Originally this piece was to be titled “The Butt Darts Bar” until my editor took her first swipe at it. “You have absolutely got to get away from this anal fixation you have,” she said. “Everything you write about has some reference to the buttocks or its major product. What is it with you? You weren’t this way when we first met.” I couldn’t responde to that, so I picked a title that would make Walt Disney himself beam. That doesn’t mean that it’s for all ages. Don’t be reading this to your two-year-old as a bedtime story.
Butt Darts Bar sat on Freezeout Hill. I don’t remember its real name, but the name Butt Darts Bar is way sexier. In the late 1990s I was playing harmonica there with a fair to significantly less than fair band called Code Blue, made up of middle-aged Rock ‘n Roll wannabes. All of us were driven by visions of sexy groupies throwing their undergarments with their telephone numbers written on them on stage. It never happened. The owner of the Butt Darts Bar, an ex-Green Beret, loved the harmonica so he kept inviting us back. I wasn’t that good, but I rammed it down by bandmates throats whenever I needed to. It helped that we came cheap. We did get all the Curs Lite, the house beer, we could drink.
We had alead female vocalist who sang off key, a bass player who often brought to our gigs a long-barreled pistol from his extensive gun collection, that he kept down his pants leg. If it was for protection at the Butt Darts, it would have taken him 15 minutes to get it out. We had lead male vocalist and guitarist, my friend, Mike, whose voice and playing were good but he wasn’t Eric Clapton, a rhythm guitarist who played badly and sang one song, “Mustang Sally,” a drummer who chained smoked on breaks, and who had a gravelly voice that sounded like The Boss, and me, the harp player, just a normal guy, from a good Midwest family. How harmonicas came to be called harps is beyond me because we weren’t pluckers, we were blowers and suckers. I also played the tambourine whenever I could because I’ve always loved percussion instruments. Usually, I was a couple of beats off, but no one said anything because I honestly don’t think they cared.
Butt Darts Bar was a cowboy bar. It had been hot spot for brawlers, but the new ex-Green Beret owner put a stop to that practice. The main draws were the game of butt darts and the whorehouse next door. Butt Darts involved pinching a quarter between your butt cheeks and two-stepping up to a shot glass where you stopped, hovered over the shot glass, and relaxed the cheeks. Bombs away. If the quarter landed in the shot glass the contestant got whatever wagers were under the shot glass. Both cowboys and cowgirls played, but it was beyond interesting when the cowgirls played because their jeans had been shrink-wrapped on. If they had cellulite, which they didn’t, it looked like the Himalayas. It left zero imagination to the mind, a statement which makes no sense because the effect on us lads’ imagination was just the opposite. It was a marvel to watch them, discretely of course, cram that quarter up into their sanctuary and then wiggle down the bar, maybe 25 ft. without losing it. Band members were always asked to join in, but no one was willing to make a fool of themself but me. I so intrigued by the process that I conned one of the young ladies to demo the technique at very close range (the lighting was bad). It worked because I won on my first attempt.
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I was born in 1943 in Paris. Paris, Texas, that is good buddy, Paris, TEXAS. Paris France has a slightly difference ambience. I not sure when I started playing harmonica but probably when I was around six and bed-ridden for two years with rheumatic fever. I was inspired by the record, The Happy Harmonica, about J.B., a young boy in the 1940s who buys his first harmonica at Mr. Humferdinkle’s candy story after being turned on by parade instruments (drums were too big but flutes just right), circus seals tooting “God Bless America,” and train whistles. The Happy Harmonica is told and the harmonica played by John Sebastian, the father of John (Benson) Sebastian, the founder of the band, The Lovin’ Spoonful. Both father and son were and are great harmonica players.
After I got over the rheumatic fever, I was the comic book 98 lb. victim of all kinds of abuse, and I wore thick glasses because the fever had damaged my eyes. To put it succinctly, I was the classic nerd, pretty much until high school when I wrestled for three years. Wrestling transformed me from a guy on the beach getting sand kicked on him and his babe swept away by Charles Atlas devotees, into a serious hunk and babe magnet. As for the harmonica, during my early boyhood as a nerd, I played the crowd pleasers, like Old Susannah and She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain, for my parents’ friends, but probably very little during my teenage years. It would not have been cool to get caught with a harmonica in your pocket.
I do remember in 5th grade when we got a choice to play a musical instrument for two years, I wanted to play the piccolo. When I told my father this, I can remember his response vividly, going something like this:
“You want to play what? he stammered. I remember we were sitting at the dining room table. It was good that both of us were sitting down. “Why would you ever want to play the piccolo?”
