They’ll be playing at 7th Haven on Crockett Street – down 7th Street to Currie (west of Montgomery Plaza – turn south to Crockett, turn west – next to the dead Black Dog).
Tuesday, May 22nd - 8:00 PM
No cover (free & open to the public)
7th Haven
2929 Crockett St - Fort Worth
Tonight's show is a casual thing, Kevin Hayes (Old Crow Medicine Show) trading sets with Jason at the 7th Haven.
Here's the myspace places where you can sample audio files of Jason Eklund's music and Kevin with the Old Crow Medicine Show.
Jason and I have known each other for a number of years. Met through poets Kell Robertson and Kendall McCook, who did hard-time with me @ the Hop in the days of "The Miracle on Berry Street." The three of us keep crossing paths, either here in North Texas or in Albuquerque (or "I'll be quirky" as Jason likes to call it), Santa Fe or Taos or Kell's tiny shack on Refugee Ridge up off the Turquoise Trail. I love the Turquoise Trail. That's the back highway btwn. Santa Fe and ABQ that you can take if you are into--and I am--hilly, winding roads and ole sleepy former mining towns where you can buy good but cheap turquoise jewelry and find a place that sells organic coffee and somebody serving it to you who remembers when Bob Dylan used to have a house there in Madrid (and they say it like MAD-rid, not like the Spanish do). Me and a coupla different boyfriends used to drive up in my blue Mazda B2000 pickup truck and just pull off the Turquoise Trail, hidden behind some brush or patch of trees, and just sleep in the bed of the truck with the New Mexico sky for a roof. I swear, everytime I tossed or turned for a comfortable position--and that's often when you're lying in a truck--I would open my eyes and catch a falling star in my momentary glimpse. Ah, those were some beautiful times...
Well, I feel lucky that these renegade troubadour types have taken a liking to me--and my poems. So much so that I stay on their radar when they're passing through town and wanna share a beer with a working class Chicana like me. Kell Robertson is getting up there in years, and Kendall McCook has been scheming for a way to get a documentary film produced for and about Kell's crazy beat poet life. This is one of my favorite photos ever taken of Kell.
I happened to be in New Mexico when they threw a big party for Kell's birthday at the Mine Shaft in Cerrillos. People drove in from different villages in the region and there was a great hoedown; Kell even sang and boot-scooted with several pretty young ladies in the bar. He turned me down when I asked him to dance; he's a persnickety codger, and I acccept that all right. But he always calls me "dahr--lin." No matter what.
Well, anyway, tomorrow Jason and Kevin are gonna come by my porch to videotape me for the documentary film they've decided to start on their own--funding or not. I'll read from some of the letters that Kell has sent me over the years, and I'll get to share a poem I wrote for him, and whatever else I can think to say. Maybe I'll talk about the Christmas day I spent at his house here in Fairmount--when he lived in Fort Worth. Kell was drunk, no surprise, but on beet wine--of all things. Tasty stuff, but it could stain your clothes forever. He was crooning some old Vicente Fernandez rancheras in the hallway, pacing back and forth in the cowboy boots he seems to wear 24-7, with the oven door open cuz that was the only source of heat in the house that winter. My new boyfriend--at the time--seemed amazed that I could be friends with an old grizzly like Kell. Let nothing surprise you.
Jason and Kevin will be out on Refugee Ridge, taping video of/with Kell by Thursday. No doubt, there will be cases of beer and songs aplenty involved.
About my old buddy Kell: He "has been a rodeo cowboy, a country & western singer, and is the first man on a horse to get killed off in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. He has always been a poet."
Here's a link to more info about Kell Robertson.
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