MOMENTS OF FOREVER: Kris Kristofferson's Love for ALL Defines His Llife

Willie and Kris were playing the Miami Marine Stadium, basically covered bleachers on a small inlet that ran along Key Biscayne. It was a scrubby situation, designed for South Florida rednecks to watch speed boats race and take jumps, just metal bleachers with an overhang to keep their hangovers from baking them out of their mortal coil in the scorching Saturday high noon sun.

The stage set on pontoons. The backstage was a couple of low rent yachts.

When the call from the promoter came – “Would you like to interview Kris Kristofferson?” – I couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough. He seemed surprised. Kristofferson had become an actor and an activist, far more than a songwriter or rock star. I was the cred freelancer covering country, black and rock of a certain stripe.

How do you tell a middle-aged white guy you and one of your friends once cut out of school one afternoon, took two Rapid Transit trains to Van Aken Center to watch the afternoon showing of “A Star Is Born”? Explaining that his swagger, shirtless or in a poet’s blouse was dangerous, bravado forward, but poetically elegant would be moot. He was a pirate, a rock star, a gypsy and a man who took great risks, reached deeper into the human condition and offered up the pivot points of pain, dignity and courage without furrowing his brow.

Heck, my father started telling me about Kris Kristofferson when I was a kid, propped between my parents watching “The Johnny Cash Show.” Landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape. Janis Joplin’s last hit – the one after she died – was a Kristofferson song. He understood addicts, alcoholics and washed out losers in a way that meant they weren’t actually born to lose.

Oh, and he’d gone to Oxford.

Yeah, I wanted to interview Kristofferson, whose music career was sagging, but whose mark on American songwriting was already indelible. Rushing to the morgue to pull the clip file, I blessed the Miami Herald’s Fred Burger, who’d covered so many of the Outlaws and other progressive country acts with a matching eloquence. He not only had several pieces, he’d seen to it that the artists he thought were important had clips from other sources in there as well.

Reading, reading, reading. Boxing, the Air Force, a Rhodes scholarship, William Blake, a teaching appointment, flying out to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for extra money, parents hated the idea he would give up his legacy to write songs. Janitor at CBS Studios, where Bob Dylan was recording; dreamer who kept handing out demos, making friends with Willie, Cash, Waylon, Roger Miller, all the other travelers seeking to make a more elevated, sophisticated kind of lyricism with an even simpler melodic zone.

When the call came through, I was ready.

Scrawling my own kind of shorthand, the voice was ruddy, rich, warm, like a savory biscuit slathered in  something delicious, something like apple butter. He was laughing a bit, telling his stories, thinking about some of my questions, really honoring my curiosity. And that’s when I shot my shot.

“So what was it like, studying with William Blake?”
“Excuse me,” he said, tone twisting around itself a bit.

“William Blake, you studied with him…” pause, then adding helpfully, “at Oxford.”
“I’m sorry…” the voice on the other end was puzzled, then a giant laugh rolled down the phone.

“No, no, you studied with William Blake,” I protested. “It’s in the morgue.”
“Honey,” he said, tamping down his chuckle, “William Blake is DEAD.”
“I, uh, uhm,” the mortification was immediate. “Can you give me one second?”

“Sure, honey,” he graciously responded. “Take your time.”

Head down on the classical writer James Roos’ desk, I silent screamed like I was auditioning for a slasher film. And then I did it again, and again, and a fourth time. Exhaling, knowing I needed to pull it together because my 20 or 30 minutes was evaporating, I closed my eyes and reminded myself I might be 19, but I am a professional.

“I am so sorry,” I began picking up the phone. Kristofferson kept laughing. “I am so embarrassed. I was reading all the clips, and I swear, it was there… I didn’t just make it up.”
“Holly,” he said, cutting me off at the pass, “can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” At this point, he could end the interview. It would’ve been deserved.

“When was the last time – do you think – someone asked me about William Blake?”
I was silent. I had no idea. I didn’t want to make it worse.

“You there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”
The voice was kind, not chiding. He obviously recognized how stupid I felt. It appeared he felt for me: a young writer at a good paper who made a gaffe of Olympic measure. “Holly, I’ll make this simple: no one ever asks me about William Blake. I’m not sure most of the journalists I speak with even realize I know classic English poetry.

“The fact you did? You get all kinds of points for that.”

We talked for another 30 minutes; far longer than was booked, so he could answer all my questions. The story was good enough, it made the cover of the Weekend section, I believe left well and above the fold; though it might’ve been the entire bottom third all the way across.

Before he hung up, he asked another question. “You coming to the show?,” which I was.

“Okay, then do me a favor. I’m going to leave you a couple passes. I want you to come back and say, ‘hi.’ Can you do that?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, knowing full well rock stars never remember. They don’t. Ever.

Until I got to the box office. Not only were the seats the first row that rose up so you could see over the four or five rows on the flat, but there were the two backstage passes. My second fiancee, twice my age and never one to come to shows, looked at me with a cockeyed grin.

“Well, Gleason, look at that. Passes! You must’ve made an impression.”
I’d not told Jason about making an ass of myself, played it off as the promoter being grateful. My fiancée, who loved Willie and Kris, said, “Well, you need to go back there, say ‘hello.’ I think it’s important. Those are really serious artists…”
“Are you going to come?” That might’ve been even more embarrassing.

“No, I’m not going to come. Some things in this world, you need to do on your own. You need to walk back there and be Holly Gleason, the writer from the Miami Herald.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll think about it.”
I was definitely not going back there. Sitting quietly, wondering when the show – a good 15, 20 yards away from us – was going to start. John Valentino, the dark, lion-haired promoter rep, was suddenly squatting down by my seat. He was smiling. “Hey, somebody backstage wants to meet you. I’m supposed to bring you back to say ‘Hi.’”

“Gosh, it’s awful close to showtime.”
“Yeah, I don’t think the show’s starting ‘til you get back there.”
Slowly I rose, grabbed my purse and fell in behind the nicest man in South Florida concert promotion, who told me how much he loved my story. He remarked that everyone attached to the show really loved it, so he was glad they sent him out to get me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, clearly out of sorts. Pontoons on a choppy bay are no fun to walk on. Holding the ropes, feeling like my knees were buckling, I would lurch forward, hoping I didn’t fall straight into JV. When we finally climbed up on the stage, he took my hand, guided me around to the back and waved towards a gang plank down onto a boat. “Go ahead.”
Standing right where you’d step off, in a black tshirt and jeans, sinewy, slightly salt in his pepper and oozing charisma, Kris Kristofferson went, “Well, you must be Holly! And you look even younger than you sound.”

“I’m 19,” I said, used to people assuming a Herald writer must be in their 30s. “Hello…”
I put my hand out, he pulled into a hug. A big, friendly, warm and loving favorite uncle hug.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “And I wanna look you in the eye, and tell you that’s one damned fine piece of writing. I can’t believe you got all that from the scraps of conversation we had.”
He was smart: get me talking about the art of writing. Suddenly, we were writers, not a kid and an icon-in-the-making.  By leveling up, he made the awkward disappear.

“Are you kidding? Those answers were great. Your story’s amazing. And I got to write about all your songs, the way you use words. How could it not be great?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised,” he said a little too knowingly. I was young enough to not realize how cynical and crummy journalists could be once the white-hot moment had passed.
“I guess, but I still think if the songs are good, the conversation is excellent, the writing should lift itself.”
“You might think, but I promise: it doesn’t. You write like this at 19, I don’t know what you’re majoring in, but you should think about being a writer. You can write, and I know that’s not even what you’re studying.”
Holy crap! He remembered. He remembered me telling him my Dad wouldn’t let me study journalism or English, because I was a published writer from the time I was 14. Whoa.

The tour manager stuck his head over the side. “You ready?”
“I guess so,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Wanna watch from the side?”

“Hell yes,” I thought, but wanted to act cool. I said, “That would be nice.”
It was an open stage. I figured my boyfriend would see me. If he got mad and left, I’d figure out how to get home. Right now, I was going to stand a few feet away from Kris Kristofferson, so lean and cool, and watch him sing “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “The Silver Tongued Devil and I,” even “Jesus Was A Capricorn.”

Tasting the salt in the air, a tropical breeze blew across the stage and pushed his shaggy hair off his face. He really was beautiful, even more beautiful than in the movies. But his passion when he sang those songs, the vulnerability and willingness to show the broken places was mind-blowing. And talking about going to church with a lady named Connie Smith, walking to the altar and falling to his knees inspiring “Why Me, Lord?,” it opened a portal into blessings where it's all falling apart.

He and the band tromped offstage. They swept me up with them, then Kristofferson cut me from the pack. “C’mon,” he said, and walked me over to the other boat.

“Willie, this is the writer I was telling you about.”
Nelson was sitting with the writer from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. He smiled and nodded. “Come sit,” he said. “Visit for a few minutes.”
Kristofferson bounced off the boat, probably to towel off from the swelter. Willie Nelson, his braids shorn into a flat top, looked exactly like my grandfather who’d just died. I was dumb struck, literally unable to speak.
“That was a fine piece you wrote,” he said. “Kris said he thought you were young. I don’t think anyone thought you were…”
“This young?” I managed. “Weird, ‘cause we talked about school.”
“Sometimes the details don’t register.”
“I get that.”
“It’s really about the work.”
“I get that, too.” Never have I struggled so hard to stay in a conversation.

When the promoter came to take us away, he was buoyant. “I am so proud of you,” JV said. “I am so proud you wrote a piece that made them want to meet you.”
“Yeah, wow,” was all I could say.
My boyfriend was so impressed. He actually told me, “If Willie would’ve let you stand on the side of the stage, you should’ve…”
“No, they definitely showed me out.”
Clang! Clang! Clang! “Whiskey River” kicked into gear, bottles – and a few drunks – started raining into the water between seats and stage. It was raucous. Lots of bikers, as well as kickers and redbecks. They came to dance, throw down and get lit.

By the time Kristofferson returned to the stage for a bawdy “How Do You Feel About Fooling Around” and “Circle Be Unbroken,” the place was unraveling. This was the power of unadorned music thrown to the crowd like gold coins and roses; people scrambled to grab what they could of the moment, to pull those emotions towards them.

Imagining this must’ve been what the Allmans were like in their prime, I held the back of the seat in front of me, a little dizzy. One man had a hand in getting President Carter elected, the other made landmark films like “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Both of them had talked to me; I would be in a daze for days.

“Here Comes That Rainbow Again,” to drop one song in among all the others, speaks so much to the way those men saw the world. Set in a café, dust bowl nowhere kind of town, a waitress took mercy on two hungry-eyed kids, telling them the candy they coveted was two-for-a-penny; it was exactly the money the children had.

A truck driver asks the waitress about why she did it. She asks, “What’s it to you?” believing in kindness over the straight bottom line. To her surprise, when the two truckers leave, there’s a small windfall at the table. Chastened by her kindness, they raised her ante and left a tip to say that kindness is the way.
An O. Henry short story over a classic folkie kind of melody, Kristofferson suggested what doesn’t kill you is worth indulging if it gives someone a little magic or breaks their melancholy. In the brightness and innocence that washed away the cynicism and world weary, the Songwriters Hall of Famer who received their Johnny Mercer Prize transformed anyone who listened.

When The Highwaymen, produced by Chips Moman, turned Waylon, Willie, Kris and Cash into the first true supergroup, the buzz was deafening. Tower Records’ PULSE assigned a cover story to me; all I had to do was juggle classes, superstar availabilities and not choke. At the time, this was the Mount Rushmore of the genre, and I understood even more now than when I’d done the Marine Stadium preview three semesters before.

First thing out of Kristofferson’s mouth, even before “Hello,” was “I just want to alert you: William Blake is still dead!” He laughed. I laughed, It was a riff on a “Saturday Night Live” bit, but it was also a small private joke, shared between the star and the humble scribe.

From being a total dodo to having a private joke? That was what made Kristofferson so lovely. He wanted to take the beat-up kid, find a way to usher her into the club. He wanted to connect some of the dots on the songs; they had Woody Guthrie and Cindy Walker, Ed Bruce’s “The Last Cowboy Song,” Guy Clark and Jimmy Webb, Bob Seger, two Johnny Cash classics, a Steve Goodman/John Prine co-write. We talked songwriters like people swap baseball cards; he spoke of what was inside the ten selections that made the album
It was strength without bullying, manly, not machismo. There were themes of social conscience, of passing time and tough places. These weren’t party songs, but things to make you think about the state of the world, how people treat other, who we throw away. It was smart and sobering as a work, and rich in terms of what we talked about.

He thanked me when he hung up, told me it was always a pleasure. I thought, that’s because you’re so good to talk to. Anyone not enjoying talking to you? They’re not doing it right.

Of course, Kristofferson was getting ready to get back into the water as an artist. He had a film with Nelson called “Songwriter,” a madcap sticking it to the Boss Hog music industry guy that looked like fun to make – and gave you a sense of how Nashville was when the creatives really were their own class of people. Independent, figuring out how to work between the lines, ready to hit the road, willing to go to any length for a practical joke and looking for a hit without selling out.

But Repossessed, a decidedly political album of social reckoning, was coming. It pulled no punches, threw down and drew lines. “Mean Old Man” and “Anthem ‘84” set the tone for a cruel, consumed by consumerism world and “They Killed Him” called out a culture that killed its visionary leaders, slaying them to never have to consider the truths Ghandi, Martin Luther King and the Kennedys put forward.

It was bold, and it struck a nerve if you listened. Most people chose to tune the radicalism out, marginalize the movie star who’d not had a hit album in a long time. When the phone rang at my desk at the Palm Beach Post, Kristofferson asked me what I thought. I told him I had hippie babysitters, this stuff is critical – if we can’t come together in peace, we would perish in the divisiveness.

With a band that had Billy Swan and Donnie Fritts, there was plenty of funky grit to go around. An outdoor show, it was a motley audience who showed up. Women swooning, because he was so fine. Vets and bikers who respected his courage for speaking up. Some country music fans who believed in the catalogue of many of their favorite artists. Native Americans who honored the way Kristofferson spoke to and for their heritage.

A melange of humanity, coming together in the songs. We didn’t speak that day. No backstage passes, though I was sure he saw me in the crowd, winked and nodded. That was plenty. Why crowd a legend when you can interview them for the paper?

By 1990, the politics had sharpened. Songs like “Jesse Jackson,” “Third World Warrior” and “Sandinista” left little to the imagination. He didn’t care; wasn’t going to pull his punches. He’d rather make music he believed in, cut live in the studio with his guys, that spoke the truth no one wanted to discuss. He wasn’t desperate, but was raging against a machine that wanted to use pop culture to distract America from what really mattered.

Like Jackson Browne, he spent his time talking to thinkers, leaders, the people on the front lines. He used his platforms – he was still an in-demand actor – to spread what he knew, and he knew plenty. He put his career and his life into the causes he believed in. And he just kept coming.

Somewhere in all of that, he fell in love with an ashy blond who was as fresh-faced and smart as they came. He and Lisa built a life, a family, kids who went in varied directions, saw the world and raised people’s consciousness. Mostly, they were love in action – and they served as an example of what can be if you truly commit and support another human being.

Just the way he looked at Lisa and smiled, you understood why he was the thinking woman’s heart-throb. That is how every woman deserves to be seen, but also respected.

He may’ve been an international superstar, touring the world with the Highwaymen or making any number of films. But mostly, he was a family man and the lover of Lisa. That was his joy, his grounding. In Hawaii, where they moved, all the local children adored him, too, called him Papa Kris – and followed him around, laughing and loving him as their own.

He stood up for the underdog, the little guy, the bullied and the overlooked. When Sinead O’Connor appeared at the all-star Bob Dylan Tribute Concert, held at Madison Square Garden, the air was charged. She had recently torn up a picture of the Pope on “Saturday Night Live,” igniting death threats, boycotts and being denounced by every Catholic organization in the world.

Brave, she took the stage, eyes piercing and seeking. She had come to sing for arguably the greatest songwriter who’d ever lived. Before she could get the first note out, an avalanche of boos hit that stage like a mountain collapse. Unable to withstand the velocity, the Irish songwriter/vocalist collapsed into a cloud of tears — and Kris ran from the wings to shepherd her off, cloaked in his arms.

As soon as he reached the shuddering musician, she proceeded to vomit. The vitrol she’d absorbed had to go somewhere. Kristofferson held her for a moment, assuring her the artists were with her; offering strength and comfort in a dark place, a pummeling moment.

If he didn’t suffer fools, he was generous with his praise. When an Oxford American think piece for his meditation on aging Feeling Mortal crossed the family’s horizon, he marveled that “Holly wrote that?,” no doubt picturing the kid from decades prior. When he saw me, he laughed and told me I’d clearly grown up.

And when “Better As A Memory,” a two-week No. 1, received it’s BMI Award for Most Played Songs of 2008, it was chaos as I teetered up to the stage in my 5” stiletto ballet slippers.

“Can you walk in those things?” BMI Nashville head Jody Williams inquired. “If you can, close your eyes and open them when I say…”
Like a good dancer, his hand slipped to the small of my back. Turning me 80 degrees, I heard now, and opened my eye lids to see Kris with his fingers in his mouth leading a standing ovation with Don Was. Surreal doesn’t begin to cover it, but my feet hurt, my heart was in my throat and tears were in my eyes.

“Can you believe it?” Jody asked. I shook my head no, because, well, it was hard to take in.

Pictures taken, someone escorted me off the stage. Before I could make my way across the room to say “thank you,” they were gone. The CMA Awards were the next day, so most likely they had an early call for rehearsal, or meeting because they were actually in town.

Walking out of our own rehearsal, I was talking to Clint Higham, Kenny Chesney’s longtime manager, about how the runthrough had gone. Coming in and cutting against the grain of rushing talent support teams, Kris was making his way towards us.

“I was so proud of you last night,” he said, taking my hands and looking into my eyes. “That is a damned fine song, Holly. A damned fine song, and you wrote it.”
I just looked at him. Cry? Laugh? Whoop? Busting a smile that was as wide as my face, I said “Thank you, and thank you. When I saw you and Don, I almost lost it.”
“We almost lost it, too,” he said. “Lisa had to tell me it was you…”
“Because you’ve never seen me in a dress.”
“Yes,” he admitted, laughing.

“Well, now you have.”
The talent wrangler came and got him, but we hugged. He told me I’d done good as he walked away, and I felt a little bit taller. If people had scoffed about me writing a song, they forgot I did it under another name so the song could have a life… and it did. If people acted like anyone could do it, like it was my proximity to Kenny that got the song cut, I didn’t care in that moment. Kris Kristofferson told me I’d written a damned fine song.

And when Kenny Chesney went on to co-produce Willie Nelson’s A Moment of Forever with Buddy Cannon, that Kristofferson title track wrecked me. A quiet performance, contemplative, yearning and yet thrilled with what has been shared, Kristofferson’s song was about the hope and wonder that even a transitory connection can yield. It’s not what was lost, it was what was felt.

Listening to Nelson in the studio, a witness to so much living, loss and adventure, the song felt like the wisdom of time. It also felt like a leavening exhale in a realm of shrinking connections, devastation and people lost not to fights or other lovers, but leaving this world.

When Kris began to fade several years ago, a bad diagnosis that Lisa refused to accept, they both hung in, seeking answers that would refute the diagnosis. One came, Lyme disease, and health returned, though the fragility of aging crept up in small degrees.

Still, there was Kris out playing with Merle Haggard’s kids, showing up at Farm Aid, being honored on the Outlaw Country Cruise. There was a tribute album. There was picking up Jerry Lee Lewis’ Country Music Hall of Fame medallion and delivering it to the Killer in Memphis.

Always something, always love.

Always love.

The last time I saw Kris, it was from eighteen rows back at the Hollywood. Rosanne Cash, beaming, walked across the stage as her rich, coppery alto followed the gorgeous imagery upwards. “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” may be Kristofferson’s most gorgeous song, and Cash grew up knowing poet laureate of the Outlaw movement long before she was herself a formidable songwriter and artist in her own right.

As the first verse  concluded, she reached her arm to the wings – and Kristofferson, eyes the purest blue of early morning, walked towards her in a parsons coat. Hair white, but flowing over his collar, he beamed right back at her, clearly knowing this was a moment to transcend all of our mortal realities. Rosanne continued to sing, Kris leaned into her and the mic, found his way.
They tangled voices, words, emotions on a song about letting go of someone you loved so they can find something better. Triumph in the sadness, a light that shines from doing the right thing. They both sang from a place of intimacy, a knowing that few can share. Though they had never been lovers, they had been life companions since Rosanne was still a girl – and when he looked into her eyes, you could see the pride he felt for the woman she’d become.
“Dreaming is as easy as believing it was never gonna end…” the song extols. Looking at the legend, Rosanne almost melted with her heart on her sleeve. Kris was savoring all that was, looking at her in pure delight. It was perfect, so perfect Cash dropped out, and let Kris have that final “do again…,” collapsing into his arms in an embrace that spoke to how precious their connection remains.

Turning away from my editor at POLLSTAR, I could feel the tears on my skin. Here was a man who’d seen so much, who should be eternal and always. Here was a man who wrote about hangovers (“Sunday Morning Coming Down”), needing human congress to survive the ache of living (“Help Me Make It Through The Night”), who knew that even when it’s over there’s a place for one last time (“For The Good Times”) and who understood the life-saving grace of surrender (“Why Me Lord”).
He was robust, tender, willing to let go. He spoke to the ‘70s zeitgeist when he wrote, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…” on “Me & Bobbie McGee.” There was no room for anything but being wholly present, leading with love and standing on the convictions of right and wrong.

For all that he was, he was a distiller of hearts. He offered generations of people seeking to understand a better way to express their longing, frustration and truth. He was fearless, joyous and willing – and as he wrote, “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down.”
I promise I won’t. But I can’t say that I won’t cry all night. I can’t say that I won’t stare into space on a plane to the West Coast tomorrow, wondering about losing another beacon of light to the stars above. Too many precious ones are leaving, and I imagine them all sitting around a poker table, laughing and raising the stakes: John Prine, whom he helped launch, and Steve Goodman, Cowboy Jack Clement, his dear Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Sammi Smith, Bobbie Nelson, Waylon, Donnie Fritts, known to all as “the leaning man from Alabam” and so many more rogues, characters and dreamers.

It was inevitable, of course. People age, people fade. But the ones who write such truth, they seem as if they’re immortal.
After suggesting that you were young enough to dream, and I was old enough to learn something new, Kristofferson summed up the seekers condition adroitly. With a demi-chorus, he explained,

“And come whatever happens now
Ain't it nice to know that dreams still come true
I'm so glad that I was close to you
For a moment of forever”

www.hollygleason.com

IF YOU HAVE CRYING EYES: John David Souther Will Be Here at Closing Time

IF YOU HAVE CRYING EYES: JD Souther Will Be Here At Closing Time

“All the press ever cared about,” he said, forcefully, but threaded with a whine, “was who I was dating.”

It was a challenge, a bit of a punchdown on the media. The dismissal was stupid, petty, especially uninformed. My ears pinned back.

“Well, you put it out there too much when you weren’t doing interviews. You made it a point.”
He was elegant, lean. Cheek bones and fast eyes, sandy/copper-colored hair a bit full, but well-sculpted. This was a man of refinement, who knew how to present himself. The gaze settled on me.

“WHAT did you say?’ Now the tone was incredulous. Clearly this person was used to selling his story as whole cloth, chapter and verse; an authority who didn’t know, but his position left him unchallenged by people who either knew less or didn’t want to tangle.

I didn’t care, because I was a journalist. Getting it right was critical.

“Who you dated,” I said. “It was always a thing, always known. Whispered about, but not quietly. One walking into your house as the first was leaving. It was legendary.”
He was gobsmacked, staring without words.

“And I knew that as a kid in Cleveland, Ohio. I loved Linda Ronstadt, and I knew. I knew about her, and Stevie Nicks, and Joni Mitchell, maybe Bonnie Raitt.”

Holding the inferno gaze as the face reddened, I knew I was a guest, asked to join Rodney Crowell’s family and friends at Talesai on Ventura Boulevard because I’d been the one who did the booking on “The Tonight Show” for Crowell’s wondrous album The Houston Kid. I’d been sliding into dinners with Crowell for years, been present at family dinners and awards moments, treated like a bonus kid or cheerleader baby. But always, I knew I was a guest in these rooms.

“It’s true, and the saddest thing is the music never registered the way it should have. You are J.D. f*%&ing Souther, and those albums were amazing. But it was never about the music. It never was, and I read it all.”

Hannah Crowell, Rodney’s gorgeous blond mermaid of a daughter, started to laugh so hard she almost flipped her chair over. Unbeknownst to me, no one spoke to JD Souther like this, no one dared. But how could they not when he came so hard and with such ballast? 
“I, I…” he said as Hannah’s outburst stopped the exchange. We all laughed, probably as much to puncture the awkward moment. He didn’t like the correction; I wasn’t happy that he’d just maligned something I’d done my whole life because he’d been played into a fame-facing hunger that America couldn’t get enough of.

“You are important, and your songs? But someone in your world rather than poisoning you on the media, telling you how crummy they all are, should’ve done a better job setting up the music, telling that story better, so the default wasn’t you as a dating man or co-Eagle.”

Rodney, no doubt, said something conciliatory, told us we were both smart, passionate people. I just laughed. Macho white men in the music business? Nothing new. It was a culture of blame and victimize what doesn’t come easy, say it doesn’t matter, talk smack about how little the critics are paid, what can you expect? But don’t kid yourself, everyone famous wants the good reviews, wants to be respected. It’s the curse of the creative class. 

He told me, “Well, Jay Cocks loved me. I always had that,” in self-defense.
I said, “Yes, his work at TIME is exceptional.” Souther’s jaw almost crashed on the table.

When we broke up for the night, people headed to where they were staying, JD Souther approached me. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “I just didn’t…”

“I get it,” I said. “I know what they feed you. People who don’t know how or can’t be bothered. Vilify what you can’t control; feed the artist a diet of rage and resentment, so they buy into dismissal instead of wanting what – in your case – they deserve.”
“Rodney told me about you,” he said. “I didn’t realize.”

That line fell there, somewhere between us, and lingered. 

Maybe he’d think about it, find some peace or ask for better next time. Trouble is artists often fall for flattery in the service of vanity. They don’t always realize that it’s not the people who fawn or drop names the hardest who can get the job done. 

How can an artist or manager truly know? Unless you’re on the frontlines, most people only know theories or have hunches about how it happens. What gate-keepers say becomes gospel. But in the end, it’s the actual how, not “facts” stacked as “gospel” that explains the way a story or placement came together.

“It’s okay,” I said. I was never going to see him again, and I not only loved his songs, I loved some of his albums.

Half a second paused. “You know, Black Rose is one of my favorite albums ever.”

“Ever?”
“Yeah, your version of ‘White Rhythm and Blues’ is so silky, and I loved Linda’s, and, well…”
“Well…”
“I think ‘If You Have Crying Eyes’ was the best George Jones and Tammy Wynette song I’ve ever heard. It sets the two people who should be together up in a way that also says why perfect and jagged as it is, they can’t connect.”

All the anger and charge was gone. He just looked at me. His car, and it was very shiny, black and waiting, was now blocking the mouth of the tiny parking lot partway into the Valley. 

“You actually know my music.”
“Yeah,” I said, head bowed demi-embarrassed as I moved towards my teeny tiny rental that was two cars back in the valet line-up. “I know your music.”

I can’t remember if Rodney gave me his number, or JD got mine. I am not quite sure when even. But somewhere in the blur of the next few months, there was a phone call. I apologized for being so strident, he explained he felt trapped in the way he’d been painted in the pop culture conversation.

“Well, you shouldn’t have talked about it so much,” I said.

“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I do,” I countered. “Lots of famous people date lots of famous people. Most of us little people have no idea what happens in Club Fame, except with you.”
Silence, but I couldn’t gauge it.

“Well, except you and Joni Mitchell.”
He laughed. Point made, “And we know how Joni Mitchell feels about the press.”

I didn’t get into the inherent sexism of defining a woman by her paramours. How he was a cocksman, and she was a side piece. I’d already had one tumble down the electric mineshaft of recrimination with him. 

“But the sad fact is: you are an important American writer who also has a strong sense of classic songwriting structures and truths. That is what should’ve driven the way you were seen all along.”

He laughed again. He got it. He knew I knew. That was the moment that cemented our friendship in ways that transcend fame or commerce or any of the ways most “show friendships” are held together. Not that he cared that I “got” it, but the notion that I knew and understood. That was what mattered to him.

There was always something courtly about dinner with John David, something grown-up and elegant. White linen tablecloths, waiters in dinner jackets, very, very chilled martinis. Tone always one level below conversational, wicked humor, muted and boisterous laughter, the conversations romped and ranged; all about books and famous people, the truly famous and famous to those who cared, names like Tom McGuane, Eve Ensler, Jim Harrison, delicious things to eat and films that needed watching. Always films that needed watching, because as much as JD loved and devoured writing, that visual element of great cinema when executed to evoke added a dimension to what was already intoxicating.

He could be prickly, too. Annoyed at things that probably deserved annoyance. Had a code of ethos that governed how he dressed, engaged and responded to the world. He loved his beautifully tailored Manuel suits – that felt like the most gorgeous flannel – but instead of the normal rhinestones and technicolor embroidery, it was grey on grey. He preferred boots that were worn, flannel that was soft, old leather bags and taking your time whether it was a meal or a conversation in a parking lot.

I can close my eyes right now, see so many restaurants in muted light, a table away from the bustle – because musicians’ ears need more quiet to hear intimate conversation – and that, “We meet again” falling from his lips. Whether it was Nashville’s iconic Sunset Grille, a Mexican place on Sunset in the forsaken space between Hollywood and very fancy, a joint somewhere outside of town, or Sinema in an old movie theater, designed to capture glamour long gone, it was all treated with the same respect for dining and enjoying the meal.

Enjoying was one thing John David knew how to do: wherever he was, however it was going to be, he would savor every last morsel or moment. Making recommendations, taking forkfuls of something, always encouraging you to find other flavors or insight.

And that makes sense…
Look at the songs. Look at the heart. Look at the collaborators. 
When you’re writing with the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Rodney Crowell, and you’re not the artist, it means you bring a special kind of heart, a sort of wisdom and word sense  they can’t find on their own. “New Kid In Town,” “Faithless Love,” “Prisoner In Disguise,” “Best of My Love,” “Simple Man, Simple Dream,” the silky “Silver Blue,” even the torqued “Roll’Um Easy” and the rager “Heartache Tonight” defined the ‘70s and ‘80s, lingered well into the new century – and over the last few years seems to have found a new ubiquity.
He had his one brush with the Top 10 with his own Roy Orbison-esque “Only Lonely,” which shimmered when it poured out of the car radio. In an era of gleaming arena-sized rock, Souther had tapped a retro-nerve with the yearning that throbbed under Springsteen’s songs of romance from “Racing In The Streets” to “Thunder Road.” 
There was a balm to the big feelings, a swelling to the yearning that suggested how much emotion wasn’t being shown. But it was also a benediction that all will be well in the end. That sense of knowing the end is what matters always made John David’s songs a poultice to draw out the agony and heal the aching inside.

Even his other brush with the radio was a post-divorce, reality-check with James Taylor. The clear-eyed “Her Town, Too” offered the reality of how shattered bust-ups of seemingly true marriages could leave whole social ecosystems asunder, but especially dealt the woman who doesn’t have her own means of support, access or community. If JD’s voice was a birch to Taylor’s maple, both men brought a solidity to facing the wreckage with compassion, even mercy – holding up how unfair and cruel what happens to the woman left behind truly is.

“She gets the house and the garden/ He gets the boys in the band…” Like turning cards over in a game of solitaire, the acknowledgement how some people care, but they go with the work – and they understand, but it’s life. The ones who talk, who said they were your friend, more consumed with the gossip than the loyalty or the hurt. And that’s where John David Souther excelled.

He looked through the chaos, the buzz, the salacious and saw the heart of the person left behind. He wrote such great songs about love, because he was at his deepest core and corps a romantic. He recognized – and delivered – the hope and promise of the most exhilarating gambit of the human condition. But even more than pulse-race, it was the tenderness that mattered and seduced him, her, us and anyone, really, who paid attention.

Because a Texas kid, who did time in Detroit, Michigan and Shaker Heights, Ohio, he was a man’s man. A refined man’s refined man, as well, and there is a difference. He was stoic when need be, but heroic any chance he got. And it stained much of his later work with a sense of how evolved a being he genuinely was, always seeking that perfect heart-shaped valentine, that girl who’s soul he saw in a way it had never been seen.

When I turned 40, I decided to throw my own party. New Year’s Eve is a horrible night to celebrate anything but people who shouldn’t drink, and I dodge my birthday as a matter of course. But 40 is the turning point in life, I had a gorgeous green velvet jacket, and sometimes one needs to face the world and their life in.a way that says, “I’m here.” 
At the last moment, I almost choked and didn’t go. Called Sean at the Acorn, left my credit card number and suggested he just have the table order. John Hobbs, my most recent ex-fiancee, would have none of it when I called to ask him to serve as back-up “please eat” for what was ultimately a wonderful table of dinner party companions.

“I have a key, I am coming to get you.” Hobbs informed me.
The word uttered started with “F.” I have no trouble with age – except other people’s use as a way to marginalize and dismiss – because I believe if you stay curious, you only become more luxurious and wise. Just the self-importance of it felt off… attention? me? No. No, thank you.

When Rodney Crowell arrived with his blindingly lovely wife/artist Claudia Church, you almost saw no one else, because they are such a stunning couple. But Rodney explained that he’d performed a wedding, wanted to bring the couple along. He knew my virtual world means my friends are any friends of someone I love.
When I saw JD looking cute and elated, I may’ve barked just a bit. He was holding hands with a slight dark headed woman with a face that was pure Victorian joy. If Jane Austen could conjure a hip, glowing heroine, it was this gamine creature named Sarah, who was Irish-born and infused with that heart of glee and adventure. With that glittering smile and laughter that bubbled over like a shaken-up root beer, she was that certain someone who’d captured the Warren Beatty of the American songbook. 

Talk about a present on so many levels! To see someone who was so erudite, so humane, so consumed by life on a foundational and intellectual level find the woman he would pledge his fidelity to? He had to be in his late ‘50s, and clearly this wasn’t a jump decision fueled by fear of mortality. No, it spoke to the willingness to keep drinking people in, letting them open in your heart and trusting the moment when it arrived.

Few things that night made me as happy, not the jokes or the stories about the time that… Not the good news about my friends, not the chocolate Acorn cake that did impossible things with devils food layers and buttercream, not the great hugs and resolutions and hopes for the year ahead. John David Souther had done what I’d assumed was for him the unthinkable, looked happier than ever and was more alive and animated than a man should be.

Ahhhh, we should all be so seen and realized. 
JD, Sarah and Enya, her daughter, bought a farm outside of Nashville, had some land, some dogs and created a world that Ralph Lauren would envy. Not only did it hold all of the totems that make the designer iconic, it was suffused with love and use, meals, chatter, coming together with neighbors, fellow musicians and friends.

And he started really writing and making records again. Joking about “I don’t know if anybody needs them,” but he set standards for songwriting, pulling back the curtain on adult desire that was for a connection beyond erogenous zones. If The World Was You arrived in 2008, somewhere between cocktail classic, boite noir and Sinatra-esque jazz as an adult outgrowth of what Laurel Canyon had wrought.

“I’ll Be Here at Closing Time,” which opened that first album in forever, was all tiny details of a charming woman, a gentle promise of being there later, possibly forever -- and delivering in ways carnal and profound. It’s a simple man, who knows to come proper, to a woman who’s a waitress but so much more.
It drops directly into the staccato humanity/lack of commentary “The House of Pride.” A bit of a barnyard scramble, with horns looping in and banjo plucks, it calls out all the venals and vanities that destroy the best of who we can be. Plucky, then attenuated, the song embodies the deals people make with themselves, the hungers and the “needs” that are wants with a wink that impales.
There was the sultry “Journey Down The Nile,” the slinking, horn slither rejoinder “A Chorus Of Your Own,” the humid Latin slow boil “Rain,” even the roadhouse burlesque piano-tittering “One More Night,” and the almost innocent, gentle recognition of life’s knocks in the misdirection of “In My Arms Tonight.” Complicated, sophisticated, it was redolent of what pop music for adults could be, but at the center of how basic so much of what life is. 

Indeed, fairly spacious “The Border Guard” excavated the cages we keep ourselves, even the freest ones, in. The falter points, the codes, doubts and lines we will not cross that bind us and keep us apart from what we most desire. “I ain’t goin’ to heaven now, I’ve learned to many tricks…” he intones as the bridge passes, a trumpet emerges to write what can’t be spoken.

“The Border Guard” holds those things that keep us warm on the nights when we’re most alone. It understands that sometimes the most heroic things we do – let people go, walk away to let someone else rise, show up and remain when everyone else has left – often leave us without. 

Noble? Foolish? Frightened? Frozen? It doesn’t matter, we have done the thing we believe is right, and that is holy.

John David understood the conflicts, the contrasts that knot our lives. Beyond messy, it was complex and therein lies the fascination. Broken wings, busted hearts, open trenches filled with tears that no one ever sees? That was his stock in trade. Not that it was a sad girl summer, nor was he the catcher-in-the-blue-girl-valley.

I remember the raw day, sky two shades lighter than slate grey and a cutting briskness to the wind, I got the call from the vet telling me Zelda, my wing-girl-spaniel was on her last months. Collapsing a bit against my car, walking by in a perfect black topcoat was J.D. who felt the energy move. 

“Well, what have we here?” he asked, clearly knowing it was not going to be good.

I explained, more wordbarfed all the things that had been said all over him. He listened, nodding. Was I making sense? I’m not sure. Zelda, the Prada of Dada, was my best self.
“Okay, pal,” he acknowledged. “This is bigger than right now. I have a meeting at Frankie & Zoey’s to talk about mixes. Can you.. Is there…”
He was giving me room to sort out what I needed. “You mean, could I go do something and you’ll find me?”
“Well, yes…”
“Okay, I was going to Baja Burrito for lunch. If I can eat, I guess I can…”
“Yes, even if you just sit there with an iced tea, I’ll come right back to you.”
And that’s just what happened. I sat with a mostly cold, uneaten burrito staring at the table. It might’ve been 20 minutes; but all I know is panic moves fast and too slow all at once, drowning you in grief and terror.

