Here's a couple links where you can see and hear The Metropolitan Jug Band, featuring David Lightbourne.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxFX3_zaRtk&feature=PlayList&p=50FADF3FFE255857&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=38

Eulogy for David Lightbourne

Oh my god. My good old pal David Lightbourne RIP. I just heard from Joe Carducci that he died night before last, apparently in his sleep. A good old friend. I learned a mighty lot from him as a young 'un and have admired him for many years. He was very good to a young Crispo in the days in Portland. I put many a mile on his couch, up by The Earth Tavern, and many a mile on his lp's, too. Crushed.

So many -- too many -- good old buddies gone.

David was 67, one of the very last true afficianados and fingerpickin' masters of oldtimey music. Proto-rock and roll, he called it. Rock and roll's earliest roots. I loved to hear him play. I learned an awful lot from him about oldtimey music, jug band, and delta blues and the many greats who played it. A masterly musicologist of American music, with an encyclopedic memory, he had an amazing record collection I was privileged as a young man to have nearly all to myself. I was brokedown poor. Dave gave me a shoebox of crappy cassettes I used to make a bunch of compilations from his hundreds of records. I still have some of those tapes, thirty and more years later, and still listen to them, too. I learned songs that have stayed with me that way, like "Jim Cannan's," a Robert Wilkins song about a long-ago bar in Memphis in the 20s, about which a Memphis preacher has been quoted as saying, "If whiskey ran ankle deep in the streets and every man were given a cup, no one would get drunker, faster, than they did at Jim Cannan's." That was also how I was introduced to Robert Wilkins' music in general, still a staple of my domestic airplay.

When I met Dave, he was playing in the Metropolitan Jug Band in Portland, with Fritz Richmond, also gone, now, along with their incredible knowledge, memories, and lore. Hipsters of legend. I'd arrived in town with Michael Hurley and The Sensitivos (Michael, Dave Reisch and me, and often other friends, especially Lonesome Wayne Thomas and Robin Remaily. Billy Foodstamp, another Portland hipster of legend gone, now, too, also was known to play washboard with us in that period.) We'd been moving on together for a long while from Vermont to Boston to New York to Nevada to California and up to Portland. The first night we were in town, we went out to hear the Metropolitan Jug Band, I don't remember where, and they were sounding good, too. But what I remember most was a grin Dave got on his face while up on the stage, playing, when he saw the bunch of us walk in. We played some that night, for free beer. Really bad beer, as I recall. Some Portland-brewed swill you're better off not knowing about.

And of course we encountered each other often after that, because David was another Rounder in all but name, besides being a master in his own right. But our friendship was made fast a bit later on when David was kind enough to let me move into his apartment of the time, up near the old Earth Tavern, where I camped on his couch for quite a while, after Steve Weber, whose spare bedroom I'd been occupying, gave me the boot into the street, likely for good reason, because I haven't always been the charming motherfucker I am today. What's a little homelessness amongst friends? Steve and Essie were very kind to have put up with young Crispo at all, in the first place, and I'm still thankful to them, both. It's not often a young 'un gets to live with legends he's admired from afar, and I remember all of the many kindnesses still, with great affection.

Now, let me put this straight: David could talk. I mean to say, he could talk on into any night, and did, for as long as you could take it. Michael called him The Informaton. Michael told me, "If he ever asks you do you know about Blindboy Pigfoot or whoever, the correct answer is yes. If you say no, you will get the whole biography, and you will find out more about Blindboy Pigfoot than you ever cared to know." But I'll put this straight, too: As Weber said yesterday, lots of people talk a lot, but David always had something real to say.

And say he did. I learned a whole lot of stuff about real American music, bedrock roots musics, and how it's supposed to be played from David and Michael, and Weber, too. David and Michael, especially, were both very free with the lore lessons, with me, along with their huge record collections.

Ain't ever been anyone freer with the lore and lessons about how American music's supposed to be played, however, than was David Lightbourne. I was already, when we met, and had been for some years, playing oldtime blues and jug band and country songs as if they were rock and roll, which is how I got into this long adventure with the last untamed Americans to begin with -- this "karass," David called it, borrowing the word from Kurt Vonnegut. Songs like "Rich Girl," "Bring It With You When You Come," "Mind Your Own Business," "Jesus On The Mainline," "My Bucket's Got A Hole In It," and others still present in my standard rep. But I was still a young man, then, and self-taught, and hadn't had the depth and breadth of listening or listening time, yet, that cats like David, Michael, and Weber'd had in addition to their own many talents. They had ten or twelve years on me and were intimate with many hundreds -- thousands, actually -- of songs and records from those rich veins of American music from the 20s through 50s. (To which they've all added, themselves, over the decades since the early 60s.)

