Will Dudley: News

Wild roses are growing by my fence in the front yard. They are low to the ground and quite beautiful. Here are some lyrics:

There's some horrible rumors floating round Nashville
I'm happy to be out in Denver
My money's on Payton, I'm hiking in the Rockies
And I might just stay out here forever
Whatever I've done, I sure hope it was fun
I'm sure I'll pay a price in the end
There's some horrible rumors floating round Nashville
And I'm out in Denver, old friend.

There's some horrible rumors floating around Denver
But I'm down in Phoenix right now
Living the life with an ex partner's ex wife
Getting by on his money somehow
Wish you only the best, every success,
I'm enjoying the warm desert air
Mixing tequila with the wild prickly pear
Trying real hard to care.
There's horrible rumors in Denver
I'm trying real hard to care

There's horrible rumors a floating around Nashville
So what else in life would be new?
Go to Phoenix or Denver, Seattle or Charleston
You might just dig up a few more
And if you look real hard in your own back yard
You might just find a brand new one
There's horrible rumors, just horrible rumors
What is a body to do?

There are horrible rumors floating around Phoenix,
And I'm in Seattle, of course.
Sipping my Starbucks on a ferry boat to Canada
with a woman who is taking me north
It is possible we might cross paths in the future,
I own a good compass and I can chart a course
There are horrible rumors floating around Phoenix,
I'm on a boat going north, old horse,
I'm on a boat going north.

I played last night, and will tonight again at Yucca Flats, an outdoor venue suited to a cowboy singer who works without amplification around a campfire. The sixty people who were there last night rode in on a hay wagon pulled by a tractor and we went from six thirty to ten thirty pretty much non stop. Last month it Arizona and California, this month it's Arizona, next month is back to Colorado. I'll be doing some recording in Nashville and hopefully Colorado this summer, and want my good friends and all my so called friends to know that whatever the rumors are, the truth is that life is good and I'm booked solid through September.

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It is a beautiful desert home on a hill with a commanding view. There is an eternity pool, waterfalls and a view of the Bradshaw Mountains. A yellow Labrador Retriever wanders around the rock formation waterfall and laps the water that rolls over the stones. There are good friends saying hello, and I am proud to provide the music.

I love eternity pools.

Sunday Morning in Wickenburg is a little less busy on my busy street. The trucks don't show up early in the morning to enhance the inventories of the Subway and McDonald's and Shell Stations. On this Sunday morning I don't see a bunch of restored Chevy's and Ford's and Chrysler's cruising around being driven by septuagenarians taking their honey's out a morning drive, but it's still early, and the weather's worth talking about when it's 75 degrees at nine fifteen a.m. in late November. I expect to see bikers rolling around and through town by ten a.m. They dress in assorted leather outfits and the road to Kingman and the roads to Yuma and California all come through here. Big Harleys and whispering Hondas roll through on these warm days of autumn.

Tonight I'll be thrilled to be singing for some girls field hockey all stars. A huge part of the beauty of singing for my supper is never knowing who's going to be there. I keep hoping to sing for Natalie Portman on a weekend getaway, but it hasn't happened yet. Still, it might be a Tennessee politician or a California businessman on a weekend getaway with his wife. It might be my next best friend, who's to say?

Last night I was happy to holler for some folks from England. We cooked out, they ate chicken and potatoes and ranch beans, they drank wine while I sang, and the more they drank the better I got. Kids ran around in circles with the kid's counselor Elizabeth. They save a plate for me if I ask, and it's always a treat to eat the reheated beans at midnight and save some chicken or steak for the Sunday lunch. It's a nice day in Wickenburg, Arizona. Warm and dry. Tomorrow's Helen's birthday, and the last day of the Scorpio astrological sign. Happy Birthday, Helen, wherever you are, and adios Scorpio, see ya next year.

Talking Arizona: It is warm compared to Maine and dry compared to Minnesota. It’s a damn desert out here, might proclaim the Kansan or the South Carolinian. “What the hell is that Jap looking flag?” I heard an old man say who obviously had just gotten off the turnip truck. I said it was the sunrise over the Valley of the Sun right here in Arizona. Being optimistic, I smiled at him. He was looking at my holster and 9mm. I left it buttoned down and walked away shaking my head. I didn’t want him to freak out, yell gun and run away. I’m sure he was adjusting to his culture shock over the state flag. Besides, he was shitting his pants, I could smell it.
A train whistle blows at 9 a.m., and a big milk truck pulls into the McDonalds that sits just down from the Dunkin Donuts on highway 60. Further west is the Mojave and into Blythe, (where the hell is Blythe?) California. The Joshua Tree resides in these deserts. If you follow the bypass to Las Vegas, you’ll miss the Gold Miners and the Gila Monster sculptured along the pedestrian walks and the living tortoise which resides nearby, waiting for the sculptured monster to move.
The milk truck leaves and an octogenarian on a moped, wearing a highway worker’s heat and light reflective vest and a bicycle helmet rides in and almost runs over the surprised sixteen year old skateboarder.
For the next few hours, desert 4 wheelers go by, Budget rent a trucks and Fed Ex trucks come and go along with motorcycles and assorted bicycles and pedestrians, police officers and little old ladies walking little bitty dogs out into the rock garden and around the covered wagon. Beware the cactus.

So it happens than noon rolls around and the afternoon highway patrol coffee clatch occurs between the subway and the dunkin donuts. There are punctuations of afternoon sirens and the occasional old man lost at the grocery store moments that tend to occur in McDonald's parking lots in towns with large populations of retired folk, but the sun shone down on my Arizona home, and as it slowly sinks into the west, leaving me at the mercy of the light of my laptop and a candle, I am reminded that every day above ground is a good day. Bodda bing, bodda boom, ba da ba.

Working on California gigs... don't know much about the state, except that my aunt was once a Professor at San Diego State and my Uncle Harry was a war hero and an Admiral over in San Diego. Uncle Harry was Harold Stout, they named a ship after him and Aunt Zoe used to say he looked just like Clark Gable. I loved that woman. She taught nutrition and used to make her own fruit cakes. They weighed pounds.

