From The Roy Bluff –Laura Perkins Trilogy -She Belongs To …

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

When a writer for Rolling Stone or one of those music-oriented magazines you see flooding the newsstands and supermarket check-out counters asked Ben Freed, the longtime road manager for Roy Bluff, the famous hip-hop-infused folk rocker, off the record, on his take on the Roy Bluff-Laura Perkins flare-up he answered like this:

Sure I knew Roy Bluff on his way up, and Laura, Laura Perkins too when she came on the scene to help build his legend, but I will speak of her later. I knew that if he kept plugging away with his lyrics, his lyrics that spoke to our weird times, the late ‘90s, to the time of the seemingly end-time great plague in this world, wars, injustice, inequality, that he would break through the thickets of the music business and rise to the top, kicking ass and screaming all the way. I knew that if Roy just kept to his words, to his music, and left the other stuff alone he would be immortal. That other stuff being a huge reservoir appetite for high shelf whiskey, high-grade dope, mainly marijuana but later, cocaine and some opium, and any grade women. But that was what made him Roy, the other stuff, and it was not until later that I realized that without the other stuff, without living on edge city, without the high-wire act of his life that he could not produce those words that spoke to us. Nada, nothing.

I first met Roy one night as he was working his way up in the music world at the Café Algiers in New York City, in the Village, where he was working out the kinks for a major tour that Ducca Records, a label that had just taken a chance on him and had signed him to do an album. The album finally produced the tour was put together to gain exposure for him in small concert halls and large hotel ballrooms and to promote (sell) the records, oops, CDs. So I had been among the small group that showed up that night as he warmed up for the long haul road trip.

Now the Algiers was a smaller club than he would play on tour although frequented by serious music aficionados and some hanger-on second level celebrities, you know Village-wise artists and musicians like Manny Ray and The Kinksters and off-Broadway denizens like Mike Ester and Fiona Florin. During the break between sets Roy headed for the bar and his couple of shots of then low-shelf whiskey and a beer chaser. I, sitting at the bar, offered to buy him a drink in appreciation for what was a good performance, one that touched me at points, one that “spoke” to me in ways that mainline hip-hop artists did not at that point. He accepted and we talked further and then we talked later after the show when he again hit the bar. The long and short of it was that after a few nights of that at the Algiers I became something of a roadie for him (unpaid at first and then when he hit overpaid). So yeah I knew Roy for a while, a while before he hit it big, and before he met Laura on the way to hitting big. Roy, as everybody knows is more that capable of speaking, of defending himself and his actions, small and large, infantile and immortal.

Laura deep down was another story, and many a lonely Roy-ing night (a term we shared for the care and protection of one Roy Bluff and his frailties) we shared a bottle or a joint and commiserated over that man. One night, one night in Kansas City, after the show at the famous Hi-Hat Club, and after a particularly tough Roy-ing period for Laura when, against all good judgment, he had almost hit her when she tried to temper his furies she laid out some stuff for me about their relationship, about how it started and so I want to tell you my take on her story, on her flaming love for the Roy. And yes I had a thing for Laura, still do as little good as it does me, so let’s get that off the table right now. Here goes:

As always with Laura she was a little hesitant even after a few drinks to speak openly of her troubles, her sorrows, having been brought up in a tight-lipped Irish-Catholic household just outside of Yonkers. Tight-lipped as I knew from my own experiences with my maternal grandparents was that you did not air your dirty line in public. And so Laura hesitated although she knew, or should have known, that I had strong evidence either by not being blinded by Roy or that he told me in his more lucid (read: not drunk or stoned) of what was, and was not, happening between her and Roy.

She started out talking about a diary that she had started keeping the previous few months out of some sense of just trying to make things connect, make sense of her life, make the jumble of thoughts she had about leaving him, about leaving Roy, about pulling up stakes and going out and starting over. She pulled it out of her purse because she said she wanted to look up some stuff that she might have forgotten or had put a certain way as she wrote it out so that I would know what she felt at the time. As she read aloud to me one entry she laughed, a gorgeous Laura laugh, an infectious laugh she had when she was in high spirits and that everybody took shelter under. She laughed that she had like many a lonely schoolgirl, or many a budding literary figure, kept little nonsense diaries filled with longings and daydreams when she was young, when she came of age, when the welter of the world’s burdens fell on her shoulders and she, shy and reticent by nature, needed some way to express the confusions that made up her life about parents, boys, sex. Mostly, as she reflected now at another turning point, what to do, or what not to do about sex. She had that figured as well as any teenager had in this mega-information age, but what to do with her life was what ailed her. I blushed a little when she detailed some of her early sexual explorings, although she only made a couple of explicit references, metaphor unlike with Roy, Roy when non-lyric producing, who swore and talked obscenely almost automatically, being her forte in talking about sex.

