Bob Bell: Rocky Mountain Roads, Part 5 of The Hot Little Mama Tour.

Roomful of Blues on stage: photo - Joe Rosen

What a difference sleep makes, such sweet slumber, stretched out between clean crisp sheets, and what refreshment such rest brings, balm for the body, serenity for the soul - two gigs in the same venue in Fort Collins and two nights in the same beds added up to ten recharged and revitalised band members. The only drag was we all had to clamber back into the Suburban once again, for another nine or ten hours of torture and head for the next venue, in Park City, Utah, up in the mountains east of Salt Lake City. Again we had two nights scheduled, and it was only around 450 miles away - a breeze compared to how we had been traveling for the previous few days. This was high country, big sky country, up into Wyoming, and a straight shot west along 80 through towns with names like Laramie, Elk Mountain, Fort Steele, Rawlins, Point of Rocks, Purple Sage, names that echoed with the sound of hoofbeats, rattling buckboards, cattle drives and the scents of lonesome cowboy campfires borne on the high prairie winds.

The dusty green Suburban was faster and more comfortable than horseback, of course, and we made good time, digging the spaciousness of the lands that stretched to the left and the right, in front and behind. Open country, but everywhere fenced nevertheless, it being ranch land after all. I caught a sad sight on one fence line that went straight up a steep mountainside, dividing sage and sand from sage and sand, a deer, dead, hung up on the top strand of wire, its hind legs trapped in the barbs, snagged as it had tried to jump the line, obviously having died after fruitlessly failing to struggle free, and starved or bled to death, a sad, lonely and desolate departure from this life.

Hours through cowboy country along a trucker highway, big rigs blasting through, with the owner’s names painted on the cab sides, some staid family company names like ‘R. W. West & Son’, or ‘Pete ’n Maggie’, and then the big corporate national outfits such as  'J.B. Hunt',  and ‘Knight Express' with their corny olde knighte logo, and my favourite, a gleaming purple and chrome rig driven by some poetic owner-driver, ‘Drag ’n Fly’; the trucks polished and shiny, dripping with chrome, huge twin exhaust stacks behind the cabs, chromed also, thundering along under the Wyoming sun, the lifeblood of America, enlivened and throbbing, corpuscles of commercial-grade diesel exploding in those pulsating Cummins hearts.

We pulled off from Interstate 80 a short distance after crossing the Utah line - yeah, boys, nearly there - and drove up and up, to Park City, to The Cowboy Bar. Park City was, and is a ski resort, and is jammed in the ski season. It was a little early in the season for serious snow, but it could be seen up there in the higher places. Still, there were folks out on the streets, the ebb and flow of tourists gawking into shop windows, locals sipping on coffee or pulling at a beer outside a cafe, digging the crowds, engaged in important talks with one another between flirtatious looks at the waitresses. 

We loaded in and set up the PA, and while the band went to the hotel, I wandered up the Main Street with an armful of posters and a staple gun, figuring I may as well do a little last-minute promotion. And then occurred one of those stranger than fiction Ripley’s Believe it or Not moments. As I was stapling a Hot Little Mama poster to a utility pole, a woman came over to me, gestured to the painting of the cowgirl, and said, ‘My mother painted that, ooh, many, many years ago’. I looked at her - she was obviously telling the truth - and was at a complete loss for words. Up until that moment, I had never considered whose work it was, who owned the copyright, whether we should have got someone’s permission to use the image. The designer we had used in Providence had found it, and we, or rather I, had never given a moment’s thought as to whether it was OK to use for an LP cover. I guess I had naively imagined that because the designer had suggested it, it was in the public domain, and was thus available to anyone. My mind whirred with the potential calamities about to unfold, cease and desist lawyer’s letters … this could get rather nasty.

