Magic is a funny word.  It means different things to different people.  To some, it means pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Chris Angel, David Blaine, and Penn and Teller have been pulling nastier rabbits out of bigger and bigger hats and I could watch them all for days.  If you haven't seen Penn and Teller's catching the bullet in the teeth trick, you should. Go to YouTube now.  I'll wait here.

 

To others, magic is what some people can do in Dungeons and Dragons books, or, more recently Harry Potter.  People who can perform magic are called mages and they use words like scry and empath and node.  I've read a lot of those books and I loved them.  Paul Kidd is great.  Mercedes Lackey, too.  There's a lot of them. Robert Jordan. Terry Goodkind. Simon R. Green.

To me, magic is a word with no real definition.  I used to think that it had one, a different one.  I used to look for it too, back when I thought I knew what it was.  I guess I wasn't very happy at the time and I wanted something more. Something different.  I spent a lot of time hoping something magic would happen to me.  I wrote songs about it.  I spent whole days traipsing about in the woods looking for it.  I built stone circles in fields.  I hung out on hilltops at the summer solstice and in cemeteries at 3:00 in the morning. I opened random doors hoping beyond hope that maybe I could get into Narnia.  I collected books and artifacts.  I was just desperate for something--anything--to happen.

Nothing ever did.

And that's cool.  I'm OK with it now, though a small part of me, every once in a while, will peek behind a door with a small futile glimmer of anticipation of what might be on the other side. For the most part, I've stopped looking for magic, but I still hope I will find it. The point of this story is to tell you, O Patient and Honored Reader, that every once in a precious while, it finds me. 

I usually don't recognize it when I see it.  It's usually something you see in the rearview mirror.  You know how it is; waking up the next morning and thinking "wow, that was magic."  You might be nodding your head if you've bothered to read this far, and I'm betting that, even if you aren't, you know what I'm talking about.  Magic comes to me as it wills, and I welcome it gladly.  It's hideously rare, magic; and just so I don't scare it off, I never look for it.  When it does show up, I don't talk about it.  I try to just let it happen, and when it leaves, I try to hold on to the memory of it--the wrapper that it came in, if you will--for as long as I can.

You can't expect it; you can't predict it.  Trying will only set you up for heartbreak.  You have to be receptive and ready for it, and you can't be angry or hurt if it only stays around for a little while.  All you can do is hope it will return soon.

"But what can you possibly be talking about when you talk about magic?" you are undoubtedly saying, grabbing fistfuls of hair on either side of your head as you read, so incensed are you. (Or maybe you just indifferently took another sip of your latté; what do I know? In any event, thanks for reading!)  I have no answer to that question.  I don't really know what magic is.  All I know is how to recognize it when I see it.  If you're willing to read further, I'd like to give you a couple of examples so that if and when magic happens to you, you can recognize it too.  Though, as I've mentioned, you probably already can, in which case you've quite charitably chosen to continue reading anyway, and for that, I thank you.

Motorcycles can be magic. They really can, and it's not what they are that makes them so.  It's the way they take you places in ways a car just can't. I'm very particular about the conditions when I ride.  I'm always cold and so I refuse to ride if it's much colder than sixty. "Sixty degrees?" you howl.  "That's considered balmy in many cultures and climes. Is your ass made completely out of candy?!"  Yes it is, and that's why, when the conditions are right, the riding is that much sweeter.  Also, keep in mind that 60° while standing in a sunny hayfield is indeed quite pleasant; a 70 mile an hour headwind, however, knocks that down a degree or 15.  But, when the conditions line up right, well; let me tell you, I've had moments on motorcycles that transcend explanation. 

A year or two back I found myself at the RoundHouse in Aurora.  I rode there on my gorgeous-yet-menacing Triumph Rocket 3.  It was a lovely summer night in the meatiest part of July; no more Chicago late spring shenanigans to worry about, flinging a crisp 40° sleet in your face as you watch your nephew's Little League game.  Nope; in July, summer has got Chicago firmly by the short and curlies, and your only responsibility is to watch out for that tornadic supercell that pops up from time to time.  I got to park right in front and I found myself next to a buddy's pretty blue scooter.  My elephantine excuse for a bike dwarfed that elegant little machine almost comically, and a bunch of us sat outside, smoking, laughing, talking bikes, enjoying the moment and the season.  

