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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

“I’ll rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
I’ll make it my home sweet home” *

That’s not all that far off from describing my life as those few who actually know me can attest. “Call me if you’re up during normal hours,” one said to me recently. He’s still waiting for that call. Another calls me by a pet name based on the sound Owls, my Official Bird of the Night, make in Russia. Everyone knows not to make appointments for me in the morning (i.e.“the middle of the night”), or first thing in the afternoon..

How did this happen?

I’ve been this way as far back as I can remember. My folks made me work in the family business weekends and summers when I was a kid, so the only way I could get time to myself was by staying up late. I was one of those kids who used to read leaning over the bed on the side away from the door after light’s out with a flashlight and a book or magazine on the floor. And, I had a radio under my pillow which led me one especially lonely night to discover the late, GREAT Jean Shepherd, but more on him later. On that radio I also heard RFK’s assassination, live. I had seen Lee Harvey Oswald get shot, live too, years earlier, the first murder ever broadcast live, a few days after I heard the news of JFK being shot just after it happened. 

After High School, and classes at the Manhattan School of Music, I left to take a dream gig in a terrific band and went on the road up and down the East Coast for 5 years. Not exactly conducive to a change of schedule. Let’s suffice it to say I gave into peer pressure and my virginity, sobriety and innocence ended soon thereafter while my late lifestyle was perfect for this occupation- our typical gig started around 10pm and ended at 4am, sometimes 5 or 6 nights a week.

“I take one last drag
As I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I’ll be what I want to be” *

During my time as a Musician, I was lucky enough to play all kinds of Music from garage rock to acoustic Jazz to Classical (with an orchestra) and as a result, I developed an ear for an insanely wide range of Music. I also worked with some great Musicians including Billy Hart, T. Lavitz, jazz great Thomas Chapin, Twisted Sister, Steppenwolf, Spirit, Mark Ledford, Lonnie Plaxico and met many others including Jaco Pastorius, Joe Zawinul, Vladimir Horowitz, Alfred Schnittke, Carlos Alomar, Tony Levin, Dave Fields. Recording my band led to doing concert sound for an RCA Records band, then to a job as production manager for one of the biggest music production houses in the country, where I put together over 2,800 recording sessions in five years with innumerable session Musicians and recording artists. After that, I became an independent record producer, an artist manager, then spent 4 years as a writer for Jazziz Magazine. After I got fed up with the state of the record business in 1998, I studied Drawing for a decade, during which I went to every museum, gallery and show within crawling distance.

“Sharing the things we know and love
With those of my kind
Libations…
Sensations…
That stagger the mind.” *

Since 2002, I have been to The Metropolitan Museum over 1,600 times, and I have the buttons and stickers to prove it. 

Along the way, Art became my religion. So, I capitalize its forms and the great practitioners of them, since I feel they deserve that level of respect. There are “artists” and then there are “Artists.” There has to be a way to distinguish someone like Michelangelo from the multitudes, right? So, be forewarned that I hold to this convention throughout. Frankly? I’m a bit surprised it hasn’t become the norm. Maybe I can help change that.

The last time I stood in front of Nighthawks. August 28, 2013, at Hopper Drawings at the old Whitney Museum.

I’ve long identified with Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, which I’ve seen in person both at its home at the Art Institute of Chicago and here in NYC at the “old” Whitney Museum during the Hopper Drawing show. In particular, the guy in the front who’s sitting by himself, the guy no one ever mentions in discussing this work which is now seminal to our culture and to the Art, Film, Music and Literature that has come after. It’s hard to believe it was painted in 1942. It feels so now. But, I digress, again.

I am that guy.

*-Detail of Art Institute of Chicago Photo

“That shape is my shade
There, where I used to stand
It seems like only yesterday
I gazed through the glass
At ramblers
Wild gamblers
That’s all in the past.” *

Living in Manhattan was always my life’s dream. And it took a long time for that to finally happen. For the last 28 years, it’s been my world, my “home sweet home,” as Steely Dan said in “Deacon Blues”*, the soundtrack of this post. I’ve lived most of that time in my world at night.

Now? I’m inviting YOU to come along with me. Pull up that open barstool, since there’s now plenty of them to choose from as  you can see from the banner (adopted from you know what, with my apologies. and undying admiration), and let’s see what the night brings.

As Joe Strummer once said, “The future is unwritten.” That leaves the present and the past to write about. One thing I’ve learned along the way- the journey is usually the destination.

“You call me a fool
You say it’s a crazy scheme
This one’s for real
I already bought the dream
So useless to ask me why
Throw a kiss and say goodbye
I’ll make it this time
I’m ready to cross that fine line.” *

*- From the soundtrack for this Post, “Deacon Blues,” Words & Music by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Published by Universal Music Publishing Group. From the classic Lp Aja, by Steely Dan.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

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