Is it time to put the ol' stick briefcase on a shelf for good? I hope not. I've been carrying this briefcase to gigs for a very long time. I guess we'll see. If 2020 is any indication then the outlook is bleak. I'd planned to be playing live music until I was age 85, and then get an oxygen tank and play for another two decades or so, but I don't know if it will happen.
External circumstances are dictating our every move pretty much, and live music really isn't happening for anyone right now. What is the future, if any, for live music? God only knows, but I'll say two things...I'm glad I did the bulk of my playing when I did, and I wish this briefcase could talk.
I've told the story before about how I got this briefcase but it bears telling again, especially since I'm getting nostalgic about it. Senior year in high school my buddy Rusty and I were sitting in a parking lot near where I lived. A sheriff pulled up nearby. He got out of his car to get something out of his briefcase. He set it on his trunk, got out some paperwork and got into his car with the door open.
Sure enough a call came in. He slammed his door and took off. The briefcase fell to the ground. We figured he'd come roaring back to grab it but he never did, and we waited at least half an hour. A couple of ne'erdowells I knew from school were sweeping the parking lot around a burger joint. They were about to find it so I went over and grabbed it. "Screw it...I'm getting it." Rusty couldn't believe I was actually going to grab a cop's briefcase but I told him that I might as well get it as those two clowns and he agreed. Sure I should've done the right thing and turned it in but I didn't, and I believe the statute of limitations has long run out.
We drove back to my house to check it out. Inside were things like paperwork and such, plus a pair of handcuffs, minus the key, bullets, a pad of accident-report stickers that you needed to be able to get your car legally repaired after an accident, and that I could've made a total fortune off off if I'd been a bad guy and happened to have some underworld connections, although it was my first sticker, and a serious black nightstick. Rusty wanted the cuffs and the stick and I kept the briefcase. It was a decent case- vinyl leatherette on the outside, lined on the inside with nice fabric, and dividers held by leather straps. I decided to use it instead of a stick bag to hold my sticks, mallets, gizmos and whatnot. With all the dividers I could also keep sheet music, set lists and other paperwork without having to fold it. That was 45 years ago and I still have it.
I looked at it not so much as copping a cop's briefcase but giving it a chance at a better life. I know if I were a briefcase I'd much rather see the world with a decent band than spend my life with the same cop, and possibly get caught in a crossfire or something and then be unceremoniously tossed in the dumpster when he retired. Plus the two guys sweeping the lot around the burger joint would've found it anyway. With all due respect I doubt those two Einsteins would've had much use for a briefcase, and God only knows what they might have done with a pair of handcuffs and a big black nightstick.
I cleared out the rest of the cop stuff and transferred the contents of my stick bag into it. It was odd at first because things rattled around in it, but once I opened it it took ten seconds to arrange the sticks and stuff, and the set lists and such were right there. I got it right about the time I started playing in clubs. Before that I'd only played in church, high school and a few parties but not yet in any clubs, so it really has been with me since official gig #1. I wonder how many gigs it's seen. I couldn't guess, but it was with me for every one.
I always loved walking in with it. I don't care if it has more stickers than a surfer-dude's van- compared to a stick bag it has a certain panache. We never had or expected any trouble with someone trying to steal our equipment while we were loading in or out, but just in case my cymbal bag and briefcase were the first things to be brought into the building we were playing, and the last things to leave. Although it was never stuffed with cash as I might have hoped, once when we got paid in cash for several nights in a row and the money was given to me, for about ten minutes there was over $5,000 in crisp $100 bills in it.
It was fun to divvy it up and deal it out. For a minute I felt like Scrooge McFuck. BTW it never ceased to amaze me that I actually got paid to do something I'd have done for free. The money was almost an afterthought. Just being able to pay for fuel, food and lodging would've been fine by me but there was a damn good surplus at the end of the day. Between the band and the shifts at the restaurant that I was able to plug into on my two or three off-days a week, I was making a very good living, roughly $90,000 in today's dollars, or in 2019's currency anyway..
Speaking of stickers it's had quite a few. One or two of the original stickers are buried under newer ones but most of the original stickers are gone. Some are really old though. I just replaced the Nixon sticker but I still had a few vintage ones from the 80s. It used to have a stick-on clock but it finally gave out. That was handy. It still has a working compass in case I ever get lost in the woods with my briefcase.
