Transcendental Pay Dirt: The Legend of Papa Curly and Chico
Sometimes you unknowingly begin a pilgrimage simply because you dumb-luck into a situation that is changing you on a subconscious if not molecular level and you don’t realize it until the dust has settled and then realize that dust is really transcendental pay dirt. I met Chico late one night in a dingy blues bar where he was filling in on drums for a band who’s name escapes me, I was a bit in the bag, and Chico and me got even deeper in the bag as the night wore on. We talked about the greats like Fred McDowell, Hound Dog, Lightnin’, Muddy, and he told me “If you really dig-on that shit you need to hear my neighbor…”. Chico said he was the “Real deal bad ass slider and could sing some too” but he didn’t have a phone or anyway to be contacted because he lives in a camper in the deep woods of “Tin Cup”. I slurred excitedly that I needed to meet this man if even half of what he said was true. Chico promised he would call me and we parted ways in the wee hours. We have all had those drunken heart to heart bonding moments (I love you bro…), so I never expected to hear from him again, but surprisingly about a month and half later the phone rings and it’s brother Chico calling with an address over six hours away in Tin Cup. The next day off I went in my adventure van “The Grey Ghost” loaded with recording gear, my trusty $80 Bronco bass, a homemade guitar, three cases of the requested Natty Daddy beer, a fifth of Jim Beam, two bags of bbq pork rinds, my Fuji Instamax, and a little song idea for “Nightcrawler (Blacktop Butcher)” about “*The Stampede” an unsanctioned hard-core motorcycle race/ride that goes from coast-to-coast and has some insane rules, rules being a loose term. The “Motherfucker” lyric was an ad libitum by the mystery man hisself.
As I navigated the rutted backroads I thought this was going to be my Alan Lomax moment! To say Tin Cup is a blip on the map would make it sound far more cosmopolitan than it is, after several wrong turns down overgrown timber roads and a humid hour feeding the mosquitos while stuck in a mud rut, I landed at a camper surrounded by pick-up truck carcasses, doorless refrigerators, about six riding mowers rusted beyond redemption, and a headless bathtub Madonna, was it folk art or a warning I pondered. The place was a deep woods blues fortress, and like a big charcoal-black lighthouse standing on the warped wooden ammo box that served as steps was the man, the myth, “Papa Curly”. Large frame, yellowed eyes that have seen it all twice, wide suspicious smile minus a few “teef”, and hands the size of rough well worn baseball mitts if baseball mitts had calluses, but overly humble and family-vibe welcoming. His camper was way too small to record in and the soft springy floor spooked me a little, I secretly imagined us all going at it hard and the thing imploding, buried alive only to be found by alien archeologists in the distant future, so we opened some Nattys, plotted Plan B and decided to trek down to Chico’s trailer where he already had his kit set up anyway. After a long series of whiskey shots, stories, one-liners, and lukewarm beers while I set up the recording gear we where ready for lift-off, I had no idea what was about hit me. Papa plugged his “Peaver git-tah” (Peavey T-60) into his pawn shop “Peaver” combo and electricity crackled through the room like an approaching storm, the seas parted, neck hairs stood at attention, somewhere in the distance a mangy wild dog howled and a baby that would change everything was born screaming bloody murder into a bloody murderous screaming world.
After a few chaotic takes and lots more booze Chico laid down some harmonica over-dubs with me riding shotgun on shaker and tambourine while Papa rolled spliffs and then we headed outside to “…set some shit on fire and drink the rest…”. I woke up the next morning at dawn slumped in a lawn chair next to a smoldering fire, covered in dew head to toe with a pulse-throbbing-head-skull accompanied by a cold-tensed-muscle-shivering-full-body-ache, and alone. They were both gone like apparitional vapor so without heartfelt goodbyes I begrudgingly gathered my gear, cracked the last blood warm Natty Daddy and motored back to Liquor Hole dazed and fuzzy not really sure what if anything I recorded was usable. The night had been plum with lots of outtakes because Papa kept cutting up, stopping to partake in his spliffs, and had trouble focusing in general, my memory was like an out of body experience witnessed through a porthole smeared with Vaseline and horse snot. If not for the physical recordings I would possibly write the whole episode off as an hallucination or automatic writing, maybe I never even left the safety or my compound in Liquor Hole Kentucky.
After sorting through the tangle of tracks and a slight mixing it was born, a hard birth but a beautiful baby. I tried to send the finished tune to Chico but his service was disconnected, probably couldn’t get a mp3 on his ancient flip phone anyway, and there was no way to reach Papa. I mailed a CD (been years since I burned one of those antiques) but have no way of knowing if he received it or if he even owns a CD player, an 8-track may have been more apropos. Some days I think maybe I’ll load up a few cases of Natty D and head back to Tin Cup to track them down, but something in me also says some people just don’t want to be found, so maybe I’ll be respectful and just drink it alone with the memory of Chico and Papa “head-buzzed” swilling and laughing around the campfire’s dreamlike orange flicker. Sometimes you just have to give up the ghost and leave the magic frozen in time and keep on truckin’.
*The Stampede is an unsanctioned hard-core motorcycle race/ride that goes from coast-to-coast, taking different routes each year. The ride has some insane rules such as no rear shocks, hard-tails only, no rubber mounted motors, no hard bags, no windshield, and no chase vehicles allowed so if you break down you are alone and fucked. I watch a young lady pull in to the finish on a hard-tail with a bare metal seat, not one speck of padding for 3,615 miles.
