Audio: https://audio.com/saintstevensthingery/audio/lou-deluca-delta-88-s-set1
Audio: https://audio.com/saintstevensthingery/audio/lou-deluca-delta-88-s-set2
Audio: https://audio.com/saintstevensthingery/audio/lou-dedeluca-delta-88-s-set-3
So, DOES everybody know this is nowhere, like Neil Young said? Maybe not, although I’ve always thought so. Today I think I see a glimmer of hope. I “slept in” after a late night. We had a little celebration.
When I was a teen-age kid and into my twenties, yes this was nowhere even if you lived in the county seat where all the money changed hands. There was nothing for us kids to do. At the time I didn’t realize there was nothing to do for the adults either. Adults were, of course, irrelevant. Now, I am them.
As I remember it, several local churches figured out how to make a coffee shop for us kids so we might not spend all our time drinking beer or worse out at the sand pit or in some barn. It was below the street, long and skinny and boring. But I went there because so did Doris, and I kind of liked Doris. There was a record player of some kind and I heard some Steppenwolf album. I had never heard them before. I thought, yeah, this is something to do-drive Mom’s car downtown, listen to music and lust after Doris.
Some fifty years later I’m still doing that. Well, it has been MY car, that has changed, and for five years or more it wasn’t downtown-it was sixty-five miles away, and Doris unfriended me on Facebook some time in the past when I wasn’t looking. I probably said something.
Even though I have proved otherwise in the past for a little stretch there, I am really not much of a party boy. I’ve had two long sustained relationships over time, which should be about enough for anybody, and I don’t really lust after Doris any more, like I might let on.
There’s this place in Pomeroy…. correct that, there WAS this place in Pomeroy. It was a bar in a building that was something like a hundred and thirty years old. From what I can tell, it was a perfectly adequate little place and functioned like a bar, except nothing weird ever happened there like happens in bars. I no longer use alcohol which may impair my assessment of that.
But Byron had (has, he’s not gone) this music. I thought I knew something about music, having come from a background of formerly owning a music store (or two) for fourteen years, but it has turned out that I certainly did not. I won’t describe what I learned but it was profound, mostly in terms of community.
At the top of the year, the place got a poison pen letter from the city-the building was condemned because of safety concerns and there was a “drop dead date” which eventually was extended slightly.
I know something about little bars in little towns around here. Very few could sustain a blow like that and continue. It looked grim.
I would have to comb through all of my communication to pinpoint the reaction time, but I’m going to say it was almost instantaneous when the patrons heard the news.
That led to an intriguing coalition of people which lasted nine months and resulted yesterday when the city council of Pomeroy voted to sell Friends Of Byrons a building over some objections from a few locals.
Pomeroy, not unlike a tourist destination, has a large temporary population, probably larger than the population of permanent residents. That population is largely invisible, since they descend upon the town for maybe three hours a week, sometimes six. And then we scatter, to points all over the state and beyond. It’s a fellowship, we’re close.
As one might predict, the dilemma quickly became about the money. There were residents of the town who were concerned about how all this affected their tax dollars. But we had already raised a large sum of money, enough to change the playing field, and in the end, found a solution. People seemed to like the temporary building we found and we bought it.
During that nine months I had the opportunity to explore other parts of the state. That by itself is another story but four of those exploratory trips were to Iowa City, which might as well be another country, because it is different there. It isn’t difficult for me to meet people in music-related settings, because I have a bag of recording stuff and that sparks conversations (it doesn’t hurt to wear a colorful shirt).
Without exception, every conversation I had was about Byron’s. Two of the conversations were with people who were deeply interested in revitalizing Iowa small towns, and those people had been at it for a while.
I lived in a town the size of Pomeroy for twenty-two years. I know how it can go-keep the weeds down, have a pancake breakfast sometimes, but just listen to this guy’s vision: this is Matt Fockler at a recent Byron’s performance:
I agree with Matt; a town has to look at itself with a wider lens if it wants to grow.
So I said that when it was my turn to speak. The town had already banded together and created a bar and grill which their Facebook page proclaims to be “A community project with 69 owners!” The cooperative elevator there has to be a significant contributor to their tax base. And now, an iconic music venue has pulled itself out of the ashes and due to the nine months’ worth of publicity that our project brought, has attracted new music lovers. The town has an infusion of cash that could help on their way to building a new fire station.
Depending upon what they plan for the Main Street block that will be demolished, there’s a sweet little stretch there that could be home to a couple of boutique retail shops. I can think of one immediately (smile) and people who know me can guess what it might be.
I think Pomeroy should look forward to their next exciting chapter.
Archive took down this recording and one other Messano recording.
May 24 was Bob Dylan’s birthday. It also would have been my 49th wedding anniversary. Bob is still alive.
This was Claude Bourbon’s performance at Byron’s Bar last night (the 24th). There is a snip in the second set where I removed the part where I came crashing to the floor at the beginning of St. James Infirmary. I do that sometimes. Oops, sorry. Claude elected not to finish that one; I don’t blame him.
Joe and Vicki were very much aware that this was probably the last time they’d perform in this building. They’ve been staunch supporters and good friends of Byron’s over many years.
So a funny thing happened the other night. Byron had to cancel a show due to the performers backing out very late and he thought he didn’t have enough time to line up another act, and he posted that on Facebook.
