Coffeehouse gigs, by nature, have always been very low-key events. You can get away with chords that would be deemed lazy anywhere else, and you can play every song two steps lower without anyone noticing. A coffeehouse set also allows for plenty of literary leaning, which is why I have always enjoyed them. If you're gonna connect with a listener over a turn of phrase or some embedded philosophy, it'll happen at a coffeehouse gig.
And so it went around twenty five years ago, when my brother in law and I took a Jeep trip down to central Florida for a handful of gigs. My buddy Mitch is a hell of a businessman down that way, and has spent his adult life running various businesses around Cape Canaveral. One of those was a coffeehouse that boasted an insanely gifted group of local artists in the late 90's. It was the hub of creativity there, and I played it anytime I got back down that way.
At this particular gig, we drew a nice crowd because I hadn't been there in a decade or so. Merritt Island is where I lived when Chase was a very young child, and I discovered the McCartney I album, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan's Tarantula there. My friendships in Brevard County were brief, but I bonded with those people immediately. They were all strong-minded young people. I was twenty one, and would sit up every night just to watch the sunrise. It was that kind of life. The ocean and Into the Mystic. I remember playing one night around 1998, and looking down at my tip jar to see a 1/2 ounce bag of good weed. It was that kind of life.
There was a guy out front as we were loading the small PA in, smoking a clove cigarette and talking to I kid on a longboard with a dog on a forty foot leash. He was older than the regulars there, and seemed really confident in his walk. He had a face that was incapable of being surprised. The man approached me with his confident walk toward the end of my first set. He had a pre-rolled joint in his hand that looked like a filterless cigarette from the stage. He sat it next to my feet at the monitor with a small piece of paper beneath it and disappeared. My curiosity got the best of me, and I cut the last song from the setlist to see what the paper said.
"FRANK - 3782 Oceanway Blvd. 11pm"
Another thing about coffeehouse gigs is that they wrap up early. I was done, and the gear was loaded back into the Jeep by 9:30 which meant we had to kill some time before making our way to Oceanway Boulevard. That pre-roll that Frank gifted me was about to get sparked on Cocoa Beach. But first, we'd do a drive-by of Frank's address.
Oceanway Boulevard was a four-lane commercial strip, with grocery stores and car dealerships scattered on both sides. And 3782 ended up being a huge box building in a retail plaza. It looked like it could've been an Ollie's or Big Lots, if you're familiar with either of those references. There was a big purple X on a vinyl banner above the main entrance, with no other discerning features to explain what it was. "It's gotta be a nightclub" I said to Nick. I didn't drink much at the time, so I figured the ol' brother in law might have to tie one on for the both of us. You never want to offend a host on the road. They're few and far between, and most will expect you to party till dawn. Nick was a damned good drinker in those days. Confident Frank was about to drink a great deal of Crown Royal.
But first, that pre-roll and the beach.
11pm came quick, and before I knew it, we were rolling back up Oceanway Boulevard. Only this time, the parking lot of X was full of cop cars- and lines of spotty looking young people. Not cool for a guy with a Bugler rolling machine and an ounce of mids in his guitar case. It was around 2001 after all. But Nick was pumped by all the excitement. He had the Jeep parked and was making his way toward the cop line before I even had my seatbelt off. I caught up with him and suggested we get the hell outta there; right as Frank pushed his way through the line.
"Make way" he shouted at the dozens of cops as he motioned for us to follow him inside. "Oh, shit" I thought to myself. "Frank OWNS the place". And he sure did. Confident Frank owned a nightclub marked only with a purple X. As we rounded the first corner toward the bar, there was a hand-drawn menu on the wall containing only various kinds of water. They sold nothing at X but bottled water.
Everybody in the place was rolling on X and pounding water like we were in the desert. At least two hundred emo kids, all writhing to the drone of the music. It was hard to tell where one person stopped and the next began. It was a puddle of humans, dripping across the floor like paint rolling off a canvas. I've still never seen a crowd move collectively like that. I was one of two "sober" cats in the room, and watching them dance for two minutes had me tripping.
Frank sliced through the crowd like butter. He moved like liquid, and not one spotty kid impeded his flow. He guided us to an office in the back and handed Nick a bottle of vodka. I must have smiled when I saw the candy dish of pre-rolls on the coffee table because Frank waved his hand over it like Willie Wonka and I pocketed one. There was a second couch along the back wall, where a nearly comatose young woman sat beside a dude in a very plain black suit. "Secret Service" I whispered to Nick and chuckled. The dude's jacket fell slightly open, and we could see his badge and shoulder holster. "No shit" I mouthed inaudibly. Nick was distracted by the three naked girls in the corner, sharing a big fuzzy blanket and a box of popsicles. I was more concerned with why the detective wasn't even batting an eye at any of it. He pulled a pewter flask from beneath his shoulder holster and took a long draw from it.
When a ginger in polka dot boxers appeared from nowhere, the young woman on the back couch said something under her breathe and started convulsing. Then she just stopped. The undercover cop picked her up and walked out the backdoor like a groom carrying his beloved across a threshold. Frank handed me two more joints and two bottles of water, and suggested we leave out that same backdoor. We passed a dumpster in the back parking lot and Nick made a joke about the plainclothes and the girl. He pulled the bottle of vodka from his over shirt and handed me the keys to the Jeep. I drove straight to the ocean to sit on some sand and contemplate what had just happened.
Shortly after sunrise, we drove to a little diner that the retired NASA engineers would frequent. If you waited in silence long enough, you could always catch some insane conversations over coffee. Only on that particular morning, everyone was nose-deep in the local newspaper. Seems there'd been a big fire on Oceanway Boulevard the night before, and a box store had been destroyed. No one was injured, but the abandoned Big Lots was gone. Police suspected that some squatters may have inadvertently set it ablaze "while throwing an illegal party". The building was registered to an LLC in Texas, who hadn't paid property taxes on it for nearly eight years. As recently as the week before, it had been an empty building; other than some furniture stored in a back office.
We drove straight through to Ohio that day, wondering if we'd dreamed the whole thing. Months later, I found a tiny piece of paper in my jacket.
"FRANK - 3782 Oceanway Blvd. 11pm"
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