So mainly she kept the diary because she felt she needed to keep tabs on what she was going to do about Roy Bluff and his internal, infernal, eternal needs that seemed beyond her grasp now that he had become something in the music business. Also apparently had made it his life’s ambition to drink a river of whiskey, and an acre of ganja (dope, marijuana for the unknowing), and taste every women with a skirt on (or maybe better off). She had put up with a lot, a lot of late and she knew she had to draw some line in the sand ever since that night that Roy, a head full of liquor and dope (cocaine, sister, snow you know), came within an inch of hitting her, maybe less, maybe less than an inch. Hence the diary to put those ten thousand conflicting thoughts together.

Laura made it clear, painfully clear, and drew a circle in the air as if to make sure there was no mistake about her feelings Roy Bluff, weaknesses and all, was her man, was her man ever since that first night they met at the Hi-Lo Club in Yonkers several years before. But the grind of the road, the grind of the care and protection of one Roy Bluff rising star, the grind of his excesses had taken a toll and Laura needed to get things straight in her mind, needed to take a break from Roy-ing. Laura said that as she prepared to write at length in her new found diary she began to think back to those first days when love was in full bloom, or the prospect of love was in the air. Nights then when she was not “blue,” Roy Bluff blue.

Laura spoke of how she remembered back to the night that she and Roy had had their first fight as a starting point. Their first, uh, misunderstanding he called it. She more plain spoken and forthright called it a fight. It had not been long after the night she had told Roy in no uncertain terms that he was her man and so maybe he was trying to test her that night, trying to see what hold he held over her. I thought as she mentioned it a typical guy thing that has been going on since Adam and Eve, maybe before. I had used a variation on that theme myself when younger, maybe high school younger, testing some young thing, testing just to be testing like testing the limits of outrageous behavior was the be-all and end-all of any relationship. It had been a tough night before a half-empty ballroom in Butte, Montana, half empty because even those hearty brethren would not fight five feet of snow swirling outside to hear a rising star. Catch him come spring one man quipped as he left to fight his own demon snows. That night whiskey-sated (maybe a little reefer too it was hard to avoid that mix in Roy’s head sometimes, or hers too when he introduced to her to dope) he, Roy Bluff, said he could have had his pick of whatever woman caught his fancy, caught his eye, or caught his momentary fashion interest.

Reason: Roy Bluff, a guy who had scrabbled and scrambled hard for a long time finally hit his stride, finally got the big pay-off for all those lonely half-filled rooms, all those small make-shift café stages, all those dank church basements replete with intermission homemade baked goods sold to help defray coffeehouse expenses, all those play louder than the drunks at midnight, when his brand of hip-hop-infused folk-rock became a craze. Got his big ass break when Dave Beck, the big recording producer for Ducca Records, happened to need a midnight drink, maybe two, and heard him at the El Segundo Café in Long Beach and gave him a shot.

Roy went on and on about how being a record contract singer anything, a concert artist anything women started giving him their keys, or whatever else they had to offer back then, in order to say they had been with the rising music star Roy Bluff for one night, maybe two at the most he bragged since Roy was moving fast, as fast as a man could to catch the rising wave. The she confided in me something she did not think I knew. Roy Bluff is not his real name, although out of some male vanity, or something he failed to tell her that until a mutual musician friend of theirs gave her the skinny on it one night when she kept on hearing him call Roy Ron. His real name was Ronald Smith, but the performance stage, musical performance concert artist stage, and maybe the whole world, was filled to the brim with Smiths just when he was starting out and so one night earlier in his career, one night after a drunken fight brought on by some loudmouth cursing his music in a Memphis bar, the Be-Bop Club over off Beale, he “christened” himself with that manly name despite losing that fight, losing it badly to a smaller wiry man,

[What Laura did not know which I did, and which she did not find out until later, after the night our talk was that Ronald Smith was not Roy’s real name either but Zebulon Jordan. The way I found out about it was the night, the first night he was busted he tried to use Ronald Smith when I attempted to bail him out and the hick cops in Louisville couldn’t find the name at the address given and were going to hold him over. He coped to the Jordan that night. All of which is neither here nor there since now he has had his name legally changed to Roy Bluff.]

