Jugs, Washboards, Kazoos and Orange County

Euphoria when your mind starts reeling and a-rocking Your inside voice starts a-squeaking and a-squawking

floating around on a belladonna cloud, singing Euphoria

I

What a song! and only one group could have done it — that’s right, the Holy Modal Rounders, folk music’s answer to the Godz (gee, I guess Iggy wasn’t the first). The Rounder’s — what a fucking great group, I mean jesus Christ. Like their first album on ESP came out in 1963 or something like that, and they’re already using psychedelic and blow your mind, all those words that our culture would use to exclusion.

Don’t come in a bottle, don’t come in a can

What every woman wants from every man

Hey hey baby I love my good cocaine

Slightly ahead of their time, they merely influenced the whole, people like Kweskin in Boston and the Even Dozen Jug Band in New York. It was about this time that urban folkies appeared. Urban because they were from the city, urban because they had grown up listening to rock and roll. And rock and roll was the plaintive cry of the oppressed tenement dweller.

These sensitive children, the ones they called folkies, were sired by the poetry and alienation of the beatniks. You know them; they followed in Woodie Guthrie’s footsteps carrying guitars down MacDougal Street and Telegraph Ave. and Mount Auburn Street and everywhere, playing a tune or two, maybe even writing it themselves. They marched in every demonstration from California to the New York island and they created the whole show.

II

I was in a jug band in college. I marched also, listened to Dylan, and dug Robert Johnson. Wrote poetry in chem lab — a child of that age. Anyway v our jug band was called the Original Dixie Jug Stompers (weren’t they all called that?) we did all those tunes, you know, like “Take Your Fingers Off It”, “Cocaine”, “Baby Let Me Follow You Down”, “Candy Man” — the whole show. We had a good time, but towards the end we know something was missing.

Ill

While at college, doing this and that, I programmed a radio show. Originally it was a folk show, but soon you knew there was no difference between Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones and I began to play a lot of Chuck Berry and that was the end, I mean the absolute end. Electricity had crept into the world. It was missing from the jug band and it was missing from the music we listened to. Dylan made official what Roger (but at that time Jim) McGuinn had already gone out and done and that was to invent folk rock.

The Byrds were folkies but they were West Coast folkies (lose three ethnic points, go back to the Lettermen). Out West folk moves were the Kingston Trio and Chad Mitchell, a group of which McGuinn was an alumnus. These dudes never played kazoo or washtub bass or anything. No sir, it was the East Coast version of the Byrds that broke it all open.

John Sebastian had the right p.r. to make it the way he did. His father is a world famous harmonica virtuoso, and it was only natural that John picked up this talent. John lived in the village, had hung around the fountain since he was thirteen, and was ready to rip off the entire blues heritage.

Everybody who was anybody hung 7

out at the Albert Hotel or the Night f

Owl Cafe cause the Spoonful were the biggest readymades to hit in quite a while. Folk automatics, rock automatics, jug band automatics, jewish boys make good automatics, your next door neighbor automatics, automatic automatics. The formula was true; the group became a big success.

IV

If tin whistles are made of tin, what do

they make fog horns out of?

Little Johnny McEuen was born on December 19, 1945 in St. Jude’s

hospital. A difficult delivery, mother and son survived nevertheless. When John was seven, he broke his leg playing basketball over at the Brookhurst Elementary School. It might be added that he missed the layup he was taking.

Ralph Barr, born at about the same time, played in that game also. That’s how Ralph and John became friends.

Then the next year, they were both in Mrs. Johnson’s third grade class. Since they were both the tallest kids in the class, they sat next to each other, and really got it together, the way little kids do.

Jimmie Fadden, played on the Allied Van Lines Little League. Team in the spring of 1958. He led the team in home runs, though his fielding was a bit shoddy. Pitching for the opposing nine in the championship game was Les Thompson, ace of the Roosevelt Roofers. It is not recorded who won or lost nor how the game was played.

Coming out of the Motor City was Jeff Hanna, a groovy dude. He lost no

time making for the surf, once he smelt that salt.

A short laddie, he was only 4’7” tall in his sophomore year at Bolsa Grande High School. In order to compensate, such that he might be able to get laid or at least a hand job, he learned how to play the guitar. Sitting out there, at

Doheny, he’d play “San Francisco Bay Blues” until some chicks gathered round. And then ...

One sunny day in June of 1965 a bunch of dudes gathered round at McGabe’s Guitar Store. One of them, Jimmy Fadden was trying out blues harps, looking for a rare D flat mouth organ. John McEuen, who worked behind the counter started jamming with him on “Stealin.” Jeff Hanna, who worked at the store giving guitar lessons, joined in and then someone started playing “Rag Mama.” They had it on so well that they got together that night at John’s house. John’s mother, although she complained about the noise, served them milk and cookies and John’s house became the hangout. John had an older brother, Bill who really had his shit together. Bill said . . .