“Because it’s small and I can put it in my pocket like the harmonica. Or the flute.” I mumbled, probably looking at my shoes.
“Well, I can tell you this much, no son of mine is going to play the piccolo OR the flute.” I remember him getting a little red and agitated. “Look, I’ve got a good cornet which is smaller than a trumpet but not small enough to put in your pocket. The piccolo would never fit into your pocket anyway. You can play the cornet like I did. That’s a man’s instrument.” Well, I did, and I hated it. My chops always made me look like a red-lipped guppy with thick glasses, a character lifted right out of the Little Mermaid.
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The first time I remember playing for others than family and at Boy Scout campfires was onboard the Jambeli, an WW II LSM landing craft, given to the Ecuadorian navy by the U.S. for trips from Guayaquil to the Galapagos Islands. In the summer of 1966, I was headed to the Galapagos Islands with a research team from Ohio State to study the paleoecology of the islands’ crater lake fossil pollen in the sediments. I was a masters graduate student at OSU at the time. To get on the expedition, I had to lie to the leader, who later became by advisor, Paul Colinvaux, a world-famous paleoecologist. The only way I made the expedition team was because Paul still needed a cook and official photographer. I told him that I was a great cook and even better photographer, both were sheer BS. As a graduate student, I cooked a lot of liver and onions and made coffee. As a photographer, I had my mom’s Brownie. I’d seen my grandfather’s light meter. Paul figured out my cooking skills on our first camping trip away from the Charles Darwin Research Station, and my photographic skills when we got home to Columbus, and he saw my ill-exposed pictures. Needless to say, he was none too happy.
LSMs, like LSTs, were flat-bottomed landing crafts that were made for short trips to dump GIs and tanks on shores, not fighting 10’ white caps for days on end. They bucked the waves instead of neatly slicing through them. So, during choppy conditions, the Jambeli made for gut wrenching sailing. The trip from Guayaquil to the islands was three-day, 600 mile journey. We started out sleeping on tight bunks essentially in the kitchen where the main staple was bananas fried in rancid grease, for every meal. By the end of day one,d we were spending all of time at the railing and looking like green chilis, so we moved our sleeping bags to the deck. It hadn’t helped that our Navy bunks were stacked about a foot apart, so quick exits to get to the bathroom usually involved a lot of bruising and swearing if you made it all. As our guts returned to normal on deck, I entertained the team with renditions of “Sail Your Boat Down the Stream.” As I did, I noticed my mates started getting sick again, so I quit, and they quickly recovered.
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I began to take the harmonica seriously after my 50th birthday party in 1993. At the party was a good friend from work who sang and played the guitar. I became a fan after his rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and we began to jam in earnest. I instantly fell in love with harmonica blues. I consider that 50th birthday party a turning point in my life and it helped get through a true, life-threatening, midlife crisis. Most men turn to sports cars and 22-year-old mistresses, and even though I wanted both, I could afford neither, I turned to the harmonica, the logical substitute for speed and hot sex.
Mike and I jammed a lot during the 90s and I improved immensely, playing mainly blues and R&R. I even took a beginner’s class along with the world-renown harmonica player, John Nemeth, taught by the late great Norton Buffalo. But, as I always tell friends, John and I went in different directions. He REALLY took it seriously and while he was still in high school and super guy, he had his own band, Fat John and the Three Slims. They were a minor sensation in Boise, playing illegally at local bars. Meanwhile, I jammed with Mike, anywhere and everywhere and whenever we could. We played at churches, bar mitzvahs, picnics, and birthday parties, christenings, etc. usually conning them into thinking we were good. And free. Actually, we weren’t bad.
Sometime toward the end of the 90s, several things of significance happened. One, while blissfully wailing away to some cassette, with eyes closed, I was pulled over by a cop. I was never sure how he caught me because he was three cars ahead of me while we were both waiting in the left turn lane for the light. Perplexed, when I rolled my window down, he said,
“Did I or did I not see you playing a harmonica back at that light?”
“Yes,” I said. “That is correct, officer. But, as you know, we were fully stopped waiting for the light to change. The only time I practice in the car is when I am completely stopped. No different than blowing your nose at a stoplight. How did you see me, anyway? You were a football field ahead of me.”
