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Key to the Highway
- University of Minnesota Press
- Chapter
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KEY TO THE HIGHWAY In June 2001, I was playing at a blues festival at Ironworld, on the border of Chisholm and Hibbing, that included a library of artifacts and old newspapers where one could research the history of the Iron Range, and an amphitheater that featured musical events and everyone from Tony Bennett to Waylon Jennings. The most popular yearly event at Ironworld was Polka Days. I was approached by one of the promoters whose main gig was booking Famous Dave’s Barbeque and Blues, a club in Minneapolis that featured blues seven nights a week. He asked me if I would like to do the weekly Sunday brunch gig for a month while their regular musician, a piano player, finished a month in dry dock. As a lapsed Methodist, I only attended church on Christmas and Easter and had most of the rest of my Sundays available. I took the gig. It started at ten and went until two in the afternoon. At first, I sang my original tunes with a smattering of blues cover songs. I realized, about an hour into it, that people were more interested in enjoying their eggs, sausages , pancakes, and Bloody Marys than they were in paying attention to whoever was making a racket on the stage, much less whether they sang or not. I was fine with that. Only those in church choir sang that well in the morning, and I had long been kicked out of mine for singing too loud. I had twenty-five to thirty instrumentals in my quiver and enjoyed playing tunes by Fats Waller, Leo Kottke, John Fahey, Duke Ellington, and others. I realized I could also work on my guitar chops and play extended versions of blues variations and song ideas, essentially getting paid to practice. On the breaks I would read the New York Times, drink coffee, eat breakfast, plan my midafternoon middle-aged rocker’s nap, and decide which movie I was going to attend in the evening. The piano player got out of treatment a month later, immediately fell off the wagon, and the gig was mine. After a couple of months, and dozens of favorable comments from what I thought was an inattentive audience, I was asked if I could do the 6–8 p.m. happy hour on Saturday as well. I told them I would happily forgo watching Cops and could do the gig, as long as I could make whatever KEY TO THE HIGHWAY show I had in the evening. The summer was coming to a close, both gigs were going well, and I told them I’d be happy to bring my harmonica player, Sonny Earl, in for a Friday happy hour as our weekly Friday patio gig in Northeast Minneapolis, where I called myself the “Daddy-o of the Patio,” was coming to an end. They happily obliged. I was now making six bills a week, eating three meals a week for free, and had an unlimited supply of free drinks, depending on who was bartending. I was paying 300 a month in rent and was driving a series of cars loaned to me by a good friend in my hometown whose dad got started in the bar business by bartending for my granddad at the Roosevelt Bar in Virginia. Iron Rangers have always had a way of taking care of their own, although not always while they were on the range but after, when they had all left and ended up somewhere else, much like a father who could never tell his kids he loved them until they left the nest. One day in August 2001, I walked into Famous Dave’s in the middle of the afternoon to pick up my amp to take to the repair shop. The managers were bitching about the booking agent, the guy who gave me the gig. I told them, “I could book this place.” I had been booking myself for years, had booked a handful of other clubs, and knew enough about it to make that claim. A week later I was hired. I had seen one of my predecessor’s checks for 840. I didn’t know if this was a monthly salary, biweekly, or—OMG—weekly. It was weekly. I was now making almost 1,400 a week. Jackpot, seven come eleven, and then and when, dig my grave with the ace of spades. A week later I had my first meeting with the corporate...