“Okay, now tell me so I can really get it. Slow down a little,” he said as he pulled the chair out across from me. I explained it was kidney failure, we’d been doing bags of fluid. He asked some questions, made some suggestions, told me that I could do things to make it comfortable for her, even make her life extend if that’s what I wanted to do.
“But one thing, promise me: It’s better five days too early than ten minutes too late.”
I wince just typing that. And I smile, because John David and Zelda had always had a thing: he loved older dogs, he saw the pretty girls they were when young and recognized the soul they embodied as they grew older.

I started boiling chicken, feeding her the meat with rice. I started sleeping on the floor, with rubber sheets and linens that were always in the washer. I started talking about life with my cocker spaniel, and seeking truth in our long, long walks across the street and at Radnor Lake. 

JD would check in, to see how “our girl” was doing. He’d laugh, tell me maybe the vet got it wrong. But we both knew, we knew the time would come. And it finally kind of did: not a hard when, but a knowing. 

Five days early, not ten minutes too late.

“Schedule it, girl, and I’ll come with you. Just let me know.”
Spring and summer was touring season, everyone in Nashville flying off in different directions. He had a flight he had to catch to make a gig, and I wanted every possible moment. “You can do this,” he reassured. “You’ve got this, you two girls who’ve seen so much and chased so many dreams.”
Yeah, but now who’ll chase those dreams with me.

J.D. had a way of knowing when to show up, when to recede, how to help even when he couldn’t be there. He knew the power of someone who understood, who saw what everyone else missed because they were too caught up in their own thing; he got the strength of locking eyes and nodding just a jot, telling you “You’ve got this.”
When my mother passed, a fraught relationship that defies explanation here, Souther was in Cleveland for a Sherrod Brown benefit with Jackson Browne. He called to ask me where the church was. “I’m a Shaker boy, too, don’t you forget. I’ve brought my suit, and I’m going to try to get out there.”

Alex Bevan, my childhood idol, sang “Gunfighters Smile” for the life gone and “Silver Wings” for the kid I was sitting in that pew. Michael Stanley, the rock god of Cleveland with all the attendance records that still stand, slipped into a row two-thirds of the way back after the casket had been rolled in. I did the eulogy, telling truth and humor, the purpose of this far-flung forceful life my mother led, taking no prisoners and creating both fury and fabulous with true originality.

Walking out, Michael helped me with my coat, said he’d played that benefit, too; that J.D. had mentioned he was coming. Maybe to let me know my glamorous songwriter’s intentions were to be there; maybe to let me know they’d found a commonality – or he didn’t want to fall short in the eyes of a man who took masculine respect to a serious level.

John David had called, of course, while we were in the process of it all. “Holly, I am so sorry. I have my suit out, and it’s pressed, but my hands are giving me such problems. It is so cold, and wet, I just don’t think I can. But I’m with you and all of yours. I promise… Oh, and big girl drinks soon.”

I loved that he loved that I call cocktails “big girl drinks.” He always thought it was such a funny way to quantify something that’s supposed to be chic and adult. To me, the inner Eloise is all demanded “big girl drinks”; he got it, embraced it, even dropped it into the swirling string-ladden Nelson Riddle homage “Dance Real Slow” on his final Tenderness album.

A year later, needing to face the grave, I made the trek to Cleveland. If my mother’s burial was bitter cold, bracing and penetrating, the little bit if snow was granular. Driving through Lakeview Cemetary, trying to find the plot on Daffodil Hill, the snow that day was wet and heavy, the kind that makes the wipers move slower. 

I exhaled watching my breath plume in the limbo between heated car and open window. Tears don’t make it any clearer, but I had some resolve. I was taking Alex Bevan and his bride to see John David later that night at Nighttown, the boite on Cedar Hill that derived its essence from James Joyce’s writing, Tiffany glass and a ‘70s brass and polished wood aesthetic that froze time in a Woody Allen kind of movie.
If I could get through this, I could give the very first person who talked to me about songs the ultimate “thank you” for showing up to sing for my mother. All I had to do was get out of the car, crunch through the heaviness and place the roses on her grave. Wrapping my muffler tighter, I walked down a small hill, around a curve, humming “I’ll Be Here At Closing Time.”
Fist in throat, knot in stomach, roses freed from their plastic, I went up the hill, and saw the roses from my stepfather. This must be the place. Honor what was. Hold it in, hide the tears, remember what’s good. Employ the dignity that defined John David. Get to the raggedy taggedy restaurant that had better than good food, meet my friends and remember the glory of being alive, also part of the ethos of John David.

He had, of course, made sure that the table was brilliant. He made it a point to sing to us and for us. When he sang some of the songs from his upcoming album, songs that I’d known for months, he was sure to deliver the key lines to us. It was worlds merging, the reasons songs matter so profoundly and the humor of “that chip upon your shoulder makes you seem much older, but you’re just a kid in dangerous disguise” escaped none of us.

That was the thing: the smallest details, strangers and known quantities, another town somewhere out there. Converging the way they can creates sacred bonds, and those bonds hold even when it feels like the ships coming apart at the beams.

When the note landed – a follow up to some feedback from a reader on a project I’m doing – they assumed I’d known, but wanted to make sure I’d heard. In Florida with mono, I’m not so in the loop, and I turn my phone off. It took me a moment to absorb what I was reading, to think who to ask, where to look. 

Because there are all kinds of facts – Songwriters Hall of Fame, the people who’ve covered the songs, the chart positions, the stories of the songs – but where’s the man? How do you show people someone who was so charmed by the daughter he never thought he’d ever have – “you know she’s a real ballerina now, and quite good,” he would probably tell you – that it transformed him even in passing conversation? How do you get people to understand that for as intractable as he was in the way he lived his life, he was gentle and encouraging to those who sought his comfort or guidance? How do you show that fabulous sense of humor, the love of gossip and dishy conversation that could turn an early dinner into closing down the place? 

Or his reverence for those who were such an integral piece of his own story, the ones who found great fame and public recognition? 

He would speak of Ronstadt’s brilliance, her reading and informed socio/cultural as well as political takes, Jackson Browne’s sense of humor and poetry, or Henley’s songwriting that they’d picked up “as if we’d never left off” in recent years with a respect we all aspire to. Never starstruck or name-dropping, these were his cradle-mates, the people who were there when a pop moment was forged and Laurel Canyon country rock emerged from the folk-populist rock of the Sunset Strip realm of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Burrito Brothers and Poco.
Like the little match girl, he made those people come to life in a way that was dimensional, that transcended even the often incredible interviews I’d done with many of the names we had in common. But that was never the point, it was just sharing the rich tapestry of life from a man who was always seeking.

When I got my rescue spaniel, Corliss, I was on the verge of a book tour for PRINE ON PRINE: Interviews & Encounters, a three year odyssey created with a lot of help from my recently deceased third ex-fiancee who’d co-managed the iconic American songwriter. Fraught, emotionally-triggered and facing a publishing company that just didn’t seem to get how to promote this book, I was overwhelmed and sure I was going to fail this gorgeous furry creature who needed love and deserved a good home.
One trainer was too hippie dippie. Another was too military, too “You be the boss of that dog, or he'll be the boss of you,” which triggered a mad barking episode that was scary. I knew there would boarding, me in and out of town. Consistency is everyting.

Torn, I called John David. A man of dogs, a human of deep fiber when it comes to the right thing, he would know. 

“What’s up, kid?” he answered. He obviously knew, or felt it wasn’t just a chat or looking for a quote. Once again, I started crying, showing fear of failing the rust-colored dog, frustration at not being able to get this potty-trained little animal to do the basics, confusion over was I being selfish? On the verge of finding him another, better forever home, it was a 9-1-1 call of the spirit.

“Now, now,” he said softly. “Can you send me some pictures? I’m gonna call you right back.”
Doing as told, I sent a handful of the pictures you can find on my Instagram. Like any proud parent, there was a fistful of shots of my gorgeous little man.

The phone rang. 

“Well, you’re not giving him back or to anyone else. This is your dog.”
“I don’t know… I don’t want to fail him…”
“Fail him? Look at those eyes, he’s all about living life. He may be a little hesitant in those first few, but he’s coming into his own. You can see it, and look at that form! He’s a beauty, Holly.”
I agreed, explained about the two trainer failures. My worry that all the travel now would create a long term problem for his socializing.

“He’s a smart boy, you can see that. It’s not gonna happen in three sessions, it’s about time, and it’s about you. It’s definitely about you, and you having the patience to trust you two will figure it out.”
I protested out of guilt, the folks whose helpful advice hadn’t worked and all the rest of the things that motivate self-doubt. John David listened, taking it in. He never told me I was wrong, just didn’t feed the monster. Finally, he said, “Here’s what I think: Seeing him, I can’t imagine that dog with anyone else but you, and there could be a whole bunch of great families for that handsome spaniel.”
He paused. “But I think dogs rescue people, and you might need him as much as he needs you, and you won’t even know why for a long time. You’re a good dog, Mom, Holly. You really understand them, feel for them, and work hard to give them a good life.

“Your book is gonna do great, and you’ll work hard to make it work. You’ll write other books, great stories, win more awards. But after all the dogs you’ve almost adopted, your Zelda wasn’t having it – and those dogs went to other people. Has it dawned on you: Zelda hasn’t stopped this one.  Did it ever occur to you this might be Zelda’s work?”

In a time of yammering confusion, too many commitments and a world that just kept telling me, “Yeah, it will be fine,” without really thinking it through, John David Souther not only heard all the trouble and considered my responsibilities, he remembered the minutiae of three or four missed connections over the fifteen years since Zelda died – and he realized that was what really mattered.

JD would check in to see how we’re doing. We’d catch up for quick calls about books and moments, always ending with “Be good to that fine young spaniel.” 

He’d left Nashville – leaving a massive hole for all of us in Music City – and he made me promise next time he was in town, I would introduce them. Laughing about the Jimmy Buffett tribute at the Hollywood Bowl, “where I’m not kidding there were so many layers and levels of passes and wristbands, I don’t think I could get to half the people I would’ve wanted to see,” he asked me if I remembered our conversation when I was in crisis about keeping Corliss. Saying yes, we both laughed; the larger lesson did not need to be unpacked.

Mr. Corliss, named for TIME’s late film and culture critic Richard Corliss, breathes softly beside me, his tummy rising and falling as I type this. All I can think about is John David’s doggies at home after he passed, probably beside themselves because they couldn’t help their Daddy. I think about the fact he’d been out playing shows, his luggage and guitar case just inside the front door from him returning from a run of dates to be unpacked the next morning.

In some ways, it was the perfect transition. Make people happy, share your wondrous songs and charm the groups of people who came out, then return home to your dogs, exhale and pause. Take it all in, realize how much love you’ve sown, grown and tended. Because beyond the songs, the stories and the acclaim, that’s the thing that remains. 

The people who’ve called me, texted, emailed, it’s all about the beauty and warm feelings that JD conjured in us. For those left behind, we have the music and the memories, not a great trade, but it’ll serve us. Right now, I can see him walking across the sky, all his ghost dogs bounding up to him, his first mate Glen Frey waving, saying come on in – and I’ll show you’round. 

Something tells me he’s settling in, making heaven an even better place for us all. Me, I’m gonna take Mr. Corliss for a walk, let him stretch his paws and tell him about my friend J.D. Later, I’m gonna get a big girl drink, raise that glass and tell my friend good-bye.

Holly Gleason

YOU CAN'T KILL ME: Mojo Nixon Has Left The Building

YOU CAN’T KILL ME: Mojo Nixon, Free, Drunk & Horny + Ready to Rumble

Mojo Nixon was crazy. Walking on a razor edge, laughing into the wind like some kind of kamikaze “Hey, y’all! watch this!” good ole boy on too much acid, there wasn’t much of anything Neill Kirby McMillan, Jr. wouldn’t do. 

Indeed, the more you’d recoil, the harder the fast talkin’, social commentarian would lean in. If he saw your flinching place, he’d double down, laughing that maniacal laugh to make you feel stupid and somehow empowered to laugh about whatever it was, too. Not that everything was a joke.

Though he’d juggle social taboo machetes like mandarian oranges – or some equally benign parlor trick, he knew music, politics and bullsh*t like nobody’s business. If his original calling card was frenetic talking blues, two chord punched up songs and a back beat that often worked out like a speedbag, don’t think he didn’t know the deep origins of the music he tore from the ground roots first.

That manic, raging street preacher thing – whether exhorting unbelievers “Elvis Is Everywhere,” thundering “Don Henley Must Die,” whirling through the reality “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant (with My Two Headed Love Child” – mined grooves that slung low, twisted hard and got funkier than cold medina.

From the very first salvo, a primitive, starkly thrumming guitar blues that teetered back and forth as he raved about “Jesus at McDonalds,” he merged a Lou Reed sangfroid with a confessional stream of consciousness that invoked all the religious leaders, fast food restaurants and Mama getting it on with Santa Claus “blamed it on menopause.” As the song’s tempo ebbs and flows, that wobble is as much a drunk man walking as a revelation.

Whatever it was, and I promise you not even Dr. Demento was sure, a brushfire ensued. Maybe it was the far fringe tastemakers at Engima Records... or the X/Blasters/Tex & the Horseheads vortex of California punk with a crazed Beat Farmers’ chaser. Taste was not the issue; that Mojo & Skid debut strung the unthinkable – “Moanin’ with Your Mama” – across a terse Bo Diddley grind. All gruff roar, blatant bragging and inappropriate in extremis, you had to laugh when he confessed “pokin’ holes in her liver” after a particularly randy assignation.

However it spread, people were buzzing. Editors at Tower Pulse, regional fanzines, record store clerks who’d tuned into champions for indie record companies dealing in the anti-major label insurrection. It was a wild time. Mojo, thrashing and bashing away, defied anything we’d seen. Not as noir or creature feature as the Cramps, not as straight up political as the Dead Kennedys, too inbred and rural to be the Replacements, he raged away like Jethro BoDean on steroids, howling like a dog about whatever hypocrisy that hit his viewfinder, as well as any hormonal, jacked up puberty-stricken XY-chromosone nonsense he could reckon. Before there were Beavis and Butthead, Mojo Nixon was a tall, two-fisted temple of arrested development with an IQ higher than a dog whistle.

The Pogues loved him. Tours together were a direct threat to their collective livers. Dash Rip Rock, Screaming Cheetah Wheelies, the Del-Lords all devoured the joke. The Dead Milkman loved him, too, celebrated  the erstwhile ranter in their “Punk Rock Girl” with the tilted couplet, “Your store could use some fixin’/It don’t have no Mojo Nixon.”

Yes, he was reckless, wild, drunk, drugging, blowing things up, body slamming road life with a velocity seemingly no one – perhaps not even Keith Richards – could withstand. Yet somehow, Nixon and his erstwhile tour manager Bullethead not only survived, they thrived. Every gambit, controversy or moment was something to laugh their heads off about, then tell the story in larger and taller detail over the months ahead.

When someone would say, “Two notes? Sounds like he needs Thorazine?,” then look at you like the Emperor is wearing a flesh suit, you could only sigh – and know how square your seemingly cool friend was. Sophomoric? Of course. But also seething, thrashing and delivering genuine commentary.
Before the fabulous Mitch Schneider arrived to steward the buzz, many of us writers circled up to tell the story. Pitching Fred Goodman, one of my Rolling Stone editors, I explained it was as much strong, savory comedy as it was TigerBeat trogolodyte songs for the truncated young men whose only love was self-afflicted.

He was intrigued. It didn’t help that I was the Steinbeck mouse in lunatic comic Sam Kinison’s pocket. As the young woman who’d never done drugs that would sit up some nights talking about bands and God, gender identity, jokes, and whatever else crossed our purview, the editor knew I knew comedy. 
“Yes, okay,” he said, wanting to be first. “Come up with something to do, ask some smarter questions – and try to bring us a lively read,”
When Dan Einstein, my fiancée left to turn John Prine’s songs into Oh Boy’s records, he asked, “What does your day contain?” 
Laughing I explained Mojo Nixon and I were going to “do” something we could hang a story on. Einstein looked at me, bemused. “Mojo? Adventure? Something for background?”

I nodded, big smile.

“I see,” he said, half quizzically, half-joking. “Well, don’t get arrested – or tattoed.”
“But, Dan, we’re kind of friends.”
Half a beat passed, he exhaled, smiled, and repeated, “Yes, so don’t get arrested – or tattoed.”
The van rolled into our lot on the second steepest hill in LA running a little hot. For some reason, I think it was the transmission or drive shaft. That van – driven into the ground touring – was classic flat paint, cargo warrior; it couldn’t fail, but it could be expensive to fix.

Young, Mojo was lean, muscular like “I’m on Fire” Springsteen, thick hair with his Elvis obsession extruding from his pores. “I need to get something to get married in,” he explained. “It’s gotta get done.”
Was it an invitation to help? Or an exit strategy that was Teflon?
“What’re you thinking?”
“Something cool. Something wild. Something me.”

“You ever been to Nudies?” I asked citing the cowboy courturier who dressed movie stars, country music legends, Led Zeppelin and more. “They’re in North Hollywood.”
“I can’t afford that,” he pushed back, explaining his wedding was going to be at a go kart track. 

“You’d be surprised, what’s it cost to look?” And the I added, “Even if you get nothing, I can use it for the story... and you can see the place Elvis, Gram Parsons and Mel Tillis shopped.”

“MEL TILLIS?!” he faux-reacted. “I’m in.”

Parking outside the split-rail building on N.Lankershim Blvd with the rearing Palomino horse on the roof, I smiled. “This could be magic. Just poke around, look at the sale racks. And if his widow’s in, she might work with you.”

Sure enough, and sure enough, and sure enough. There was a white satin shirt on a sale rack with a red satin yoke, pearl snap buttons and piping. It was still too much, but Bobbie Nudie, Nudie Cohen’s widow, was working the register, wash’n’set crash helmet hair in all its motionless glory. 

Walking over to the circular rack, I explained who the lady leaning on the counter was. “Tell her what it’s for. She’s a fan of the story. Oh, and flirt with her. That works, too.”

I walked away, didn’t look back. Some bread won’t rise if you stare it while waiting for the yeast to kick in. When I came back, she was wrapping up the shirt, smiling coyly and telling him his intended was a lucky woman.

I started to laugh, but I knew: if you’ve got the ball rolling, do nothing to break the momentum. Just eyes down, walk on; get in the truck. Once we were moving, he laughed that garrulous laugh, side-eyed me and proclaimed, “I feel like I stole it.”
“Really?” the intrepid reporter began.

Whether a fan of wild young love, good looking young bucks or just hoping to make a sale, the widow of the man who’d dressed all the cowboy film stars had set a price Mojo could afford. But – and this was instructive into the man I was riding with – beyond the “Hell, yeah” of scoring some gilded wedding clothes, there was the aw shucks of a kid who’d loved cowboy movies, a humility for where he’d been and what he’d purchased. The raging lunatic talking bluesman had joined Elton John, Keith Richards, Dolly Parton, Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, r.e.m. and Gram Parsons in the rock and country royalty who’d worn Nudie.
And he got it. That was part of what made it intriguing. Sitting there at the wheel, the chiseled featured alt-star was thinking about what that shirt meant; not that he’d made it, but that he had touched the hem of something great. For all the frothing, foaming, seek-and-destroy propulsion, underneath McMIllan, Jr. was more educated than people realized and more appreciative than the cyclonic presence could ever reveal.

The conversation circled being on the verge, something you can’t truly capture until you’re on the other side. But the momentum and the pressure of almost breaking through to the mass pop consciousness was palpable. When the questions turned from ham-fisted pop up flies – designed for the obvious punchline or proclamation – the answers turned thoughtful, the character broke and a man looking to skewer and impale stigmas emerged; he wasn’t out of control or feral, but a wicked intellect that understood the psychology of respectability and seeking more who knew just how to land a punch of the things they held dear.

Unfortunately, the gags were so delicious, Rolling Stone ran three Random Notes in quick succession. Suddenly, he’d more than permeated the 2x a month rock periodical – in a time when that real estate was finite and coveted – and the decision was made to spike the profile. 

It meant I didn’t get paid, but it also meant people didn’t see the deeper, more thoughtful side of the kid born in North Carolina, raised in Danville, Virginia, who went to a liberal college in Ohio, drifted to Colorado then San Diego as he carved out space for his outsized brain and worldview. He knew music, deep and wide; held opinions that were informed and thought out. 

Ironic, and yet, people loved the too loud, too robust freak flag flyer tilting about plastic Jesuses, myriad Elvis incarnations, magic mushrooms, foofoo haircuts, being vibrator dependent, legalizing  pot, refusing menial labor, burning down the malls and stuffin’ all-American MTV VJ Martha Quinn’s muffin, but he also did Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” with all of the verses, even the “subversive” ones.

And any time someone suggested it was a novelty, how long could the joke last, Mr. Mojo Nixon would land on another plateau of “how did he do that?!” And the “do”s that stacked up were impressive.

Beyond playing drummer James Van Eaton in the Jerry Lee Lewis film “Great Balls of Fire,” which was filmed in Memphis and starred Winona Ryder, Dennis Quaid and X’s John Doe, he dipped in and out of movies. A bit of Ferris Bueller “Can you believe this?” matching the intensity of someone willing to see how far he could push the moment.

That intensity also nitro-funny-car fueled his performance art as cultural white trash snapshot promos that gave MTV an edge as corporate rock began subsuming the strange place where music videos from pasty British bands, quirky art school downtown acts, dance, punk and new wave  and other fringe artists had launched into pop status. 

Concerned about being consumed by “the man,” Mojo’s list of demands were copious. MTV met them all. Suddenly, he was a preacher, a used car raver, an overgrown “Deliverance” refugee and best of all, himself freestylin’ about whatever topic they were tropin’.

Again, there was all of that. But there was also the music. Jello Biafra, Dave Alvin, the Beat Farmers, the Pleasure Barons all made records with him. Even the legendary producer and creative iconoclast Jim Dickinson helmed an all-star band that included Doe, Dash Rip Rock’s Bill Davis, the Del-Lord’s Eric Ambel, Country Dick and more for Otis. Recorded in Memphis with a six figure budget, it was the one to break the joke wide open.

In Memphis for a showcase, I ran into Davis in the lobby of the grand Peabody Hotel. We were waiting on the ducks, killing time in the suspended hours of late afternoon, explaining to the other why we were in Memphis. Talking about the Liberation Army show they were going to play at the Omni New Daisy Theater, talking about the combustion in the studio, it was too strong a pull.
Playing hookie from the junket, a young writer and a piano player in tow, we descended into the humid night. Our names were on the list, that seemed to be my mantra in the ‘90s. Inside the overpacked theater, the music was so loud the walls pumped and the swelter made one’s clothes limp. But onstage, there was so much heat and fun, the bodies were pressed a dozen deep, roiling like fish at feeding time as the music crashed over them.

Handing my leather jacket to the piano player, I announced, “I’m going in,” and plunged into the sweaty mass. Euphoria was the only word for it. Never one to love a mosh pit, what was happening on the floor was a whole other thing: the largely male, teen and post-teen throng were caught up in the rhythms and the off-handed jokes. It was the ultimate “your favorite band” situation – only every musician on that stage, including Dickinson who sat on, was legendary in their scene.

The propulsion coming off the stage was James Brown-inflected, terse and taut. They might be singing about racing big foot trucks, Shane McGowan’s dentist, polish that won’t take or the infamous Don Henley death sentence and a Star Spangled anthem of Mojoliciousness, but the playing was blistering. There was no joking on the bandstand.

Wandering back into the dressing room after the final encore, “What are you doing here?” was met with his “Yeah of course” embrace of whatever happened. Beyond the pleasantries of post-show chatter, there was the acknowledgement of how good it was. He knew what he was doing musically – and he wasn’t gonna pull light.

That roaring way of talking geared down to own just how impressive what was happening was. If the outboard motor was the outrageousness of what he was saying, he knew it could allow him to make a record of the funky soul, shuffles and high octane hillbilly rock & roll he loved. 

Maybe the greatest joke was on the music industry: the loon was the guy preserving certain strains of American music in a way that major labels paid lip service to, but didn’t give a damn about protecting.

Not that he took it all serious. Playing the National Association of Campus Activities Convention at Nashville’s Tara-like Opryland Hotel, he had no problem whipping out “Louisiana Liplock” (applied to the metaphorically sound love porkchop) to the mid-afternoon ballroom of student talent buyer, exhorting them to chant along. My mother, with her striped high-rise hair in town, looked sideways at me, inhaled and announced, “How charming.”

She, too, had martini dry skewering skills. Dragging her back to say hi, she assessed the frenetic mass of flesh, looking up and down, sizing him up as he raved at me.  Frustrated at his missing the obvious, I hissed, “Mojo, THIS is my MOTHER...”

“Oh, Mrs. Gleason,” he chuckled, wiping his hand and extending. “How nice to meet you.”

Eye-rolling, she announced, “Charmed,” clearly not. Whatever Mojo he shot through his mahic fingers, a moment later, she was laughing along, leaning into him a little too much. Alchemic tilt realized.

No doubt he told my mother I was a good writer, that I got it deeper than many. He might’ve mentioned the Alternative Press cover story I’d written, that lost night in Memphis or picking up a wedding shirt at Nudie’s. But more likely, he flirted with her 1% more than just an empty threat – and she liked it.

Mojo’s magic was he always knew which button to push to get his desired result. What to say, what to do, how to sling it, drop it, roll it or set it on fire. There was no looking back, just full speed ahead. If you couldn’t hang, you shouldn’t be there anyway.

And the smart ones – like me – knew when to go home. 

Music business is a full frontal assault with back-knifing as wholesale sport. People come, people go, people betray and say “they’re always there for you.” Mojo Nixon – who made mincemeat of televangelist Pat Robertson on CNN’s crossfire – should’ve been a sitting duck. He was a powder keg of the wrong thing to say, in the middle of a fire pit. Somehow, though, his thinking was clear enough and his Zero F’s Given brazen enough that he was indestructible.

A radio stint in Cincinnati, reunion gigs for Kinky Friedman at Austin’s iconic Continental Club were moments. His legendary runs with the Toad Liquors, a ninja death squad of a raucous road band comprised of Earl B Freedom, Pete Wetdawg Gordon and Mike Middleton, barnstormed across America, seeking to burn down the tedium of 9-to-5 existence for every desk jockey and blue collar brave enough to come out.

He became SiriusXm Outlaw Country’s Loon in the Afternoon, the jock whose freefallin’ “Outlaaawwwwww Kuhntreeeeeeeeeeee...” became the signature siren cry. He did a NASCAR show, a political throwdown so saltily named I won’t tempt people’s server filters. To listen to Mojo was an existentialist assault into the pleasures of outlaw country, trucker anthems, alt-roots and other raw, ragged kinds of hard primitive.

Having moved from San Diego to Cincy, he was more in touch with the middle of the country. He was in the pulse point of the flyover, right where the South (Kentucky) met the Midwest (Ohio and Indiana). It was a perfect fit for speaking your mind, slathering what you loved in big talk and throwing razors at what stunk of self-interest of the worst kinds.

A few pounds heavier, Elvis sideburns a bit less bushy, Hawaiian shirt and Daisy Duke Carhartts a fashion statement of their own kind, Mojo Nixon was once again larger than life. Your best friend at the bar who spoke truth and didn’t look back, he was hilarious and you’d forgive him whatever the departure from your own buttoned up (or down) life.

My own world had moved so far into the mainstream, it was more an exercise in big smiles and joyful hugs when we’d cross paths. When you were there, not much needs to be said. The laughter is an encyclopedia of all that’s happened.
But Outlaw Country keeper Jeremy Tepper, himself once the manifest behind trucker label Rig Rock, cajoled and prodded me to get on one of their Outlaw Country Cruises. “You won’t believe it,” he said. “You have to trust me.”

Cruises? Blech. Old people, bad buffets, no phone or wifi service? No thank you.

Until I said “Yes,” and was swept away in a world of pure musical immersion, unfiltered and uncensored exhileration. And as Penny Lane explains to William Miller as they race to the Hyatt on Sunset in “Almost Famous” – “If you never take it serious, you never get hurt. If you never get hurt, you always have fun. AND if you ever get lonely, you just go to the record store and viisit all your friends..”

Visit all your friends?! The Outlaw Country Cruise was better than any record store, even the Tower on Sunset or in the Village in New York. Everywhere you turned: Steve Earle, Rosie Flores, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Ray Benson, the Mavericks, Dan Baird, NRBQ, Rodney Crowell, Carlene Carter, Elizabeth Cook, Warner Hodges, and more...

Leering on the top deck, Mojo Nixon stood like the Ambassador of All. More than Big Daddy, Boss Hog or Evel Knevil, he was surveying a world where people railed against things that blunted freedom, destroyed originality, small businesses, personal integrity or a sense of joy. These were his people, many suckled as young college students drinking stale beer and chanting along with his most rank choruses. 

“YOU!” he said, looking at a creature in a floor length Lilly Pulitzer caftan. “You still do it just like you did.”

He threw back his head, laughing at the perpendicular clothing that embodied the spirit of anarchy he embraced. What could be more outlaw than wearing something like that? He got the joke on the joke, and he loved it.

For five, six days each year – and one extra from California for West Coast punk – the Outlaw Cruisers could drink, yell, rock and party with complete abandon. Nobody was driving. Their favorite bands were on-board. Everyone was in on the heist.

Over those few days, a theoretically big deal music industry practitioner would turn back into a baby rock critic. The surge of the shows, the love for Lucinda Williams, John Anderson, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris gave the ships meaning, but it was expurgating the carbons and expectations that it made it so ragingly fun.

That first year, standing between Mojo and Bullethead, his long-time manager, both wearing matching suits, it was that moment when Penny Lane informs William Miller, “You... are home!” Leaning over me to share an aside, both men chuckled. Glaring up at them, Mojo just laughed harder.

It wasn’t mean, it was recognition. This was where I grew up, this was where I would always belong. Whether I fell away for years, or was there next week, there was a bond for people like us that transcended niceties and how it’s supposed to be done.

In that room, in that moment, there was only surrender to the music, lavishing in a love without conditions or expectations. Do your own thing, girl; be what they need, but come back to your friends and know we’re good with the Lilly clothes, the monograms you can see from space and that too serious way of taking everything on. You’re not like us, you’re exactly like us.

Broken toys, conscientious objectors, lost souls, human dumpsters, spewers of vitrol at how stupid so much of it is, the Outlaws and the Outlaw Cruisers are a breed unto themselves. It’s a crazy, magic, mixed up millefiori glass window with which to view the world. It is also the perfect distillation of the unhinged freedom that Mojo Nixon conjured every afternoon.
Walking out of a church women’s guild luncheon in Palm Beach, the text came, saying, “You got a minute?” 

Tepper and Bullethead, no doubt wanting to run in how much fun they were having at sea, were reaching out to someone who’s work landlocked them this year. Calling Tepper, his voice was off, “Uhm, they worked really hard... They tried...”

“WHAT?!” Turning into North County Road, cloistered by Banyan trees, I could tell the news wasn’t going to be good.

“He had an amazing set... maybe the best show he ever played last night... just killed it...”
“What’s going on...”

“MOJO.”

How could that be possible? The man who squalled, “You can’t kill me/ I will not die/ Not now, not ever, no never... Gonna live a long, long time...” over a variation of “Amazing Grace” was an insurrective manifesto for everyone raging against the machine. With Wet Dawg doubling down on jukejoint piano, the drums crashing and the guitars splaying across the track, it was a speedball of life.

“Holly...”

“Yeah, we need some help...”

The conversation was brief. Some details about breakfast, Adair, known as “the Bride of Mojo,” and their son being flown home from the cruise, what great spirits he was in, a nap taken – and a twister of whoa flying into the stars without another word spoken.

“Got it. Okay. I have two things that must happen. Stand by. Of course. I’m so, so sorry.”

They were waiting to cast off and return to the Atlantic. Dash Rip Rock, Bill Davis’ band, would play their show, dedicate it to the psychobilly life force, and let the Irish wake seethe with proper ballast.

What better place for Mojo to leave the building? A near perfect death. Close to matching his hombre amigo Country Dick Montana, who died onstage at a packed show at the Longhorn Saloon in Whistler, British Columbia, both died as they lived. Hard, happy, regaling the world with what made them both burn so bright.

Pulling the car over on the sawgrass, my throat was a fist. Like someone had punched me, but from the inside out. How can you explain all that Mojo stood for? The joy, the anti-bullying, the raging against crap and the exulting in a great solo?

And then the ugly crying began. It lasted too long and not long enough. It has gone on for hours, and it’s still breaking through. Beyond the rapier sharp mind, there was a big bold heart – and it was far more open than people realized.

Nobody called foul louder, but few people created as much acceptance and welcome as he did. For me, it was losing a chunk of my innocence, my wild-hearted years of chasing songs and stories. But it was also losing a touchstone of integrity in a world that has none.

Pressing my lips together, I can see him raving onstage in the Magnum Lounge, a sunken fishbowl pit of a smoked mirror bar. The band is pumping hard; the audience smashed together. Drops of sweat fling into the crowd as people are chanting about tying their pecker to their leg, to their leg – and it is glorious. 

For those few moments, everyone is 21, wild, free and ready. To be able to do that, to dissolve all limitations and realities in the name of utter surrender to euphoria, is powerful stuff. Sixteen hours later, I’m finally finishing this essay, raw voiced and swollen eyed, but marveling how long and how close I stood next to that flame.

Maybe because he was so generous, he didn’t incinerate the rest of us. Our last few talks had been about PRINE ON PRINE, how could he help, when were we going to do that book event in Cincinnati. “I’m ready, Holly. Just tell me when...”

Somehow it feels like he already did. And somehow, too, it feels like he’s still ready, and we just need to tell him when. After all, the chorus of “You Can’t Kill Me” closes – after maligning those who’d ban books, sex, where and how one can live -- with the professions “You can shoot my body full of holes, but you can't kill the spirit of rock 'n roll” and “my soul raves on forever...”

What more needs to be said? Exactly.
Go watch “Mojo Manifesto.” Turn up BoDayShus or Whereabouts Unknown. Get a cheap polyester tuxedo and head to the stock car track, all night dive or anywhere the unlikely convene.

AND IN HIS OWN WORDS: https://news.pollstar.com/2020/03/30/qs-with-mojo-nixon-now-more-than-ever/

Feb. 7, 2024

www.hollygleason.com

BEYOND THE CORAL REEFER: Jimmy Buffett Finds That One Particular Harbor

BEYOND THE CORAL REEFER: Jimmy Buffett Sails Into That One Most Particular Harbor

It was always the ne’er-do-well golf pros. Everything cool, somehow contraband and just beyond the true reach of a 12-, 13-year old girl who was too thin and absolutely curious about what the grown-ups didn’t see because they weren’t paying attention.

Songs about smugglers, washed out drifters, deadbeats and writers would drift from that backroom, occasionally with a waft of steel guitar and some short blasts of harmonica. The voice felt just like one of those naughty golf pros – warm, familiar, welcoming, wry – except it had some flannel to it, some molasses and a bit of cayenne as it flowed over notes that lifted and fell like the curtains on a slow, humid night.

He sang of a Florida I knew from going to Pompano, Delray, Palm Beach to work on my golf game during the six, seven months Cleveland wasn’t hospitable to that sort of thing. When his voice drifted out the bag room on a small gust of gasoline, dope smoke and sweat, my ears pricked up for the stories, always the short stories about pirates looking at 40, men going to Paris to seek something, lives intersecting in Montana...on Monday.

It was all so romantic. Even before I knew about “Margaritaville,” because I lived in a place and time before that Key West loser’s lament became the freak flag, good-time National Anthem. Somewhere in the delta between personal responsibility and screw it, that song plumbed the awareness of a man who knew better, but just didn’t care.

Jimmy Buffett must have been changing labels. I bought all those ABC/Dunhill Records – it seemed – remaindered at Record Theater at the Golden Gate Mall. A1A after the single lane coastal road that ran along the east coast of Florida; the sunk skiff Livin’ & Dyin’ in Three Quarter Time that was too hillbilly on first listen, but “West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown” reminded me of too many babysitters; White Sport Coat & A Pink Crustacean who’s “Grapefruit Juicy Fruit” felt like something I was living, a Gatsby world for a barely teenage Catholic driving to another golf tournament, as well as the slinky “They Don’t Dance Like Carmen No More” that saw my father wax rhapsodic about Carmen Miranda and then wince when “Why Don’t We Get Drunk & Screw” rolled up.

We didn’t think about “labels” then, just “cool” or “lame.” Cool, of course, came in degrees. Buffett was that uncle your parents wouldn’t let babysit, even if he could talk to them about sailing, literature or Gulf Coast resorts. That made his sangfroid that much more delicious to a kid sitting on a worktable in a back room, not getting all the references.

“Margaritaville” wasn’t a hit when people started singing it, just the self-confession of the guy who drank himself out of the deal – and wasn’t 100% sure he cared as the hangover throbbed. He was coping, tequila, ice, lime and blender. For a washout, it was perfect.

All the sun slaves loved it. Work hard, party hard, recover while you you’re onto the next.

I loved that he painted this Florida of black top turned grey by the sun, the old people in plastic shoes, Walgreens and crusty ne’er do wells in bar rooms watching the ceiling fans turn. He got the Key West of Hemingway, who I already adored, Tennesseee Williams, who would beguile me in college, as well as the next wave macho literary and creative brios Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Guy de le Valdene.

Key West was for pirates. Dusty, dirty, chickens roaming the streets, space between buildings that held Lord knows. It felt like electric creativity when my father and I would escape from “practice,” head South over the 7 Mile Bridge and set to walking the streets like the tourists we were: an older Dad and a scrawny little tomboy, both sponges for whatever was in the air.

He’d lie to Mom about where we were, that’s how I knew it was good. And when Buffett’s songs came pouring out of a muscle car’s rolled down window or in that badly-ventilated back room, I was right there at Sloppy Joe’s on a barstool next to my father.
“This is the stuff, pro,” he’d tell me. “THIS is... the stuff.”