I'm so glad I got to go out to Laramie in '06 to play an annual festival, The Uplands Breakdown, he and Joe Carducci have co-organized for ten years. I got to play with Dave again and stay at his place again, and smoke the hootie while listening to his incredible stories that went on and on into the night and started back up next morning, right where he'd left off or on some other tack still to be discussed and elucidated in scholastic detail. Elwood was there, too, an annual event for him. And then I got to play a gig with Elwood and Amy Annelle in Denver afterward.

Damn it, I've owed David a phone call for a while and I'm so sorry now I procrastinated on it for so long. He didn't have regular access to a computer and almost all of my communications get done by email. Last I heard from him, a few months ago, was a long voicemail message, telling me, "dammit, Gary, if you want to communicate you're gonna have to learn to use a telephone and I was just telling Carducci ...." You had to be ready to keep a phone to your ear for a good two hours or more when you called Dave. I wish I'd been ready. I loved the old curmudgeonly iconoclast and have admired him now more'n 30 years. I don't expect I'll stop now because he's gone. He had a part in making me the man I've become and he was a good old buddy I'm going to miss. An American original. A true believer.

The last deep lesson I came away with from David, out there in Laramie in '06, he was telling me all about the guy he was working for, who'd let him build an apartment upstairs over the business. He was telling me how his boss was an evangelist christian. I allowed as how I couldn't imagine having the same in my own life. Dave said, "Well, Sisco, you see the thing is, America's a big country with lots of different kinds of people in it, and if you want to write about it and sing about it, you have to be able to deal with that. All of it."

Yes, you do.

RIP, old buddy.

Black beans cooking in a big old pot
Black beans cooking is what we got
All the time
We are only waiting
For some groceries to arrive....

Howdy And Here She Is

I've been pretty tired after the marathon twelve-day foal watch, so haven't been blogging much. Now that I'm back to my normal workload, I've been recovering. Here are some photos of the filly who made it all worthwhile, however tiring. She's going to be a very fine and sweet horse. Her official name is Dedicated One (her dam is Dedicated Sue, her sire Formula One). Her stable name is Oona. In these snapshots, she's four days old.

Dedicated One Arrives In This World!

Suzy had her foal -- a great big, strapping, beautiful, chestnut filly, at 10:35 last (Tuesday) night. She has a white blaze and socks to top of her rear pasterns, nice brown eyes. Great big legs. Dr Rick says "huge." Suzy was perfect, strong and brave. She really stamps her babies! The filly's going to have Suzy's coloring and sorrel tail. I was there for the whole thing this time, from just before her water broke, while I was doing night check and getting ready to bed down in the tack room, again.

Our first foal, Rep, two years ago, pretty much foaled himself, and got right up on his own as soon as he was out. This one -- Dedicated One -- stable name "Una" -- I had to get my hands and arms bloody, to give her a tug to help out. Took a good while to get her toweled off and up on her feet, but did, and then a few minutes for her to get her sea legs, me holding her up. Our friend Kim arrived and helped me get her nursing for the first time. Dr Rick arrived after she was up to make sure all was well and it was, everything perfect. We got her nursing again while he was there, a good long drink.

We have four horses again! Yay, Suzy! Yay, Una!

I hope to get the official baby photos today. We didn't have a camera available last night.

What a foal watch! Twelve days. Suzy's term was 348 days. I hadn't had any real sleep to talk about for twelve days but I got some last night.

!Adelante!

Jeffrey's Everyclear Party

In Nevada in those days, you could get a cocktail to go, in a "go cup." Try that most places today and see how far it flies... Maybe still can in NV. I don't know. In fact, you could get a cocktail everywhere I remember going. Go to the diner for some eggs in the morning, have a cocktail if you wanna. 7-11s sold liquor. Supermarkets, too. In Silver City, the only retail establishment in town was the bar.

Sometimes we'd go into Carson so we could pretend to gamble and so drink for free at one of the casinos. Dave would get one thin dollar worth of dimes. When a waitress would approach, he'd put one dime in a slot and take a cocktail off the tray, then walk around with it. And so forth. Get kneewobblin' drunk for one dollar or less.

