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Readings from “Rust Belt Chic” at Vol. 1 Brooklyn Reading Series

New Year’s Day I began to feel creeping over me one of the viruses that’s been forcing so many people to their beds. Day One’s utter tiredness soon morphed into a stomach bug. After three semi-miserable days, by Thursday night, Jan. 3, I was finally well enough to venture out of the apartment. I’d been building myself up to enough of a rally that I hoped I could manage at least a couple hours out in public. I was scheduled to be among the readers at a long-planned night of readings from Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, to which I’d contributed, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern.” I’d been looking forward to it since RBC co-editor Anne Trubek asked if I wanted to be part of the event. What’s more, I’d invited friends who said they’d be there–I couldn’t not show up. Still, not feeling good yet, I let Jason Diamond, host of the reading series Vol. 1 Brooklyn know that I’d been ill and asked if he could slot me in early on the program, in case I had to bail or something. He was great about it, putting me first. I appreciated this. I used to often speak up first in classes, and have never minded being in that spot.

The reading room at Public Assembly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn was a big darkish space with rows of folding metal chairs, some upholstered benches, and lights above and behind a wide stage on one side.  Jason introduced the program by revealing his geographic own roots–not Cleveland but Chicago. He said that to a kid like him growing up in Chicago–while parts of the nearby Midwest clearly identified with something: Minnesota=hockey; Wisconsin=the Packers; Detroit=the Pistons, who Bulls fans hated–about Cleveland–even less was certain. It struck me that while Chicago may have its widely reputed Second City issues, it’s always the First City of the Midwest. After Jason read the brief bio about me that I’d provided, he brought me up to the stage. As I set my talking script on a music stand next to the mic I looked out across the chairs and found I couldn’t see anything or anybody. Those lights above the stage were now all behind me, leaving me peering in to a black cavern. I was a bit unsettled, not having presented somewhere like this before. When I speak, say, at a publisher’s sales conferences, I rely on eye contact with the book reps to know how my points and pitches are landing. I had some lines in my script I hoped would prompt a few laughs, or a tear, but the delivery was going to be tricky under the circs. No problem, I thought, I know people are still sitting there, even if I can’t see anyone. With that, I launched in to the piece:.

Growing up in the hotbed of rock n’ roll that was Cleveland in the 60s and 70s, I began going to hear live music before I had even turned fourteen. 

This was exciting. I could feel confidence growing in the crowd that they were going to be hearing something interesting. Their interest seemed to grow as I read and talked the piece over the next six minutes. At about the midpoint, I revealed a visual aid I had brought–my copy of the album that gave my essay its name, “Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern.” This drew an appreciative titter from the crowd. I wrapped up with these two graphs:

In reporting this piece, I interviewed Cleveland musician Alan Green, with whom Stress played live gigs as late as 2010.  He reminded me that Stress was born a minute after midnight on New Year’s Day in 1943, and was feted as Cleveland’s firstborn of the new year—a fitting birth for a bluesman if you remember bluesmen singing the lyric about the fabled character, “born the 7th son of a 7th mother on the 7th day.” Clearly, Stress had a suitable pedigree for a bluesman. Alan’s reminder that Stress had long ago been a New Year’s baby brought back a flood of rich memories from great New Year’s Eve shows when Stress and revelers raucously marked a new year and Bill’s birthday.

Living in New York City today I remain a devotee of going out to hear live music, a happy habit I formed forty years ago listening to Mr. Stress. I must add that after Rust Belt Chic was published last fall, Stress read my essay and we’ve been reunited via telephone and the Internet, after more than 25 years being out of touch. He’s very glad to see his career remembered in this book. Even with macular degeneration, he still reads voraciously with the aid of voice-enabled software. We were in touch on his birthday two days ago, his 70th, and he knows I’m presenting his story here tonight. 

I felt good delivering this tribute. It was mete and right to honor Mr. Stress who warrants more homage and notoriety for having given so much to the blues and Cleveland’s live music scene over many decades. As I added for the crowd, Stress’s impaired vision may be at least partly attributable to his music-making, for he told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter in 2011,

“I woke up one morning and. . . I had lost a third of my vision. I’ve heard it comes from [a harmonica player] blowing so hard, you pop blood vessels. I can’t drive or get around as well. But it ain’t stopping me from playing the blues.”