I'm in Arizona for the winter, and trying like hell to not stop working. Tehachopi, California looks like a go, and I've already played in Tucumcari and Tonopah...

I'll be in Tucson pretty soon, too, I expect. Karma will tell...

I'm finishing up a book and if I'm the only one excited about it, then my name's not John Kennedy Toole. Just kidding.

It's an obscure joke, but a bad one just the same.

I went to the grocery store and picked up one of those little plastic hand baskets; I hadn't put anything in it yet, and like a dumbass, I let it rest in my palm, and swung it hard. It was just a goofy reaction, like biting my tongue... a dumb thing that happens without thinking. Muscle brains at work, and the damn basket hit my elbow right on the funny bone. There was a bank in the store, and the teller saw me do this, and laughed right out loud. I had to admit, it was funny, but it hurt. That's humor, I guess, bound to hurt someone.

I'm looking forward to California.

Bad news tends to find its own way to people, but I have to speak a little about a friend of mine for thirty five years. We wrote songs together, their titles were 'Champagne', 'The Reverend Lincoln Moses,' 'The Judgment Day Blues' and '100 Miles from Memphis On the Left Hand Side of the Road' and 'Queen of Spades' among others.

His name was Taz DiGregorio, and he was killed in a car accident on his way to the tour bus. He was Charlie Daniels piano player, and had worked with him for over forty years. I knew more about Taz than I did about my own brother, and he meant as much to me as my closest family.

His real name was the same as mine, William. Nobody ever called him that, though. Some of his family called him Joel, cause that was his middle name, but I never knew him as Joel. I just knew he and I carried the same spirit inside and lived for the sake of the muse that drove him and still drives me.

Musicians don't live straight lives, we live on the road. We carry around little guitars or big drums or giant pianos and bang on them, hoping the world will hear whatever message we are compelled to bring. Don't ever ask a musician why they do it, because most of us don't even know. We're gypsies, usually strung out and tired, coming or going and sick of eating truck stop chile.

I ain't nobody, but Taz was at least as ornery as me, and fully capable just about capable of any damn thing, good or bad. He rolled a few cars, and got in and out of trouble better than anyone I knew, landing on his feet when people around him fell on their asses. A lot of people loved him, a lot of people didn't, and that's the way it was. He never compromised when he struck the ivories, and I have seen him play piano for eight hours straight. I was the idiot banging on the guitar, and the results were some of the songs we wrote together. I don't know Charlie Daniels all that well, but my heart grieves for him and Charlie Haywood, who worked with him longer than I knew him. I don't even have words to express my proper condolences to his wife and family, but I can't cry about losing this friend. I was so blessed to know him that I ain't sorry at all. He died on the road, living the life he chose, and going to the next gig. We should all be so lucky.

For the next few months I'll be working primarily in Arizona. Ya-hoo

When people hear this song, they stand up and sing. It's easy to see why, it's only got three words you have to repeat, and it's fun to say

RIDE THE TRAIN

If you want to ride in style, ride the train.
See every passing mile, ride the train.
Have a drink and relax as you roll on down the tracks
If you want to ride in style, ride the train

2. If you want to see the country, ride the train
California clear to Maine on a train
If you want to see a canyon
Take a ride out to a grand one
on a train, ride the train ride the train

Break: Take the kids and the wife for the trip of their life
Ride the train, ride the train, ride the train

You don’t have to drive the car on a train
Have dinner with the stars on a train
Let the wheels go round and round
While your body slows down
On a train, Ride the Train Ride the Train

3. Go see Colorado by rail, or look out on the Appalachian Trail
Fred C. Dobbs saw Mexico, don’t that make you want to go
Ride the train ride the train ride the train

4. If you want to see the mountains, ride the train
Ride out through the forest or the plains


Break: People are born on the train….
People die on a train…
And when the wheels hit their stride,
There’s no better way to ride
Than to ride all the way on a train
Ride the train, ride the train, ride the train.

When the leaves change, and the aspen turn from green to gold and brown and the scrub oak turns a deep red and the nights grow a little colder, Colorado is where people want to be.

The colors in the mountains are beyond spectacular; the view from the mountaintops down onto the prairie or over onto the western slope is not even taken for granted by those who live here and see it every day.

I am making plans to record this winter, and I think tomorrow is my old friend Buddy Harmon's birthday. His dad drummed for Elvis and taught his son well. Happy B'day, Buddy, maybe I'll see ya down the road in the next year or two. Hope so.

It has been a very good summer...

The La Veta Hotel will book me on Thursdays through September, and the Dude Ranch season has closed gracefully on a somewhat flat year for the ranches, although there are bright spots across the board, for there were no serious setbacks or injuries on any of the ranches where I sing, and the haying is in and the fields are looking good up in Gunnison.

September at the Dude Ranches and Guest Ranches in Colorado is the best time to see the fall colors as they begin to change. I encourage all to visit, and of course there's no better time than now. The colors up in the Gunnison Valley and the fishing at the North Fork and the Rainbow Trout and over at the Tarryall is an adventure just waiting for some kid from Baltimore and his dad and mom.

