I Spent the Night in Jail
For 15 years I did time performing in a weekly residency in Greenwich Connecticut, where all the beautiful people live in great big beautiful houses.
Week after week we played, month after month, year after year. We made many memories and gained friends along the way!
But…
One cold wintery night in December I found myself spending the night in the Greenwich jail. The officer that night was happy to let us know it was the very same jail Diana Ross (you can google it) spent time in back in ’04. (Makes you wonder if there wasn’t some profiling going on there, you know how the man likes to go after us musician types). How Diana did it in this stark, raw jail cell I will never know.
Anyway, the show was over. Greenwich Avenue was all but abandoned except for our two cars. We were making our way back inside to say good bye to the staff. Suddenly there are far off headlights coming down the Avenue, veering towards us as we make our way to the sidewalk they come dangerously close. A group of wile teens honking and yelling out to us as they drove by. We continued inside to say good bye.
Three minutes later we are back on the Avenue beneath a crisp moon. Mark Barden, one of my oldest friends and musical partner since we were teens gives me a hug and says… “Where did you put my car?” I looked at him, he repeats his query.I turn around to see one car where there just was two.I responded “I didn’t touch your car.” Now understand the idea of me doing something like this would not be totally out of the question as we had a lifetime of missing items between one another under the guise of friendly pranks.
As he angled for the truth he tried to leverage me with his cell to his ear feigning to call the police. I encouraged him. He dialed and held the phone out so I could hear it ring, still thinking we were engaged in a game of “Pranking Chicken” he held his ground. “Greenwich Police” still looking at me as if it were my last chance he starts to tell the officer about his missing car. I was absent of protest, I think it was then he accepted we had a problem.
His car was gone and worse, was that all of his musical gear PA, three guitars, peddle board and a variety of other items were in the car, one guitar alone (vintage stratocaster) was worth more than the car. As we recounted the last moments before, to the seemingly skeptical criminal mind of the officer who responded, he informed us of an organized ring of thieves preying on musicians and that it was probably “already going down I- 95”. I mentioned the timing of the teens passing by and the probability they were responsible. He assured me with all of his “Brooklyn 99 Swagger” he was certain it was the “band of thieves”, I think he was making a pun he did not intend.
Well the long and the short of it was, the skepticism had turned into suspicion. We a were asked to “come down to the station” in order to process the paperwork around this criminal act perpetrated right there on the mean streets of Greenwich, CT.
So off we went, where we spent the next several hours going over the details, ostensibly for GPD to conduct a proper investigation and locate the car with its contents. Our eyes squinted hard against the early morning sun as it had been reasoned we were “free to go” so like Johnny and Merle we said Farewell and walked into the sunrise like two country outlaws earning our way in the hard way!
It would take months for a resolve but that is a tale for another time.
Have you ever lost a car ? An instrument? Been an outlaw?
Drop me a note and share you tale!
be well,
Artie
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