Popination Staycation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Canyons Lounge
In which: Julian Lage and Leo Kottke get vulnerable within their mastery, my partner and I get liminal and learn lessons. And meet some weird and wonderful new people (or are they)?
Hotels, no matter the luxury level or niceness, are always kinda weird. My partner does a lot of business travel and so he likes to collect pictures of weird liminal corners in hotels wherever he is. There’s inevitably some weird little chair and table set up under a light that doesn’t seem quite right, that obviously no one ever sat at, or ever will; some odd sconce or wall art that seems like it adheres to non-Euclidean geometry. He’s not the only one who does this: look at Reddit or ThePlatformFormerlyKnownAsTwitter and you’ll see all kinds of images that you’ll swear can’t be real, or that were surely made up by a bot. We saw two such spooky corners the other day, as we were staying at a Marriott in Boulder, the drive home being too punishing and terrifying after the concert we planned to attend. Plus long. So we decided to make it a special occasion, and, though maybe more of a chunk of change than we wanted to spend, it ended up being a deeply lovely little microvacation, and I’m very glad we did it.
We were seeing Julian Lage and Leo Kottke, two of the highest level guitarists on the planet, up at the awe-inspiring Chautauqua auditorium, nestled just there at the base of the mountains. We were going with my parents, he and my Dad being super guitar nerds themselves. So we met them at Backcountry for a bite to eat beforehand, and then enjoyed the concert. Some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. And I’ve heard a lot.
But just before meeting them, partner and I took a moment for a post-snarls-of-traffic relaxation cocktail at the hotel bar. The ‘tender was a twitchy and colorful seeming scion of Boulder of old (an impression we later confirmed as we chatted), looking like a half hippie, half rock star hybrid who was interested in hearing about where we were from and why we were there.
As you enter the hotel, through the construction-guided labyrinth of entrance halls, one of the first things that catches your eye is a strange cluster of light fixtures, twinned, that frames the large opening of the hallways that points straight to the hotel bar. We settled in and I took a couple amazing shots of the bizarre lounge area that boasted not only an array of different types of seating, but a few people clustered around a fireplace on the one end, an inviting corner table partially obscured by a pillar that partner announced he wanted to have a pic of us sitting at, and an odd scarlet-felted billiard table plonked down in what seemed like the middle of things. If we had been staying any longer than one night, I would have absolutely used any number of these things, and lounged in any number of these not-quite-right corners.
So I ordered an Old Fashioned, except it was a specialty one, particular to this bar, using local bourbon, local cherry whiskey, an actual cherry (not the neon colored sugar globes that typical maraschinos are), and all told, was one of the most phenomenal cocktails I’ve ever put in my mouth. And I’ve put in a lot. The ‘tender described his process and the ingredients, and went on to share that he changes the ingredients based on where people tell him they’re from. Which. I don’t know why my telling him I’m from Boulder made him give me a deliciously non-sweet old fashioned, but I was and am eternally grateful. Normally, I need to ask my mixologist to make my old fashioned less sweet, but this was perfection, with no indication on my part of my non-sweet preference. Even partner declared after tasting it, that he’d order old fashioneds more often if they tasted like that.
“Let me try that again”
If you’ve never heard of either of these artists before (Leo Kottke or Julian Lage), know that they are guitar maestros of the first order. They do classical / jazz / howtheheckdoyoudothat style guitar music and in each of their cases onstage that night, their only instrument was their guitar. No backup band, nothing but their fingers, strings, and in Kottke’s case, voice. That’s it.
Absolutely mesmerizing, and (like I said before) some of the best music I’ve ever heard. But here’s the astonishing part:
Look, I knew these guys were both geniuses—I had been enthralled by an interview online with Lage, which is what made me so keen to see him in person to begin with. A young, soft spoken, obviously somehow neurospicy prodigy who does things with his instrument (sshh) you can’t imagine, he played amazing music, both original and genius covers, to open for the master. And he touted Kottke as such—he acknowledged him as an inspiration and an aspiration between songs, and I thought sheesh who could be so amazing as to be a goal for *this* guy…
But then Kottke came out after intermission (partner and I had some gobsmacked conversation at the outdoor bar in between but more about that later), and I understood.
Now, I noticed that Lage, in some songs, would retune in the middle of playing—not interrupting or stopping, you understand, but he’d fiddle with the knobs while playing. I didn’t hear anything off, myself, but I later realized he was making mild mistakes and correcting them, or actually incorporating them into his art, which is even more impressive.
But Kottke was a storyteller. While Lage played brilliantly and had lovely things to say in between, Kottke would sing and accompany himself, chat with us while still trilling away at his instrument, and, very often, would begin a new song and go, “Huh. Let me start that again—that’s not working, is it.” And he’d start again, and everyone was so delighted and on board with the whole journey. I didn’t hear the ‘mistakes’ myself—I felt like Columbo at the end of ‘Any Old Port in a Storm’ when the murderer declares the dessert port is LIQUID FILTH and I didn’t detect anything wrong.
But the sheer artistry and vulnerability of these masters (the young and the established) not just making a mistake and plowing through or punishing themselves about it, but acknowledging it in real time, onstage, taking it with grace, showing us how they’ll fix it, and even incorporating it into the music itself as an essential ingredient, was just…
I often struggle with the ‘why am I doing this’ syndrome of art, as does my partner, as we both find challenges in making our various arts in different ways. This was eye and brain opening. Holy shit, we both thought, these geniuses are just showing us how they’re messing up, they’re starting over again in real time? Wha? You can do that? Partner expressed some of his thoughts about it (he said his artistic mind has matured by leaps and bounds within those past few days);
Partner: I’ve been going about this all wrong.
Me: Oh? Oh. How so?
Partner: I was focused on the brilliant final product. I didn’t realize. I didn’t get it—the process to get there is so much more important.
Me: Oh! O yes. It’s a typical platitude but it really isn’t though, is it.
Partner: I didn’t know that was possible. It’s…
[we’ve done a lot more processing since then, and I’m sure we will do a lot more. I predict I’ll be writing about this again.]
Meanwhile, at Canyons
Back at the hotel bar, after the concert, we ended up chatting not only with our erstwhile bartender, but another one, a younger one with biceps like bowling balls and gentle brown eyes, and his girlfriend who sat at the bar. We ended up holding court there at the Canyons till they closed. Girlfriend’s name is Corinna. Her and and her beau (ugh I don’t remember his name) are from Florida and apparently are travelers. They said they’re traveling around and working, which sounds both interesting and maybe scary but all in all rather mysterious.
We learned the old established bartender’s name is Jim, and that he’s been living in Boulder since 1976, and even more astonishingly has seen Blue Dime Cabaret before (!) like…what? Well I guess if you’ve been in Boulder that long. We must be more of an actual institution than I thought. Jim described how he took a girlfriend of his to see the show several years ago and now he thought about it I did look familiar…
Conclusion
It’s all very fluid, isn’t it. Corinna & her beau are in a liminal state themselves, it seems, and the hotel of course is, because of what we’ve discussed before. Jim likes to hear people’s travel stories, also a way of being in between. This is why hotels are always so weirdly liminal in their designs—they’re liminal spaces just by doing what they’re supposed to do.
Jim & I, though, have lived in Boulder the same amount of time almost (though I guess it doesn’t really count since I don’t live there now), which is decidedly *not* liminal: roots that deep and long are solidly in place. Or do we plant our roots and extend our leafy anemone branches out to brush against those that are breezing by? And what lessons from those two masters, one young and one old, can I take away from this?
“Let me try that again…”