addendum

Okay, in trying to get all those posts out of me last night I left out the crucial funny part of the last entry.

The reason Allen came in to do the piano part is because Rufus Wainwright never wrote me back.

Somewhere down the line, one night Rob and I were recording and we were talking about Rufus and we decided, what the hell, we were going to ask him to play on “Little Plum.” I mean, it’s right up his tin pan alley. So, I went home that night and enlisted letter-to-famous-person-writer extrordinaire Sarah to craft a fine missive to the man. If you don’t believe that she is the master of getting a response, just go ask her why it was that Janeane Garafalo called our house one day and they talked for an hour.

Anyway, that’s her story, not mine. This is how the letter went:

Dear Mr. Wainwright,

I understand that you have some celebrity and I will assume that you probably aren’t even reading this, that it has instead probably landed in the hands of a monkey in a bellboy outfit, whose unhappy task it is to wade through the bizarre rantings of your throngs of fans for 2 bananas per hour.

I would like to say this mail will be much different than all of the rest of the letters you get, but, I cannot lie outright like that. At least there will be a surprise ending with this one.
With that being said, I will get right to the point.

Paul Melancon is a struggling singer/songwriter in Atlanta, Georgia.
Is he the hardest working man in show business? No.
Is he a talentless hack? Possibly.
Is he a huge Rufus Wainright fan? Absolutely.
Paul is currently working on his second solo CD entitled Camera Obscura at Rob Gal’s Snack N’ Shack Studios. He is financing it himself and eating a lot of macaroni and cheese in the process.
He got it into his head that he would like you (Rufus Wainwright – not the monkey) to play piano on a song called “Little Plum”.

Paul and Rob figured the worst you could do was say no, or take out a restraining order, so they asked me to write to you with this most earnest request.

We are willing to pay for airfare for you to come down here and we can pay you $50 American dollars for your trouble, plus dinner at a moderately priced restaurant.
Obviously, Paul and Rob will be willing to work around your schedule.
Here is Paul’s web address for you to determine the level of embarrassment this would cause you.
www.paulmelancon.com

Thank you for your consideration.
You may respond using any of the following methods:

xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you again for bothering to read the letter all of the way through and we look forward to your reply.

Regards,
Sarah – letter writer extraordinaire

Unfortunately, he never responded. The only address we could come up with was the label, so I suspect he never even saw it, but I do like to think if he did he might have actually considered it. I mean, if I were in his shows, I might be like, “what the hell, might be fun…”

Sadly, not to be.