July 24, 2011|By Jay Jones | Special to the Los Angeles Times On a sultry summer's eve, the tables in the courtyard of the Alys restaurant at La Veta Inn are crowded with folks lingering after they've finished their meals, enjoying the music of local singer-songwriter Will Dudley. Hold on to your hat when you cross La Veta Pass The wind blows strong in Colorado The cowboy crooner isn't forecasting the weather, but he might as well be, because some in the audience will ride the rails in the morning up to La Veta Pass in search of more live music. For five summers now, the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad — a tourist train operating between La Veta (pronounced lah-VEE-tah) and Alamosa in south-central Colorado — has been offering passengers a terrific deal: You buy a ticket for the scenic trip through the Rockies (starting at $30), and they'll throw in a two-hour concert. The concerts — accessible only by rail and staged on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through September — feature mostly country, bluegrass and cowboy artists. Past performers have included Larry Gatlin, Nanci Griffith and Ricky Skaggs. This year's lineup includes Michael Martin Murphey, the Rifters and Weavermania. Although not superstars, they're talented musicians nonetheless. The concerts are staged in a natural amphitheater, a wildflower-strewn mountain meadow with the towering peaks of the Sangre de Cristo as a backdrop. As Dudley predicted, it's windy atop La Veta Pass. Some baseball caps go flying as passengers step off two trains at what was once a railroad settlement named Fir. An old steam locomotive has made its way up the mountain from Alamosa to the west, while a diesel engine has pulled coaches from La Veta to the east. First-class passengers have paid for the pleasure of riding to the concert in style, in luxurious rail cars once operated by the Illinois Central Railroad. They're reminiscent of another tune in Dudley's repertoire. Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car. Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score. "City of New Orleans" is not only the song's name but also the name of the train on which these cars once saw service. Seated in comfy lounge chairs, guests are served free drinks by railroad personnel who also provide decks of playing cards and rolls of pennies. Card games, however, distract passengers from the passing scenery as the trains chug toward La Veta Pass. From the town of La Veta, the steel rails pass through two tunnels as they climb more than 2,200 feet. The 40-mile journey takes a little more than an hour. "Bear on the left!" a voice squawks through a walkie-talkie as visitors press their noses to the windows. The Rio Grande Scenic Railroad also hauls freight, andbears frequent the spot where 2,000 tons of barley were disgorged during a derailment a few years ago. "Every summer, they come back. Sometimes we see as many as 10 bears in this one spot," explained Ryan Weeks, the passenger services manager. "They know the food's there so they come back every year." After arriving at Fir in late morning, guests can chow down on the contents of a boxed lunch ($10) or a catered hot meal ($12) featuring barbeque beef and pork, plus baked beans and potato salad. Although no buildings remain from the original settlement, the railroad has constructed the chowhouse, the stage and modern restrooms. All the electricity is generated on-site, using solar panels and a windmill to harness that seemingly ever-present wind about which Dudley sings. Keep your boots on at night Keep your coats buttoned tight You never know just when it's gonna' snow They build snowmen in July in Colorado.

We're going to start with Lincoln Moses. We're recording a horn section. I'm in Burns Station Studio with Taz DiGregorio and Kurt Storey. We've been listening to a Billy Prine record and are getting ready to record these boys. Tom Jones' former sax player and a third generation Sicilian New Orleans trumpet player named Corey DiStefano and trombone player named Duck are all out in the studio jamming right now to a song called "The Reverend Lincoln Moses." It is all R & B. Taz and I wrote these lyrics about a man whose "mission is redemption, and they sing about it all night long."

The trip to Tennessee has yielded two new songs. We're not as productive this year as last, but the songs once again are different from anything I've ever done. We wrote a rock and roll song called "Champagne," and then a very blues song that we're calling "Where's Mine?"

Past the fields I hear them singing
Christian lullabies
Over the fields go ravens winging
I wish I could fly

But the night brings shade, the summer’s warm
And the night bird makes it’s sounds
While the ivy creeps and the old hound sleeps
Above me on this ground

Summer sun and frozen winter
Wrap the past away
Grandfather’s pistols in the attic
With the dust of yesterday.
And the old red badge and the ribbons and medals
Rust around me now
While the mountains wear down, our bones can be found
Here in the cold cold ground

High on the banks of the cool Mississippi
We sleep in shady dreams
The south endures like Elvis,
Or the river as it sings

I remember the taste of Tupelo honey,
The pain of the old war wound
I remember the names, buried and bound
To me here in the cold, cold ground

We share the music as listeners. I think horses hear music; elk bugle and the birds sing while the song of the humpback fills the deep and endures in our recordings. Our voices make the songs different, but its purpose is in our need to communicate.

With me, singing is as natural as my mother's voice, which I grew up hearing. It was a lovely voice. Mother didn't drink, she used to say "nobody wants to hear a drunk sing except maybe another drunk." She would play the piano and practice her singing, leaving us kids to make our own Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches.



I love to sing like some people love ice cream. I take care of my voice today with simple common sense rules:

1. No Smoking. Never go on stage wired, stoned, drunk or medicated past aspirin.

2. People will forget a hundred good gigs and remember the mess ups and mistakes every time. Don't alter your mental state with drugs or alcohol and expect to do a good job on stage. We're not George Jones OR Courtney Love.

3. Keep videos of your shows if you can. Don't be too easy on yourself, find knowledgeable people to critique your work. It is difficult to hear severe criticism, but self appraisal means nothing unless it's math.

3. Drink hot tea and honey every morning. That's just me, and it might be in my dreams, but I believe it helps. Sing for at least an hour a day, two is good; I would never suggest more unless it's the gig. Four nights a week is good for most singers, and that's just the way most folk's vocal chords work best. The vocal chord (duh) is a muscle. Be nice to it.

5. DRINK A LOT OF WATER. If you hydrate your chords with brandy, you may like it, but you may also strain the muscle and not know it. Drink TEPID water between songs NOT ICE WATER. Some would say drink a cup of hot tea with lemon between sets. Keep the water close. Ice will constrict your vocal chords and impede your ability to do your best. Singing is a cardiovascular exercise, unique to the muscles of each person. Doing it naturally well IS A GIFT.

6. Don't take yourself too seriously. Strike a balance and have fun.

7. Don't piss off the band. They can make you sound real bad as well as real good. If you're on the road, the same goes for waiters, who generally see the food before you do.

I work consistently as a solo performer. Among musicians that is unusual because we have to sing in tune and not ruin our voice. Sing and play at the same time and then use good songwriting and humor and distraction and praise and musicianship to maintain the interest of a crowd of people for AT LEAST an hour.

It's no piece of cake, but it's do-able.

Mother was a focused reader and a musician. My father was a Sergeant and made sure his oldest son Will got his start in Latin and religion early. He was a righteous man who took to religion like he took to alcohol; with great fervor and then to excess.