So it wasn’t that he was agile, handsome or beautiful, if a man can be beautiful in this wicked old world that drew the women to him, as much as that he had a certain serious jut-jawed look borne from out in the prairies, a kind of cowboy look, that appealed to women, lots of women. Appealed to Laura for that matter.

Roy continued on that line about the women as he stated that he had run through the alphabet with such catches, blondes, brunettes, red-heads, especially a couple of wild red-headed sisters, college students, young professionals, slender, not so slender, yeah, the whole alphabet to fill his dance card and share booze, dope and whatever was at hand, sometimes, as to be expected, getting out of hand. Hell, he liked it, loved it for the while he was on edge city. And so it went as he puffed himself up in his own mind as least. That was not a good night as he ranted on unto exhaustion.

Later full of bad booze and sorrows Roy, trying to make up, said that was his act until she came along. Until she, Laura Perkins she, whom he called his “sweet angel,” called her sweet angel when he was having one of his better moments, had gotten under his skin, gotten the best out of him. And waxing a little poetic he said wherever the winds would take them, or not take them, she would always get under his skin, that was just the way it was almost from the first, and he said he accepted that sometimes with a sly grin and sometimes with daggers in his eyes. She merely waved him off having heard that line of defense (and contrition) before, by him and others. They did, to keep the Butte snows at bay, Laura laughed as she said this, make love that night.

She said Roy used to drive her crazy when he got into his “maybes” mood, something that had been happening a lot more of late Usually he would bring it up to settle himself down at some pre-performance moment as he prepared his play-list in his head, and he was in a sly grin mood. As he set himself up for the day’s work, actually night’s work since he would be giving a concert later that evening, he would start. The maybes, as I knew because more than once he had used me as a sounding board, being a little game that he, previously nothing but a love‘em and leave ‘em guy, played with himself trying to figure out just how, and the ways, that she, one Laura Perkins, got under his skin.

The first maybe was that Laura was not judgmental, not in a public sense anyway, and not in any way that would let him know that she was. She had given him a lot of rope, had accepted his excuses, his frailties, and his rages against the night (as she tried like hell to temper them and made a point, a strong point to me of not wanting to discuss those efforts since this was about leaving him and she wanted to interject some sunnier days into what she had to say). She said Roy had told her he would laugh to himself as he thought about the circumstances under which they had met and he knew deep down that, publicly or privately, judgmental was just not the way she was built. She said she had let a little grin form on her face in recognition of that trait, a trait that she told me she was particularly proud of.

Then Roy would describe to her his thoughts on that first night, he had just got into one of the ten thousand beefs that he got into when he was drinking back then. He was working his first major tour, major in those days being working steady and working in small concert halls and large ballrooms throughout the country (no more dank basements and crowded cafes, not for Ducca recording artist Roy Bluff). Some customer at the famous Hi-Lo Club in Yonkers who didn’t like his song selections told him about it, told him loudly.

Roy, having been drinking (and smoking a little reefer) all day, responded with a brawl, getting, as usual the worst of it, when Laura walked in with a girlfriend. Laura told him later that she did not really know who Roy was but her girlfriend, Patty Lyons, dear Patty, had heard his first album and was crazy to see him in person and so she had persuaded Laura to tag along. The truth was that Laura had heard about him from a musician friend who had heard him at the Café Algiers in the Village a few weeks before and so had not so much tagged along as was intrigued by what she had heard about him. That musician friend, a woman, a woman whom Roy had slept with at it turned out, was the one who drew her attention to that jut-jawed cowboy aura and thus the intrigue.

She had given Roy a look, an honest look, a look that said yeah I might take ride with that cowboy (laugh, cowboy from Portland up in Maine, Maine born and bred), an instant attraction look, and Roy, bloodied and all, gave one back, ditto on the attraction look. Later, just before he started his second set he asked the waitress what Laura was drinking, he then had a drink sent to her table, and she had refused it, saying that if he wanted to buy her a drink then he had better bring it to the table himself. Funny she said since she was a struggling student over at Pace University in Tarrytown at the time she would normally accept when a guy, almost any guy who looked like he might not be a crack head or crackpot, offered to buy her a drink, or two.

