Ukulele Consultant and Ego Kabuki Critic.
Tapwater Jackson has been performing lobotomies with a broken ketchup bottle since 1953.
Occasionally, I am tapwaterj at gmail dot com. But, really, so what?
The Tapwater Jackson backyard this April evening in North Carolina.
I am considerably more North and West than yesterday.
Airline travel fatigue + going to the office in the dark =
A short Tapwater Jackson bio, for inclusion in a distant site:
Baritone ukulele and tenor guitar consultant and ego kabuki critic, Tapwater Jackson has performed as a sideman on various instruments, and in multiple genres, for more than 40 years — usually underpaid and frequently without credit. He has also sold visual artwork, but cannot understand why. Although trained in classical music and jazz, Jackson has also composed, performed, and recorded microtonal nonsense, having tuned salad bowls to C very very flat, and perfected the art of playing a Chinese gong with a violin bow. Finding music composition too difficult as a major, he settled for a degree in philosophy, which was far easier. It was also the road to living small.
His current set lists seem to land in the American Songbook from 1910 to yesterday, with some straight-faced irony and shameless back beats. He is fortunate to have an unrelated trade, requiring a terminal degree, with which he can make a living without the need for food stamps.
Tapwater Jackson was a writer and Contributing Editor for River Explorer magazine, until its implosion and inevitable lawsuit. He was not a named defendant, which makes a compelling argument for not participating in ego theater, and for moving beyond the need for recognition.
Although Tapwater Jackson has lived his entire life as though it were a sand painting, he sometimes wishes that he had not.
Currently, Tapwater is without cat, dog, wife, girlfriend, or tobacco addiction. He misses several of those.
Tapwater Jackson wears comfortable shoes.
My 10-year-old offered to help me transplant some spearmint cuttings into a problem area of the garden — guaranteed to become even more problematic with the introduction of spearmint, but it was my best choice. He lugged the can of water and helped me get the first plants in the ground, watered, and mulched. I was reaching down to clear away the leaves to make a spot to dig for the last plant, when he said, in a very calm but firm voice,
“Snake.”
I slowly drew back as a 12-inch copperhead slithered away from the spot my hand was reaching for.
The boy said, “I knew it was a snake because the rest of the ground wasn’t moving.”
We decided to go back in the house and watch a movie, but we did the Badger Badger Snake dance all the way.
GPOYW — Tapwater Jackson and his large ukulele.
Barbecue: verb, noun, and fundamentalist religion; this photograph being proof of the most heretical act imaginable in North Carolina — a beef brisket. I home church in my own way.
I think George had a better look than I do. Dave Brainard’s If Not For You shoot.
GPOYW — Liner notes from the double album, Music for Dark Kites (1983). That’s me on the left with the stylish glasses.
I was on a teleconference the other day and a colleague did a “OMG, what is with the hair?” I guess these people have only seen the buzz-cut persona. I don’t really have a reason; although, of course, I had an answer — “It is cheaper than a red convertible and less painful than a tattoo.” But, while a funny line, that isn’t it really. At least, I think it isn’t.
