Three Strangers

Hi, everybody. I’ve been well, taking time off from writing while I’m home from the road. Casey and I spent a week on vacation in Michigan, where we got engaged (!!!), and now we’re back at home, getting various kinds of work done before we both head to Newport Folk Festival at the end of the month. (Me to play with my dad and Waxahatchee, Casey to do press and hang out with us.)

We’ve got a bunch of shows coming up. Four in particular I want to mention: Case Oats is playing our album release shows in New York (Aug 19), Toronto (Aug 20), and Chicago (Aug 22). And before I head out on tour with Waxahatchee this month, I’m playing in Eric Slick’s first-ever krautrock super group show in Brooklyn on July 23. Nels Cline on guitar, Kevin Morby, Cass McCombs, Jenn Wasner and more trading vocals, our dear friend Brian Betancourt on bass, Slick and me double drumming all night long. If you like Neu! and Can and all that freaky, disciplined, but ultimately very unbridled and free post-war music, c’mere.

Speaking of Eric Slick, he makes an appearance in the first story I want to tell you below. I was thinking this weekend about what I really care about catching up with you all about, and I thought of these three moments with strangers.

I hope you’re all having lovely summers so far, and hope to see you at a show. Thanks for being here.

—Spencer

1. Kim at Waffle House

I ate at a Waffle House with Liam and Eric at 1AM in Nashville at the beginning of the summer.

Server Kim was absolutely smitten with Eric and insisted on giving him free orange juice even though he didn’t want any. She had very few teeth and was in the 99th percentile for charisma (which is to say, had a lot of it).

Later in the night something bad happened in the restaurant that shocked the three of us and rattled Kim but ultimately didn’t surprise her. She works in a Waffle House at night. She sees things like this all the time.¹

She treated us like ducklings to shoo to safety.

When the danger passed we told her we were gonna head home. As her wards, we wanted her to know our whereabouts, that we were gonna be okay.

She went back to our table to ring up our ticket, which made me laugh. Usually a restaurant doesn’t charge you when you’ve been mortally threatened on premise. I shouldn’t say usually, because it’s not usual. In my imagination they waive the waffles.

But we would never stiff Kim. So we paid and asked her to pocket the whole thing. Big Waffle doesn’t need the cash. She’s the one who lived this night.

She thanked us a bunch, the four of us instantly welded for life in the way that only near-calamity can bond you, and she went outside to smoke trauma cigarettes with her coworkers.

2. Two men with broken fists

I bought firewood at a gas station. Two guys stood in front of me in line. One with a cast on his right hand, one buying a Coke.

The cast man was young and scowling. The Coke man was older but tough. Chicago hard-living contractor.

Punch something? the Coke man asked the cast man.

Yeah. Blank.

Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it? Coke man was open, wide open and unafraid. The cast man was sealed shut.

I did the same thing, the Coke man continued. Couldn’t control myself, punched someone. Won the fight, broke my hand. Hope it heals up quick, buddy.

Cast man cracked, smiled at the Coke man. Realized he’s not the only one who punches things he shouldn’t punch.

3. Young scholar working for Jesus

Last Saturday. Somebody knocked on our door and rang the doorbell three times in a row. Urgent!

I opened the door to a family wearing nice church clothes. Two older women and three young kids. At first, I think they’re relatives of our next-door neighbors, ringing the wrong house. But then the oldest kid (maybe ten) pulls out a pamphlet, and starts the pitch. For Jehovah!

The pamphlet is in Spanish. But the amazing thing is, he says, I can scan the QR code on the back and translate it to any language I want, like English. All I can think about is how this kid is going to go to college someday. Frankly, he should be in college right now, no disrespect to his current pastime, futile as it may be to proselytize to me, a Jew.

Speaking of which, I can’t resist, I can never resist, no matter how gentle the proselytizer is, I want to gently tell them back, I’m Jewish, thanks though. I tell him in Spanish.

He’s a little flustered and says, Oh—you’re—Jew…

Pero gracias por esto! Gracias por que… gracias! I backpedaled, tongue-tied.

He said thanks too and brought his flock to the next hearth, hurting no one.

P.S. For you pencil lovers out there, I bought this bundle of new-old-stock 70s Czech pencils at a flea market in Spain last month for one dollar. The shopkeeper didn’t look up from his kefta when he sold it to me.

1. Not withholding details here to be vague on purpose, only because I don’t feel like writing about it right now. Incredibly, no one was hurt.

Yeah, this post has four strangers in it, but three sounds better. You can pick which guy from the gas station is the protagonist.