It's All Right Now

Some time back, we treated ourselves to a bed & breakfast night on the edge of downtown.  Our room was on the rooftop, and as I looked down from the deck, I spotted this house.  I remembered it right away as the building where I first worked after moving to Denver in the 70’s.  It was a renovated mansion with offices downstairs for a talent and booking agency called Stone County.  Live music was big in town during that time, and it was most often performed in small venues.  There was Ebbets Field downtown, and Cafe York on Colfax, the Oxford Hotel.  The larger venues were still smaller than most clubs around today.  Rainbow Music Hall, Turn of the Century.

That back door by the bench leads into what was then an enclosed porch.  It was the Publicity department where I assembled press kits, and opened packages of cassette tapes from bands looking for representation.  Later on, I handled contracts between the musician’s union, the venues, and the performers.

It wasn’t uncommon to walk into the front room and see several folks standing around, not all of whom I recognized.  The phone rings, and I ask, “hey, is one of you guys Jimmy Buffett?”.  And he takes the phone from me.  I smile with delight and hand it to him, not having the guile yet to be embarrassed.  We represented names like Steve Martin, Mason Williams, Bryan Bowers, John Hartford, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Leon Russell.

One evening, I was asked to drive up into the foothills and deliver a demo album to this guy who was performing at a bar on Hwy 285.  I grumbled about it, couldn’t get anybody to go with me, I had to pay a freakin' cover charge.  His set was just starting, so I had to wait it out until I could get a chance to pull him aside.  It was a really good set.  The guy was J.J. Cale, and he was very warm and friendly, and I was charmed.  I wasn’t yet aware that he was already a legend.

Have I lost any of you younger readers?

Along with photographing concerts from backstage at Red Rocks, I got to join Willy Nelson and his group of outlaws for ribs in the caverns underneath the stage.  I built a darkroom and developed black & white photos in my little basement apartment.  And I partied.  Booze, Quaaludes (are those still around?), cocaine, white crosses (to stay awake for the party).  Had a couple of flings with performers that actually liked me because I wasn’t terribly enamored with their so-called celebrity status.  “Sorry, but I won’t abandon my guests to pick you up at the airport and go with you to the mountains.” I was mercifully protected from the things that often happen to naive young women who live in that world.  I left the music business (the agencies all moved to the West coast or Nashville), got my first of several “straight” jobs, and settled down for the most part.

Nowadays, I might go see a local band whose members used to work with some of the people from the 70’s, and the on-stage name-dropping is rampant. Not that many people in the audience are old enough to recognize the names that are being dropped.  “I wrote this next tune. It was recorded by Michael Murphy.  I wrote it, but because of a misprint, he got the credits on the album cover...”   The awkwardness of it makes me cringe.  They’re older than me, and still doing that shit.  It reminds me of myself not so long ago.

For longer than I care to ponder, one of the first things people learned about me was how I used to work in the “music business”, photographed concerts, hung out with so-and-so, did cocaine with Tiny Tim.  Not really, but it could have happened.

I literally mourned the ending of what I believed was the most prestigious period in my existence on this earth.  Who I currently was, what I did for a living, my intellectual pursuits after the glory days were not among my talking points.  I had nothing to say for myself other than who I used to know.  I gradually quit doing that.  Not really sure when it happened, but seeing that old house again got me to thinking about it.

The adventures of the 70‘s gradually became a memory that seldom entered my mind. I’ve had enough awe-inspiring, chill-bump inducing events occur in the interim between then and later, that then has become a shadow in the mural of my sojourn on this planet.  It’s a lot less work to be who I am at the present moment, and to appreciate others for...you know.

Glad that finally got straightened out, so that I can now tell the good stories.

RAM