As I finished I glanced up from my pages and looked into the darkness. A soft “Whew” and a whistle came from the audience, then an uprush of clapping. I was amazed at how long the applause lasted, seeming to go on for many seconds. I couldn’t have asked for a more attentive audience, or a more appreciative reception.

I was followed by six other readers, five of whom were contributors to Rust Belt Chic, all former Clevelanders, and one guest Michigander, who told a story about Detroit. It was a grand night, made grander by the boisterous crowd, easily more than 50 people–this, only three nights after New Year’s Eve–Jason Diamond‘s inspired MCing; and stellar presentations.

The order in which the seven of us read, from last to first is pasted in below, with our bios as they were provided to Jason, readers’ relevant links, and a brief note on the topics each of us presented. I made an audio recording and if I’m able, will later share my reading on Mr. Stress. I want to thank certain friends who came to the event: Bridget Marmion, of Your Expert Nation, a book marketing firm with which I am also associated ; Daniel Zitin, independent editor, and his son Benjamin; and Peter Ginna and George Gibson, of Bloomsbury Publishing (they are also colleagues with RBC contributor, Pete Beatty, who was the evening’s last reader.). Copies of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology were sold that night, and you can buy it too,  from Cleveland-area retailers, online booksellers, and the RBC website. I urge you to support this unique expression of community literary spirit.

Meantime, if you want to read my essay pretty much as I delivered it Thursday night, please find it at the post below this one here on The Great Gray Bridge. You may also click on this link for the complete post with photos, the contributor bios and their topics of discussion.

“Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern”–as Delivered 1/3/2013 at Vol. 1 Brooklyn Reading Series

Essay text, as read and spoken by me on January 3, 2013 for the Rust Belt Chic event at Public Assembly, Williamsburg in the Vol. 1 Brooklyn reading series. A related post, a blog piece on the whole evening, may be read via this link. Copies of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology may be purchased from Cleveland-area retailers, online booksellers, and the RBC website. I urge you to support this unique expression of community literary spirit.

2 Mr Stress album coverRemembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern 

“Growing up in the hotbed of rock n’ roll that was Cleveland in the 60s and 70s, I began going to hear live music before I had even turned fourteen. Music Hall, with its fixed rows of seats trimmed in maroon velvet was a regular venue for bills such as Cream with Canned Heat; the Grateful Dead with the New Riders of the Purple Sage; Traffic; John Mayall; the Allman Brothers; and The Band, among many other acts. In 1972, just after turning eighteen, then Ohio’s legal drinking age, I began to discover live music venues that were even more fun as a hang-out than Music Hall.

On the eastern edge of University Circle, near Euclid Avenue and Ford Road was a squat red building known as the Brick Cottage, where I discovered that Mr. Stress, a venerable Cleveland bluesman often performed. Stress dubbed this club the “sick brick,” a rueful yet fond homage to the many nights of alcoholic excess committed within its walls. Mr. Stress was the Paul Butterfield of Cleveland—a white bluesman who sang and played harmonica and led his band with an unerring sense of what made the blues so entertaining and sustaining to live music lovers. He was always comfortable on stage with a cohort of diverse sidemen, young and old, black and white, tattooed players and professorial piano players.

In 1973, I went off to Franconia College in New Hampshire. By 1978, when I returned to Cleveland full-time, Stress and his band had moved up the block to the Euclid Tavern, at Euclid & 116th Street where they joined forces every Wednesday and Saturday night for a long-running residency. This club, a lot larger than the ‘Brick,’ included a central music room with a low stage for the band in front of a dance floor, an outdoor area in back, plus a basement bar. It was a veritable cruise ship of nightlife. During breaks between sets I often made new friends in my ambles around the lively deck. In the room opposite the stage was the main bar, a wide hitching post of a drinks station where multiple bartenders pulled beer taps and poured liquor. Above them was a sign that became a lifetime motto for me: ‘It’s hard to soar like an eagle when you’re on the ground with the turkeys.’

Mr. Stress—real name Bill Miller—was a TV repairman by day. ‘Stress,’ as most knew him, was a big reader, a history buff who avidly consumed books, including many on the Vietnam War and military history. In 1978, when my family and I began running Undercover Books, a bookstore in Shaker Hts., I’d order Nam books that Stress asked me about and bring them to the club for him. (Sometimes he paid for them, sometimes I just gave them to him–my personal payback to Stress for the enrichment he always lent the local music scene.)

