scrapbook

I met Bruce Phillips in November of 1969. At the time I was the kitchen boy, lighting and sound man, and permanent third act on the bill at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. All for 5 bucks a night and the privilege of sleeping on the Persian rug in the lobby when I couldn't find a place to sleep for the night when the bars closed. He had come in to do a guest set, having just left Salt Lake City after having been blacklisted after running for US Senate on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket as an anti-war candidate. He got 6000 votes and split the Democratic vote
so badly that he couldn't get his job back as a state archivist (Imagine Utah Phillips, anarchist, wobbly organizer, and radical songwriter, working for the state!). He was a larger-than-life vision out of the Old West; leather hat and vest, cowboy boots, gold watch chain, and mustache and mutton chop whiskers.

We introduced ourselves and I found out what he needed on stage to do a set, and then started to argue about the relative merits of Guild and Martin guitars. He played a big Guild F50, and while I had a Gibson LG1, I had always wanted a Martin. After I introduced him to the sparse crowd I started for the door, heading for the Kettle Of Fish, the bar next door that served as my hangout, and meeting place for most of the musicians and other lowlifes that frequented Macdougal Street. I hadn't even made it down the dark, dank aisle to the lobby, when a very large, meaty paw forced me down into one of the booths the back. The large appendage was attached on the other end to a huge, bewhiskered folksinger by the name of Tex Koenig, who growled in my ear, "You listen to this man!"

He started out with a bang, Joe Hill's PREACHER AND THE SLAVE, interspersing the verses with the story of how the song came to be written, and by whom. Do I have to state that I was impressed? It took me a while to make the connection between who I saw that night and U.UTAH PHILLIPS, The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, that Rosalie Sorrels had been talking about (we all thought that that was a fig newton of her imagination). In fact I heard that one guy walked up to Bruce shortly after he arrived in the Mysterious East and exclaimed, "Damn! You do exist!"

Anyways, that's how we met. We became friends later, although we would occasionally swap stories over drinks in the Kettle.I took off for California in '70, my wife at the time and I hitchiking across the Continent. Saw Salt Lake City for the first time on that trip. Heading further West on I-80 I finally understood that line in AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL about "purple mountains' majesty". When my wife and I split up at the end of 1971 in Berserkeley I came back to The Big Apple (Bruce always called it THE BIG CORE, the apple having long since been eaten).

On Labor Day of 1972 there was going to be a performance down at Battery Park at the lower end of Manhattan; Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, and U.Utah Phillips, and it was free to the public. I actually managed to drag myself out of bed before noon that day (at the time, true folksingers in the Village didn't stop throwing up until 2 in the afternoon), and made it down
to the park in plenty of time before the noon starting time to hang with Utah and renew our friendship. It was a beautiful afternoon and a great show. I caught a ride with Utah back to the Village in "Blanche", his '57 white Chevy panel truck, where he bought me lunch at the Lion's Head (I didn't have much money back then, still don't). He gave me one of his double
sided Echo harps (which I wish I still had), and invited me up to Saratoga Springs where he would be playing at the Caffe Lena prior to his departure the following Monday for a tour of England. I could have caught a ride up to Saratoga with him, but I had committed myself (something that has often been discussed) to a recording session in D.C. for the Peoples
Bicentennial Commission, a series of radio spots sharing the hidden history of the United States of America. I stuck my thumb out the next morning at the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan headed for the Capitol.

The next night after the session was finished I got some money to pay for a bus ticket to meet up with Utah, and rode the Dog all night, arriving in Saratoga fairly early. Spent a couple of hours trying to find Utah, since he hadn't told me his phone number or address. Just walked into the Four Sons Cafe and asked Phil, the owner, how to find him. Hung out there for a couple of hours until Lena Spencer (the owner of Caffe Lena) walked in. Phil greeted her with, "Lena, we've been looking all over for you!" She told me where the Wildflowers house was. When I finally found his abode I had to wait 'til he woke up. After breakfast he announced that Jim Ringer was recording at the Folk Lethargy (Folk Legacy Records actually, but that's what Bruce always called it) studio down in Sharon, Connecticut, and what say we go down there? We piled into "Blanche", 6 or 7 of us and headed South.

Folk Legacy was a wonderful recording company run by Sandy and Caroline Paton that put out some great LP's of folk music. They were located in a barn that had been converted to a music school which was also their home. Sandy also had some wonderful single malt Scotch that we raided, enough of it went down my gullet that I went to sleep on the couch (I was later told that my snores ruined at least one take). The next day Ringer said he needed an up tempo song for the album so I played him OLD BILLPICKETT which he decided to learn and record that day, with my old friend Jay Ungar backing him up on mandolin. Mary McCaslin, who was Jim's partner, sang backup on the choruses. Utah agreed to take on the publishing, and then took off back to Saratoga to get ready for the coming festivities. I hung around for a day or two more and then hitchhiked back to Saratoga.

So many performers showed up to see of Phillips off to England that instead of doing two sets a night at Lena's, Bruce would do one set, and for the 2nd would just give everyone a chance at the mike. It seemed like everyone was there; Saul Broudy, Dakota Dave Hull, Andy Cohen, Nancy Katz, Jane Voss, Margaret MacArthur, JB Freeman, Ringer and McCaslin, Bodie
Wagner, and a host of others (I really don't remember much after a certain point) .Ringer showed up with a release for the recording of my song and 25 dollars, which Jim, Utah, and I proceeded to drink up in a couple of hours. I will spare you the gory details of that fun-filled weekend, but I should mention that I didn't dare show my face in that town for at least another 6 months. Continued on page 2.