Perry - From the Top

FROM THE TOP

BOOKS

Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting

Truck: A Love Story

Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets and Gatemouths Gator

Big Rigs, Elvis & The Grand Dragon Wayne

Why They Killed Big Boy

AUDIO

The Clodhopper Monologues

Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow

I Got It from the Cows

MUSIC

Headwinded (Michael Perry and the Long Beds)

Tiny Pilot (Michael Perry and the Long Beds)

BRIEF TRANSMISSIONS FROM

TENT SHOW RADIO

MICHAEL PERRY

WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Publishers since 1855

Text copyright Michael Perry 2013

E-book edition 2013

Portions of this book are adapted from material previously published by HarperCollins and in Mens Health and the Wisconsin State Journal.

For permission to reuse material from From the Top (ISBN 978-0-87020-680-1; e-book ISBN 978-0-87020-681-8), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users.

wisconsin history .org

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Perry, Michael, 1964
From the top : brief transmissions from Tent Show Radio / Michael Perry.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-87020-680-1 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-87020-681-8 (e-book) 1. Perry, Michael, 1964Anecdotes. 2. Tent show radio (Radio program) I. Title.
AC8.P577 2013
814'.6dc23

2013041080

To the founders of Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua.
They raised this tent in every sense.

To the volunteers.
If youre at a show and see someone
in a blue vest, please thank them.

And to the audience.
Its empty without you.

Ah, its great to be way up north here under the beautiful blue and pearl-gray canvas, this fine, stout tent at the foot of Mount Ashwabay, overlooking the ancient waters surrounding the Apostle Islands and just one sailful of breeze away from Chequamegon Bay.

The performance youre about to hear is one in a long, long tradition of singing, dancing, and storytelling performed live and in person beneath this beautiful tent. We keep er pitched from June until the autumn moons, and wed be most grateful if you choose to join us; youll find a complete schedule at bigtop.org. We hope you join us, and if you do, when the first note rises from the stage we think youll understand why patrons and performers alike love to say: Big Top Chautauqua its the Carnegie Hall of Tent Shows.

For the past three years it has been my privilege to approach a microphone and recite those words as the host of Tent Show Radio, a production originating from a spacious canvas tent pitched at the base of a ski hill overlooking Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin.

I invoke the term privilege with specific intent. The history of Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua extends back over a quarter-century now, and I am a late arrival. The tent didnt pitch itself. It was raised by a small band of freethinking optimists, and every time I step to the microphone I keep that in mind. I offer the contents of this book not from a position of propriety but rather as a grateful guest. Im just a guy allowed to sneak in through the backstage flap now and then.

The best seat in the Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua tent is not for sale. I dont say that to be snooty or snotty, Im just letting you know the way it is. Dont obsess over it, because the seat is located in a section theater professionals refer to as obstructed viewso obstructed, in fact, that you cant even see the show from there. The spot in question is situated in a brace of old drop-down theater chairs set up along the backstage walkway between the stage and the dressing rooms.

Its cozy back there, and quiet. From this seat you can see the artists preparing to take the stage. Some are one-namersso famous theyre recognized worldwide by their first name alone. Some should be famous but are not, and some are making their first stage appearance ever. Actors shuffle to and fro, muttering their lines. Black-clad stagehands hurry through, bound to set a last-minute prop or string a mic cord. Youll see a musician leaning in to bring his guitar in tune, or a vocalist, her throat wrapped in scarves, hunched in a chair and cupping a mug of honey-lemon tea. Novice performers pace back and forth, checking and re-checking the dry-erase board for curtain times. Veteran performers check email or discuss health insurance deductibles. The lights are low, and everyone is getting ready for the show.

I especially cherish this seat on those nippy nights early in the spring season or in the final few weeks before strike, because the crew keeps a pot of good coffee going just off the wings stage right, and the smell is even better because of the edge in the air. Its enchanting to sit in that theater chair and observe this charmed space where performers take one last deep breath before heading out to the lights and applause. Sometimes they leave behind hints of their preparation: a scribbled set list, a curled and highlighted page of script, a cellphone still glowing with the last number dialed being the number home.

Then the show begins, and even from back here you can feel the electric momentum of it, the way the performer and audience agree to dive in and see what happens. Sitting in the suddenly empty backstage space you can hear little things that dont go out over the sound systemthe scuff and twist of a dancers slipper, the thump of a musicians heel keeping time, the creak of the stage as an actor crosses. You can see into the tangle of cords and girders beneath the stage where an electronic light blinks, relaying some information that means something to someone, and thenand this is the best, best part of allthrough a gap in the velvet skirt at the stage front come distinct sounds from the audience: an anticipatory titter, an appreciative gasp, an over-loud clapper, and sometimes, when the performer has drawn a tent full of strangers deep into the center of the moment, the fragile, expectant silence.

Many of these showseven the silent bitsare recorded and put together for broadcast on Tent Show Radio. My job is to introduce the show, close the show, and during intermissionright in the middle therehave a little talk about anything I wish. Those little talks are what led to the book in your hands.

As a writer Im used to working in long form over a long time: essays that take weeks to finish, magazine pieces that take months, books that take years. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of words. Tent Show Radio monologues, however, have to be written once a week and must be brief enough to fit the six-minute sandwich between two thick slices of music. Ive been typing for a while now, and its been a challenge to find my voice in this format. I have also renewed my respect (established twenty years ago when I worked as a newspaper stringer) for anyonebe they plumber or poetwho produces under tight deadlines. (In fact, the radio show monologues led directly to a gig writing a weekly column for the Wisconsin State Journal, an opportunity for which I am grateful and baggy-eyed.) When preparing these brief transmissions, I strive for a more conversational tone and spend less time excavating the ol thesaurus.