One sticker that is washed-out in the photo is an embossed, holographic "steal your face" Grateful Dead sticker that I got when I flew out to see three shows at Redrocks in '85 or so. That was a wild time and I can still get taken back to that time when I see that sticker. In a gesture of hope I recently added a couple of new stickers. Maybe they'll see the light of day, or maybe not.
Over the years in addition to sticks and mallets and stuff it's carried a variety of things, depending on the situation and whether I was playing in or out of town. In that regard it was much better than a traditional stick bag because it gave me extra room. It's almost always had a water bottle, and various vitamins and herbal-energy formulas, plus a few moist towelettes.
I usually had several magazines, and I liked getting local newspapers from the towns we played in, to see what was up with with where we were. Sometimes I'd pack a map of where we were going to be, and trace the route, but of course no matter where we went, there we were. For a time it held either a small bottle of nice wine, in case I might run into a late date and want to have dinner or something, or a pint of good whisky, just for snakebites.
Sometimes I'd have a Playboy pinup or two that I'd hang up in our motel rooms, just to remind us of why we started playing music in the first place. Just kidding...we got into music for the love of it, and all of that stuff was just a bonus. An amazing, amazing bonus. In fact I always say that if I had it to do again I'd do it just for the women (or the adventures, travelling, meeting new people, the fireworks, the weed, the souvenir t-shirts, the money and other rewards, etc. too for that matter), and I think most guys in bands would have to say the same thing.
It was often packed with fireworks, especially if I knew the gig was right for it. We shot a lot of fireworks in the bands I was in. In the Bud Greene band we usually had a dedicated fireworks bag in the van but I usually carried a few small things in my briefcase. You never know when you might need some cheap effects. In the Generic Band one thing that gave us great delight was to shoot fireworks inside a club rather than in the parking lot or wherever. We'd rig them up with delayed fuses, using a cigarette.
There were a couple of bars that were large enough to shoot fireworks inside. On our break we'd set up some fireworks on an empty table, light a cigarette, break off 2' or so and stick the fuses into the unlit end. That gave anywhere from three to ten minutes of delay, depending on how long the cigarette was. We'd set it up, casually order a beer and talk to a couple of people and then hit the stage.
The fireworks would go off after we'd started our set, so even though the club owners knew full well it was us, they couldn't really do anything. The fireworks would go off while we were playing a Zappa tune or whatever and we'd be doing our best not to crack up. It never got old. For a very brief time it held some serious fireworks...an M-1 tank round simulator. It was a plastic cartridge almost the size of a Coke can. It was meant to simulate the flash, concussion, sound and everything else about an M-1 tank round, except for metallic shrapnel.
It had two wires instead of a fuse. Normally it was hooked up to an electric ignitor but all it needed was for both wires to touch an energy source, like a battery. A guy got it from an army buddy, who got in trouble for setting one off out in the sticks. It blew out windows in the guy's house from fifty yards away. The police didn't come...the National Guard did. They knew from the sound what it was. He said they knocked on his door a few minutes after he set it off. All they said was "Don't set off any more of those," and left. I love that story.
He was damn lucky. This was pre-911. He wisely decided not to shoot another one He gave one to my friend and he gave it to me. I had no intention of using it but I kept it for some reason. I made sure there were no batteries rolling around in my briefcase. It would've blown it to smithereens, and probably messed me up too if I'd been near it. It didn't stay in the briefcase very long, but it still held some serious firepower. Back then you could still get real M-80s occasionally, and I kept some in there for emergencies, such as if we ever wanted to blow the shit out of something or cause a distraction so we could leave town or whatever. I'm kidding...we just loved to shoot them. They were loud as fuck.
A few times on special occasions I'd load my bass drum up with a bunch of fireworks, tie the fuses together with one long fuse and run the end out of the vent hole in the top of the bass drum. I'd go into a solo and light the fuse. It was nuts. I had a clear front head so it was visible to the audience. I mostly used these things called Jumping Jacks. They looked just like firecrackers, except they didn't explode, and they had a pinhole in the side. All the gas jetted out from the hole which made them spin around and sometimes fly all over the place.
