Dan Garner

Kathryn wakes me up at 3:am.
"Did you know the world premiere for your TV series is in New York next week?"
"Hmmmm"
"And its only 7 minutes from the Chelsea Hotel!"
"Uhhmm"
"And I can get reservations!!"
"Mmmmm"
"And flights are reasonable!!!"
"Uh, baby? I'm not even sure what's going on then..."
"I checked your MySpace and you're not doing anything."
"Uh, baby?"
"There! It's booked."

And so began the incredible journey.

I had been an extra in a new series, for the gay/lesbian channel, LOGO. In "Sordid Lives: The Series" I play air guitar behind Olivia Newton-John who plays the part of a honky tonk singer/songwriter, Bitsy Mae Harling. It was a really cool experience. We started fiming at 6:30 in the morning and ended at 9:30 that night with a short break for lunch. It was a whirlwind.
This was all shot here in Shreveport and the bar that was to be "Bubba's" is actually "Mr. Crow's" or "Crow's" on W. 70th. I had even performed there with my crazy friend/brother Mike Jordan.





After we wrapped that was pretty much it... and then the videos started hitting YouTube.
There were about 6 music videos in all and the 3 I've seen, I have to admit, look pretty damn good.







Kathryn has ComCast cable in Shreveport, which does not carry LOGO. So in order to see the first two episodes we headed up to New York City for the "World Premiere" about a week before the series began to air.

Now, I knew a little about the Chelsea Hotel. What I didn't know I Wiki'ed.

"The hotel has always been a center of artistic and bohemian activity and it houses artwork created by many of the artists who have visited. The hotel was the first building to be listed by New York City as a cultural preservation site and historic building of note.
Owing to its long list of famous guests and residents, the hotel has an ornate history, both as a birth place of creative modern art and punctuated by tragedy catching the public eye. Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey while staying at the Chelsea, and poets Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Richard and Rebecca Eller chose it as a place for philosophical and intellectual exchange. It is also known as the place where the writer Dylan Thomas was staying when he died of alcohol poisoning on November 4, 1953, and where Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, was found stabbed to death on October 12, 1978.
People who live/have lived at Chelsea

Writers and thinkers
Art fills the staircase of the Hotel Chelsea
During its lifetime Hotel Chelsea has provided a home to many great writers and thinkers including Mark Twain, O. Henry, Herbert Huncke, Dylan Thomas, Dale Beran, Arthur C. Clarke, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac (who wrote On the Road here), Robert Hunter, Jack Gantos, Brendan Behan, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Oppenheimer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Bill Landis, Michelle Clifford, Thomas Wolfe, Charles Bukowski, Raymond Kennedy, Matthew Richardson, and René Ricard. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, committed suicide in his room at the Chelsea on September 21, 1968.

Actors and film directors
The hotel has been a home to actors and film directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Shirley Clarke, Cyndi Coyne, Mitch Hedberg, Dave Hill, Miloš Forman, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Eddie Izzard, Kevin O'Connor, Uma Thurman, Elliot Gould, Jane Fonda, and Gaby Hoffmann and her mother, the Warhol film star Viva and Edie Sedgwick.
Musicians
Much of Hotel Chelsea's history has been colored by the musicians who have resided there. Some of the most prominent names include The Grateful Dead, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Virgil Thomson, Dee Dee Ramone of The Ramones, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Marty Connolly, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious[1], Richard Hell, glam rocker Jobriath, Rufus Wainwright, Abdullah Ibrahim/Sathima Bea Benjamin, Indian musician Vasant Rai , and Leonard Cohen. More recently, artists such as Ryan Adams, The Libertines, and Anthony Kiedis have spent time at The Chelsea.
Visual artists
The hotel has featured and collected the work of the many visual artists who have passed through. Larry Rivers, Robert M. Lambert, Brett Whiteley, Christo, Arman, Richard Bernstein, Francesco Clemente, Philip Taaffe, Michele Zalopany, Ralph Gibson, Rene Shapshak, Robert Mapplethorpe, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Robert Crumb, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Vali Myers, Donald Baechler, Herbert Gentry, Willem De Kooning, John Dahlberg and Henri Cartier-Bresson have all spent time at Hotel Chelsea. Painter & ethnomusicologist Harry Smith lived and died at the Chelsea in Room 328. The painter Alphaeus Cole lived there for 35 years until his death in 1988 at age 112, America's oldest living person. Bohemian abstract and Pop art painter Susan Olmetti creates paintings outside on the sidewalk during her frequent summer residencies at the hotel.[4]
Fashion Designers
Charles James: Amongst the ranks of the legendary couturiers of the 20th Century who influenced fashion in the 1940s and 50s -- a man also credited with being America's first couturier. In 1964 he moved into the Chelsea Hotel in New York. James died of pneumonia at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978.
Warhol Superstars
Hotel Chelsea is often associated with the Andy Warhol Superstars, as he directed The Chelsea Girls (1966), a film about his Factory regulars and their lives at the hotel. Chelsea residents from the Warhol scene included Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Larry Rivers, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America, and Brigid Berlin.
Explorers
Ruth Harkness, an adventuress/naturalist who brought the first live giant panda from China to the U.S. in the 1930s, stayed at the Chelsea Hotel after her return to the States."

