A Beginner's Guide to Trench Warfare: Mr. Kevin Cubbins-Part 3 of a 4 Part Series

"Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further."

--Soren Kierkegaard

"I don't know."

-- Kevin Cubbins

Note: Please allow me this one potential misstep. I just watched the final episode of ‘Lost’ last night. Quite honestly I literally cried myself to sleep (then cried some more in the shower after I woke up today). I fully acknowledge the effect it is having on me and the myriad ways it may have effected what I wrote. Right now I really don’t give a flying fuck. And I think that’s a very, very good thing (though I’m fully aware of the likely possibility it’ll wear off soon - but I kinda hope it doesn’t). And yes: I watch television and enjoy it very much. I also often sincerely enjoy big budget Hollywood movies. And I don’t like Nick Drake (even if I’ve told you personally that I do). There. I said it. I feel a great weight has been lifted.

It took me a long time to write this. Not because I didn’t want to write it. Not because I’m lazy (though I am, of course). It took me a long time to write this because it isn’t inherently funny. It’s almost impossible to make it a joke, a knowing nudge of the elbow, a “blog post”. It took me so long because to write it in that manner would do a grave disservice. Not to Kevin Cubbins but to myself. It’s not that Kevin isn’t a truly funny person. Or entirely undeserving of ridicule. He is, but all that is very much beside the point. If I write about Kevin as I’ve written about everything else I would be lying to myself. Lying to you is fine by me. It’s entertaining. And I have always done that well (not entertained you - lied to you). I’d be lying to myself because I care too much. Working with Kevin has meant a great deal to me, has made me love music again, has taught me something bigger than I am entirely capable of understanding. And all that makes me look like a fool because today, in the era of irony-to-avoid-sincerity it means we (and me - all of us - that includes you) actually do feel, I become the potential pun at the end of a joke I never wrote, the asshole that cried in the theater at the end of a movie I took my five year old to see, an absolute idiot. I give up: enjoy my foolishness, revel in it, because it won’t come around again anytime soon. Kevin Cubbins is worth it. And no, Ashley: I am not going to steal your husband. Not yet anyway.....

There’s a reason it’s hard to write about Kevin Cubbins. Sure: if he was interviewed by TapeOp,  it might very well prove itself to be the most boring interview in the history of their useless, masturbatory, narcissistic, savior-making, cocksucking, shitty magazine (I hope you read this, Mr. Larry Crane - you suck ass). And yeah: Kevin is a weird guy. Not in the “I’m incredibly eccentric, please bring me my copy of (insert little known book - but known amongst the hippest and most discerning, self-involved, boring assholes) and try not to scratch my new Italian-made English riding boots”. No, Kevin is weird in the simplest (and ultimately the only honest) fashion (he wears sneakers and loves Gabriel Garcia Marquez - and writes short stories that are blindingly great). He isn’t obsessed with the idea of himself. Nor is he terribly interested in the obsessions of others. His obsessions don’t expand outwards in a way that makes him an easy target for a blog post. And I know, without a doubt, among all the other people I could have or already have written about, he could give a good goddamn.

You see, Cormac McCarthy’s “eccentricity” doesn’t come from McCarthy’s actual behavior. It comes from others’ ideas about Cormac McCarthy the person (as related to their “experience” of Cormac McCarthy the writer). It is born of their NEED to believe in his eccentricity, their perverse desire to live vicariously through the socially-constructed madness they’ve created for him (in lieu of studying their own). They do it because they are boring. They do it because they themselves are “mad”, as well, but are too afraid to face it. Cormac McCarthy has done virtually nothing to deserve the label of “eccentric” placed on him by readers, critics, and academics. Like Freud said, “We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment from a contrast and very little from the true state of things.” If one wanted to they could do the same with Kevin Cubbins. They could call him an eccentric, an obsessive, an oddity. But they could just as easily call him a technician, an engineer, or (maybe the worst of all, the most mundane and un-musical of all, the most masturbatory, the words used by asshole music gear peddlers old dudes at shops who played in a band 20 years ago and are holding on desperately to their "record that would've hit big if the label had pushed it right") a guitar player.

I seem to write, over and over, that “so and so person” is an “enigma”. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. It’s really beside the point because implying or saying something like that says more about the writer than the reader. It’s boring. And useless. And a lazy trick. Everyone is an enigma. But me? I’ve used the word so often it’s lost all meaning (at least for me, anyway). It’s become a lie. I like hiding behind lies. And generalizations. And quotation marks and parentheses. And bullshit conversations with bullshit conversationalists just like myself. If “all the truth in the world adds up to one big lie” I am basing my self-ness, my stupid freedom-induced “essence”, on the hope that the opposite is true as well. So I’ll use the word one last time. Just because it’s lost it’s meaning to me doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a carefully considered definition as a word brought to you by the 1913 Edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “an inscrutable or mysterious person”. I just wrote a lengthy and overly-wordy paragraph to do the opposite of what I’m about to do now. Because I know in this final use of that word it's true.