They changed from red to green and made a cool whistling/buzzing sound. You never knew where they were going to go and that was funny, but inside the bass drum they flew and danced around like a swarm of angry, flaming bees. The effect was massive. For a time I had a hole cut into my front bass-drum head, like almost all drummers do. I'd toss in a smoke bomb or two and the drum would fill with tons of smoke. For the next few songs, whenever I'd hit the bass drum it would send out a perfect smoke ring. That was fun. Music and fireworks are two of my favorite things, and combining them was a real treat.
During my single times I kept a t-shirt, toothbrush and change of underwear, in case I might spend the night out after a gig. The dividers kept the shirt nice and wrinkle-free. I usually kept energy bars, jerky, trail mix, bananas and things like that, especially if we were on the road. When it's 3:30am and you've just finished a gig and packed up all the gear and you're hungry as hell because you haven't eaten in ten hours and you've just burned several-thousand calories, having a few snacks held off starvation until we could find a gas station or a Waffle House. It could hold a lot of stuff...enough to share.
In one divider I kept all my used drum sticks. I learned early on not to throw away sticks. People asked for drum sticks all the time, and I couldn't afford to give them a new one, although at first I did that a couple of times. I kept a Sharpie for note-taking or if someone wanted a stick signed, or for phone numbers. I had a notepad or two and a Crown bag with small screwdrivers, tools, drum keys and extra cymbal felts and such. Sometimes I carried a disposable camera and took photos. Sadly those are long-gone.
During the Bud Greene years, almost every night I'd go through a t-shirt per set. It didn't matter if it was Summer or Winter- with 250 or so bodies in the room dancing around and grooving, it gets like a sauna. I'd go through about three liters of water, and after every set I'd take off my t-shirt and wring out pools of sweat onto the floor. It was unreal how much I sweated but I loved it because I was sweating out toxins by the bucketful. I used to walk over to Doug, take my shirt off and squeeze it onto the ground and it always blew his mind. We were into playing music and we gave it all we had. I kept three extra shirts for every gig, ready to go, in my briefcase.
During the time I was working at the crazy restaurant we played at one of my friend Jon's annual Halloween parties. They were truly legendary. Here I am with my buddies Marko, Robert and my date Julie. As usual things got nuts, and I was distracted by the lovely lady I was with, so I ended up leaving without my briefcase. The next morning Jon called to tell me.
He and the people who'd spent the night there had found it. They were all still drunk as loons and they were going through my briefcase and examining every single thing in it and doing a running commentary as they took each thing out. I wasn't there to see it but it was still hilarious over the phone. Jon would pick up each item and announce what it was and they'd all crack up. They got a tremendous kick out of it believe it or not, and it was worth leaving it. My briefcase had fun that night too.
My briefcase and I played at so many great parties but this one was a standout. It was one of the ultra-legendary Christmas parties for the crazy restaurant. That was the first year we had to move the party from the restaurant. They'd gotten so out of control that we already had to take the next day off and close the restaurant to clean up from the party, and the cleanups would usually get out of control too, to the point that we almost had to stay closed a second day to clean up from the cleanup.
We finally got smart and said "Screw it...let's let somebody else do the cleaning up." It was a treat knowing we wouldn't have to worry about getting up the next day to go in and clean up the restaurant. In years past that's what we did. Having to go in after a legendary party, hungover as fuck, and having to clean up a place that's been totally demolished was a true drag.
The year before that, the "cleanup" was a tragedy. We all stumbled in around noon, and some of us hadn't gotten much sleep. The restaurant was in shambles. Everybody had to have a little hair of the dog just to be able to face the task. Three hours later we were all piss-drunk all over again, and the mess got even worse. One of the managers named Kimberly and I were going at it in a playful way. She was standing behind the bar holding a hose that she was about to hose down the floor behind the bar with.
She pointed the hose at me and pretended to turn it on. I reached behind the bar and grabbed the soda gun and pointed it at her. It was a Maubian standoff. We stared each other in the eye for a moment, as things got quiet and whistling music was heard in the distance. Who was going to shoot first? Now Kimberly is very well-endowed. She stuck out her chest toward me and said "Squirt me, motherfucker!" and so I did. She had the advantage in force; there was a lot of water coming out of the hose, and I had to jam my fingers into the spout to get any force at all, but I had the advantage of having chilled water, which had a noticeable effect on her chest.