Buffett was snide about the right stuff, tender with the good stuff and savoring of the naughty stuff. Even before he turned into a billionaire industrial conglomerate of frozen drink machines and retirement communities, he understood not just what mattered, but how.

If the Eagles were “The Dirty Dozen,” Buffett was Butch Cassidy’s “Sundance Kid.” He had the escape route planned; he wasn’t backing down and he wasn’t afraid to hit the tricky spot. At a time when Southern California rock included Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, J.D. Souther, America, Neil Young to some, Poco to others, Buffett was the Southern cousin, a bit more leaning to the folkie side of singer/songwriter.

He ran with Jerry Jeff Walker, Jesse Winchester, Steve Goodman. He got those traditions. He exhumed Lord Tom Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk (& A Holy Man),” which he delivered with a hilarious ramble on You Had To Be There. It was that notion of street musicians, playing for tips and vibes; a secret handshake and a wink to a counterculture that was as romantic as it was pungent.

“People ask me, where in the hell is Margaritaville?” Buffett says on You Had To Be There, after referencing the possibility it’s a little island in your mind or the bottom of a tequila bottle. Then he proclaims, “It’s anywhere you want it to be, baby...”

Postcards from a life I didn’t have agency over. Yet. People I didn’t know. Yet.
But I leaned into the poetry, loving the notion of captains and kids, characters painted with same detail John Prine conjured. But where Prine could be profoundly sad or lonely or conscience-tugging, Buffett was more the brio of the literati he was running with.

Dreaming dreams inside the songs has a strange centrifugal force. Like so many people who drift into the world not quite sure where they’re headed, it can pull things you never intended to you. Alex Bevan, my first folk singing idol who befriended a wet behind the ears kid, knew him from their days playing National Association of Campus Activities showcases, trying to get regional college dates. He’d talk of their intersecting wages of the road: afternoons in laundromats, talking about Goodman, Jerry Jeff and whatever.

Buffett hadn’t blown up yet. Bevan made him seem real-sized in a way. Even sneaking into “FM,” a film about free-form, big business rock radio, with cameos from Buffett and Ronstadt, the notion of pirating someone’s concert for broadcast seemed delightfully on point. In “Urban Cowboy,” he took that out West cowboy nonsense and lacquered dancefloor country with his zesty “Livingston Saturday Night,” no doubt informed by his writer friends who fled Key West for Montana.

And then I fell out of the sky at St. Andrews School in Boca Raton, seeking to be recruited for college as a golfer. It was a co-ed school with very rich kids who were sophisticated in far more fast-track way than Ohio. That was where I met Valerie.

Valerie de la Valdene, heart shaped face, tilted smile and a wash of ebony hair falling across her eye, was the daughter of a count. She was also Buffett’s godchild, and like me, a young’un used to running with older kids; she couldn’t drive, but she was one of us. If Eloise had been raised by adventure hunters, she’d’ve been Valerie, who ran up and down Worth Avenue barefoot, laughing madly and plotting the next adventure.

Valerie, who got us the tickets to Buffett’s annual Christmas show at Sunrise Musical Theater in Ft Lauderdale, who said, “You should review this for the Bagpiper,” our school paper. Being such a big Florida icon – even then –it seemed to be the most perfect idea. Until they used that issue of the paper for the annual fundraising drive, missimg my smirking reference to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (& Screw)?”
What would Jimmy Buffett do? It became my sextant and compass. Looking at the Dean, who was braced for some kind of antics, I exhaled slowly, smiled innocently, and said, “Obviously these people are not music lovers...”

Jack Bower could barely contain the laughter. His face turned red; the howl was trapped in his throat. A theatrical man, husky but not fat, his eyes danced as he looked at me, suggesting I keep talking without saying a word.

“Dean Bower, that IS the name of the song, and it was a climax to the show. It was bawdy and brazen, but also self-deprecating and self-impaling. To not say it happened would be to not tell the story properly.”

He couldn’t take the mealymouthed sweetness. I was not that kid. He knew it. Barking as a laugh and his voice escaped, he managed, “Get out of my office. And please, Holly, be smarter please. The donors are important... They’re paying the bills.”

Turning in the doorway, I tried one Hail Mary pass. “Would it help if you knew I went with Valerie?”

I smiled. He laughed harder. It was implicit: while Buffett was the dope smugglers’ personal hero, he was also a saint in South Florida. Though his manatee awareness campaign was a few years off, he quietly did much for the region that was over-run by Haitian refugees, other Spanish speakers, profiteers who’d pave the Everglades and other entities to check.

“Get out, stay out of trouble. You know what to do.”

Yes, whatever Jimmy Buffett might do.

Still, he was quicksilver. Sightings all over the state. “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.” Concerts at Blossom Music Center, Sunrise, Rolling Stone magazine, softball games against publications and radio stations. It was a different time, and place.

One day during college, while clerking at the Miami Herald, a call came through to the general features desk. “HELLohhhhh,” the voice came down the line, “How are you today?”

No one was ever friendly on that extension. The euphoria felt real, the voice familiar.

“I was wondering if you could help me... I am trying to figure out where to get some good Thai food down here in Dade County. Can you help me?”
“Well, sir, uhm, we really don’t provi...” I was trying to avoid making a Herald endorsement.

“Honey, would it help if I introduced myself? This is Jimmy Buffett, and if the restaurant sucks, I promise we won’t get you fired.”

I turned purple. Of course, he won’t. He gets the plight of the late teenager/early twenty-something. I gulped; didn’t want him to think I’m stupid.

Putting him on hold, I asked a couple of the folks on the desk that I trusted. Got back on the phone, trying to “sound” like a pro, I picked up, “Okay, not sure where you are in the county, but the place you want is called Tiger Tiger... It’s down Dixie, south of the Gables, and it’s delicious. I think you’ll like it.”

“Awesome, baby. And if you can get out of there, you’re welcome to join us.”

He laughed and was gone. Dixie Highway is an easy navigation, especially in the ‘80s. Just get to Coral Gables and start looking; that restaurant was dark wood. It’d be easy to spot.

Whether it was a pleasantry or a genuine invitation, I was too intimidated to show up. Besides, real life drive-bys are only magic when you’re not stalking.

A year later, I would get to interview Dan Fogelberg, playing the NAMM Convention in Hollywood, Florida. He had a bluegrass album, High Country Snows, coming, and I stalked my story with a vengeance. It’s hard to say no to a kid with shiny straight hair in a striped t-shirt with hope in their eyes; the tour manager agreed, saying I needed to chase their limo to Ft. Lauderdale – and I could meet him in the restaurant, talking while he had his dinner. Nina Avrimades, his manager, was there; I tried to not be too excited, but I knew her name from Buffett’s record covers.

The Fogelberg interview went impossibly well. Turned out he’d had his dinner sent to his room; he was only going to have soup with me. But he ended up staying for the entire hour. When he left to go change, I set upon the lovely blond-haired woman, asking questions about what she did, how she did it.

“You know, he normally hates these things,” she confided. “Dan genuinely enjoyed that.”

Screwing up my courage, I asked the big ask.
I opened with the obvious, “You know Jimmy’s the Grand Kahuna down here. No one is bigger.”

She laughed. She saw the set-up, and she knew he wasn’t “in record cycle” or “touring.” We left it that she’d think about it, see what she could do. A couple months later, Buffett called my dorm room – and the Herald ran the piece.

So did Country Song Round Up, the world’s oldest country fanzine. My canny editor there told me about Buffett’s connections to Nashville, the reporting for Billboard magazine, the days hanging out at the Exit/In, Closed Quarters and the general creative hauntings. Suddenly, the Jerry Jeff Walker stuff, the steel guitars and the actual country undertow made sense.

It opened my mind to how impossible things can merge and converge; made Willie Nelson not the only one who could tap authenticity in seemingly opposing realms of music. But where Nelson was truly making country safe for the alternos, Buffett was slyly interjecting country music into songs people loved and never letting them realize it was “liver.”

It always seemed to be that way with this Buffett character. He existed in our world like twinkle lights in a bar; look up and smile at the twinkle in whatever other clutter was around. He knew poetry, knew how to deliver it – and he knew how to revel like an Endymion Mardi Gras float, tossing ravers out to the fans like so many fistfuls of beads.

Signed by Tony Brown, it wasn’t that Buffett came full circle, so much as music had turned all the way around to where the kid born in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in Alabama started his journey. Sure, there’d been Lear jets, misadventures, crazy stories, mysterious substances, inside jokes, sports teams and “60 Minutes,” but there was more to come. Writing his own books about Joe Merchant and memoirs, launching a chain of cheeseburger restaurants that turned into hotels, Broadway shows, football stadiums, creating a space for the regular guy to get a little tropicrazy and have the license to let your freak flag fly high.

All that was ahead of him. Records were a place to give his creativity a home. He was still everybody’s favorite “oh, yeah” songwriter/singer/supernova, but the Parrothead ubiquity was just starting to quicken. “One Particular Harbor” from that era was beautiful, a lulling melody that spoke of refuge and peace/piece of mind. It wasn’t what country radio was doing, but the video – possibly shot in Polynesia – was close to four minutes of mental escape every time it rolled up on CMT or TNN.
That escape was everything. As MTV blared and pulsated, Buffett was saner, smarter rebellion against 9-to-5 and the status quo. His touring business grew more robust without radio; his legendary Coral Reefers became more formidable. At different times, Timothy B. Schmitt (the ether-high vocalist with the Eagles), Josh Leo, Tim Krekel, Will Kimbrough, especially the tenderest hearted songwriter/guitarist/ Mac MacAnally, all artists in their own right.

Suddenly, it wasn’t about chasing hits, but the longevity of classic tracks, the opportunity to convene with your Parrotheaded brethren, to sing these songs together. Buffett was the grandmaster – and he took his duties seriously.

He used that power to launch Margaritaville Records, where he signed original Nashville compatriot Marshall Chapman for her It’s About Time: Live from the Tennessee State Women’s Prison project and a neophyte trickster/writer acolyte of Jerry Jeff and Keith Sykes named Todd Snider, whose mostly talking blues “Alright Guy” caused an alternative/triple a sensation.

Snider, a free spirit, and Chapman, a lanky rock guitarist with blazing charisma and a drawl for days, embodied that notion of outside the lines is the only place to color. Original voices and perspectives, they brought it with a burning intensity as different as the other – and as contrasting to Buffett’s cool

Chapman, opening for Buffett at the Hollywood Bowl, knew how to bring a Chrissie Hynde panache to a bare bones rock’n’soul grooved attack. She and her Love Slaves left those fans panting for more, and when the main dish is Buffett, that’s saying something.

Saying not just how astute a judge of talent he was, but his willingness to share the stage with a woman known as “the female Mick Jagger” in the ‘70s and the sly Snider, a songwriter who loved to see what would happen, including wandering off from the venue on one tour and not look back. That is all part of the carnival, the glorious feast Auntie Mame promised in the original Broadway show. If it gets twisted, that’s part of it.

So Buffett became an icon, larger than life – and somehow still inviting. A Saturday morning superhero, he was the kind of cartoon who was so frisky his skin almost seemed not enough to hold him. The tales of shots fired at his plane over Jamaica; the tales of adventures that inspired William McKeen’s Mile Marker 0; the charities he anchored and advocated for in New Orleans, the Hamptons, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

But even then, it was the random Buffett, the sightings of the man in the wild. Running into him in a purple label Ralph Lauren tux, where he got up and sang some for the wedding of one of his friend’s sons in Palm Beach; laughing jocularly at a CMA Awards after-party after singing “5 O’Clock Somewhere” with Alan Jackson; on his bicycle on County Road in Palm Beach, dropping by to see friends at PB Boys Club or reports that he was out surfing with friends.

Of course, he was. For while his brand was the guy who lived his life on his terms – St. Barths, St Kitts, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Jimmy Buffett actually inhabited a devil-may-care world where he just was. Not rejecting the fanfare, but laughing it off as he went.

Which isn’t to say he ever stopped thinking about what his next creative step might be. A million years ago, reading the Sunday New York Times and Saturday Wall Street Journal at the pool at a fancy Vegas hotel, he spent a little time with an emerging country artist, sharing some wisdom, talking about football and demonstrating how little one needed to change. That lesson served Kenny Chesney well; he remains indifferent to fame, investing his heart in the buzzy byproducts of making people happy with glorious concerts that remind them the joy of being alive.

When he played the annual Everglades Benefit in Palm Beach County, usually with some splashy single name guest, the high dollar tickets flew out. When the Gulf Coast was destroyed by weather, he got a few of his famous friends – and came in to raise millions of dollars. Big shows with an undertow of fun within the wreckage, offering hope as it solved or helped with problems that were critical.

If Springsteen wrote “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive,” Buffett lived it. Top-to-bottom, front-to-back, inside-out and upside-down. It was a tilt-a-whirl, centrifugal force of ebullience – and it never flagged. Whether Las Vegas, peaking out from the wings, or West Palm Beach’s “what name is it this year?” amphitheater in the swelter, it always delivered exuberance and delight. If you came with a squad or a date, we are all one once the singers slithered onstage, the tin drums started their rolls and the churn started turning.

In 2018, fresh from induction into the SOURCE Hall of Fame, which recognizes women in the music industry behind the scenes, I boarded a plane to fly across the sea. All alone, my destination was Paris, France. To mark the triumph of the unseen, it didn’t matter that no one else could join me.

Raised on the poetry within songs, hearing Jimmy Buffett sing “He Went To Paris” at La Cigale seemed the most perfect way to hold that young girl who didn’t quite understand all the grownup emotions, but recognized the power in those songs. Deceptively engaging, Buffett – like the Texas songwriters, the wild authors and filmmakers of Key West – knew that if there wasn’t conflict or a yearning, the song didn’t lance whatever was stuck in the listener’s heart.
It wasn’t that I was numb from the music business, but it extracts a toll on women who don’t fly by their looks or native charms. I needed to remember those moments when a song sounded like something I could – and must – touch, and my heart sped up at the way the images often stacked up to create some truth about living.

Paris, as Audrey Hepburn declared, is always a good idea. The streets alive with passion for life, the different size glasses of wine you can order, the fabulous cafes, the bookstores, walking along the Seine, over the ancient bridges, the Deux Magots and Café des Flores, as well as the D’Orsay, Marmottan. Picasso Museum and yes, the teeny Hemingway Bar at the Ritz.

Stopping at Le Roc, supposedly the oldest Catholic church in Paris, I knelt in a chilly stone cathedral and wept for all that life had given me. So many blessings, adventures, wonders, people and dreams that came true; not just my own dreams, but the dreams I’d midwifed for artists who didn’t always see what I dreamt for them... artists who didn’t always see how their music changed lives.

Sitting so close to the stage later that night, taking notes to always remember, I was overwhelmed by how much joy could be delivered; also, the heroism washed out characters could have being true to their own shattered lives. “He Went To Paris” was, indeed, the miracle I believed it would be.

“Looking to answers... for questions that bothered him so...”
La Cigale, there in the 18th arronddisement, had quite the history. Built in 1894, Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier had played there, later Jean Cocteau would stage avant garde evenings. It would become a movie theater in 1940, ultimately falling into a screening house for Kung Fu, then X rated films, but always it remained. Deemed a historic building in the 1980s, the French recognized its intrinsic essence – and Philippe Stark was drafted to return it to its former glory.

The metaphor was not lost on me, or the fact this less than 1000 seat venue was where Buffett chose to play. Like Key West in the ‘70s, it was the fabulous dissolute chic without resources that deliver dignity and delight right where you are.

I had traveled alone, but I sat in that row at La Cigale with every me I’d ever been. The little girl run off with the naughty golf pros, the baby rock critic people didn’t take seriously until they saw my words, the young dreamer working in a world where a journalist’s stories weren’t vanity, but a truth for the tribes, a voice that shaped how people saw the worlds and the artists who mattered, a business reporter, a major label department head who hated the way decisions were never for the artists, a boutique artist development and media relations innovator who’d fight for her clients, a battered survivor of a callous industry, a truth-teller when it mattered – and nobody wanted to listen.

It got crowded in that row. But it also got epic, because Jimmy Buffett had also flown into headwinds over and over again. He never won a Grammy; only had quantifiable hits on country radio with people like Alan Jackson. He didn’t care.

Jimmy Buffett believed in his songs, his friends, the characters who’d inspired him. As long as he had those people, a little imagination, he’d find a way. Oh, and that way made him a billionaire; he had the last laugh on the music business know-it-alls.

Not that that was his motivation. Standing onstage, with the smile slicing his face like wide open like a ripe mango, eyes sparkling at the naughtiness of Parrotheads converging on Paris in some kind of electric mojito acid test, there was revelry to be had – and songs, poetic and ribald to be sung.

That way the joy and the mission: honor what is however it was, remember the beauty, hang onto the high jinks and never, ever doubt the songs.

For someone who tilts at windmills, gets treated more poorly than people would ever imagine, whose best friend once squealed – driving around the streets of LA as two unhinged medium-20-somethings – “You could be HER, Holly Gee!” as Dylan’s “Sweetheart Like You” poured from her tape deck, La Cigale took back that fate which stretches you across a rack until you break and gave me back the effervescent joy of serving the music. That was what it’s about...

Even when the king of the parrot pirates was out flying his planes or chasing the sun, talking about good times or creating more memories, he was always braising those songs. Living like he sang, laughing like he wrote, it was all the same beautiful ecosystem so many people drew their moments of release, of elation, of crazy wild “oh yeah” from.

It was money I probably shouldn’t have spent, but it was the best value I’d seen in a long time. On the plane back, I smiled and exhaled and mindfully let all the good that is my life flow through me. “This is what being present feels like,” I marveled.

Jimmy Buffett, more than anything else, was absolutely, truly, completely present. Like his friends from Key West, adventurers all, he understood: Immersion is everything. Dive deep. Go big. Go crazy. Have fun. Feel it all, revel in it – and let what makes you feel alive be your navigational buoy.

It was a lesson that mattered profoundly.

When the call came at 5:11 a.m. from Kenny Chesney who’d texted me the night before, he didn’t have to speak. Just “he’s gone,” and gravity fell out of the room. It was dark, too early for morning to even think about breaking, and yet...

When we hung up the phone, I pulled the new rescue spaniel to me. Petted his silky head and felt tears fall off my face onto his ears. “Oh, Corliss,” I told the little guy, “you have no idea. To find someone who lived as most artists who pretend to, who embodies all the happiness that comes from being present, who wrote about places that mattered and being ripped down and forgotten...”

So many songs, so many moments, so much life.

And not just Buffett’s, but our own. I found “He Went To Paris” rising in my throat. Not because I called it up, but something in my muscle memory sent it through the transom. Singing softly to a red cocker spaniel who was licking the tears from my face, I couldn’t believe when I got to the end...

There it was: the words the old man, who’d seen World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, great love and horrible loss, had told Buffett more than half a century ago. Suddenly, there was the elegy for us all.

“Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
“But I had a good life all the way.”

www.hollygleason.com

Dan Einstein & the Essence of What Matters: Unfinished Business, Prine & Sweet 16th's Grace

“He doesn’t talk to college papers,” said the voice at the other end of the phone.

“But college students are the future. They’re the next generation of fans,” I protested.

“He doesn’t talk to college papers.” CLICK.

I blinked twice. John Prine had a mail order record label. No one I knew knew who he was. Who was this rude person who wouldn’t even listen. I lamented for this empathetic soul who’d written about an OD’d Viet Nam vet, forgotten old people, a middle aged housewife shipwrecked in her marriage. If only Prine knew...

And then John Prine booked into the Carefree Theater, which ran smart movies and the occasional concert. Even though it was West Palm Beach, Doug Adrianson, my editor at The Miami Herald, would understand the value of this performance. He immediately assigned the story. 

The concert promoter was thrilled. A million people across the state would read the feature; it would help sell tickets on the other Florida shows they were promoting. Just one thing: I wouldn’t talk to that Dan Einstein. They could set-up the interview, but I wasn’t speaking to the rude man who’d hung up on me.

The day before the appointed time, Jeff Chabon, Fantasma Production’s publicist, begged me to please call the management office. “He’s a great guy,” he insisted. “We went to college board stuff together: him from UCLA, me from Arizona.”
“He’s a jerk. I don’t care.” I responded.
“Holly, they want to make sure you’re not a psycho.”

“You don’t want me to make this call...”

Sometimes you do what you gotta do. I picked up the phone, listened to a half-baked apology, said I didn’t care. I asked tersely, “Is it okay for him to call me now?” 

“Yes, tomorrow at 2.”

“Great.”
”He doesn’t like doing interviews, just know that.”
“Okay. Thank you.”

And at 2 pm on the dot a slightly sand-papered voice called, asking, “Is Holly there?”
We talked for over two hours. About so many things, the Midwest, Aimless Love, old songs, home cooking, country music, Johnny and Rosanne Cash, traveling the country – and not being too famous, just famous enough.

When I took a job at a competing paper, my story was spiked. When I went to review the Carefree show for the Palm Beach Post, because I knew small labels lived by people knowing they’re out there, they put me front row. Prine stepped over the speakers during the opening “Lulu Walls,” said, “Hey, Holly...,” scared me to death and forgot the next verse of his song.

Waiting after his set to apologize for wasting his time, Prine could’ve cared less. He wanted to tell me about Tribute To Steve Goodman, the tribute recording for his best friend who’d died from leukemia. Told me I should call the office and get a copy.

“Your office doesn’t like me,” I said. He laughed.

“Well, you call,” he encouraged. “And they’ll send it to you.”

“The Palm Beach Post isn’t that important,” I explained back in the days when advance cassettes on good tape was a meaningful expense.

“They’ll send it,” Prine assured, eyes twinkling. “Because I’m gonna make’em.”

Calling for the advance music, Dan Einstein asked if we could clear the air. Chagrined by the killed story, apologizing profusely, I agreed. He told me about the late folk singer, who I knew from Alex Bevan, my childhood idol who’d opened several Midwestern runs, about his sense of humor, love of baseball (especially the Chicago Cubs), his amazing family, his years long battle with leukemia. You could tell this voice on the other end of the phone really cared.

Barely out of college, I summoned the courage to tell him the story of visiting my aunt in Chicago as a young teen and seeing Goodman’s “Soundstage” on the local PBS station. So fired up by the broadcast, I made someone drive me down to the tv studio, where I was sure they would be loading out the gear. It was dark and abandoned when we got there.

That made him laugh. He promised to send me the advance cassettes, to Fed Ex them three day “because we’re a small label, and, well, we cut costs where we can.”

In the middle ‘80s, the idea of “running a label” for an artist with actual traction seemed crazy. Sure, Alex Bevan, my idol, had Fiddler’s Wynde, but he had the local record stores and his shows to sell records at. John Prine – or Steve Goodman – were nationally known. Major accounts weren’t going to deal with a handful of titles here, a new release with maybe 100 copies there. And yet, with the customer cards and mail order business, Oh Boy and Red Pajamas were making it work.

Dan Einstein was figuring out how to do the impossible. Over time, he figured out how to not just get the rack jobbers and accounts to do business with them, but to pay upon delivery. In a net 90 day business, Goodman and Prine were strictly COD. It took years, but they got there.

It was fascinating to hear the machinations of building allies, the stories behind pulling off the concert at the Aerie Crown Theater in Chicago with the local folkies, plus Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Arlo Guthrie, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

He would tell me stories, too, about the punk heyday in LA. Going to shows at the Masque, Madame Wongs, the Starwood. Tales of the Germs, X, the Cramps and the Screaming Sirens, booking the Motels at UCLA long before “Take The L” and “Only The Lonely” were hits. Through his eyes and words, I got to glimpse the raw demi-monde of a scene that felt like fire.

Sometimes I think we’d invent reasons to call each other, to just talk. Him, a college drop-out staking his claim with a small artist management company where he could build these crazy labels, me a music critic for an outer ring daily paper and freelancer with a growing national reputation through Tower Records Pulse!, Trouser Press, Performance, Rock & Soul, Billboard, HITS and Mix.

When Billy Vera had a moment with “At This Moment” during Michael J. Fox’s famous breakdown on “Family Ties,” Dan told me about Vera’s band the Beaters, about Peter Bunetta the drummer and emerging producer. The Palm Beach Post was early on that story, breaking two days before the Associated Press.

In the winter of that year, I was going to be in Nashville doing interviews and a little media training for CBS Records. He was going to be there for publishing administrator BUG Music’s new office celebration. “We should meet,” he said. 

I wasn’t so sure. What we had on the phone was great. Why ruin it? Why run the risk of... What? I didn’t know, but that first call, that first hang up nagged at me.

“Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun... and maybe I can get you into the show BUG’s doing with John, and John Hiatt, Dave Alvin, Marshall Chapman, some more people.”
And so, we met. Sat at Tavern on the Row, laughing and making small talk like we’re always known each other. He wasn’t as old as he seemed on the phone, and he really liked to laugh. We could’ve sat there from the end of the day to the show, but he had to go check on Prine. He left me with, “You’re on the list. I’ll see you there.”

Days when you go from interview to interview, a media training session wedged in, maybe a meeting with someone like Tony Brown to hear what he’s excited about can be exhausting. Was I going to even be awake by 10? But it was Prine, Haitt, maybe Peter Case, too.

The venue, long since bulldozed for what is now the massive Warner Nashville Building, was low-ceilinged and poorly ventilated. Just walking in, it was so hot, you felt the humidity. Unzipping my coat, looking around, I couldn’t find him... I just sat down where I could find a table, a little disappointed. Of course he has to work; he had the headliner. He was busy. What part of this did I not know? But before the first act came on, there he was, dragging a chair behind him. He knew that late, there wouldn’t be one; he brought his own.

That was Dan. Ahead of what needed to happen, ready with the solution.

After the show, he took me back to say “hi” to John, who admonished him to make sure I got to my car. Standing on the corner of 16th Avenue, the small talk continued until he finally kissed me. It was not Paris after the war, but it was a dam breaking. Stammering, because I’ve never ever thought in those terms, I kissed him back, then said, “I think we should probably go home.”

Whirling, it was one of those, “he likes me” moments. The knowing someone who you really think is smart actually truly likes you. You drift through the next few hours, sleep some, but a little more electric than before. What did it mean? Did it matter? Who knew...

Walking into Warner Brothers the next morning, I was greated by Janice Azrak barking, “You slut! You whore!” and regaling all in earshot about seeing me kissing some boy on the streets of Music Row last night. There were no secrets in that era Nashville, what was I – in a bright pink winter bomber jacket – thinking? Trying to explain, it was a pile-on. Embarrassed, shy, what do you say?

Nothing. I didn’t even know where the boy was staying. I didn’t have time to think.

Rodney Crowell, the great white interview whale, was that afternoon. After three years of asking anyone who might have a notion how, doing his wife Rosanne Cash for the cover of Coconut Grove’s alt-weekly Grapevine, having had multiple publicists from the high cred Network Ink intercede for me with their assistant, it was to be. There wasn’t a record to tie it to, but having been a fan of his writing, it was a chance to unpack bruised romanticism, life as Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band wingman, a producer on the rise and a maverick talent who’d signed a poster from his last Warner Bros. record to me after I sent a copy of my review from Rollins College’s paper to the publicist at his label,
The interview was incredible. Crowell is a good and easy talker. He drank a gallon of water, unraveling stories of growing up in the “white trash” part of Houston, the road with Harris, writing pop and country hits for the Dirt Band, living in California and moving to Nashville. Leaving there, I was levitating.

When I got back to my friend Ben’s house, there was a note with a number. I called, asked and was put through to the room. A suddenly formal voice said, “Uhm, may I take you to dinner?”

“Well, yes,” I said, still afterglowing from a great interview. Suddenly awkward, “But, uhm, one thing...”

“Okay. I mean, I was thinking we could go somewhere kind of nice.”

“I interviewed Rodney Crowell, and I really don’t want to change out of these clothes,” I hedged.

“Okay, that’s fine.”

“Well, I’m in a yellow sort of sweat shirt and sweat pants,” I explained. “I was, uhm, thinking we could go to... Krystal?”

“KRYSTAL?”

“Is that okay?”
“I was thinking I could take you to a nice dinner...”
“I know, but I would really like to just go to Krystal.”

There was silence.

“If you don’t mind. I mean, it’s really nice that you want to do that.”

“I have John’s credit card. He said to go use it.”

“You don’t have to tell him...” I hedged. He laughed.

And Krystal it was. For a handful of teeny double cheeseburgers. Three hours of talking over fountain cokes. What about? Who knew? Where we’d been. What we thought, or figured. We only stopped to pick-up my friend Ben Payne at the airport, whom we dropped off, and rode around for another hour talking.

I left the next day. When I got home, there was a message on the machine to call Dan and let him know I’d made it back safely.. It was a different number. When I called, John Prine answered, said, “Hey, Holly...,” then called out, “Daaaaaaannnnnnn, it’s a girl.”

And so it began. 

Unbeknownst to me, the man who wrote “Donald & Lydia” and “Paradise” was our Cupid, finding ways to throw us together. Telling Dan to take me to the Grammys a few weeks later, “if she’s a reporter, she’ll love that. She can file for that little paper.” Hiring me to write the bio for German Afternoons, so they could fly me to Washington, DC for Prine’s sold-out Wolf Trap show. The second Farm Aid, where it was brutally cold in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the dressing rooms were masking taped sections of the fieldhouse floor. Making Dan come to do settlement when they had Florida shows, then taking me out on the run with them.

Funny thing is: it didn’t take much. Anyone who talked with Dan, fell in love with him. So smart, so many ideas of how to make things work that one couldn’t figure out. From him, I learned the idea of your friend is my friend. Cathy Hendrix in Atlanta, running a small label. Mike Leonard outside Chicago, doing stories for NBC’s “Today.” Marina Chavez, their once receptionist, who would become one of roots music’s pre-eminent photographers. So many names; all they ever had to say was “Dan told me to give you a call...”

And it worked that way the other way, too. The Illinois Entertainer. David Gans at MIX. Cowboy Jack Clement, the legendary producer and Sun Records’ creative spark. Steve Berlin when Los Lobos was on tour for Will The Wolf Survive. Always, “Hello” and “What do you need?”

That was Dan’s heart, and he brought it out in others. Just as the somewhat shy, often unwilling to let you know how really accomplished he was man kept making impossible strides and creating magic and unthinkable things.

By the very next Grammys, Oh Boy and Red Pajamas had two of the five nominations in the inaugural Best Contemporary Grammy category. Tribute to Steve Goodman, with all those loving performances from the Chicago folk community and a few famous friends, and German Afternoons showed that artists who didn’t fit the system could make a mark making music on their terms.

When I saw the nominations, I screamed. Dan, being Dan, said, “Well, I guess this mean it’s working.”

Working? The mail order business, with the comment cards. The occasional catalogues to tempt people into other albums. The one-by-one accounts. Slowly, purposefully, building to something that almost paralleled what the big labels did on a far smaller scale.

“We have to do something special,” I remember on a late night phone call, trying to come up with some way to mark this moment. Whether he knew the significance or not, as a reporter, I recognized what they’d done out of three sunlit rooms in a slightly worndown building built for Marion Davies by William Randolph Hearst.

Having made many trips to see my boyfriend and eventual fiancée, I had found a street fashionable boutique on Melrose where they made clothing out of very old kimonos patched together to give the beautiful fabric new life. Claudia Grau and her staff would visit with Dan and I when we would go to Melrose, talking about local music gossip, people on the scene and life as an indie label.

When I asked if she’d consider making me a dress, the answer was yes. When we were in the store discussing it, they asked Dan to try on a pair of pants they were thinking of making as a unisex option. Laughing about trying them on the “girls dressing room,” he came out – and they looked at each other smiling.

Were they really thinking about genderless clothing in the later ‘80s? Hard to say.

But when Dan picked up my dress and bolero to bring back to Silver Lake, he was aghast. 

“BooBoo, what’s wrong?” I asked, not sure why he was so thrown.

“They... uhm...”

“Yes.”

“They made me... a cumber bund and a bow tie. They...”

“Is there something wrong?”

“They wouldn’t let me pay them for it. They said to wear it for good luck.”

“Is it ugly?”

“No, no... It’s...”

He reached into the bag, where it had been lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. Pieces of kimono in rich, deep tones had been sewn into what a man wears with a tux. Judging from the size, it would fit perfectly. I smiled. Those women wanted to give him so love in exactly they way they knew how.

“It’s beautiful, Dan. I think you should put it on. I think we need to leave soon. It’s pre-telecast and it’s LA... and we have to valet.”

At the Shrine Auditorium, back in the smaller more community music industry days, people were glad-handing, waiting for the doors to open to begin the awards to small for network television. We sat down hear the front; John, me, Dan, Al Bunetta and his wife Dawn watching the winners be elated and thank the people who mattered to them. The Winans, a gospel group with family members in seemingly every category, were so euphoric we decided we had to go hear their music.

And then it was Best Contemporary Folk... and the winner is... Tribute to Steve Goodman. Dan hesitated more than a beat. Prine reached over, with a big smile, and said to his friends, “You better go get it.”

It was a blur. What they said, what happened next. If the year before, Dan had found me a pay phone to file from – because as a date, I wasn’t in the press room – then kept people away from me, while trying to make the connection work with the remote transmitter, this year, he was a big winner.

“I can’t believe this,” he whispered when he got back from the press gauntlet. “How did we do this?”

“Well, you booked a theater... you called Stevie’s friends,” I joked. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. 

“You understand this mean’s Stevie’s not forgotten,” he said. “And all those people who loved him, they’re not going to be forgotten either. Those songs now maybe live on...”
“Yes, Dan, I do. Because that’s what you do. You make sure people aren’t lost, or overlooked, or forgotten.”

He squeezed my hand. “Maybe. And when this is over, we’re going to get Chinese food. Or the Pantry. Or Astro. Or something.”

“Hey, can we just be here right now?”

Being here now could mean so many things, because Dan’s ability to love and be curious went so many places just in LA. The San Diego Zoo. The train to San Juan Capistrano. Pacific Coast Highway north until we decided to come home. The tea room at I. Magnin, “because who would ever believe people lived this way? And we can still pretend.” The carousel on the Santa Monica Pier. Shows everywhere where he knew everyone.

When The Palm Beach Post fired me – alleging things that couldn’t be further from reality or the truth – Dan was on a plane the next day. “Don’t worry,” he said when I called him in tears. “We’re going to figure this out.”

Picking him up in Miami, as I’d done so many times, he announced, “I think what you should do is move to LA... and become the world class rock critic you are. Screw small town papers. If The Herald doesn’t have room, then come to LA.”

“But Dan, a freelancer can’t afford those bills...”

“They can if they move in with me. Tell you what: you pay your phone bill, and I’ve got the rent. Can you do that?”

Speechless, I nodded. Then in three days, we packed up on apartment, setting most of it in storage, the things coming in my car in a pile by the door; things that were precious were in a suitcase he took with him.

As we worked to clean up the apartment, I used dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher. He emerged from the back bedroom to a living room engulfed in suds and bubbles; the howling laughter pulled me from deep cleaning the grout.

“Ohhhhhhh, Luuuuuuuceeeeeeeeee...,” he said through giggles, “you’re home.”

I burst into tears. He hugged me. “THIS is funny. We will laugh about this always. Please stop crying. Please, please. Only you, and that’s why this is so perfect. I’ve already scuba’d in, stopped the dishwasher. We’re going to have to get this cleared out, but let’s laugh and jump around in the bubbles.”

Let’s laugh and jump around in the bubbles. And we did. Eventually opening the patio door, taking armfuls and boxes of soap suds out into the bushes. It looked a bit like a snow drift when we were done, but we were laughing and finding an ironic joy in the shattered disappointment of being treated so poorly by people who had no idea what they had.

Before I turned in my key, I’d sold a story on Jackson Browne to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner for a Chrystic Institute Benefit he was doing. I would arrive – after a week at Fan Fair, where he would meet me for the drive to California  – a published Los Angeles-based writer.
When he told Prine what happened, John said, “Well, then you two kids should come to England and Belgium with me. It’ll be just the thing! Have some fun. See the world. Screw that stupid paper.”

We could barely see out the back window of my teeny Nissan Pulsar, but away we went. Telling stories about the towns we drove through, looking up stuff on the map. Sometimes we’d try a truck stop, other times we’d just roll into a grocery store and grab an apple or some yogurt. Somewhere in Oklahoma, a stock boy bagging up water for us saw my advance cassette of Motley Crue’s next album; he came a little unglued.

Dan winked at the teen, and went, “Magic is real. Sometimes these things escape – and if you’re lucky, you catch them.”

“Whoa, man,” the kid replied. “But that’s THE CRUE....”

“And it F’ing rocks!” Dan affirmed, laughing. “You’re gonna love this record. It’s sooooo good.”

Never mind he was wearing enormous glasses, had a tiny pony talk and a well-groomed beard. He looked nothing like an Okie headbanger, and yet. The kid nodded solemnly, and Dan nodded back.

Coming into Tucumcari, New Mexico, Dan had started singing Little Feat’s “Willin’,” the Lowell George truckin’ song Linda Rondstadt had mainstreamed. We both loved Little Feat and the Band, so it seemed like ironic soundtracking at its finest. Nosing the car off Rte. 66, we landed in the parking lot of a low to the ground turquoise building wearing a sombrero. 

“Some of the best Mexican food in the world,” he offered smiling. “I thought a little adventure and a surprise would do you good.” 

It was delicious. Unexpected. Soul-sustaining as well as stomach-filling. We decided to drink some coffee over our plates of cheese enchiladas, to just keep going as far as we possibly could. What had started as a retreat in defeat was truly becoming the beginning of something else. I didn’t know, but this person believed, so I did, too.

Back when the first wave of women rock critics had mostly faded away, I wanted to do something that wasn’t really being done. White men, often with Ivy League degrees, had taken over – and even having been on the road with Neil Young as a college student, having written a Tower Pulse cover story on Johnny Cash/Waylon Jennings/Kris Kristofferson/Wille Nelson’s Highwaymen configuration, as well as the Trio with Linda Ronstadt/Emmylou Harris/Dolly Parton – I was often the only woman in the room. Taken seriously? Yeah. Sorta.