I learned from the nuns to enjoy learning. I learned to stay away from home by my father, so we all got what we needed. I studied Latin and began to learn the phonetic relationship and the importance of the history of the words we use every day when we speak. A lot of English comes from Latin, and is a good reason to teach a little Latin to children, like a secret language. My brother and I spoke a little, and it was fun.

There are good folks in the city
With their lawns all trim and green.
They go to theater, wear ties and collars,
Burn oil and gasoline.

I got a horse and saddle,
And I doubt if that will change
I haven’t seen a highway
For a hundred miles of range,

I’m riding
Up here where the mountains touch the sun
When I’m riding, when I’m riding I don’t envy anyone.

My feet are in the stirrups
And my horse is running free
We are hawks upon the wind
We are sparrows in the trees

We are thunder on the prairie
We are quiet through the stream
We are hearts that beat together
We might wear the crown of Kings

When I'm riding
Going where a man can't go alone
When I‘m riding When I’m riding I don’t envy anyone.

It's Veteran's Day. My father was a veteran, my brother was a veteran, my nephew Christian is a First Class Fire Control Technician in the Navy. I'm a Vietnam Vet, I was six years in the navy, which I joined in 1969. My brother died in Baghdad. My father, God Rest him, sleeps in the cold earth of Minnesota, having fought in three wars during his thirty three year career with the Air Force.

I didn't take to the military and I did not like Vietnam.

When I came home, I wanted to be left alone. I went from Seattle over to Idaho, into the Benowah Valley on the Couer d'Alene reservation, and spent the summer in the woods. I made my own beer that summer, in a rain barrel, and when it was done I got drunk with the forest ranger, who was my nearest neighbor. Cows wandered through the place, and I bathed in a creek, used an outhouse and read by lamplight; there was no electricity. I listened to a battery powered radio occasionally that summer, but not much. Mostly I read, although I played a lot of guitar. My wife had been dead for a year, (car accident). I fixed the roof and did some work on the floor, which wasn't all that much. It was 1975, in the summer.

I'm glad I've got those days behind me. I suspect time will help the soldiers coming home today, and I can't say how much it means that people actually help them make the transition. I didn't hear the words "Thank you for your service" until 2005.

Shaman



I can’t move forward. I just don’t know how. I feel like I can barely breathe sometimes. It helps if I have a routine, so I hike, and target shoot a bit with that old bow that Grandfather gave me. Out on Red Rock Road the dog and I and the antelope play. That road goes way out on the plains; almost far enough to forget. It’s a routine that I just can’t ignore, so I go out and set up and shoot on Thursdays. Last year I did it every Thursday, even in the winter, except the one time it snowed so damned much they shut the highway down clear to Kansas. Now that was a blizzard. The dog likes the snow. Hell, he loves it. He gets excited when he sees me go to get the bow, too. When it’s cold and still out on Red Rock Road, things almost slow down enough to gain a sense of peace. I like to camp out there now and then. Camping and cooking in the cold is a trip. There’s an old trail leading to an abandoned mining town where I’ve pitched my tent so often that Buckshot keeps a bowl there. Solitude; I can cry out loud or whisper, share silence or conversation with the dog. Not a tree in sight on the plains out there; it’s the plains, and there’s just not much growing; reminds me of my life. I might not hear a sound other than the huffing of the dog and myself or our feet crunching through week old snow. I pretend I’m a warrior or a mighty hunter tracking dinner for my family or protecting them from some unseen enemy.
Yeah, right. I’m no hunter; unless you mean hunting for the catsup aisle at the Safeway. I’m no warrior either, not even close. Being raised out here I know how to find the antelope, and generally where to look if I want to search for the bear, or the elk and deer that live up in the mountains. I’d as soon shoot them with a camera, though, and I don’t go looking for them very often.

Grandfather and father, when he was alive, raised cattle out on these plains. I help Grandfather every way he lets me these days, he has been my closest friend for as long as I have been alive. I tell him I still love her, and he says I will see her again, but I don’t think so. I think I’m dying inside. “Grandfather,” I say to the night sky, and I wonder how it is I’ve never known his women, or how he never leaves the mountain in the winter. I know he’s in the mountains. I say his name like a mantra, because just because it grounds me. When I feel like I’m floating away, Grandfather can help me, so I ask him to help me again. He spends a part of every summer down here on the plains, but this is February and he will never be here in February. I’m out here shooting arrows into an old bale of hay and walking around in circles talking to him, accompanied by a dog that won’t fetch. Good thing, too, cause that dog pisses me off pretty good sometimes. We hike, and I shoot. Then we fix supper and I shoot while the sun goes down. He hangs around and gets the back of his ears scratched. He doesn’t do so bad in the bone and scraps department, either. I feed him a dry dog food, and soak it in hot water, which makes him kind of a gravy. Buck sits there while the water cools off enough not to burn his tongue. He burned his tongue a few times when I started feeding him like that, but he learned soon enough to sit patient and wait until the food is cool enough before he dives in. Today I was pondering the notion that no matter how hard I try, waiting can be the most difficult thing; having the dog around helps.

* * *

The latch lifted on the door, and Grandfather walked in, followed by his constant companion, the old German shepherd.