Like me, many Stress fans came to the Euclid Tavern every week. I was friends with Danny Palumbo, who got around in a wheelchair. Danny worked for the State of Ohio in workplace compliance for accommodating the disabled. Never hindered in his enjoyment of the fine blues that Mr. Stress and the band put out, Danny would dance in his chair along with everyone else crowding the floor, boogieing to up-tempo numbers like “Crosscut Saw” and “Firing Line,” or swaying to laments such as the mournful ‘Black Night,’ when guest sax player Mal Barron would sometimes sit in. Danny had a colorful way of talking about the female friends he’d meet each week at the bar, and I recall him once saying of a certain Tanya, a particularly cute and curvaceous regular, that given the chance he’d eagerly ‘drink her bathwater.’

Another Stress fan I saw just about every week was Michael Lloyd, an African-American friend who like me had for a time worked at Municipal Stadium. We met when we were each vendors for Indians ballgames. I sold beer, Michael sold hot dogs. I did it for one summer, he did it for several and then moved in to the season ticket office. He was a tall and handsome fellow, with a smooth manner and sweet speaking voice. I thought of him as the Euclid Tavern’s Smokey Robinson of. He was a sharp dresser and a great dancer, and always drew to himself the prettiest, most statuesque new female visitors to the club. They would walk into the place, clearly wondering what this rough and raw place was all about; Michael would spot them and deftly take them under his wing for the night.

Stress enjoyed bantering with his bandmates and regulars got to know his repertoire very well. As Stress would reach the punch line to one of his hoary gags, a bartender would chime the tip bell, a badda-boom underlining the corny humor. One of Stress’s favorite lines was, ‘The more you drink, the better we sound.’

In the early 80s, Stress put out an album, ‘Mr. Stress Live at the Euclid Tavern.’ Here’s my copy of the LP, which I listened to while composing these recollections. I bought it before moving to New York City permanently in 1985. When visiting family back home, I would sometimes return to the club. Except for Stress with a new band, I never saw my old friends. It seemed people had moved on. As years passed, I occasionally wondered if he was still playing at the Euclid Tavern, or playing in Cleveland at all. I also wondered if the Euclid Tavern was still standing, even as the rest of University Circle underwent many makeovers and Cleveland picked itself up off the mat of urban decline time and again. While reporting this piece, I found a phone number for the establishment and asked a bartender if Mr. Stress still played there. Sounding a bit surprised, he replied, ‘No, he hasn’t played here for a couple years.’

Next I spoke with Plain Dealer reporter John Petkovic who’d written a 2011 story about Stress. He’d reported then that in 1993 the musician had had a heart attack. Stress also told Petkovic, ‘I woke up one morning and. . . I had lost a third of my vision. I’ve heard it comes from [a harmonica player] blowing so hard, you pop blood vessels. I can’t drive or get around as well. But it ain’t stopping me from playing the blues.’

Petkovic referred me to Alan Greene, a Cleveland musician who played gigs with Stress as late as 2010. Alan told me Stress is still living and now considers himself in ‘semi-retirement.’ Alan also mentioned that New Year’s Day 2013 Stress will turn seventy, which brought back a flood of rich memories from great New Year’s Eve shows when Stress and revelers raucously marked a new year and Bill’s birthday. Alan also mentioned that when Stress was born, a minute after midnight on New Year’s Day in 1943, he was feted as Cleveland’s firstborn of the new year—a fitting birth for a bluesman if you think of Muddy Waters singing about the fabled blues character ‘born the 7th son of a 7th mother on the 7th day.’ Clearly, Mr. Stress had an auspicious pedigree for a bluesman.

Living in New York City today I remain a devotee of going out to hear live music, a happy habit I began forty years ago listening to Mr. Stress. I must add that after Rust Belt Chic was published, Mr. Stress read my essay and we’ve been reunited via telephone and the Internet after more than 25 years being out of touch. He’s very glad to see his career remembered in this book. Even with macular degeneration, he still reads voraciously with aid of voice-enabled software. We were in touch on his birthday New Year’s Day and he knows I’m presenting his story here tonight.”