I GOT A FEELIN MY MIND'S IN THE PIE

I got the news this afternoon that my friend Steven died unexpectedly yesterday morning. Stevie-O, as he allowed me to call him, was what's generally considered a "character", so I feel like I need to write about him. I'm sure other friends of his knew a lot of other sides of him, but these are the experiences and characteristics that I know and feel the need to put out there as a memorial--

Steven was piratical and bombastical and a great big teddy bear of a guy (and I don't mean the gay version of "teddy bear", though that might apply, too).  I first knew him through his fairly out-there, snake-chasing posts on the Third Man Records Vault and one of the Jack White message boards, where he used the screen-name Avard, which I later learned was his father's name (Or maybe his grandfather's, I can't exactly remember now). His avatar looked like a young African-American guy in a red wig...

...so imagine my surprise when I met Steve in person, in line in Chattanooga in 2012 for Jack White's first public solo show for Blunderbuss, and found myself confronted by this large and loud and boisterous, bald and goateed guy who looked like he could be either a biker or a sailor.  Not what I was expecting.  When I got home from that show and received in the mail a poster from Jack's first private solo show, prior to the one in Chattanooga, a poster featuring a huge black vulture, which Steve bought the day after the Chattanooga show on his way home through Nashville and sent to me just because he'd decided we were going to be pals, I was so touched and it was the beginning of an exchange of gifts, both large and small, back and forth, that culminated less than two months ago when I sent him a copy of Kid Congo Powers' Live at Third Man Records single that I'd asked Kid to sign for Steve when I was in Detroit for Devil's Night in October.   

After Chattanooga was Jack's show at Webster Hall in New York, after which Steven told me that if he weren't gay I was exactly the sort of woman he'd want to marry, after he watched me coming around the corner up the street from the venue, sprinting as fast as my legs could go, hauling ass to make it by door-time because I had tickets for both of us and two more friends and I hadn't been able to get the day off from work and had to take the train up from DC mid-day and then catch two subway trains and then run four blocks from the subway and he was waiting for me so that he could grab me and drag me inside to the front of the line.  This was the show broadcast live for AmEx Unstaged, directed by Gary Oldman.  We'd gotten a teaser for this show in the form of a video of Jack and Gary that included a few moments of the two of them rolling around on the floor wrestling.  Day of the show, Steve and our two other friends had camped out in line all day to ensure we'd be on the rail when I got there with the tickets and, according to Steve, when Gary Oldman walked by that morning, Steve asked him what it was like to wrestle with Jack, to which Gary apparently replied "I bet you'd like to wrestle him". Same show at which Steve swears he caught a drop of Jack's sweat in his mouth.  You can see him, bald-headed and goateed, throughout the show, right smack in front of Jack (as well as the wrestling match that begins the video)--



Steve loved the raisin pie at Yoder's Amish Restaurant down in Sarasota, Florida, and one day when he was waxing rhapsodic about it to me, he altered a line in one of his favorite Jack White songs, Take Me With You When You Go, to "I got a feelin' my mind's in the pie", which became a repeated refrain when he wanted pie or Jack or just fucking felt like saying it.

And then there was the time I got up at midnight and drove all the way from Maryland to his house in Connecticut to pick him up so that we could drive to Boston for one of Jack's shows, at which we both fell in love with Cary Ann Hearst, of the opening act Shovels and Rope, when she belted out a song so intensely that she ended up with two long streaks of runny mascara all the way down her cheek.  Oh, and some girl threw a bra at Jack on stage, to which he replied "Thanks, Ma!" and Steve and I joked about that again just a few months ago.  I was so exhausted on the drive back to his place that night that he talked non-stop to try to keep me awake, telling me stories about things like the time Patti Smith did a reading (or something) at the Wadsworth Museum (where Steve was chief preparator right up until his death, dammit did I really just type that?) and he'd ended up out on the loading dock eating sandwiches with her. 

And then we got up the next day and drove to New York for both of Jack's soon-to-be-infamous shows at Radio City Music Hall.  Breakfast that morning before heading to New York was fabulous, as Stevie-O took me to the local Polish market where we stocked up on chicken meatballs with dill sauce, sauerkraut, sausages, rye bread, and other treats, and went back for a feast sitting at his 50s-era formica kitchen table with the Raconteurs Live in Glasgow blasting from the stereo in his living room.  I was miserable at the show in New York that night, though, not because it was the show that Jack cut short after only an hour, but because our seats were halfway back and there were so many tall people in front of me, and so many people running back and forth along the row and up and down the aisle next to us that I couldn't see the goddamned stage. Steven's seat was right behind mine and he could tell how distraught I was because I wasn't dancing or clapping or singing along the way he knew I normally did, and at one point during the show he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around my shoulders in a big hug.  I almost started crying right then and there in the aisle at Radio City Music Hall, but I didn't. I am crying now, remembering it.  It was sometimes hard to know what to make of Steve, with his bombast and ALL CAPS written communications and the constant stream of Radio City Music Hall Rockettes show e-mail announcements he would forward to me and how he'd rant about the things he couldn't buy or do because of the limitations of his health and his finances, but that hug at that particular show really kind of told me all I needed to know about him. 

Me, Steve, and our friend Monya just before that infamous Radio City show. 
I have another photo of just Steve and me from that night, but I can't find it and am going to be fucking pissed off if it's not on my computer somewhere.

And, yeah, it seems like pretty much all of my memories of Steve revolve around Jack White and, well, they do.  He loved Jack the way I do.  He was into all sorts of kinds of music and was constantly telling stories of shows he'd been to and musicians he'd met (I once asked him to list all of the bands he'd never seen live because that would be easier than listing the ones he had seen), but it was our shared addiction to Jack's music (during the Blunderbuss tour, it was Steve who coined the term "getting JACKED UP" for going to one of Jack's shows) that brought us together.  Unfortunately, the last time I saw him in person and got one of his big hugs was just over three years ago, because, as mentioned above, his multiple health issues and financial difficulties made him unable to just up and follow Jack around like so many of us do.  But Steve is... was one of the few friends I've made within the Jack White community that I talk to.. talked to continually on a regular basis, one of the few with whom I found other interests we could share, one of the few that made a point to keep in touch with me, even if it was just to tell me what was going on with him.   

My heart breaks for his husband, John, and their cats Rosie and Taffy (and the dearly departed Conchetta), and for his family.  I think of his massively abundant tomato harvest last year that he posted fifty million photos of on Facebook.  I think of all the mouth-watering meals he told me all the time that he was preparing, and all the art we talked about (he was my go-to when I came across a piece of art I needed help understanding).  And it kills me that he died before Jack's new album could come out this year, that he couldn't get JACKED UP, couldn't see his JACK ON FIRE, even just one more time.  


 
He was at that  ^  goddamned show in 2005 when Jack screamed "And I will FUCK YOU until you die!!!" and he never, ever got tired of telling me about it. 

I don't believe in Heaven, but that's not going to stop me from imagining Steven up there in the clouds with Conchetta, engaging in human bowling with the angels and telling them all those stories of all of those incredible shows he went to in his lifetime, bellowing "I GOT A FEELING MY MIND'S IN THE PIE!!!"





I'M GOING TO MISS YOU, STEVIE-O !!!