Dirty Jack's

In 1976 I was only 23 years old; just a kid. I started playing country and blues harmonica only three years before that. I pursued it with a youthful intensity I can no longer muster, and by the time I landed at Dirty Jack’s Theater in May of 1976 I was pretty damn good. As I have written elsewhere in these pages, that was the best summer of my life, for a whole bunch of reasons. I drank a bit back then, mainly because it was a rite of passage for a young guy from Wyoming. Drinking beer – particularly Coors beer – was a social norm. It was fun. Now that I have quit drinking nearly 30 years later, I can clearly identify the summer of 1976 as my last good time. It was the last time I was clean and sober enough – and perhaps naïve enough – to be happy with the pure joys of life. Things kinda went down hill after that. Some readers have noticed that I haven’t written much on this blog about the 1979 season at Dirty Jack’s. I came back as a veteran performer that year, but it was a summer f...

In 1976 there was a remarkable young man who worked for Jon Stainbrook as kind of a gaffer/grip for the theater. His name was Mikey. Mikey was only about 15 years old, and slight and wiry. His job was to shinny up and down the rafters of the old theater and hang lights, or move scenery, or sweep the lobby, or whatever. During the show each night he helped with the light cues. I think he ran the follow spot. Mikey was a jack of all theater trades, and he was well liked by the cast. I never knew anything of his family life, but he seemed to spend every waking hour at Dirty Jack’s Theater. His wardrobe seemed limited to jeans and a small collection of tight, long sleeved disco shirts he wore every day. He had curly red hair and a Wyoming attitude: Don’t Fuck With Me. He was something of a legend for having crawled on his belly the entire length of the theater under the floorboards to drag the sound snake or something. The actors were very impressed with that. When I left the show in ’76 I...

On a day early in May of 1976 when the cast of Paint Your Wagon first gathered, I met the guy I will call Mark. Mark was a guitar-playing singer with long hair who fashioned himself in the mold of Jackson Browne or James Taylor or something. He whipped out his guitar and sang a whiny song in a nasal voice even before we’d all said “Hi.” He seemed a bit too eager to impress upon us that he was a REAL performer among us amateurs. I developed an instant distaste for the guy. Mark had a pretty big part in the show, singing many of the ballads and playing sidekick to Jon Stainbrook, the head honcho of Dirty Jack’s Theater. But Mark just irritated everybody with his pretensions and self-importance. The “board” part of the “room and board” arrangement for the cast at Dirty Jack’s was not too fancy. [Neither was the “room” part, but that is another story.] In fact, the cast ate every morning at an open-air restaurant attached to the theater that served only sourdough pancakes. We also ate ther...