When a record company person would want to take me to lunch, Dan would patiently explain to his wildly dyslexic girlfriend how to get where she was going; occasionally telling me what to order to prevent a dining disaster with the more exotic – to me – cuisines. He would explain why surface streets were better; implore me not to give homeless people money “as the mental hospitals have been cleaned out, dumped into the streets and you never know which paranoid schizophrenic might have a box cutter.”

Musician turned to BAM. The Los Angeles Times started using me, as did Music Sound Output, Home Studio Recording, FRETS, CD Review. YM came calling. Dan was right: I was a national level music critic, only my location suggested anything else.

Rolling Stone fell open when I got a call about talking to Joe Isgro, the independent record promoter who spoke to no one. When I called with the news, squealing and not bothering with spaces between words, he just said, “Get dressed.”

Not too long later, he showed up with that proud smile. “You hungry?”

I was still squealing. Rolling Stone in the ‘80s was a tough nut to crack; two issues a month, the space was finite – and freelancers were rarely used. But I had my CP Shades matching oversized top and skirt, my grey with black wingtip Tony Llamas on. 

“Where are we going?” I asked. 

“Surprise,” he said, as the car nosed down the Duane Street hill, through Silver Lake and onto the surface streets that would eventually put us on Sunset Boulevard. Passing the Comedy Store, I figured we’d either head towards Dan Tana’s – one of Prine’s favorite spots – or go to the fancy Hamburger Heaven just off Sunset. 

But we turned just before Tower Records, nosed up the hill behind the car rental place we used and into a lot outside a low all white building. The valet opened our doors, and I blinked.

“SPAGO?” It was the outpost of stars in movie magazines, glitterati like Cher and Pacino.

“You only get in Rolling Stone the first time once,” he said. We could barely afford it. When we got engaged, we didn’t even bother with the ring, because “we’d rather eat it than have me, a girl who doesn’t care about jewelry, walking around with it on my left hand.”

One of the Bangles was two tables over. We were against the far wall, near a window. Dan let me have the seat facing the wall. We had champagne and pizza, and we laughed like this was a dream and we would wake up. Only we didn’t. We had desert.

And then I saw her. Lauren Bacall. Even more beautiful in person. Stunning. 

“What?” Dan asked, unused to my being overcome. 

“I, I can’t... even,” I stammered. The impossibly discreet restaurant didn’t cotton to gaping at the other diners.

Just as I was about to be busted, I rose, walked over to the iconic actress, and went for the compliment to save – I hoped – our bacon. I could see Dan getting nervous, trying to conjure a Plan B and C.

“Miss Bacall,” I said, as the manager stood by, not wanting to make more of a deal. “You are so very beautiful and elegant, and you embody even more completely in person everything I was raised to believe a lady should be. It’s staggering, and I just wanted to tell you how truly incredible you are – and thank you for the example you’ve been my whole life.”
The manager was staring. Bacall looked up at the man, looked at me, smiled, then said, “MY darling, how incredibly charming you are. Thank you so much for coming over... and letting me known. Your mother must be so proud.”

I just smiled and nodded, started backing away. “Yes, ma’am, and thank you. I just thought it was important for you to know...”

“Well, you’re the sweetest.”

Back at the table, Dan let out a low whistle. Without ever chiding, he said, “I was trying to figure out if I had enough money to just leave the cash on the table, so we could just make a run for it... I can’t believe you pulled that off.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“I haven’t decided,” he said, shaking his head. “Somehow you pull this stuff off, and everyone loves you. But God, Holly, sometimes you scare me to death.”

That was Dan. He’d never clip anyone’s wings, or tell them how to live. When things were good, he would throw open the window in case you could fly, and put out a net, in case you couldn’t. It didn’t matter what or how, just that it was something wonderful.

And when it wasn’t so wonderful, he knew what to do, too. Shortly after arriving, at a Roger Waters concert, we landed in the dressing room after the show. Being taken to meet Jackson Browne, who refused to believe I’d interviewed him – and the back and forth escalating with me moving from horror at the misunderstanding to anger at being betrayed by a socially conscious artist who’d opened up how I’d seen the world, Dan quietly walked over, put his fingers into the waist band of my jeans and gently pulled me back and away.
Outside the dressing room, I collapsed into a pile of tears. How could Jackson Browne think I’d made that up? Why would I? He’s only talked to me and a reporter from Newsweek in four or five years? How does one forget that? Why would he not try to understand?
“ShhhhSHHHHHShhhhhhhshhhhhhhhh...” he whispered, petting my back, telling me it didn’t matter. “Shhhhhhhhhh...”

As the sobbing turned to sniffles, he held me at arm’s length, looked into my eyes and said – perhaps – one of the most important things anyone’s ever said to me. It endures.

“Holly, you have to make a very important decision,” he began. “Jackson’s behavior was atrocious, and we don’t know what’s going on... but you have loved those records, those songs, how he chooses to use his fame for good for so long. Are you going to let the fact that he just acted like an ass take that from you? OR are you going to chalk it up to he’s mortal, and that music is a part of your life?”

He paused to let the question sink in. Then he smiled as I looked at him, slightly dazed. “Because as much as I would love to come home and not have to hear Late for the Sky or For Everyman set on 11, I also know what those records mean to you. I wouldn’t hand something so precious over because a human being made them...”

And so, to separate the art from the mortal, the artist from the flawed being. He was right. He was, honestly, always right. 

And he always knew just where to be. When South By Southwest started, we were there. When “Austin City Limits” was more for country singers, they sent John Prine to Terry Lickona and his wonderful weekly show any time they asked. The New Music Seminar – leaning to hip hop and dance, punk and new wave – was his regular stomping grounds. 

Duke’s at the Tropicana, where Rickie Lee Jones and Tom Waits used to hand out. McCabe’s Instruments in Santa Monica, where small shows happened in the back room. The Palomino Club in North Hollywood, a once old school country room co-opted by the punks and Ronnie Mack’s Tuesday night BarnDance with Jim Lauderdale, Lucinda Williams, James Inveldt and so many more; Buddy Miller on the bandstand with Duane Jarvis, Pete Anderson by the cigarette machine and Manuel, the heir to famous rhinestone tailor Nudie Cohen, at the bar.

Characters, colorful people. Chuck E. Weiss. Howie Epstein, who would ultimately produce Prine’s (finally) Grammy-winning Missing Years and Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings. The Heffernan Brothers, who’d produce the Irish series “Sessions” to cross-pollinate Irish and British roots artists with American and the occasional Mexican. Jac Holzman, who founded Elektra Records under the aegis of Warner Brothers, took me to lunch to explain how they did it, to give me even more insight into how herculean what Dan had built with Red Pajamas and Oh Boy.

Formosa Café. The Apple Pan. The Cheesecake Factory in Marina Del Ray to meet his sister. The Mandarette. Border Grille when it was a tiny little nook on Melrose. Dan Tana’s and Pacific Dining Car when Prine was in town. Netty’s takeaway on Silver Lake Boulevard, eating there on the picnic tables. Searching the tables at Lucy’s El Abode, me asking which one Jerry (Brown) met Linda (Ronstadt) so many years ago.

Always Intermetzo, the little house on Melrose where you could sit at the counter front and watch them make California-fresh French or the lovely tented patio out back. Even when they were busy, they’d find a table for Dan – and we’d eat fettucine with goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, fresh herbs and walnuts. 

Those small things thirty years later, you can still close your eyes and see, feel, taste. The way the light cast caramel tinges or the hyperblue of early morning, the Raymond Chandler dingy overhead pulp fiction light of Kate Mantilini on Wilshire where dinner could be had extra late – or the blaring brightness of Ben Frank’s on Sunset Plaza if quicker was more in order after the Comedy Store or the Roxy.

We grew up together, became fully formed people together. He a brilliant young executive who could pave a way that hadn’t existed before. Me, a lady rock critic with a strong roots-bend who was a confidante for Keith Whitley, Sam Kinison, Patty Loveless and Nicolette Larson. We co-existed, sparkled in each other’s universes and made the other more. That’s how it’s supposed to be, and that’s how it was.

But even something perfect, sometimes, it’s not the “what it should be,” or the “happily ever after.” Yes, Dan could laugh off my father’s first real question being, “So, Dan, what do you think about Jews for Jesus?” after surviving Easter mass at the Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida... and certainly, I could explain to his stepmother Lynn if it was so important to the family and Dan would make sure they were raised in faith, “of course we could raise the children Jewish; they just need to have faith in a God who loves us.”

Somewhere along the line, it dawned on me. Dan’s happily ever after was somewhere else, and so, I let go. Moving out was tricky; Dan kept coming to vet my potential new apartments and neighborhoods. Finally, West Hollywood, right near the Mayfair Market, I found a quiet executive studio and signed the lease.

No tears, only the admonishment. “Wherever she is, I don’t want you to miss the one.”
Friday night buzzer rings, tales of dating disasters. I’d protest, “I’m writing,” he’d counter, “I have Fruzen Gladje.” Always, I would buzz him up.
We stayed friends, good friends. Shared meals at Barney’s Beanery and Hugo’s, both walking distance from my house. When I got sent to Nashville by HITS, he once again helped me pack up and move; drove me to the airport when I’d come back for business.

He took a Chinese cooking class at some point, called me several weeks into it he thought he’d found her. The lump in my throat was joy. BooBoo, the man who once gave me pink bunny slippers we immediately named Chuck and Di, was finally, hopefully getting the love he so truly, deeply deserved.

Loving people isn’t about possession, but wanting what’s best for them, the things that will make them happy. Thissounded like everything I believed when I pulled the chord on the parachute.

When Al Bunetta Management moved operations to Nashville, closer to Prine, but also a creative community fomenting into a place like Austin or Athens, maybe a rootsier Minneapolis or Hoboken. Dan came first, to get settled and figure out what life might look like.

We ate some meals, had some laughs, talked a lot about life. He was so happy. Everything I’d seen was turning out, he maybe didn’t know it, but he knew my Black Irish heart. When it makes up its mind, there’s no drama, but there’s also no going back.

They bought a place. Ellen started high end food styling for tv, film and magazine shoots. Dan continued doing what he ‘d always done – signing acts, helping people realize their dreams. If he’d co-managed the Rave-Ups in LA, now there was Todd Snider, the folkie championed by Keith Sykes, Prine and signed to Jimmy Buffett’s lablel. 

Blue Plate, formed to spread the gospel of West Virginia Public Radio’s Mountain Stage syndicated series, was expanding. Oh Boy Classics mined the (Sony) Tree Publishing vaults for recordings by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Conway Twitty and more. Oh Boy signed the roots/rock Bis*Quits with Tommy Womack, Will Kimbrough and Grimey’s co-owner Michael Grimes, as well as Donnie Fritts, Janis Ian and Kris Kristofferson.

What had begun when they were in California with Epstein making Prine’s sound rockier and more muscular continued. The Missing Years and Lost Dogs ushered in a renaissance. After John’s cancer battle, Dan helped usher in a shinier way of polishing dreams. Beyond the Billy Bob Thornton movie “Daddy and Them,” which featured “In Spite of Ourselves,” Dan helped co-ordinate an album of the same name with duets on country classics with women singers Prine admired from Connie Smith to Delores Keane, Emmylou Harris to Trisha Yearwood, Melba Montgomery to Patty Loveless. Longtime tourmate Iris DeMent was on several; she would later sing it on “Sessions at W. 54th” with Prine. 

Watching his second friend battle cancer moved Dan tremendously. He would look at what was created, the things that mattered and the way life can flow away from you while you weren’t looking. He loved his wife. He loved what they shared. He’d done everything you could do on the indie side, and he wondered, “What else?”

Twenty years ago, he did the unthinkable: he walked away from show business. Started a bakery in East Nashville, when East Nashville was still more scary than hip. He pioneered the concept of creating something for his community, a place that gave back and gave refuge. He knew how small things changed lives, so he figured he and Ellen could create somewhere that offered that to people in a way anyone could partake.

Sweet 16th Bakery was born. A building that was demolished and rebuilt. A bunch of recipes from their families, and a few from friends. A breakfast sandwich – “one to go” – that’s been hailed by Gourmet, Southern Living and been named one of Food + Wine’s Top 10 Breakast Sandwiches in America.

The sweets are legendary, having won the Nashville Scene’s Best Cupcake so many times, they’re not even in competition any more. Elvis Cupcakes. Brookies. Scones. Coffee Crack Cookies. Myriad flavor coffeecakes, hand pies and danish. 
Even more than the food – they do meatless soups, grain-based salads, Dos Papas Burritos, quiches and lasagnas – is the comfort. Everyone who goes there works on the “friend of Dan’s (and Ellen’s)” principle. Conversations are had, friendships cemented.
There are dog treats for the pups, cookies snuck to the children. Dan leaning over the counter, smile and eyes glittering, are a sight countless young Nashvillian’s have grown up on. To them, he is “Dan, Dan the Muffin Man” with good reason.

On horrible days, Dan could feel it. He’d come around the counter, sweep someone up in a hug. When a friend’s husband left her, he went to the guy and told him what a mistake he was making – and made sure, man-to-man, he understood the impact of his capriciousness. 
For me, he was always my rabbi, my compass, my human. No matter was hanging over me, pushing me into a corner or creating a particularly nasty vector around me, he’d have the wisdom to know what to do. Always.
And he was always so generous with his insight and his time. Having been cradle babies together, we understood each other in ways most people can’t. If you didn’t live through it, there’s no prism to explain or make clear. We didn’t need it, we lived through it.

A few months ago, Dan was back from the rehab hospital where he’d been getting his strength back from surgery. We were talking in a corner of the bakery, sharing thoughts on the state of everything, when he paused. “You know, you need to start figuring out an exit plan,” he began. “We were gonna do that this year, before the surgery, now we want to get me well, then figure it out, because there’s a great big world out there – and we’ve all worked long enough and hard enough to deserve to experience it without all the responsibility of what we do.”

“Really, Dan?” I asked, because work was just part of not being independently wealthy.

“Yes, find someone to look at where you are, figure out what you need. Promise me.”

It had been two years of COVID, real financial uncertainty. Scrambling to make my bills, to try to put money up for retirement. What I believed was solid wasn’t necessarily what I believed. And here was Dan speaking truth to me about the reality of life post-pandemic.
Promise me.

Promise me.

As Dan has bounced back and forth with rehab hospitals and infections, he’s been the guide to an anthology for Chicago Review Press called Prine on Prine: Interviews and Encounters. Between us, we unlocked so many missing pieces in those pre-Google, pre-Wikipedia world where AllMusic.com is cited as it’s a real time source. In this pre-digitized morgue world, so many stories have been lost; but thanks to having been there, they’re not found.

The week before he took ill, we talked for two and a half hours from his hospital bed. He was so clear, so sharp – and so ready to get well. Weighing all of it, the ground broken, the music made, the achievements, he got incredibly serious.

“Did any of it matter?” he asked, truly contemplating. 

Twelve minutes of my monologue later, he laughed. 

“I don’t know, Bunny Girl,” he said. “You look at what people value now, you wonder. You look at how all they care about is what they think and not what happened, you realize: the days of paying attention or really feeling stuff may be over.”

“Only if we accept that, Dan,” I countered. “Only if we decide that we aren’t willing to raise our hands, make the points, show people what they can’t see.”

“You might be right,” he laughed. “This book is going to blow people’s minds. There’s always so much more than people see, so many things you can show them. Maybe that’s the deal...”

“Yeah, Dan, that’s the deal. Look at all the things – high and low – you showed me. And you still are. Always will. It’s what you do...”

“Aren’t you going to say ‘and why you matter?’” he teased, knowing I like to complete the circle when I talk. 

“No, because everyone knows why you matter, and I don’t have to say it. Everything about how you live, what you do, the way you treat people: it’s all a lesson in what matters. I know. I’ve been watching you for years.”
16 January 2022. **.**** www.hollygleason.com

Nanci Griffith Catches Some Sweet Blackbird's Wings

Nanci Griffith & That Sweet Blue Bonnet Spring, Catch Some Blackbird’s Wing Down at the Five + Dime

A yellow dress covered in pink and red cabbage roses, mint and emerald green leaves seemingly holding them to the fabric. She had mousy brown hair, bangs that descended like staggered drapes around her elongated heart-shaped valentine of a face with eyes so sparkling and alive they glittered into the cameras/

Her speaking voice sounded like a small child’s, matching her diction. Her words bathed with wonder at it all – street light halos, Woolworth stores, trinkets and hope, she lit up as she shared what she knew or saw or felt.
Under the covers in a too cold house my much older fiancée didn’t own in Coral Gables, he’d left to go do errands. I could draw close to the oversized television on the table at the end of the bed, sheets pulled up around me as I stared at this anti-Barbie singing smart such smart songs. Miami’s PBS station ran “Austin City Limits” at an early hour, and in the black-out-curtained window, it felt like a Girl Scout meeting gone a little long.

“Austin City Limits” was once truly a Texas texture, as Guy Clark would sing in “Rita Ballou.” Every now and then, they’d pick a few local writer/artists or bands, given them a show. Nanci Griffith, whose name I didn’t know, had just released Once In A Very Blue Moon on small indie Philo Records – and this was a showcase for those brilliantly turned sketches, almost scrimshaw miniatures of small town life.

Her voice, when she sang, was deeper, throaty, had that Stevie Nicks’ vibrato – or a pure, soaring crystalline quality. It melted over the kind of acoustic music that exists in the fertile delta between country and folk, where the violin is more fluid, the steel guitar more diamonds sprinkled across still water. It didn’t straddle the genres, as much as float back and forth like sheets on a breeze when they’re hung outside to dry in the sun.

She was obviously older than me, but was so young seeming, she was the grown-up answer to my far older than my own 12 year old appearance while slinging bylines for The Miami Herald, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Tower Pulse and Southern Magazine. There was a place for us kid-looking people with hearts older and more erudite than our looks suggested. And, her melodies were sweet but salty; the loves and adventures were pure and sized for an actual life someone could inhabit.

By the time Jason returned, I was out of mind about this woman I’d seen in the yellow dress like Helen, my extra grandma by choice instead of blood, wore while playing a guitar almost as big as she herself was. She had an upright bass and a cellist and a licorice whip thin guy who sang, so minimal chic but with this hair, and and and...

Full grown, exfiancee #2 glazed over. But he knew when I got on a tear, it didn’t stop. We got in the car, drove down to Spec’s, the South Florida record chain, and walked in. Me blabbering, him trying to figure out how to decode this problem. Turns out one of the clerks had had “ACL” on, saw the same thing I did – and walked us back to the folk section.

Once In A Very Blue Moon was in a bin for the taking. We did.

Walking out pleased with the purchase, I excused myself from any further conjugal duties and went back to my dorm room. I sliced into the shrink wrap, drew out the disc and put on side one. “Ghosts In the Music,” indeed.

It all poured out, puddled on the cold linoleum tiled floor of a room mostly packed up towards semester’s end. Endearing, charming, unselfconscious, it was small stories, big truths, moments you might not notice – but that might just define you.

It had been recorded at something called the Cowboy Arms Hotel & Recording Spa with the same producer of John Prine’s Aimless Love. I couldn’t know so many of the players – Roy Huskey, Jr on upright bass, Mark O’Connor on fiddle, Phillip Donnelly on guitar – would become figures in my own story, nor that the background singer Lyle Lovett would be one of the singular voices of Nashville’s progressive traditionalist moment.

It was just magical, and perfect. Like a Truman Capote or Willa Cather novel, moments seemed pressed between pages and saved for the ages.

The obsession was such that I called Rounder, raved about this woman from Texas I’d never heard of – writing for The Herald enough I knew lots of record company people in those days before MTV, let alone internets and instant gratification – and asked them to please keep me posted. That I didn’t know what story or who for, but I wanted to write about her, absolutely.

My exfiancee thought I’d fallen into toxic shock from my obsession with Southern and Dust Bowl fiction. He just couldn’t... so we started taking separate cars as the candy-coated voice unfurled these sweet stories. Pulling up, banging what Griffith came to call “folkabilly,” on the cheap aftermarket cassette player attenuating the cassette I’d bought, her voice sounded a bit like a muppet gone tipsy.

Rounder didn’t forget my lunatic raving. They sent me an advance cassette of Last of the True Believers, an even more accomplished and confident album that still did the Currier & Ives meets Norman Rockwell vistas. Her sound had solidified; Rooney’s always tasteful production was at its greatest elevation. Each instrument was its own sparkling diamond around Griffith’s at times guttural, at others shimmering or tender velvet vocals.

Tower Records’ Pulse bit. My first conversation with Griffith via phone was delight; her Texas twang rolled down the line with girlish giggles for punctuation. She conjured a instant friend intimacy that suggested the same kind of friendship that made the innocence of “There’s A Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret” such a covetous thing for a young woman starting to make her way in the real world.

We talked Larry McMurtry, O. Henry, steel guitar as a mood-setter, John Prine, dime store treasures, the journey. She’d had two albums I’d never heard of (again, it was world before the internet made everything instantly accessible), with dreams of having music take her around the world.

She was exotic as peacocks on the front lawn, as familiar as homemade bread or a well-washed linen shirt with a slightly frayed collar. Twee as some found it, she could bite into the world, too. Whether the reeling fiddle of “More Than A Whisper” was a grown-up love’s complicated nature and need for true manifestation, or the rushed and rushing bawdy declaration of life from a whore waiting on a trick “Lookin’ for the Time (Workin’ Girl)” with its profession “This sidewalk ice is cold as steel/ and I ain’t Dorothy, I can’t click my heels...” and the utterly business forward “If you ain’t got money, I ain’t got the time for you.”

Authoritative. Straight to the heart, the gut, the throat. It was a money shot, and she – the little folkabilly goddess in the white anklets and Hooverette house dress – didn’t flinch or waver. To say I loved it would be like saying Chanel is expensive.

Around that time, Tony Brown rolled into Florida to meet up with Steve Wariner, an artist he’d produced at RCA Records and had just signed to MCA Nashville. The Chet Atkins protégé was that same kind of wide-eyed kid as Griffith’s persona suggested. Driving Brown back to the Howard Johnson’s by the , urnpike after a night of hanging out and closing down a Palm Beach restaurant/boite, I pulled out my advance of the album – and threw it in my cassette player.

I’d made a speech about how I didn’t know whether it could work at country radio, if it made sense for a major Nashville record company, but this was special. He needed to listen. That voice poured out of the speakers of the little tin mosquito Nissan Pulsar I was driving, bounced around the car and lit the piano-playing A&R man up like a pinball machine.

“Can I keep it?” he asked. I let him have it, let him bounce out of my car into the mildew-scented hotel in the grove of sagging palm trees. The next day, his head most likely throbbing, he got in my car, so I could take him to where Wariner was sound-checking. He went on and on about how much he liked it, the writing, the voice, the person singing it.

Said in some ways, she reminded him of Wariner, who he was doing pre-production with. Someone who didn’t want to be more than they were, each sang about a life that was the right perspective for the room. Wariner – beyond the crushing guitar skills and sweet voice – truly was a small-town Indiana kid; Griffith, though, a product the local Texas songwriter rooms dreamed of larger worlds and other places.

The legend is Lyle Lovett turned Tony Brown onto Nanci Griffith. But that day in the sun-parched parking lot outside a strip mall honky tonk, the Elvis and Hot Band veteran witnessed like a new convert. We were two people talking over each other about how incredible this artist was; me saying I was so glad I hadn’t overstepped my bounds, Brown saying he needed to figure it out, but was going to..

At the same time, Steve Popovich, a rock & roll student of all music and the head of Polygram’s Nashville operation, heard “Love at the Five & Dime” – and told Kathy Mattea it was her next single. The West Virginia songstress with the dusky eiderdown voice that curried the folk out of mainstream country product smiled. She’d not followed up “Soft Place To Fall” with a hit, and she needed to breakthrough before it all fell apart.

Driving north on I-95 a few weeks later, “Love at the Five & Dime” came pouring out of the speakers – and it wasn’t Griffith’s version. It felt like a hit, slightly folkie, very homespun and charming in the way it told the story of Eddie and Rita, waltzing the aisles of a Woolworth store. Suddenly, Mattea’s sweet spot was colonized – and Nanci Griffith was a hit songwriter.

Momentum and dominos both move fast. Suddenly, Griffith’s record deal came through at MCA Nashville. She was touring Europe, becoming the queen of Ireland, a nascent then full-on friendship with dean of Nashville songwriters Harlan Howard.  “Letterman” and “The Tonight Show,” Rolling Stone, back when it was every two weeks and excruciatingly hard to get into. Was it Liz Thiels, the publicist? David Wild, the reviews editor, who adored roots music? Was it just how intriguing her special mix of elements was?

Did it matter? Even if country radio found her voice too bracing, Mattea had another #1 with “Going, Gone,” while the touring life saw Griffith become a full-on headliner around the world – and a theater-sized draw in the States, where she also headlined folk festivals.

Free to explore the lives of characters who intrigued her, able to make a good living making music she believed in, it was fluid. She moved to MCA Pop, then Elektras Records, worked with producers Glyn Johns, Pete Buck, Rod Argent, Don Gehman, Peter Collins, Ray Kennedy and served as a comrade and peer to Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Guy Clark, Tom Russell, Townes Van Zandt.

Championing Julie Gold, Griffith’s “From A Distance” so transfixed anyone who heard it, it wasn’t long until Bette Midler recorded it. Midler’s version defined ubiquity for many years, reminding people we are all small and equal, that “God is watching us” not as an enjoinder, but a comfort in our hard times.

Like a good folkie, she lifted people up in song. A later album, The Loving Kind, boasted a title track inspired by the obituary of Mildred Loving, whose Supreme Court case overturned laws banning interracial marriage, and the capital punishment indicting “Not Innocent Enough.” Earlier, Storms’ “It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go” considered kids without chances in Northern Ireland, impaled racists in Chicago and measured the hope of America’s ‘60s idealism with a chorus that implores, “It’s a hard life, a hard life, a very hard life/ and if we poison our children with hatred, then a hard life is all that they’ll know/ and there ain’t no place in this world for these kids to go...”

“Trouble in the Fields” from Lone Star State of Mind lamented the plight of family farmer, while the dobro-drenched, accordion-basted “Love Wore A Halo (Back Before the War)” from Little Love Affairs measured the outlaw lives of number runners, a Jersey hotel and perhaps some comfort paid for by the hour. Unlikely people, missed or stumbled over, they rose up under Griffith’s sense of detail and zeal.

She would do a pair of covers projects, this woman who’d generously covered everyone from Tom Russell to Robert Earl Keen to ex-husband Eric Taylor, that celebrated her influences. Other Voices, Other Rooms gathered up 17 songs from Bob Dylan, Kate Wolf, Gordon Lightfoot, Jerry Jeff Walker, Woody Guthrie, Janis Ian, Buddy Mondlock and Harry Belafonte with Carolyn Hester, Emmylou Harris, Iris Dement, Arlo Guthrie, longtime collaborator James Hooker and Linda Solomon’s “Wimoweh” boasting Odetta, the Indigo Girls, Kennedy Rose, Holly & Barry Tashian, John Gorka, David Mallett, her father and Jim Rooney.

A supple versatility, a fluid sense of folk made the project seamless – and earned her her first Grammy Award. Best Contemporary Folk Album, an honor that matched the present to the past and the future. Other Voices measured how much veneration she brought to the art of songwriting, the ones who came before. Raising a light for the generations to come, she shone on – and fans flocked to the light.

But Voices’ Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire”-evoking video for “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” duet featuring the song’s writer John Prine that nailed the way reverence, searching, kindness and the echo of emptiness converge. Black and white, grainy, urban, Griffith in white and Prine in black, they are angels living in our world as supernatural forces and mortal beings. Beyond the whimsy, there was a sense of truth matching the reality of being a star in the musical sense.

Just as important as her O. Henry character sketches and embrace of the postcards and polaroids that make up a life, the woman with a mouth like a bow conjured a tenderness that permeated her songs. Love was sometimes perfect and attained; occasionally flawed and wild. But as often, it was failed and someone – usually the woman – was leaving, frustrated, sad, but never beaten by what had transpired.

As a music critic carving a path when there weren’t really women covering music, as a female working her way through six engagements and many suitors always trying to be reasonable as I left, as a girl raised on books and dreams and hopes and songs, Griffith seemed a chimera before me, radiant and resplendent as Our Lady of Bookworms or the Patron Saint of Coffeehouse Angels. Could she really be real?

Any single woman with a career or a drive to find their place in the world – in those days before Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Rickenbacker-downstroked suburban tales – found a richly-colored construction paper fortunecatcher every time Griffith released an album. Those stories of old couples we hoped we’d turn into like True Believer’s “One of These Days,” but also the unflinching make it happen drive of “Ford Econoline” that allows for self-propulsion, for dreams that required some form of screw it.

There was the romance of it all. No matter which album you landed on, that romance of life, the sweet nectar of somebody’s smile or a flick of a wrist taking a cigarette to their lips, it was all spark and igniting properties. Wherever, however, drink it in, swallow it down – and let whatever it was rush to your head. Don’t lose your senses, but go ahead and enjoy every last tingle.

That was the thing about the bookish, kindergarten teacher-looking songwriter: she could smoke’em if you had ‘em and drink’em down with the best. She would show up half kewpie doll, half brainiac and leave the room in ashes, all hearts splayed. Who wouldn’t wanna do that?

Many, many years ago, dressed in a pink and white gingham dress with buttons down the front and pale pink Buster Brown shoes, I went to UCLA to see Nanci and Guy at some hushed concert hall. I made the decision to dress for her people out of respect, but also to honor the way she’d lit my way coming into my own as a writer.

After slipping backstage between their sets to say my hellos, I had to slink out halfway through Griffith’s performance, drive into West Hollywood and make my way to the Whiskey A-Go-Go where I looked beamed in from another galaxy. Security guards a 100 yards from the door couldn’t believe someone looking like this could be on the guest list, nor could the guy at the Will Call window where the show was about to go on. Of course, I didn’t care that at the height of spandex, slashed tshirts and Aquanet, I was a giant neon goody two shoes. I was on the list, and they were ushering me in.

As the Nasty Habits took their positions in the world’s smallest nurse uniforms, I made my way through the snickering throng. Sam Kinison bounded onstage to introduce Motley Crue, who were kicking off their Girls! Girls! Girls! album en fuego. Riling the crowd up, the band came on like a jet engine hitting prime thrust -- the crowd reacted accordingly.

“What the hell do you have on?” asked my surly comic friend when he got back to us. “God, Holly...”

I explained where I’d been, what I’d seen, screaming over Nikki Sixx’s throb and Mick Mars’ squealing guitar. He took me in, started to laugh, shook his head. Dressed like a pirate, with a rag tied diagonally across his overprocessed hair, he pulled me close and hugged me, whispering, “Well, okay, respect.”

Respect. More than anything that’s what Nanci brought the world: respect. She smoked. She drank. She recorded other people’s songs to make sure people heard them, shared duets with everyone from the BoDeans to Mac MacAnally, Tanita Tikaram to Darius Rucker.

She loved Loretta Lynn, could talk about her for hours long before Jack White made her a hipster madonna, and Carolyn Hester, a folk goddess almost nobody today remembers. She never played the ingenue, nor did she throw sex around like a hipcheck in ice hockey.

She may’ve veered towards country radio, or closer to adult alternative at times, but she was always utterly herself. She knew how to be true to her literary influences in her songwriting, yet never lose the thread of who she was most of all.

Now she isn’t. Slipped through a crack in time, just – POOF! – and gone.

A couple years ago, her manager sent me to the house to do some interviews for a possible memoir. She was so happy to see me, remembered times I’d interviewed her, places I’d seen her play and so many friends we had in common. It was sweet and fun, like running into an old friend in an unlikely airport.

She treasured her memories, the people she’d met, all the twists along the way. Talking she’d light up, clearly delighted by the memory. But somehow, she wasn’t ready to tack down her past. Yes, it had all happened. She’d had a miraculous life, done amazing things, seen the world many times over, shared stages with incredible musicians.

But to talk about it, you could feel it weighing her down. If she was measuring her past this way, what else was left? She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t know. Not that we ever talked about that in those terms. Sometimes you just know people who look back too much run the risk of turning to salt and blowing away.

Not Nanci Griffith. She was one who held her own course, made her own journey. Of course, she would quietly slip away while no one was looking, just like one of the girls in her songs. She knew where she was going, knew Guy and Townes and Prine and Cowboy Jack and Steve Popovich and Phillip Donnelly and so many more were waiting.

When you’re headed to that, why would you stay? Long ago, she wrote “Gulf Coast Highway” with two friends, a song about love and death and spring in Texas, parsing the way progress siphons off the delicious parts and places of life. The melody feels like steam rising from a blue line on an old map in that kind of swelter only Southern towns near water can muster, the chords moving slowly like a cloud of melancholy.

Yet, “Gulfstream Highway” is a song of triumph and a letting go. When I heard the news, it was the third or fourth thing I played, because the joy in life’s fading is perhaps the thing -- after all the cultural dissonance, all the lives lost -- we need most.

As she sings towards the song’s end:

“Highway 90, the jobs are gone
We tend our garden, we set the sun
This is the only place on Earth blue bonnets grow
And once a year they come and go
At this old house here by the road

And when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing
And we will fly away to heaven
Come some sweet blue bonnet spring...”

www.hollygleason.com

Connie Bradley: The Best Friend A Dreamer Ever Had

Connie Bradley shone brighter than 4th of July fireworks. Part of it is simple: she was so dang pretty. Blond hair, eyes like a fox that twinkled, the turned-up nose, the mouth that was also always perfectly lipsticked.

And she knew how to put those outfits together. Bright colors. Mixed fabrics and textures. Sweatshirts and jeans. Cocktail clothes and ball gowns. All of it always set off with the most perfect accessories, just that one touch that made you look and made you smile.

But that really wasn’t the deal about why and how the woman who got her start as a receptionist at WLAC-TV mattered. Sure, she worked at a couple labels, spent more thirty years at ASCAP before rising to the head of the Nashville office. Really what stands out was Connie Bradley and her acute curiosity, which drew people, especially songwriters and artists, to her.

She was a magnet for the creative types, who could tell by the way she listened, she “got” it, she understood their gift and their humanity. And even when she didn’t, she knew who was vulnerable and who needed a little shove when it came time to respond.

Because what Connie Bradley wanted, more than anything, was for people to win. Nothing delighted her more than seeing a young artist or writer have that first #1. Few things excited her like hearing a great song; a demo, a kid with a guitar or a final master recording, she didn’t care. Bring it on: more music, more life, more heart, more emotion.

She wasn’t a snob, either. She loved great big gooey hits, as much as she loved the deepest songs from Rodney Crowell or Emmylou Harris. To her, every song was the writer’s child – and every record was the artist’s face to the world.

So when you walked up the red carpet at the Nashville ASCAP Awards and Connie saw you, she’d light up, throw her arms around you, know everything about not just your song, but your journey to that moment. She had great writers’ reps, whom she empowered, so it wasn’t some kind of overcompensation. No, she just loved writers and their stories that much.

While Connie was the queen – head, or EVP feels too mundane – of the Nashville ASCAP office forever, trying to remember when that happened is fuzzy. To me, she had always been there, had always been that force of song, of magic, of propulsion for artists.

I can’t think of a time when Connie wasn’t there. Like the sun coming up, Connie Bradley – who married into a behemoth Music City music family when she married legendary producer Owen Bradley’s son Jerry, who would help Chet Atkins make RCA the home of country music’s first platinum album Wanted: The Outlaws – defined creative life for legends, newcomers, breakouts and superstars.

She came of age as an executive when women actually ran Nashville. Jo Walker-Meador at the Country Music Association. Frances Preston at BMI. Maggie Cavender at the Nashville Songwriters International Association. Helen Farmer, also at the CMA. Donna Hilley at Tree, which was purchased for huge dollars by Sony.

Not only did these women matter, these women broke ground for artists they believed in. They created opportunities, blazed trails and often fought behind the scenes to change fates and outcomes. They’d look at you if anything was said about what they’d done, as if they had no idea what you were talking about; but they did massive career-changing things. Over and over again.

To them, that was what mattered: music, artists, songwriters, people.

Though when I think of Connie, I think of the most amazing laugh, the flashing smile, the way her eyes lit up when she saw you – waved you over, patted the seat next to her, put her ear near your mouth for some delicious bit of news. Welcoming isn’t a strong enough word, nor is inviting. Perhaps, most plainly put, it was inspiring – you to be the best you, the most you, the Connie-est you you could be.

And the only thing richer than Connie was Connie with her best friend Donna Hilley, or Conna as they were collectively known. Together, they could warp speed, make gravity loosen and hard hearts melt. Always laughing, always up to some great adventure – even if it was just a trip to the Dollar General Store or lunch at some white table cloth restaurant or local dive joint.

They got each other, celebrated each other, lifted each other, amused each other. To morph Scarlett O’Hara and Aunt Mame, they lived to prove that if life were a banquet where most poor such’n’so’s were starving, they were never going to go hungry again.

Laughter was their currency. Brilliance and instinct were their blood. They knew publishing, creativity, reality. They could shuffle their decks, build people up, high five when the music mattered – or connected.

When Donna Hilley suddenly died, a pall fell over the myriad people who loved her. My first thought ran to Connie. What do you say? Do? Offer? I send cards all the time. But what good is a card when half your boisterous spirit has gone to heaven?
One day, a few weeks after the news settled and people had gone back to work, my assistant said, “Connie Bradley on 1.”

I couldn’t imagine. I was close to Donna, who I’d helped get on Entertainment Weekly’s Nashville Power List at either #2 or #4, having explained both the dollar amount of the publishing revenue she stewarded or the careers she touched, legacies she ensured. I mostly knew Connie through Donna. But maybe I’d said, “If you need to talk...” in my card; maybe she was curious about my relationship with her friend.

“Hello,” I said quietly, figuring I’d let her lead.

We had a twenty-minute conversation... about me. Of all things. “I just want you to know that I know this is a tough business for women, and I watch you. I know you always stand up for the right things, you speak up when it matters and when it’s hard. I see that, and it matters and makes a difference. Don’t stop.

“Donna really believed in you, what you do... and I do, too. If you ever need me, I’m here.”

If you ever need me, I’m here...

From a very powerful woman who I could do nothing for. Jaw-dropping.

But that was Connie Bradley.