“He was hoping you might come up this weekend,” Grandfather said, smiling. “You’re early.” I looked at the old man, and watched as his dog walked over and sniffed Buckshot’s butt, then stuck his head into my lap. I put my hand on the top of his head, and scratched him behind the ear. “I took a sick day. I could tell he was missing me,” I replied. Grandfather looked at me for a long moment, then said, “You used to smile more, Jim. We’ll have spaghetti tonight, and play some poker. I thawed some elk meat for it this morning. You can stay the weekend, right?” He walked back out to the front porch, looked across the valley toward the western pass and watched the sun set. I didn’t answer, he knew I’d stay. I brought him some comic books and sweets. He’s partial to Superman and Archie, and today I brought him a Superman and a Snicker bar, and some honey for his tea.
We range our cattle in the high country in the summers and down in the Apishipa Canyon in the winter. Grandfather likes his winter solitude, and won’t come down and help me with the herd in the winter. I’m glad, because that old man’s not just slow, he tends to wander off. I think he does it on purpose, and just doesn’t like cattle in general. He tells me the earth is alive, and that there is no difference between reality and dreams. I don’t know if these are Comanche notions or what; he also likes the Cubs and eats oysters and flirts at the supermarket. He’s a skinny old man, but he acts like a teenager when he sees the right set of curves behind the
checkout counter. He likes living up on Cordova Pass, that’s for sure. He says it used to be Apache country, and laughs because he’s a Comanche. Blanca, just west of us, is one of the 4 corners of the Navajo nation, and grandfather’s fond of mentioning that too. The Spanish Peaks hide the valley of the Cuchara River, which also pleases grandfather greatly, because that’s our home, and the river comes right out of the ground up there on Cordova Pass. The Spaniards named this range Sangre de Cristo, but to me these mountains are the Sacreds. The Ute called the Spanish Peaks “Wa-ha-to-ya”, or breasts of the earth. This area is sacred ground to a lot of tribes. Grandpa says the mountains talk to him. “Sure,” I tell him, and smile. When Grandfather smiles, his gums appear in the gaps between his teeth. The sight of this always makes me smile. I don’t have a clue what he looked like when he was my age; he has just always been Grandfather.
We both had a cup of hot tea. When I go to my grave, I hope he is still around. He is old; old like Yoda, and to me he has lived forever, like these mountains. When I was a boy, dad showed me how to throw a baseball. Grandfather walked me to the top of the west peak of the Wa-ha-to-ya and back for the first time, and he was old then. He told me once that he was there when my son was born, though, and that makes him crazy. I don’t have any kids. He’s been telling me that all my life. I don’t understand him, but I love my Grandfather. He keeps me grounded, and he can make me smile with just a look. When I’m around him, Kay doesn’t appear in my mind and break my heart every twenty minutes, just every hour or so. I guess I’m getting better, but if I found a way to sleep for one night without wishing she was here or if I could just stop dreaming she was beside me again, I might smile again. She is gone. Grandfather smiles, and I save my tears for the pillow.

We shared a meal, and spent the evening playing poker, a game Grandfather taught me when I was far too young. Poker is how he likes to visit. He asked me how work was going, and I handed back two cards. “I don’t really know, I’m a little distracted this year,” I replied. There is nothing I can hide from him, so I tried to smile. Grandfather smiled back at me with a look that said ‘I know your soul,’ and put his hands on the pouch around his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment. Taking some kind of dust from the pouch, he blew it off his hand at me. Then he said some words I thought might have been either Comanche or maybe just bullshit, and lit the old pipe and passed it to me. I didn’t have to ask him what was in it; we’d both been calling it medicine forever. Dad hated it when Grandfather lit this pipe. He used to shake his head and leave the room. Grandfather said to me once “Maybe it skips a generation.” Grandfather smiled when I took it. Not that I believed much in what we were doing, I just knew that Grandfather believed it helped me and that was enough. Besides, it was some of the best dope I’d ever smoked. He reached back into his pouch and pulled out a coin with a hole drilled into it. The hole had a black braid going through it, which he tied around my neck. “You should wear this, it will help,” he said. I looked at it; there was a feather etched into one side. The other side was etched into a woven circle, and the circle was divided into quarters. “Thanks, Grandfather.” He knew I was lost. But he has been my compass forever, and I need to be around him. We drank a bottle of his brandy, smoked a little more, and I wandered off to bed sometime after ten; I slept in a bed in a house I’d known since I was born.
* * *
I woke up staring at the sky, lying on my back. “Where’s the ceiling?” I wondered, and my heart skipped. I wasn’t where I went to sleep. I was wide awake, lying in waist tall grass. I went to sleep at Grandfather’s house. “Maybe I’m dreaming,” I blinked. I reached up and rubbed my eyes, sat up and looked down at my clothing. “Sure is warm,” I thought to myself. “And this grass is high. Where is Grandfather? Where am I?” I feebly called him, more of a whisper than a yell, but he wasn’t there.

I was wearing a homespun shirt I’d never seen before. I didn’t recognize my hands. “These hands are hard; and pale,” I frowned as I began to speak right at them. “I’m visiting Grandfather in the mountains, and these aren’t even the mountains. These are the plains, and that’s as plain as plain can be.” I laughed at my own nervous humor. It’s supposed to be February, and I’m feeling a summer breeze. “Maybe I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming,” I thought as I sat in the tall grass knowing I was not dreaming.
A horse stood nearby, grazing; he was paying no attention. This was my horse. I knew this, but I also knew it wasn’t. It was just there, and mine. “Surely I’m dreaming. Am I crazy?” I wondered. I had no idea what was happening, but I decided not to panic. Closing my eyes, I spoke to the heavens and asked for guidance. Nobody answered, as usual.
The horse wore loose hobbles around its feet, and a braided halter and bridles the color of its own tail. I went from prone to squatting, uneasy about standing and looking around. “I need to get back to the mountains” I said to myself as I walked over, reached down and removed the hobbles. I made an immediate decision to head up to the valley where Grandfather lived. It was the right thing to do. “He’s a pretty horse,” I thought. He was tall and long and he seemed to know me. I looked around in the tall grass, pondering the situation. “No cell phone. Hell, there’s probably no service out here anyway,” I thought to myself. Taking hold of the bridle, I turned in the direction the horse faced, and stared out across the prairie. It was an ocean of prairie grass, and beyond that the front range of the Sangres spread out before me on what seemed to be a cloudless spring or summer morning. I judged the mountains to be about 30 miles from where I stood, but things looked different. I recognized the mountains, but there just weren’t any signs of any kind of civilization. I thought for a moment that it could be that I was just not looking in the right place, but then I got this feeling that Dorothy must have had when she landed in Oz. I strained my eyes and looked all around for any sign of something that looked like civilization. I came up empty; not so much as an airplane contrail.
I turned to look at the horse, and started talking. “So where’s the highway, big guy?” I looked down at his unshod feet. “I’ve been in this part of Colorado all my life, and I’ve never seen grass this tall,” I whispered to no one as I stared in disbelief. “Now it’s as far as the eye can see.”
Next to the horse was a bundle. I looked closer, and there was a Henry rifle in the scabbard next to it, with the initials J.W. carved into the stock; not my initials. A bow and arrows, leather stirrups and a robe made of antelope or deer hide that had been brushed and smoothed and tied into a bundle were lying on the ground. There was a leather cartridge belt wrapped around the hide, and it was close to full. I bent down to look at it, and my hair fell across my shoulders.
“Jeee-zuss,” I cried. “Red hair!” I went to bed with black hair, and I wear it short, in spite of how Grandfather disapproves. Thinking about him, I wondered if he was somehow a part of this. “Grandfather, what have you done?” I cried to no one.

