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