Friday, January 11, 2008 Hillside Farm, Meigs County
There was yet one more strange fluke in the weather and I was able to go for a little motorcycle ride yesterday. It was an interesting respite in the normally crummy weather we enjoy in the winter. I had to be back in time to get my car so I could pick up Izze at school but still and all, it was a sweet taste of spring. I’ve been working on tunes for the upcoming tour and I have to say that it is moments like this that remind me what a slow learner I am. I’m still thrilled when I learn something ‘new.’
Time passes inordinately quickly and it seems to be more of a challenge to get things done. So far so good. I am surrounded not only by family but also my favorite things. How can I have gotten so lucky?
I’m not going to dig too deeply in that well right now but I will enjoy the water. The other night before the rain came I was walking to old Chihuahua and I chanced to look up, which I really should do more often. The sky was brilliant with stars that splashed across the sky in familiar patterns. I have to say that it simply took my breath away. The stars above, me and the three legged Chihuahua here on earth… What a simple bit of paradise. I like it when things are simple.
Well, it’s off to pick Izze up.
Sunday, January 13, 2008 Hillside Farm, Meigs County
Kirsten Dahl and Marty Brennan sent me a fantastic retrospective collection of Ian Buchanan’s works. The earliest works are from 1957 and the latest are from 1982. Most people have never heard of Ian Buchanan. You missed good one. I met Ian in the Winter of 1960. By some quirk of fate we both wound up in the same house in Yellow Springs, Ohio at Antioch College. I was already in love with the guitar and had been for about five years, but even I knew back then that I really didn’t know shit… about much of anything.
I heard Ian play. To say I had an epiphany doesn’t even come close. I had been in love with the music for some time but I had never seen it played close up. Even though I came from Chevy Chase, D.C., in reality I was a hick kid from southern Maryland. What did I know? My first visit with Ian and his music was like the opening shots of a Fourth Of July fireworks show. As exciting as that was, I had no idea of the multi-dimensional show to come.
There were a lot of guys and gals up New York way who could play that stuff, but I didn’t know any of them and I had never been to New York. In that oddest of places, Yellow Springs, my life intersected with one of the greats of that or any time, Ian Buchanan. Why did he choose to befriend me, I’ll never know. He was only a little bit older than I at the time, but he was generations ahead of me in the music. We did both love motorcycles as well as guitars, but that is another story for another time. Anyway, I watched and marveled and asked him to teach me. He said, ‘Yes,’ and that moment has defined the rest of my life. I wasn’t a quick learner. I remember agonizing over West Coast blues. He stressed the development of my right hand, something I stress today when I teach. ‘The right hand,’ he said, ‘drives the music.’ Indeed, how right he was. I remember he and Alan Heald and I went to Dayton to Pop’s music and I bought my old J-50 for a hundred bucks and an old five string banjo that inherited me from somewhere. I practiced almost every waking hour of every day and I started to learn. I still remember the moment when I was first able to keep an alternating thumb going in a tune. It was better than winning the lottery!
In the three months of that quarter my career as a finger picker was launched. At the end of that Winter Quarter I got a Co-op job at the Rusk Instituted Of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. It was on 400 E 34th St. as I recall. Anyway, Joe Zinman, Josh Davidson and I got a furnished flat at the Lincoln Square Hotel, somewhere off Amsterdam Avenue in the seventies. I can’t remember exactly where. I worked as an attendant down at the hospital during the day and spent every night either with Ian and his friends in Queens or down in the Village. The first time I played a hoot at Gerde’s Folk City I, well… felt pretty good about myself. Ian’s friend Marty Brennan and I along with a gal named Linda Fuchs picked a little music together and actually had a couple of gigs. I spent as much time with Ian as he would allow and continued to try to learn. I’m not sure I ever pleased him with my progress, but he continued to tolerate me.
I was in New York for three months on that gig. When I left New York, spurred by a less than exemplary academic record I dropped out of Antioch and went back to the Philippines where my Dad was still stationed. I took my still pristine J-50 headed out to the P.I and went to college at the Ateneo de Manila. I had a couple of Gary Davis albums with me as well as a ten inch Folkways solo Brownie McGee. This and a head full of memories had me practicing non stop for the next year. In a way this was perfect for me. I was and am a slow learner. I had a year to go over and over the songs Ian started me on… He gave me the keys to the highway… I have been driving ever since.
I never saw Ian again. I got so caught up in my own life on the West Coast trying to become somebody I let my old friends slip away. Jack was the only one from the East Coast gang that I kept in touch with and he and I have now been in touch for fifty years. Linda moved to California shortly after I did. We used to keep in touch but then she dropped of the face of the earth. I hope she is well. I learned much from her too. The Jefferson Airplane was working the Café Au Go Go down in the village sometime in the mid sixties. One of my new twin reverbs had blown up. I those days, when we flew, I just used to put a cover on the amp and check it in as luggage. I remember seeing it crash down the carousel in baggage claim more than once. Anyway, one of them died and I had to take a cab up to 48th St. to get it fixed. (I hailed a cab and threw the damn thing in the trunk. Man those twins were heavy. The cab driver turned around and said, ‘Hey Kaukonen, where’s my dobro?’ It was Marty Brennan and the dobro story is a tale for another time.
I never forgot Ian and his music, but I forgot that is nice to keep in touch with friends. In the early 70’s, Linda called me from Oakland to tell me that Ian had sustained a dreadful fall and had survived as a paraplegic. My California buddy, Billy Dean Andrus died of a drug overdose right around the same time. I dealt with these realities by ignoring them as best I could and spent most of my time chasing my own tail as my colleagues and I slipped into moderate fame and notoriety. Sometime in the early eighty’s I found myself in New York and decided to actually give Ian a call. I was talking to a friend of mine, Gary Kiyan, who knew. ‘Let’s go see Ian,’ I said. Gary looked at me for a while and then said, ‘Haven’t you heard, Ian died last week.’ I remember that moment.
Well, life went on as it does if you stay alive. I am listening to Ian’s recordings that Kirsten sent me and I easily slide back more than forty years into that time when we were all young and the endless summers stretched out in front of us. The excitement of being able to focus on one thing found me transfixed by the guitar. I had no children yet so it was easy to just be a guitar player. I now have children late in life and this is giving me a new perspective I could not have conceived of even a few short years ago. At my age, I am starting to see my old friends trickle off into the next world whatever that might be. I am reminded to tell my family each day that I love them and to try to keep in touch with those friends that I can.
Yesterday was another fluke day in a weather kind of way. It was in the forties, which says to me, ‘go for a motorcycle ride.’ I went to a Music Together class with my wife and daughter and then I went home, suited up and rolled out the scooter. It was in the low forties but I had the right gear for a ride under these conditions. My friend Jerry and I went for a hundred plus mile ride through the beautiful Southeast Ohio hills… beautiful even with the bare trees of winter. I thought of Ian and I going for rides back in Yellow Springs in 1960. I am sorry that he died so young before the world could discover more of his music. I also wish we had time for more rides together. Perhaps he is riding free on whatever plane he inhabits. In any case, today I am grateful for having lived these memories and for being alive to create more. There is no time like the present to be alive I must say. I have dwelt in some dark spaces in my life, but I have dwelt in some bright ones too and I am in a bright one today.
Ian, I never had a chance to tell you how much your friendship meant to me… or your art. It would have been a different world for me had you not chosen to be my mentor.
Thanks!