* * *

Grandfather’s home is just west of the mountains. My family’s been in the valley over there since before the Spaniards came, so Grandfather tells me. The more I know him, the more I wonder. I know the valley, though. It is my home; my only home, no matter where I stray.

I set the stirrups across the back of the horse, loaded the pack and headed off toward the mountains. Things being so strange, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I let the horse have his lead. Of course he knew the way.
We moved with the wind chasing us. About midafternoon, I spotted a deer, and an hour later was skinning dinner and quietly congratulating myself on my skill with the bow and thinking that this knife in my boot is a damn sharp and big skinning knife. I found a dagger strapped inside the sleeve of my shirt, and it left me wondering who this white guy is with the red hair, little hands and good eyesight. “He needs a bath,” I thought as I took in the aroma of clothes that smelled like a bad combination of too many places between washings. It sank in that I was no longer in the world I went to sleep in. If Buck were here I’d say we weren’t in Kansas anymore just to hear myself call him Toto. I haven’t seen another living human, but I did cross a wide trail extending south and east. Something inside me believed it had been cut by a herd of bison. I kept moving. Dusk found me on a river I recognized as the Huerfano. Making camp in a grove near the bank, I hobbled the horse, built a fire and stripped down and stepped into the water. “Man, I stink,” I thought as I shook my head and threw the clothes into the water as well. I bathed and washed my clothes as best I could. A short time later I was eating venison and inspecting my traveling kit butt naked near a warm fire while my clothes lay in the grass nearby drying.
* * *

The rifle is a beautiful piece. It is a .44 rim fire, with a deep grained walnut stock. It’s well oiled and familiar to me. The knives are all well honed and clean. The big one in my boot has a bone handle, and the one on my hip is a match for it. The tips of the arrows are forged iron, and the bow is well made and powerful. It looks handmade, though I have no idea what kind of wood this is. My clothes are functional, the pants are leather breeches of some sort, and the boots are some sort of moccasins that come up to mid calf. The scabbard for the knife on my belt and the rifle both look like deerskin, and are hand stitched. There is a flask, and it’s either half full of brandy or my nose went south. “Mmm,” I sighed as I drink from it.
Wrapping myself in the robe, and totally worn out, I fell asleep fast.
When morning came, I built a fire and sizzled some venison while inspecting the horse a little more closely. “You’re a sturdy beast,” I told him. He seemed to like my company. I had a lazy breakfast and left in no hurry, keeping the same direction and moving off of the plains and into the Cuchara valley. Not knowing where else to go, the horse and I headed toward Cordova Pass, and I started feeling very lonesome. I wandered in my thoughts, and Kay was there again. She was a woman to miss, and my thoughts stayed on her even as I perused the landscape and saw it for the first time again. A prominent butte stood off to the west as I headed south and up toward the pass. Grandfather had always told me to speak kindly to the mountains on my way into the valley and I would have a safe journey. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I flourished the brandy flask on the way up the valley and toasted the strange and beautiful rock outcroppings that run like spines up the Spanish Peaks. Not a sign of civilization had appeared, though I had passed what looked to be sign of other horses.

My pony and I moved onto the Front Range without crossing the interstate, without seeing any homes, and with no people in sight; not a fence, not a footprint. Coming into the mountains from the east like this should have taken me through Walsenburg, but it just wasn’t there. I took the trail home up the Valley between the Spanish Peaks and the Trenchera mountain pass. The town of La Veta and all the ranches were gone, not that there was much there to start with. The only trails were animal trails. “Grandfather,” I whispered, praying that the cabin would be there. “Lord, let there be water and game,” I thought to myself. It was there the last time I was up there, but then Walsenburg and La Veta were also there just yesterday; and the interstate, and the highway, and two lakes and a reservoir which are now one lake and no reservoir. I headed to the place I’ve always gone in times of trouble, but I was not confident. Just lost, confused, and coming home to the only place I knew to go, but like that other gringo, John Denver, sang, “ I’m coming home to a place I’ve never been before.”
Coming up the pass, the horse picked up its pace and we turned up a trail into the canyon where I grew up. A cabin and barn and corrals came into view. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the place, and suddenly seriously wanted a drink, and I wasn’t thinking water. I turned the horse out into the corral and brought the gear into the cabin. Tossing the saddle over a saddle tree just inside the front door, I headed straight for a trunk next to the back wall. Inside the trunk, between the lace and the bedding and beside Grandfather’s derringer case and the matched set of dueling pistols was a case of brandy in bottles older than any I’d ever seen. I knew it would be there, and it was. Taking up the first bottle and the notebook next to it, I poured a flagon and opened someone’s journal. It was an old journal, with the same initials on the leather binding that were on the rifle: J.W.

* * *
The name on the inside of the journal was James Whitman
March 20, 1820
The fight was fair, and I hit the mark, causing the son of a bitch great pain as he died. I can only hope my sister appreciates what I’ve done for her. I’ve made her a widow, and I can never be received by my family in Charleston again, but neither will that bastard husband of hers. That does bring satisfaction.


