the year is running out on us. shit, the decade is running out on us. we are perched on an edge, looking out over the lip. standing again at the border, behind us our personal and shared history, ahead of us what we make of it and (allow me the clunky rhyme) mystery. here in the land of the survivors (there are still four or five days left in the year and all the mystery those days may bring, but for now it looks like we have survived this year/decade), as i was saying: here in the land of the survivors, i nod to those bringers of magic moments who didn’t make it through this strange decade, a decade that always struggled for a proper moniker and never really got one. the aughties? the naughties? the zero’s? we push forward.
after spending the 90′s in a state of flux, travelling always and never spending more than a better part of a year in any one locale, i found a home in tucson, arizona near the beginning of this decade. i was drawn to this desert mini-city with it’s rich musical history and it’s forever shabby ‘economy’ as if by a sun powered tractor beam. a new story would start for me in tucson, i would start a band in tucson, i would learn how to write a decent song in tucson, i would fall in love and learn how fragile and fleeting that is.
the first concert that i attended upon unpacking my bags and staking out my corner of the old adobe, was this: vic chesnutt with band in tow at the solar culture gallery. the opener was a kid with a violin that had spent some time in the squirell nut zippers, the kid’s name was andrew bird. when i got to the concert andrew bird was toward the end of his set inside the gallery but i never made it inside, i was more concerned with the goings on outside of the venue where vic chesnutt sat in his wheelchair sharing a laugh with tommy larkins (longtime jonothan richman drummer and, although i would not have imagined it at the time, someone who would play drums with me on a number of occasions over the still fresh decade). i was introduced to vic for the first and last time on that solar culture front porch and i can only say that he exuded kindness and had the hands of a magician.
the word had come down the pipe earlier in the day that the vic chesnutt show would likely be cancelled due to the fact that the tour van had broken down somewhere upstate, but we hopers and believers held out and showed up and, a very late start later, we were treated to one of the most inspiring performances i have ever witnessed. vic was a rock n roll preacher, shouting his sermon on the stage, yelping and banging on his old gut string guitar. i was transfixed, i had never seen anything like it. when i got home at three in the morning, after being acosted by a peckerwood tucson tweeker, i was emotional, exhausted, inspired. i immediately sat down and wrote and recorded a new song that was a complete rip-off of one of the vic chesnutt tunes i had heard that night, or rather a complete rip-off of ‘knockin on heavens door’ which vic had ripped off for one of his songs and somehow made it, not only plausible, but completely his own. i had to see if i too could work a little magic with those three tired chords. i couldn’t, but i learned something in the process, something that had to do with sincerity and personality and not giving a fuck but really giving a fuck and embracing the unknown and smiling in the dark.
a couple of years later, campo bravo had established ourselves in the old barrio and we were asked to play a concert supporting vic chesnutt at the old club congress. i couldn’t have been more humbled, more thrilled, more nervous at the prospect. i rehearsed the band until nearly every member told me to chill out, or fuck off, or relax man. but the week came and i felt like we were ready. four days to go now and david slutes from club congress calls me. i answer, “hey dave, what’s up?”, dave tells me that, due to a family emergency, vic chesnutt had cancelled his upcoming show in tucson. it wasn’t going to happen, it never was going to happen. that’s how it went down, how i almost had the honor of sharing the stage with vic chesnutt. when he died on xmas it all came back to me, i hadn’t thought of it in years. so much had happend since then: i had left tucson for san francisco, put out some records, played with some of the best rock n rollers anywhere, fallen in and out of love, and had come closer to myself, learned to be okay, most of the time, with the good parts and the bad parts. that night in tucson listening and watching vic chesnutt helped set all that into motion. some people can recount how that speech that martin luther king gave in ’63 inspired them, set them on their course, or maybe it was listening to cornell west or maybe it was jimmy swaggert before he started fucking prostitutes in motel rooms, i don’t know, but that night vic chesnutt set me straight, into the mystery, and it’s a whole lot crookeder and a whole lot more magical than i could have ever imagined. this is a salutation, the grandest of thank you’s.
