The Boys In The Band

 

The stock market was crashing, the border crackdowns were causing big ripples in businesses and families, and the headlines the news was making were getting louder every day. I was trying to run away from all of that, heading into the desert to play music for some horses and their owners who had called me about doing some campfire music. They’d made a point of saying that they were sort of looking for a western band. I’d made a point of saying it was sort of just going to be me. 

I was over on the other side of the mountain, crawling along slow enough to try to keep the bottom of my wife’s car attached to the top as I circled the cactus in search of the place where they were supposed to be. As black top turned to dirt and dirt turned to two tracks I started thinking that there was a pretty good chance that I was either getting way closer or way farther away from where exactly that was. When I crossed a big arroyo and saw a set of horse corrals off to my left I noticed some youngsters hanging out off the side of the road.

 They were typical teenagers in lots of ways, sort of a motley looking bunch, rangy and unkempt. There were four of them, all carbon copies of each other and looking like they wanted to be independent but at the same time not wanting to be more than a few feet apart from each other. Because it was sort of odd to see that many coyotes in one place I stopped and watched them for a little while. They didn’t seem to care too much that I was there, I guess because they hadn’t lived long enough to learn that machines with wheels like to shoot real bullets. 

We watched each other for a while before I forged ahead, following the smell of mesquite smoke up the draw until I finally found the place where my crowd of riders was gathered. Big camper style horse trailers and rodeo rigs were circled up around a blazing fire, bales of hay, and an open bar. There were only a half dozen people milling about between the smoke and their drinks which made me wonder why they had wanted a full band so badly. A duded up guy in a loudly embroidered black western shirt and starched Wranglers approached me to introduce himself.

“You must be part of the music” was his greeting.

“My name’s Dave. You must be Don?” was my answer.

When he didn’t answer right away I followed his gaze down to my feet.

“Not dressed very western are you?”, he asked.

I looked at my dusty-lace-up-shoes and then over at his shiny-black-snake-skin boots. They were topped with silver toe tips and heel plates. I sort of straightened up my straw hat and looked him in the eye.

“Guess I’m dressed the way I’m dressed.” I had a large smile on my face. 

“We were sort of expecting a band. One time we had Ian Tyson. He brought a band.”

Right about then his cologne began to invade the distance that was growing between us. Since I was apparently failing his inspection I decided to find an upwind bale of hay and just get to work before things got any worse. I kicked off with some Ian Tyson, figuring these folks had at least heard some of his stuff. When I finished the first song Don chimed in.

“Whose song was that anyway?”, he asked, sloshing tequila out of his glass as he looked around, smiling at his cronies.

“That was an Ian Tyson song. I thought maybe you knew his stuff”, I answered.

“Never heard him sing that one.” 

I started thinking that if they were gonna hang this guy for being easy to please they’d be hanging an innocent man.

I kept winding through my show, working hard to connect to these folks who were too country to be city and too city to be country. I searched through old songs, new songs, songs I’d already written and songs that I was just making up. They seemed to like all of them well enough but there was no doubt that they were looking for approval from Don. So far, though, the old silver tip stallion wasn’t showing much acceptance of me or much of what I did.

When the stars began to turn on and the smoke got busy shifting everybody’s chairs around I decided to try a song that I’d written about a horse from the Baja. I told the folks that it was a song that I had purposely built around the structure of a mexican polka. Don, predictably, shot in with his opinion before I even started.

“Now how are you going to play a Mexican polka without an accordion? That’s something you need a full band for!”

By way of an answer I just launched into the song, hitting the “ooompa” rhythm on my guitar and singing them the story. When I got to the last chorus I sang out sort of a grita, that Mexican yell that is part joy and part pain. As soon as the last note ended there was an eruption of matching gritas coming from the area of the horse paddocks where I had stopped to watch the coyotes earlier in the evening. I hollered out another grita and, sure enough, the back up singers all chimed in again. 

“Well, Don”, I said. “You wanted a band. Looks like they finally showed up.”

I launched into a love song, something that I thought the coyotes might like. Silver tip Don sort of eased up for the first time that night, stood up from his chair, and took the hand of the lady who had been sitting next to him. They both began to dance with big smiles and small steps, making little dust clouds pop up from their desert dance floor. When the song was over they all asked for more so I just kept doing what I do while my coyote choir chimed in whenever a song would call for it. 

When we reached the end of the trail Don paid me, thanked me, and said that my music had turned out to be pretty good after all. I thanked him and then stopped by the cook tent on my way out so I could load up a plate for the trail. Driving back out the way I had come I thought about those coyotes and how they’d pretty much saved my bacon. They didn’t care much about the stock market, the news, the border, or silver tips on boots. When they sang they did it for all the right reasons; they didn’t need to be invited to sing for people who weren’t sure what they wanted to hear and they sure as heck didn’t need the money.

I stopped when I got to the corrals where the coyotes had been, looked at the plate I had mounded up with brisket, cole slaw and cornbread, got out of the car, and scraped it all onto the ground in the spot where it would do the most good.

My last song that night ended up being the first rule of the road – always take care of the boys in the band.