“That’s irrelevant,” he said. “As a cop we need to be aware of anything out of the ordinary and harmonica playing while driving is definitely out of the ordinary. In fact, I thought only kids played the screechy things. This area is my beat and if I catch you playing and driving again, I’m going to ticket you. Whether you are at a dead stop doesn’t make any difference. Besides, do you really think any of those unfortunate enough to be within hearing distance of you are going to be pounding their steering wheel in pedal-stomping glee? I don’t think so.” And with that, he strode away. I had lied about only playing when fully stopped. I practiced all the time while driving on the road. On the interstate, during snowstorms, with the daughters unbuckled in the car, etc. I never got in an accident, but I was passed by both my wife and sister-in-law on Boise streets and didn’t notice them screaming and gesturing at me through closed windows. Their shock always reminded me of my favorite movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles when John Candy and Steve Martin were tooling down the freeway going the wrong direction. A couple yelled at them, going the correct direction, from the other side of divider, “You’re going the wrong way, you’re going to kill somebody.” John and Steve just laughed at them.
The second event happened when I joined the band, Code Blue with Mike, as I mentioned in the introduction. Mikw had auditioned for the lead singer and guitarist with Code Blue and got the job. Once he was secure, he got me into the band. We played together for about two years and had a tremendous amount of fun but never made any money. If we made $25 per member per gig that was good night.
I vividly remember one summer night we played at the local Annual Rocky Mountain Oyster Feed. Oysters are bull’s balls, floured and fried in deep fat. They are actually quite good. For $16 you could eat unlimited balls and quaff enough Curs, to make you hurl, which we saw a lot of, into bushes, on the dance floor, etc. Allegedly, oysters cause your testosterone level to redline, thus increasing your potential for copulating for weeks without a break. I ate as many as I could tolerate but don’t remember any significant results. That wasn’t the case with the main clientele, cowboys, and their cowgirls. This was made very apparent later in the evening that the oysters, plus the Curs, had a positive impact on both the bulls and the cows.
The feed was held outside, the area enclosed with a chain link fence, and we played on an old flatbed truck. It ended abruptly at 10 p.m. and I do mean abruptly. We had to stop mid-song while playing Brown Eyed Girl. The crowd booed because the drunk cowgirls had requested that we play that particular song about a dozen times. “Play that fucker again,” they slurred, banging on the flatbed. “We love to dance to that motherfucker.” It was obvious why they stopped the event at 10. Not one of the dancers in front of us could move without falling over. One cowboy in front of me was grinding away with his cowgirl with her dress hiked up and with his one hand feeling her ass and the other hand her breast. Not quite dancing but not totally disgusting either. As we were breaking down our equipment, I was helping the drummer disassemble his drum kit and the same cowboy pinned his cowgirl up against the truck bed between me and the drummer and started screwing her standing up. I just remember her with her head bouncing off the bed and screaming, either from pain or ecstasy or both. It wasn’t easy to pack up our gear with the truck shaking.
It was made further obvious why they ended at 10 when the cowboy shitkicker pickups rolled out onto the highway. There were several accidents and cop cars blinking red and blue, and chaos and dust filling the hot night air. Trucks were randomly peeling off across the dry fields trying to escape the cops. In the organizer’s belated wisdom, they changed the rules the next year and still allowed as many balls as you could hold but reduced the Curs Lite to ten- sixteen oz. cups. We were not invited back presumably because we had been too judgmental of crowd behavior. I’ll never forget our drummer, in his deep, gravelly voice, say after the gig, “I wouldn’t do that again if they gave me the fucking national mint.”
For a short period of time after Code Blue disbanded, I played with a long-standing local blues group called the Bitterbrush Blues Band (BBB). The harmonica player, a friend of mine, became deaf so he recommended that I replace him, which I gladly did because BBB was a good and popular band. At our last gig before disbanding, we played at the annual fundraiser for the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep Society. We were told we were going to play for at least an hour before and during the dinner. We did neither. We played for about 15 minutes before dinner as people drifted around making bids, after which time we were told our musical services were no longer needed; dinner was being served. This was after two hours of setting up. The auctioneer was our BBB leader so we couldn’t play afterward.
The auction involved two items which sent our wives to the restroom with their coats and then straight home. The first item was a huge homemade Bowie knife that looked more like a sword than a knife. It was being gifted to the youngest person in the crowd. Made sense. It would certainly make cutting your Barbie doll’s hair easier. The Society president brought the house down with his comment that it was too bad there wasn’t a pregnant woman in the house. What? If so, was he planning on performing a C-section? I think some little boy won that one. The second item was a lady’s pink assault rifle, scaled down for the tiny lady’s smaller statue. An AK-something. It could have been a rocket launcher for all I knew. A 12-year-old girl won. While the girl and her proud parents were beaming for the cameras, our last wife threw down her napkin and went to the bathroom, never to be seen again. BBB was never paid for the three songs or the auctioneering. Our leader said as we were packing up, “Well boys, that’s the last time we play for those cocksuckers.”