I started out trying to be nice and only squirt water or club soda at her and not shoot sticky Coke and stuff all over the place, but I was blinded by the water and I just started pushing random buttons, and Coke, 7-Up, soda water and whatever else was in the gun went all over Kimberly, and everywhere else. It went on for quite some time and when we finally quit there was a good 2" of liquid covering the floor of the dining room. The only drain was behind the bar, and the floor wasn't sloped toward it. The builders didn't plan on an afterparty flood I don't reckon.
We had to locate some squeegees and basically had to bail the restaurant out. We were trying to push the river out the front door, slipping and sliding and busting our asses. It was lunacy. Naturally we kept on drinking, and by around 11pm we were totally shitfaced, and the place was still nowhere near clean. We thought about taking another day off but Kimberly put her foot down. She locked the doors and said we couldn't leave until the place was spotless, which was pretty much about the time we opened for lunch the next day. We decided enough was enough, and that next year we'd have the party somewhere else.
We picked a place called Top of 21. It was the top floor of a big building and it was surrounded on all sides by glass. This party sticks out for several reasons. I was playing music with my best friends for a place where I also worked with my best friends. The band kicked ass that night. I had a date with a beautiful sweet redhead. I'd just gotten a My Buddy doll, which you can see in front of the bass drum. It was also the first time I tried X.
Back then the My Buddy doll had just come out and they played the My Buddy commercial 100 times a day. Andy and I used to sing it all the time, and since we actually were buddies, when he drew my name for the Christmas gift he got me a My Buddy doll, and I lost it. I was thrilled. Only he would do something like that and I really appreciated it, plus it was hilarious. I already loved everybody but once the X kicked in I really loved everybody. And everything. I loved my drums, I loved my sticks, I loved my My Buddy doll and I loved my briefcase.
I remember looking down at it as I did many nights, left-hand drumstick at the ready, there by my side as it had always been. No matter where I was in the country playing, it was always there by me. It was a constant. It was grounding. It even helped with bouts of homesickness, when we'd been on the road for a week or more. I could always find something interesting inside it to occupy myself, and for what it represented to me it made me feel good just looking at it. It still does. When I looked down at it that night, doing X for the first time, it gave me a warm fuzzy. I was soooooooo glad it had been with me all those years. My briefcase and I had a blast at that party. Our bond was stronger than ever.
I have to mention something that happened several hours before the party, as we were setting up in the afternoon. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I knew the party was going to be a blast but I took it as a sign that it was going to be extra-good, and it was. Moving the party from the restaurant was genius. It was on top of a 21-story building and by far the tallest building in the area. The view was incredible. You could see for hundreds of miles in several directions. It was exciting just setting up our gear there.
We were watching a beautiful sunset when I noticed what looked like a wisp of smoke way out over the horizon. I'd never seen anything like it. It was still 100 miles or more away and I couldn't make out what it was. As I watched it got bigger and closer. I started to see definition and I realized that it was a massive flock of birds. I'd seen large flocks of birds flying over but not like that. I'd say there was easily a million birds, maybe two. It lasted several minutes. Seeing them from far away was amazing enough but I was thinking how cool it would be if they flew around the building and past the windows, and that's exactly what they did.
They took dead-aim for the top of the building. When the lead birds got close it looked like they were going to crash into the glass but at the last second they did a synchronous move and the huge flock parted like the Red Sea. There are no special-effects that could touch that. They all flew at window-level. It was a black river of birds, and we were dead-center in the middle of it. You just can't get that anywhere else, and I still think about it with awe and reverence. It was humbling, and crazy-cool. You could look right into their eyes and they were looking right back at you. It was a trip. It was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.
I also have to mention that when I first started feeling the effects of the X it was very disorienting. We were in the middle of the set when it kicked in, and it hit me so hard I thought I might pass out or even have a seizure or something. From what I'd heard I didn't expect any of that, but luckily it only lasted a minute or two. I was feeling like I might get sick. I was in the middle of a song and I was concerned about possibly passing out at the Christmas party, although that would have definitely added to the mystique to have someone actually have to be carried off from one of the parties.