V

In a week or two

If you make the charts

They’re gonna tear you apart

Okay, let’s be honest, it didn’t take a hell of a lot of arm twisting to convince the boys to be a band. Bill had some business sense and got them booked into the Paradox, a folk club in Orange County where a lot of future famous people played — people like Jackson Browne (who was a member of the Dirt Band for a short time), Steeve Noonan, Greg Copeland, Pam Poland, Tim Buckley and just a thousand others. While they were playing there, this surfing dude came up and asked to sit in. The surfer man, Bruce Kunkel, had just come in second to Hobie Altar out at Huntington Beach so that he was well known to the performers. That was the year that Hobie Altar surf boards outsold Greg Knoll boards, even though the latter were better. Hobie won riding tandem with a blonde haired (of course) surfer chickie. Bruce’s move was to come in doing a handstand, but it wasn’t enough at this particular meet. Anyway the Dirt Band was flattered to have such a local celebrity join in with them and they asked him to be a part of the group. Sometimes Bruce would perform in baggies to show off his surfer knots.

VI

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (by now their official title) just kept getting it together, playind dates with another local band, the Doors. They would do a lot of Jackson Browne and Steve Noonan material, especially one song “Buy For Me the Rain.” One of the best speed songs and certainly the prettiest, its instant acceptance as a standard was not hard to understand. Out as a single, it sold a million and the group was in business — maybe. Their first album, built around the success of “Buy For Me the Rain” was an eclectic showcase of their varied talents, and while it may or may not have been an artistic success (it’s real hard to listen to now, but then so is the first Country Joe album since I stopped taking acid) it sure as hell wasn’t financial success.

VII

Oblivion is a familiar place to most performers, for if most of them hail from Nowhere, they wind up in Oblivion. Oblivion at first for the Dirt Band meant touring with the Doors as a warm up band, another album called Ricochet that sold thirty-seven copies, a couple of movie appearances where the group wound up on the cutting room floor. They struggled for awhile longer, playing such exotic spots as New Stuyahok, Alaska (Les has a farm there); Elyria, Ohio; Euphrates, Pennsylvania; Muncie, Indiana — need I say more. So finally, after a gig in Pensacola, Florida the group disbanded.

VIII

Recently I received a telephone call from a Patti Johnson. You may or may not wonder what a Patti Johnson is; at the time I had no idea. Patti on some level is a publicist and she was inquiring

if I wanted to go to Aspen to see the Dirt Band perform. Sure why not; I’ve never been in Aspen; figured it might be a trip. I couldn’t believe the Dirt Band was performing; I thought they had totally dripped out of the universe, or at least the known world. Patti assured me that such was not the case, and that they were better than ever. I had seen them once with the Doors and remembered that they were pleasant and innocuous enough that they didn’t make anyone uptight while we were waiting for the Doprs to go on.

Soon after this telephone call, I received in the mail an album from Liberty/U.A. Since no one gets albums from them (at times they seem to be a nonexistent record company, run only as a tax loss for Transamerica) I was surprised to say the least. Opening it up, I found it contained the new Nitty Gritty Dirt Band record, along with a very sweet note from Patti Johnson. Being only male, things like that evoke a response in me. Much to my surprise, the album was quite good, good enough that I was even moved to write a review of it.

Like if the Grateful Dead had become a jugband, instead of Nashville sidemen, they might have made this album. On the other hand, if Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band had done bluegrass, this might have been their album. But San Francisco is hot L.A., nor is Orange County, Detroit, so this album is totally tjie Dirt Band including

minor flaws. One last thought if the ] Band took amyl nitrate, this is what \ they would sound like.

IX

Sitting backwards on this airplane is bound to make me sick Spend your life on a DC8 Never get to land Settle down in this world

The flight to Aspen was the f goddamned worst in the world. I used | to like to fly, but I think this was the | end of my technological romance with J winged flight. And then Aspen. Little ! was I prepared to find Sausalito in the i snow, but sure enough the town looked like any plastic village in California,! except that it had even less soul. Like ; Aspen was so bad that I started drinking: to soothe the pain, but there wasn’t! enough alcohol in the town to do it. The only, and I emphasize only, thing that made it bearable was the Dirt Band’s performance each night. Here’s another Aspen story. I wanted to meet this chick Julie Newmar who was somewhere nearby and I couldn’t even ; get a phone call through. /Out of sights huh?

Like the legendary Mar-Keys, this is a band that switches instruments. Unlike the Mar-Keys they stop to do it, but don’t subtract any points, since this variety made for a better set. They opened the set with their former hit, “Buy For Me the Rain”. The most obvious difference is the elimination of their jug band apparatus (while it surfaces later on, it’s now only one of the many stances). Without skipping a beat, they went into Mike Nesmith’s “Some of Shelly’s Blues” and then their current hit, “Mr. Bojangles.” Suddenly it was Buddy Holly time and they did “Rave On”, the Buddy Holly cut that created the Yardbirds.

They close the show with a fifteen minute rock revival bit that somehow (okay, I guess it ain’t too difficult) is about a zillion times more effective than Sha-NaNa. They were so much( fun throughout the gig that I thought I was back in San Francisco 1966-67, when people went to the park and danced, balled or just got high listening to some local bands make music, without pretensions of being heavier-than-thou. That’s the Dirt Band — a group without pretensions who just want to bring some joy into the world with their music. .