‘Country’ and ‘Western; are possibly the two most divisive words in popular music. It remains true though that world-wide, country music is the most popular, ubiquitous form of music there is. It is loved and hated in equal measure, but it is loved and hated globally. There seems to be no middle ground where country music is concerned, nobody ever says ‘they quite like it’. My slow introduction to it was decades ago through the music of Ry Cooder. There isn’t a whole lot of upside to getting older, but following your favourite musician over the decades is one of them. To follow their particular journey, to grow along with them, to wander off and follow them down the unexplored alleyways of their changing tastes and then go to their shows and reminisce a while together is surely one of the joys of being a long-term fan. Following Dylan is the same of course, but I always have the uneasy feeling I’m slightly irritating him, and he'd rather I wasn't there. Anyway he only does the big shows, which I hate. Ry was my gateway drug to country, as well as all sorts of other music. Of course Cooder is kind of special in that regard. He is the great curator of American popular music. I believe after his wonderful and heart warming work with ‘The Buena Vista Social Club’, (he collected together some aged and legendary Cuban musicians from the 50’s and made a film about their lives and music) He was charged with ‘giving comfort to the enemy’. The enemy in question was mighty Cuba, of course, being a real and present threat to the United States a mere 60 years after the Bay of Pigs. His possessions were sequestered and it was made difficult for him to return home. Given that popular music, alongside the movies, is possibly America’s greatest and most profound cultural contribution to the world, and that Cooder is its greatest archivist, interpreter and champion, this was as petty and small minded a piece of persecution as could be imagined. Bill Clinton’s last (and probably only) magnanimous act as president, apparently, was to pardon him. America should be ashamed by this but I imagine at this moment in time they’re a bit snowed under in the being ashamed department.
Another reason Country Music resonated with me was because of its white blue collar credentials. I would play those blues and soul songs of disconnection and misery, because that’s what you did in pubs, but actually it's kind of preposterous really. I’m patently not black and I’ve never suffered racist oppression, life in the ghetto or abject poverty. The nearest I’ve been to the Mississippi Delta is probably Milford Haven and my beat up car has never been repo’d. I did have a Ford Escort nicked outside a gig in Tottenham once but that hardly counts. I am however, obviously white and although I suppose you’d describe me nowadays as typically middle class, my background is definitely blue collar, my father was a British railways booking clerk and porter and he was, in his youth, a Labour party activist. A union man and a union family. Country songs are about failed relationships, about searching for those small freedoms, about working shifts in a factory, about friends and girls in bars and having a good time, or having a bad time. I’ve done all that, I can sing about that stuff.
Brendan discovered country music at exactly the same time.
I have mentioned Brendan Gore before, from my college days. I shall be mentioning him again, unavoidably, in future blogs. It’s not that easy to characterise my relationship with him, a difficulty I share with just about every other person who has met him, up to, and not excluding, his dog Fido. I'll settle for treasured friend as opposed to say, nemesis.
We both got into Country music quite independently during the one occasion we fell out. That we have only fallen out once in all these years says a great deal about both the strength of our friendship and, to be fair, my substantial reserves of tolerance. In about 1980 I had driven up to Stockport, where he lived, from London, for a visit. I was accompanied by a new girlfriend. She was very nice, rather a gentle nature, with that new-girlfriend enthusiasm to meet some more of my charming and interesting friends. She was therefore wholly unprepared for Brendan.
By the time we left to head back to London I was furious at his behaviour. Of course him getting us banged up in the cells at Cheadle Hulme police station hadn’t helped. Brendan had a rather more cavalier attitude to arrest and the possibility of criminal charges than I had. For a start he had had more experience. I could see my career going up the spout and my new girlfriend was beginning to have serious and understandable reservations about our future. Reservations which proved perfectly prescient of course. The weekend ended in disarray and acrimony. We drove back to London vowing never to repeat the experience. 18 months offended silence later, one warm summer’s evening the phone rang in my London flat. It was Brendan. “And another fucking thing....” he began. It wasn’t an apology as such, but it was the nearest I was ever going to get. Catching up, we discovered that we had both discovered country music and his band ‘The Removal Men’ were shifting from hard R’n’B to the music of Hank Williams and George Strait and taking their loyal audience with them.‘The Removal Men’, had evolved from an earlier iteration called ‘Gags’ and were in those days the best pub band in the North West. I’d say they still are. If you ever get the chance, go see them.
In the 80’s I was playing the London pubs with a band called ‘The Game’. We were unusual in that the singer was also the drummer. Billy was a small wiry Turkish Cypriot with an unruly mop of red hair. He looked about 12. In conversation he had the tiniest squeaky voice that was slightly disconcerting, it made him sound like he was 12 too. But with a microphone in front of him he was transformed, a great soulful singer and a tasteful drummer.
Billy also played in a trio, with a small aggressively bisexual singer called Jimmy. Jimmy, despite all evidence to the contrary really believed he was an undiscovered star. His self delusion was absolute and he never stopped his hustling, ligging and self promotion, or as the A&R men of eighties London called it, ‘making a bloody nuisance of himself’. He was impossible not to like though and he was interminably upbeat. He was once on ‘Top of the Pops’ but had been uncharacteristically reticent about this. He gathered his sceptical friends round the television for the big show. They had only just been made aware of this sudden apparent break into the big time and he refused to tell them anything about it apart from the fact it was ‘Number one’. They sat through the whole show, enlivened only by Pan’s People, (excuse me while I drift off into a small Proustian reverie here........... That’s it, back). Eventually Kid Jensen announced that week’s top hit. They all sat through it in a kind of appalled silence. “Erm, which one were you Jimmy?” asked the first one to recover the power of speech. “Jimmy beamed proudly at his friends. “The one with the blue beak and the big feet, third from the left”. It was ‘The Birdie song’. He was one of the dancing birdies.