I was trying to stay calm and not hurl and keep playing but I was sort of holding my head down. I remember looking at my briefcase, and it gave me a bit of comfort. I knew I was with my best friends and that if I did pass out or whatever I'd be okay. That was before the photo was taken. I was totally fine by then. I was flying, as you can probably tell from the grin on my face. BTW that's Rusty in the photo, playing congas. Rusty was with me when I got the briefcase. He came up to visit every Christmas and we'd usually have something going on music-wise. He always got a kick out of seeing the briefcase, and as far as I know he still has the nightstick and handcuffs.
I'll never forget the moment that all the weird feelings went away and I realized I was going to be okay, and all the lovey-dovey things I'd heard about X kicked-in. It took the love and happiness I was already feeling and ramped it up exponentially. It was like crashing into a dimension of love, and I got a smile on my face that stayed there for the next 6-7 hours at least. At the instant it kicked-in I looked out over the nighttime cityscape, and my eyes landed on the red, lit-up emblem of the Hilton across the street. I cracked-up in the middle of the song.
I was relieved that I wasn't going to pass out or flop around on the floor, but mostly it was because while it was supposed to be an "H" it looked for all the world like an "X" to me, and I died laughing. I pointed it out to everybody and we all made the X-sign with crossed arms. Good times. I appreciated my briefcase more than ever that night. I did consider the fact that I might possibly pass out and fall face-down in the middle of it, and it might be the last thing I saw for a while, but as always it was there for me. I really appreciated it. Thanks officer, wherever you are,
This is a happy face. No emoji needed. This was taken about an hour into X-ing, and right after I'd opened my present. It truly flipped me out to get a fucking My Buddy doll, but that's Andy. I was tripping on My Buddy, and BTW I remember that they sold out everywhere and were rare as hen's teeth but he'd gotten one, which was a trip in itself.
I'm pretty sure he paid above the sticker price, but that's just an example of someone being incredibly thoughtful, with a damn good sense of humor. I loved it. Of course someone had to snap a photo with me and My Buddy, and I'm glad they did. As far as my personal feelings about the party in general went, this photo about sums it up. That was an amazing party, X or nor, but the fact that about half the people there were doing it too made it that much better. The Love Bug bit pretty much everybody at the party. I'm glad I was there.
Anyway, back to the briefcase. Of all the things I've kept in that case over the decades there's one thing I never carried. I never carried anything related to drugs or paraphernalia. I didn't do drugs anyway but I did smoke a truckload or two of weed. Actually I did carry around High Times magazine (we were actually mentioned in one paragraph in an issue) because it was good reading material, but besides that never even a pack of rolling papers.
Amazingly, considering the Bud Greene band was named after our favorite herb ("Which one's Bud?"), we only had one major incident with the law that resulted in an arrest. I wasn't about to have my briefcase confiscated because of a pinch of weed dust in the corner or whatever. It would've returned to the cops, ashes to ashes, and I doubt the briefcase would've have wanted that. By then we'd long-since formed a bond and it wanted to stay with me.
This is the last gig I've played to date. Will it end up being my very last? It's possible. Too possible in fact. This was a year ago, at one of our favorite watering holes. It was also an official/unofficial reunion for people who worked at the crazy restaurant, and at least two dozen former employees showed up, plus it was really packed to begin with. The love in that room was incredible and I truly wish I could've bottled it. Thank God we could still hug back then.
I was having major equipment issues including stolen gear, so I wasn't really able to relax and let it flow and have as much fun as I usually do, although I did enjoy playing. It was a personal thing and it didn't affect the music in a big way really, and we still sounded good. My briefcase was there, squeezed in by my hi-hat stand. I always kept a stick propped butt-end up in the dividers, ready to go in the rare instance I dropped my left stick. I could depend on it.