Kevin Cubbins is an enigma.

I talked to Kevin before writing this, talked to his long-suffering and generous wife Ashley, and talked to people I know much too well into writing things about Kevin or saying things about him so I could insert them into this blog post. It was all wildly entertaining. But I think I have (and had before I spoke to anyone) plenty to say about Kevin without using any of it. In most cases, as my wondrous and perfect (but sharply straightforward, caustic psychotherapist truth-spitting - painfully so) wife pointed out, I was looking for other people to say what I wanted them to say, and in some cases led them (by creating incredibly pointed questions) to say exactly what I wanted them to say. Because it would've been embarrassing to say it myself. Because I care too much. The stories I didn’t know, though, are definitely worth telling here.

Ashley told me how awkward Kevin was when he attempted to woo her. Amazingly, against all odds, he was successful. They decided to get married (I was really hoping to hear about Kevin’s bumbling proposition - there wasn't one) and they picked out a ring. To ensure that it was bought (only Christ himself knows what additional obsessions were controlling his riddled brain at the time), Ashley looked in his wallet one day when he was out of the room, saw that he had enough money in it to buy the ring, and said to him, “Why don’t we go get the ring today?”. It worked, of course, because Kevin is seriously crazy about his wife, but also because being the “mad professor” he is (Ashley’s words, not mine - though I entirely agree) it was the only way to redirect his attention towards it. Only their wedding was stranger. That in itself is another post (or more likely a lengthy short story published in The New Yorker that readers assume is a joke but is, in fact, entirely true). Noteworthy tidbits of the ceremony include:

1. Dokken was played so slowly on acoustic guitar, as to resemble classical music, until some musicians gathered in the church (one being myself) realized what it was.
2. A trumpet “wedding march” that, once the trumpet player missed a note, ended in the ubiquitous “battle charge” most often used at football games.
3. A small fox (apparently widely believed to be a “good omen” during a wedding) appeared through the floor to ceiling glass walls behind the altar that looked out over the Mississippi River. It was an incredibly adorable fox. Until it came closer to the glass and took a shit.

All of this took place before the reception that, though not as perilous for the couple, proved itself to be almost as funny (mainly because of Kevin’s perfectly compiled cd’s given to the DJ being replaced by the DJ’s own choices, beginning with the reception standard “Brickhouse” - primarily hilarious because of Kevin’s frantic and bewildered reaction). The wedding and reception stand, to this day, as the most amazing I’ve ever been to. Both because they so clearly adored one another and because it was so fucking hilarious. But I digress (and it was so worth it)...

I interviewed Kevin over the phone and recorded the entire thing. Do not be concerned: I have edited key portions and they will soon be available for your listening displeasure. Initially I attempted to play “bad cop” (though my wife has often said that not only would I make an awful cop but would most definitely make an awful “bad cop” because I imitate movies and television too much - and she says I often do this with many “characters” I attempt to play - she lies, of course). I thought I was rather good. Kevin did not. Lori thought it was awful. Kevin called back and asked me why I was being a dick. I came clean. I told him about playing the “bad cop”. He was relieved. Relieved!

Seriously: think for a moment about his reaction. Virtually anyone else would consider my behavior to have been utterly absurd; absolutely ridiculous. Kevin was relieved that I was only playing a part and not being a asshole. As the re-tread adage goes, “It takes one to know one”. My wife has accepted that I am certifiably insane (though I have not). It has taken many years of living and putting up with me for her to come to this conclusion. It took Kevin two seconds. Because he is crazy too. Not melodramatic (this is a common accusation thrown at me), not entirely absurd (I am often entirely ignored by my closest friends and family - unjustly), or hysterical in the classical sense (also aimed at me - also incorrect, of course). Kevin got it because he is “mad”. His brand of madness does not resemble mine in the least. But they are somehow half-siblings. And he instinctively knew it; organically accepted it. Magic! We are both unjustly ignored and scolded by our much better and far sexier better halves. We have discussed this. The common experience is so uncommon it comes full circle: it is our common. Oh the satisfaction (oh the confusion?)!

