Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story

15. Out West

= @ = K < < E Out West The people managing the family band, Bob Bean and a new promoteragent , Jack Clement, decided that we needed to perform in the West to get better known. So in 1964 we went out there. First stop, for some shows and some recording, was Beaumont, Texas, George Jones territory. In fact once George came around to borrow our bus. It was raining and he took it over to his house and got it bogged down in the ground, just ran it up to the axle in mud. It never did work right after that—every time we’d get in a rainstorm, it would quit on us. He was drinking when he did it, of course. That was before he sobered up. After a few weeks, we went to California. Jack Clement had the boys dress in sweaters and slacks, and had us billed as “folk music,” to take advantage of what they were calling the folk music boom. We played Disneyland and clubs like the Ash Grove and the Hollywood Troubadour . est Out West pressing on / 91 We had some fun times out there, and caused quite a stir. People were always talking about this wonderful Stoneman family, with all these “amazing” children that played so well. I remember one time in particular in the early days when a TV reporter was interviewing Mommy and Daddy: “Mrs. Stoneman, how does it feel to have such amazing children?” “Aaaagh,” said my mother, and rolled her eyes and sank down in the chair. “Get her off that mike!” cried Bob Bean. “Get Pop on there, get Pop!” So they moved the mike to Pop. “How you doin’, Pop?” said the interviewer. “They call you Pop, don’t they? ’S all right if I call you Pop?” “Don’t matter to me a’tall,” said Daddy. “How ya doin’?” “We’re starving to death, that’s how.” Me and Donna were backstage, doubled over laughing. And Bob Bean and Jack Clement were going, “Quick, quick, get Pop off there, put the camera on somebody else.” They were really panicked. You gotta pretend like you’re not hungry on a big television station in L.A. And there’s another memory I love from California. We would often play in California in the next few years, so I’m not sure of the exact date of this. Anyway, we were playing the American Pie club in San Francisco . The bands that went on before us were college students, about my age, trying to play country songs. I was a little peeved at them—well, let’s come right out with it, jealous—because they went to college and I didn’t. I was thinking, They don’t have to do this and I do. They got other ways of making a living. Why do they want to play our music? And they were not doing it right. For instance, one band tried to do “Act Naturally,” the Buck Owens song, and they would sing it They are go-ing to put me in the mo-vies / They are go-ing to make a big star out of me. Saying each syllable real clear. Instead of They’re gonna make a big star outta me. I was thinking, Oh, how can anybody murder a song so bad! We were standing around, getting ready to go on. Daddy and my brothers had on sweaters and slacks. Donna and I had on starched full skirts with ruffled blouses, red and blue, that we had made, and little 92 / pressing on white boots. And our hair was done just so. We were all so prim and proper. Some guys came up to us, five of them. This is back when the natives weren’t resting very well at Berkeley. These were students and they were rank, long straggly greasy hair and beads everywhere. Hippie City. And one of them said to me, “Does she play that?” He was grinning and pointing to Donna sitting there so prissy with her mandolin. I said, “Uh, yeah.” And I looked at them and I thought, Now they’re gonna make fun of us ’cause we’re hillbillies. So I said, “Yep, she’s been playin’ ’bout three, four weeks.” I got real hillbilly, even more so than I naturally am—which is hard to do. And they looked at Scott, had rosin all over his fiddle, walking around the back of the stage, antsy to get on. And they said, “He plays that fiddle?” “Well, he don’t have much hair on the bow ’cause it’s an old used one, but he’s been tryin’ to learn to play.” And Jimmy had his old bass, splinters all over the side of it, and one of the hippies said, “Guess he’s learning that.” “Yeah, he got it from a buddy of his.” The hippie looked at Van, who had a hole in his guitar where he’d picked so hard and fast. “He’s been taking some lessons,” I said. And I told them I’d been playing my banjo “’bout a month.” Then I said in a real innocent voice, “We’re gonna try and play good for you today. We’re gonna work real hard for y’all.” They looked at each other. One of them muttered, “This I gotta see,” and they snickered. Then they went and sat down in the front row, crossed their arms, and stared up at us. The announcer said, “Here they are, ladies and gentlemen, the singin ’, swingin’ Stonemans.” Well we cut down on “Cimarron” in the fastest way, ripped right into it, Cimarron, roll on . . . Scott was bearing down on that fiddle, Jimmy slapping that bass, Donna playing all those diddley notes. I took my banjo break, and I played as hard and fast as I could go, looking straight at them. (With my left eye, of course. My right eye, as usual, was doing its own thing.) And the hippies went, “Oh my God,” and they slipped down into their seats, all five of them at the same time. As I was putting my banjo away in its old beat-up case, the guys opened the backstage door, and all together they said again, “Oh my God!” pressing on / 93 Then