The woman studied the poster, with its bold red background, and nodded approvingly. ‘It looks good, real good. Nice job. So you’re with this band? And they’re at The Cowboy Bar tonight? I’m coming! See you tonight!’ And off she walked. She did make it to the show, and we gave her an LP and a few posters and never heard from her again. There was a postscript to this story, however. Ace Records in the UK had designed a hipper cover, which was an airbrushed painting of a slickly dressed and sexy woman being cooled by an electric fan, and so when we had exhausted the original run of the cowgirl covers, we switched to Ace’s design and used that one thereafter.

In spite of it being off-season, the club was jammed that evening. The fact that Utah had weird licensing laws certainly failed to deter those who were out for a good time. Mormons don’t drink and disapprove of those who do, officially anyway. The club didn’t sell alcohol, it sold set-ups. To members only. Yes, I dig, it gets more and more confusing. So to get a drink in a club you brought your own booze, applied for a membership at the same time you paid your admission fee, which would be granted immediately, and then you’d pay for a glass, and maybe also a mixer. Of course, you didn’t really pay for a glass, in the sense that it became yours. Rather you rented a glass. The entire silly and sorry set-up was called just that, a set-up. At the Cowboy Bar, there was a liquor store next door. Like all liquor stores in Utah, it was a state-run operation. During the break, the club emptied as the crowd ran next door to replenish their supplies. 

So that was weirdness number one. Weirdness number two was the altitude, the thin air. There were oxygen bottles in the band room for a good reason. The thin air made breathing hard, made you feel constantly out of breath. We all use our lungs to live, but for the horn players, who literally used their lungs to earn their living, the air, or the lack of it, played hell with their intonation, in staying in tune with the band, the very basic effort of blowing the horn in a manner which would produce a certain sound at lower elevations mutated up in the mountains to the extent that each attempted note was a gamble, as was the estimated amount of air they blew for each note. Years of experience flew out of the window, it was as if they had to learn their instruments from scratch once more, only this time it was in front of a paying crowd. Add into the mix the fact that the high altitude makes one feel strange, mildly ill, as if battling a hangover; and if you were battling a hangover, then it became a really awful hangover.  The piano was out of tune, so Albi had to transpose most of the keys half a tone. Musically it was a tough night. 

The mostly local crowd, delightfully ignorant of all this, downed their set-ups and danced and cavorted about the dance floor, unaffected by the lean and attenuated air. Towards the end of the evening, a large and rather cadaverous looking woman in her forties who’d been standing in front of the stage approached Pic at the end of a song and asked him something. They conferred a moment or two, he nodded, and she mounted the stand as he announced, ‘And here is Dixie, she’s gonna sing ’Stormy Monday Blues’’ and the band swung in behind her. She approached the tune in a rather Ethel Merman-ish manner,  changing the first line from ‘They call it Stormy Monday’ to ‘They call me Stormy Monday …. ‘ and the musicians collectively rolled their eyes. It was funny in a sad and pathetic way, and for the rest of the tour, and for years after, poor old Dixie was remembered as Ma Kettle,  the appellative bestowed upon her by Doug, and whenever her name came up it prompted an ad hoc chorus of ‘They call me Stormy Monday’.

