The Other Night
The restaurant closed an hour earlier. The kitchen staff wrapped up, cleaned up and left. Gone. We sat in the dying evening light on the deck next to the hotel. The air carried a hint fall. A chill. Leaves already turned on a few trees down by the lake. This was early fall in the mountains. Several of us chipped in for beer and the bag of ice that now rested in a battered blue Corona icebox, palm trees and all, on the deck. A cooler reminiscent of Jimmy Buffett, who died a few days earlier.
During dinner, my friend D had been giving the waiter a bunch grief over the fact the hotel/bar hosted a blues fest a couple of months earlier and, “Where’s the bar guitar?”
The owner, Johnny, walked up, and reaching behind the ATM machine sitting against the wall next to our table, pulled out a guitar, handed it to D, and said, “Here. Play.”
It was an old Silvertone. A Sears Special. My first guitar was a Roy Rogers version. In spite of the fact it was mass produced, cheap, and old, this particular guitar produced a remarkable range of tone. Bass to treble fully found, strong, and resonate. A pick-up crossed the sound hole with the wire lead held to the body with red Tuck-tape. Functional. A bar guitar.
D played. In his inestimable manner. While never playing “professionally,” D plays on the fringes, drops in and out. A welcome player. He’s recorded and has contacts across BC in a variety of sound studios.
So they started talking, Johnny and D.
“Oh, you know Buddy Z.”
“Yeah. I played with his drummer for a few years in a band. Blagh-Blagh. We toured. You know . . .?”
“So you must know Max. . .”
And so it went. Back and forth. A blues riff of a tennis match populated by Canadian and American blues players, guitarists, bass players, drummers and vocalists. Back and forth.
The only real name I remember is Studebaker John because we jammed one day in front of the Valley Social on Second Avenue in Fernie pre-pandemic. D filmed it.
I sat and watched. My days of the Old Town School of Folk Music long past. My real playing long past. At the table next to me, a Marley-esk Rasta mon, E, did the same. He sat rolling joints and smoking them like they were our rolled Bugle cigarettes of the 70s. The rich sweet smoke wafted across the deck in the light evening breeze.
We drank beer. Smoked. Played. And the evening faded into the night.
There were five of us left. Johnny and D playing ‘Do you know?’ blues tennis. Dave, the waiter, silently smoking cigarettes and saying he was glad to be off. A totally silent, a second Johnny. E, the Rasta-mon, and myself.
The evening progressed. Johnny played the Silvertone. D played the Silvertone. Johnny went into his cache of guitars and brought out a 1950s sunburst Gibson. The same model that James Taylor and host of other acoustic rockers play.
“Feels like a pound of butter in your hands.”
It did. A pound of butter.
D played it. Dave played it. Hesitantly. I hefted it and played a few cords. And set it back down.
Johnny played it with comfort and ease. It was his guitar. He knew the riffs. He knew the frets. He knew the strings.
“This one hasn’t been re-fretted like so many of this age. It’s got the original frets and is easier to play.”
The sun dropped behind the mountains. We told stories of music. Of remarkable nights.
I told being a dishwasher in Vail in a long narrow basement room with a dumb waiter at one end. The constant flow of dirty dishes dropping down over the night. Of knowing the night was coming to a close, when the sound of the dumb waiter descending and the thought of one more batch of dishes made me shrink. Instead of dishes, there was a silver tray with four lines of coke. Great coke. This was Vail in the 70s.
On several of those nights, Steven Stills came in to jam with whatever touring band played the house. He was spending much of the winter hanging with Judy Collin’s younger sister who was spending the winter in town.
Then, one night Neil Young came in and joined him.
At 1:45am, the bar owner stood on the bar, rapping on a wine glass with a fork. Silencing the bar.
“This is last call. At two we close and we’re locking the doors. Stay or leave.”
No one stood. No one left.
We started leaving with the sun coming over the mountains and lighting the valley floor. I can’t tell you more than a single moment from the night. The Needle and the Damage Done. People stone silent at the end. Other than that, I only remember the night was phenomenal.
Music.
Pure.
Essential.
And we walked out. The sun rising without a cloud in the sky. A perfect Colorado morning.