Mon Oct 13 2014

At the mobile office.

Haven’t typed those words in a long time. Back in the days of the Guitar Craft Diaries, Seattle Circle Diaries, and never ending website updates, coming down here to the café with my computer to work was a slightly ritualistic practice for me. Basically it got me out of the house, where there are myriad minor and mundane distractions, to get my writing or research done. Since then my home/office routine has become a little more regular, and tends to involve more guitar practice than writing. Plus, when I do leave the house I generally try to do so on foot or bike, which means that getting to and from where ever takes up the bulk of the time and is in fact kind of the point, rather than hanging out at the destination. But I had an open morning, and some reading to do, so getting out made sense. Ergo, here I am. Now to the actual work.

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I have to say that while the location, layout, general atmosphere, and of course the coffee, still make this my favorite hangout, the quality of the music has deteriorated significantly since the days I worked here regularly. You still get the sense that it is what the baristas want to hear, and not something canned or prescribed. It’s just that in the early days the prevailing personal taste of the staff had a lot more in common with mine. I suppose the upside is less distraction for me.

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Okay, playing music has gotten me to some pretty interesting and wonderful places in my life. It has also gotten me into some pretty questionable places and situations, and a few downright dangerous ones. But no musician’s war story I can personally pull up comes close to this shit. I first heard of Sam Lay as the drummer for the Butterfield Blues Band. He also played on “Highway 61 Revisited” and was in the band for Dylan’s infamous electric Newport gig. But before that he was in Wolf’s band. Here, he has been fined by Wolf for arriving late.

Getting Lay angry was unwise since he packed a snub-nosed .38. Wolf, too, carried a pistol but didn’t hold on to it at gigs. “When he come in, what Wolf would do is open the cylinder, take the bullets and stick ‘em in his pocket, and hand the gun to the club owner,” Lay said. “He didn’t want it in his possession while he was there.”

Wolf exchanged heated words with Lay about the fine. “He jumps all up and bangs on the table,” Lay said. “So when he did, I just stepped back from him a couple of steps. … I didn’t know nothing else to do. I just whipped that snub out and cocked that hammer back. Everybody broke and run … so I reached down there and got my other $10 and I left.”

Fast forward a couple of days, Wolf and Lay meet in the lobby of Lay’s apartment building.

“You know what he asked me? He tells me, ‘You got a clean white shirt and still got your uniform?’ I said ‘Yeah, Wolf, I still got it. I didn’t have no reason to get rid of it.’ ” Lay was back in the band.

Just another day in the life.