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Sometime in the 90s while I was working for the State of Idaho, a co-worker asked me to play with their church band during an outdoor summer service. It was in July, the hottest month of the year in Idaho. Kurt, who belonged to a small evangelical church, mentioned that the band was going to practice once before the Sunday gig. We got together mid-week in their chapel for the practice, and they were bad. Very bad. I remember it being a chaotic practice where we never actually completed a song. I do remember that Amazing Grace was one of the songs, of course, and I knew and loved playing harmonica to Amazing Grace. I was nervous because the rest of the mainly hymns, , I didn’t know at all but my friend, the guitarist, kept saying that it would be fine and not to worry about it. Well, I did worry about it. The lead female vocalist was a 15-year-old girl with a weak voice whom I couldn’t hear.
We played at high noon in the open on bleachers. The sound system was horrendous, but my mike was working well, too well. I was drowning out everyone, and I couldn’t turn the volume down. Furthermore, only Kurt, the lead singer and guitarist, and in front of me by a good ten feet which basically meant I couldn’t hear him. Actually, I couldn’t hear any of them, so the songs were unrecognizable to me, even Amazing Grace. They had told me the keys of the songs at practice, but it quickly became apparent that they had changed the keys since practice and had forgotten to tell me. I could hear myself coming through the PA system above everything else, loud, and clear, usually in the wrong key. It was the nightmare to end all nightmares. We all were standing directly in the sun, and it had to be 100 degrees in the shade. Since it was a church and I had worn a sports coat, I was sweating like a pig in heat. I just played and prayed for it to be over.
After each song, the congregation smiled and clapped very politely. No wild screaming or standing ovations or throwing of underwear. When it was over, I was hoping to exit without being seen but that wasn’t going to be the case. My friend immediately rushed up to me and said,
“You sounded awesome. Everybody loved you. They thought you were a great addition to the band.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me, Kurt,” I said. “I sounded like I was playing from Mars. A passing cement truck probably sounded better than me. I could hear myself on the PA and while you guys were playing one song, I was playing another.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Come meet the congregation and my family and have some punch and a cookie.” Members came up and sweetly complimented my playing, and I kept thinking what’s in that punch? Ecstasy? What is this church really into?” As soon as I could make my exit I did and went home and had a few beers and goofy pills. After that, I didn’t feel guilty at all that it was Sunday and I’d just played at a sweet little church.
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From 2007 – 2011, Sandy and I were in the Peace Corps in Queretaro, Mexico, when I played with a Mexican blues band at coffee shop. The owner, who played the harmonica, invited me to play with this band when he found out I played blues. He said he wasn’t good enough. I called the band leader about getting together and practicing before the gig and he said, “Why? This is Mexico. Just wing it and it will go fine.”
I said, “I just thought it would be a good idea since I haven’t met you guys or know what songs you are playing.”
He responded, something like, “What do you need to know? Blues are blues.” But he reluctantly arranged a jam session for 5 p.m. at his house.
I showed up right a five, which again, was not normal in Mexico. At 6:30, after everyone had straggled in except the lead female singer, she came waltzing in and we practiced until 7. Punctually at 7, a whole pack of musicians arrived, and they began their Ska band practice, and I went home. We sounded shockingly good at the gig. Toward the end I was wailing away with my eyes closed and I heard some very strange music coming from the other side of the stage. When I opened my eyes, I saw the coffee shop owner with his harmonica playing like he was possessed, but in the wrong key. It sounded horrible so I stopped and let him finish the song with the band. Everyone clapped, including the band members as if nothing had happened, and he bowed and walked off stage. The band said that I added a lot and promised to invite me back for more gigs. That was the last I ever heard from them.
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Probably nothing I’ve done throughout my life has brought me consistently more joy than the harmonica. I’ve played for 73 years. It got me one of my best friends ever and we’ve been playing together for almost 30 years. It got me through midlife crisis. It got me into two bands and on stage maybe 100 times or more. That little 4” instrument continues to give me pure bliss virtually every time I play it. It taught me patience, it taught me how to work with others to try to produce a work of art, however bad, and showed me that jamming and playing for an audience are two of my greatest pleasures in life. And it has taught me a lot about music even though I had played piano, trumpet, and guitar for brief periods in my life, and a wife who taught piano for years. I can’t thank that little instrument enough. To this day, all I have to do is pick one up whether it’s in the car (at a dead stop, of course) or in my man cave, or with Mike or whoever at an open mic, it brings a smile to my lips. Blues is great therapy for the blues. And in seconds, I’m J.B. in the Happy Harmonica, or playing at the Butt Darts Bar. What’s more, I can put it in my pocket.
