If you’re going to the Wailing Wall you grab your best Jewish friend. If you’re going to the Bob Dylan Center you grab April. And that’s how we ended up living in Tulsa time on Oklahoma, where the wind goes whipping down your face for four days. But you don’t sit with her on the tiny little American Eagle CRJ700 plane because American was nice enough to give you first class. After a bus ride from LAX’s terminal 5 to a secret terminal on the side of Century Boulevard, we were off to Tulsa. Now I confess, I haven’t been to the middle of the USA in decades, preferring to stay firmly on either coast, nor have I thought much about the tiny towns there. What a treat downtown Tulsa was without traffic, people, grocery stores, fast food joints, gas stations or any of the other boring accoutrements of everyday life. It’s a ghost town but in a good way. The city now offers up to twenty grand if you move there and live downtown because, well, there’s no people there really. We know this because our Lyft driver by night/screenplay writer by day, took ten grand to move there from El Segundo. But what Tulsa does have is bars, restaurants, art galleries, tons of awesome music venues of all sizes, bakeries and hobos on every street corners.
The Woody Guthrie Center in the Tulsa Arts District was up next on day two. What a splendid place this was and what a treat to see an exhibit by music photographer, Dave Gahr. He shot everybody back in the day, including the cover of Bruce’s The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle album. His photos were just phenomenal. Lunch at the Tavern nearby with books lining the ledge behind the tables and delicious, but weird food, like baked carrots covered with onion rings and we’re off to our afternoon siestas. We were commanded to see the Center of the Universe nearby. This was crazy fun. You stand on this concrete spot and turn completely around in a circle, while speaking. As you turn, your voice takes on this extraordinary echo that can only be heard by you. I tried recording it and it doesn’t record at all. Only the person speaking can hear it. Just amazing! Once done, we get a brand new Uber driver with a Jeep so high off the ground we had to practically throw ourselves into it. I sit in the front and realize he doesn’t know how to work the damn app yet, so he’s circling a four block square area getting nowhere. I take direction matters into my own hands and set him straight on the course to our hotel. April is impressed with how well I know my way around town already.
I booked this time for the trip because the Bob Dylan Center was hosting a benefit concert that night for Jesse Ed Davis featuring Jackson Browne and Taj Mahal at Chapman Hall. What a gorgeous theater that was, the kind where you don’t even have to stand up for people to walk down the aisle in front of you. I’ve been a Jesse fan since I was a teenager. This Indian guitar player extrordinaire played on everything back in the day, like Rod Stewart’s Atlantic Crossing, Jackson’s first album and a host of others from Leonard Cohen to Bob Dylan. He was mostly identified with John Trudell though, another amazing Indian activist, poet and writer. Jackson did two Trudell songs, followed by his iconic Doctor My Eyes which Jesse played on. Taj was up next and at 82, he sang and played his heart out. We didn’t think they were ever getting him off the stage. What a talent and what a memory for April as Taj Mahal was her very first concert back in her day. Another nightcap at our favorite Orphas ended our second day in Tulsa.
Our locals told us we had to see Leon Russell’s Church Studios and museum and so on day three we did just that. So much fabulous rock and roll history in this little church that Leon turned into a recording studio. Everyone who was anyone recorded there all those decades ago. Then it’s time for musical Mecca- the Bob Dylan Center. I’m wearing a Dylanfest t-shirt and the assistant director at the door goes nuts. He tells us his mother, who lives in Seal Beach, CA, attends our friends’ Dylanfest every year and so he comps us the entry fee into the museum!! Now Dylan fans have seen a lot of his stuff on the Internet, in books, on TV and YouTube etc for years, but there is nothing like seeing all his stuff in person plus special things he must have saved just for the museum. My favorite was all the original scraps of paper he used to come up with all his songs over the years. Bobland, as I like to call it now, is just so awesome. From his typewriter, to his gold record for Blood on the Tracks and everything he could haul out of his closets in between. There was a viewing room with eight never before seen performances throughout his many decades and reinventions. A fantastic video of him being interviewed just for the museum itself with Bob waxing eloquent on all aspects of his life and songwriting was just terrific. And then there was the Jesse Ed Davis exhibit to go along with the concert the night before. Just extraordinary.
Friday night, after another much needed nap, took us out to the River Spirit Casino where my casino beginner’s luck held out very nicely. After dinner at the Fireside Grill, April found the It’s 5 O’clock Somewhere bar in the casino, complete with a country band and some of the best country dancing I’ve ever seen by the patrons. It kept her busy while I racked up some more slot machine wins. This night’s crazy Lyft driver was a guy who had to stop and pee first before we could leave, then he made us listen to his kid’s band’s CD on the way home, all the while refusing to drive anywhere near the speed limit. I guess so we had time to listen to the damn song.
Saturday, our last day, and the fact I can sniff out an art museum no matter where I am, took us to the Philbrook Museum of Art. It’s a gorgeous old mansion in a part of town with some beautiful old stately grand houses, paid for with, what else, oil bucks, decades ago. The winter didn’t let us tour the gardens, but the beautiful art in the museum itself more than made up for it. A quick stop at the Holy Family Cathedral, so prettily lit up the night before, found it closed. Too many hobos around to leave those doors open, I guess. One of our new found friends told us there are 1500 churches in the Tulsa area. That’s both interesting and a bit scary. Back for our last dish of coconut shrimp at the Arena Pub and Grill, then off to the airport for the ride back home. Even at the airport; no cars, no traffic out front, barely any people in the terminal. Coming from congested Los Angeles, this was a marvel to behold. When we live only in the teeming metropolises of the east and west coasts, we tend to forget there is an entire country in between. What a treat to see something different and certainly much easier. Tulsa is a musical city and that’s so part of its charm. Now I just want to see more of these little musical cities in the middle. And so, our livin’ in Tulsa time came to a close, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be back someday, especially if they give me 20 grand to move there!
Midnight Missives and Musings 