Yeah, yeah that was the start. After Roy had finished the set he did bring that drink over. She never asked him about the fight, about the cause of it, or even about how his wounds were feeling but rather stuff about his profession and the ordinary data of a first meeting. All she knew was as close as he had come a few times afterward that was the last time he fought anybody for any reason, fought physically anyway. He would always bring that up when they were in fight mode as some virtue that would not have occurred except for her and by implication that if she left him he would fall back on his wicked ways.

Then Roy would move on to a blow by blow description of what happened after that. He would start with maybe it was that at the beginning, not the beginning beginning, not that first night when after his set was finished he brought that drink over to her table (and to be sociable one for her girlfriend too) but after he had gotten used to her, had been to bed with her and she had said one night out of the blue, that he was her man (she said he said she had put it more elegantly than that but that was what she meant, and she agreed, agreed she put it more elegantly than that ) and that she would pack her suitcase if she was ever untrue to him. Those were the days when he was still grabbing whatever caught his eye (including that female musician friend), and reasoned what guy who was starting to get a little positive reputation in the music business wouldn’t grab what was grab-worthy. But after that he said he too silently and almost unconsciously took what they later called the “suitcase” pledge although he never told her that, never told her he took the pledge, it just kind of happened. A patent lie, no question.

Then he went on to speak of a maybe that totally befuddled him. It was that Laura would refuse the little trinkets that men give women, hell, she wouldn’t even accept roses on her birthday. She only wanted a quiet moment alone with him away from the helter-skelter of his public life. One night when he and she had been smoking a little dope and she was“mellow” and ready to shed a little of her private thoughts she had told him about a man, an older man (older then being twenty-five she being eighteen at the time, but more that she was unworldly or really not ready to accept the wicked old world on harsher terms and so malleable) who had lavished her with gifts, money, some jewelry (later found to be some reject stuff) only to confess one night that he was married and as part of that package had beaten her up as he walked out the door after she had called the whole thing off. She said if what she and Roy had wasn’t good enough without trinkets then they were doomed anyway and she would not want reminders of that failure around.

Roy would then give the full-court press. Maybe it was as they grew closer, as they got a sense of each other without hollering and as his star started rising in the business after his first big album hits, that she tried to protect him from the jugglers and the clowns (her words), the grafters, grifters, drifters and con men (his words) who congregate around money as long as it is around. Better, she protected him against the night crawler critics and up- town intellectuals who gathered around him as they saw him as their evocation of the new wordsmith messiah and who were constantly waiting, maybe praying too if such types prayed, for him to branch out beyond the perimeters that they, yes they, had set for his work, for his words. Waiting to say“sell-out.” Yes, she had protected him from the scavengers as I had, maybe better since she did not have to deal with them like I had to.

Which led to maybe it was the soothing feeling he got when after raging against the blizzard monster night of the early years, those bleak years right after the turn of the new century, on stage, in his written down words, after hours in some forsaken hotel room town, nameless, nameless except its commonality with every other hotel room, east or west, she softly spoke and made sense of all the things that he raged against, the damn wars, the damn economy, hell, even his own struggling attempts to break-out of the music business mold and bring out stuff on his own label.

Maybe too it was the tough years, the years when he was still drinking high hard sweet dreams whiskey by the gallon, still smoking way to much reefer (and whatever else was available, everybody wanted to lay stuff from their own personal stash on him, some good, some bad, very bad) when she took more than her fair share of abuse, mental not physical, although one night, a night not long before he finally crashed big time and had to be hospitalized (and not long before she started keeping that diary), he almost did so out of some hubristic rage. She waved him off when he tried to explain himself. She said “let by-gones be by-gones” and that ended the discussion.

Then out of the blue one Roy Bluff a bundle of walking contradictions, all tongue-tied and timid floored her with this- and she quoted it from memory-“And maybe, just maybe, it was that out in the awestruck thundering night, out in the hurling windstorms of human existence, out in the slashing muck-filled rains, out, he, didn’t know what out in, but out, she was, she just was… “ And as the tears slowly formed as she finished the quote she floored me with this. She thought, thought hard and fast that maybe, just maybe, she would give her walking daddy, her jut-jawed cowboy walking daddy just one more try.

Damn.