John Herald in front of his cabin on Maverick Road, July 2003  (Photo: Andy Friedman)

The first time I thought to call John Herald was at a party I had at my apartment on Vanderbilt Avenue a couple of years ago. It was Ben Sebastian who told me he's a cool, approachable guy and that he'd probably welcome the call. A few days later I searched him on the web looking for contact info and all I could find was an email to someone who must have been his friend and who handled his bookings. I never heard anything back. I let months go by, maybe even a year, until it occurred to me that there is no way that John Herald wouldn't be interested in talking with a young guy who knows all about him and isn't even a musician. So I called the phone number that was listed, which was his own home number, as it turns out. I left a message. Not too long after that I got a call from an 845 number that wasn't my in-laws or anyone else I knew. It was a little late at night, maybe around 10, and it was a Friday, if I remember correctly. I answered the phone and it was John Herald. I remember how happy I was to hear his voice and how happy I was to detect in his voice an excitement and happiness and genuine appreciation. I knew right away I made a friend and compatriot and that we would perform together, talk in a late night diner somewhere after a show, and maybe even travel. During the summer of 2003 that all happened. But first he asked that I send him my info and he sent me a few 8 x 10 glossies with the 845 area code at 914, which meant they were at least six or ten years old, maybe more. Also in there was a cassette for a new album he said he was working on and an article that appeared in the Times when his last came out in 2000. I loved the tape.

We decided to see what we could put together, me with my slideshow poetry show, Paul Curreri with his guitar and John Herald with his. I contacted a million places, most didn't write back and some were very skeptical and careful about talking any details until they fell to the wayside and stopped correspondences. I had been in touch with John whateverhisnameis at The Turning Point in Piermont, NY for a long time to get my show there. I called with the addition of John Herald and that twisted his arm enough to give us the show. After that I booked us into Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn. I thought that would be a great thing, to have John Herald playing live before that hip Williamsburgh crowd, and boy was it ever a blast. People are still telling me about that show. And to cap it off we'd pick John up at his home on Maverick Road in Woodstock and drive to Bennington VT, where my friend Sophie's dad lives and where he's made a little arts/music performance space in an abandoned and refurbished railroad station up there. He was very excited that John Herald was coming and even made a luncheon for us and all of his friends who used to see John play in the old West Village days. When we picked John up I got to see his house. It's a log cabin there in the woods with thin stiff curtains and memorabilia up the wazoo. Great big posters of the Greenbriars live at Club 47 or Folk City with whoever else on the bill, from John Lee Hooker to Ramblin' Jack Elliot and beyond. All kinds of old vinyl weighing shelves down nearly touching the floor, almost as heavy as Rick Von Schmidt's collection. And a lot of cassettes, too, with some CD's. Maybe about 6. One of them he brought with us to listen to in the car. How I wish now that I remember what it was. It was a bluegrass band I never heard of, I know that. I remember, also, his answering machine. It just rested there on his kitchen table next to an ash tray. I remember rooms in the cabin with walls created out of strategically placed bookshelves and hanging drapes, but I could be wrong about that, or inventing it out of memory from somewhere else. But if that's not true it could be.

On the ride to Vermont he slept the whole time. Zonked out almost immediately. We talked a little. Tara and Paul were in the car, Paul in the back with John and Tara up front with me in the Civic. I could see him sleeping from my rearview mirror, he looked very grey and pale and the weight of his thin skin sort of pulled on his face as it all bunched up near his ears and advertised the skeletal frame which supported it. I remember his Adam's apple and open mouth as he slept. Zonked out completely for the entire ride. Once we got there he came to almost immediately, as well, but then asked to sleep in the back a little longer while we went out and set up our stuff in the railroad. I remember Tom, Sophie's dad, couldn't wait to meet John and I had to explain that he was still in the car napping. I felt like I was lying about the fact that we were bringing him and that it was a cover up for the fact that he wasn't there at all. But then within a half hour or so something caught my eye outside in the parking lot and it was John, stretching out and walking around and smoking a cigarette. He was wearing black pants and a dark navy blue T shirt. His hair looked darker and blacker when he was awake, grayer and whiter when he was asleep. I went outside to say hello and we talked a bit. He said this sleepiness was the result of some medicine he was given to relieve a bad flu he had just gotten over.

The show was great, but not that many people were there, even in that community to see the great John Herald. But John was always happy to play and put on a great show. Plenty of talking and jokes and great playing. For the show he wore a thick straw hat.
I remember before the show just hanging out upstairs with Paul and John while they smoked and tuned their guitars and we all were just talking.