When a young manager and a big dreamer were trying to get the artist broken, really broken – not just a cascade of stats about #1 hits and albums sold – Connie got out her phone book and made calls. She told people why the kid mattered, why the young manager who was giving it his all should be given a break, should be taken as someone good for “our business.”

She counseled. She schooled. She cajoled. But what she really did that was game-changing was believe.

When people laughed about Kenny Chesney -- hard to believe now, but as the ‘90s became the 21st century, they did -- Connie dug in. She told anyone who’d listen why the young man from East Tennessee mattered, why the young manager – and she believed in Clint Higham, not just Dale Morris the legend who’d broken Alabama – would color outside the lines to realize Chesney’s demi-traditional country take on heartland kids’ experience.

She wouldn’t say it like that, but that’s what she meant.

And when they’d hit a road block, a speed bump, Connie would have Higham to lunch or dinner or drinks, make him laugh, remind him what mattered, send him on his way. Nobody believed like Connie believed, and if she did, how dare you falter?

No one thrilled more seeing good things happen to the young songwriter with his will to rock the kids beyond the media centers than Connie Bradley! She would show up, drink it all in, laugh, clap, dance, have a cocktail, hug all the right people.

As his star collected, his meaning solidified, his vision focused – moving from a young traditionalist to someone drawing on the same essence of rock that grounded Springsteen, Mellencamp, Seeger and Petty in a way kids in rural America could locate themselves – she kept crowing, kept the heat on, kept the industry powers-that-be’s feet to the fire.

Suddenly the kid making music videos with dancing cockatoos, whirling girls from the salsa bottle and John Deere tractors quickened. He was heroic. He was honest. He was real. When the young people of the flyover, coming of age in towns and small cities, saw “Young,” “When the Sun Goes Down,” “Anything But Mine,” they saw themselves – and they saw a “star” who represented their dreams, desires, triumphs and heartaches.
Connie knew. Always.

Because Connie Bradley never let go, never moved on to an easier act with momentum, people paid attention. Sustained focused, faith that didn’t falter is a big witness in show biz. Connie Bradley understood that, and she brought it at 40,000 watts without flicker.

A few years ago, under the guise of interviewing her husband Jerry Bradley for the CMA Board, she was on a stage, doing what she does best: bringing the business piece of country music to life for people who had some idea, but not the essential nuance Connie had.

While she’s doing the glorious hostess thing, charming and enchanting the audience, leading her husband through his unbelievable history, a door to the side opened and a thin, muscular man emerged with his head down. Approaching the stage, the raw charisma pulled all eyes his way, and Connie turned.

Kenny Chesney was there to present the CMA’s highest honor for service, the Irving Waugh Award, to his friend. Shocked, Connie didn’t know what to say, but Chesney did.

“To the best friend a dreamer ever had...”

Connie cried some, laughed more, hugged hard, beamed mightily.

Not that she ever did it for awards, or for honors. She never did anything except make people more, give them chances, offer them help or a hand up.

When I think of Connie, I think of her laughing, telling some story about something that happened to some writer that tickled her to death... I think of her and her girl gang drinking a little too much wine and laughing a little bit too loud... I think of Clint Higham during rough patches coming back so fired up and happy after their lunches... I think of her blessing my desire to hire Michelle Goble when I needed a killer assistant, telling me, “She’s a good one, and she needs to grow” – and taking her back into the ASCAP fold when Goble’s health insurance needed to cover a husband’s pre-existing conditions... I think of her willingness to tell it like it is, even when the news wasn’t what someone wanted to hear; but it was always the clarity that most people never had, a clarity that came from years of watching, challenging, recognizing why things failed and how to make them fly.

I think of her always knowing just what to say, and when to say it. And I think of her complete happiness watching a song come to life, whether it was a stadium of 60,000 singing along or some boy or girl Ralph Murphy had brought into her office, a young person who didn’t even know where to begin.

Those things have nothing to do with the fabulous gowns, the joy she brought to every room she was in, the love she shared with her husband Jerry, even the incredible haircuts that always made you feel like somehow it was easy for her to look glorious. Truth is: it was Earl at Trumps.

They say when you die, you can measure the life by what you leave – not the things, but the moments. If that’s true, Connie Bradley will never truly be gone.

Too many moments with too many people that made too much of a difference makes them impossible to count – and every single one of us will keep her light burning brightly, will hopefully find ways to bring her joy with us where we go. Certainly, that’s what she would’ve wanted and hoped that she left in her wake.

Something tells me, too, she’s watching us. Once she and Donna got caught up on the state of creativity in heaven, they’re probably both lying on their stomachs, legs in the air behind them, laughing and trying to figure out how to help us from up above. No doubt they’re laughing, crying with joy for being back together – and wondering where the next great song is coming from.

Just Can’t Get Enough, Michael Stanley

Jan 2, 2008

In the end, there will be Cher and roaches -- not because of any deeper meaning, but more because of the harsh requirements of endurance and exoskeletons made of kryptonite. For even as the Stones post-AARP brand of "Satisfaction" owes as much to Metamucil as genuine danger, there will always be those with something to prove. And it's on the proving ground where the faithful burn.

So it was that Michael Stanley, once ground zero for Cleveland's collective psyche, took the stage at Nautica June 10. Having once held the city in sway with multiple night stands at only the largest venues, Stanley brings something more than mere power chords to bear -- and it raises the stakes each time he straps it on.

Though MSB's glory days are behind them, the Resonators maintain a sense of rock as deliverance. Beginning with the wings-beating build that is the intro to "Midwest Midnight," they were vigilantes looking for promises in the power of well-turned choruses and deliverance in the emotions flexed over the course of two hour and 45 minutes.

"How ya doin', Cleveland?" roared Stanley, guitar hanging loose from his shoulders like Excalibur. "Welcome back to a seriously long love affair…" Sung from a knowing place, "Midwest Midnight" is a testimony to growing up, of understanding the stakes, of being betrayed by the dream and still finding the kick inside to not only walk away but to hold one's own. As keyboardist Bob Pelander throws himself hard against the melody, the entire band raises the intensity to a place where they're taking the corners on two wheels, trusting centrifugal force to keep them grounded.

Time can be the enemy of rock bands. They start out young and angry and bold. They grow battered and disillusioned and wind up cynical or flattened by the weight of what's already happened.

For those who never quite make it, though, rock and roll becomes the weapon to fight back, to rage against the machine. When the dark-haired writer tears the face off another vocal on "In The Heartland," the anger isn't about what hasn't happened so much as a refusal to relinquish the power and the promise of rock & roll.

"Some of 'em think about leaving, but none of 'em ever do" is as much about one's commitment to the music as it is the place they're from. Amid heavy sax bursts, "Heartland" celebrates a choice to stand one's ground rather than chasing something more ephemeral -- and Danny Powers' seering guitar solo burns that decision into the audiences unconscious.

The faces of these fans are the faces of Everyman. Young. Middle-aged. Obviously privileged, probably blue collar. Washed in the throbbing backbeats and the churning melodies, they shine with the joy, the hope, the promise of Christmas morning or new love. It is nothing new they are experiencing, but merely reminding themselves of something they know: there is honor in these songs, the way the music carries them -- and that is a basic truth they can count on.

Keyboardist Pelander has a David Sancious moment that takes a very cocktail feel through a series of descending figures to heighten the tension that becomes the fiery "In Between the Lines." Ultimately shot from the gut, in many ways this song is about what has happened to both a group of journeymen as it is about this city as anything performed in the whirwind set.

With a cigarette on his lips, wailer Jennifer Lee in a tight black dress beside him and a sax player blowing an urgent elegy for hope lost along the way, this is Stanley facing the truth and being wiser if a bit shaken by the brutality of how it really is. Here drummer Tommy Dobeck is relentless -- and in those vicious impacts, the rhythm carries when the realizations topple.

Not that everything was so full-tilt. On the ballads -- especially a tugging violin-and-mandolin-laced "Spanish Nights," caressed with enough bittersweet conflict to make the pain of denial seem like the sweetest reward of all for it means one can walk about knowing the depths of how it feels and that feeling is what it means to be alive -- there is a deep heat effect that comes from a romantic willingly digging down into the emotions that make people flinch. It is in the squirm-inducing truth -- "Spanish Nights," the driving'n'crying "Lover," where Stanley reels from the punch of betrayal and a love that won't relinquish his pride or passion -- that the ballads pack perhaps more punch than even the most rocking moments.

In their hands, a blues workout like the moth-eaten "Redhouse" introduces the most root element of music: the foundation that is time-honored changes. Knowing means the flex can be the channeling of those who came before, and in that consolidation of heritage, an elevation occurs.

The slow, grinding "Redhouse" becomes a sticky, fetid opening in the ground for the blues to spawn rock. Steam practically rises from the groove as Marc Lee Shannon etches the basic melody with regret steeped in a brittle razor's edge tone which tattoos the moment with essence. The audience collapses under the force of something so primitive addressed with such measured force…

There is a flex and recoil at work here, a baptism in casting the theme and bringing it back. Pelander's electric work was solid, but on the B3 he transcends, physically sending himself into the instrument as cushions of chords fall upon each other, spent yet building into a fall-out that supports Lee's moan of the forsaken. Her tortured cries defy words -- and embodies the torture that fires the blues.

"Redhouse," a song of betrayal, is ultimately light. For Stanley, having provided a format for his band's exorcism, he shines as the contrast -- wisely not engaging the catharsis, but rather leaning into the insouciant Plan B of "if she won't love me, her sister will."

Not that Stanley's modus operandi is arm length disengagement. Embracing Steve Earle's ode to escape "Someday," a song written as an ode to the fading of Nowhere, Tennessee in one's rearview mirror, it becomes a sweet lullabye of dreaming about leaving, but never wanting to; a love song to fast cars and holding fast to what one is made of.

There is a delicate balance being struck here: raw lust in "High Times" pitted against the wistful remembrance of "Somewhere In The Night" with its defining "all you get to keep are the memories, and you gotta make the good ones last." Even in the past, though, there is a future -- and that is the central truth to the Resonators on this night -- that will deliver you if you will only let it, only believe, only let go and surrender.

When the musical explorations that dissolve into a familiar keyboard pattern, humid sax washes and an undertow that pulls the faithful out, "Let's Get The Show On The Road" offers the truth about costs and damage and the betrayal of dreams. Guitarist Powers reaches inside for a bleeding solo that defines the torment of knowing and needing to continue as the audience casts their dispersions at some unseen target.

A cautionary tale, again it is a witness to how painful it can be out on the edge -- but also a testament to the inevitability of survival. For there are no choices really, just the voice of a wiser man who arrived on the other side head reeling, trying to make sense of it all and confessing bitterly, "The Lord uses the good ones, and the bad ones use the Lord."

It is an ultimate truth, the ultimate realization. Yet all these years later, Michael Stanley can check the mate. If the dream of stardom withered on the vine, the promise of rock salvation burned even brighter and offered a purer form of deliverance.

Drawing on the assemblyline rallying cry "Working Again" and exploring "the Bo Diddley beat," then transitioning into the drama of the mining disaster "Fire In The Hole" where restraint is locked into a groove, which the band expertly rides out, staying on and staying with it, throughout a shuddering culmination that is a sweat-soaked climax that leaves one spent and feeling sated.

That would have been enough for most. But for Stanley, the crucible of a downtrodden city's hopes during its hardest times, a benediction that embraces the whole of the experience -- of a man, a band, a collection of people -- was necessary.

For Stanley and the Resonators, "My Town" offers everything they are. It is a simple song, straightforward in its understanding of the chipped dramas and faded glories of the truest lover any of them have ever found, a place to make their stand and sow their gifts in the name of music. It is a song about the things worth fighting for -- and the dreams that may've not always been obvious, but were constant companions.

The moment is so transcendent, Stanley comes off the stage after a last chorus and the band plays on. With a nod to what was, a phalanx of guards surround and sweep him away -- only for the true believer to emerge at the back of the venue for a victory lap through the people who have brought him 30 years later to a place where genuflecting before the burning desire to be something more is as simple as giving it all to the music.

In that moment, the crowd is Michael Stanley -- and he is the crowd. "East side, West side--give up, or surrender --been down, but I still rock on..."

There are some truths that should be held to be self-evident. For Michael Stanley, it would seem none greater than that. And for the fans who've kept returning on blind faith and drunk passion, it is a covenant that has never betrayed them. In a world of faster, harder, cheaper -- what more powerful reality is there?

Just Another Night In America: Michael Stanley + the Resonators Burn Right Where They Are

April 21, 2013

Choices and decisions. Roads taken, things that mighta, things that oughta, things that should…

Michael Stanley should have been a rock star. Like the “Almost Famous” not quite broken, eternal open act Stillwater, Stanley did everything but become  an arena-sized headliner.

Except in Cleveland, Ohio, the Rock & Roll Capital of the World, the watershed scene in Cameron Crowe’s coming of age as a baby rock critic film where Stillwater is confronted by the encroaching reality of business as survival for a little band tilting at the impossible notion of “making music, you know, and turning people on.”

In Cleveland,Ohio in the late ‘70s and early 80s, you didn’t get any bigger than the Michael Stanley Band. Two nights at the Coliseum sold out faster than Led Zeppelin. Five nights in a row at Blossom Music Center. It was a frenzy, and the city had their shot at the brass ring that regional heroes Tom Petty, Bob Seger, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen manifested into national renowned for their hometowns.

But that was then, this is now. What happens to rock stars who fail to launch? The ones who don’t make it, who leave an entire city gasping for their moment to seen. Because if Michael Stanley did one thing for the psysche of a downtrodden city, he let them feel seen, recognized in th eslog and shove of surviving a rough Rust Belt reality. It wasn’t Springsteen heroic, but real to the streets of Cleveland, Akron and the other factory towns that were struggling across on Northern Ohio.

Make that kind of music, especially where people are used to digging in, they show up.

Give them dignity, some swagger, some reason to believe, they hang on.

And when it’s over, they don’t forget.

Rock stars get real jobs when it’s over, blend in, make due; but they don’t forget, either. Just everything changes.

The reasons, the drives, the motifs. Still, the ones who believe never falter.
Because even when life moves on; the power of what music means sustains.

The trick is to swerve beyond the trap of nostalgia, bypass the sodden machismo of “who we were.” Things may be larger in the rearview, but they’re gone. Hang onto what’s gone, you might as well lay down and die. Over and done, you’ll miss what’s ahead to be savored.

For Michael Stanley, and the fans who peopled the four capacity nights at the slightly shabby Tangiers, it’s not about merely remembering. Not any more. If in the two decades he’s been doing these intimate shows, there were years of marking time and fulfilling people’s desire to hear the canon of their truly golden years one more time; it happens. In some ways, it’s the gravitational force of the needing to return to something you knew without thinking that lets tedium set in.

Whatever the last several months have held, there was a moment where it all flipped over. What it was becomes what is. That which “never quite happened” suddenly matters, perhaps even more than when it first had its moment. Because now the need to believe, the need to celebrate is even more pressing.

Like the city of Cleveland itself, Michael Stanley is still here. Still writing songs, still brandishing that brand of heartland rock and roll that makes the people of the flyover know they’re not forgotten in the rush for newer, hipper, younger. A little weathered from the miles, it’s not about still standing, but being triumphant in the journey. Celebrating where you are for what it is and flying the defiant flag of “we don’t give a damn about you, either/we have each other-- and know how to hang on when it ain’t easy,” the now becomes imperative.

Throwing the gauntlet from the very first downstroke of “It’s All About Tonight,” a brakes-cut bit of bravado that is all carpe nocturnum, they don’t look back. Stanley, who’s earned the right to coast, hits the stage with purpose.  Sixty-five years old, he sings harder, digs deeper and drops his often stoic resolve more now than ever.

It is music that, when fully surrendered to, transforms, lift people up and drives them past the inertia of merely getting by. That is where Stanley is now. It is obvious from his attack and his intensity that he wants to take his people with him.

His old songs burn with an urgency. A whiplash sting to “In Between The Lines,” the song ofpersonal and cultural reckoning ignited by the murder of John Lennon, it's a brutal indictment and fierce reminder. In some ways, a napalm rage against the killing of our innocence, “Lines” serves as a call to investment, to engagement, to taking an active role in making the world a place beyond rage, avarice and nihilism.

That electricity echoes on the waves of Danny Powers’ slow burning lead guitar and Bob Pelander’s cascade of piano notes during the bridge of “I Am You.” Again, Stanley sees the power in identification, the embodiment of being in it together. For him, it’s a state of inclusion, the combined energy making everyone so much more… and also the unspoken declaration of the heroic position of enduring for others.

Rock and roll used to mean that. In Northern Ohio, it still does.

“I Am You” leads to the pensive “Winter,” a meandering Celtic-folk-leaning ballad that starts innocently enough. Equal parts reflection and regret, it’s also a knowing measure of where one is. To be willing to want to live, to hang onto what could be is the greatest fuel there is – especially knowing that one’s days are numbered.

The rush of that awareness fosters a force that fuels a colossal jam as the song shifts tempos, builds and lunges towards some exhaustive shudder. Harkening back to when AOR songs left room for excavation of melody and form, “Winter” bookends the much older “Lets Get The Show On The Road,” a bitter snapshot of the ennui of road life, the emptiness of the dream when it betrays you and the dead end that never seems to actually end.

Containing the line “the Lord uses the good ones, and the bad ones use the Lord,” “Let’s Get The Show On The Road” illuminates an insight not yet experienced. Yet strung across the free form jazz back section, all paper tigers and Trojan horses of the lies we’re sold, what we need to believe and the way the dream can draw and quarter you, Stanley's seething witness blisters.

It is not blind rage, but the ballast of knowing.

The revenge is to keep coming. No retreat, no surrender. Indeed, exult in what is, what’s left, what you know and what yougot, not what people try to sell you. This beer won’t make you sexier, that hair care product won’t make you young.

That unflinching staredown transforms a song of not nearly enough into a rallying cry. The kick inside may be the only shot you got. But it’s what you got, and that seems to be the resonant note this night in Akron.

With an encore of “Working Again,” from the aptly titled Heartland, there is the Rodney Psyka conga/Tommy Dobeck drum pastiche that works multiple rhythms into a frenzy that sets the urgency in motion. Ultimately, another song of making ends meet, borrowing against tomorrow because that’s all there is, the desperation is marked by a fierce commitment to getting by with one’s two hands and the strength of a very broad back. If there is a more joyous drummer to watch than Dobeck, who hits with as much finesse as punch, it is hard to imagine – and that euphoria feeds the performers as they dig in for the duration.

Like “It’s All About Tonight,” the immediacy is visceral. These fans know how these realities feel, they’re not American Express premium ticket holders buying the illusion of authentic blue collar exigency. These are their songs, cast as large as the room – and their souls – can contain. Packing a walloping Bo Didley beat, which Stanley tells them “is the beat your parents warned you about,” the crowd is on their feet, shaking what their mothers gave them for all its worth.

The Resonaters know the power of that primal pull. As the vamp builds, the “uhn, ahh” turns into the call and response of coitus. It is both metaphoric and literal – and the crowd surges towards their own sort of full-tilt musical climax. They want it, they’re gonna have it – and they shriek with abandon, spent but not quite exhausted.

In part, it’s a case of momentum being exponentiated via the ballads the fans are most invested in – “Falling In Love Again” sung more by the crowd than Stanley, a stately trek through the ’79 steamy slow dancer “Lover” – which allows regaining their collective breath to gather their fervor, then pushing further onto a pulsing forward tilt of these blue collar anthems that define the Midwest.

Being the last night of the stand doesn’t hurt. Stanley sung as hard on the fourth night as he’s ever sung, leaning into vocals, pushing phrases with a power that supercedes his normally smoky pensiveness or bitter bark. It’s as if he’s singing for his life; in many ways, though, his is.

These songs, culled from years in the trenches, are a litany of fighting back, of almost/not quite and try, try again. To get knocked down and denied so many times, and to get still back up and play, not for the record deal or the big tour or a Grammy, but because your soul requires it is the purest reason there is.

A holy pursuit, there is no gain beyond the moment, remembering how alive you can feel. That moment of putting the pedal down, pushing the night to its limits – and feeling the things that gave you such potency when you were young, realizing those emotions are still something you can feel, embrace, wrap yourself in offers an energy otherwise untapped.

It’s not buying a Corvette and driving too fast, looking like an old fool too deep into losing touch to know the difference. This is about the intersection of dignity and what you’re made of is. The simplicity of suiting up, showing up and throwing down to the point of all that there is. Not for the money or the glory or the fame, but because as Springsteen says, “it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

Who we were, who we are, who we will be. It dangles in the humidity on one of Paul Christensen’s sax solos, sultry and ripe with the promise of desire; echoes of moors and Appalachia in Marc Lee Shannon’s mandolin turns. Beyond words, it's in the blood, pumping, throbbing, surrendering to how fierce it must be to be true to its point of origin.

No one else may ever see. No one beyond the moment will ever know. It doesn’t matter. For the assembled, this is all there is – and it fills the need in ways the superstar on his private jet, the high gloss fame monger or pampered starlet will never know.

Snookie be damned, this is real. Real is what matters once you know happily ever after is right where you stand if you wrap your arms around it, and take it for all its worth. Michael Stanley – and the people who love his music – have figured that out. It is all that they need to get by.

20 April 2013

Walter Miller: Nobody Loved Artists More

He was gruff. And smart. And funny. And nobody loved artists more.

Walter Miller loved artists in every way possible: intellectually, creatively, cellularly. On a soul level that defied description. To say that he “got” them was like saying that Bill Gates understood computer codes. It was like exhaling, or maybe inhaling.

And it didn’t matter what kind of music, either. He loved it all, got it all. He wasn’t afraid to fight for what he believed in. Comedy, too. He craved genius; he responded with everything he had.

“Who are you?” he said in the overcrowded dressing room at the Roxy, the iconic rock club next door to the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Steam was rising in part from the comic who’d just blazed through a ferocious 75 minutes, in part from the overheated celebrity guests coming to pay homage, including Hugh Hefner, Linda Blair and seemingly every Outlaw of Comedy.

“Sam’s friend,” I said, moving a little further down the dressing table so the man who was clearly in charge could get closer to the comedian.
“That’s not much of a name,” he replied.

“Right now, my name doesn’t really matter,” I smiled. “You’re here for him.”
Walter Miller was directing “Breaking All The Rules,” Sam Kinison’s first comedy special. Kinison had set the world on fire with 11 minutes on “Rodney Dangerfield’s Young Comedians” special several months earlier; cause controversy with Louder Than Hell, his first Warner Bros. vinyl release, play an overly intense professor in Dangerfield’s “Back To School” feature film and late night spots. Johnny Carson loved him; David Letterman loved the back and forth. He’d gotten banned from “Saturday Night Live,” where he’d done actual stand-up sets, for a joke about Christ’s final words – and then was invited back three weeks later to host.

Into the white hot blast surrounding this “Outlaw Comic,” who said all the things people thought but would never dare speak, Walter Miller appeared. His mission was to walk through the cocaine, porn stars, heavy metal and whatever else, focus the genius – and the genius could focus – and deliver the special that would solidify portly comic’s place as the heir to Richard Pryor, Robin Williams and especially Lenny Bruce.

I had no idea who Walter Miller was, except like me, he didn’t look like he belonged there. He also carried himself with a warm authority that required no explanation.

“Walter,” Sam said, turning towards him. “You happy...”

“Yeah, yeah. I have some thoughts for tomorrow, but this was just great.”

It had been, absolutely. Kinison knew what lay in the balance. He wanted it, and he knew an underplay at a rock room with the right director was exactly the right move. He also knew Walter Miller, who directed the Grammys, was the right man for the job.

“Breaking All The Rules” remains a lightning fast, yet perfectly paced hour of comedy. Put it against the best of today, it still holds its own. Some argue it re-set the standard: don’t allow the shock to overwhelm, keep it lean, cut so the jokes lay in without being obvious... set... up...

And when Kinison’s life would spin out of control – as it did in often blazing fashion – Walter Miller remained steadfast in his support. He continued to direct his specials, to offer words of wisdom to the former preacher who’d become one of Howard Stern’s most favorite people.

But it wasn’t just the high voltage and the shocking. The man who directed The Grammys”15 times, the Tonys from 1987-1997 and The CMA Awards 14 times was seeking the unique, the talented, the ones who truly stood out.

After Mary Chapin Carpenter charmed an industry not sure what to make of CBS Nashville’s folkie with an unrecorded song about the wages of being the unheralded “Opening Act,” Miller saw the bright light the Brown University graduate cast. Never mind that she’d walked out in a periwinkle pantsuit, faced an entire industry with her dusky alto, her martini-dry little throat punch at a jerk of a headliner and the kind of delicious smile that he captured to its best effect.

When Shooting Straight In The Dark launched a solid hit with the reeling Cajun-feeling “Down At The Twist & Shout,” Miller was all too ready to put her back on “The CMA Awards.” With her own band, the full stage, it was one big guitar twang, fais do-do fiddle and quick tumble.

Chapin, for all her intellectualism, distilled exuberance. For the second time, Miller captured the unfettered joy, but also the bright shine of a smart woman engaged and engaging the world in all its glory. An unlikely country star, so much of what Chapin brought to the genre – and Walter Miller helped show the world – was a freewheeling sense of being female that transcended tropes, defied age and body type and invited an enthusiasm that wasn’t empty headed.

When Chapin received two nominations – Country Song and Country Vocal Performance, Female – for “Down at the Twist & Shout,” I reached out Tisha Fein, his longtime talent executive. “He lauves her,” the woman Miller called “Teesh,” replied, “But he can’t redo what he just did on the CMAs...”

Having anticipated the problem, her management had already reached out to the celebrated Cajun band Michael Doucette and Beausoleil. She laughed when I explained, “They’re ready, and available, and it’s a way to give back to both the New Orleans chapter, and honor Cajun music, which I know is hard to get on network television.”

“Let me walk it in there... I’ll call you back.”
The booking was done in a matter of days. Chapin went on to romp through her first Grammy appearance, win Best Country Vocal Performance Female on camera, and ascend to her rightful place in the progressive country pantheon that included Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, kd lang, Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill. She’d go on to four consecutive Country Female Vocalist Grammys – and Country Album of the Year for Stones In The Road – part of that success being a direct result of how Walter showed the entire music business the high-tempo, savvy about life songwriter.

But it wasn’t just the wry “Shut Up & Kiss Me,” “I Take My Chances” or “I Feel Lucky,” the melodically sweeping femmepowerment of “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” or “The Hard Way” that spoke to the natty man in the golf sweaters and sports shirts just so. He had a poet’s heart, and when it came time for “The 35th Anniversary of the CMA” special, he wanted to do something special with her. Though she’d become the tv bookers’ favorite with those clever built-for-radio songs that created a twinkle in every girl’s eye, Chapin’s true gift was always the soft ballads that spoke so much truth about the life or love or who we are.

“I Am A Town,” from Come On, Come On, is cello, finger-picked guitar and that exhaled burgundy voice. Shooting an almost water-color homage to the America found on two-lane highways, his eye for beauty matched the lyrics of the song in a way that made prime time into art.
“Artists are very special people, and you can’t just stick them up on a stage and let it happen,” Miller, who has won three Directors Guild Awards, a pair of Peabody Awards and earned 20 Emmy nominations, told me 15 years ago for a profile in CMA Close-Up. “You want whatever an artist is going to do to reflect their essence, their career, their soul. . And to do that, you can’t just do cookie-cutter television.”

And when I took an acclaimed songwriter with a deal on a new label helmed by lawyer and powermanager Ken Levitan and world renowned producer Emory Gordy, Jr. to lunch with Walter on a grey, rainy July, he looked at Matraca Berg and asked, “And what are you all about?”

He knew she was the first woman to have written five #1s in a single year, that Reba McEntire had been Grammy-nominated with her “The Last To Know,” that “Wild Angels” gave Martina McBride a song about being truly alive, “That Kind of Girl” was Patty Loveless’ manifesto of being, Trisha Yearwood inhabited “Wrong Side of Memphis” and Deana Carter’s innocence lost “Strawberry Wine” would define coming of age for generations. But who was she?

They bantered, jabbed and stabbed at the table. Big jokes, insults traded and volleyed. But when that question came, it was a whole other kind of moment. Looking at me, I nodded. Go for it, Matraca, go get your heart’s desire.

She explained “Back When We Were Beautiful,” a elegiac ballad that was piano and a voice that was vulnerable. The antithesis of the funky, strummy tempo songs she elevated into street smart slices of how women loved, it came from a conversation she’d had with her mother-in-law about not just aging, but who she and her husband been when they were young.

Walter already knew the song. He recognized the pathos. Listening to her talk, there might’ve been a little something in his eye. But he put on his warm face, told her it was wonderful – and picked up the check.

Later that afternoon, he instructed, “Trust me, and keep the faith. I’m going to get this done.”

It was nine months, the time it takes to gestate a baby. People would tell me there was no way Matraca Berg was getting booked on “The CMA Awards,” let alone with a 5 minute song about aging that’s mourning their youth.

People would tell Matraca that, too. And as the slots kept disappearing, down to one final slot – and the word was Wynonna Judd wanted it – I’d get the “This isn’t happening,” yeeps from the woman nominated for Song of the Year.

“You have to trust, Walter,” I’d say evenly. “Every time I talk to him, this comes up. He says ‘Trust me,’ and I do. You have to, too. Just please don’t listen to people who think they know everything. They don’t know Walter like they think they do...”

And sure enough, the final slot went to Matraca Berg. The call from Walter was like so many awesome calls, “I get one slot, Holly. One slot where I can do whatever I want, and this is what I want to do. She’s terrific, and the song is unlike anything, and I can’t wait to get her on that stage.”

Maybe I screamed while he was still on the phone; maybe I started to cry. Hanging up, I know I shrieked loud enough Zelda, a dog who refused to be canine, actually barked from the backseat. Walter told me years later, he didn’t want to listen to the bitching and have people try to extort him into some act he didn’t want because he’d booked some songwriter.

He knew what he was doing. He knew what he wanted. He got it done.

That was Walter, someone who got it done.

Matraca went onto win Song of the Year, dedicating the award to the background singer mother who’d got her in writing rooms with Red Lane young. She was introduced by Vince Gill as “a poet,” performing in a navy blue slip, a piano and three cellos. Years and years later, Walter would smile and proudly say, “Les Moonves still says its one of the 10 best moments of music he’s ever seen on television.”
And that had been the response in the moment, not merely revisionist history. He’d called a few days later, saying, “Leslie says that was the best moment on the entire show. THE best!” His joy was palpable, the vision landed – and someone he respected saw it, too.

That same year, sitting in traffic, I’d got a call from Walter, informing me that a Male Vocalist nominee client of mine would be getting a presents, not a performance. I started to cry, hyperventilating, and saying, “Oh, God... they’re so terrible. You have no idea... the screaming I’m going to endure.”

Not only was the artist lazy and largely mocked behind his back, but he’d had a history of dissing Miller. Not showing up to rehearsals he deemed not important, bad mouthing him in trailers on specials (with Miller standing outside the window, hearing every word), there’d been no professional respect shown a man who’d directed Comic Relief, specials for Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams and Johnny Cash

“I can’t help it,” he said. “There’s not room. And, frankly, there’s nothing special about what he’s going to do. It’s the same thing every year.”

I continued to cry. Walter sat listening. He understood the way managers’ expectations without looking at how to build something meaningful for/around their clients could rain down on a publicists instead of dealing with their real issues.

“I am so sorry,” I choked out, feeling the fool. Who does this to someone so generous? And yet, I knew the verbal thrashing that was coming.

“Give me his number.”

“Whose?”

“The manager’s...”

“Oh, God, uhm...”
“No, he’s not going to take it out on you. No, no, no... I’m not afraid of a bully.”

And when the artist was given a truncated performance on a flyer stage, I asked why he relented. “I didn’t, Holly,” he said. “The more I talked to the guy, the more I got it. So I told him, they could have this – and have this only because of you.”

That was Walter. Gruff, yet deep down, so kind and concerned about everyone else.
When he came to town, we’d have dinner at the hotel where he always stayed and was quite the house favorite. The conversations were always far flung and amazing; life, golf, friendship, people we knew, people we loved, people who’d left us. And always revelations. When he’d talk about Charles Schulze, “Sparky,” hanging out at the hockey rink where he skated, it was like peeping through a keyhole where creative titans could just be men, just be friends and at peace.

That was thing, for a man so robust and so successful, Walter really just wanted to do great work, help artists who needed the “moment” that might launch something great.
He wasn’t’ afraid to fight for it, to stand his ground, to dig in in the name of creating something that was truly breathtaking, great, spoke to something more than just flogging a hit. When you’d go to Washington, DC for “A Capitol Fourth,” you’d feel his pride in being an American; sense that the way he stacked that show, it was about demonstrating the diversity and majesty of American talent from Broadway to soul, country to pop – all backed by a classical orchestra, culminated in extravagant fireworks behind our nation’s monuments.

Paul and Debbie, his children, were incredible directors in their own rites. Each took his eye, turned it to the world, created television that was compelling. But they – like their Dad – also created families of love, extended circles of kindness and fellowship.

That was always the best thing about those dinners with Walter. Yes, he’d tell show business stories about everyone, and he could regale you for hours, a natural born storyteller, but when he’d deep-dive into you, you felt seen, heard. He’d listen to a career crisis, take it all in, then lift a glass, cry, “Screw’em,” then tumble into laughter as he transformed your problems back into mole hills. He’d ask about your love life, wondering aloud, “Could this be the one?,” not to be gossipy, but in the hopes that perhaps you could find what he had.

What he had – beyond 100s, maybe 1000s of people whose lives he touched – was the ability to have great fun and a real sense of himself without becoming lost in ego. He was always looking to lift people up, to teach them how to be better or more. He delighted in Snickers bars, his preppy clothes and finding young artists who inspired him.

And when he believed, he never faltered. Talking to him one night in the early 2000s, I asked a big question. I’d been thinking about how regal he looked walking into Sam Kinison’s Holllywood funeral, a hotbed of hard rockers, comics, saloon owners and people trying to be noticed. All in black, sunglasses on, he was stoic and open. A small respite of honoring the dead in the fomenting chaos.

“How come you never gave up on Sam?”

“Because,” he said as if that explained everything.

“Well, so many people did, they just walked away,” I pressed, “And you never faltered that I saw.”
“Holly, you knew him. You knew what was deep inside, and you knew the talent. Why would somebody’s struggles erase that? Either you’re in or your out, I guess.”

“And when I first started talking to you...”

“Yes...”

“Why did you listen?”

“Because you smart, and you loved the music, and you really thought this stuff through.”

“Well, doesn’t everybody?”

“They think they do, but they don’t know – and don’t care or want to know.”
“Hmmm...”

“And you were that kid with Kinison, that said everything about you. How much you cared, how much you understood what was going on... not everyone has that.”

“Huh...”

“Lotta people in this business want to be a big deal. Then there are the ones who want to be around great, who love the artists and want to make them shine. When you find one of those, you don’t forget.”

And so, Walter Miller’s gone. After 94 years, countless adventures, millions of miles traveled, all those jokes and ribbings, songs that he loved, lives that he touched. He noticed unlikely things, and he created bonds and bridges.

Something tells me Zelda, my beautiful yellow cocker spaniel, was waiting at the gate for her buddy. Well-behaved, she used to go to “CMA rehearsals,” sitting on the Opryhouse pews right behind the director, who would brighten noticeably when she arrived, them enjoy a rousing dialogue that brought my precious baby into the room as a player in full.
Looking over his shoulder after a particularly predictable performance, Zelda turned her nose up and looked off. “See, you guys, even the Cocker Spaniel knows...”
Then he was onto barking instructions into his headset, scanning the run and reaching for a mini Snickers. There are far greater examples of Miller’s generosity, but I can’t think of one that shows his heart quite like that. 

I’m Gonna Catch Tomorrow Now: Billy Joe Shaver’s Rowdy Tonk for Believers

He was a little bit shy, and big. Great big, big big. Half standing when I walked up to the table at the old Longhorn just off West End, he was almost too big to extricate himself from the hard wooden booth. A shock of hair fell across his eyes as he reached out a man’s forearm clad in denim and smiled into my eyes, nodding a welcome.

I clenched the extended hand, forgetting... We’d never met, but the legend of Billy Joe Shaver losing most of three fingers in a saw-mill accident was known... and I clenched my fingers into a “man appropriate” grip.. A firm handshake, my Dad used to tell me, levels the playing field, says you’re strong, says you’re true.

Only when I closed my fingers, there was a whole lot of nothing there. He gripped with the fingers he had, closing his great big hand around mine. His palm had seen enough physical labor, you knew this wasn’t a pampered soul, who got rich and fancy when Waylon Jennings cut an entire album of his songs called Honky Tonk Heroes.

I tried not to react, show surprise or yelp. He’d seen it all; he’d’ve probably laughed, but I was there to do an interview for Tramp on Your Street, his first album in a decade. I wanted to maintain not just my cool, but a sense I could handle the story. The project was a pungent roots rock affair, long on muscular guitar that was a narcotic musk of twang, tone and jangle courtesy of his son Eddie.

That was why the album was Shaver, not Billy Joe Shaver. It had that thumping backbeat that made Waylon Jennings an outlaw of equal stripes biker and cowboy, as well as the acoustic-forward tilt that pulled you into Willie Nelson’s far friendlier Armadillo country orbit. As Garth Brooks exploded, Vince Gill’s sweetness reigned and Alan Jackson brought traditionalism back into fashion, Shaver struck a blow for the roughneck place in country music where men were men and the ladies were glad.
An almost primitive writer, capable of great poetry and earth-cracking truths, Shaver’s gift was an odd gentleness, a vulnerability that recognized the failings of our mortal coil matched with a hell-raising, take-no-shit kind reckless good-timing. Still sitting there in that packed chain restaurant all the songwriters and old guard business types congregated in for mid-price red meat, potato planks and cold beer, draft or bottle, he was mostly funny, charming, patient recounting the story of a life Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry and Tom McGuane couldn’t conjure as a team sport.

Raised by his grandma, supplementing their social security singing on a pickle barrel in a general store, he was a bona fide Texas blue collar texture from a time forgotten. Though solid teachers’ pet stock, the brawling suited him better – a fact testified to in “Georgia on a Fast Train” that proclaimed, “I got a good Christian raisin’ and an 8th grade education/ Ain’t no reason for y’all to be treatin’ me this a way” – and manual labor for a big strong boy was an honest way to get life done.