The night went on, that long cool Utah night, with cloud juggling mountainous peaks high and mystic lording over little insignificant Park City, and I stood behind the board, listening to Roomful of Blues, awash in waves of rhythm, floating upon the roar of the crowd, and was aware of how far away I was from the green Brendon Hills, the soft curves of the stone-faced earthen banks, sprouting neatly trimmed beech hedges, long green cords stretched across that ancient and long-settled land, and was lonesome for the peace of those days, when maybe the lengthiest drive of the week was just one muddy mile on an ancient red David Brown tractor, the long walks with Glen at my heels, attentive ears and eyes waiting for the call, ‘Away, Glen!’ Ah, dear sweet Glen, finest dog I have ever known. It had not taken long after I had bought my first 20 broken mouthed old ewes to realise that without a dog, shepherding was a fool’s business. It took four or five people to move the sheep from one field to another - as soon as one got a couple of them moving, the rest, scattered around the field, would lower their heads and graze on that sweet green Somerset grass. One dog could gather the flock in mere moments, running behind them, darting from side to side, keeping them tight together, and so herding them through a gateway like a well-rehearsed chorus line. I couldn’t recall just how I had found the guy that had trained Glen and put him up for sale. I do remember he trained dogs, and ran them, in sheepdog trials, those exhibitions of canine craft designed to show off the skills of dogs working hundreds of yards away from the shepherd, responding to a series of whistles, cries and arm wavings all underwritten by untold centuries of instinct. A group of perhaps 30 sheep would be grazing 200 yards distant. The shepherd would signal to his dog to go around to the right of the grazing flock, round them up, and take them to a  pen of hurdles another 100 yards away. Off the dog would race, initially going real wide until he had the sheep between him and the pen. The sheep would flock together, a little panicked, seeking safety in numbers. The dog, 40 yards from the flock, would crouch, eyeing his charges, and slowly, smoothly would approach them, gathering them into a tight bunch, then would sink down into the greensward, his eyes intent upon his charges, and with just the turn of his head, would persuade them to go to the left or to the right. Then, as they were moving, he’d rise and slowly stalk the flock, maybe taking a few fast steps to the left or right to keep them moving in the direction of the pen. Should one ewe wander away the dog would be off immediately, and the miscreant would rejoin the others post haste, and within minutes of the initial command, the dog had the sheep penned. Then the shepherd would whistle another command, and the dog would dart into the pen, moving the sheep out and take them to another pen, another 100 yards away.  Often hurdles - ten-foot-wide portable fences - would be placed at random between the two pens, and the dog was commanded to take the flock to the left or the right of the obstacle. The dog would dart this way and that, escorting his wards, keeping them together in a wide woolly walking bundle until they gained the second pen. Or maybe, while all of this was going on, a solitary sheep would be released, three hundred yards off, way up the hill, and the shepherd would signal to the dog to go grab that one and bring her to the rest of the flock, and all would be accomplished in moments, even though the original flock might be dispersing while he did it, and as the lone ewe was brought to the flock, all came together again, the second pen was filled, and the dog would lie, several feet from the entrance, pink tongue lolling, panting and intent, very very intent, his patient keen brown eyes always upon the flock, his look a keen beam of command, a gentle but firm demand of ‘be still, just don’t move’, and so it was. 

The guy I had bought Glen from trained these dogs. He ran a flock of several thousand sheep on a big estate some 20 miles from where I lived back then and trained these dogs both as a hobby and a source of cash. He showed me the commands, such as ‘Away’, and if you wanted the dog to go to the left you raised your left arm as you said it, and if it was to the right, well, you shouted ‘Away’ and raised your right arm. If you wanted him to stay, you said ‘Stand’ and raised the left hand straight up. And if you wanted him to bring the sheep to you, you said ‘Walk-Up’ and made a beckoning motion with the right hand. The purpose of using verbal commands and hand signals in tandem was simply that sometimes the dog would be within sight, but out of earshot. He put the dog through the motions and then introduced us. Told me his name was Glen, and he wanted 50 pounds for him. Said that in all honesty, he would never amount to becoming much of a great sheepdog, but he’d make a decent enough farm dog. Over the weeks and years that followed, I realised that not only was it the best £50 I ever spent but that Glen was the best pal I had ever had. A few months later, while standing in the lane outside our farmyard talking to our neighbouring farmer, Harry Bishop, whose family had lived and farmed in the little valley for countless generations, and whose counsel I valued, considering him to be my guru in all things to do with farming, and especially with sheep, had leaned forward while sitting on his tractor seat, and pointing to Glen, said: “Gotta tell ‘ee, Bob, that dog o’ your’n, ‘e be the best damn dog in the valley. E’s a real good ‘un’.” And my heart swelled with pride, and I fondled Glen’s ears, and he glanced up, brown eyes soft and trusting, his tail swishing back and forth in the dust.

