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Panama, Read 2
He's back! PANAMA RED has a thousand stories to tell, and not a single damn one of them is boring. That's no small feat, considering Panama was one of Kinky Friedman's original Texas Jewboys, and he's been playing his ever-so "tasty guitar" for a substantial amount of years now. Hot on the heels of his truly excellent new release 'Homegrown', PANAMA RED has taken some time to visit Amsterdam. What follow are his thoughts (printed here exclusively on KindaMuzik), candid and often extremely humourous. Not a single letter, comma, or space has been altered. This week: SOULFUL TRIP REVIEWED: PANAMA RED PLAYS ROOSENDAAL.
Tekst: Panama Red
Publicatiedatum: 21 mei 2001
He's back! Panama Red has a thousand stories to tell, and not a single damn one of them is boring. That's no small feat, considering Panama was one of Kinky Friedman's original Texas Jewboys, and he's been playing his ever-so "tasty guitar" for a substantial amount of years now. Hot on the heels of his truly excellent new release 'Homegrown', Panama Red has taken some time to visit Amsterdam. What follow are his thoughts (printed here exclusively on KindaMuzik), candid and often extremely humourous. Not a single letter, comma, or space has been altered.
S O U L F U L T R I P R E V I E W E D : P A N A M A R E D
P L A Y S R O O S E N D A A L
This saga begins one night in Maloe Melo when Jur the Main Man introduced me to this guy looks like something out of Good Bad and Ugly named Hans, owns a bar in Roosendaal, a town down on the Belgian border. Dude is wearing one of those floor to ceiling train robber raincoats, a big Stetson, and enough turquoise jewelry to support a whole Southwest tribe for a year. We talk a while and ultimately I get a gig to play in his bar. This is back in February.
Sunday April 1 finds me and my personal trainer and nurse Peppermint Patty on the train to Roosendaal, gleefully escaping grandparental duties for the wilds of South Brabant.
Coupla things: we had bought first-class tickets (usually they sell second class unless you specify), but for some reason were unable to find smoking accommodations in same, so we settled into a second-class state of mind and seats. All went well until the conductor came by and told us we had to leave second-class and get back to first, where we apparently belonged. I've been chased out of first to second before but never vice-versa. And I tried to explain the rationale that having paid for a better class of seating, we should be able to slum it a little. Not so, adamantly replied the conductor. If we wanted to ride in second class, we should have bought second-class tickets. So we got up and under the scornful eyes of the peasants returned to first class. Actually there is almost no difference between the two; first has slightly plusher seats an a little more legroom.
Ultimately we did find a smoking section.
Now comes a couple of spectral yet polite characters in black leather jackets swaggering down the aisle. They go by, I look on the back of their jackets and it says, no shit, "Hell's Angels" on the top of the Hell's Angels wing and "Switzerland" at the bottom. Now of course I gotta wonder what Hell's Angels from Switzerland do to be badass? Be late. Or miss an appointment altogether. Don't fill out a deposit slip properly. Drink milk directly from the carton. Get up from dinner without excusing yourself. The potential ins and outs of being a Hell's Angel from Switzerland keeps me occupied the rest of the trip, which is short...a couple of hours at most, and soon we pull into Roosendaal Centraal Station.
We go into the restaurant and for a grand total of about four bucks have the most wonderful fish soup ever made. The Dutch eat well, and I've tried to figure out why the food here is so much better and cheaper than at home. Maybe the farmer dudes are subsidised. On the other hand, a doctor will come to your house in the middle of Sunday night, it costs about forty bucks for a filling in a tooth, unless you have insurance, in which case it's cheaper. There are a lot of economic mysteries, but one thing I've noticed is the absence of insurance companies' fingers in every pie. Perhaps we oughta drag those guys out in the street by their neckties an just shoot 'em. Come the Revolution... Or maybe it's the bold concept that the healthcare system exists to deliver healthcare. Anyway the fish was great, and I get on the horn to Hans, who shows up in full rodeo drag, turquoise dripping off of him, to take us to the bar. On the way Hans says there are a lot of Moroccans at the club... don't worry. Well, I wasn't, but now that it's been brought up... Hey, I'm a Semite myself, that is, a descendent of Shem as opposed to Ham or that dude Japheth. They're Hamites or something.
We get to the club and the dreaded Moroccans turn out to be nice fellows, not at all bloodthirsty. Besides I still have Patty draped in black head to toe, so I earn a coupla points from the boys there. De Pub, as it's known, is a relatively small place, good thing, cause I draw at one time I counted 43 people. But I do my little show, an everyone seems to like it. Now, there aren't just the Morocco guys there; there are also some honest-to-goodness Dutch country music fans, including a coupla Dutch Mrs Robinson babes.
Let me tell you a little about the wonderful fans in Roosendaal. During the breaks I fielded questions in re my curriculum vitae; Texas Jewboys, Billy Joe Shaver, stuff like that. Roosendaal has gotta be the hottest hotbed of country music fandom in the whole little country. Not only do they like country music, but the people who came to our show are inordinately well-heeled...rich enough to make a yearly or bi-yearly pilgrimage to Willie's picnic, or to SouthbySouthWest. And child! the getups these folks had on just to come hear this not-even-relatively unknown singer songwriter. I haven't seen so many Tony Lamas, even one pair the guy swore were Charlie Dunns, western-motif jewelry, and I don't know what-all outside of Austin. One lady fervently swore to me that "Texas is my home." One of those people who if they're good, when they die, they get to go stay at Willie's house.
I won't belabor you with a set list which if you haven't heard my cd would mean nothing to you. I'm not a music writer...at least in the sense that I can review my own shows. I didn't break any strings. I got out of the gig well-paid and not injured. It was a good little gig, and if I ever get the chance to go to Roosendaal again, I'm on the train.
Hans put us in a cab to take us back to the Station, and when we got there, I tried to pay the guy, but it turned out Hans had already done that for me, too. A touch of Texas oil baron class in Roosendaal.
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