Kerouac Sleepover
Jack's friendly ghost told me to "get to work."
The “Taking the Temperature” shows I originally had scheduled for last weekend in Florida left me with a Saturday night off between Bonita Springs and Orlando. That is the furthest south I’ve played in the ol’ USA and, to be honest, I wasn’t feeling very confident that the shows would be well attended. Since nobody had ever really been asking me to come down there, I assumed there just wasn’t much of an audience.
My agents couldn’t seem to find anywhere that could offer a decent fee for that Saturday when longtime fan John Frinzi reached out about doing a show at Jack Kerouac’s house in St. Petersburg. They occasionally host house concerts and private events there, and the property is also available as an Airbnb.
A gig and a place to sleep. Sold.
The first show in Bonita Springs was a soft play at an art center attended by a handful of longtime fans who couldn’t quite believe I was there. I couldn’t quite believe I was there either. The audience was lovely, and as is often the case, a small, attentive crowd can feel better than a large, distracted one.
The next morning I left the resort where I’d been staying and headed north. Central Florida struck me as one giant strip mall built sometime around 1985 and then left largely untouched. Endless palm trees, chain restaurants, storage facilities, beige stucco, and six-lane roads. Maybe it was the popularity of Miami Vice that convinced half the country to move there?
By the time I reached St. Petersburg, it was around three in the afternoon. Jack Kerouac’s final home sits on a modest corner lot in a quiet neighborhood. Next door is a dormitory-esque apartment building, and the neighboring houses have that same slightly faded Florida quality I’d been seeing all weekend.
Kerouac lived there for the last five years of his life with his wife, Stella, and his mother, Gabrielle. I’ve read three of his books and have always been a fan. Like a lot of people my age, I came to him through On the Road.
I’ve never been particularly superstitious, but when I walked into the house, I immediately felt something. Not a ghost exactly. Just a calmness.
The house doesn’t feel like a museum. It feels lived in. The furniture, the books, the photographs. Everything seems to have been left alone for a very long time. You get the sense that people are caretakers rather than curators.
I had about an hour to wander around before Ken, the owner, arrived and filled me in on some of the history. Kerouac spent the last years of his life here. By then, the mythology had largely passed him by. He was drinking heavily, in poor health, and far removed from the image most people have of the young writer tearing across America.
What fascinated me most wasn’t how he died or who inherited what. It was learning that he left behind forty notebooks full of material.
Forty notebooks.
Even after the fame, the criticism, the drinking, and the disappointment, he kept writing.
That evening, about sixty people gathered in the dining room, which opened onto a large covered porch, for the show. No stage. No green room. Just people packed into a house built for living rather than performing.
There’s a photo of Jack and Gabrielle hanging on the wall. Jack has a look on his face that seems to say, “These better be good lyrics.”
A grand time was had by all.
After everyone left, the house settled into a slightly spooky silence. I wandered through the rooms for a while before turning in for the night.
On the bedside table was a copy of The Buddhist Years. It seemed appropriate.
I read a few pages, got lost, backed up, and read them again. Whether it was Kerouac’s writing or the noises coming from above the ceiling, I couldn’t seem to stay focused.
Every few minutes, there was another thump, scratch, or scurry overhead.
Squirrels, rats, ghosts of unpublished manuscripts—I took a Xanex.
When I think of Kerouac, I think of personal freedom. Freight trains, hitchhiking, jazz clubs, New York apartments, San Francisco bars, all-night conversations, endless highways. Everyone is searching for something just over the horizon.
Yet this house feels like the opposite of all that.
It’s quiet. Ordinary. Comfortable.
That’s the part of artists’ lives we rarely romanticize. The hours alone. The notebooks. The false starts. The work itself.
Not money. Not property. Not some grand empire.
Just pages.
Speaking of writers, I’ll be opening for friends Peter Bjorn and John doing their 2006 indie masterpiece “Writers Block” in October.