He was a sweetie all right. The day I had brought him home, the man that had sold him to me had said: “Find him a nice little shed in the barnyard somewhere, give him some straw and an old coat to lie on, and he’ll happy enough,” and that is what I had done upon bringing him home. My wife Hilary and I made him comfortable in a small shed just a few yards for our cottage, and then we turned in for the night. We had not been in bed for more than ten minutes before Glen started to howl, long, loud, sad and mournful, oh, so mournful, man, the sound tore at our hearts, savaged our souls, clawed at our consciences. Which, being a very smart dog, was his intent, and after an hour or so of terrible guilt, we put on coats and shuffled through the dark, unlatched the shed door, and brought Glen into the house, no doubt the first house into which he had ever been during his short two-year life. We returned to bed, Glen on the floor beneath us, and peace reigned, and a quiet and serene joy spread through the little cottage.

But that was a hill farm in Somerset, England, a few years back in a different life. Here and now was a nightclub way up in the Rocky Mountains, USA, and I had to pay attention to my new flock, and what was happening on stage, as the last set drew to its sweaty and breathless end, and the musicians walked to the dressing room, and a few hits of oxygen. 

Amongst the audience that night was Brian Kelm, who had a blues show on KRCL in Salt Lake City. I had spoken with him on the phone several days before we had hit town, and we had talked about our mutual love of blues; the upshot being that he invited Doug and I down to the station the next day for an interview on his show, to plug the new record and the second night at the Cowboy Bar. This was something that in theory we tried to do in every town, but the reality was that due to our relentless schedule, there was usually just not enough time to do these things. For small independent companies like ours, promoting a new record by touring region by region, territory by territory, was the time-honoured way to get the word out. So Doug and I drove down the mountain to Salt Lake, found our way to the studio, and asked for Brian. He was jazzed to see us, still excited by what he had heard the night before, and was full of questions about the band, its history, the previous records with which he was very familiar, and wanted to know all about the latest LP, which he played between questions. After talking with Doug for 20 minutes or so, he turned to me and asked what I had been doing before hooking up with the band. He knew of course, from our conversation the night before, of my history with Island Records, Trojan Records and those early years of my life when music had sustained me, but all of that was years ago, and without thinking about the obvious need, when appearing as a guest on a show about music, to talk about music, I answered him, truthfully enough, that I had been a shepherd. 

In the radio business, dead air is verboten, a horror to be avoided at all costs. Silence is not golden, it is leaden. My answer stopped poor old Brian in his tracks. His eyes went from astonished, to quizzical, and the dead air went through a rapid reincarnation, became pregnant, expectant, a palingenesis and we all laughed. “Er, you must be the first blues shepherd I’ve had on the show,” and I explained how I had taken a seven or eight-year sabbatical from the music business to live on the edge of Exmoor, an area as stunningly beautiful in its own way as were the Rockies, although admittedly not quite so high. 

Brian did us proud, playing most of the record, honouring us with over an hour of air time, giving away tickets to the show that night and proving himself to be an all-round great guy and promoter of the music. He showed up for the show that evening, and was able to see the fruits of his promotion - the Cowboy Bar was sold out.

The next day, Saturday, September 12th, was a travel day and was the first day since September 4th that we had not played a show. We’d gigged every night since then, a seven-night string of shows in five different towns stretching out along a 2000 mile long road, winding two thirds of the way across this enormous land, ten guys jammed into one suffering travel-stained Chevy Suburban, with all its stinks and discomforts, its fogged-up windows, empty bottles, fast food cartons, coffee cups and newspapers underfoot, and the endless yammering and yakking of musicians, the countless supply of cassette tapes, Texas blues, New Orleans R & B, Duke Ellington, Jack Teagarden, Rockabilly, Soul, the unwinding soundtrack to our wanderings, ever-present, forever discussed, favourite or newly discovered tunes played over and over and greeted with whoops of joy, hands beating time on seat-backs, those fortunate moments when the cumulative miles of great fatigues were washed away by the cleansing and refreshing tones borne of shuddering and intense soulfulness coupled with fine and greasy art, instant pick-me-ups breathing vigour and rapture, a rolling American epiphany played out mile after dusty and bouncing mile.