The Piermont show at The Turning Point was an embarrassment. It was there that I first met John. That was our first meeting after the phonecall. Paul and I were waiting outside and I saw someone pull up slowly on the other side of the street in an old blue Corolla or something wearing a heavy straw hat. I figured it was John and it was. He got his guitar out of the hatchback, crossed the empty street and we all said our first hellos. Then we told him that bad news, that no one was here, it looked like no one was coming, and that the club never advertised our show, put it on their calendars or hung any posters. Not even the photo of John that he sent to the club when we booked the show on the billboard with all the other 8 x 10s outside. Why? We don't know. The guy at the Turning Point never got what it was that I did with my slideshow poetry show and after the show he revealed the fact that he never advertised the show because he was positive no one would come to see slideshow poetry no matter how many posters he hung. And John used to play there all the time but slowly people stopped coming out to see him and he didn't think anyone would come, so he just let us eat it. I called all of this in my own head, anyway, when I was parking my car and I saw the bartender and the sound guy leaving the clubs and getting into their own and driving away. So the owner set up sound for us and the 5 people in the audience (3 of our friends, 2 "radio" people on the owner's comp list) and then disappeared to count money. When we explained all this to John as we all walked in John said "So should we just split on him?" I said that I was really looking forward to this date but left it up to him. I was glad to hear him say the same, that he was looking forward to meeting us and hearing us perform and performing himself, too, and he said, "So we'll play for each other!" I learned from John Herald that night that its OK to be in it for the right reasons, and we all had a great time there. Paul tried to chew the owner out after the show, who was still counting money, but he barely listened and said he was willing to do it again just to prove to us that no one would come no matter how many posters were hanging. If he has a "John Herald Tribute Night" over there, I swear to God I will picket out front even if I go to jail for it.

The Pete's show was a hit. There were a lot of people there and you really can't pack more than 45 into that room anyway. It was filled with people loving John and his music, I'd say 99% of the people hearing of him and hearing him for the first time. He sold a lot of Cds after the show and there was the beginning of Herald heralding a new generation of appreciators. I wish we could have done something like that another time or two. Matt Curreri, Paul's younger brother, opened the evening with a rocking set that John caught and told me he enjoyed. Then it was me with the slideshow poetry stuff, and then John. I think John may have made a couple of mentions of how I was tapping into the same thing he was but with different instruments, and again I felt justified and so thrilled and lucky to be doing everything I'd been doing up to and including meeting and performing with John and beyond. Again, it felt like I was Dave Van Ronk and John Herald was Reverend Gary Davis. I've always loved that story Dave Van Ronk told about driving Reverend Gary to perform at the Newport Folk Festival. The car ride started in Harlem where they picked up Davis, who immediately began picking on his guitar in the backseat. With the same lick over and over somewhere into Massachussetts, Van Ronk finally asked Davis to either play something else or quit it, only to find that his voice woke Gary up, who apparently (and allegedly) was playing the whole time in his sleep.

The audience was so extremely enthusiastic for John at Pete's and John loved it, you could tell. He told so many great jokes that I wish I could remember. One of them was pausing between songs to let everyone know that the Martin guitar company asked that John, at every show, announce that he plays a Gibson. He filled up that little room like it was the Purple Onion or the Gaslight or any of the falafel shops in the village that used to be coffeehouses. They ate him up. He even got some girls to flirt with out after the show on the patio. He sat with three of them and they loved him. We were all ready to go at around 2AM when he asked if we wouldn't mind staying a bit longer, and that he met these young girls and was enjoying himself. He told me that he always had a thing for younger women. At around 2:30 or so we went to Kellog's Diner in Williamsburgh. Me, John, Tara, maybe my brother and a guy named Max who I met not too long before that. I remember John ordering the chicken, a whole chicken, with a side of those thawed out and cooked frozen carrots and peas with bread. He had a few bites then disappeared into the bathroom for seriously about 25 minutes or so and then finished the entire chicken. Then he drove himself home, back to the woods, but I knew he liked it. After the first show in Piermont he drove himself back, too. I asked him if he listened to music in the car and he said he didn't have a tape deck but liked the silence. I asked him if he had a radio and he said he leaves it off, that he loves to drive at night in the dark all alone with nothing but the silence. I loved that image and instantly wanted to do the same, but I'm not good at driving at night. Too dark and quiet.

Another time we ate together was on the way back from VT. It was very late at night and we stopped in Moosic for some Chinese food. I remember John told me that Moosic reminded him of Liberty, NY where there used to be a great folk club long since gone. I never knew of that place.

The last time I saw John was the next day, the night after the night we dropped him off on Maverick Rd. and we headed to Tara's parents in Mt. Tremper. There was a party at Legends in Woodstock and we invited him. He came a little late hut it was great to see him just on a social level. We hung out on the porch there while he smoked with my father in law, too, who remembered seeing him play from a long time back. John was wearing a tan colored Members Only type coat and recognized a picture of himself on the wall at Legends, a picture taken way back. I don't remember seeing him off or saying goodbye that night, he just sort of disappeared, but we talked about going swimming the next day so I called him the next afternoon. It wasn't the best day to go swimming but we'd catch up with each other soon.

So many times over the past two years I've been meaning just to call John to say hello. Or even to try and set up another date. But I've been so busy and it never happened. I should have just called to say hello. Danny Kalb lives in my neighborhood and I see him all the time on the street. I've sat down and spoken with him before but I want to do it again. I know he doesn't remember me and each time I pass him I wonder if he's saying to himself, "that guy probably has no idea who I am." When I did talk with him that one time the conversation ended in a hug. It started by my asking if he'd Danny Kalb and him saying, "Why, you want guitar lessons?" I told him I wasn't even a musician and we were off from there. But just yesterday I saw Danny Kalb again, pointed him out to Tara and I said that I've got to sit down and talk with him again, let him know that the young people know damn well who he is and how important that is. She agreed. We got in the car, I turned on the radio and the Greenbriar's "Take A Whiff" was playing. That's how I found out Dave Van Ronk died. They were playing one of his songs on the radio. I knew right away.

-- Andy Friedman