And now Kathryn and me.

I had just finished my CD, "College Radio Dance Party" and am finishing up the next one, "DAN GARNER IV". Kathryn had wanted me to do a solo project that would be just me, harmonica and acoustic guitar, an unplugged, if you will.

So I began to hatch a plan. I would record, there at Hotel Chelsea and see if I could catch some of the vibe of the place. I have a little ZOOM 4 track digital recorder that looks like a Taser and fits in your palm. I would record in the room, in the halls, on the stairwell, on the fire escape, in the elevator and on the roof (that didn't happen).
I hated the idea of having to carry my guitar on a plane, because of a bad experience in Toronto, but we found a guitar shop on premise at the Chelsea, "Dan's Chelsea Guitars" and so we would get in on Sunday, I would buy an inexpensive guitar and begin recording every day and see a bit of the city every night. The Sordid Lives Premiere was Tuesday night, so that would give me plenty of time, I reasoned to record, at least 10 songs.

We missed our flight and by the time we got in, "Dan's Chelsea Guitars" had already closed. We looked in the windows and Kathryn said, "What kind of a guitar is that?"
"Looks like an old National Steel, kinda like Johnny Slim used to play,"

We went back to the hotel.







Our room was great...perfect really, for our bohemian sensibilities. We had a great meal at the Spanish restaurant and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning my first stop (after breakfast with Kathryn) was the guitar shop.

It was sweet. I asked about a little Martin guitar behind a velvet rope.

"That's $17,000,"

My eyes immediately shifted across the room at a black Ovation hanging overhead.

"What about that one?"

"$350"

BINGO!

"Uh, can I look at the National in the window?"

"The 12 String?"

"No, the old 6 string."

It took my breath away. I was handed a glass slide that fit my finger perfectly and sat down to fall in love with this guitar.

THE GUITAR'S STORY



It was a scratchy old 1929 National Triolian with a BAKELITE neck, serial number A 1317. It purred and it hummed as I sat in the tight corner of that little guitar shop trying out my best licks.

"So, what's the story on this guitar?" I asked.

It had come in yesterday. The guys who ran the shop were sort of ticked that they had to stay late for the guy with the guitar, who traveled down from Upstate New York. They were in the middle of grumbling about it, when a large water pipe, from the hotel above, burst, showering the shop below. If they hadn't been waiting for the guitar, the shop would have been flooded and their entire inventory of highly collectible guitars would have been ruined. As it was, they were able to save everything.

If Kathryn and I had not missed our flight, we would have gone into the shop before they closed that Sunday and I would have just bought the Ovation and never looked back...

I called Kathryn and she came down from the room and bought it for me (the heavenly hosts now begin their trumpet fanfare and best choral arrangement of Hallelujah).





I immediately went back to the room an set about the business of recording my songs...







All in all I recorded 13 songs at Hotel Chelsea and expect to release it some time late September, early October.














We eventually made it to the Sordid Lives Premiere and had a wonderful time.