Borderline Flute

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 Borderline Improv

It doesn’t get more bordeline than this. Here is a recording at the US customs dock in Buffalo en route to see Mark Kozelek for my first seminal visit to Rochester in upstate New York last fall. Waiting for the rest of my motley crew from my bus to clear customs, I took a few steps from the emptied bus, took also a big *gulp* and rang out some flute-sounds on a bamboo flute, yes, within earshot of the driver and wandering border patrol as trucks jockeyed across the rain-soaked tarmac of the the cross-border terminus.

It felt like a no-mans land, despite my having cleared security.

As an avid photographer, I’m sure you’ll appreciate my obsession with Rochester, this much-maligned city, home of Kodak as it is. Oft-times I have looked longingly across Lake Ontario to Rochester’s night-time glow and - when weather conditions permit – its charcoal skyline by day, and wondered what this ‘city-across-the-water’ is actually all about. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction.

Sure, Nada Surf at the Opera House here in Toronto was indeed a highlight of ’08. But checking out San Fran’s brilliant recluse along with his seated accompanist guitarist at the start of their America-wide road-trip last fall, offering up this cover of the classic Modest Mouse tune, was, well, just incredible.

Trucker’s Atlas is heart-rending, visceral and perplexing all in the same instant. It astounds me how the sound of two guitars and voice can transport a listener so. What an opening song selection as the founder of Sun Kil Moon and the Red House Painters embarked on what was originally a North American-wide tour – they were supposed to make it to Toronto, but it turned out that Rochester ended up being the closest port of entry: maybe they had hassles at the border?

Bottom line? It was worth the drive to Rochester!