John Sinclair

In Memoriam: Mr. Lee Bridges, The Cannabis Poet

(Little Rock, March 1, 2005) First: humblest apologies for missing the January and February editions of the Free Press with this column. The Christmas holidays were consumed by the launch of our internet radio project at www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com; by the recording sessions at International Roots Music Collective headquarters for an album of verse & guitar duets with Mark Ritsema to be issued in the Netherlands by Unsound Records this spring; and by the composition of some 7,000 words investigating the North Mississippi hill country blues, now in print as the cover story for An Honest Tune magazine out of Oxford, Mississippi.

Then at the end of January, there were the intensive efforts to get one's affairs in order before leaving for the United Snakes to begin three months of touring to promote my internet radio show; a new CD collection called NO MONEY DOWN: Greatest Hits, Volume 1; and the release of a new book of poems, i mean you: a book for penny,  published by Jeff Maser in Berkeley. Getting this little guerrilla tour lined up and then saying goodbye to all my friends and associates in the Netherlands and trying to get things in order for my projected return at the end of April took up all the time I had, and I missed the deadline again.

But, like the old folks say, nothing beats a failure but a try, so let me try to catch up on the people and places that make the life of an itinerant bard so worthwhile and full of thrills despite the logistical difficulties and unrelenting economic terrorism against which one is daily forced to struggle. Maybe this poem will give you something of a picture:

As I've reported before, my progress through the difficult world of today is facilitated by the care and sustenance provided by an incredible international network of friends and fellow travelers who offer unstintingly their homes, performance venues, contacts, personal networks, cars and cash and food and private stashes to keep me going on my travels. I'm sort of lovingly passed along from one set of caretakers to the next until I'm safely back where I started from, and everything is lovely except for the motherfucking pocketbook.

So, to begin properly, let's offer special thanks and appreciation to the consortium of care-givers for their assistance along the way so far: Clay Windham, Michael Veling, William & Kenya, Henk & Cher Botwinik, Anthony Murrell, Ferre, Joeri and everybody in Amsterdam; Mark Ritsema, Ben Schot & Anneke Auer in Rotterdam; my wife Penny, my daughters Sunny and Celia, Maribel, Matty Lee, Adam Brook, Dimitri Mugianis, Bruce Cohen and all the characters in Detroit; Jeff Strouss and Tommy Spaghetti in Ann Arbor; Fritz Kielsmeier in Chicago; Wallace Lester & Shannon McNally, Barry Kaiser & Mary Moses, MaryBeth, Bill Lynn, Dennis Formento, Jerry Brock, Sylvester & Lou-Lou at the Backstreet Cultural Museum, David Kunian and Marc Stone at WWOZ, Barry Smith at the Louisiana Music Factory and Dave Brinks at the Gold Mine Saloon in New Orleans, Laurence Hall in Memphis and Chad Henson, Allison Borders, Eric Deaton, Justin Showah, Guelel Kuumba, and all my peoples in Oxford who make my residencies there so rewarding.

Tonight I'm safely ensconced in Dotty Oliver's house in Little Rock, frantically typing against tomorrow's final possible deadline to plug the space she's saved for me in the March issue and get this column back on track. Little Rock is the fourth stop after Detroit, New Orleans and Oxford, Mississippi on my RADIO FREE AMSTERDAM tour of the United Snakes, where I'm doing a series of performances with a splendid variety of musicians and ensembles and staging on-the-road editions of the John Sinclair Radio Show to be posted on our website back in Amsterdam.

The radio show, conceived in a series of casual meetings at the Coffeeshop Amnesia last fall, was launched at www.JohnSinclairRadio.com on November 22nd with the first of 16 one-hour programs staged and recorded in disparate venues during the 2004 Cannabis Cup. They aren't really radio programs because we aren't even on the air, but they're constructed and conducted as if we were broadcasting live  from wherever we set up our primitive little set of equipment. Recordings are played, announcements are made and guests are welcomed and interrogated, and the show is wrapped up at the 60-minute mark. Then our producer, engineer, director and webmaster, Henk Botwinik, trims up the recordings and posts them on our website, where they are archived in order of release.

We've made and posted another series of programs since the Cannabis Cup run, including shows recorded at Schipol Airport, the Winston Hotel, Amnesia, Café Aroma, the art squat What Is Happening Here, the Tongue in Groove Gallery, backstage at the annual Balloon Party at Paradiso and on-site at the first venue on the RFA tour, the New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck, Michigan. Our internet radio affiliate, Ann Arbor Alive at www.a3radio.com, was kind enough to send Nearly Normal Warren over to produce, engineer and record our first on-the-road program for Radio Free Amsterdam, and it became our 25th posting on the site.

I don't mean to bore you, but I'm pretty proud of our production and take particular pride in the fact that we've done this with no budget whatsoever, just the creative energies, time and dedication of our small band of guerrilla broadcasters headed by Henk Botwinik and Larry Hayden and including Kristie Szalanski, Yaki, Joeri of CannabisHosting, and Anthony Murrell, who doubles as our fine arts correspondent, Dr. Art, and director of the arts group EPISODES, the principal sponsor of the RFA project. When Larry and I return from the Snakes in April we'll be looking for specific program sponsors of various sorts so we can begin to compensate the principals and improve our broadcast and recording set-up.

Meanwhile we're continuing to produce more on-the-road shows, with two joint productions  with Marc Stone and David Kunian at WWOZ in New Orleans and one with Jim Dees at WMUS at the University of Mississippi at Oxford already in the can, one scheduled in Memphis next week, and more being sought in Little Rock, Nashville, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Bay Area as my travels take me further along the road. Then there'll be more collaborations to come with a3radio.com when I get back to Michigan, including a live show from the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor.

The hard part about this kind of internet radio  is building an audience that has to go to a specific website to pick up on the programming, but once you get there it's a good thing because all the programs are archived there and you can listen to any of them at any time. We're working toward establishing a streaming web radio site and bringing in programming from independent broadcast producers whose shows would complement our offerings, forming a sort of web of our own that should yield some interesting and highly listenable results.

So tune in if you will and enjoy some of the programs we've posted so far. There's a new show posted every Monday night, and more to come later this spring when we increase the number and frequency of available programs. And to everybody in Little Rock, thanks for the hospitality and the opportunity to perform again with one of my favorite guitar players, Mr. Thomas Jones of Arkansas. I'm glad to be here and hope to see y'all again soon.


Postscript: Since I left Amsterdam February 1st I've learned that my dear friend Lee Bridges has passed away at the age of 77. Known to his many friends as Mr. Lee and to his listeners and readers as The Cannabis Poet, Lee Bridges was the best loved of men and a beautiful cat in every respect. Roll one up for us, Mr. Lee, and save us a seat at your big table in the sky.

You can read John Sinclair's On The Road  columns and tune in to the John Sinclair Radio Show recorded live in Amsterdam and on the road in the USA at www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com.