 

Well, making a long story short, one of our number asked another of our number if he could take the pleasantly pastel blue scooter for a brief little jog around the block, and that ended catastrophically.  But the night ended with me taking the erstwhile scooter jockey, bleeding both from elbows and freshly wounded pride, home on the back of my axe-murdering land-torpedo, and we took a very long detour while he showed me around his city, then clothed in a thin translucent nightgown of late-night mist that turned the street lights all to halos and summoned crickets to chirp louder than the exhaust; the air redolent of freshly-mowed lawns and recently-turned mulch.  We cruised for about 3 hours; I wasn't worried about the stigma of two dudes on one bike, nor was I worried that he might be grinding fresh blood into my back rest.  The night was too beautiful to let go, and we just let it drift and stayed with it as best we could.  

This other time, Columbus Day came up all summery.  Middle of October and it's 85° out; the sky a deep unbroken blue, a sheet without a wrinkle.  I've got the day off and so does my friend.  We both ride but his horse is in the shop.  Good thing I've got two.

I've always wanted that situation to come up: two guys who ride, but one of them doesn't have a bike.  "Why," I say, "you poor unfortunate soul!  Please come throw your leg over one of mine!  No, you can't have the crappy one.  You are my guest and I insist that you take the nice new shiny one.  You'll get used to its gargantuan proportions in no time (and don't hit the throttle until you're in at least third gear)!  What's that?  Fuel?  My dear fellow, its commodious tank is filled quite literally to the brim.  I shall have to replenish my own gasoline supply far sooner than you and, when I do, I shall ensure that both are nicely topped off.  Ride and let your inhibitions fall by the wayside!"

It didn't quite happen like that, but close.  We went way out west and spent the day exploring.  He seemed to enjoy my enormous garbage truck of a motorcycle and I reveled in the fact that my beaten and broken down old war horse still had some frolic left in her rusty old bones.

We hit the smooth black tarmac of the roads out in Shabbona hard and, as I recall, we had to gas up twice.  The day came to a peak when, apropos of nothing, my friend pulled over and shut the engine off.

"You know what just happened?" he asked.

"What?" I said, getting off and putting the kickstand down, making sure it didn't sink too deeply into the gravel of the small farm field turnout we were temporarily occupying.

"It just hit me that I am riding a motorcycle," he said.

"You often do," I replied.  "You have one of your own, remember?" I chewed concernedly on my lower lip, confused.  Had he suffered from some strange cerebral haemorrhage?  Would he survive?  Did I have sufficient signal strength to summon an ambulance?

"That's not what I mean," he said.  "You know how you used to fantasize when you were 10 years old about how cool it must be to ride a motorcycle?  I just regressed and realized how awesome this is.  It hits me like that every once in a while."

You know something?  Him regressing like that had the same effect on me.

"Come on!" I said, getting back on and gleefully hitting the starter.  "Let's ride some more!"  

And that's how the rest of the day went.  That was magic.

Bombing into the city at dusk, watching the setting sun bounce off the glass walls of the skyscrapers, turning everything the most spectacular fluorescent shade of orangey-pink.

Diving under the Circle Interchange, banging the transmission down a gear or two and hearing the open-header exhaust bark angry pops and snarls off the concrete walls of the viaducts as the machine banks deep on an off-ramp.

Dragging the foot pegs in a curve and pulling a trail of sparks out behind you.

Sliding up to a stoplight in the city; the transmission in second and the engine winding down from just south of the redline as the mufflers barf little balls of blue flames out onto the cooling pavement.

Shooting north on Lake Shore Drive; winging west on the Kennedy; streaking south on 57 with no idea where I'm going or when I'll be home.  Burnouts leaving the bar; drag races out on the lonely two-lanes west of DeKalb; following the high beam’s lone spear of light through pitch-black Archer Woods at 3:00 in the morning as I go trolling for Resurrection Mary.

