Latte At Café Lena’s Anyone-With Susie Sampson In Mind

 

By Sam Lowell

 

Lance Andrews had had to laugh at the coincidence even though the hurt inside his head which resulted from the incident made him feel kind of weird for laughing just then. Here is how it played out for those who are curious about old flames, about busted romances and, well, about the fate of coincidences. Lance had been on assignment for the small folk publication that he wrote for, American Folk Gazette, an assignment that had taken him to Saratoga Springs after an absence of maybe forty years, possibly more. For those not in the know about folk music over the past half century or so the name Saratoga Springs at one time was, and still is if less so even today, synonymous with Caffe Lena, the tiny club just off the center of the downtown area. Through those portals passed folk legends like newly minted Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Utah Philips, Rosalie Sorrels, Arlo Guthrie and a host of others too numerous to mention. Lance was in town to do a story about the old café for a new generation fairly well untouched by the wand of those previously mentioned legendary names. He had consciously failed to mention that through those portals passed Susie Sampson, an up and coming new voice folk singer back around 1975 and at one time Lance’s paramour. The coincidence? The very night that Lance had been scheduled to go to the club to drink in the atmosphere a bit the headliner was one Susie Sampson.                

But maybe we should go back a bit for the big affair between Lance and Susie and their subsequent separate paths could stand in for the vagaries of trying to survive on the edges of the music world, the edges when the early 1960s folk minute which took American campuses and other prominent locales by a storm ebbed taking no prisoners. In those days Susie had been a student at nearby Skidmore College studying music and as she entered her senior year had been wondering if the folk scene would provide her with enough income to make a career of it, at least for a while. She had grown up down the road at Clifton Park and had taken up the guitar after her parents had bought her one for a Christmas present her freshman year in high school. Susie, always shy and somewhat withdrawn around her farming family, would spent hours practicing the instrument up in her bedroom and while her talents as a guitarist were always behind her real instrument-her voice-she proved adequate enough to get into the coveted music department program at Skidmore. Through high school (and college as well) she was the prime soloist for the chorus and had initially had thoughts of a classical career. Then the folk bug hit her, the ebb of the folk bug around the time that the British invasion and “acid” rock had turned former folk devotees on to those genre.               

One night in 1965 she discovered Caffe Lena’s, with hostess Lena, a character in her own right, at the door taking admissions, and Tom Paxton on the bill. That was the night that she also found out that Lena’s had an “open mic” night on Tuesday for anybody who wanted to do a two song set (and pay the two dollar entry fee). She was excited about the prospects of performing in a non-school situation and find out whether she had the stuff to take a run at a performing career. So a few weeks later she showed up at Lena’s (Lena on the door again taking admissions) and placed herself on the list which gave the order of performances. She had decided that she would do one religious-oriented song reflecting her pious Methodist upbringing among the farming brethren having always been intrigued by that last phrase “I hear the noise of wings,”  Angel Band, and one more contemporary, a cover of Woody Guthrie’s Deportee. Needless to say she wowed the mostly student audience. What she had previously been unaware of was that talent-spotting Lena (between bouts of admission taking) had taken note of her performance and the audience’s reaction to it and had taken Susie aside before she left and asked her if she would like to be the opening act for Larry Rivers, then an up and coming talent (whose light would fade later after bouts of cocaine addiction), and a crowd-pleaser in a couple of weeks with his off-beat folk repartee. Of course she had said yes to that proposal and began the next day to put together a six song set featuring a couple of Patsy Kline tunes and a couple of Joan Baez covers thrown in along with a song she had written but had never performed in public. The night of the performance she may not have outshined Larry but if not she came close. That was also the night that Lance Andrews then a student at Siena who was in Saratoga in order to date a student at Skidmore who was the sister of his roommate. That roommate’s sister was with him that night but Lance’s eyes were all over Susie.

Later, a few weeks later, when they finally met Susie would tell him that he had made her “nervous” while he was looking at her as she was singing-nervous but wondering to herself who he was. The way Lance played his hand to meet Susie was pure Lance. As a journalism student at Siena he had finagled the editor of the school newspaper to do a “human interest” story, a story on area budding singers- a generic fluff piece but the editor, Ben Samuels, said what the hell. So that weekend he was off to Saratoga to “meet” Susie. Another Lance touch he had Lena make the introductions to add her imprimatur to his weak credentials. So Lance made like a reporter although he also peppered his interview with her with lots of personal questions that did not seem to fit with the subject he was supposed to be covering-new talent. As he finished the interview he shook Susie’s hand (she would later tell her girlfriend roommate that the shake was so gentle she had felt somewhat flush after he removed it from hers) he asked her what she was doing after her performance. Recovering smartly for such a shy young woman she said going with him for something to eat because she would be starving since she did not eat before a performance since it made her feel logy. Bingo. And that started the on again off again love affair between Susie Sampson looking for fame and the bright lights and Lance Andrews who wanted to help her get there.                                

Maybe the times were just out of joint. Maybe 1965, 1966, 1967 the years of their torrid affair mixed in with Lance trying to get his foot in the journalism door at the Albany Times and Susie was trying to break out of the confines of upstate New York, of the Caffe Lena, were just a bit too late for either to make their marks. Lance was the first to speak of making a break, of heading west to see and hear all about was brewing out there in fantasyland, out in the summer of love. Susie balked at that, said she had to get to the Village and get her break. Said she was not built for Grace Slick and Janis Joplin mixes, felt she could make a living on folk if she could just get to the big city and not have to depend on an occasional feature at Lena’s or over at Siena and Skidmore or worse, much worse working for the “basket” at Sonny Red’s in Albany. So they split-for a while. In 1969 they were back together after Lance had sowed his wild oats in California and had worked a niche for himself in the alternative newspaper scene as a “cultural” reporter meaning reviewing the myriad new groups sprouting up in the acid-rock etched night. Susie had had her moment in the Village, had done a feature at the Gaslight where she did well but she was like in a time capsule trying to get some place when there was no some place to go to.                     

They would make one more go in 1972 and by 1975 had closed out whatever it was that had flamed but now was burned to the edges. He went up to Boston and had a checkered career as a free-lance journalist mostly for old friend Ben Gold’s Spectator, had had three wives all divorced now and a slew of kids who cost him dearly for sundry college educations. Susie, a couple of years after that final split decided, prompted by her straight-laced family, to quit the folk scene. Had gotten married to a guy from her high school, had had the requisite three children and had recently been widowed when that high school friend keeled over one night after spreading seed on their fifty acre farm.     

As Lance took his seat that night in the seemingly unchanged tiny room that passed for a folk club and Susie came on to do her feature he was all eyes, like a kid.  Later, a few hours later, during intermission when they met to cut up old touches Susie would tell him that he had made her “nervous” while he was looking at her as she was singing-nervous but wondering if he was still married to wife number three. Later after cutting up those old touches with a few flirty asides thrown in Lance asked Susie what she was doing after her performance. Having found out from a mutual friend also in the audience that night that he had divorced number three she recovering smartly for such a not so shy mature woman she said going with him for something to eat because she would be starving since she did not eat before a performance since it made her feel logy. And that would start … Only at the Lena.