My Night With A Dead Milkman

So where was everybody? Never book a gig on Memorial Day Weekend. And this was my first Memorial Day Weekend home since 1996, when I started going to W.E. Fest.

The folks in Wilmington NC are no doubt doing just fine without me. I took the year off and spent Friday night at The Record Collector in Bordentown, NJ, performing on a bill with one of my punk rock heroes, Joe Jack Talcum of the Dead Milkmen.

Randy Ellis, aka Randy Now, who booked so many amazing shows at City Gardens during the Eighties and Nineties, has been bringing bands to perform in a small gallery at this mom-and-pop record store for a while now. He's had some big names - Ian McLagan and Graham Parker and Peter Tork - perform there, even though the space can only hold about 50 people. Well, that wasn't a problem last night, since only about ten people actually showed up.

I was fighting the flu and probably should have been home in bed, but I got through the set without a coughing fit. My guitar's pickup died but Joe was nice enough to let me use his Ibanez electric-acoustic, which is a gorgeous guitar. I did have a couple of brain freezes and had to sputter through some missed lyrics, but all in all, I thought it was a pretty good set. I finished up covering a song by my buddy Sal Cannestra's band 13 called "City Gardens" as a shoutout to Randy.

Joe was great, throwing out some old Dead Milkmen favorites (including, of course, "Punk Rock Girl") and mixing them in with a Dylan cover and songs from his Butterfly Joe persona and his split CD with Mischief Brew. His songs teeter somewhere between romantic shmaltz and deadpan ironic jokery, on tracks like "Yesterday I Was Talking To MY Sister" and "What Her Autopsy Revealed." Joe plays acoustic guitar almost like an electric (I'm all strumming, he actually plays leads) and does some nimble harmonica work.

I want to thank Randy for asking me on the bill, and Mr. Talcum for letting me use his guitar. The Dead Milkmen will be performing at Insubordination Festival in June, and I will be there in front of the stage singing my fool middle-aged head off. I hope to see you there.