All of these were great moments that couldn't have been planned.  They just happened.

Music sets itself up that way as well.  I've spent a lot of time just talking about music and I won't rehash old well-stomped ground on subjects like how grateful I am to play, or the cool and talented people with whom I am fortunate enough to have shared the stage, or the friends that has made me.  But I would like to regale you, O Patient and Honored Reader, with a tale or two that might help illustrate how, sometimes, it's just magic.

Picture, if you can, an airplane hangar.  Not a massive one; this one is a private hangar in a neighborhood built around a small grass landing strip.  People who live here own their own planes, and they're small--Cessna 172s, Piper Cubs, maybe a Beech here and there.  If you own your own plane, you're going to have to have a place to park it, and that's called a hangar.  These people each have one of those too.  Must be nice.

Now picture a wedding reception being held in this hangar.  It's a perfect summer night for an outdoor reception; the air is hot and only slightly sticky and there's a good breeze moving.  The large door is open and the plane, a pretty little tail-wheeler with an aluminum fuselage that has been polished to a mirror finish, has been pushed outside where it sits with its nose in the air as if it were far superior to partying with the common folk.  The event planners have hired a band and that's us; a groovy little six-piece combo that has a small horn section.  Everybody who's not in the rhythm section is a multi-instrumentalist so there's lots of flexibility and people switching things up.  It's the third set and everybody's wrecked, but not in the standing-up falling-down shitfaced way; it's more like the "I don't care who I'm gonna offend; I'm gonna effin' dance" way.  The band is pounding through James Brown's "I Feel Good" and the dance floor is packed.  Nobody's dancing with anyone in particular; everyone's just out in the pile and wiggling.  There's lots of sweat and laughter and fun and the band comes to the outro with those killer horn hits. 

"So good!"

 DA DA! 

"So good!"

 DA DA!

"I got you!" 

DA DA DA DA DA!

We tag it back to the beginning of the outro. A devastatingly gorgeous young lady in her late 20s or early 30s has her hands over her head, arms straight, wrists together, palms up, hips sinuously bumping in perfect sync with the pulse as we swing back around and do it again, and again.  We come back around to the outro for the third and final time.

"So good!"

DA DA!

"So good!" 

DA DA!

"I got you!"

DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DAAAAAAAAA...

But instead of ending, the band slides out those 3 notes that are the intro to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" and the place just melts.  You want sultry?  You got sultry.  Now people aren't dancing; they are working.  They are bumping.  They are grinding.  They are standing up spooning and nobody cares who's dating and who's married and who's single and who's gay and who's straight.  They're having a great time with each other and that's all that matters.  The devastatingly gorgeous young lady has worked herself into the center of the crowd, and I'm sure there are lots of people in there that I would switch places with if I could make out individuals, but instead it's all elbows and hips and chins and other less-bony parts in an obfuscating but still pretty wonderful mishmash.  

We did that.  And that was magic.

There's been a lot of really magical moments in my life for which music is responsible.  Maybe you were there with me on one or two of them.

Like that time we played the last show ever to be held at the Skyline Stage in Aurora.

Or that power trio gig we played on the street in Bucktown when all we did was play Hendrix and SRV and ZZ Top and it was loud and raw and stomping.

The chili festival in Wisconsin when the lady in the crowd asked one of the lead singers to sign a *cough* body part.  She even had her own Sharpie.

Playing "Sweet Home Chicago" in the brightly-lit snow globe that was Soldier Field while 60,000 fans screamed along with us and we got to watch ourselves on the Jumbotron.

Or that time on the Gazebo stage at the RoundHouse when we played Freddie King's "Same Old Blues," and you absolutely burned the place down with a guitar solo while walking down the stairs to get as far into the crowd as you could until you ran out of cord.

That time you played Ray Charles's "What Would I Do Without You" for my birthday present, belting it out on your Selmer Mark 6 tenor sax as hard as you could and looking like you were about to rupture an artery.

