Jeff Cotton

Some 46-plus  years ago  I found myself side stage at the closing night of Winterland, handing comedic actor Dan Akroyd, a live microphone to address the long sold out New Year’s Eve audience. While Dan bellowed out his opening line “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Winterland ballroom….”  to the audience, he had me hold his briefcase of harmonicas, the one with the handcuff & chain. I thought it was a prop. I didn’t know then that “The Briefcase Full of Blues” would literally become the stuff of legend.

A couple of our rabid listeners pushed the new audible book in front of us, called “The Arc of Gratitude”. It is written and voiced by Dan Akroyd, and it is a veritable sleigh ride through the story of the band that was not a joke. Only two hours long, it’s loaded with inner-circle cameos and it is most definitely worth a listen, if for no other reason than to learn how John Belushi literally put his house on the line to follow his dream, a dream that would end up resurrecting the careers of a handful of America’s greatest talents. Oh, and I learned why Elwood’s harmonica sound was so fucked up for the first few songs at Winterland (you’ll to have get the book).

Here’s a clip from the night that was, the last show at the aged skating rink with the New Riders of The Purple Sage opening for The Blues Brothers and The Grateful Dead playing till dawn when breakfast was served for 5500 spun-out souls on New Years 78/79:

 

 

It was in the newest weeks of 1980 that I found myself in San Francisco, on Broadway no less, making over what was the Hippodrome dinner theater into the newest venue for the Keystone family of nightclubs (Berkeley, Palo Alto, SF). On Grand Opening night, the headliner was Muddy Waters with Kinky Friedman opening for him. It was my guess that most of the blues fans in the audience to see Muddy did not know or care about what this big Texas Jew had to say, let alone know his sense of humor. While strapping on his guitar and tuning, he introduces himself and says…“I just got done writing a jingle for the second largest tampon company in the world…and their motto was… ‘We’re not number one, but we’re right up there.’ “ 

– – – Tasteless? You bet. Break the ice? Sure did.

Anyway, Kinky did a good set of solid tunes and funny stories and Muddy did his inimitable Muddy thing, sitting on a metal folding chair with his guitar (for over an hour) laying out the real deal Muddyness. 

After the show, I found Kinky sitting by himself in his dressing room drinking and toking on a huge cigar, which of course stunk like the dog turd it looked to be. He took a tug off of a bottle, offered it to me and says “HEY, WANNA SLASH OF TEQUILA?” …“Uh, no thanks”, I say politely. “WHADDYA YOU KNOW ABOUT TEQUILA??” …he barks. “CUERVO? “…he says, still holding the stubby square bottle out to me, “…THIS MAKES CUERVO TASTE LIKE CAT PISS.”  I took a slug and sat down. 

After another slug or a few, I learned a few things from Kinky that night; what, and how good, Herradura Tequila was (and how Bing Crosby and his drinking buddy formed a shell company so they could import it into the states for themselves), and… always drink the best tequila you can get your hands on.

My story. Stickin’ to it.

~jeff cotton

Jive co-founder

I first met Ramblin’ Jack Elliott in Reno back around 1982. He was hours late for a gig I had booked at the Ice House Saloon. That night it was snowing up on Donner Pass and when Jack drove up in his motorhome through the snowflakes, I figured he had gotten hung up coming over the hill in the storm. But no, he had come in from the Nevada desert and was late because he lost his dog while camping the day before. After probably 20 minutes of telling me about it (still in the parking lot), we were finally walking in to start the show and he said to me “They don’t call me ramblin’ because I travels a lot”.

We heard a half-dozen stories like that (and that once you met Jack, you felt like you were friends), from the artists Sunday night in SF’s packed Masonic Hall, a nice-sounding 3500-seat theater. Joe Henry was our charming Emcee and band leader and boy, what a band. Greg Leisz on dobro, pedal steel, guitars & mando stood out from the first note and was occasionally thrilling while being so understated you couldn’t tell he was THE mood & sound for the whole night. Jason Crosby on keys and fiddle wove in & out of Greg’s melodic work like they’d been doing it all their lives. These guys just floated my boat.

Early on the sound mix was predictably shaky through Sarah Lee Guthrie’s 2-song set with new Jiveradio fave Melissa Carper, but they held up and set a welcoming tone.

[There’s a full setlist here: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/various-artists/2024/masonic-auditorium-san-francisco-ca-23acd81f.html ]

[You can see some crowd videos (even though Joe asked us all to turn our phones off) in this Jambase post, which includes Bob Weir’s fun story about meeting Jack, here: https://www.jambase.com/article/bob-weir-joan-baez-ramblin-jack-elliott-tribute-concert]

[A review of the show by Relix mag: https://relix.com/news/detail/bobby-weir-peter-rowan-joan-baez-and-more-come-together-for-ramblin-jack-elliott-in-san-francisco/?mc_cid=ebb2f5db05 ]

The stories and love were the best part, but the standout musical moments to me were;

-Peter Rowan with Sarah Lee doing their cover of “The Cuckoo”,

-when Maria Muldaur brought out Roy Rogers to do some of his trademark blazing slide work on a Blind Willie cover,

-both of Dave Alvin’s songs (with that band…wow!).

-when the gravitas knob got turned up big time with Steve Earle telling a great story and intro over a rolling folkish guitar groove to Jack’s own “912 Green Street”.  He growled it out and my earth shook.

-Nathaniel Rateliff’s cover of Hoyt Axton’s “Gypsy Moth”. Night Sweat’s guitarist Browan Lollar threw down some killer lead’s. Man, I have GOT to see that band!

-Jackson Browne’s “Far From The Arms of Hunger”, which he nodded to the children of Gaza, just tore me up like only serious “Folk” music can do.  This song, and the whole evening’s program of poetry & song reminded me that “Folk” music was originally at it’s core about protest, activism, and community. The lyrical message was usually serious and called on the listener to speak out, to do something, or at least cry or empathize for other creatures not us. Oh, and call out The Man. I can only hope the billion-dollar Live Nation Man coughed up some couch change to help The Sweet Relief Musicians project.

Much thanks to Jack’s daughter Aiyana Elliott and the captivating Victoria Williams for their gargantuan efforts in putting this night together. We’ll be adding plenty of Victoria’s music to the Jive, along with more of the whole roster, which already looked like a Jive playlist.

After I watched Joan Baez close the show by dancing a little jig with Jack and we streamed out of the Masonic in a sea of the most silver ponytails I’ve ever seen in one place, I had to wonder how many last waltzes any of us have left, old or young. Please keep on kickin’ The Man and throw those you love the roses while they’re here!

I never did hear if he found the dog.

~jeff cotton

We lost another dear soul last week with passing of Robert ‘Bobby Mac’ McNamara. Bob was a longtime pal, ally, and co-conspiritor(!) in many things musical.

I knew him from working with his many bands back to Cannibal Dynamo in Reno from the mid-80’s, up through loads of gigs with Guitar Woody & The Boilers, and some of his side projects like Kingfinger, and Strange On The Range, among many others.  He was a big-hearted gentleman who rocked many things, including being on original KAVA Radio Project (the embryonic Jiveradio) and he was a founder of The Reno Blues Society.

DJ Jim will be featuring much of Bob’s various music trips ALL NEXT WEEK [M/W/F 9a-12p PDT] and watch this space for news of a celebration.