As for his fingers, he shrugged, and said, “Yup, I was feeding planks on the line, reached back, got tangled up and next thing you know, my hand got pulled in.”

Matter of fact, matter of life. Maintaining eye contact, he half-shrugged assessing my limit for gore, then kept going, “I looked down, saw my fingers in the saw dust, scooped’em up and put’em in my pocket. They tried to reattach’em, but too much damage was done.”
No big deal. Keep on. Keep on keepin’ on.

Chiseled features, a head bent to dreaming and the music inside, he found his way in the nightlife rooms of honky tonks and bars. Wrote some songs, banged around with his guitar, decided to give Nashville a try.

The story of Jennings’ repeated brush-offs  after saying to bring the deep-voiced star some songs manifested into a threat to “kick your ass” if Waylon didn’t listen was as widely known as his the one about his mangled. He laughed telling the story sitting there, aw shucks and well, you knowin’ as if it was a just a little crappy on the line not the great big fish it was made out to be.

Funny thing is: Jennings cut a whole album of his songs. More than the legend, there was the music, earthy, real, splintered in places and consumed by whatever emotion was driving the writing.

Laughing at the table, he leaned over, wanting to share a secret.

 “You know that Madonna?” he asked, making sure I knew this wasn’t about some blessed virgin. When I nodded, his eyes gleamed and his chuckle tempered with something just to the left of lust. “Now there’s a gal, you know? I wrote ‘Hottest Thing In Town’ about her, the kinda gal that knows what to do no matter where you find her.”

“Well, well...” I replied.

“I mean, you don’t know her, do you?”
“Only by records...”
“Man,” he exhaled. “Just... man... I wouldn’t mind going a round or two with her...”
It wasn’t dirty, wasn’t nasty. Maybe the closest I’ve ever come to someone inhabiting that Hank Willilams’ notion of going “hawnkee tuhnkin’.” Though something told me if she wanted to use him as a human trampoline, he’d give at least as good as he got.

Lunch was savored, not rushed. He told stories, gossiped a little, talked about his past, his son, the future – and seemed not to notice the stolen glances from a pretty fast room. My mother’s mother, a salty gal who loved a character, would’ve pronounced him “darling.” My father, a former Marine, would’ve said, he was “A-OK.”

We stood up. He asked if he could give me a hug. It was like being swallowed by a mountain. He’d been off the rails for part of the previous decade, living rough and Tramp On Your Street was going to put him back on his feet. It gave him a reason to steal his son back from Dwight Yoakam – and to show rock crowds, college kids and old school country fans that there was still a spark of honest-to-goodness real men making stripped down, jacked up country-blues rock.

To hear something so unadorned, so almost turpentined then was a revelation. Today, it’s stark raving pure. Analog tape, real gear, musicians on the floor, throwing it down. You can almost hear the tracks sweat.

And so I went home to write up a story for Tower Records Pulse! I made some calls, talked to some people. Convinced my editor at The New York Times this record, this artist in this moment was important. Sometimes it’s the antecedents (the people he’d impacted) that make the difference, but in the end, the 550 words in America’s paper of record make a very different kind of difference.

Somewhere in the middle of that review, I wrote, “Ragged emotions are something Mr. Shaver earned through living, and that hard-won knowledge infuses "Tramp on Your Street," his first recording in 10 years. Whether it's the roughneck bump and shuffle of "Georgia on a Fast Train," with Mr. Shaver yowling the lyrics of bumpkin protest, or the meditational bluegrass of "Live Forever," these are songs of redemption. In his world, though, redemption takes many forms: unabashed -- and unreal -- lust ("The Hottest Thing in Town"), surrender to a higher power ("If I Give My Soul") and, somewhere between, yearning (the fragile "When Fallen Angels Fly," the eerie "I Want Some More").

Mr. Shaver once saw Hank Williams and sang of the experience: ‘His body was worn, but his spirit was free/And he sang every song, looking right straight at me,’ offering self-revelation in the process. With a gruff voice and awkward phrasing, he knows that truth isn't pretty. Still, he presents the tales and insights of a well-traveled soul wrapped in a buzzing barbed-wire guitar and a backbeat that crashes like a garden gate.”

I’d write thousands of words about Billy Joe Shaver over the years, witnessing to his stoic grit, his naughty sense of fun, his abiding Christian faith, his ability to transcend hard times. But maybe nothing captures it better than those few lines.

Moving around Nashville in those mid-90 days, in and out of camps and creative communities, I preached the gospel of Shaver’s core truths and rough-hewn, yet brutally exacting demolition country. So alive, so electric, you wanted to turn people on, shock them from the slickness.

Notes were written, CDs left between people’s storm doors and front doors. Phone calls, but especially delicious sessions of “ooooh”ing and “ahhhhhh”ing over the viscerality of the tracks and the wisdom of the words.

“Live Forever,” a quiet take on one’s spirit being eternal and a directive on kindness and the Christian way, seemed like a prayer the go-go ‘90s needed. With that kerosene rising melody, it deserved a torchy voice. Hummable; why not? It could bring sanctity to the radio.

When the phone rang, Patty Loveless, on the other end, was raving about the album. An Appalachian traditionalist seasoned by wild hare juke joints in North Carolina, she understood every syllable and note twist on the album. “I’m gonna cut it,” she announced.

“Live Forever?” I asked, gleeful

“When Fall Angels Fly,” she returned. “It’s broken, but it’s saved. Holly, people need that kind of promise and that kind of hope.”

It was never a single, never a focus track. But the ache in her voice, the break in that vowels when she confessed, “I have climbed so many mountains, just to see the other side/ I have almost drowned in freedom, just to feed my foolish pride” was a revelation. Not a soul saved by love trope, but a woman who’d been places, who owned the miles and the men in the arms of that one person can embrace her whole being.

While it didn’t earn seven figures, the song left a mark on history. When Patty Loveless became only the second woman to win the Country Music Association’s coveted Album of the Year, it was, “Patty Loveless... When Fallen Angels Fly” that got announced.
Not long after Loveless and her husband Emory Gordy, Jr, cut the song, I came home to voice mail I could barely make out. Cell phones were new, reception was bad. A couple late nights later, I picked up the phone to that same voice: Billy Joe Shaver.

“Holly, I will never forget what you did for me,” he said.

“Well, it was a great song, and look what it did for Patty! It gave her a name for her record...”

“I’m not kidding,” he said, being grave and serious. “When I heard her sing that song, I wept. It got down deep inside me. I can’t thank you enough.”

People in moments are grateful. Gratitude in any form is lovely. The irony: Billy Joe Shaver never forgot. Decades later when I would run into him, he’d always find a way in a random moment to lean over and whisper some variation of “I mean it... man, the way she sang my song” in my ear. Because singers and songs and truth were holy, and he took it hardcore serious.

And that was thing for all the sorrow and the pain... this is a man who lost his son to a heroin overdose on a New Year’s Day, and still showed up for his gig at Poodies later that night, who lost his mother and his wife in shortly thereafter, who just kept going, kept seeking to do the next right thing and help those who needed help.
Tucked into corners of the night, random multi-artist events or tv tapings, he was always glad to see you, always ready to sing his songs and tell his truth. He wasn’t detached, the songs showed that. “It’s Hard To Be An Outlaw,” flexing wicked double-entendres sung with Willie Nelson, from 2014’s Long In The Tooth has the same measured brio that made his early songs such unabashed articles of a certain kind of life.

“Jesus Was Our Saviour And Cotton Was Our King,” “Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be A Diamond One Day,” “Ride Me Down Easy,” “Devil Made Me Do It the First Time,” “Old Five and Dimers,” “You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ” spoke volumes of how the Outlaws lived – and breathed. Later he got more randy, howling bawdy hilarity like “That’s What She Said Last Night,” or the hilarious truth-tell “Wacko from Waco” that rose from Shaver actually shooting a man.

Another larger than life legend that paled compared to the actual tale. Sitting at a bar with his lady friend, who was attracting unwanted attention, there were words. When the offender wouldn’t stop, Shaver suggested he was going to the bathroom, when he got back, the guy should be gone, or there’d be consequences.

With a chorus that promises, “I don’t start fights, I finish fights/That’s the way I’ll be/ I‘m the Wacko from Waco/You best not mess with me...,” Shaver walked out of the bar, looked at the guy threatenng to blow him away, and shook his head. “Where do you want it?” he asked him, then pulled the trigger.

Cool as is he is smart, Shaver rolled right up to Wille Nelson’s house, and started negotiating his surrender. Indeed, the bonus finds the Red-Headed Stranger admonishing listeners, “The Wacko from Waco is still on the run, A writer, a singer,  a son of a gun/ Don’t cross him, don’t boss him/ Stay out of his way/ Don’t give him no trouble /Cause you’ll just make his day...”

So beloved by all, it was only a matter of time before justice was served. With Robert Duvall and Nelson sitting in the courthouse during the trial – and acting as character witnesses – Shaver was soon free again, exonerated by self-defense..

Free again! Some men are freeborn men, others live their lives in shackles. Maybe that’s what made Shaver so transfixing. Never wanting to be anything more than he was, simple and willing and seeking higher ground while good-timing like few could, he walked that line between damned and sublime.

The acapella “Star In My Heart,” a tender love song to someone gone who will always be loved and dedicated to his son Eddy, on 2012’s Live from Billy Bob’s, manifests a purity you can’t fake. Tumbling into “Live Forever,” the Bee Spears-evoking back and forth bass part and the few gut string notes scattered beneath that slightly bent vocal tone, he weighs the words he’s sung for a couple decades at that point.

You fathers and you mothers

Be good to one another

Please try to raise your children right

Don’t let the darkness take’em

Don’t make’em feel forsaken

Just lead ‘em safely to the light

When this whole world is blown asunder

And all the stars fall from the sky

Remember someone really loves you

We’ll live forever you and i

I’m gonna live forever
Im gonna cross that river

I’m gonna catch tomorrow now...

When the news arrived, via email from a mutual friend who moves through the same rooms of legends and songwriters, I shrieked. Literally, blinked twice and felt the blood curdling scream reflexively leaving my throat and through my lips.

How many more people are we going to lose? Are going to pass into the sky? Jerry Jeff Walker? Bobbi Cowan? JT Corenflos? Who next? It has been a cruel harvest, and a brutal year of too many unknowns.
In the vertigo and disorientation, it’s hard to know where the wall is, or why we should be believe it’s going to get any better. And yet, we have these songs, these recordings. From the ‘70s, the ‘90s, the ‘00s and the ‘10s.
Slightly slurred, swooping down and lifting up, the joy is a dissolving agent, the faith is a buttress against what we can’t know. Typing this, another one, yet another one, I feel my heart lurch from shock to rage to sorrow to confusion and ultimately to being glad. In a world where all is temporal, Billy Joe Shaver was – all the contradictions, the swagger, the kindness, the hilarity. And there are so many memories to sustain.

Even more, there is the music and the songs. Listening, absorbing it, I feel the corners of my mouth rising, my heart easing just a little. There are more tears to be shed, no doubt, but right now, it’s a little bit of Dixieland in “The Good Ole USA” and knowing he lived in glory, not in vain. Not a bad truth to tell.

For further reading: https://lonestarmusicmagazine.com/qa-billy-joe-shaver/

And The Cradle Will Rock: Eddie Van Halen Broke Ground, Birthed Joy + Flew To Heaven

You couldn’t trust the Record Revolution near the Parmatown Mall. At least, not if you frequented the one on Coventry with the day glow punk rock window displays and surly clerks. Yet, there I was in front of a peg board display of “New Music,” weighing an offer from a way older than me golf pro to buy me a record.

The normal signals weren’t there. No interesting posters, stand-ups or displays to point the way. Just a bunch of shrink-wrapped albums, which I kept removing, turning over, assessing. How I got there, I don’t know. But I remember balancing my fear of his annoyance with my own desire to not squander a free record. Or in this case, 8-track, because that’s what his car played.

Pursing my lips, I made my decision. Van Halen. Definitely.

I had no idea what it actually sounded like, but two burnt-out caddies had been raving about it earlier in the week. If it was good enough for them -- and they liked their rock – then it was exactly what I wanted.

The golf pro was non-plussed. “You sure?” he asked dubiously, flipping the album cover over and perusing the titles. Was it “Ice Cream Man” that gave him pause? “Atomic Punk”? “Little Dreamer”? I didn’t know, didn’t care. His pique made me want it more. There was no way this was going to be the Archies or the Partridge Family, so there was no shame in my game.

“Positive,” I said. Marched towards the door of the little strip mall store, paused and waited. He took the bag, his change and headed for me. Passing through and onto the sidewalk, he looked over his shoulder, “This is gonna suck.”
“Awesome,” I said, refusing to cower. “Can’t wait.”

That sound like an oncoming train turning into a space ship, the creeping bass throb made the opening 20 seconds feel like a lifetime. A cymbal strike, then another, and then... then... that guitar tone, swiping, slicing at the space inside that maroon muscle car. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard – and I’d heard a lot. T. Rex, Uriah Heap, Deep Purple, Les Dudek, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, the Stones.
The singer, wide open, vamping, rafting diving, wailing, was like a stripper on a pole. Swinging around the melody, yowling for effect, flexing what he had. It wasn’t power singing, slightly nasal, slightly throwing it out there. Like a javelin thrower, it was all about the moves.

And then the guitar solo started – notes, surges, circles, a definite sense of progression. Whatever the singer was doing, and it seemed to be about howling over a big hook-filled chorus of multiple voices intoning “Running With The Devil,” it didn’t matter: the show was the guitar, and the guy playing it knew no fear.

Proof was in the second track. A tumble of notes, tons of notes, spinning and circling at a ridiculous pace. Like someone had taken a Gregorian organ piece, speeded it up, played it on an electric guitar. It was thrilling, no other word for it. Whomever this was, the dexterity was death-defying. And it wasn’t just fast notes, but someone chiseling a real piece of music out of thin air.
I could feel the smirk crossing my face. Lips pressed together, the corners were repelling against each other, my eyes squinting as I tried not to be a poor winner. I’d been looking straight ahead, not making eye contact, just letting the music move through the car, me, the windows. When the notes were swallowed by something that felt like industrial noise, I exhaled. Turning towards my companion, the stabbing thrash that felt so familiar, that “when the whip comes down” flagellating the melody slapped across the bucket seats – and I realized the familiarity was... the Kinks!

Holy crap! One, two, three. This Van Halen album, bought because two stoners, who were the best kind of bad news, had been talking about them, was yielding in ways that reinforced my authority about music and rock bonafides.

“Well...” I leveraged, letting the smirk turn into a smile. “Well, well, well.”

“Yeah,” he said. It was so good, he couldn’t disparage the record. And good in a way that suggested a brighter, cleaner kind of rock. This wasn’t the heavy metal or hard rock that was so onerous or dark. It almost felt like pop music, something that in another universe reconciled that serious playing of the guitar and a drummer who kept sweeping things along with the idea that big shiny chorus were what it was all about.

“Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” seemed to be the poon hound’s national anthem. Raised around golf pros always on the prowl for something quick’n’easy, I got the rub. This was hormones and want to, the idea that it’s just sex – and why not?

For all the macho posturing,  damn that guitar player could play. And it just got better. “I’m The One” was a tangle that was blistering. Sure, there was an a capella “oh, wah, shooby doo wah” section that recalled the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water,” but it was the guitar that just kept coming.

By “Jamie’s Crying,” Eddie Van Halen was playing with a wanton tone that slithered and swung from side-to-side like the hot chick who knows everyone’s watching her walk. The counter melody, counter vocal part spoke volumes about the intention, the aggression and the control he had over his instrument.

We were still sitting in the parking lot, letting the music pummel us. Looking at the clock, I flinched. Dinner-time! Oh, damn...

 “We gotta go.”

But having sat there, consumed by the playing, the swagger, the gusto for something big, loud and hip-shaking, there was something more to it than the guitar riffs, solos and weird ways of attacking the instrument. It was... FUN.

They played hard. But somehow – and not just the over-emoting, over-pouting singer – they didn’t take it all so serious. Yeah, virtuosity seemed to be an anchor, but they got the joke about how torqued up and testosterone-lacquered this was. Indeed, they leaned into with zeal. Who sings “I’m on fire” over and over in falsetto? Just a smokescreen for the spiraling runs, the punch punch pow of certain lines.
Over the bridge, up Carnegie, up Cedar Hill and peeling off to the Fernway School district. The tape kept clicking into the next quadrant, and nobody was saying much of anything. Pulling into the drive, I was a little bit late. I’d have to explain, but the damage could be undone.

“Can I keep it for now?” the golf pro asked, hoping to feel the grooves punch up whatever nocturnal adventures were ahead.

“No,” I replied. “You said it was for me.”

Pulling it from its place in the dash, I smiled. Clearly victorious, I tucked my trophy on one hand, opened the door and hit the driveway. “I had a really good time, and I love this. Thank you so so much.”
The much older golf pro scowled. Thwarted from annexing the tape, the gap was between 20-something and 14 was becoming bigger by the nano-moment. Kid sister, mascot, pain in the butt, I was big fun – and I extracted a big price for my time.

“You’re late,” my mother brayed. “Where’ve you been?”
I slid the tape under the cushion of a living room chair, smoothed my clothes and said, “Oh, I went over to the West Side and played golf with a couple of the pros.”

Knowing to start putting food on my plate and commit to dinner, I lowered myself into the seat that trapped me between the table and the wall. It was a basic dinner, no big deal, but dinner was always a big deal.

“How’d you play?” my Dad asked.

“Okay... Greens were slow, made a lot of putts.”

“Anything good happen?”

“Nope, just another day hustling golf with the hustlers.”

What a lie!

Up to the attic I stole after dinner, breathing in dust bunnies in the airless upstairs. Listening to “Eruption” over and over, trying to figure out how many notes, where they were going, how he was doing that. Finally, hitting the “Back” button over and over, I just let it wash over me like a rush of blasting water. Sinking into it, I drifted to a place beyond words or physical location – just rhythms, twists and tone.

Van Halen, the band that split the difference between rock and pop, had exploded inside a mid’70s muscle car – and taken me away. If Aerosmith felt like the Stones seedy US underbelly, this was something else. For a girl who liked the guitars out front, the rhythms propulsive, so began a love affair and guilty pleasure that would sustain me throughout college.

The next day I saw the two stoners, went, “Van Halen... YEAH.” They looked at each other, then back me and smiled. We all just nodded and smiled.

Springing for the album, looking at the pictures, they were dangerous without being menacing. Carnal, sure, but more the kind looking for volunteers than hostages. And if you were just there for the music – wallflower that I sort of was – that was okay, too. Come, rock, be. Throw your hands in the air, shake your butt, jump up and down. Leave your frustration, put the accelerator down.

Bad days, Sad days. There was Van Halen. It could pick you up, spin you around.

There was nothing profound here, just a cymbal crash, the jackhammer beats. And that guitar – doing things that just kept you moving forward. But always, always with melody.

And if David Lee Roth was that loudmouth guy who couldn’t shut his trap, hair like a lion, peacock strut and an arrogance that was laughable, Eddie Van Halen was cute. There, I said it. That smile, those impish eyes: he was a guitar god, but he was also really adorable.

Having grown up around the nerds for whom girls barely scanned – even their girlfriends seemed like an afterthought – the notion of a guitar hero who was darling was perfect. One more thing he did better than everyone else, yet that wasn’t even the point.

By the time Van Halen II dropped, they were massive. What had been my private stash, my jump around in my tshirt and jeans proposition had injected a Top 40 sort of hard rock sheen into Album Oriented Rock. The pulsing beats, the room on the tracks, the ear worm hooks – more often from the guitar as the lyrics – creating a new ubiquity.

Suddenly, all boys played air guitar. Junior high school dances saw the wall-flowers spill onto the floor, lurching and churning to Alex Van Halen’s “stomp” here crashes. Even the cool Moms were down, turning up the car sound system and bouncing their head in time. It was primal, but polished into a light saber gleam.

They found a way to reinvent “You’re No Good,” a steamy soul song that my friends all knew from Linda Ronstadt’s exhortative version, as a dank sort of trepidation, then emergence. Whatever, whoever she was, the guitar’s ramble spoke more than Roth’s vocal. It was half self-salve, but more the confession of a man felled by love.

Much to unpack from a song all the little girls thought – via Ronstadt’s backbone – they understood. To stare at the block disc turning ‘round was to hypnotize oneself with the turning and the tone. Not that II was a journey to the center of your psyche.

No, they perfected the party on, lust’n’libido notion of rock and roll. Out front, shameless, yet not so threatening for their unabashed celebration of “Dance The Night Away,” “Beautiful Girls” and “Women In Love.”

There was ZZ Top/Tejas kinda boogie with “Bottoms Up,” an acoustic almost flamenco excavation called “Spanish Fly” that dropped into straight into the slice’n’spin “DOA.” Every flavor, every color of rock and roll, it was here. Narcotically infectious, even the rock based upon classical music geeks had to give propers to Eddie Van Halen and his crew.

Van Halen merged being a party band with groundbreaking musicality. So much fun, you could miss the virtuosity – until that one riff corkscrewed by you, took hold, dropped your jaw. Whether you played an instrument or not, there was that moment when you stopped, went “What the...” or “How the...”

Make no mistake, it was always the brothers Van Halen. Diamond Dave may’ve been the sideshow carny and Sammy Hagar the hardcore metal singer, but it was the propulsion of Alex’s drums and the igniting factor of Eddie’s playing.

If “Oh, Pretty Woman” put them squarely on Top 40 radio, “Jump” made them lords of MTV. Even more startling about “Jump,” it was the columns of synthesizer that architected the equally driving single that was feeding on the post-disco new wavery of Men Without Hats and the Thompson Twins with an authority that would one day ooze from Prince’s rock-taut funk.

Yes, the solo – hammer-ons and arpeggios --  was like a jungle gym you could climb all over, but the vision transcended mastery of the guitar. Suddenly, we were all one big musical gumbo, one big party where all elements cooked up hot.
“Panama,” back squarely in the rock lane, worked just as well. Good times, good hooks, good grooves. They conviviality of the band of the band in the video made Van Halen a club you’d want to be part of: the thump bomping you forward, the red guitar with the white tape taking on another level of iconography.
It was all so thrilling, then the tempo dropped. If Roth’s recitation was a little creepy, Van Halen’s guitar – the tossed back and forth downstrokes, slithering licks  – was a novella unto itself. A dark and stormy night, a misty roads end, a little bit of musk and misadventure.

And “Hot For Teacher”? After school special took on a whole other, prurient realization.

Diver Down and 1984 suggested a musical omniverse. A place where it all rocked together. But perhaps the greatest unifier had nothing to do with Van Halen at all.

MTV was a bastion of blinding Caucasian whiteness. Like AOR radio, it was filled with the Camara and Trans Am friendly bands. For every wacky Cindy Lauper, boytoy Madonna or British new waver from Banarama to the Clash, there was no Hendrix, no Tina Turner, no soon-to-be-minted Prince of Pop or just Prince.

Eddie Van Halen, whose parents moved to America because of his prejudice his Indonesian mother faced living in Holland with his traveling musician father, understood. Without ever flexing his own family’s experience with racism, he showed up, put up and laid a solo down on “Beat It” that made Miichael Jackson a citizen in full of MTV’s rock hard jungle.
No one doubted Jackson’s talents, that wasn’t the fact. Without words, though, there was a segregation in place that no one wanted to address. With six strings and a whirlwind of dexterity, Eddie Van Halen showed it was all music. Bring the intensity, the creativity and let the best song win.

Like a lot of rock stars, he struggled. Booze, primarily, but drugs. Late nights, party down. But always sweet to the core and chasing a dragon of what could he make the music do, where could his fingers go, his ability to drive deeper into his instruments, his vision, his curiosity.

Hanging with Sam Kinison, the comic/preacher/surprisingly facile musician, they could go for hours, for seemingly days. Talk, laughter, jamming, pressing into all the places people who fly so close to the sun see that elude the rest of us.

Always, always, seeking something more, walking a blade of music and shock, Where could it go? What unspeakable truth could you find?
If Diamond Dave was a flamboyant sideshow barker, Eddie Van Halen was seeking something more. If the party was what drew the masses, it was the playing that fed his soul and galvanized his band as more than one more hair metal act with momentum and a moment.
Three patents. Licks every pimply faced kid who wanted to rock locked himself in his bedroom to learn. A currency of the road is communicated by his solos without ever calling a title.

Having risen from backyard parties and Hollywood’s Starwood/Gazarri’s scene, he understood the commerce of hot girls, good times and loud music. But Eddie Van Halen knew how much more it could contain.

If Roth wanted to fly solo, Sammy Hagar provided a way to take things more seriously. Sure, they’d still pack some leer factor, some brio, some of that rafter-diving vocalese. But “Right Now” suggested a band that could make you think, too.

It was a new day, a new way of rocking hard. Once again, in a whole other way, Van Halen had redefined their singularity. If the exploding reality of another discovery didn’t have the same seismic force, they broke ground wielding awareness with the same “check this out” as Roth twirling some girl’s g-string on his finger.

Eddie F’ing Van Halen.

Like the Michael Jackson solo, heck like the solo on Nicolette Larson’s “Can’t Get Away From You” billed to “?,” he sought to keep his cancer struggle on the downlow. People knew, but had no idea. Word would spread, then be calmed.

It was as if he didn’t want people to lose site of the music in the struggle. He was a vessel of the Gods sent to pour the music out over us. The rest was just a matter of his mortal coil being mortal. Don’t look there, look here! See the sparks fly! Watch me ignite this 18 bar section of song! Hear the twists, swirls, corkscrews – and smile, or jawdrop, or marvel, or scream.

Scream! With delight, pleasure, rapture, awe. He didn’t care. He just wanted to play.

Standing in the grocery store, the text came.  Just the TMZ announcement, nothing more. Butt the sender: Kenny Chesney, a kid who had those songs pumped into his veins almost before he was double digits.

Having become real stadium-sized ticket-selling artist, Eddie  Van Halen’s represented the blurring of lines in the name of music to the kid from East Tennessee. If Keith Whitley gave him heart, Van Halen was the blood pumping through his heart and his approach to music. The notion country could have real songs, could punch hard, could burn guitar solos into the night as 60,000 people screamed was born turning up Diver Down in his best friend David Farmer’s stereo.

He, who’d made friends with his hero, had shared at least one blistering night with the Van Halens. Not quite a “Wayne’s World” moment, but the pictures show a road band, clearly influenced by the brothers, beaming about the merging of worlds, the kindness they were shown and the moment to share a stadium stage with icons who’d seen and done it all.

The spice aisle blurred. Somehow the heavy whipping cream didn’t seem so important. These moments – so ordinary and uneventful – can knock the legs out from under you, take your breath away. Tears ran down my face, not because I knew him – beyond seeing that smile under those thick dark bangs falling across his face with Sam – but because Eddie Van Halen’s guitar set me free, let me jump into the brink and believe could fly.

Texts flew all night. Emails came and were sent. Back and forth, back and forth. An art director friend passed me a couple of the Gene Simmons-produced demos, bursting with the inevitable.

A couple calls, a lot of tears. For me, Van Halen  -- where it all began – played way too loud, but exactly the same volume was when a barely teen found a record in the West Side Record Revolution.

And that’s the thing about Eddie Van Halen: he -- seemingly -- knew no fear. Just higher, faster, squigglier, fuzzier, cleaner. He didn’t care about changing the world, he wanted to press the music as far as it could go. And he did. And we are all the more in so many ways for it.

As Long As I’m Making Music, I Can’t Do Nobody Wrong: Mac Davis’ Sweet Songs Sail Into Paradise

He was cool. Not Steve McQueen cool, but good guy who’d do the right thing, help somebody out because he could cool. Indeed, he was the kind of cool that even before I knew what cool was, or really understood what the man with the curly dark hair and the bright smile did, I knew he was cool.

People think the social upheaval happened in the ‘60s, then the ‘70s were one long disco inferno. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Cleveland, Ohio alone, the lake died, the river burned, four kids were shot to death protesting the Viet Nam war at Kent State, race riots saw America’s first Black mayor elected and nice girls from good families ran off with the Children of God, Mexico to get busted coming back with a lid of grass or New York because Roe V. Wade wasn’t a reality, but their pregnancy was.

Into or against all that, Mac Davis emerged the unruffled songwriter who’d created hits that synthesized these moments. Elvis Presley’s “A Little More Talk” may be the musky brio that defines the King’s charisma, but “In The Ghetto” alone crystalized the stark pain of the inner city with a quiet conviction that matched Marvin Gaye’s own social awakening. But there was more, the tender “Watching Scotty Grow,” the heart-tugging “Memories” and the life-affirming “I Believe In Music” to temper the awareness you couldn’t turn away from.

Suddenly, the kid from Lubbock who moved to Atlanta, then crossed the country seeking a toehold in music was a songwriter the famous artists clamored for. Nancy Sinatra had invested wisely when she signed him to a publishing deal. He wrote hits for Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Bobby Blue Bland, Tammy Wynette, Frank Sinatra and Merle Haggard, plus Aviici and Bruno Mars of recent vintage.

People who believe in music are the happiest people

Clap your hands, stomp your feet, shake your tambourines

Raise your voices to the sky, God loves you when you sing

The son of a religious man, gospel permeated his music. Whether the slow burning carnality of “One Hell Of A Woman,” or the overt church-feel of “I Believe In Music,” the soul of his raising was evident. So was the innocence of dreaming when you’re small-town bred, but believing there’s something more: “Texas In My Rearview Mirror” spoke volumes about chasing what you don’t truly understand with enough passion to possibly catch it.

That hope in the face of impossible odds, that smile and sense of “why not?” embodied an optimism people needed. But this wasn’t a hoaky sap who didn’t know better, this was an actual man intent on embracing the best in people.

Growing up, my atonal Dad loved to sing along with the radio. Some songs got even more gusto than others, and Davis’ songs – whether he sung them or not – swung in a pocket perfect for Midwestern males content in the suburban realities. He found “It’s Hard To Be Humble,” wryly iconic with its confession “I’m perfect in every way.” He delighted in the real life reminder “Stop & Smell the Roses” with its gospel tinge.

And as a golfer, he had a temperament that when we watched as a family, his deportment was  that of an excellent athlete. But more than a cocky jock, he came off like the definition of “a sportsman,” the kind of gentleman who’d be nice to your daughter, respect your wife and wisecrack his way around the course. But also, the kind of guy who’d press on the last three holes, and pay his bet even if he didn’t think he should’ve missed that putt.

Honor comes in many forms. Mac Davis seemed to embody it.

“Lucus Was A Redneck” a swampy, bluesy funk, painted a pretty unapologetic picture of white trash. The wah-wah guitat’n’harmonica track was a corner of the mouth kinda special, where the narrator called out a bad seed for using the N word, beating up hippies – and just kept going, railing about racism and bullying without ever flinching.

That’s the kinda stuff my Daddy liked. No show, no big deal, just a solid cut to the gut, call it as it was and don’t look back. Other than that rearview mirror filled with Texas, neither did Davis. Between “In The Ghetto” and “Lucus,” Davis did as much for racial equality in a turbulent time as anyone – and he wasn’t looking for any credit, he was just showing the simple truth to a world that needed it.

Needed it. Never chiding, never holding it over someone’s head. Even “Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me” stood as a warning to a girl who was a good hang about being a guy she didn’t wanna think about as a long term prospect. In someone else’s hands, the song would’ve been an arrogant brush-off, but for Davis with those Raphael-like curls, it was a gentle landing from a tall summit being prescribed. 

Music is the universal language, and love is the key
To peace hope and understanding, and living in harmony
So take your brother by the hand and come along with me

Lift your voices to the sky, tell me what you see

And then – after a couple years of music man tv variety show a la Campbell, John Denver, Andy Williiams, even Sonny & Cher – came “North Dallas Forty.” Playing a seasoned quarterback who was resolute and philosophical about the game, privileges and realities of being a sports hero, the songwriter/pop music star’s cool quotient went through the roof. Somewhere between DGAF and Ferris Bueller, Seth Maxwell was low to the ground and never one to let anyone see him sweat. With just enough drugs, booze, profanity and women, it was a pretty unflinching look into big time sports that candy-coated nothing.

Just as tellingly, the earthy part of who a man is at his most venal permeated Davis’ performance. Opposite Nick Nolte, Dabney Coleman and Charles Durning, the bar was set pretty high. 
Playing a flawed character, but one of modern heroics, the smiling guy from the variety show and so many PGA golf tournaments imbued Seth Maxwell, the peacock quarterback who knew the deeper aspects of his sport, with both swagger and a humanity bolstered by conflict.

It’s just a football movie, one could argue. But back when storyline, conflict and tension were key to film-making, “North Dallas Forty” sought to illuminate larger truths about a flashy game America was making its new religion. Like his songwriting, where there was often gritty truth beneath the indelible hooks, the performance showed how much of the world Davis had absorbed. Right down to knowing sometimes getting by can be an awful place to be.

The complexity is part of what fascinated Davis.

More than anything about the Songwriters Hall of Fame member, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member, a 1974 Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year, Georgia Music Hall of Fame, Texas Country Music Hall of Fame and BMI Icon Award winner, it was the humanity that mattered. Well into his seventh decade, Davis was still collaborating with young artists on the rise. Just as Bruno Mars about “Young Girls,” or Avicii on the international hit “Addicted To You.”

Once upon a time, a young kid from East Tennessee at the beginning of his career was in Hollywood for business. A mutual friend introduced him to Davis, and it wasn’t long before he was invited to stay at their house when he was in California. It was a place he would visit, a home in the storm of chasing the fame – and an opportunity to talk songwriting, inspiration and what it all means.

A small town kid, Davis found the highest reaches of what music can give. Rather than swelling up with selfishness, he opened his home to young artists coming up, reveling in new waves of creativity and the love of the game. 

He had a beautiful wife of 38 years, children, grandchildren, joy and generosity. Family was something that didn’t just endure, but sustained – and the fertilizer that made “Stop and Smell The Roses” so sweet. 

That sense of humor, the curiosity informed a willingness to come out and be seen, but never overshadow the others in the room. 

Sometimes my life is measured by watching others, seeing how they move through the crowded halls or talk to people I’ll never know. Mac Davis was one of those: seen from the distance or up close in the conversation next to mine. He had a laugh you’d like to shower in, and a smile – all these years later – that said, “Amen! Thisis the place to be...”

He appeared a little late at that small town kid’s 40thbirthday party, slipping in so as to keep the focus on my friend. By then, Kenny Chesney was selling out stadiums by the handful, had won a few Entertainers of the Year Awards and was well on his way to a second greatest hits... But that wasn’t the point of his showing up. Mac Davis came to see his old friend, a kid who’d done well, but someone who’d become part of his family on a threshold where he could celebrate a life-marker because life is what mattered.
The hug they shared was profound. Friend*family*force of love.

More than money, more than fame, more than hit movies, tv shows or songs, the delight of seeing a buddy in the middle of a celebration made his light shine. Having spent more time in Nashville, co-writing and seeing friends, sometimes you’d see him coming out of a restaurant or event, often with Lise, his equally beautiful, equally in love with life companion.
The irony of Davis, with the smoky voice that could be seductive, droll or friendly, was that if you looked at his songs, it was always about bringing people together, giving them love and helping them find the joy that defined his life. Simple stuff, and yet, that’s where it gets tricky. Still, the man who wrote “I Believe In Music” pretty much lived it every single day of his life.

And who knows maybe I'll come up with a song
To make people want to stop all this fussing and fighting
Long enough to sing along

Justin Townes Earle: Godspeed, Saints of Lost Causes + Little Rock & Rollers

I know there's an angel just for rock 'n rollers
Watching over you and your daddy tonight

            -- Steve Earle, “Little Rock & Roller”

Justin Earle never seemed to be afraid of anything. A lanky little boy, he’d turn up sometimes caught on fire and ready to take on the world. By the time, his dad had some success, the dark-headed child with the hubcap eyes that took in everything was immortalized on the second side of the iconic debut Guitar Town.

Caught between Earle’s self-defining declaration “Fearless Heart” and the a capella bluegrass of “On Down The Road,” “Little Rock & Roller” was an aching phone call home. From a payphone somewhere near the Arkansas line. A tiny bit of chanson verité, the erstwhile lullaby – a father stunned his child can answer the phone stumbles into the reality of “I guess I didn’t know you could do that/ Lord help me, have I been gone that long?” – in some ways set Justin Townes Earle’s destiny in motion.

Telling the child not to get his mama, savoring the few stolen minutes before getting back on the bus, Earle absorbs all he can – and tells his son not to be afraid, to get some sleep, to dream and know he’s always loved. Funny how what was once literal can be metaphoric and then literal again.

Justin, with the middle name invoking his father’s mentor and friend Townes Van Zandt, was destined for songs. Even more than the drug addiction he battled from puberty, there were pains in his heart, a joy inside, too, that needed to live in songs. And so, after a few local bands, the inevitable rose – and Justin Townes Earle started carving out a place for himself in the Americana world.

In 2008, The Good Life appeared on Chicago’s insurrective Bloodshot, home to Robbie Fulks, the Mekons, Alejandro Escovedo, the. Bottle Rockets and Neko Case. Stark, it featured Dustin Welch, Chris Scuggs and a very young Amanda Shires on the cover. But just as his father reset Nashville with his bulked-up blue collar rock-country, JTE turpentined everything down to the essence – and wrote a record that. was lonely, broken, hopeful and a bit brash.

That old school charm –chartered in part by Mississippi roots master R.S. Field --  offered an almost time warping trip into ‘50s/’60s taverns where Wurlitzer jukeboxes reigned and the Opry was something people waited for on Saturday night radio’s across the Midwest and Southeast.

A charming record, it introduced a young man with a lot of baggage, two big names to carry around and a musicologist’s sense of what he wanted to embrace – and. where he wanted to go. There was a Dickensian (Charles, but also Jim) innocence to the young man who’d already. OD’d five times – and. had lived to tell, not brag.  

Long legs demi-tucked up and sprawling out under the table of the funky sports bar in East Nashville, on the verge of leaving for the first tour for his first album, we laughed about the déjà vu and the inevitability of it all. Hard to believe the child I’d first met during the sessions for his father’s Exit Zero, the follow-up to Guitar Town, was embarking on the same dream.