Tragically, Jimmy was never to be the star he always believed was his destiny. Within a few short years he died of AIDs, the plague of the eighties. In his final few months he showed sincerely admirable qualities of courage and grace that had largely remained hidden during his active years. For all his faults he is remembered fondly.
That decade country and western enjoyed a huge resurgence. Country clubs opened up. Country music festivals started. Line dancing became a craze. Little known to me at that time, my future wife was returning from Texas, where she had been a dancer and had picked up the moves and steps in the bars of Austin, where she went to gaze longingly at cowboys. Advertising line dancing classes in Bury in Lancashire, she experienced a few moments of panic when 350 people turned up to her first class. She has been doing it ever since. (Gazing longingly at cowboys I mean. She still does line dancing too).
Billy and Jimmy, sensing an opportunity, expanded the band, changed their name to ‘Firewater’ and leapt on the passing bandwagon. They secured a deal for their first album and I wrote the two non-covers that were on it. Probably due to my involvement, it sank without trace. I would love to know where my complimentary album went. Five pounds and a copy of the Daily Mirror to anyone who can find one.
Following and sometimes sitting in with ‘Firewater’ was the start of an off and on connection with playing country music which continues to this day.
In 2002 or so I was playing at a country music festival in Southport, Merseyside. It was quite a big festival, and I was playing with a band called Western Union. We had a girl singer, a guitarist known as Mad Ronnie, a roadie and a sound engineer called Ray, a top bloke. Country festivals are a diminished event nowadays. Simple demographics I guess, there are few young people into it and the festival goers are dwindling. Mobility scooters are not that great in the mud.
Twenty years ago they were thriving, supported largely by the camper van and motor home community. (There is only so much camper vanning you can do without needing another interest and country music perfectly fills that gap). Festivals always had large motor home car parks, each vehicle flying the confederate flag, unaware that in many parts of the USA this is the equivalent of flying a swastika. (Maybe not that unaware in some cases, worryingly). As well as loads of bands, Western Ware stalls and line dance workshops, the organisers liked to add a bit of variety to the day’s entertainments.
We were on second to last and before us was novelty western act called Little Running Deer and his squaw Hiawatha. She was actually called Tracy from Warrington I discovered later. The first part of his act was to invite members of the audience to come and smash beer bottles on the floor. With great fanfare running Deer then slowly laid on the broken glass whilst Hiawatha laid a large board over his back. She then invited the more hefty of the audience, (she was spoiled for choice here), to walk the length of Running Deer’s body and basically grind him into the broken glass. To be honest I wasn’t expecting this sort of warm up for our set and I sat there transfixed with my pint glass half way to my lips. He emerged from under the boards and sprang nimbly to his feet with aplomb, waiting for the acclaim. He was lacerated from his neck to his thighs and stood there brushing shards of glass from his bleeding torso. The audience gawped. Bloody but unbowed he moved on to the second part of the act, the rawhide bullwhip.
A flinching Hiawatha lit a large Havana cigar and placed it between her lips. Whilst she muttered a half silent prayer and mentally reviewed her career options, Running Deer attempted to take the cigar from her mouth with the tip of the enormous whip. There were a series of enormous cracks as the length of the whip snaked into the air. He didn’t get within five metres of the cigar. In the end Tracy’s nerve broke and she spat the cigar out whilst Running Deer turned to take the applause. Tracy sagged a little.
Next, to the evident horror of a by now already spooked audience, Running Deer produced three knives and a board propped up with an easel. Gesturing to ‘death wish’ Hiawatha, he flipped a knife into the air and promptly dropped it. Hiawatha winced as it clattered noisily to the floor. She spread herself against the board and Running Deer advanced till he was about 2 feet away from her. We all sighed with relief. Even I could stencil round Hiawatha from that distance. After a couple of rounds of throwing, when he could as easily have leaned over and just stuck them in the target Hiawatha took centre stage and invited members of the audience to take part. Who was brave enough to take the little squaw’s place? What about you sir? You look the courageous type. A great smirking hulk of a man volunteered, egged on by his friends and family. To drunken cheers he stepped forward, pumping his fists at everyone. Hiawatha made him swear he hadn’t been drinking and was in full possession of his faculties (he was at a Country and Western festival, I felt the question was a bit redundant really), and led him to the target. He was grinning at his table and waited for Running Deer to stand his two feet away and stick the tiny knives in. His table had their phones out and were hooting encouragement. It was all a big laugh. Well, a big laugh until Running Deer produced three Cherokee hunting axes and started to retreat to the back of the enormous marquee. The volunteer's grin faded slowly into a sickly grimace. “Is paleface ready”? Running Deer called, somewhat indistinctly from right at the back of the room. Paleface was growing paler by the second. He nodded wanly and gulped. Suddenly Running Deer hurled the first throwing axe in a great looping parabola the length of the marquee. The audience ducked as the axe twanged into the splintering wood and vibrated with a clichéd 'doinging' noise. Whether it would have been right by the hapless target’s left ear or would have split his skull in two I will never know. The volunteer had bolted for the welcoming bosom of his family long before Running Deer squinted and drew his arm back, and was now gulping a pint down in relief. There was collective shudder as each member of the audience imagined the tragedy that might have been. Running Deer collected his knives and his Hiawatha to a horrified silence. It didn’t seem to bother him. I imagine every night ended like that and he probably regarded it as normal.
Mad Ronnie leaned over to me.
“Follow that”, he said.