If this is really my last gig, I'll know for sure that things have broken down to the point where it's no longer possible. God that's a horrific thought but if it does happen, wanting to play music out somewhere won't change a thing, and maybe it'll be time to think about the possibility about what comes after this, an afterlife or an eternity if you will, if it indeed exists. You know what they say..."If there's a Rock and Roll heaven, you know they've got a hell of a band." Seriously, if it gets to that point I can guarantee it's going to be a world that's not much damn fun to live in, I hate to say. It's true though. I think about all the bands these days, from kids in a van to pros, and the fact that they can't do what my briefcase and I did. It's incredibly sad and I feel for them but that's another story.
Aside from a handful of church gigs or parties, this briefcase has been with me at every single gig I ever played. Maybe there's some people who kept their original stick bag for their entire careers but it can't be many. This briefcase got to see the East Coast from Florida to Virginia, plus Mississippi. Like me, my briefcase's favorite town to visit and play in was Oxford, Mississippi. Not every briefcase can say that. Some things were just meant to be, and this is one of them. I was meant to be in that parking lot and that cop was meant to get a call and speed off and lose the briefcase, and it was meant to be my "stick bag." Or it was just a coincidence. Either way I've really enjoyed having it.
If my stick briefcase and I never play a gig again, then so be it I suppose. It ain't worth playing right now, in a world where literally you can get fined for standing too close to the bass player, that is if you can play anywhere at all. Hopefully down the road live music can make some sort of comeback, but sadly I can't see us returning to anything near what the music scene was. I hope I'm wrong. It gives me some hope when I look at my briefcase, and the general feeling of all the good and crazy times my stick briefcase and I had, so it's a mood-elevator.
Like some people, you can get attached to certain inanimate objects you've spent lots of time with. I think maybe there's residual energy in things sometimes, but maybe that's woo-woo talk. Ha-ha I'm sitting outside and an owl just flew up and hooted right as I typed woo-woo. Anyway in these messed-up times, or any times really, things like this can be an anchor of normality in a sea of bullshit. There's serious energy in music to say the least, and maybe it can be stored like in a battery.
There's definitely some sort of vibe coming from this briefcase, and I believe there's something to it. When we played Club XIII in Sheffield, Alabama, Pat Hood, now of Drive-by Truckers, used to sit-in with Bud Greene. One day he invited us to a private tour of the legendary Mussel Shoals Studios. Legendary owner, bassist, engineer/producer and Pat's dad, David Hood, was there as usual. There was a brick wall coated in sealant that was where many of the vocal tracks to some of the most famous recordings in history were done.
The brick wall gave a bit of natural reverb and a millisecond or two of delay. It was perfect for tracking vocals. Artists from Paul Simon to Aretha Franklin to the Stones to most or all of the Beatles, if I'm not mistaken, to you-name-it tracked vocals in front of that wall. I was about to walk past it and in into the main room but I stopped dead in my tracks. It was like a jolt of electricity jumped out of that wall. Either I had a small seizure at that exact moment, or I truly felt some sort of energy radiating from that wall. The latter theory was confirmed when Pat walked over and saw me staring at the wall like a fool. I was literally someplace else for a few seconds.
"You feel it, don't you?" he said. "Yes" I replied. That was truly heavy. I told him I could feel energy coming from the wall and it hit me like a ton of bricks, and he said "Oh yeah, it's real. Some people can feel it more than others. You're a 'vibe' guy, right?" "Pretty much" I said. For the record, on the smallest level everything in the Universe is a frequency, which is also a vibration. If you ask me there was some sort of energy coming from that wall. Who knows...we don't know everything.
Bricks have quartz in them. Quartz can store electrical energy. It may be a stretch to say it can hold "musical energy" but anything is possible. Artists of every genre come to Mussel Shoals specifically to get a "vibe," and they'll tell you that. Who has the audacity to say it isn't real? If my briefcase does have residual energy it's certainly positive, or in the high-vibrational spectrum, and that's a good thing.
If my briefcase has seen its last stage floor, then I salute it. It served me well. If the reunion party was my last gig ever, then I went out on a hell of a high note. As far as the music itself goes it may not have been stellar for me but on a general level of good or bad gigs, and certainly audience quality, I couldn't have asked for more. All the stuffing was hugged out of everybody there. It was beautiful. If that's all she wrote I'll go out on that note. Maybe we'll play again, but if not, thanks faithful briefcase. It was fun. If we had a dollar for every mile we travelled together we'd be rich beyond our dreams. Rock on.