Harder still to believe, in a true Ecclesiastes manner, I profiling Justin for The Los Angeles Times, the same way I’d written his father’s first national piece for Tower Pulse all those years ago. We laughed about that, about feeling old, sometimes lost and out of place, but knowing that fate understands what we all merely tilt at.

We talked about the life he’d led, the drugs, the street running, the bad company, the broken heart, the lost child and always the hope. Music and addiction give that to you, but the talent – that’s something you have to home. There’s no genius pass when you’re a songwriter, no “just let it fly” when you were raised around the kinds of artists and music JTE was.

He won the Americana Music Association’s 2009 Best New/Emerging Artist. He showed up in Billy Reid, looking every bit the dapper young artist on the rise in a red velvet suit, closely tailored and retro enough to mirror his sound.
His manager Tracy Thomas, who’d worked for E-Squared when Steve and Jack Emerson founded a small label, looked every bit the proud mama. Known for her tenacity and ability to soothe troubled souls, the woman who’s gone on to manage Jason Isbell and was a force in the Drive-By Truckers’ world, Thomas was midwifing a tender heart who wrote with empathy and the cracked determination of an empty generation seeking their place.

Midnight at the Movies and the gospel-flecked Harlem River Blues continued the walk-about through roots, influences and old school aesthetics. Like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Justin understood how to make the antique contemporary, to create a vital sense of now out of something that was so lovingly out of time.
He struggled, too. Yes, he won at 2011 Americana Music Award for Best Song for “Harlem River Blues,” hair parted down the middle like Alfalfa from “The Little Rascals,” round glasses and that scarecrow body. Looking as much Dust Bowl chic as hipster nerd, it seemed Justin was finding a way to be his own man. even if the white-knuckle whispers suggested his demons were always close by.

Still, Justin had that angel quality that made people root for him. Calling from Denmark for a story about Children of the Credibility Revolution, he was thoughtful, disarmingly honest, willing – perhaps too willing -- to talk about the misadventures that were as Earlean as the prodigious gifts of writing and culling music at the source.

When Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now, an album he’d been flirting with when we’d talked, arrived, it was a naked sort of wrestle that reckoned and buckled under the truth of how we mess our lives up. That was Justin’s native ground: loneliness, broken hearts, abandonment, yearning, alienation and always the way shadows inevitably creep up on you.

That sadness and the shuddered off sense of “I’m okay” permeated so much of the music, the kid whose looks were as much Hank Williams Senior as they suggested his own parents offered a refuge for anyone battling disappointment. Listening to Justin Earle, you didn’t feel so alone in your alone. Someone else had been there, his songs suggested, and knew the pain; but also lived to tell, to conjure these soft melodies, these words to let you know you’d make it.

Only somehow, Justin never quite got to the other side. Always slip-ups, backslides, missing chunks. Ultimately, a man’s choices are his own. Justin knew that, too

“Look, I was 20 years old, a junkie on the street,” he said all those years ago. “If you don’t think that’s a dose of reality...I. figured out pretty quick that nothing’s owed me cause of the name I carry.

“Sure, it may get the door open, but then it’s a pretty heavy door, cause it comes with expectations. I’m not intimidated by [the name]... And I’ve always been a fighter – I’ve got the. two fake front teeth to prove it --  so I’m not worried about it.”

Single Mothers and Absent Fathers followed four albums for Bloodshot. Recorded for emo/punk powerhouse indie Vagrant, the two-album song cycle explored that legacy, the wounding and also the marks left. Like everything, there was room on the tracks to let the light come in and the pain out. 

By the time Justin landed on New West, Kids In The Street had a joie du something. Always one to find the bright in the dark, Earle seemed to be seeking a new kind of joy. On the verge of parenthood, perhaps there was a turn. As much a love letter to the scrappy Nashville where he grew up, one of the first razed areas in Nashville’s gentrification, its sweetness outstripped everything. Fatherhood can do that for you.

Still, for all the crossed fingers and held breath, all the second chances and nine lives lived, there was a fragility to Justin that underscored everything. Not quite Jeff Buckley, he understood that the brittle places are the ones that made us precious – and in that, in those songs, perhaps he forged the thing that had gone unstated. His art was not washed in brio, even when he brought bravado to the table – and that allowed the disaffected, the uncertain, the depressed and rejected a comfort and even a bit of dignity.

That his last project was The Saint of Lost Causes seems prescient in the rearview. Evocative, vibey, it pulled you in, twisted his sense of historic, all those influences, he invoked a white working class blues with guitar tones that buzzed and churned inside. He took on truths for the losers, the poor, the cast off, pulled songs out of disparate genres and always put his own sad-eyed self out there.

A gamut run, The Saint of Lost Causes surveyed all the things he’d explored. “Appalachia Nightmare” was raw knuckled Winters Bone kinda stuff, while the acoustic juke of “Don’t Drink the Water” impaled the toxic waters of Flint, Michigan balanced by the must live euphoria of the rockabilly “Flint City Shake It.” There was the atmospheric of “Memphis in the Morning,” a shuffling minimal blues street corner invitation “Say Baby” and the steel-guitar’n’cocktail drum kit self-reckoner “Talking To Myself” to offer the phases and stages of one man trying to move through the world.

Tragedy, triumph, torment. At 38, Justin Earle was too young to be gone. Yet at 38, it’s almost a miracle there were this many years, this many records and songs. Still...
When the social media posts went up, because that’s what we do, someone drew on what was perhaps the best unintended elegy from his catalogue for. his official platforms. Always restless, always seeking, he summed his life up perfectly.

“I've crossed oceans

Fought freezing rain and blowing sand

I've crossed lines and roads and wondering rivers

Just looking for a place to land...”

No cause of death was given, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe all that matters is that he lived...

Today, tears and songs are all that’s left. For all the people who loved him, the ones closest and two rings out, it’s unthinkable – and for those of us, even those who were the occasional beneficiaries of his conversations and his smiles, there’s the jarring notion of how temporal all this is. 

Down on the Beach the Sand Man Sleeps: Sweet Dreams, John Prine, Sweet Dreams

John Prine stepped over the monitor at the Carefree Theater on Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, looked down, winked, said, “Hi, Holly!” and proceeded to laugh. He was power-strumming “LuLu Walls,” and he was fired up. Something about that song got him bashing hard, a noted contrast to the ruminative sketches of the human condition that had pulled me to him as a barely teenager.
Having just taken full-time job at the Palm Beach Post, my interview for the Miami Herald hadn’t run. He hated interviews, I’d been told, but we’d ended up talking a couple hours about life, old school Nashville, listening to WSM-AM, Midwestern values and Mr. Peabody’s Coal Train. He had a big sense of humor about being “John Prine,” an object of obsession for enough to keep his lifestyle afloat, but not exactly a household name.
After the show in that old movie theater, we sat on a couch, where he made the pitch for A Tribute to Steve Goodman, a Chicago-folkie-grounded tribute to his best friend, who’d died. Willie Nelson’d just had a #1 with “City of New Orleans” to help make sure the three Goodman girls got their college education paid for; Prine was doing his part to maintain the legacy of his running buddy.

That was the thing about John: he was never really in it for himself. Over the years, he’d be in all kinds of places, doing all kinds of things, but mostly, he liked to stand back and grin, watching people and taking in all that joy.

Wasn’t long before John got a great idea. His younger manager was an overly serious, somewhat awkward type. Maybe he’d play a little cupid, do what had to be done. Our first date could’ve been funded by John’s American Express card, except I wanted to go to Krystal. “Keep her,” he advised when he heard where we’d had dinner.

And so, barely much more than a kid, I started spending so much time on the road with the dark headed songwriter, Garry Fish, his Sancho Panza tour manager, and Dan Einstein, my soon-to-be third ex-fiancee, Fish joked, “We saw you more than our wives those years.”
It was Wolf Trap in the spring when the heat soaked through John’s jacket and left him in a clinging soggy tank top. You could literally wring the night air out.
There to write the bio for German Afternoons, I was standing in the wings, watching the zealous fans pressing into the stage, reaching up for him like the masses in “Tommy.” I was terrified. Turning to Fish, I half-squeaked, “Do something! They’re going to hurt him.”
“Hurt him? They love him,” came the response. “Look...”
They did. The sold out crowd rocked gently as they leaned over the front the stage, singing the songs softly when it was a ballad like “Sam Stone” or “Hello In There,” more raucous for “Blow Up Your TV” or “Illegal Smile.” It was a revival, but also a moment to reconnect with who they were. That was the magic: who you were, as you are. Enough, plenty, seen for the cracks and broken places and loved almost more for them.

Still, John wasn’t pious. He’d take over the Bridal Suite at the Peabody Hotel and have three and four day poker parties, breaking only to have cocktails and watch the ducks march in the lobby. One night, flown in from LA on a record company junket, I turned up super-late, thinking they’d still be rocking, only to be met by a sleepy-eyed Prine in striped pajamas, hair akimbo, just shaking his head. Scanning my companions, he chuckled, admonishing, “Choose wisely” as he shut the door.
When I got fired from The Palm Beach Post – accused of being on the take from Southern Pacific and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, as well as sleeping with Sam Kinison – John decided Dan and I needed to go to Europe. Passport packed, we embarked on a whirlwind tour of folk festivals across England and Belgium; touring the country in a vintage Daimler, we took in the countryside, realized how loneliness, emotional scars, alienation and indignation wrapped in humor were universal.
It was a magical trip, except for the part where my eyes wouldn’t stop leaking. Standing in baggage claim in Belgium, John first brought chocolate only to receive more tears; then flowers and more tears; finally, a little stewardess doll, and yes, even more tears. The tour was renamed the Pack, Unpack & Cry Tour.

But that was John: he’d never get mad.  He knew none of what was said was true – “my God,” he teased, “the alimony alone, they couldn’t have afforded you!” – but he hated seeing the pain. Whatever it took, he was my Huckleberry. And I wasn’t alone.
There was nothing like being charged with taking John to Dan Tana’s for dinner. Old Hollywood kind of hang, white linen pasta and all sorts of characters hanging around. Tucked into the elbow of Santa Monica Boulevard, he loved the thick darkness that almost swallowed the candlelight whole. Laughing, we’d talk about records, gossip about people we knew, sometimes wait for Dan to get off work. Occasionally run into someone he knew.
You never knew who, only realize when you saw legs that weren’t attached to a waiter at the edge of your table. It was that thing he had that pulled people to him. Twice I looked up, and – oh, crap! – it’s Bob Dylan, who would sit down, and just start talking. All very normal, except of course it wasn’t, and it was.
Part of what made John so precious was his ability to love all without bias. People were good or not his kind. When Dan and I were getting to the end, we made the trip to Dublin for a merging of musical worlds tv taping called “Sessions.” Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Marty Stuart, the O’Kanes, Rosie Flores, Flaco Jimenez and Guy Clark were part of the American contingent – and it was a week of entirely too much everything.
Dan had promised not to work, and immediately forgot the promise. To make it up to me, I was asked if I wanted to visit Windmill Studios with John.
Prine being friends with Cowboy Jack Clement had entre with U2’s people. Windmill was their studio. I said, “Yes, of course,” and got to be there when John saw Fiona for the first time.
It’s funny how life works. John was trying to coax back Rachel Peer, his then-wife who’d taken off and had surfaced in Dublin, actually playing bass for his taping. I hated the idea. The pretty dark haired studio manager with the great laugh seemed to be so much more right. Two nights later in the deepest hours, I spied them tucked into a banquette at the bar holding hands.
Dan and I wouldn’t make it, but John and Fiona somehow managed to transcend an ocean, the road and his idiosyncratic life.
But in the inbetween, there are so many polaroids of still life with John. Tracking up in the hills above Sunset with Howie Epstein, pushing himself to really deliver a record that pressed into the rock undertow, scraped away the hurt of a busted marriage and opened up the scared hope of new love. The Missing Years was amazing in the generosity of “All The Best,” that hung like so many little white lights across a brutal tableau of being crushed, the humanity consuming fame of “Picture Show,” the jaunty new love shuffle of “I Want To Be With You Always.”
The first run-in after the break-up at Roseland during the annual CMJ Convention.
Having run down to the winidy hall for soundcheck to make sure I could get in to see him open for Johnny Cash, the stage hands hadn’t known what to make of me; but didn’t want to make a mistake and leave some kid out in the cold. When John got there, they pointed to make sure he knew me, and when he came over, it was another gentle admonishment. “There were more Holly Gleason sightings than Elvis sightings during CMA Week, and you never called,” he said, looking me dead in the eye. “And I just want to remind you: I was your friend first. Without me, Dan would’ve never been able...”
I was red in the face. Hot, embarrassed, devastated. Even then, he couldn’t hold my feet to the fire. Putting his hand under my chin, he smiled, “Never ever come back to Nashville and not call.”

Kind of like “Summer’s End.” That lulling chorus, “Come on home... come on home...” It’s an invitation, and a prayer; it’s a lullabye and a meditation on having a place in the world where you just are. Welcome, safe, at ease, protected, loved.

It was a world that could expand as needed. Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings wasn’t just a snappy title. He knew how to bring people in, wrap his arms around them, see what was beautiful about their spirit, and it was never the big stuff, either.

I can see him, another crazy late night during a three day stand at the CoachHouse in San Juan, Capistrano. A massive table surrounded by people, Harry Dean Stanton in a sombrero crooning Mexican folks songs, as the assembled drank tequila and reveled in the moment. And there was John with that Cheshire grin, smiling at the euphoria bubbling around him instead of eating his enchiladas.
I can see him at a ‘40s feeling local hall outside Sarasota, Florida, surrounded by the people he loved. Music, food, streamers for his 60th birthday. When the band wound down, and the Brothers Prine had played “Paradise,” leading us through the final number, we adjourned to a pier. Standing there, in a cloud of friendship and love, fireworks lit up the sky as John and Fiona embraced.
I can see him, walking down the narrow stairs at some old British theater ahead of me. He’s got some stuff bundled up in his arms, cowboy boots poking up, a bottle of Aqua Velva sticking out of the one boot shafts. It was such a classic moment of manliness, unforced, just real.
I can see him, walking up to me at Baja Burrito with hs tray, asking me if it would be okay to set down and have a late lunch with him. “Of course, silly,” I said. “It’s always good to see you. Any time, any place, any where.”
I can see him at another CMJ, years later, standing on the stairs in his black top coat and jeans. He’s ready to go, and can’t figure out where I’ve gotten off to. I’d been talking to a new guy friends from Cleveland had turned me onto, who’d recorded his first album at their studio. The guy wasn’t much impressed with me, but when Trent Reznor saw John waving me to come on, he almost fell out of his chair. “You know him?” “He’s like my uncle...”
I can see him, in that kitchen on Lindawood, with the not quite yellow wallpaper with the pineapples, candlesticks lining either side of a small table-sized bowling alley, laughing and rolling strikes. When the people started leaving, he showed me a perfect vintage Wurlitzer jukebox, stocked with the best classic singles.
“You know how I got this?” he asked. “Stevie.”
Then he started telling a tale about touring in the South, AM car radios and old school hillbilly stations. The two friends got so high on the classic country by the time they hit New York, they decided to write the perfect country song. Only they did it trading lines in Sharpie on the wall of the fancy hotel they were staying in.

When the boozy haze cleared, John told his friend if he’d take the fall, he could have the song. The jukebox was his publishing money. Every time I’d hear David Allen Coe kick off the redneck national anthem of “You don’t have to call me darlin, darlin’...,” I’d smile at the secrets I know. Sometimes I’d look at John and he’d wink.

I can’t remember the day many years later Dan Einstein called. “I don’t want you to hear this from someone else. John has cancer.”
My heart stopped. “Don’t worry. We have the best people at MD Anderson. They’re on it. John’s on it.”
“I’ll pray.”
Somehow I knew. Having finally found Fiona, having two darling sons – Irish twins born 10 months apart, plus young Jody Whelan, Fiona’s little boy – and an even larger family in Ireland  to love, he would fight with everything he had. Scrappy Chicago mailman, former Army mechanic, son of a ward healer. My money was on John: things were going his way, he wasn’t going anywhere soon.

I would get updates; I would do laps on my rosary. I would squeeze my eyes shut, and beg God not to take him. And God heard me.

One day Dan showed up at my house, rang the bell. “Come on out, let’s talk.”
My heart sank.
“John’s made a record. Duets with country girl singers. He wants you to do the press.”
“Al will never go for it.” Al Bunetta didn’t believe in publicists, John was a critics’ darling.

“John’s already taken care of it.”
And so after a career of Patty Loveless, Rodney Crowell, Lee Ann Womack, Asleep at the Wheel, Tim McGraw, Emmylou Harris’ Spyboy and Matraca Berg’s Sunday Morning To Saturday Night, we dug in for In Spite of Ourselves, an album of deep vintage country with one new original sing with Iris Dement known for the line, “I caught him once, he was sniffin’ my undies.”

It was, for the most part, heaven. When I asked John, “Why a record of duets instead of your own songs?,” his eyes sparkled. He told a central truth: “I like singing with girls. I can sing with me any time.”
He did tv. He did interviews. He did too many interviews. He got mad at me.

“I feel like a piece of meat,” he barked on the New York sidewalk as early crush of rush hour people parted like the Red Sea around us. “I don’t like it.”

“But it’s good! People are going to know this record is out...”
“No, I feel like meat. MEAT! Do you get it?”
“Yes,” I said emphatically, knowing the USA Today photographer was set up in the bar of the Edison Hotel, waiting to get the picture for the cover story that was booked. I needed to break the momentum, and I needed to get John back into the cocktail lounge.

“I get it. You feel like meat, like you’re being pimped, and you know what? You’re right! You... are... right. But you know,” I paused for some tension,  “I may be a whore, but I’m your whore.”
Black Irish rising, my voice kept getting louder. His eyes kept getting wider. When I dropped the coup de grace, he couldn’t believe I went there. Busting out laughing, he grabbed me in a hug, and went, “Good Lord.”

We were in McSorley’s in no time, the shooter snapping and popping the flash as the bartender poured John a cocktail. It was quick work, happy hour was coming on. We all had places to be, and I had calls to return.

It wasn’t long ‘til I got a call. “We’re downtown in an Indian restaurant. We’re gonna go see Willie at the Bottomline. C’mon out, Cinderella, and have some fun. You work too much.”
They ordered some Tikka Masala, waited while I ate – and off we went. The Bottomline with John is probably a lot like the Vatican with the Pope. We watched Shelby Lynn, went out to Willie’s bus, where I was once again gently admonished, “Whatever you do, don’t smoke Willie’s weed.”
“John, I don’t smoke pot.”
“Well, people get excited around Willie.”
Watching the two masters visit, I was silent. The love and respect, the courtesy and grace with both men was astounding. They laughed some, talked about Kristofferson a little. Then it was time for Willie to hit the stage.

Getting off the bus, John whistled low. “Wow,” he said. “I’ve never seen you that quiet ever.”

The little details never escaped him, moments cracked open and revealed the tiniest truths that only he saw. It was incredible to watch the way he painted what everyone else missed.

Dan called me last weekend. “I don’t want you hearing this from anyone but me. It’s bad. He’s been intubated. With all the cancer that hit his lungs, this is a beast.”

I started to cry. When I was a kid, a baby rock critic working so hard at getting it right, John figured out how to help me get to the other side. I grew up on the road, traveling the world as part of his ragtag bunch of gypsies. I got Al Bunetta to admit he was wrong about publicists after we blew up In Spite of Ourselves, or maybe Fair & Square.

None of that really matters right now. As a stray, there are very few people who see all the way into your heart, who love the wild, the fierce and the formidable – who delight in your intellect, celebrate your wins and share their best moments with you.
John had done that for me my entire adult life, not because he liked how I held the mirror for him, nor because I could swim laps in songs like “Storm Windows,” “Unwed Fathers,” “You Got Gold,” “Christmas In Prison,” “Long Monday.” Just because was plenty.

At the end of The Tree of Forgiveness, the droll “When I Get To Heaven” opens with John talking his way through his first moments with God. It’s a jolly ole number that’s part Dixieland, part whimsy and 100% pure fun. Listening to him revel through the high-spirited folly – singing of kissing a pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl, smoking a cigarette that’s 9 miles long and getting a vodka and ginger ale – it’s exactly what you’d expect.

Turning sweetly serious, he confesses, “I’m gonna go find my mom and dad/ I wanna see all my mommas sisters/ cause that’s where all the love starts/I miss’em all like crazy, bless their little hearts...”
It’s so dear, so small town kid returning to the roost. And that little kid who’d shoot with his pistol, but empty pop bottles was all he would kill, that little boy  also rears his head, confessing, “And I always will remember, what my father said, ‘Buddy when you’re dead, you’re a dead peckerhead...I hope to prove him wrong, that is when I get to heaven”
Hearing John romping it up, heaven seems like a ball. Then again, John made everywhere a ball. Chewing that gum, stomping while he strummed, easing into hypocrisy with a level gaze and a few funny bon mots that left you nowhere to turn.

Dan didn’t call tonight. I got a text from an editor at HITS. All it said was, “Sorry,” and I started to cry. Funny how even in the carnage, in the many people who’re being taken from this earth, somehow it just didn’t seem like John would be one of the ones called home.
All those songs, all those stories, all those faces to okay for. Each and every one so very precious. Whether you ever shook his hand, shared a meal or just marveled from the cheap seats, he knew you were there – and he touched you in a way you didn’t even know you could feel.

I can see him now. My 17-year old cocker spaniel, my little child, had died, and I couldn’t get on a plane to Pittsburgh where I had work. Washed out, I ended up in DC where he and Steve Earle were sharing a sold out bill. Standing in the wings a couple decades later, the lights defused an almost halo around him as he exhaled those songs everyone knew by heart – and then after everyone was gone, I went down to say good-night.

He took me in, considered my pain, gave me a hug that said he knew. It was that simple, but it was that complete. Heading into the parking lot, he called after us, “You drive careful... You’ve got things to do, and you’re very precious cargo.”
That’s what I want to tell the angels right now. The ones from Montgomery, and California, Wolf Trap and the Ohio Theater, the Memphis/Muscle Shoals deep south contingent, the Austin and other Lone Star angels, as well as anyone who thinks they can fly.

I can close my eyes, see John in a single spotlight, half-braying, “Down on the beach, the sand man sleeps/ Time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps/ and a country band who plays for keeps/play it so slow, singing, ‘Don’t let your baby down...’”

Whoever you are, wherever you are, pay heed. Today’s country bands don’t play for keeps, but John Prine comes from a place where those things are incontrovertible. All you have to do is close your eyes, wrap your arms around your soul and listen.

Let Her Fly: Fierce Phran Galante Now Fights From Another Plane

She had the best laugh, there’s just no way around it. If you melted down all the things that give joy, ran them through a synthesizer and realized it as a sound, it would be Phran laughing. Earthy, robust, burgundy colored, sparkling, fiery, alive.
It wasn’t a twerpy high pitched swirl, wasn’t some kind of pogo stick giggle, nor a dry-fingered cackle that measured her delight. It was deep, it was round-bodied and it flowed like lava, up and up and up until it rolled down all over whomever was blessed to be in her company. And Phran Galante, with the flashing eyes and ballerina smooth movements, laughed a lot.

The only thing brighter or more inviting was her smile. When her lips rose up and parted to reveal those Farrah Fawcett flashing teeth, entire rooms were dazzled by the light – it shone from her eyes, her pores, her heart.
Yet, Phrannie was fierce. An advocate for animals who spent decades fighting animal cruelty, she almost single-handedly took down middle Tennessee’s kill shelters, creating awareness, raising funds and making the communal United Partnerships in Animal Welfare an organization to reckon with. She wasn’t playing, and she hated the idea that animals were seen as beasts instead of the loving, engaged creatures they were.

Lexie and Fergie, her own fur friends, were as much children as pets. Not in that overly babied, humanized way either, but imbued in dignity. She understood all creatures great and small were most of all: exactly as they were meant to be. It’s what made her such a fantastic horsewoman: she met her horses as equals, and rode with that passion of merging with one’s mount. It is a rush beyond all others, and it suited the woman with the woman whose hair always seemed to be blowing on the wind.

Riding hard and blazing trails was something Phran did only too well. She had great curiosity and deep fervor to know how things worked, why they had alchemy and captivated. A waiter’s story, a superstar’s magnetism. Though she took that fire and applied it to deserving charitable organizations, she arrived in Nashville Phran Schwartz, recently relocated temp from Chrysalis Records in New York.
Joe Galante had taken to hiring brilliant women from Manhattan – including writer and then-Penthouse editor Kay West, later MTV’s Pam Lewis – to help sharpen his messaging and perception realities for Madison Ave. He saw something in the woman with the flashing eyes, her lust for music and her ability to see beyond what was and recognize what could be.

Beyond groundbreaking campaigns for Grammy winners KT Oslin, the Judds and Clint Black, she dug into the realms of future of Hall of Famers Alabama and Ronnie Milsap with a vengeance.

It was no wonder when Clive Davis committed to what would become to the powerhouse Artista Nashville, Phran Schwartz was one of his (and nascent labelhead Tim Dubois) very first hires. The soon-to-be Mrs. Galante recognized the challenge, and she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to launch a label... and she jumped in with a shy, tall drink of water named Alan Jackson, former hitmakers Exile, Western swingers Asleep at the Wheel and turbo-talented Pam Tillis.

It’s a funny thing about starting young in a fast-track business. So much, so quick, so wow – and you need to never seem shocked or surprised by any of it. Maintain the face of a swan, nod, find the through line, the probable underpinnings, the reasons things happen or the hoped for end result. When you’re a kid, you know the adults don’t really see you, so you fade into some unseen background like a vase or an oversized chair.
By the time I met Phran, I had written regularly for The Miami Herald, then a Top 10 daily newspaper, Tower Records’ quintessential Pulse! magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, SPIN,  Performance, Country Song Round Up and Rock & Soul. I was contributing multiple times a week at The Los Angeles Times, every issue of Rolling Stone and was about to named Features Editor at HITS. On paper, big time – and certainly courted for the exposure I could provide.

I’d been on the road with Neil Young, to “The Tonight Show” with Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton, gone toe-to-toe with Lou Reed, done a cover story on the Highwaymen, hidden out in the bushes with Motley Crue for Random Notes at the MTV Video Music Awards and made friends with turbo-controversial comic Sam Kinison.

But I knew most people were nice to me because of access. I learned to hang back, to be nice, to stay removed. It was the cost of doing what I loved in a way that protected my integrity and my heart. It also was a sad and lonely way to be, but we make decisions.

The first time I met Phran was at an industry convention. She had that amazing hair, those fingers that were so statuesque, you would watch them fly. She asked me a million questions, talked about all her artists in a way that demonstrated not only did she she see them in their music, she heard their humanity in what the created.
As someone who rarely let down her guard, offered anything more than conversation about the artists or the business, I could feel the tension easing out of my body. Shy by nature, those conventions take so much out of me – and here I was, suddenly feeling recharged talking to someone who seemed like a long lost friend.

That was Phran’s greatest gift: instant comfort, trust and especially fun. In any moment, she could see something – an idea, a person, another thing in another room – fun, and off you’d go. Because Phran loved adventure and life and people. She wanted to miss nothing, and she was quick to sweep up everyone to share those moments with.
As someone who understands putting up a big front because no one cares how you feel, Phran Galante lasered straight into my heart – and saw a real person who genuinely cared about the music. It didn’t make me a chump or a mark, it made me someone precious to her. 

I’m never sure if she sought me out, or I was always looking without knowing it. But running into Phran was always hilarious, provocative and meaningful.

Right before she went to Arista, there was a radio convention in Century City. All the labels were jumping through hoops, presenting their artists,  hoping to forge believers for the names being bandied about.

She and I ended up on a patio attached to a hotel room at one of the many private parties. Someone was inside playing a guitar, we were outside where the smokers and talkers were holding court. Sitting on the concrete floor, she told me she was making the move... and I “oooh”ed and “ahhhh”ed over the genius of her being brought in to launch a label.

The urban legend of Richard Gere and the rodent was en fuego, all the whispers and the punchlines. Somehow we got talking about it, and she marveled that it couldn’t really be possible. “But Phran,” I said, having learned how to apply mascara from two drag queens (their term, not mine) in the ladies room at the Copa in Fort Lauderdale, “it is possible.”
Then began a technical accounting that included pantyhose, paper towel rollers and how the “thrill” is achieved. She looked like she was going to throw up. Then Phran burst into peels of laughter, shocked into that kind of horror response many of us have.

“Joe, Joe,” she yelped as she continued with that life-affirming laugh. “You’re not going to believe this. Come here...”

She made me explain again, just three people crouched on a hotel room balcony. Joe Galante, easily the most charismatic and possibly most powerful man in Nashville, the diamond bright Phran and myself. For a fringe-inhabiting kid, it felt like the moment before the comet hit.

But of course, it didn’t. She just hugged my neck, said, “You just never know...”

And indeed we don’t.

Here was a woman, who upon her return from New York, used her record industry contacts to get music into Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. Famous and starting out, massive songwriters and anyone else, they were enlisted to go and sing to the children.

Putting her passion for tennis where her racquet was, she was one of the founders of The Music City Tennis Invitational, which raises hundreds of thousands for Vandy’s Children’s Hospital. As a co-chair, a silent auction chair and player, she brought the MCTI to life – and received both their Sportsmanship. Award (twice) and Outstanding Service Award to recognize two decades of making a difference.

And when she got the diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer, the thing that took my father, she met it with her life force fully engaged. While some people whispered it was so advanced, such a rare strain, I almost felt sorry for the disease: it had never run into people with the determination of Phran or Joe.

Between the Galantes, all forms of therapy would be vetted, explored. They would be tried as warranted, appraised and continued or abandoned for something more effective. If anyone would know how to keep this beast at bay, indeed dismantle its killing power, it was Phran and Joe.

She would get weak, or have reactions, then she would rally. It went into remission. Phran kept riding her horses, seeing her friends, gathering her people around her at her house. It wasn’t a cause for fear, nor a reason to think anything but the best.

As Mame might’ve said, “Life is a banquet, and most of you are starving to death.”
Phran would tolerate no starving. She was out, she was traveling. Trips to Europe, trips to the barn. Always, she was laughing. She was perfect.

She engaged others who were diagnosed, helped them meet the reality without fear. She shared her hope, her resolve so others could have a monkey see, monkey do role model. Sometimes when you’re in the unknown, Galante understood, that little glimmer of light can lead you to where you need to be.

And she made people feel good, her punk shock of hair always so jagged and rock & roll, no matter what they were facing. She even managed to make most of us forget the battle she, herself, was waging.

When she felt well, she was out... One night, I ducked into a brand new restaurant of Polish origin with my laptop and some interview notes. The food was something I’d grown up on, and the mostly empty restaurant seemed like a great place to work.
Forty minutes or so into wrangling quotes into narrative,  I heard a laugh, that laugh. Looking up, Phran and Joe were the only other diners. Seated a few tables away, they were leaning across and towards each other, absolute adoration and appreciation on their faces. This was the good ole right now, and they were savoring it.

Small talk about what getting my masters, how the city was growing. She shone, and looked deep into my eyes, seeing someone trying to achieve and smiling at progress she could see even If I missed it in my exhaustion.

It’s why she could help build hospitals, close shelters that euthanize the animals left there, make cancer patients feel safe in something so towering. She looked inside, recognized the need and met it on its terms.

She leaned into the ethos – as Matthew McConaughey’s father told him to do as he was dying –of “just keep living.” And reminding the rest of us how to do it with verve and style. She was fearless in the valley of the unknown, unbridled when it came to adventure.

There are few, if any, women who could match someone as singular as Joe Galante with focus and “can do.” She did. And her heart was bottomless.  It’s why her presence in Nashville made such a difference. It’s why there’s almost an echo in the city today, an imperceptible hollow sound where her heartbeat used to be,

The thing about people like Phran, though, is they never really leave us. There will be glimpses in the most mundane, and the biggest moments everyone who ever met her will encounter. I remember passing through the too close tables at the BMI Awards, her fingers reaching out, entwining in mine, to ask me about my dress.

Hers was a 1000 times more cutting edge and glamorous, but she recognized the burnt out midnight blue velvet as something special. She was letting me – in the crush of awards, the glad-handing, the insincere backslapping that greases how business gets done – know that she saw,  recognized what it was.

Small things, unnoticed by many. For a girl used to dressing to distract and also qualify for the room, she knew what was small inside me. With a smile and a squeeze of her fingers, she’s pronounced, “You look awesome” – and transferred the blessing of a queen.

That was Phran: the people’s queen, someone who existed to see us all as we were in the best possible light. We were all lucky to exist in that glow... and to know fierceness can be the fuel of the biggest, brightest hearts.

Take Me Home Tonight: Eddie Money Passes, Regular Guy Rock Hits Heaven Between The Eyes

“UHN... hold on...

UHN, hold on ta me tighter

Never gonna leave you Now (gasping for air)

Can’t you please believe me now...”

I didn’t understand what that “UHN” meant, or why the scramble for breath. I knew it was something, something that eluded me – and something that pulled my nose to the speaker of that silver Ford LTD with the black vinyl roof my mother drove, Marlboro ever jutting from her mouth. She hated WMMS, but was exhausted from the arguing about “beautiful music” versus rock & roll.

I cut my eyes sideways to see if my mother had heard it. Her eyes had narrowed. Something sliced the steel belted exoskeleton and slid right in. Even she got it. And she hated rock music. Thought it was dumb, and loud.

Eddie Money, a former New York City cop, who looked like the kinda Guinnea boys you saw on the brick streets of Murray Hill, was blowing up car stereo speakers with his first album. Long hair tumbling down, unconstructed jacket, shiny shirt, smile that knew things bad and eyes that strafed you as you walked by. He wasn’t quite dangerous, but with given the opportunity, he wasn’t gonna play altar boy,  that much was clear every time “Two Tickets To Paradise” or “You’ve Really Got A Hold On. Me,” or “Baby Hold On” spilled out of an open car window.

Waking in a hotel in downtown LA. It used to be a flophouse, after a long run as the very respectable YWCA. The sheets are lovely, the bathroom has two sinks. I ‘d been waiting on the ghosts, only now there’s an email Eddie Money’s dead. B pop star to most, footnote to kids. Blue collar punch the clock kind of rocker.
I rub my eyes, pull myself up. Every day, somebody’s dying. Eddie Money, one could argue, outran his fame. But man, when you’re a kid, and there’s a Gordian knot blocking your understanding, those memories stick. And if he was the same kind of journeyman as Donnie Iris, Bob Seger or Billy Joel before they hit, well, that first album had a lot of hooks.

And ultimately, the former cop had the same kind of white guy soul that Southside Johnny Lyons had: from deep in the gut, a left turn around the larynx and through the vocal chords and over the lips with a whole lot of mean it and even more unfiltered desire. This wasn’t a smooth talker kinda guy, and he knew what he wanted. But, of course,I was a little too young to figure all that out.

Anyway, that popped silk collar charisma all the Italian boys worked back then defined. Biker jacket, street corner bravado. You didn’t mess with them,  even if you didn’t know better. Don’t engage, definitely don’t antagonize. The cool of the brio was kind of intoxicating.

He coulda been Italian, like my hot-headed second ex-fiancee, but he wasn’t. Actually Irish, but Mahoney didn’t have the same music as Money – and as a blue collar, working class kid, he was all about doing what you had to to get by. Cleveland was a working class town filled with guys just like him. So was Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester. But there was  also something musky, alluring about whatever it was he was doing. “Two Tickets To Paradise” packed the same escapist runaway ethos to a promise that... what was it? And did it have something to do with that “UHN”?
Seventh/eighth grade dances would beckon, where Crazy Uncle Obie would spin the hits, lights spinning and gawky kids would get swept up in the guitars, the cymbals  played on the rims and the hormones we didn’t really understand. But who cared if their palms were sweating if Bad Company or the Doobies or Thin Lizzy were calling you to the dance floor?

Eddie Money was part of that siren’s song. Jumping up and down, squealing “pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight” with delight from the way the melody caught you up, the notion of knees together freedom was more than plenty. I mean, most of us didn’t even know what the notion of knees together really meant; we assumed it was to not flash the dingy white some of our cotton panties had turned from multiple washings, or  maybe advertise the nascent pubic curls that were starting to escape from beneath the elastic border.

In a way, all  true. But it was – as I would figure out much later – what lay beyond that innocence. As the Knack admonished But The Little Girls Understand, and Cheap Trick built a temple from the shrieking swarm, Eddie Money was a more honest wolf than that. But somehow in that Irish way of being so impossibly, criminally charming, he’d laugh you all the way to wherever those two tickets might lead.

Sitting in traffic on Las Olas Boulevard in a lime  green 72 Mustang that was more lemon merengue yellow with a gen-u-wine avocado Naugahyde faux leather and no air conditioning, I was inhaling the brutal heat and humidity that was August in Fort Lauderdale. WSHE – She’s Only Rock & Roll – played “Baby Hold On” five or seven years past its prime. The world fell in.

“UNH...” Uh-HUH. it hit me. This was a guy on the verge. Having lost my virginity late, I had no rolodex of coital sonics. That kind of dumb ass innocent, I might park, but that other zipper was going nowhere... And by the time I got around to truly getting horizontal, Eddie Money was reserved for recurrent airplay.

No wonder he sounded so smoky when he wasn’t mid-release. That wrung out, torqued up tone to his voice, it wasn’t just dusty or road worn. Something made it urgent, but until you’ve fallen into the funnel of that sort of merge’n’release, you just can’t recognize it.

The scratch-scratch-scratching inside your rib cage or pelvic region, some kind of nervous pressure? It’s not so cause-and-effect that you know. But you lean towards it, knowing there’s something there – and you know it’s gonna be good whenever you figure it out.

The late ‘70s and ’80s, populated by the dichotomy of punk and disco/country/arena rock, created an odd disconnect for my generation. Alienated kids, losers and outcasts weren’t looking for social statements as much as tribes and signifiers. And in Cleveland, Ohio, the idea of getting married, settling down and having a family – even in my all-girl school with an emphasis on college and meaningful degrees – was an unspoken thing.