there was the time in California when we were playing, and the strobe lights were going, and Jimmy had a seizure on stage. “Groovy,” hollered the hippies. “Man, he’s really grooving!” The sound man, wearing an obscene tee shirt, came over and held the microphone in Jimmy’s face. “No, no, he’s having a seizure!” I cried, trying to shoo the man away. “It’s a gas!” the sound man yelled. And the crowd went wild. Because people were liking us so much, we got to do a lot of television specials—the Steve Allen Show, the Texaco Star Parade Starring Meredith Willson, the Danny Thomas Show, the Jimmy Dean Show. That nationwide exposure from the TV shows meant we got more bookings in the East and we would go back and forth. Between shows I was living near Las Vegas, because Gene had started working with Judy Lynn’s band there. Judy Lynn had called me, asked if I knew of a banjo player, and I had recommended Gene, thinking he’d be able to give me and the children some support if he had a steady job. So he was in Vegas, and I was traveling back and forth between California and Vegas and then sometimes going east. All that traveling was rough. It was a rough time for another reason—Scott and his drinking. Scott started drinking real bad, a lot of wine and stuff. Daddy said, “Dadblame it, Scott, you gonna have to stop that!” He was really concerned about Scott because you couldn’t depend on him, he might just take off. And in fact Scott did take off. “I wonder where he’s at,” Daddy said to me. “He’s playing with the Kentucky Colonels. They took him.” “Why’d he want to play with them?” “Because they let him drink.” And that was it. Scott went off with them because they didn’t mind if he got drunk. Or if they did mind, they didn’t feel they could get mad at him like Pop would. I know that’s the reason—not that he wanted to play with them more than us—because with that band he did not have the grit behind him that he always liked. Now, the Kentucky Colonels was getting to be a well-known band. Their main players were Roland White, a wonderful mandolinist, and his brother Clarence, who was a 94 / pressing on really good guitar player, a great guitar player. But to have Clarence in the band and be your backup, that wasn’t so good, at least to my way of thinking. Because he didn’t give you enough rhythm. It was always diddling, all the time, deedle deedle dee dee deedle, playing individual notes. And then the Kentucky Colonels put out live tapes and records from the shows. Now I know some people say that those recordings are legendary and that they influenced a whole generation of new musicians. But my opinion?—they should never have been released. Needless to say, Scott was drunk. It was very obvious that he was drunk because he did “Any Damned Thing,” which is a song he wrote which was not a nice song. The reason he wrote that song was because he got mad. This was back when we were playing the Famous and Scott would take a bucket on the stage and, as I said, holler, “Pitch in the pot. If you don’t pitch in the pot tonight, tomorrow we won’t have a pot to pitch in!” Sometimes he would add, “If you got any requests, write it down on a hundred-dollar bill, and if we don’t know it, we’ll write it.” Some guy came up, real drunk, and said, “Play any damned thing,” and he threw ten dollars in the pot. Scott looked at him and hated him. So he said, “All right, I’ll play any damned thing.” So he started singing and he made this awful song up. And those Kentucky Colonel showtapes were awful. Scott was playing that kind of song. And there’d be no solid rhythm background when he’d take a break.And the recording wasn’t any good. They never should have put those performances out. I could pinch their heads off. It was hard for the family band, Scott’s going off like that. If you have the best musician you can imagine in your band, and he just takes off . . . My father, it hurt his feelings, hurt him bad. But he was used to Scott’s drinking. We all understood. Now, my mother would get real mad about all my brothers’ drinking. I remember a time in particular, when we were still living in Maryland. There was one decent piece of furniture in the house, Grandma’s old Singer sewing machine that Momma had brought from Galax. She’d wipe it off every day. I guess a lot of memories came to her with that old sewing machine. Well this day Momma was out at the grocery store, and my brother Gene staggered in drunk after work with a whiskey bottle and pressing on / 95 plopped it there on the sewing machine. It stewed over, and he passed out on the little cot we had. Momma came in, saw that bottle of whiskey, and grabbed it. It had eaten the paint off of her sewing machine, just ate the varnish off. Needless to say, that didn’t make her very happy. And Gene laying there smelling of drink. Momma went into action. She put a sheet around him, sewed him up in it, and beat him with a stick of stove wood. I saw her do it. “Don’t you ever bring another bottle in this house!” “God, I won’t do it anymore, Momma, won’t do it anymore!” An elbow would come up in the sheet. And she’d bang it down. But with Scott, she couldn’t do nothing. She would fuss, but Scott would say, “Ah, Momma, my little mother, the best mother I ever had. I’m sorry. You know I love you. Please don’t be that way.” That was Scott. You just couldn’t stay mad at him. By the time he finished, you’re the one feeling guilty and apologizing. He was a humdinger. ...