Chad Elliott, who has recently moved to within striking distance of Pomeroy, replied, aw darn it, I was going to attend that show since I would be in town to deliver a painting. I was packing my bag, ready to walk out the door, and flashes of brilliant white light and loud classical symphony exploded around me.
Um, duh.
It took just a few minutes of classic social media exchange on Facebook and everybody put it together and there would be a show after all.
Super hardcore trooper Marie Farrell, who occasionally scares me 🙂 managed to coax her musician friend Walt Peterson into coming and he brought a case of harmonicas. This was promising to be a “different” kind of spontaneous night that can only happen in magical places.
Chad got started solo and unless he’d just written a bunch of new songs (inevitable) or wrote one as he played it on stage, I didn’t need to take a lot of notes, so I ducked into the back room where I can indulge in my dirty little tobacco habit. There was Kathryn. She has to travel farther than Chad, and was waiting for the right time to join him. Nobody knew she was there yet. Fun when that happens.
Except for the part where I had my input set for mp3 rather than wav (a reason for using two recorders) (and I think I got by with it anyway), the night proceeded to have its way with all of us.
Chad and Kathryn both took advantage of the situation by road testing some new stuff. And making a few mistakes. Human. Real. Priceless.
Without succumbing to the urge to review, here’s the night in three sets. Kathryn joins in set 2, Walt joins in set 2, and Walt and Marie join in set 3. This is the “raw” version, the edited version will eventually appear at Archive.org.
To access all of our Elliott recordings (so far, they’re not all up yet), click here:
This week Byron’s Bar had a three day festival, billed by Byron as: N x BS, like the Texas show SXSW. Only this one was North by BS, which of course means Byron Stuart. I think he so deemed it because it was an accident.
On my way the third afternoon (my son’s birthday, and yes, I called), I couldn’t help but notice the beauty of rural Iowa during harvest season. Except of course for the farm machinery on the blacktops and some slightly disturbing evidence of creatures that had been frightened out of the fields where they’d been hiding and subsequently been driven onto the hard surface roads, but hey, in the end, we’re all food.
I drove 390 round trip miles to attend, which was nothing compared to my friend Marie’s 600 miles.
What makes obsessives like Marie or myself do that? That’s expensive and exhausting. Sometimes you want a co-pilot and there isn’t one. I have heard every possible explanation under the sun which explains why people DON’T do that, but in my opinion, they’re all bogus.
We heard three acts probably most of my readers won’t recognize, The Forrest McCurry Duo, The Joey Tenuto Band, and Mace Hathaway, a solo act.
Until I find some talent of my own which could survive on a stage (I don’t play an instrument or sing), I don’t review. But I’d like to say I was transported by each act, each in their own way.
The nine sets from the three nights are posted below.
If the guy who owns the joint accidentally books shows three nights in a row, it is obvious that many people will pick and choose among those nights. The becomes ABUNDANTLY obvious if you’re there every time, and then for me, it becomes a guessing game: who are these people tonight and why are they here? I guess even though I know 90% of them fairly well.
For example, there are the Byron’s Dancers-a fairly static group who take to the somewhat tiny dance floor during the danceable numbers, often as singles, sometimes as couples. I have not been a dancer for about 28 years, due to some changes that took place at that time (I sobered up after drinking more than my quota for a couple of decades before that) but I admire the dancers. I USED to do that, sort of concert-style, clearing an area around myself so I could flail around more liberally than some others.
One night several years ago, Marty Enslow, a Des Moines guy with a radio show about Iowa stuff, and I were just in the process of meeting and a young dancing woman managed to pull Marty onto the floor over his protestations, and he danced around with her a bit. She was one of those twirl-me-back-and-forth types and that was obviously not Marty’s style and he escaped. He and I went back to conversation as we left it, but all of a sudden, there she was, in my face. I looked at her like what-the-hell lady and she admitted that yeah, I was the last guy in the place she’d asked. But I was already planning to break her of that hand-holdie shit and show her some freestyle interpretation when she said to me “wow, you really feel this stuff, don’t you?” She also made it obvious that she was trying to piss off the ugly guy that she was with by dancing with everyone in the place, so I escaped.
Byron mentioned that same thing last. There were a couple of Dead songs that Mace did which got me back out on the floor. I am not comfortable doing that stuff by myself-my former spouse wasn’t such a bad leaper and twirler herself. But it’s been a long time. I just remembered half of the act during some emotional trauma in early July. I remembered what to do with my arms, but not (yet) what to do with my feet. Byron mentioned that “you really feel it” thing. Of course I do, Winterland is coming up, I must practice.
It was interesting to string three days in a row like that. In the five years I’ve been going to the place it has only happened a handful of times. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems to me like the Frequent Fliers figure out how to bring all their trials AND tribulations to a show, dump them in a bucket and whoever can use whatever is welcome to it.
Except for the part where I suspect the NXBS might not have been financially successful (he said, conservatively), I would like to see that become a “thing” which might be periodically repeated. There are two motels nearby and a campground nearer-by. Just a thought.
Forrest McCurren Band
Joey Tenuto Band
Mace Hathaway
10/17/23
These are the “raw” recordings from my mics which may be edited for the Archive version. I used two sets of mics; this is from the pole up by the ceiling.