I got so whisky drunk drinking for free while pretending to gamble one night, at a blackjack table, I couldn't do the math with the cards when they were dealt. Dealer was getting irritated because he was trying to work for a living. The pit boss finally told me I was welcome to stay and drink if I wanted to but I couldn't gamble anymore. Truth!

Place was lawless in those days as anywhere I've ever known, any time. I don't recall too many real bloodlettings for it.... Chaos, often. Madness, always. Occasional fisticuffs. Sure. 'S why we liked the place. On top of that, it was also, with Vermont (still), and Nicaragua and El Salvador, the most armed place I've ever lived. For all the chaos and madness, booze and drugs and general lawlessness and fun, I don't recall many firefights, for all that. Most people were downright polite,actually, if'n you obeyed the code of the mountains.

One time Jeffrey had an everclear punch party at his trailer in Silver Springs. Made a big ole punch. (Everclear for those who don't know was raw grain alcohol -- a punch would be about 190 proof.) Invited all of his pals over for the afternoon. Everyone, needless to say, was good and slammed by the time the punch was drunk up. My '63 Fury had no exhaust pipes at all, just noise right off the manifold, and a completely broken spring in the back on one side, so it listed heavily to one side.

(The manifold exhaust pipe had rotted through and broke in two on the way to NV from VT that year, and I'd driven across country with it like that, getting out every so often, crawling under the rig, and stuffing either broken end into a beer can, which muffled it some, until the can burned through, repeat process, and so on, for a couple of thousand miles. One night when we were leaving the End Of The Trail I was so drunk -- clearly -- that I told Jeffrey to drive. Anyone who's been in a vehicle when Jeffrey was driving knows that's fuckin' drunk, right there. No further description required. Jeff, instead of just driving around a corner and on to the highway to Silver Springs, decided to take a "shortcut" instead -- up and over this rock ledge -- boom bang -- ripped off the entire remaining exhaust system from manifold to tail pipe's how I got into that fix.)

So, a whole bunch of us left Jeffrey's for the End Of The Trail in my Fury. I can remember for sure that in the car with me were Morgan, Lonesome Wayne, and Custom Kenny, but there were more than that. The front seat was crowded and the back stuffed full. All of us way more than drunk.I got about a block toward Dayton on the highway when the cop light went on behind and the siren. So, I pull over, thinking the jig is finally up, this time, for sure. Redhanded. Judge'll never let me out. If they'd have pointed one of them breathalizers at me like they have today, thing would probably have exploded, killing us all.

Cop comes up to the window. Takes a slow gander at the whole bunch of us. Likely caught a good buzz just from the fumes. Doesn't bat an eye. He looks at me and says, You need to get that muffler fixed. I says, Sure, will do, right away. He gave me a warning citation. Never said another word. Turned around, got back in his car, and drove off.

They ain't shittin' you, either, pilgrim. You could buy this lot, for example:

Like the ad says, "plenty of room and close to town."

This is a shot of my last daylight view of Nevada before heading back east for what I didn't know would be a quarter century (fueled by a black beauty Jeffrey slipped in my shirt pocket, kept me going nearly to Cheyenne....):


I stopped here to drink a beer and gather what was left of my wits before the long drive to Jeffersonville, Varmint, where I arrived with one last thing ten-dollar bill in my pocket, which promptly disappeared at the roadhouse bar that was then called the Library and is known today as Robbie's Wildlife Refuge.

That was also the last transcontinental voyage of the '63 Fury. Later, I sold it to my brother, The Other Sisco, for one hundred dollars. He drove it, with more than 200,000 miles on it, when it was using more oil than gas, per old rig. He used to buy used motor oil in large lots from gas stations and just pour it in one end so it could run right out the other. We called it the SS Acid Rain in its final years, because the once-blue paint job was peeling off in huge sections, like sunburn, right down to the bare metal. It was a good old rig. Maybe my favorite of all I've run.

Dave Reisch and John "The Other Sisco" circa 2006, Sensitivo party at my VT joint

Dayton

The End Of The Trail, as it was late '90s. Sorry to say I have no photos of it in the glory days. The saloon is more than 150 years old.

The End Of The Trail was the headquarters of life, late 70s and 80s. Dave Reisch taped the whole jukebox selection, "the soundtrack of life," on to cassettes one afternoon. It's a literal recording of one afternoon at the Trail, jukebox, pool table noise, conversations at the bar. A real time recording of a day in the life. I'm transferring the recordings to CDr. So far there are two completed.