Fading with a Technicolor Bang

Strings were pulled and I found myself--still in my getup for serving Chinese lunch specials--backstage, running a jumbotron for a Glenn Yarbrough concert that turned out to be the last of what he says will be his last tour.
Beyond simply being in the said location, I was surprised by the tour's entropic nature: the promoter, who was supposed to arrange everything concerning publicity and venue, was an utter flake, so the tour manager and his two assistants were run listlessly baggy-eyed from events along the lines of, "hey, there's a blind guy with a guitar who says he's opening. Anyone know anything about that?"
"It wasn't canceled?"
And so I met Dan Maher, a fantastic musician with a killer folk music show on NPR.
While the manager troubleshot software and hardware problems with the jumbotron, one of the stage crew tried to set the snakepit of wires, amps, guitar stands and guitars with only one clear path in--for Glenn--for a chair, two booms, and a blind man's safe passage.

By the time Glenn came on, I had the hunch that the audience would need either binoculars or a megajumbotron to read the singalong lyrics; for those lucky enough to have hair, gray and white were the only natural tones. And what a remarkable presence Glenn carries.

Consider that Glenn Yarbrough, the big guy with a Santa beard standing in the middle of the twelfth stage in as many days, is two years younger than sliced bread. His toy soldiers would've worn uniforms from the Spanish Civil War, and at an age when his peers (those still living) are fatigued by a rigorous trip to the pharmacy, he took off on a tour from southern California to northern Washington. And still crowds expect him to sign autographs; such is the myth of the performer.

Of course his voice has more texture than it used to. After the show, when I thanked him for the performance, he apologized for his gravelly voice. "I can hardly talk, now." He was truly embarrassed.

I guess it was justified. Were I to perform with comparable tone, I would be kindly escorted from stage with a hook. But as one of the few in attendance who hadn't either grown up to Glenn's crooning or spent months preparing for the tour, I was one of the few people who actually heard him. For the vast majority, the core timbre of his voice engaged Technicolor filters that overdubbed their senses with the magic of remembered youth.

The next day, the promoter was informed that unless he made a payment toward weeks of overdue pay, the band would walk. Again, he promised that the money would be in their accounts by the time they set up the stage.
And the tour never saw him--or a paycheck--again.

It's a sad situation. The promoter is well connected and sure to talk up how Glenn or the manager was really at fault. Fans will miss out on the second half of what Glenn says will be his last tour, which comes a few years after the release of what he says will be his last CD. And the musicians, professional performers who had turned down weeks of gigs for the tour, were rendered ex post facto volunteers.

But step back a moment to think about it: over two weeks, Glenn Yarbrough and the Havenstock River Band--the members of which Glenn had to recruit individually and groom into his collective acoustic vision, plus enough lackeys to keep everyone going--covered enough miles to get from France to Kiev, Rome to Denmark, performing every day on a different stage, waking up every morning in a different bed, and Glenn is just shy of 80. And beyond the years, he carries a showman's life, a performer's hours and ritual abuses, plus the added weight of a living myth so strong it overwhelms his fans with a sense of the world as it was when they fell in love.