 I created a carefully considered series of questions for the second portion of the interview. These questions directly involved music (or some attempt at it on my part). Though it required a great deal of pulling teeth (and many root canals), eventually Kevin answered the questions as I demanded they be answered. But towards the end I felt interviewed and uncomfortable. I’ve tried jokingly to do this same thing with Tim Mooney, Bob Frank, and James Finch and have been entirely successful. This was not the case with Kevin. His answers were beautifully strange. And beautifully Hemingway-esque-ly direct and final. It was disturbing and comforting at the same time. None of the other interviewees ever made me uncomfortable; left me at a loss for words like Kevin did (and you who know me know that if I am ever at a loss for words I will make words up). Sure, it was disarming. But as before it proved something: some odd kinship and a shared madness. Though the madness’ are dissimilar they know one another; they communicate. So it was uncomfortable and disarming which, for me, was comforting and revelatory.

Then Kevin did something truly strange. He called back to add one more fact to the conversation. Kevin told me he had been the boxing champion at The University of Memphis, a school in a city filled with people at home with violence, people quite good at it. He wasn’t bragging. He was adding lost information. I thought this was hilarious. Because I assumed it was untrue until it was confirmed by a number of people and ultimately Kevin’s best friend of many years, Mark Stuart. Yes, in fact, Kevin was the boxing champion. And just as others I’ve known who are truly good fighters, I look at Kevin and believe I could easily beat his ass. I’d be very, very wrong. And a lot of people were. Partially because (largely because) Kevin doesn’t appear to be anything remotely close to a “street fighting man”. And it’s not that he’s stoic or “knows his strength” in some ridiculous Zen way. He just doesn’t ever think about it. Doesn’t care. Because it would take up too much space in his brain reserved for too many other obsessions. But I really would like to see him kick the fucking shit out of some truly arrogant and useless cocksuckers in the Memphis music “scene”. For my own satisfaction. It’d be a brilliant fight between good and evil and good would win out. And I love the underdog (or the person who by all appearances is the underdog).

None of what I’ve mentioned up to this point has involved anything related to my record, to the part Kevin has played in making it what it has become, or to the process of working with him. And I don’t care. There’s more time for that. And Mr. Kevin Cubbins is more than deserving of more than one blog post. If you haven’t noticed, this blog post is by far the longest I’ve written. And I like it best. And it’s just the first part of it. Kevin has recorded additional music for the record, has mixed it, and has co-produced it. He’s in many ways made it what it is today. But more than anything he’s made me like it again. I didn’t listen to it for almost a year. I’d convinced myself, for a number of reasons, that it wasn’t worth it’s weight. And it’s not that Kevin Cubbins sat me down and told me it was great. He didn’t really say anything at all. He just made me believe again. He made my own shit exist for me again. Not just in regards to this record (a record I know now is good -and believe in it- whether you will think so or not). I don’t need anything, really. And don’t take this as some enlightened bullshit. I still hate myself. Don’t worry. I’m kinda not kidding at all.

I don’t know what Kevin did. Any asshole with a board full of faders and knobs can do something with a record. That’s not what happened. Any charlatan engineer or producer can convince an idiot musician that they are “brilliant”, that they are a “genius”, that something that’s never happened before is happening right here, right now. Kevin didn’t do that either. Those blessed with real magic don’t need endless racks of outboard vintage gear. Fuck your Neve.Those capable of true magic don’t need to lie. A Neumann doesn’t change shit. That’s why it’s magic. And believing in magic is for fools and children. God bless fools and children. Lazarus walks, the Virgin shows up at Lourdes (and that’s in France of all places), and people in Arkansas don’t get bitten by poisonous snakes. Kierkegaard advocated a leap of faith saying, “Because it is absurd I believe”. I believe. I do.

I don’t know why. So that happened. I guess. Ask Kevin. Ask the living disembodied disappointing ghosts of the perfect “Layla, and Other Assorted Love Songs”. Just don’t ask T-Bone Burnett, Tony Visconti, or Glyn Johns. And definitely not Joe Chicarelli. Because the charlatans and gurus and uninteresting motherfuckers are still running their mouths to Larry Crane (and he prints every interview and every letter to the editor those goofy bastards write) and to any fuckwad that’ll listen (and that’s a lot of fuckwads). Ask Kevin. He’ll tell you he just does it and he doesn’t know why you keep asking so many stupid questions. Insinuating it’s more than that will only make him uncomfortable. My record is Kevin’s, too. Because I said so. Fuck you.

Footnote: Ashley is four months pregnant now and it’s a boy. Today Kevin told me the name they’re going with right now, temporarily anyway, is Jack. I was so touched, of course, because naming your child after me (though it makes perfect sense) is always touching. Then it occurred to me after we got off the phone: she’s thinking about Jack Shepard. Damn. Regardless, we’ve come full circle back to ‘Lost’. And that’s a beautiful thing. Because it’ll make you cry. Unless you’re too amazingly hip to own a TV or watch a mainstream television show. In that case, go fuck yourself.