ever capable of the wink and nod that let’s you know looks are not much, let alone everything, but it all comes home in a haunting song about Robert Johnson; yes, Robert Johnson’s back in town. And so isn’t Bill Morrissey. He tells you about a Love Child he has with this waitress named Sarah twenty some odd years back, when he was passing through Wassilah, Alaska, and how annoying her constant talking was, and there is a classic Morrissey punch line coming, but if you want to hear it you have to see him for yourself. I’ve been told he has another one about travelling with Woody because Guthrie was the only singer he knew with a laptop, and how Rambling Jack was allowed to hang around because he carried the printer, which made hopping the freights tough for poor Jack. 

And he has some great new stuff. One about falling in love in autum, which is when your summer dreams come true, or about a Texas Girl he fell in love with, or a haunting song about the girl on the Spainish coast. And then he lightens things up with a one verse attempt to win over younger kids, and when a woman cries out “are you saying we are old?” without missing a beat, he responds “not old, seasoned.”

So Mark comes back on stage for the final couple of songs, trading verses with a wonderful vocal harmony and guitar; two guys who know how to play with and off each other. And they sing about how you can’t use no green or rotten wood, cause the Feds will get you by the smoke, and Bill let’s you know how his clan hasn’t paid the wiskey tax since seventeen-ninety-two. Bill’s not old. He’s seasoned. And he’s back.

So I pick up another copy of his novel Edson because a lent copy years ago was never returned, but who can blame them. We say our goodbyes and I head out into the Portland night, walking till I find a pizza place still open, pick up a Greek nine incher and head back to the La Quinta, thankful there are still nights like this one.