Musician anecdotes

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Tom T Hall was once given a solo show at the Bluebird Cafe, the Nashville place where all the songwriters have to play to make it in Music City. He was being received as a legend, not someone on the make -- everyone already knew he was: a living legend.

Y'all have been to places like the Bluebird. there are so many rules. No talking. No smoking. Whisper when the performer is on stage, or don't say a word at all. It's like a church, but with booze, that you are supposed to drink quietly, and not enjoy. My dad once got chewed out for eating nachos too loudly. It is so overly reverent, even to really lame songwriters. 

So Tom T.  fuckin' Hall comes out on stage, fiddles with his guitar, tunes it up for a bit, eyes the wide-eyed crowd and says...."A wise old man once told me this when I moved to Nashville: there's no such thing as free pussy or safe drugs."

 

[baboso 6057]

[noharleyyet 2852]

[Grandioso 2592]

In the early 2000's when James McMurtry began getting the credit he was due, my friends and I would go see his midnight Wednesday residency show at the Continental at least once a month. Sometimes multiple weeks in a row.

Anyway, a buddy of mine who was especially in awe of his songwriting ability and lyrics eventually decided he had to introduce himself to JM and show him some appreciation.

So he goes up to JM after a show, when it's like 1:45am or so, and tells JM he's a fan, that his songs are so great, etc. You know, kind of gushes a little bit. My buddy expects JM to talk about a song or the show or drop some wisdom, and he just says dryly, "Yeah, I've seen y'all in here before. Why don't y'all ever bring any girls with you?"

Legend.

[jimmyjazz 46225]

I used to see McMurtry at the video store on South Congress (when video stores used to exist).  He usually had a kid or two with him and looked on the verge of blowing his top.

The best encounter I had with him, though, was at Northcross Mall back when the center was a giant skating rink, before they moved it to the east end of the facility.  He was obviously tending to some kind of kiddie birthday party.  The hollow, depressed look in his eyes was hilarious.  The man is not interested in the small details of daily life.

[noharleyyet 2852]

“I used to think I was an artist. Come to find out I’m a beer salesman. “  -James McMurtry

[tbone_ 14181]

In

[Celery Man 21003]

I grew up in the suburban pop punk scene playing in bands. One of the groups that was old when we were starting out and then verging on pathetic when we were old (just the one original guy still in it, slinging pizzas and playing late ‘90s pop punk when the genre is dead and he is in his mid thirties). I finally got him to confirm the story that, in the late 90s, they had been signed to a good punk label very briefly and went on tour with an up and coming band. Maybe Saves the Day. He had locked the singer of the band in the bathroom of a bus or something as a prank, the guy didn’t like it, and they got dropped from the label. And that’s what happened to his break.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

On 11/22/2018 at 11:58 AM, Grandioso said:

In the early 2000's when James McMurtry began getting the credit he was due, my friends and I would go see his midnight Wednesday residency show at the Continental at least once a month. Sometimes multiple weeks in a row.

Anyway, a buddy of mine who was especially in awe of his songwriting ability and lyrics eventually decided he had to introduce himself to JM and show him some appreciation.

So he goes up to JM after a show, when it's like 1:45am or so, and tells JM he's a fan, that his songs are so great, etc. You know, kind of gushes a little bit. My buddy expects JM to talk about a song or the show or drop some wisdom, and he just says dryly, "Yeah, I've seen y'all in here before. Why don't y'all ever bring any girls with you?"

Legend.

There's a term for that in Nashville: to gherm, hard G, when you make an ass of yourself in front of a musician you admire. 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Another one:

 

Back around 1978 Townes Van Zandt was living in the hills outside of Nashville in an unheated country shack with no running water at the end of two dirt roads. He shared this retreat with his red-haired teenaged bride Cindy, his hyper-intelligent wolf-dog Geraldine, a cat, the hens Eenie, Meenie and Miney and the rooster Moe. Not to mention whatever guests would crash there on any given night. Often enough it was Steve Earle and his friend Chip Phillips, as it was on the night this crazed tale took place. In the wee small hours, Townes made a grave announcement.

"Y'all are gonna have to shoot Moe," he told Chip and Steve. "He crows before dawn. I just can't take it any more."

"Townes, I can't do that man," Chip said. "Plus, I know Cindy loves Moe."

"No, she's cool with it," Townes assured. "She's sick of getting woken up too. Plus, my cat just had kittens and I'm out of cat food. Moe will make a nice meal for her, and she needs one."

Chip and Steve agreed to take part in the murder of Moe, but only if Townes, who had one arm in a sling from a recent truck wreck, would be the actual triggerman.

"Alright, here's what we'll do," Townes said. "Steve, you flush Moe out in the open. I'll prop the shotgun on the porch rail here and shoot him. Chip - you take this hatchet and give him the coup de grace."

Amazingly, the plan went off without a hitch, and soon enough, Moe was plucked and boiling in a pot on the wood-stove.

Which is about when Cindy started to wake up, and Townes's trademark wicked, if hilarious, cruelty kicked in. He picked up one of Moe's claws, carried it over to the groggy Cindy, and said "Hey Cindy, Moe wants to say goodbye." He pulled Moe's tendons to make the gruesome claw look like it was waving.

Cindy shot awake and lunged for the shotgun at the side of the bed and chased the laughing Townes out into the gray dawn. Obviously, she hadn't been in on the plot after all.

Somehow, things calmed down a bit. Chip remembered that later that morning a journalist - he thinks it was Chet Flippo -- had made the pilgrimage out to interview Townes. Townes was showing Flippo around his rural eden - "Here's my morning glories, here's the outhouse," and so on.

 And then he comes to the henhouse. "We've got three hens - Eenie, Meenie, and Miney," Townes said.

"Where's Moe?" asked the journalist.

"There ain't no Moe," Townes cracked.

"To this day," Chip insisted, "I think Townes concocted that whole horrible scene just to set that one-liner up."