Duke Ellington

It was a good old jump from Park City to San Francisco, close on 800 miles, a minimum of sixteen hours, but we had a day to get there. Downhill to Salt Lake, out along 80, across the salt flatlands, south of the Great Lake itself, past Bonneville, which of course made me think of Malcolm Campbell, the legendary English racer, who broke the world speed record in 1935 on these salt flats, going over 300mph, which is pretty fast whatever year you are in, and man, what a mad family the Campbells were; Malcolm’s son Donald crashed on the Bonneville Flats going 360mph in a 1960 attempt at creating a new record … his car was designed to reach from 475 to 500 mph which is, in anyone’s book, quite quick. Amazingly he lived, only to die on Lake Coniston in England’s Lake District, in 1967, while attempting to break his own water speed record. His boat, Bluebird, became airborne at 348mph, somersaulted and crashed, the film of which played endlessly on TV that year to a rubbernecking nation.

Flat, flat, flat along 80 until the Nevada state line, rising up into the hills at Wendover, and the first casino, with its garish dollar signs, winking neon and shallow promises of cash, riches, an escape from the drudgery of everyday life, an escape which never quite materialises and in reality evaporates as fast as the suckers billfolds empty, and the ancient sea bed of the Great Salt Lake faded into the blue and shimmering distance, and Oasis loomed, then Wells, then Halleck, dusty towns spread along the highway, signs heralding slots, poker, roulette, biggest payouts in town, old wooden wagons sagging outside weatherbeaten wooden buildings, the cowboy mythology of the west reduced to sad roadside attractions, with old pickups parked outside, their paint faded and dull from the gritty desert winds, next to gleaming town cars, smart and polished, glinting in the noonday sun. Past all this we drove, until the signs for Elko appeared, and Albi shouted out ‘Here it comes!’ His father lived out here, a father he had not seen in years, and this was a long-awaited reunion, weeks in the planning. 

We parked outside a casino, and Al disappeared to make his rendezvous, and the band dispersed, to eat, gamble and be glad to be out of the truck for a few hours. A town of 15,000 or 16,000, Elko sat on the old California Trail, that old wagon train trail that followed the Humboldt River, the trail that transformed easterners into westerners, and then caught new life as the Central Pacific railroad line came through, and became the hub for ranching, mining, rail freight, and grew into the Heart of North East Nevada, as its sign proudly signified. I heard that a lot of gold was mined in and around the area, and no doubt the casinos in those early days accepted gold dust and nuggets of all sizes. Maybe they still do - I never went in to ask, but then I didn’t have any gold anyway.

Eddie Bond

High desert out there, sitting at 5,000 feet, the air a little thin, the Humboldt River bending through the town, its waters bound for the Humboldt Sink, starting in Nevada and ending in Nevada, all a part of the Great Basin, that great geological drain reaching from Salt Lake to Lake Tahoe in California, with fingers touching Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming, that watershed that caught all the water in that enormous area, and wouldn’t let it go home to mother sea, holding onto it like the casino operators hang on to all the dollars they reel in from the rubes.

Bog Joe Turner

Departure hour came, we all got into the Suburban, Doug who’d won a 100 bucks, Al with tales of paternal joys and great reminiscences, the others tight-lipped and feeling dragged at having squandered the stashes they’d put up in vain hopes of quick money, and we blew out of town, five hundred miles to go, driving into the setting sun, interstate 80 our guide, and now we were headed for the coast, The Coast, the Pacific, fabled San Francisco, city of hills and cable cars, fogs and poets, all the way across, road and more road until it runs out at the water’s edge, and all you can do is stand on the sand and look at the curve of the ocean’s horizon, so full of mystery, kissing the sky in a blurry, foggy and cloudy embrace.