Christmas in Colorado. — Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer

The year Jay and I were with Roger (2001, but don’t quote me), my mother told us that we weren’t welcome for Christmas in her house. Jay and I could come if Roger stayed home, but we lived in a camper so there was no staying home that wasn’t coming along. Mom never accepted the relationship; she just waited for it to be over.

So, when a friend and fan and sometime investor/benefactor’s step-mother inquired about hiring us to perform after dinner at a small holiday party she was hosting at her home in Aspen, we figured out how much it would cost us to get there and sheepishly quoted what felt like an extravagantly high fee. It strikes me as especially sad as I write this that it was a perfectly reasonable figure (I think it was $5000); it only seemed extravagant to us because we were used to playing for little or nothing and had come to believe that’s all we deserved.

She agreed to the fee and we were off to Colorado. I assume we drove there in the van with the camper, but I don’t remember, and I don’t remember where we were coming from. (This period was well-chronicled in our blog and personal journals, so I could look up these details, but honestly why?)

The gig was to play four or five songs right after dinner. A few days earlier, the Manager (I think that was his title) relayed the host’s request that we sing God Bless America. This was the Christmas after 9/11 and everyone (well, not us) was in a jingoistic mood. We pondered the request. I hated the song, hated the politics. We decided we’d sing This Land Is Your Land instead. I remember that it felt risky because we were being so well paid, and because this friend/fan/patron had been very generous several times in our money-hemorrhaging career and we were grateful. That memory also makes me sad and embarrassed.

(We also learned the Dreidel Song because our fan/patron’s family was Jewish. Did they request it? God, I hope so.)

When we arrived, we were shuttled through a back door into a maze of hallways through what looked like a restaurant kitchen to what I think was probably a storage room where we changed into our costumes and warmed up and waited. It wasn’t exactly upstairs/downstairs; more like front of the house/back of the house. The Manager came and brought us to a sort of hall in front of large double doors. We were told that the host would introduce us, the doors would open, and we’d start playing. Which is exactly what happened.

The doors swung open and revealed four or five steps leading down into a small dining room, a table right at the foot of the stairs, eight or ten guests finishing dessert and coffee, looking up at us skeptical-delighted. Halfway into the first song, a couple at the far end of the table got up and left the room. I won’t say who they were, but they were very famous in the 1970s. (I feel like I have to be discreet. Beats me why. I just finished reading Mary Rodgers’s memoir, and I can’t wait till I’m 80 and don’t give a shit.)

Part of our agreement was that they put us up for the night. (This is why I think we must not have taken the camper.) Our lodgings were in a very fancy hotel in town. Everything on the little strip of shops and hotels was covered with snow and twinkling lights, pretty, romantic, and slightly surreal. Our rooms were luxurious. It was the first time I’d seen those thick white bathrobes they provide in expensive hotels and later that night we sat outside in a heated pool surrounded by snow, the surface of the water covered with a thick layer of steam.

I don’t remember where we stayed after that night, but we were in the area at least until Christmas. One day we drove past a sign for such-and-such monastery with an arrow pointing up a narrow road. Either the sign said this, or maybe we called, but there was a midnight mass, open to the public, on Christmas Eve. We thought it would be a perfect remedy for our Christmas blues.

The mass was performed in a small, plain room with low wood benches and bright overhead light. There were half a dozen monks and maybe ten guests. I guess I’d imagined Medieval chants but the music was contemporary Christmas songs accompanied by a little Casio or maybe a guitar, and that was it for pageantry. The thing lasted at least two hours, the benches had no backs, the room was hot, and we’d had a couple drinks beforehand. It was excruciating.