For me, music meant freedom from those things. If Tom Petty’s “Wild One” set the pace for my heart, anything that spoke to getting away resonated. Even Eddie Money, whose music was largely unoriginal, obviously derived of a hybrid that morphed Springsteen’s most Asbury Park with Meatloaf’s full-charged bravado.
Eddie Money wasn’t cool. That wasn’t the point. Like a million Catholic guys and prep school boys, he was reaching for what he could get – and he wanted a tender place to fall, someone to believe in him, and yes, to get down with. As the horn blew behind me, and I started to laugh, I thought about all the nights punching the sky in punctuation to the songs from the first album.

Eddie Money. Like those ‘50s and ‘60s doo wop artists, girl groups, singles acts, there was a moment – and the moment mattered. Those songs were indelible, but the artist? A few tepid albums followed; more of the same, but with sanded down hooks.
“Trinidad” from his third or fourth album offered a little exotica with a Caribbean undertow, and it worked at radio, but it didn’t lob that visceral immediacy. The even more reggae “Running Back” seemed to follow-up on the cool freeform AOR morning shows, but his desire felt snuffed out.

And so it was. Until MTV launched. Suddenly, a stuttering, staccato tom-tom pound-down – with a video that returned to raw lust and release with a visual reinforcer of a hydraulic lift vintage car bouncing for all its shocks were worth – called “Shakin” put Money back in the crosshairs of hard hormones and gotta have it. The song was everywhere...
FM, AM, MTV. Rock stations, Pop stations, AC stations. The voice, still blustery and worn, witnessing to that kind of nuclear erotic magnetism with zero self-consciousness. Eddie Money breathless, offering homage to the girl, the car, the coitus. It was on – and inescapable.

Suddenly, this guy, verging on obscurity, was back with a vengeance. He knew what it was like to go from the good tours to the dumpy clubs, the decent hotels to crappy truck stops and busted no name motels.
When he speaks in the breakdown of “Shakin’,” there’s a sense it’s more than just the sex he’s referencing. Stammering,  “I got a little nervous... She took her. coat off, she looked so pretty... “  The music swells back up as he confesses, “I’m always talking, maybe talking too much...”

That seemed the tide of Money’s life, career. Managed by the legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, who had a great seat to the show, sometimes there’s an X factor to take a band from being a hit act to Bon Jovi. Maybe he had it, maybe he didn’t.

But what do you want the boy to do? Albums like Where’s The Party?, No. Control, Life For The Taking and Playing for Keeps were serviceable, workmanlike, cliche. But unlike Foreigner, whose debut album was the same kind of hit dispenser, the massive hit eluded.

Interviewing him for a South Florida bar gig – for The Miami Herald? Unlikely. The (University. Of) Miami Hurricane? Perhaps. The Palm Beach Post in my first gig post-college? Could be – talking to the journeyman rocker was an odd push/pull. Resigned to the life, knowing hits made the difference, introspection wasn’t something the former cop leaned into.

He wasn’t combative, wasn’t bitter – or philosophical. Mostly, he seemed tired instead of the seen-too much, jaded boredom of guys whose fame is fading. Happy to be talking about music, he was affable, not deep with the answers. The kind of interview where you hang up, and wonder “What am I gonna write?” and worry about hashing clichés because that’s all you got.

He had an album out, one that was languishing. MTV was probably a luxury Epic Records had stopped affording him. Maybe Springsteen said something about Ronnie Spector in an interview, or Little Steven threw down somewhere. But the lead track “Take Me Home Tonight,” a song of being washed out, of needing to believe, of wanting someone to be there, featured the bad girl doyenne of the Ronettes.

Ronnie Spector. Another obscured pop soul deserving so much more light and wonder, a woman with a trenchant sob that cut open every hurt you’ve ever known. Eddie Money knew that pain, remembered her embodying his own longing as a kid. For him, to have her on the desperate plea was the past and the present paralleling for perhaps a better future.
And that’s part of it.  Money lived like a rocker, booze, blow, babes and pills. Those party down demi-anthems were as often torn from his own life. It’s why when he was engorged, he was so compelling – and when he was not, the hits were a little scarcer.

In the conversation, beyond the absolutely reverence for Spector, a Popeye-channeling sense of “I Am What I Am.” MTV liked a different kind of pretty boy, played to the rock & roll fantasy. The scrappy New Yorker was like any blue collar Joe cranking out covers in his garage. He knew it, and was okay with it. Indeed, he was so okay with it, I didn’t dare ask about the erotic load in his songs – because it would’ve been like talking to “that uncle” about his sexual adventures.

Hey, regular people have sexual adventures. But it doesn’t mean you wanna see’em with their clothes off, and that’s some of what made Money’s pull so sticky. He gave hope to every one of us, whether waiting for the reason, the willing partner or that one special person. Hearing him turning his voice inside out against what passed for rock & roll in the moment suggested that kind of passion, want, need existed for the rest of us.

Exhaling hard, I opened up Spotify – and figured I wanted to remember whatever it was. And the first thing naturally was “Hold On.” Knees pulled up to my chest, arms circled around them, I held my breath waiting... waiting for that “UHN,” and remembering before there’s sexual healing, there’s the pilot light of rock.& roll.

The record sounds dated as hell, but it also sounds exactly like being that awkward age. It feels like one of those songs – with the ooooohs providing a cushion for that husky, dusky voice, the hand claps punctuating the shuffle – that pulls shiny kids who aren’t completely sure. Hands flying, smiling at the notion of surrender, jerking back and forth, hips swiveling, fists pumping and – yes – shouting along, it is as far as the limit will let you go.

Tonight, there’s no limit. Eddie Money, fighting stage 4 esophageal cancer, slipped into the stars. That regular guy, that average bloke who kept getting counted out, then bouncing back with yet another record that was ubiquitous for a year or two, doesn’t have to fight to have a place on the charts. He doesn’t have to worry about the audience eroding out from under him.

Checking my IMs on Facebook, sure enough, ex-fiancee #3 – once dragged to see “Eddie Cash & Carry” as we joked on our way to the show I was reviewing – had popped up. “I heard about Eddie Money, and you were the first person I thought of, you... and that show.”
At its best, that’s what music – like the passage of the people who make it – does: pulls you together, binds your memories, melts time and place and gives you an urgency to touch those moments where you felt so alive.
Dan, as ex-fiancee #3 is known, co-managed John Prine, built Oh Boy! Records and Steve Goodman’s Red Pajamas label. He’d surfed in the punk/roots waves of Los Lobos, X, the Cramps, Tex & the Horseheads, the Screaming Sirens and the Busboys. The Midwestern love of working class pining eluded him, at least when it had that glossy guitar and earnest passion. He laughed all night, marveling at how the time-warped, acid-washed crowd kept yowling.

But three decades later, the proof is in the message. Eddie Money’s gone. He didn’t live the rock & roll fantasy, but it looked like he figured out how to have the music keep him, his wife of 30 years, five kids, siblings and the faith.

Turning on the shower, I pull the album with “Take Me Home Tonight.” Gated drums, nervous guitar parts, synthesizers move through the steam. As a woman whose known great loves, men afraid to cross parallel and a few failures to launch, I get it. Get how one holds on by what’s heard in the voice of another...
Tonight, that voice’s home. Outran the cautionary memoir in song “Passing by the Graveyard” too many nights. Now he doesn’t have to run, he just has to turn up the radio and hear Ronnie sing “Be My Little Baby.” We should.

You're All I've Got Tonight - Ric Ocasek's Gone, Brush Your Rock & Roll Hair

It was cold, steely but not metal. It swirled and encircled you like a cartoon vine, only it was staccato – and the beat was so evident. A tension to it, a tautness that put you on edge, even as you leaned into it. And that sangfroid vocalist, slightly whiny, absolutely penetrating, higher register than Lou Reed, yet just as disaffected.
When “Let the Good Times Roll” poured out of the crappy school car station wagon’s speakers, it still grabbed you by the ears, or the throat, or the heart. Nothing sounded like it. Punk was more fractious. Rock was more bloated. Pop was more hyper. Disco was, well, more shiny.

Like Goldie Locks, this – whatever it was – was just right. Terse, hip, cool – and yes, romantic even its alienation. As a kid raised on Holden Caulfield, this singer was new wave perfection.

And, as Kid Leo throatily told us, he and his partner in the Cars Benjamin Orr, were from Cleveland. Cleveland, Ohio, the rock & roll capitol of the world, where Alan Freed coined the phrase, Chrissie Hynde got that famed “Precious”-invoked abortion, Joe Walsh and the Raspberries and Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys had come from, had done it again. Only maybe better.

Ric Ocasek (oh-KASS-eck) was the praying mantis of rock: tall, thin, long limbs, hidden behind dark glasses with the most amazing structured hair cut. Never menacing or cruel, only wickedly cool and somehow removed from all the trivial things that hung up so many other odd balls and weirdos.

Weirdos, yes, the mainstream preppy kids didn’t get them in their primary colors that suggested Stephen Sprouse, their downtown GQ chic that took the notion of tailoring to a minimalist sense of liquid movement.
Maybe it was because Richard Otcasek was one more too thin ethnic kid in a city born and built on Italians, Irish, Polish, Croatian, Hungarian, German, Lithuanian and more. While it was a melting pot, and getting over was king, you never truly forgot who or what you were – and that awareness gave all of us an outsider status. Whether you were aggressively identified with your country of origin or not, you knew on a cellular level, you were something more/different/other.

But like Andy Warhol, who came from the next town over in the steel corridor, Ocasek and Orr knew there was more. Dreaming could lead to reinvention, the road could take them to a new kind of self. So off to Boston they went, and germinated, sprouted and brought the alienation and hormonal foment—by way of local Boston rock airplay on WBCN -- to a Roy Thomas Baker synth gilded, minimal but slamming rock project

And it slammed. Maybe it was the space on their records – room between instruments on the tracks, space between the words, the whip crack beats, the notes unfurled – that left a place for the thrust to get in.

The Cars – now in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – were the ones who changed everything. Suddenly, I wasn’t an outlying little girl in a plaid skirt and knee socks being sneered at by the brutal hard punk clerks at Record Revolution on Coventry – the high temple I went to trying to find the latest Stiff release, asking which Akron band was maybe next, or whether Elvis Costello was the Jackson Browne of punk to the spiky haired checkout guy.

No, the Cars made new wave safe, but also tough enough for the boys who thought Blondie and the Ramones were trolling the singles of the ‘50s and ‘60s and the Plasmatics were just shock rock for a new generation. This well-played, well-written, brutally well-recorded music hit the Bad Company/Journey/REO people right between the eyes, and gave the Springsteen/Seger folks enough loser ascending narrative and momentum lift to climb onboard.

Suddenly the playlists at the 7th and 8th grade dances were populated by “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight,” “Moving In Stereo,” “Just What I Needed.” The herky jerky dancing giving license to even the most awkward, the clear beat a lighthouse blink of exactly when to step, bounce or lean back. Even the dorky kids could have a moment where their awkward looked like an aesthetic decision.
Who didn’t wanna be the girl with “the suede blue eyes”? Didn’t wanna have nuclear boots and drip-dry gloves? Or be bouncing down the street or dancing neath the starry skies with that sort of unselfconscious abandon? And if it had an impact, well, really?

Before there were John Hughes movies, there was The Cars. Then Candy O, with that fuzzy through a vacuum cleaner hose wah-wah tone on “Let’s Go,” that synth undertow farfisa curling “Lust for Kicks” and the AOR living title track. Not as cataclysmic, perhaps, in terms of a discovery that toppled musical cliques, but solidified their place as a rock band that worked for everyone in a way the Electric Light Orchestra, the Sex Pistols and Tavares never would.
They had a big slot on the World Series of Rock one summer... Was it the Fleetwood Mac headlining one where Stevie Nicks came out to sing on “Ebony Eyes” with Bob Welch? Where Todd Rundgren’s modern interpretative dancer during “Can We Still Be Friends” prompted mockery from the guys I was with, as I tried to explain he was A Wizard, A True Star? Where street corner rocker Eddie Money opened the day?

Sandwiched in the middle, it was the one act everyone could agree on. Even the guys who were just there to see hot Stevie were all about the planed and highly constructed new wave of the Cars. Local heros, sure. But even more importantly, they stripped things down in what they played, came right for the thorax and worked an art school deep freeze as they did it.

If Benjamin Orr, with the softer voice, blue eyes and razor cut blond hair, was “the dreamboat,” Ocasek was the dangerboy. He would stand and watch and wait. He knew things, things he might or might not share. Might or might not lift those ever-present wrap-around shades. Might or might not acknowledge a desire to be loved, even though it was all over the songs.

I left Cleveland, moved to Florida. Lived out by Military Trail, where nobody ever ventured. Played golf on some of the second tier clubs and resort courses as a “prep golfer,” as high school teams were then called. I was lost in an unrelatable world of stupid jock boys, feathered hair girls and an anti-intellectualism that choked me. They didn’t even have real record stores!

Peaches in Fort Lauderdale, a county and a half away, was a high temple I was not allowed to drive to, and the weird record store that smelled of mildew, rotting cardboard and really tired weed nearby was all there was. In a dying strip mall with a grocery store designed for those just above the poverty line, the “record store” catered to those folks and sold white label, generic black type 8-tracks and cassettes.

Panorama came in, and didn’t move in the redneck town where we lived. I picked it up for 99 cents, and lived by the creeping synths of “Touch and Go.” That attenuated “All I need is what you’ve got/ All I tell is what you’re not... All you know is what you need, dear/ I get this way when you get near...”

My knees would go weak, my pulse would quicken. Then the spaghetti Western beat/melody would pick up, sweep the redneck awfulness into a neat dust whirl that made me laugh about where I’d been exiled. There was no new wave antihero coming to save me, no John Cusak type who’d recognize that beyond the monogrammed sweater and sharkskin green golf shorts was an alienated heart looking for an outcast dream.

But the promise of “Misfit Kid,” “Down Boys,” and even “You Wear Those Eyes” reminded me I just had to survive two seasons of high school golf, get to college and believe. There was a tribe out there, waiting for me... waiting for every other disaffected hipster kid who looked around the rah-rah high school shenanigans, and rolled their eyes.

College radio set me free. If the Cars seemed to be rutted up, assigned a lesser role in what was current or perhaps a moment of salvation in the rearview mirror, Ocasek’s heart stayed true. He produced the Bad Brains. He made more experimental records. He merged with Romeo Void for the incendiary “Never Say Never,” as Deborah Iyall hissed a whole other acid rain of diss at a judging and rejecting guy. Sizzling with menace, she chorused, “I might like you better if we slept together/Something in your eyes says never... Baby, NEVER... say... never...”

Ocasek took the rejection of the too tall, too thin, too nerdy, too introverted boy and turned it inside out for a nurse uniform-sporting, tossled explosion of mahogany curls, buoyantly built Iyall. Suddenly the girl nobody picked was a spider monkey of acrimony and sexual vengeance, morphing every slight into a slow burning, white hot melt you to the core vocal napalmist.

And that was the deal: Ocasek took your pain, your frozen inability to respond, the humiliations dealt and sometimes received without the other person even knowing and transformed it a liberation that was aggressive euphoria.

When Phoebe Cates, the “it” girl of the moment, flashed her billion watt smile on the diving board in “Fast Times At Ridgemont High,” then bounced on the end – no subtle metaphor there – only one song could play. And play “Living In Stereo” did, as she took off her bikini top and plunged into the icy blue pool. No telling how many moments of masculine self-abuse were launched by the short clip of Amy Heckerling’s directorial debut, but Cameron Crowe, who wrote the book and script, more than understood.

Acts so vitally aligned to cosmic zeitgeist should never, ever be counted out. When MTV launched, the angular front man – who seemingly had as much in common the David Byrne as Lou Reed’s downtown aesthetics – was uniquely poised to stand out in the new visual realm.
Shake It Up preceded MTV by just a skosh, but not enough to miss the nascent days of a medium blowing up. The video for the title track won the first MTV Video of the Year Award, and the band’s lean morph suited a channel that usurped terrestrial radio in its ability to light flashfires.

Suddenly, the Cars – my Cars – were back, bigger than ever. The post-art school rock/popists lassoed hooks, used churning grooves, employed those flat vocals against plates of synthesizers, tumbling drums gated for that odd crispness of each beat, the guitars that never ever went away.

Even when Ocasek, clearly the leader, wasn’t the focal point, somehow he rose into a new realm of “wow.” When Orr’s yearning “Drive,” from Heartbeat City, became ubiquitous – and the blue-toned black & white video was airing seemingly hourly, the band tefloned themselves from burn-out by hiring the model of the moment Paulina Porzikova.
The video, capturing those singular moments of inconsolability, isolation even from oneself, worry for the beloved in such a state, was packed with S-O-S signals of universal recognition. Yes, she was beautiful, but she was each of our doppelgangers with her dark structured bangs, massive cheekbones and lips swollen but not cartoonish. She made out of control pain and anguish somehow okay – and Ocasek, locked in a supporting role, as well as a chair in his own sequences, somehow got the girl.

Mantis and the model, even more than beauty and the beast. Beyond a shared Eastern European lineage, though, they were quiet artists, thinkers, seekers, recognizers of how much more pop culture contained. If we failed to recognize that – and most did – there were always the pictures of them at events smiling, showing the joy of being seen and celebrated.

Smiling was another mantle of hope. After being a witness to the kind of pain that paralyzes, after distilling the rage inside, the frustration of spite in a culture of jocko cool, look who got the ultimate girl?! See them laughing! Grinning! Living life, seeking higher ground, finding the kind of connection, inspiration, stimulation we all crave.

And if Ocasek faded a bit from view – his solo albums never had the massive success of his band, though 1986’s This Side of Paradise still occasionally finds its way into the lost hours especially “Emotion In Motion” – his creative light never dimmed. As a producer, he helmed albums for Bad Religion, Weezer, Jonathan Richman, Nada Surf, the Cribs, Pink Spiders, Suicide and part of No Doubt’s equally ubiquitous. Rock Steady.
It was always about the quest – seeking things through music that perhaps could not be realized in normal interaction. In a world that judges by looks – no matter what your Mama tells you – Ocasek figured another plane to move the discussion to. It was a place of deeper value, more raw truth and confession, the willingness to put the cards on the table because vulnerability was couched in a tempest of rock/punk/new wave plumes. It made you dance. It set you free, fist punching the night as sweat rolled down your body. It worked.

I was sitting in “Raising Hell,” the wonderful documentary about Texas political columnist Molly Ivins. The unlikely writer used wit to punch holes in hypocritical ballast, pompous assery and a general lack of common sense also tore through what was to bind us together through our “other” status. That’s when my cell phone started vibrating in my pocket in a theater with a strict no texting policy. They’re serious: they’ll pull your well-rounded bottom out of your seat.

How important could be it at 7 pm on a Sunday? Right? Emerging from the theater, I looked. Fourteen texts. From friends across America. All rock & roll true believers. All faithful acolytes of the way music moves you through the worst and heightens the best.
Still exhausted from eulogizing Eddie Money, with two assignments due, a sore throat most likely from a red eye two nights before, I sat in my car frozen. Who’s gonna drive you home, indeed. Exhaling more than inhaling, I texted my movie squad, getting a one word response from Hayes Carll that started with “F.” My thoughts exactly.

Coming out of a movie about someone who transmuted cultural norms and expectations to move through the clogged arteries of “how it’s done” to forge communities of people who thought they were alone, how does this happen? And yet, it does.

Jon Pareles, an early champion of the band at Rolling Stoneand now lead critic at The New York Times wrote, “In the Cars, Mr. Ocasek’s lead vocals mixed a gawky, yelping deadpan with hints of suppressed emotion, while his songs drew hooks from basic three-chord rockabilly and punk, from surf-rock, from emerging synth-pop, from echoes of the Beatles and glam-rock and from hints of the 1970s art-rock avant-garde.”
Technically, that pretty much nails it. But listening to Live from the Agora from 1978, tears spill down my cheeks. It’s amazing how knowing innocence can be. I was in many ways a 35-year old cocktail waitress at 12, yet my heart beat for cleaner, simpler things – and raged against how crummy and selfish the world around me seemed. No one’s fault, just the momentum of how it is, what’s expected and the pre-ordained realm of the golden ones who we would never be.

It was all so black and white like the checkered flag on the Panorama cover, so cherry red high sheen lip gloss and massive white teeth the debut cover promised, so Vargas girl in repose on the Candy-Ocover: tropes co-opted for rest of us, storming the walls of Versailles, looking for cake or at least a few songs we can dance to.

Don’t Go To Strangers - Russell Smith: An Ace, An Old Friend + An Echo of a Moment

Thirty thousand or so feet above everything, late and tired. With the ear buds in, the demos – all top shelf kind of awesome – go rolling by. Heady stuff, and the kind of songs mere mortals never get to hear, because they’re saved for artists whose singles can generate the kind of money that pays more than mortgages, expensive cars and college tuition.

And then that voice. That voice. The kind of voice that can get on top of a basic rock drum kit with a clean, solid beat and a guitar that coils and swaggers as it works the melody like a hooker in a pair of expensive heels, just let those vowels ride it like the wave they’ve all been waiting for. Six foot nine and glassy, he best waves are all sheen and crash – and the steam coming off that humid tenor, not quite smoky, not quite earthy clay, was undeniable.

I could feel the blood draining from my face. A chorus, everything falls away – except the beat, which finds the voice weighing the reality of the situation as a rush of the tempo picks up and the song builds again. The velocity of the arrangement displays the urgency, the singer stacks the truths, knowing “If I leave right now...,” he can change everything.

But the singer knows, she’s leaving. Not just leaving him, but leaving for somewhere. California, a dream, a life, some other than what she’s had with the hero. Russell Smith, a son of Lafeyette, Tennessee, had always been able to twist the complexities of life and wring them into fecund songs.

The demo says Tom Shapiro, no slouch of a songwriter. Obviously, one of – if not the only – writer on “If I Leave Right Now,” with the boast, “I could reach around and clip. Those pretty wings/ Before she flies to her California dreams/ She could never say no to me/ I know she won’t go...”
Sit there and drink, chase the girl and bring her back. Is it ambivalence? One more toxic male who won’t bother? Or some hard-boiled cowboy who knows some women aren’t meant to be held down, held back, held.
Mouth dry, my stomach lurched. What do you say? Who do you tell?

In life, there are those moments that seem so significant, then mean seemingly nothing at all. But you’re tagged, by the charge, the laughter, the whispered long distance, coiling and uncoiling the telephone chord in those hours when normal people are asleep. You talk about literature, rock & roll tours, missing the Grammys the year you win “beating Dolly & Porter, and that just shouldn’t happen.” You discuss theories of sobriety, people you know, people you don’t, people you’ve heard of, as well as the holes that open between people, caverns that swallow the good things and leave jagged shores of anger, misunderstanding, frustration.

Oh, and an album called This Little Town.

See, Russell Smith had been the big shot lead singer of the Amazing Rhythm Aces, known for the tawdry unapologetic cheap hook-up “Third Rate Romance,” the cheating lament “Amazing Grace (Used To Be Her Favorite Song)” and the Grammy-winning almost. gospel “The End Is Not In Sight.” He’d also written big ‘80s hits for John Conlee (“Old School”), Randy Travis (“Look Heart No Hands”) and T Graham Brown (“Don’t Go To Strangers”), later Texas guitarist/vocalist Lee Roy Parnell (“The Rock”).

Leave it to an L.A transplant to Sony Nashville’s A&R. Department named Larry Hamby, who also signed Blaster Dave Alvin as a solo and DC folkie Mary Chapin Carpenter, believed the post-Urban Cowboythrall had room for a sultry Music Row meets Muscle Shoals rocker with roots in gospel, country, bluegrass. The downstroke firm, the ability to hit the note head-on, but also to slither in was a best of both worlds proposition – and the writing was personal, detailed, yet you could see all kinds of people in the laments, the shuffles, the midtempo. ruminations.

It wasn’t an album destined to change the face of anything, but in a lounge lizard Nashville framed by men with back-combed chest-fur pillowing gold nugget medallions, bolo ties and girls with rooster spiked hair, it felt worn and honest. The songwriting was solid – the title track captured small town communication with the wistful truth “Mrs. White tells Mrs. Brown/Before you know it’s all over town,” the faded kid making do “Jenny Hold On,” the dobro-bending, Louvin-feeling harmonies on “Anger & Tears,” the big city girl “riding through the concrete canyons of New York” haunting him on “The Colorado Side” – and that voice, equal parts good bourbon, dried tobacco leaves and very old brandy.
More than anything, Smith wrote of loss, compromised dreams, the hard piece of heartache. Even more profoundly, he didn’t write master tragedies, but squalid truths that existed behind bad neon that flickered and buzzed, cheap motels with chipped linoleum, a dank smell and sheets that didn’t feel good. It wasn’t that people weren’t faithful, it’s that life made it so hard to be true; Smith – unblinking – wrote what he saw.
“When The Night Comes To Call,” like Joe Cocker’s “When The Night Falls,” was a grown-up consideration of congress. But for Cocker, it was the known, the consumed by a fidelity of the soul. Smith wasn’t that holy; he recognized the raw desire and the need to feel another, especially one who evoked what was already lost. There was a stateliness to hanker, the right hand on the piano rising and the left kneading bottom chords, a Bob Seger-feeling acoustic guitar. sweeping up any stray bits of emotion.

No regrets here, no judgement. Sometimes being lost in the flesh is all you can do. Why look back? Why look down? Burn the moment ‘til it’s gone, embrace what is – and feel that delivery by. raging fire.
Country music used to be for adults. There was a sexual knowing, frankness even, and acceptance. True love isn’t always, but the need for release, for connection, the illusion of kindness is relentless. And so, This Little Town.

Liz Thiels, a publicist with unwavering taste and a strong sense of narrative, understood why an artist like this, one more tangential than straight WSM Country would move me. Not just the Eagles tours, or Don Kirschner’s “Rock Concert” appearances. Opening acts were once as strong as the headliners, often – like Little Feat or NRBQ, even the Replacements – more adventurous.
The interview – by phone, the first of so many ponderous phone calls – was vast: how songs formed, truths pulled away from the obvious, hooks done properly held them down. Was it for Country Song Round Up? Tune-In? Tower Pulse? Doubtful The LA Times, or Rolling Stone.
Doesn’t matter, like so many of the publications above, Russell Smith is gone.

Just saw the news, somewhere. Russell Smith, RIP. Basic facts, a few song titles, the request – in lieu of flowers – to donate to the Macon County High School Band. Internment in the Testament Primitive Baptist Cemetery says that, finally, the man who sang, “my soul cries out for rest, but the end is not in sight...” has found his final reward.

Funny the things you remember about first meetings. He wasn’t much taller than me, and his hair was like soft, dark brillo. Wearing all black, slimming, lengthening. Not auspicious for a man seeking to be a country star – something he laughed about, appreciating the irony; later skewering fame jockeying with “Jerry Fontaine (& His Screaming Guitar).” Somehow, with eyes that sparkled with life, it felt right for the songs.

Like a captured animal, he was killing time in a holding banquet room in the Stouffers Hotel, where he would soon sing in a ballroom for people he needed. Was it Country Radio Seminar? A NACA Convention? IBMA? IEBA? I do not remember, nor did it matter. He’d written hits; he’d won a Grammy. He didn’t need, just wanted a reason to get out there and play.

And for all the Southern soul to his soft rock-tempered country, he really liked the hard stuff. Loved Tammy, as well as Conway, and Jones. He would talk about obscure tracks, laugh about the way vowels got stretched, notes tumbled or suspended, then smack his lips about how good it was.

A member of MENSA, a kid who watched Tennessee find its way, a seeker or maybe a wonderer, he was mostly a father of two boys, a recent divorcee with a wife who left for the one thing a man can’t give her. He was bitter, trying to cope, seeking higher ground, hoping for more, harder than he ever intended. He was funny, and he liked to talk.
And so we did. Politics. Religion. Broken hearts. Promises that unraveled. Hopes that you steer by. Al Green. Foster & Lloyd. Movies no one saw. Faulkner. Twain. Laughter. Outrage. Sam Kinison. What was going to happen to country music. Would it matter? And why are existentialist wells such a pain to fall into?

You fall into confessions and communion with people. Never planned, rarely sacramental. Just there you are, profane and seeking. In this case, I was California – and he was Tennessee. He told me he thought I looked like a kid, couldn’t believe I was the music critic Holly Gleason. I replied something about sounding taller on records. We laughed.
For a period of time, we would meet up. David Kidd, when it was two stories. Hide and seek in a book store, or more “find me.” But you could park yourself somewhere interesting, and when the other showed didn’t matter. And when they did, always plenty to talk about.
And as intriguing as his singing voice was, there was something about his speaking voice. Warm, with a real strength to it. And softness. A voice you could sink into, feel welcome and reassured. Everything we’re looking for in life, only it’s a mirage. You could hear them when he talked.

Funny thing, though, about being friends with grown-ups, real life takes them away. You can twist for days in someone’s life, run your fingers over their books, marvel at their heavy wooden furniture, or family photos, but it’s not the same as being there day in and out. It’s not like pitching a tent, claiming your ground and dropping an anchor.
No, you drift and the line breaks. What you love about the other person, it doesn’t go away. Occasionally, you’ll have a random encounter, a run-in or an overlap. You smile the smile of one who roots for the other, asks all the right questions, look all the way to the. Back of their eyes – and watch the soul shine.

One latte spring night we sat outside the Bluebird, on the curb, talking about nothing. Just because. The night bugs weren’t swarming, but had to occasionally be wiped out of our mouths, and still we sat, talking and laughing. It was easy like that, elusive in ways the sex he often sang of wasn’t.

Not quite that last bit before daybreak, he made some joke about being old and hoping he could get up. Then confessed he had the boys coming over early, reached out, offered me his hand and said, “We both probably oughta be getting home.”
And that was that, melting into the steel grey of a new day fixing to happen.
It’s been years now since whenever the last time I saw him. There were incredible songs – the heartbreaking post-divorce “The Home for Unwed Fathers” comes to mind – and Amazing Rhythm Aces reunions; collaborations as the hilarious soulgrass Run CnW, with his friends Jim Photoglo, Bernie Leadon and Vince Melamud.

What you have with people can be so vivid, so incandescent, it always shines when you close your eyes. You can hear the voice, and that butterscotch thread melts inside you. It’s easy to keep moving, working, being – and get pulled away.
Until you’re sitting on a plane, slicing through those same lost hours, hearing a voice without introduction and everything gives way. Even when you hold your poker face, your inner dam collapses. But after so much time, what do you say?

Tonight, nothing. Russell Smith is gone. But really, he’d been gone, just a hint of scent on the humidity here and there. Maybe someone who knew we knew each other, carrying news. Or a random bit of music. And it’s okay, or as okay as it can be.

Having had that life intersect mine for however many months, it was glorious. As glorious as the music, as alive and flickering as a flame. I could rue the time lost, or I could be amazed at what was. Me, I’ll choose the music, and the memories, be thankful for what I had – and maybe remember to embrace the ones who’ve moved beyond a little more.

15 July 2019

Barbara Bush: RIP A First Lady/Mother of Grace, Love, Grit & Welcome

Barbara Bush is dead. It’s hard to believe. She was always sort of older, sort of elegant, sort of the perfect grandmother or mentor young people deserved. But she was in many ways so much more.  She is the kind of woman women strive to be, even when they don’t know it barraged by Madison Avenue insecurity and Hallmark tropes of “good mothers.”

Barbara Bush is the last of a certain kind. A true lady. She understood graciousness in the moment made everyone more, just as she recognized love was the truest lubricant for life.

In a world of big weddings and catfight – or quickie – divorces, she maintained a worldclass romance with George H.W. Bush that swept seven decades, two different Presidential waves, raising children, striking out to settle in Texas with her husband, enjoying grand- and great grandchildren,  and growing old. There was never a question of the love, nor the commitment to family; she did it the same way she drew breath, completely and without ever having to think about it.

Because a woman like Barbara Bush, you don’t need to think. You work from the heart, and the loving thing somehow seems to happen. It’s why when her husband was President and the news media would be raking him over the coals, everyone seemed to love the First Lady.  He joked she was “the most popular woman in the world,” and wasn’t jokingly juxtaposing.

She was exactly the mother/friend/aunt/teacher/grandma you’d  tell your problems. She would listen until you finished, nodding her head or making eye contact to make you feel less whatever was balling you up, then she’d think for a moment and offer some insight, some story about a similar experience, or perhaps just the affirmation, “I’m sure you’re going to figure this out” or “I know it’s going to be alright.”

You believed her, because you knew she knew things, done things. And had she. Not that she did showed out about it. But leaving her home in Rye, New York – and her college education at exclusive Smith College -- with a dashing pilot who became her life’s great partner to help him stake a claim in the Texas oil business would be a crazy notion for almost anyone in mid-20^th century America. From her place in “society,” it was crazy. Yet that’s just what she did.

Mrs. Bush was strong, too. They didn’t call her “the Enforcer” for no reason. She raised three spirited boys, gave them security and a sense of chasing their own worlds to the edge of their dreams. When they got in trouble – as our second Bush President did – she stood with them, helped them pick up the pieces and hold their own families together.

Always without flinching. Usually in a Shetland wool cardigan, partially buttoned, hair just so. She was not glamorous like Jackie Kennedy, but she had that same sense of how one behaves: voice low, eyes direct, heart open to others (even if there were things you were never going to share).

They both loved literacy, the arts and encouraging others. They were both sphinxlike, and careful about what was revealed. Charm was once described to me as learning more about the other than you tell, making people smile and perhaps laugh while doing it, and always finding common ground in the process.

In a world of MILFs and hot wives, Barbara Bush was more and better. Solid. Genuine. Real. She was a matriarch, the kind of woman who is the cornerstone of big adventures, memories that matter and the steadying force for people chasing impossible things. Think about that: President. Twice. Not just her husband, but her son.

As much of a sacrifice as public life can be, she never shunned her duty, always showed up in her gown at state dinners, looking every bit the empress she actually was. But to see her extended hand, whether a dignitary, a veteran, or a child, there was never a sense of who she was. That same electric common touch that erased differences Princess Di had, only Barbara Bush was no young beauty with small children. No, she was a grown woman who’d seen life, progress, disappointment – and she wore it all with a stunning peacefulness.

In a world of faster, harder, more, First Lady Bush represented the swan as mother, then grandmother. Unruffled, welcoming, she was as adept with school children as families stricken, world leaders, the kind of good ole boys who were part of her life in Texas and the old family coziness that existed in places like the Bush family’s Kennebunkport, Maine stronghold.

 It’s a gift: that ability to meet people where they live, to understand how to entertain with comfort over flash, to create environments that’re inviting and understated, yet somehow stylish. Like Lilly Pulitzer, Barbara Bush understood the pleasures of family, friends, lots of children running through, dogs of all sizes and a home filled with laughter; more than titles, the privileges, it was about a sanctuary for the people she loved.

And like Lilly, love was a big part of it. Love, from that giving, unconditional place that seems rare in a world of Tinder, hooking up, friends with benefits, me-mine and the absence of loyalty in the pursuit of one’s place in the world. The smile with the crinkles at the edge of her eyes said everything about who she was, how she saw the world and what she left in her wake.

 I am lucky enough to have grown up in a matriarchal world where women like Barbara Bush existed. From my own grandmothers, who were so different except for their fierce love for the people in their lives; Helen Walker, who came in twice a week to help out and make sure I knew I was loved; Jeannie in the locker room who watched over me like a hawk, even picking the black suit for my mother’s funeral saying, with a note that said, “She’d prefer the Velvet”; Sue Whiting and Ann Upchurch of the Women’s Western Golf Association who marshaled so many young girls traveling without parents into college golf and life; my best friend Kathie’s mother who used to sneak cigarettes behind their store, and wink at me not to tell the girls; Joyce Reingold, who gave me my first job straight out of college and remained a friend throughout my journey through life; Marybelle Matousek, who insisted I play in women’s tournaments when I was a child, taking up for me when the notion of ability to win became a problem.

Grand dames without airs, they were a special breed. Long on poise, short on tolerance for pettiness, they ruled their worlds without so much as wrinkling their brow. Occassionally, arching one, but never losing their temper. Or if they did…

My father, a golf historian, was quite taken with Barbara Bush. Having the opportunity to interview the President – “Did you know his W is for Walker, as in the Walker Cup?” he would always ask – it was the former First Lady who truly tickled his fancy. “She reminds me so much of the ladies back home, and there is so much love coming from her. It’s just fantastic.”

I didn’t hear the news that Mrs. Bush had passed when it broke. I was in my last lecture class for the semester, teaching music criticism to college juniors and seniors waiting for the year to be over. A beautiful day, they were enthused about everything, including the machinations of what makes a great feature.

Encouraging them to get off the straight boilerplate of facts, to try to summarize those things and get to the essence of the subject quickly, I offered, “What things mean, how they fit in the world around them, that’s where the good stuff is. Show me who this artist is, why she matters…”

Then I got in the car, trees just succumbing to the pressures of buds wanting to open. It was sunny, and beautiful, and a perfect temperature. Like I always do, I called my best friend Kathie, and said, “What’s going on?”

Kathie Oh! started talking about Barbara Bush, telling all these stories, and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew she was sick, that she’d opted to not seek further treatment the day before. But, surely, she wasn’t gone this soon?

“No, she died,” Kathie said. “She’s gone.”

We both fell silent. “Another gone,” I finally said.

“Yeah, it’s like the end of an era. Those kind of women are dying out.”

We were both quiet again. Then Kathie picked up what she’d been saying before I’d asked. “You know the thing I loved best about her? We have a friend who knows them, and they’d had lunch with the President not long ago. Our friend asked about doing something, and George Bush said, ‘No, I have to be getting back. After all these years, you know how much Barbara still loves holding my hand.”

After all these years, she still loved holding his hand.

Simple stuff. Truly. Basic. Profound. In a world where Kardashians get Ferraris for giving birth, all Barbara Bush wanted was to hold the love of her life’s hand.

May we all be so blessed with that kind of love. Barbara Bush would’ve wanted that for all of us, I’m sure. And in the not so distant future, who knows? She will, no doubt, be holding her beloved’s hand all over again. Loves that endure beyond the ages must also transcend our mortal coil.

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