April 7, 1820
Louisville: A three day poker game, I won a fair amount. The men and women here on the river are not to be trusted. More than a few look as if they would happily murder me for pennies; I am keeping a low profile, assuming that there could be wanted posters on me.

April 12
There is no law here on the river. One of the women traveling to New Orleans was found dead on the lower deck of this floating whorehouse and casino. The Captain said a few words and committed her body to the river. It is unclear how she died. Still, the Captain wrote it in his log as an accident. I am looking forward to New Orleans, and expect the gambling there might be a little less dangerous.

* * *


Jesus, this is good brandy. The cabin is nice, too; it’s a pretty fair sized abode with a pantry built off of the back porch. There are sacks and barrels in the pantry; it is stocked for a long stay. In the back is a built in closet, with a trap door and what looks to be an emergency exit. On the shelf over a small dresser in the cabin is another pistol. It is a .44 caliber cap and ball Colt, one of the more deadly pistols of the mid 19th Century. “It can get you into trouble but it can’t get you out,” I thought to myself as I looked at it. There are dishes, and they’re heavy; some kind of crockery or stoneware. There is also a large array of ironware and cooking utensils, a small set of silver spoons, forks, and knives in a wooden case, and a barrel of water next to a bowl on a stand. It looks like a primitive sink. There is a cutting table; I know this because of the scars on it; a clock rests on the mantle. Some might call it a grandmother clock, but it isn’t ticking, and somehow this bothers me. I feel out of touch, and although I seem to be falling in the right direction, I am way off balance, struggling to comprehend, and having difficulty keeping my mind wrapped around the changes I’ve gone through in the last two days. Sitting in the cabin, reading the journal, the weirdness of the whole situation finally settles in on me. I have two memories; one is waking up while the other is fading. I know where I am, but I’m not sure who I am. “Grandfather,” I whispered.
Behind the cabin and tucked against a hill is a smokehouse with a half a side of deer and an elk hanging. There is a large amount of split firewood back there also, another large pile in need of splitting. Looking further, I found a garden area that did not look neglected. A large, double bladed axe leaned against the back wall. Inside the cabin was a buffalo hide robe and some kind of a mattress on a frame about a foot off the floor. Under this bed I found a fair amount of powder. There was also plenty of lead and above the door, a large caliber Sharps rifle. Two different war clubs hung on the walls, and a tomahawk hung on pegs within easy reach. I don’t even own a can of pepper spray, and whoever lives here and leaves this place wide open is armed to the teeth; I have a notion it’s me. I’m trying to be cautious, but I’m also thinking brandy. There are two hats on a hat rack, and a bear skin on the floor. The sacks and barrels in the pantry are filled with beans, dried barley, oats, some sugar and salt, and a large amount of honey and tea leaves. There are put up preserves. There is no coffee, but there is sugar. “God wants me to be a tea drinker,” I think to myself. First, though, I am going to drink brandy, enjoy the fire, and sleep.
* * *

Grandfather came to me in my dream. “This is your home,” I heard him say. “Sure it is, grandfather. It’s the only sacred ground I’ve ever known.” Then he showed me how to make the fly fall where the trout is looking, and he was younger than I ever remember, and we stood on the banks of a cool mountain stream. I saw his gums through the gap between his front teeth when he smiled, and the dream deepened. . “Who is to say what is real?” he asked. I slept fitfully, and woke up with a hangover.
* * *
Watching the sun rise, I waited for water to boil for tea. After a cup, I staged an invasion of the pantry and finished with a fair breakfast of corn and oat meal and bacon with more tea. Sitting on the porch, I noticed a woman walking up the trail, leading a pony carrying a light pack. Her eyes were black and beautiful, her stride confident. Across her right cheek ran an angular scar that for a short length; her dress was not that of a maid, but men’s breeches. Her teeth were straight and fine and her gaze deep and disarming to me. She looked directly at me, and no sign of hesitation, but one of recognition, was there. Removing her pony’s rigging, she turned the animal into the corral with my horse. As she walked across the yard toward the porch, I stood and walked out to meet her. “My man,” she whispered, as her arms reached over my shoulders and she wrapped me in her warmth. “Grandfather says he will keep your dog. They get along very well, but he says that the dog won’t fetch.”

It's been four days now since I've posted, four days that have included my birthday as well as my brother's and sister's birthdays. Three Birthdays in one family in four days. I love celebrating for three on my baby sister's birthday. I noticed yesterday as the World Series began that it has never begun later than this that I can remember. We're usually three or four games into it when my birthday on the 24th rolls around. I had three glasses of Merlot. One glass for Judy, one for Jon, and one for me.

My baby sister was born on the 26th of October, just two days after I turned four. My brother Jon was born a year and three days after I was, on the 27th of Oct.; Happy Birthday, Jon. Jon died four years ago in Baghdad. had not. He was not healthy enough to be in a war zone, and his decision to go took its toll. I miss him.

My baby sister Judith lives in Milton, Washington and has had a career working in a hospital in the Seattle area. She's raising three grandchildren. Happy birthday, Judith, you are an angel and your brother loves you.

I like to ponder as I celebrate my brother and sister on our birthdays every year. I'm going to write a few hopes down: I hope my sister is happy, always. I hope my brother got what he wanted from life. I miss him.

I drove up to Crested Butte today, I wanted to watch some of the clouds roll over the mountains. The top of the Butte is white, and there are bare groves of aspen all along the way. The beautiful reds and golds that signify the start of October are all but gone. It is a beautiful sight to see the ground disappear into snow, and the trees disappear into the fog as the clouds roll down into the valley, but I have memories of winters past that still shiver my old timbers. The weather man down in Denver is talking about their first look at the snow this fall. We've been having cold nights, and the tourists from summer are gone. The tourists who come here every winter haven't arrived yet, and the people who survive in this valley are exhaling their summers, catching their collective breaths, and preparing to inhale a little winter. I prefer my winter with a Merlot.

