Dirty Jack's

I have started several blog posts with the phrase, “When I first arrived at Dirty Jack’s Theater in May of 1976…”. That is because it was such a cool and memorable time. I was suddenly immersed in the most stimulating and interesting episode of my young life. So, many of the memories begin at the beginning. Bob Adams was a bass player and stagehand in Los Angeles when he met John Dorish. Dorish had worked a previous season at Dirty Jack’s Theater in Jackson Hole, and wrangled jobs for both he and Bob in the 1976 show, Paint Your Wagon. Bob and another friend, Paul Fox, arrived in Jackson early to build the rather complex stage set for the show. It was still late winter when they got to town, with lots of snow and cold. It must have been freezing in that old theater; I don’t remember that it had any heat at all. They scavenged weathered lumber from an old sawmill outside of town and constructed the set with all its movable, convertible elements; a set that was used not only in Paint You...

Paul Fox, the talented actor from the 1976 production of "Paint Your Wagon" at Dirty Jack's Theater, died the following year from a rare form of cancer. I remember Paul as a solid actor and a great guy. He was my friend in that long ago summer. He was close to young Rhonda Willford, who kept in touch with him as he was ill. Part of rummaging through ones past is finding that old friends have died. Doc, Nancy, Paul, and Richard Tierce (and probably others). Jon has gone to a place where he can't be reached. But they live on, laughing and singing in my memories of a creaky old theater. Rest in peace, buddy...

It was early this morning when I got up to do the laundry. It was still dim outside, and my girlfriend was still sleeping. I grabbed the laundry basket and my iPod and busied myself. My iPod is a Nano 4GB with about 900 songs on it, almost all of them blues and almost all of them featuring blues harp. It also has a few non-blues songs from the era when I came of age; the early to mid seventies – rock and folk and country that I liked or was meaningful to me in some way. I set the iPod on shuffle and quietly went about laundering our clothes, by myself on a dark morning. The song “These Days” by Jackson Browne came on, and I froze like a statue. Instantly, I saw a friend’s living room in 1975. I heard the music coming out of his stereo speakers. I smelled the patchouli and pot. I was there. I felt that familiar, comfortable certainty that the best rock songs all had steel guitar in them, like Neil Young’s music. Sitting in my friend’s living room in 1975 passing the pipe and listeni...

...I arrived in Jackson Hole for Dirty Jack’s 1976 show, Paint Your Wagon. I didn’t own a car, so a friend – actually, the brother of a friend – drove me in his pick-em-up-truck from Powell, Wyoming through Yellowstone Park to Jackson Hole. He dropped me at the theater and drove off. Within a matter of minutes I was buddies with Sean, Tim, Bob Adams, and the rest of the guys in the band. The Cowboy Bar immediately became our place. A man could sit in there on a fine early summer day and have a beer and a smoke, and contemplate the fates that had brought him to such a pass. Life was pretty frickin sweet. The Phoenix Suns and the Boston Celtics were battling in the NBA finals on the TVs suspended from the knobbled pine ceiling in the Cowboy Bar. When I tired of the game I could watch the cowboys (real and of the drugstore variety) grunt and preen for the tourists. All the stools along the bar that stretched the length of the room were saddles, complete with stirrups and horn. Unc...

“...Out there in the spotlight, you're a million miles away. Every ounce of energy, you try and give away, as the sweat pours out your body, like the music that you play. Later in the evenin' as you lie awake in bed with the echoes of the amplifiers ringin' in your head, you smoke the day's last cigarette rememberin' what she said...what she said....” [Bob Seger/Metallica] The ’76 gig in Jackson Hole was not my first professional gig--if you use the metric that a professional plays for money. But I was far from a professional musician. I had invested hard-earned paper route money in high school for a Sears Silvertone Classic and taught myself to play. Sears had a catalogue--and catalogue sales in ’68. I went with the nylon strings and the wide neck, because I too had “chubby” fingers (like Doc) and not much reach. Bar chords were not an option, so I capitalized (as I could) on the rich sound of the “open” chords.” My first professional solo gig was a coffee house at...

