I just received a not from Clint, an old friend from grade school and he mentioned Utah Phillips. Now Bruce "U. Utah" Phillips was a folksinger, he was a Union man, a father and he was a human being. All that other stuff is fine but this covers a good batch of the important stuff. He passed away in 2008 and I stumbled across his blog which has been continued on by his son, Duncan. It brought back many fond memories of the man and his music and his heart.
I'll share my slightly edited comments with you below that I wrote to Duncan and his readers back then...So go listen to Utah Phillips and more importantly, go live like him...with passion and grit and standing up for what YOU believe in..Amen.
Brad Riesau said...
I played Bruce's I HAD A MULE on July 4th at a beautiful outdoor gig and I hadn't sung it since the late 70s so I searched online for the words which I never came up with.
But, alas, I read the news of his passing and I was saddened greatly and almost immediately filled with great joy of having not only experienced his incredible rapport as a member of an audience numerous times over the years but also touched personally by his grace and sincerity as a human being.
I was a young college student at SDSU in the late 70s and was on the Cultural Arts Board that worked with San Diego folk supporter Lou Curtiss to book what was a gem of a little annual Folk Festival.
The first year I was involved Utah was one of the headliners. After speaking with him briefly before one of the afternoon workshops I was completely taken with the direct and passionate focus he had with each and every person he met as well as his inate ability to touch folks on a very personal but universal level whether conversing casually or in the spotlight onstage.
Also on the bill was Kate Wolf who was as gracious as a person could be to an enamored guitar player (me) who was scrawling down lyrics to tunes as she sang them. I had the audacity to ask her if they were correct as she came off stage. She was sweet enough to offer to show me the chords right then and there. The song was A LEGEND IN HIS TIME which on hearing it now seems to fit Bruce as well.
In the years since, I have worked as a publicist for many fine musicians including Willie Nelson in whom I have also witnessed this kind of graciousness and connection on a one-to-one basis with his fans. And I always recalled the first time I ever saw the wall between stage and audience fall away, when I first realized through Utah and Kate that the reason these great talents were so magnificent was that they were just good folks like the rest of us; folks with families, folks that cared about other people, folks that spent their time sharing good thoughts and good messages and good sense with other good folks.
Here's to good folks.
July 8, 2008 2:31 AM
What You'll Find Here: Music, Movies and Me
Since May 1976, I have written in journals. When I have nothing particularly resonant to say about my own inner turmoil, philosophic ramblings, sexual peccadillos or whining on about the state of the world around me...I have always fallen back on reporting the cultural time consumption that takes up in inordinate portion of my daily goings on.
In the 40+ years since my first concerts seeing Children's Symphony presentations on Sundays at the Pasadena Civic or The Hot Jazz Society's monthly Dixieland romps in an old meeting hall on the edge of the L.A. "River" across from Griffith Park, I have been sold heavily on the magic of live music. As Neil Young so aptly put it, "Live music is better bumper stickers should be issued."
Growing up a few orange groves and canyons length away from Hollywood also contributed greatly to my family's addiction to movie going. From the time I was a small there were weekly trips to the drive-in theaters that dotted the landscape, or the local Temple theater for the Saturday matinees. Once in a while we'd drive the 12 miles into Hollywood and see something in one of the magnificent old movie palaces like Grauman's Chinese, the Egyptian, The Pantages or later the Cinerama Dome. My dad loved Westerns and War movies, as if he didn't get enough shoot-'em-up as an L.A. County Sheriff in his day gig, my mom adored musicals and comedies. My brother and I loved them all.
At SDSU, I played in my first gigging band and began booking concerts on campus as part of the well-funded Cultural Arts Board, kindling for my future life in and around music.
So it's not surprising that my first jobs out of college were working in local video rental places (which were all the rage) or managing a couple of Sam Goody record stores in Mall's on the East Coast where we marveled at the new CD format and sold the first home computers and video games (yes Commodore and Pong and Atari).
So these are really just extensions of all of those journal entries talking about the great new movies I was seeing and LPs/CDs I was listening to.
Though iPODS/iPADs, apps, smart phones and downloads now make music and movies accessible in your own pocket, there is still nothing like sitting in front of a stack of speakers with a room full of people swaying to music created before your eyes. Nor is there anything that works quite so well for me to escape the real world and all of it's pressures just outside than two hours in a dark theater, absorbing the stories flickering across that wide screen as they pull you into their world.
But a really good taco runs a close third...
In the 40+ years since my first concerts seeing Children's Symphony presentations on Sundays at the Pasadena Civic or The Hot Jazz Society's monthly Dixieland romps in an old meeting hall on the edge of the L.A. "River" across from Griffith Park, I have been sold heavily on the magic of live music. As Neil Young so aptly put it, "Live music is better bumper stickers should be issued."
Growing up a few orange groves and canyons length away from Hollywood also contributed greatly to my family's addiction to movie going. From the time I was a small there were weekly trips to the drive-in theaters that dotted the landscape, or the local Temple theater for the Saturday matinees. Once in a while we'd drive the 12 miles into Hollywood and see something in one of the magnificent old movie palaces like Grauman's Chinese, the Egyptian, The Pantages or later the Cinerama Dome. My dad loved Westerns and War movies, as if he didn't get enough shoot-'em-up as an L.A. County Sheriff in his day gig, my mom adored musicals and comedies. My brother and I loved them all.
At SDSU, I played in my first gigging band and began booking concerts on campus as part of the well-funded Cultural Arts Board, kindling for my future life in and around music.
So it's not surprising that my first jobs out of college were working in local video rental places (which were all the rage) or managing a couple of Sam Goody record stores in Mall's on the East Coast where we marveled at the new CD format and sold the first home computers and video games (yes Commodore and Pong and Atari).
So these are really just extensions of all of those journal entries talking about the great new movies I was seeing and LPs/CDs I was listening to.
Though iPODS/iPADs, apps, smart phones and downloads now make music and movies accessible in your own pocket, there is still nothing like sitting in front of a stack of speakers with a room full of people swaying to music created before your eyes. Nor is there anything that works quite so well for me to escape the real world and all of it's pressures just outside than two hours in a dark theater, absorbing the stories flickering across that wide screen as they pull you into their world.
But a really good taco runs a close third...