Standing on the shoulder of the Stevenson at 3:00 in the morning and hauling gear out of the back of The Dragon while it spewed forth sparks from under the hood.  We were convinced it was going to explode any second until Ron fixed it with an empty water bottle and some duct tape. 

That time in the basement of Penny Road Pub where the bouncers asked us to stop because people were backed up on the stairs trying to get down to see us and we were violating the fire codes.

That time we sang Townes van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" in your living room.

That time we sang Steve Earle's "Me And The Eagle" to your dying father and, with what little breath he had left, he sang along. 

Those moments?  All magic, every one of them.  And, as you might guess, there's more than there is time to write about, or your sufficient patience to read.  But the most magical moment of my life didn't really have anything to do with motorcycles or music.  It didn't even have anything to do with my lovely Lois, the beautiful fat little mutt who came into our lives in 1992 and blessed us every day with laughter, delight and unconditional love until August 27th, 2007, the day she left us.

It had to do with cars, and that might require some background.  Still game?

If you know me on any level other than cursorily, you know that, since I was old enough to want to be anything, I wanted to become a professional race driver.  "Speed Racer" was always my favorite TV show as a little kid and, even to this day, the trumpet fall at the beginning of the theme song sends a little habitual shiver down my spine; a remnant of the thrill I used to get in 1978 or so when hearing it meant I was about to watch a show about cars.  I got this bug from my dad, who raced when and where he could in the 1960s.  He made a good run of it, campaigning a late 50's Alfa Romeo Giulietta against stuff like MG's and Austin Healys.  He quit when the call came to start a family, but you could tell that he never really let the fire die out completely.

He'd show me and my brother how to heel-and-toe; how to set up for a corner; how to box out the other guy with a little trail-braking and undercut him towards the apex.  He'd show us this stuff in our 1969 VW Microbus, a vehicle about as suited towards spirited driving as I am towards being a competitive horse-racing jockey.  It was still fun and we were always delighted, and when we got an MG of our own, a lovely little beige 1972 MGB with the chrome bumpers instead of the hideous rubber ones, it was even better, piling my folks in the front and my brother and I on the little parcel shelf that did okay as an impromptu back seat for a little while, with the top down on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Well, all that stuff did was fan the flames for me.  Growing up, I toyed with a few possible paths my life could take, such as music, or writing, or science.  But all I really wanted was to be around cars and make my living from them somehow. 
God's plans are not our plans, however, as I've sometimes heard it said, and so I put those old dreams away for a while and let myself become whatever it was that The Creator had in mind for me.  I don't regret it; I grew too tall to be able to fit into a lot of the really fun ones anyway.  Besides, there are certain monetary restrictions that come with a life choice of parochial education that put those dreams a little out of reach. 

All that is fine, and I truly have no regrets.  But I got a taste of how it might have been once, and that's not even the magical part.  Can you handle a little more background? 

Hey, you're still reading! Right on. 

Let's get back to my dad for a second.

He loved the Italians and Alfa Romeos were really the only marque that was accessible to a hard-working guy who didn't have a lot of money.  Oh, sure; lots of Italian makes to choose from in the sixties, and everyone sexier than the last: Lancia, Maserati, Lamborghini. Even Fiat and Abarth were starting to hook up.  All he ever wanted, though, was a Ferrari, the prancing horse of Maranello. 

Well, the family always came first, and my folks did it the way it is supposed to be done; denying us nothing in their power to provide, raising us in a quiet little town with good friends to play with and good schools strongly based in faith. They were strict when they needed to be and realistic when we wanted things we simply couldn't afford.  They sacrificed a lot for us and, when it was time for us to go off to college, they kept sacrificing so they could send us. 

Well when you have a set of priorities like that, a Ferrari is simply too low on the list.  My dad filled the hole in a lot of little ways: our first MGB, and then, later a '78 that my brother tried to destroy and couldn't, and which I tried to keep nice and destroyed; the Mazda 626, not spleen-squashingly fast but competent in corners, this despite the front-wheel-drive layout; and finally, in 1989, a Corvette.