It's October, and it's almost over; red and gold, the orange of Halloween, the World Series and of the births of so many of us whose parents used each others' bodies to stay warm those cold winter nights of New Years cheer, alcohol and fruitcake. Children born in October could be products of New Years Eve gropings. I think I was conceived in a winter storm, but that's just me. This is my favorite month. It can snow a blizzard, or be as balmy as August. The nights are sharper the farther up into the mountains you go in October. The nights are about as sharp and black and beautiful as they can be up here around Blue Mesa. It gets cooler faster at night. Rain and thunder and lightning move faster at this altitude, and we share the world around us with wild elk, deer and bears, badgers, skunks, marmots, as well as our own critters. We all sense the coming of the cold. October is the rut for deer and elk, I expect for bear as well, but I'm ignorant about them mostly. I like it that way, I don't see bears as animals I want to get to know too well, I see a little too much of myself in their desire for solitude. October is when Libra leaves the room and Scorpio moves in. In October, things go from splendor to bare trees.

The splendor is past its peak now here in the high country, and Gunnison is once again becoming a place of local faces more familiar, of people we we come to know over the course of the years. Here in the Gunnison Valley, Rudy Rudebaugh died at 86 after spending six decades guiding people into the National Forest over near Ohio City.
He rode until he was 86. I saw him on horseback taking 5 hunters up to a cabin when he was 85; he offered me an orange. The men who grow old and have lived here are different than any men I know. They abide when others run from this cold and dry wind.

The Gunnison Valley rolls into the forest that blankets Monarch pass; the road goes on through the canyon into other valleys and onto the plains; Big Horn Canyon will get you there, it's Highway 50. If you take the cutoff at Cotapaxi, you can cut up the side of the canyon to the road to the Heurfano Valley, which is my home. It's a beautiful drive, it passes through Westcliff, home of one of the best Bakery's in the world. The ladies who run it wear bonnets and dresses to the middle of their shins and they don't take credit cards, God bless 'em. They make pies and turnovers, bread and pastries. If you ever make the drive, look for the herd of buffalo that sometimes wallow near the highway on Wolf Springs Ranch in the Upper Huerfano Valley. I never get tired of seeing them, I feel like a trespasser onto the prairie when I look at them.

I drove to Durango from Gunnison yesterday. Here at the height of the autumn splendor, the highway was being driven by motorcycles and more than a few corvettes and sports cars.

My jeep made the trip, and I've never seen a more beautiful highway. Some say that highway 550 out of Montrose to Durango over Red Mountain Pass is the most beautiful highway in the world. They'd get no argument out of me.

I was in Durango for a Cowboy Poetry Festival at the Strater Hotel downtown. Diane Tribbitt, cowgirl poet and I wrote a song with Curly Musgrave a few years ago, and Curly recorded it last year with Belinda Gail and RW Hampton just before he died. I sang it with Belinda at the Strater Hotel Theater at the Saturday night performance of Diane's poetry. It's on Curly's last CD, it's called "Cowboy Farewell." I can't thank her enough for the opportunity to stand on a stage and present our collaboration.
I drove the most beautiful highway in the world to Durango, and while I was there I saw the most amazing thing. I saw grace and I saw the smile that accompanied it.

I don't have much to show for my years, if you're counting dollars. I buried a wife and got left wondering how my heart will ever beat again, but it does. Still, I hope for romance, even at my age, and I saw the most beautiful woman while I was in Durango. If I never see her again, I still saw her. I spoke with her, I touched her hand, and that makes me a pretty lucky guy. Today she might wake up looking like hell, talking like a pirate and wrinkled as a raisin, but in Durango, she was beautiful, and my heart, approximately the size of a shriveled cranberry, was hers. I suppose as time goes by, she'll get even prettier.

Somebody once said it's day all day in the daylight, and night all night in the night.

What is it when you homer in the gloaming, and you always will? Is something born in the sunset? And by contrast, what was it in the dawn that died, making dawn forever sunset to a fool who dreams of what might have been? Hey, let's wax philosophic...

It's day all day up here around Gunnison, and Thursday I'm going to head down the mountain toward Colorado Springs for a gig. The weather's perfect for it. I'll be in Durango on Friday to cheer on some friends as they tell their stories, and that put me driving between the Springs and Durango on Friday. Drive carefully out there, folks, and look out for dumb critters on the highways.

Finishing another season of singing for guest ranches and resorts in Southern Colorado, I have to say I have the best job in the world, but only because Colorado is so beautiful. I don't wonder why other people don't do this, being a musician is harder that some might think. Being on the road across America is tough enough. I buried my heart here in cowboy country, and I expect I'll spend a few more years here. How many people get to sing and get paid for it? If a musician complains, it better be about music, because we have something other people wish for. I work for the best people in the world. If I have one complaint about Nashville, Tennessee, it's that there are so many musicians there that the only way to make a living there as a musician is to get out of town or else get lucky and snag one of those rare paying jobs playing for the tourists who flock to the country music mecca. I lived in Nashville for ten or twelve years on and off, and still slip back occasionally, but I never saw anything like Monarch Pass or the Maroon Bells, or anything in the world like the Comanche Grasslands until I came to Colorado. I've been in fifty states; I said that once and woman asked me which two I missed. Hmm. A man has to make choices. I was born on an Air Force Base that doesn't exist any more, just like a huge number of Americans. I grew up trailing after a Sergeant, living out of a footlocker. I expect that's why I love to travel so much that I've been in fifty states. I spent my junior high and grade school years in Europe, wondering if cowboys really existed. I had no idea that cowboys could speak so eloquently to me of what it really means to be an American. I am who I am, and Colorado opened its heart to me. You can share that feeling.
Colorado Dude and Guest Ranches open their homes to guests from New York and Atlanta and Philadelphia and Phoenix and Tampa and Houston and Minneapolis and even Denver for a week through the glorious Colorado summer. That's something to sing about.

With the arrival of autumn and the changing of the colors of the aspen and scrub oak on the mountainsides and in the foothills, there's nothing else to do but get into the car and explore the beauty. I recommend the less traveled roads.