(?)

Road Loner Chapter 4

Benjamin Jaffe
Sep 8, 2018 · 4 min read

#WEAREBEN

There is another Ben Jaffe out there. At least one, in all likelihood quite a few. This fact has confronted me many times over the years, recently more than ever. My prime co-namesman is from New Orleans. He is a musician too and possesses a wider renown than me, your Ben Jaffe. If exposure is important to you I suggest befriending him. Plus, you won’t have to remember a new name.

This coincidence has never provided me with anything more than a laugh and a disappointing phonecall or two. More than once my mind’s cash register *ching! has gone off with the sound of a music publishers voice on the line, saying they want to license one of my songs, only to have cold water dumped on my head when they rattle off a title I’ve never heard. Oh, you want the other Ben Jaffe. He’s in New Orleans. Other Ben Jaffe leads a band called the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Years ago, in my very first BJ/BJ mixup I had a lawyer (representing me for a friendly “drug” possession charge at appropriately named High Point University) take a different approach to billing when he realized he and his son were not about to see ME in concert in a few weeks. The list goes on. A royalty check arrives for not me. I get a text message of a rockstar playing a tuba in someones backyard. (New Orleans Ben is a tuba player). His mom calls me on his birthday, not mine (that one is jk). Like I said, gentle events bearing no great burden or reward. Until Boston.

There was a day off on the Donavon tour and my wonderful agent Kate said we’d gotten an offer to open, in Boston, for esteemed folk-chanteuse Shawn Colvin at the City Winery. I’m hungry to get on any stage that will have me these days so I said yes, hopped in my leased Mazda and slung it ever closer to its mileage limit. The I-95 was as unforgiving as ever. If the cluster of freeways near Los Angeles, (where I’m these days living), is the god of the Old Testament in his reliable and ruthless brutality, then the 95 is Judas fucking Iscariot. A traitorous avenue of regret, unfortunately necessary for the narrative. I got to the City Winery by 6.

The Boston City Winery is located square on top of a pile of heritage. There’s Haymarket Square around the corner, Faneuil Hall down over there, TD Garden looming up, belching trashed revelers. The City Winery itself is presumably what happened when the House of Blues humped your favorite day spa but the child was raised by its Grandma, the Hilton Garden Inn. Overwhelmingly cordial, the very young staff helped me in, ushering me down to a secluded Ikea-chic dressing room deep within the bowels of the complex. Frankly, I was overjoyed. There was a shower in the room and glass bottles of water with those plastic swing top corks. I did yoga and ordered salmon. An hour passed and Kevin the fastidious production manager asked me how I was doing. Great Kevin, thank you. Please follow me Ben, I’d like to get you backstage 5 minutes before showtime, please don’t play your guitar as we proceed through the lobby. Why of course Kevin lets do this. The salmon was fantastic.

I’d gotten a brief moment just after soundcheck to meet Shawn and tell her thanks for having me. She was very kind with a slightly wary look in her eye, which I would later recast as confusion. Brushing it off, I’d gone back to my comfort dungeon to make the most of my hummus plate and that’s when Kevin summoned me. Wariness melted and the show was great. Despite the boner-destroyer prerecorded message limiting City Winery’s general liability and the bar mitzvah-aged pipsqueak presenter, I walked onstage to a sold-out room, rapt at attention and loosened at the hinges by CW cabernet. Gorging myself on the pure oxygen of an attentive crowd I blasted through the set, sang well and walked off to exuberant applause. A triumphant feeling all around, not so much marred as flavored (?) by a real estate investor, an even multiple of my age full on #metoo-style kissing me on the mouth as she swayed up to the bar. The idea that sexual invasions of personal space are perpetrated solely by folks with testicles is blatantly false. HOWEVER, I accept that life expresses itself in degrees, and while I might have gotten a few drops of rain on my head, its most often women who end up drenched by typhoons of male douchery. I wiped off my mouth and sold some merch. People were kind and this was feeling like a pretty clear check in the W column as I packed up my things to go, shaking hands with the promoter on the way out. Great show Ben! Here let me give you a little tour, we’d love to have you back, solo or even with the band haha!

Haha thanks promoter! Which band?

I hesitated just slightly, I’m not sure why. I’ve been in another band for years, we’ve played City Winerys before in other cities and there was nothing out of the ordinary about him mentioning it.

Preservation Hall! Cried Promoter. Anyway here’s our smaller performance space, here’s our conference room, our wine cellar…

For the first time in all these years of mixups, I didn’t correct him. I swallowed my tongue and smiled and said mutely, yes it’d be great to come back.

I don’t feel proud, I don’t feel sorry. You book Ben Jaffe, you’re going to get a good show, no matter who shows up. It’s about time this came in handy.