This was a sinister black C4 equipped with the rare-as-hens-teeth-and-for-damn-good-reason 4+3 manual gearbox which should be used in place of waterboarding when interrogating terrorists.  That Corvette was a big part of my formative years and, though I didn't drive it much (too young and too inexperienced), I loved watching the joy it gave my father.

 
My dad took that old black Corvette to a number of autocross events and got his ass repeatedly kicked by dudes in Hyundais and Dodge-Frigging-Neons.  He got off the track, thoroughly pissed off, and came back armed to the teeth with a 1991 Corvette ZR1.

The C4 ZR1 was no joke. That thing put out 375 horsepower from a naturally aspirated 5.7-liter aluminum four-cam V8 that was designed by Lotus.  It was the first Corvette with multivalve heads, and it a record average of 175 miles per hour over a 24 hour period.  It could spin to 7500 RPM and do the sprint from zero to 60 in just over 4 seconds.  You need to know, O Faithful and Determined Reader, that those were unheard of numbers in those days. 

Well, my dad had one.  A green one, in fact.  And while he didn't get it on the track very often, he did get pulled over a lot.
My mother's patience, often strained in a household full of three dumb guys who loved to go fast, began to finally wear thin after my dad got nailed for 90 in a 30 and got let off with a warning, the skunk.  My mom grabbed him by the collar and told him it was time to dump the Corvette for something slower. In a fit of inspiration, he pounced.

"Anything slower?" he asked, eyebrows waggling.  My mother, knowing she had just backed herself into a corner, sighed.

Not all Ferraris are slower than a 1991 Corvette ZR1, but a lot of them are.  And so, after my mom and dad raised two trouble-prone but well-meaning boys, one with some behavioral issues that required more than a few visits to pediatric psychiatrists on what was often a tightly stretched budget, my dad finally got to bring his dream home.  After all those years of cars shows; all those times a Ferrari would go by in traffic, rare as unicorn farts, my dad rolling down the window and exhorting us to listen to the firey song of its exhaust as it hammered away from a stoplight, my dad adopted a Ferrari 348.

There came to my parents' house a sort of glorious dichotomy for a few months in the spring of 2010.  In their garage was a bright red Ferrari, looking leggy, high-strung and temperamental.  Next to it was a deep green Corvette, looking curvaceous and sultry in all the places that the Ferrari was exotic and exciting. Those, my friends, are two very sexy automotive asses to be poking out of your garage door on a sunny spring morning.  There seemed to be a lot of people taking walks around the block on days nice enough to leave the garage door open and wax a hood or two while listening to the ball game.

 

Those were good days.  Unfortunately, too rich to last.  

Finally came the day when my dad said he had to sell the Corvette.  Good old girl, but not enough room in the stable—or the bank--for two thoroughbreds.  We got ready to say our goodbyes.

Well, along about the first week of June the following year, the Corvette hadn't sold yet.  There was a track day event going on at Road America up in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.  Road America is a gorgeous four-mile racecourse carved into the hills of central Wisconsin, and it's known for its fast straights and long sweeping carousel turns.  When the track hosts an event like this, you bring your helmet and 300 bucks and they let you or anyone else out on the track and you can go as fast as you want, hopefully without killing yourself or smashing your high dollar hardware to macaroni.  My dad extended a very generous offer: he wanted to put the Ferrari, known around our family as The Princess, out on a track and see what she'd do.  I was welcome, if I wanted to and had 300 bucks, to bring the old Corvette along and get my rocks off.  I both wanted to and had, so we packed up on a Saturday morning and made the three hour trek north.

There's a certain absurdity in taking a long road trip in a car out of which you plan to beat the absolute stuffing, but that's part of the fun.  We got up there around 9:00 and, after check in and tech inspection (during which they verify that your brake pads aren't made out of wood and you're not sitting on a milk crate), we went to ground school.  After that, and for the first time in my life, I was where I'd wanted to be since I was old enough to want anything.  I was on a racetrack in a fast car.