One of the stupidest things I ever did was leave the show early in the 1976 season. It was mid August, and my girlfriend back home was growing increasingly insistent that we get married right away. She was kind of frantic about it, and I thought I loved her so I told Jon I had to go. He was not happy. A senior member of the band took me aside and told me that if I did this – if I left the gig to get married – I would never play professionally again. He was right, sort of… I didn’t play seriously again until I got rid of her. I packed my stuff in a duffle bag and rode my thumb through Yellowstone back to Powell, Wyoming. By the time I hooked up with my girlfriend she had pretty much forgotten about marriage. I knew then I had made a horrible mistake. A few months later in Phoenix she woke up on a Sunday morning and told me she had been unfaithful. I cried, and asked her only if the guy was still around and it was still going on. She said no. I didn’t want to know any of the de...

I just finished posting a song to my website, a song I finished recording today. I started working on it last weekend but I didn't like the way it sounded, so today I redid it. It is a a little semi-acoustic blues thing we call "Just Messin' 'Round" -- because that is pretty much how it started. [begin notes for gear geeks] The harp is played into two Shure SM58 vocal mics plugged straight into the recorder; no old bullet mics and no stinky tube amps, the gear I normally use to get the ragged Chicago tone. The guitar is an acoustic Epiphone with a Dean Markley pickup through a Korg ToneWorks DI box. I progammed the rhythm section on a Boss DR-880. [end notes for gear geeks] This song is a bit of a departure from our usual Hard Blues style, but I had fun creating it and I like the way it sounds now. This is a lot like I sounded 30 years ago in Jackson Hole. Please let me know what you think. Just Messin' 'Round

Dave showed up on a Wednesday. He drove to Jackson in a 1970 Cougar, of which he was very proud. He pointed out to me the 4-speed transmission and trim option that made it quite rare. I had not seen or heard from Dave in a couple of years. We had once run wild together, raising hell and hitchhiking all over the Northwest. We split up in Wenatchee, Washington, when a situation turned sour and it was a good idea for me to get out of town fast. I made my way back to Wyoming. Dave was on a road trip and decided to look me up. Mutual friends told him I was in Jackson, so here he was. It was awkward, until he said something like, “Hey, things got pretty fucking weird back then.” It sounded like he forgave me. Dave had been my hero. He was cool and hip; confident and glib. He had an easy way with the ladies that I admired. He was like a magnet. Wherever he went people were drawn to him; wanted to catch some of his mojo. He was a minor guru of the hippie drug culture in a place that was the en...

Tim’s post about flashbacks got me thinking. Emailing with ex-Dirty Jackster’s lately has caused more than a few random memories to percolate to the surface. I remember: -The blue and white checked shirts the band members wore in the 1976 show. -Taking a picture of the audience from the stage one evening right before the show began. I wonder what ever happened to that photo. -The Hungry Hound, a little A-frame restaurant owned by Jon’s friend Al. -Jon invited the band to some event; I think it was at his house. I asked him if his sister, Nancy, would be there, and he immediately said, “You horny bastard.” -Watching Molly dance with some fancy disco guy at the Rancher. She was very good. -Buying cigarettes at the Jackson Drug, right on the corner near the theater. It is long gone now. -Getting so drunk I lost my car (for the first time.) -How really nice Kathy Stainbrook is. -Listening to Tim O’Reilly singing “Unicorn.” -Playing “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)” in the d...

It’s funny what you carry around with you: a scarred knee from a bicycle accident off the sting ray; a hurriedly-scratched phone number safe in your wallet where it will probably never see daylight; and laugh lines around the eyes.... August 1991: An outing. A Ch-46 flight into northern Iraq via the USS Nassau sitting in the Eastern Med. The next stop in the itinerary is Silopi, an expeditionary airfield technically in Turkey, but so close to the border that Dan Rather would claim he was reporting from Iraq. The war is technically over and the flight into Zahko is uneventful except for a nagging realization that the border landscape looks a lot like southern Idaho. At the airfield in Zakho, off the main runway, but close enough to be in the prop wash, sits a Marine who has to be a reservist (because of the gray hair). Directly in front of him is a tripod easel. He is busy dabbing watercolor on thick paper. The Marine is Colonel P. M. Gish, a notable combat artist, and he is continuing ...