My friend Lisa from Castaic sent me some photos of last night’s Zombie Happening down there. Up here in Clovis we are still safe, the only zombies sighted were all staggering around the intersections and crosswalks promoting a Halloween Megastore over by the mall. I drove another block and spied a lone zombie limping across the intersection. This guy was older than the others and his clothes were clean and pressed. No blood or gore anywhere but I gave him extra bonus points for the withered arm.
Marty Stuart is a thoughtful, driven man. Make no mistake he has talent down to the bone, but he knows talent will only get you so far and Marty Stuart wants everything. He wants your soul baby.
Driven? Consider the year 1970 and an 11 year old Marty asking his mom to buy him a bright yellow shirt for the Choctaw Fair. Why you ask? Well it seems Connie Smith (29 years old and married at the time) is performing there and he wants to make sure she notices him. The young man is not only smitten, he has a plan. In the car on the way home from the Fair, he tells his mother “I’m going to marry Connie Smith one day.” It took him 27 years, but that’s exactly what he did.
Being a thoughtful man, Mr. Stuart concedes that even Jesus needed helpers so he has assembled an elite band of Nashville heartbreakers and life takers to assist him in spreading the Hillbilly Hoodoo Gospel. Seperately they are; “Cousin Kenny” Vaughn on guitars, “Handsome Harry Stinson” on drums and “The apostle Paul” Martin on Fender Precision Bass. Together they are The Fabulous Superlatives.
Mr. Stuart takes into account the importance of iconography and ritual as a means of fascilitating worship and here he casts a broad net. The very first item placed on the stage is nothing less than Clarence White’s fabled Telecaster. Just standing there dead silent in the middle of the stage, it calls the faithfull in like a bell. Later, Mr. Stuart will also haul out Bill Monroe’s old Gibson Mandolin and flail away on it lake it was a $300 made-in-Korea replica. There is power in the old wood.
Obviously well versed in the study of physics and human anatomy, he knows exactly the…tenderizing effect two Telecasters and three Twin Reverb amplifiers can impart on your heart and other internal organs. And last Saturday night up in Golden Gate park we got tenderized good. Marty and his Fabulous Superlatives took the stage and straight away went into “Branded” followed immediately by a twangy instumental. Marty proweld the stage looking intenely into the eyes of the audience. I could almost hear him thinking “are they ready yet?” Almost probably. The band mugged it up in the finest Southern Gospel tradition, but there was something else going on here, someting daker and heavier. Then it hit me, these guys dressed all in black are like Blue Öyster Cult for Baptists.
As “La Tingo Tango” reached it’s reverb drenched conclusion Marty stepped into the pulpit and good naturedly demanded “Everbody say Howdy!” We respond as one with our best Minnie Pearl how-deeeeeeeeeeeeee! Marty bows with a flourish, yeah we were ready.
We had a great day in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The weather was sunny, the crowd was big and friendly and the music was for the most part incredible. We just breezed right in to the foot of the Golden Towers Stage thanks to the efforts of some gracious friends that had gotten to the park around 4:00 AM to set up tarps right at the foot of the various stages. ”Just look for the yellow smiley face!” Arlene said. After catching some well deserved rest at the Stanyon hotel they began to filter in to the park. Evan and his wife Jaimie from Turlock with Arlene and Melissa from back east. Then Greta (the pride of Manresa Beach!) came meandering in. Last but not least , Jet City interlopers ;^) Davo and Grant taxied in from SFO at the last minute .
We had decided to make the Golden Towers Stage our base of operations because Buddy Miller was starting the day off there. I hadn’t seen him perform a full set of his own music since 2002. It was so good to see him with a full band in good spirits and obviously good health. He turned in a typical great, twangy Buddy Miller set with Regina Carey singing all the Julie parts and Emmylou Harris joining in on a couple songs. Then Robert Plant came in and helped close out the set with “I’m Movin On”, “What You Gonna Do LeRoy?” and “Sea of Heartbreak”.
Buddy Miller aka The Jesus of Twang
Former Ragamuffin and Nashville Superstar Phil Madeira!
Robert Plant dropped by to pay his respects
Next up was a band called Okkervil River. I’d never heard of them and we intended to bug out and go over to catch Boz Scaggs but these kids totally won me over. Lead singer Will Sheff poured his heart and soul and eventually his body into this music. They had the crowd right from the start but then disaster hit when the Will’s mike stand loosened up and dropped down to waist level. Doh! Sheff just dropped to his knees and kept singing as the crowd roared.