And I sucked.

I think now it was because I was too excited to be any good.  At least I like to think so, and I also like to think that, when it comes to hustling a car around a track, I'm not Mario Andretti, but I'm not horrible, either.  I speak the language of racing fairly well and I know that before you can be fast, you have to be smooth.  Smooth, easy transitions on and off the throttle; on and off the brakes.  Gentle motions with the wheel; catching the transmission with the engine on downshifts so you don't shock the driveline.  You don't want to upset the car.  I know these things.  I also boiled the brake fluid on my third lap and ended up in the gravel on the outside of turn 1.  

I limped the car back to the pits.  My dad, who was in a different session than I, was leaning on the wall on the inside of the Armco crash barrier and was waiting for me to shoot by as I rocketed up the front straight at 140.  Instead I idled the Corvette into the pits, smoke gaily billowing from the front brakes, the pedal sinking all the way to the floor every time I touched it (and this on silicone Dot 5 fluid that was specifically implemented by racers to resist boiling).  When he asked, I shamefacedly told him what happened.

Let's pause here for a little recap, as the whole point of this epic was to tell you how I know magic to be real.  Frustratingly rare, yes; and ephemeral as hell, but real.  And I began this last anecdote by telling you that, my whole life, what I wanted most was be a race driver and finally here I was.  Temporary though it was; small beans though it was, I'd finally made it onto a track and I was making a dog's breakfast out of it.

"Where's the magic?" you might understandably ask.

The magic happened when my dad slapped me on the shoulder and grabbed his helmet.

"Get in," he said.  "I'll show you the ropes."

I got in the passenger side.

All those years of listening to my dad tell racing stories, miming with his hands that time he or someone he knew pulled off an incredible pass.  All those times playing with Matchbox cars on the floor with me marveling at the neat engine noises he made and trying to make the same ones.  All those lessons in parking lots and empty subdivisions telling me how to place my feet, my hands.  When to grab the next gear, when to get on the brakes and when to get back on the gas.

 

And now, a chance to sit at the feet of the master and watch him at work. 

 
In his hands the Corvette, which had previously been a galumphing mastodon as I clumsily tried to transition from the tight ninety-degree left that was turn 6, just after a blind rise up the hill from turn 5, to the sweeping right that is turn 7, all the while trying to get it into third gear as my feet stepped on each other, became a gazelle.  A bellowing, fire-spitting gazelle, flicking easily from turn to turn, showing the track marshals the insides of the fender liners as my dad came around the carousel, the tach needle flirting with 7000 RPM.  All the way he was talking, easily translating words into action as, right after he told me what he was going to do, he did it.  I could have watched and listened all day; listened as the car, which had bucked and snarled as I slapped it droolingly around the track, began to sing, to howl, and finally to scream with an oily ecstasy as my father once more worked at his craft.  

Instead I got 4 laps and the marshals waved the session in.

My dad parked the Corvette, walked over to the Ferrari, and went out on his own.  The Princess made two laps before shutting down almost completely, red lights sparking all over the instrument panel as ghosts in the machine, satisfied to lay quiet on summer evening runs to Starbucks, roiled and raged at this unacceptable request to live up to the expectations of the breed and claimed an overheating catalytic converter that killed the party.  

Me?   I waited for my next session to be called and, when I got back out there, I tried to remember what my dad had said and done and tried to do it like him. And the Corvette, from which he had been able to coax singing and dancing where I had previously only drawn flops and moans, began to sing and dance for me too.

That was magic. 

I was finally getting the hang of it, flinging the car from corner to corner and passing my share of people.  But then I spun it on turn 14 and came this close to putting my dad's beautiful hunter green Corvette, which he was still trying to sell, into the wall.  The track marshalls black flagged me and the event coordinator kicked me out.  

It was still fun and for a little while, it really was magic.

I still hold on to that day, and when I'm daydreaming, I often go back there.

Like I said: you can't go looking for magic.  It just happens.  These aren't moments you look forward to.  They're moments you look back on.  And that's better because, that way, they last a lifetime.