Episode 7: I would do anything for a Klondike bar

Episode 7: I Would Do Anything For A Klondike Bar
6·17·09

The Band:
Loblolly Boy
Luke Kalloch - Guitar, Vox
Katy Pearson - Ukelele, Banjolele, Clarinet, Drums, Mandolin



The Scene:
It's a drive. And by drive I mean a haul.

Nick and I are heading up Downeast to pay a visit to Loblolly Boy and Bearkat. We're heading out past Damariscotta to a small fishing village known as Round Pond.

Loblolly Boy - A.K.A. Luke Kalloch - is staying with Katy in a house there.

And by "house," I mean a free house. The Loblolly Boy Myspace page says his location is "Anywhere that's free, Maine." He doesn't mean that in some hippie-utopia sense. Not entirely, anyway. Through a complicated web, he is staying at a free house in Round Pond. He and his Lord of the Rings tattoos and Katy-also-known-as-Bearkat.

Also, Luke is from Round Pond - which sweetens the prospect of free house. His mother, he happily points out, is about two miles down the road.

Round Pond is, lamentably (for us) just an extended layover in the post-college journey for Luke and Katy. They're leaving for the Other Portland in early July... but they are doing it in style, with a tour. You can catch 'em at the Northstar Café on July 6th.

Luke and Katy have been playing together since January. They complement each other well. As Luke sings, you can see Katy watching back. More than watching, she peers into him as he plays. She strums and thumps along, adding dulcet melodies to lovelorn tales of woe.

A little sneak preview for next week: It happens the other way around, too. Although Katy admits she can't look at him while he sings. You'll have to ask her why that is.

Loblolly Boy sings a lot about death and destruction. He also sings a lot about love and loss. Apocalypse and Heart are key elements in his music, even as he plays in a domestic home in coastal Maine.

Or maybe especially as he plays there.

The sea is harsh and fishermen live rough lives. Missing fingers, miserable, deadly weather, long weeks on choppy seas where salt-water spray, high winds and harsh sun beams tan skins into leather. Fishermen's wives are known for being just as rough, attached to men they love but knowing that at any moment, Poseidon could strike and make her a widow.

Fishing communities snap Loblolly Boy's dichotomies into focus.

Even the wanderlust in Luke's life is echoed in the long trips to sea. Luke and Katy have stories from all over the country, crushing bread in Denver parking lots, eating canned tuna in Seattle, and the drive through Virginia's foothills.

Man, they've been everywhere.

But Luke shares a happy connection with Downeast. He rattles off facts about the lighthouse on the Maine State Quarter and the coast. He laments the old stories he'll miss that the old fishermen tell. Stories about the history of the place. He knows that everyone in town knows he was visited by Nick and I because a few residents in town saw my car crawling down his road.

And he's got a bit of a history bug. Take for instance, his name. A "loblolly boy" served on 18th and 19th century ships, doing anything the surgeon wouldn't do. Holding down patients, cleaning tools, tossing amputated limbs overboard and "bedpan duty."

Consequently, his music sometimes feels like songs you'd hear in a wharfside pub. A whiff of sea air as he whispers and wails about being together at the end of it all. There is a connection in his songs between death and love and sea life. As much as Luke sings about bombs dropping, there is a Downeast boy under it.

But he knows he's got to move on, ramble on. Sights to see, places to be. There's a positivity that beams electric from Luke after a few minutes of meeting him, where you can't help but feel the same wanderlust. Maine's home, sure, but you've got to get out sometimes.

Fishermen head out on the open waters and breathe salty air and face death for a simple trade. Loblolly Boy heads to an inland sea, breathes dust and exhaust and breath and sings simple songs.