Eventually one of his mates came and fixed him up (no help at all from the local soundguys) Then the poor guy’s guitar cable popped out and again the sound crew didn’t move a muscle to help. Will looked lost and then angry for maybe…half a second and then he just started dancing and leaping about while furiously strumming a guitar nobody could hear. Scott Brackett, the keyboard player had to quit playing (again) and run up and get things plugged in. Eventually everything settled down and the band melded one of their songs into Sloop John B with the whole meadow joining in on the chorus while Sheff and bassist Patrick Pestorius laughed and triumphantly shoulder butted each other at the mike loving every minute of it. Ahhhhhh to be young…….
Okkervil 1: Will Sheff, patrick Pestorious and Justin Sherburn
Okkervil 2: Scott Brackett, Lauren Gurgiolo and Travis Nelson
Next up at the Towers of Gold Stage was Old 97s. A band I was really looking forward to seeing for some reason I can’t remember anymore. A joyless performance made worse by a couple of guitars that refused to stay in tune. Best thing I can say is Jon Langford and Xene Cervenca came out on separate songs to help get the crowd going.
Ken Bethea, Jon Langford and Rhett Miller
One thing I’d like to mention is the crowd at this event is also part of the show. You find yourself meeting with music lovers from everywhere around the world. Take for instance Denver and Mary pictured below. They were visiting California from St. Louis, MO and had run into Marty Stuart at their Hotel. He told them about the festival and they grabbed a bus to catch his set. We insisted they share our tarp with us as the ground they were siting on was a bit muddy. I found out Denver is a passionate and very knowledgeable country music aficionado. This guy took me to school and meeting them was just as much a treat as any of the music we’d heard.
Mary and Denver Perkins
Last up for Saturday at the Golden Towers Stage was Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives. I’ll probably be writing more about these guys. Suffice it to say Brother Marty and his crew brought a ton of Nashville flash and professionalism to San Francisco. I was blown away.
Kenny Vaughn, Harry Stinson, Marty Stuart and Paul Martin
Getting ready for our annual pilgrimage to San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival , we were saddened to learn of Amy’s passing from friends. A beautiful musician.
“She could do it all,” Alvin said. “She was a great string arranger. She would multitrack the violin and viola and everything else and suddenly you’ve got the L.A. Philharmonic behind you. She was brilliant on that.”
Used to be celebreties died in groups of threes, or so was commonly held. A movie star dies, then another and people would get all concerned and start wondering “Who’s next?” “Oh I hope it’s not so-and-so” Or “It’ll probably be you-know-who, he’s got the cancer.” Sure enough within a week or so there went another.
It was all great fun. The magazines loved it and sometimes they even printed up special editions that my Mom would buy because they would be collectable one day “You just wait and see.” She still has some of them and no doubt my sister will inherit them along with all those Jesus plates.
This year all of a sudden, It seems like the pace has accelerated and more disturbingly, it’s people that I have emotionally vested interests in that are passing on. Part of it has to be my…advancing age, but I think it also has something to do with Andy Warhol’s vision of everybody’s fifteen minutes of fame. That train done came and now it’s starting to chug it’s way out of the station.
I remember my dad and his morning paper. First place he’d go was the obituaries. ”Well I’ll be damned, Milton Weaver died.” My mom would come over and look at the paper and she’d notice that somebody like Marty Robbins had passed away and they’d talk about Marty and then they’d talk about Milton. This was back in the ’80s, I’m about that age now.
I was over at their place this past weekend. I grabbed the paper out in their driveway and took it inside for them. They get up alot later nowadays. I put the paper on their kitchen table and talked to my dad over Fox News while my mom made us some coffee. She served coffee at the table and my dad snagged the paper and went straight for the sports pages. “Well I’ll be damned the Giants won.”
I was shocked. “Dad, what happened to the obituaries?”
“What?”
“I SAID WHAT ABOUT THE OBI-TU-ARIES? HOW COME YOU ARE NOT READING THEM?”
“OH…I don’t know. I think just about everybody has died.”
Obviously well versed in the study of physics and human anatomy, he knows exactly the…tenderizing effect two Telecasters and three Twin Reverb amplifiers can impart on your heart and other internal organs. And last Saturday night up in Golden Gate park we got tenderized good. Marty and his Fabulous Superlatives took the stage and straight away went into “Branded” followed immediately by a twangy instumental. Marty proweld the stage looking intenely into the eyes of the audience. I could almost hear him thinking “are they ready yet?” Almost probably. The band mugged it up in the finest Southern Gospel tradition, but there was something else going on here, someting daker and heavier. Then it hit me, these guys dressed all in black are like 
