Category Archives: Elmer Williams

Elmer Williams, Grateful Dead, Musicology

Gearing up for One More Saturday Night…

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(and a Friday, and a Sunday).  My manager came into my office on Friday, and said, “I guess I know what YOU’RE doing on July 4.”  I didn’t. I hadn’t heard. I had heard that an announcement was coming, but the ripple effect hadn’t quite reached me yet. “What?” Then he told me the Dead had made their announcement.

One last time, three nights at Soldier Field in Chicago. July 3, 4 and 5 of this year. Then that’s it. No more. Final. Nice way to close out fifty years of playing. Not quite as grueling for the band members, who are getting on in years, as a full tour.

Somehow my passion must be infectious, because I got the go ahead at home, and my ticket requests are in the mail! I had Sabina help me with decorating the envelopes, a decades-old Dead tradition. Did you know that there has been a scholarly paper done on Dead fan envelope art?  Fascinating.  You can check it out here: Uses for Fan Envelopes from the Grateful Dead Archive as Digital and Traditional Primary Research Sources.

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10872745_10206063415649648_8116666118185781145_oThere is a certain “Great Pumpkin” feel to it. You hope that the effort put forth in your envelope decoration will be rewarded with the ticket(s) you seek. The reality is, we don’t know if we’ll get tickets for any of the three nights, much less all three. But today’s the first day for mail-order postmarks, and mine are in there with everyone else’s, so I like to think we’ve at least got a fair shot.

I went, with this same manager, to State College, PA in 2008 to see them at the Change Rocks show. Then I went to two of the shows during the 2009 reunion tour — I took Sophie to see them in Charlottesville, and Eve came up to Philly with me to see them just a few months before the Rectum, errr, Spectrum got demolished.

So yeah. Add that to all the times I saw them in the 80s and 90s (RFK, Cap Centre, Three Rivers Stadium, Madison Square Garden, etc), and yeah. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.

Elmer Williams, John Fahey, Musicology, Warner Williams

How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, by John Fahey (Review)

 

http://www.amazon.com/How-Bluegrass-Music-Destroyed-Life/dp/0965618323/grokthis-20/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419991728&sr=8-1&keywords=how+bluegrass+music+destroyed+my+life

this book is pure joy. I finished it today after spending a good number of hours of the past few days down at the dock, with a fishing line in the water and this book in my hand. I simply could not put it down.

The book is 290 pages, and only at page 245 does he begin to describe how bluegrass music destroyed his life. I won’t spoil it, except for saying that it was from hearing Bill Monroe’s version of “Blue Yodel Number 7” for the first time. That much is on Fahey’s Wikipedia page. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I asked for this book. I knew John Fahey from the lore. Knew that he was a phenomenal fingerstyle guitar player. Knew that he was an outsider, but was also responsible for “rediscovering” some of the important blues players during the 60s folk/blues “revival.” Knowing this was not enough to know what to expect from this book.

This book is not a factual memoir in the traditional sense. It’s more of a documentary of the things that happened to John, during his childhood in Takoma Park and later in life. As all of us know this, that not everything that “happens” to us will seem real or believable to others during the retelling. But as much as I can, I understand and “believe” these things that happened. Our musical education does not always revolve around an instrument or its practice. It is also influenced heavily by the things that happen to us, the people thrown into our path by the universe, and the strange reactions that can occur internally and externally. This book is about those sorts of things. Things that happen to people, and how they are processed by each unique individual, based on the other experiences in that person’s life.

Some of the things that happened to him, happened in places that I recognize and can visually conjure, in places that my friends live to this day. This makes it all the more real to me. Even the most fantastic of stories. Real. I recommend this book to anyone with music in their lives and in their hearts, and anyone who has ever lived in Takoma Park, and anyone who has spent any amount of time exploring country blues, bluegrass and old time music. I wish Fahey was still with us.

One of the stories involves him and a buddy getting to know a blues player in Takoma Park, while basically going door-to-door searching for old records to consume.  This blues player probably changed his life, and turned out to be Elmer Williams, brother of Warner Williams, who I used to see at Taliano’s open mic nights in Takoma Park during those years in the early 90s when I lived there, and who is still playing in the area to this day (Warner, at least).

Elmer takes him to Ritchie Avenue (one of the “colored” areas of Takoma Park, at least in the mid-1950s) in the middle of the night, sits on the hood of the car and starts playing the blues.  People start emerging from houses and dancing in the street.  At some point, Fahey’s current obsession makes an appearance, and Elmer gives him the guitar so that he can win her affection through his playing.