THE BALLAD OF COUNTRY DICK MONTANA

Bodie's was a dirty, green storefront bar in the middle of University Avenue, sandwiched between a manufacturer of prosthetic devices and an Alberto's taco shop. My old high school buddy, Doug, was in town for the weekend and we were looking for something to do for the night. Doug said an old friend of ours from college, Buddy Blue, was playing in a band and they were playing at Bodie's that night, so we decided to check it out.

As we arrived at he bar, we saw the green neon sign flickering in the darkness and a handful of police cruisers idling in the parking lot. Inside the bar, a man with a wild mop of dirty hair and nasty teeth stumbled through the crowd and a cocktail waitress whisked by, her empty drink tray balanced in the air on a thumb and two fingers. In the far corner, seven or eight bikers played a noisy game of eight ball.

Onstage, a live band flooded the crowded bar with an impressive version of Springsteen's "Reason to Believe." The Beat Farmers, it said on their drum set, and onstage four guys pounded out a sweaty set of rhythm and blues. This was not the soulless techno-crap spun by some D.J. at those Stepford-esque meat markets in the valley, but live, soulful, guitar-driven rock and roll. I heard pieces of Bo Diddley one minute, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and Led Zeppelin the next. The music was raw and alive, and it gave me a chance to blow off the steam I was accumulating in the halls of academia as a student at San Diego State University.

It was 1984, my third year in college.

The Beat Farmers consisted of Buddy "Blue" Seigal and Jerry Raney on guitar. They also covered most of the vocals. Rolle Love, the bassist, was the quiet one. He seemed content to stay in the shadows, plucking his huge upright bass. It was hard to see the drummer from where we stood but suddenly, rising from a cloud of cigarette smoke like some shit-faced genie, Country Dick Montana stepped out from behind the drum set and made his way centerstage.

"How're you doin' tonight?" Country Dick growled at the audience, grabbing the mic like he was angry and about to break something. As this loud, surly man began to rant and rave, the band played behind him, smiling like little boys.

"Well, put on your fun hats, boys and girls," Dick bellowed. "It's time to party." He then took a giant hit from the bottle of beer that dangled from his fingertips. This brew-swigging, name-calling drummer stood well over six feet and cultivated a hip western look. He wore a big, black cowboy hat, black boots, and a long, brown leather coat. Country Dick Montana was a cross between Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Sammy Davis, Jr.

"Gather 'round, ya losers," Dick said before he started his song. In spite of his apparent hostility, Country Dick always berated his audiences with a grin playing at the edges of his beer-soaked goatee, and even through the daze of alcohol, sweat, and fatigue, you could see the genuine affection he had for the audience; how much he truly cared for "the maggots," as he called them.

"This song is about Love and a buncha other tender crap," Dick would slur between hits from the bottle, and then finish with something like "So let's get this sleazy little hoe-down on the road."

Country Dick's voice was part Harley Davidson engine, party rusty chainsaw. It soothed with its homespun charm, yet maintained an edgy unpredictability--you couldn't tell if he'd rather give you a bear hug or punch your sorry lights out.

Doug and I were sitting at a tiny cocktail table near the stage and, early in his song, Country Dick jumped off the stage and sauntered around the dance floor like a king. Every eye in the place was glued to him, waiting for the match to hit gunpowder. Throughout his barroom tour, he fired off dirty jokes, nasty comments, and wild observations that left the standing room only crowd in hysterics. For effect, he took exaggerated pulls from the squat, brown bottle that never left his hand.

As the song reached its rowdy conclusion, Country Dick made his way back up toward the stage, but hesitated where Doug and I sat nursing our warm beers. Without warning, Country Dick put his hand on my shoulder and hoisted himself onto our table where he began dancing like a stripper eight or ten feet above our heads. In the lights, I could see the sweat shining on his forehead, lining the brim of his old, black hat. As he danced, the bottle of beer flailed wildly. While hovering above us, he put out his arms like a bird and steadied his beer bottle on the crown of his cowboy hat. This balancing act was not successful for long, however. The bottle toppled off his head and crashed to the floor. This scene repeated itself again and again over the months, as I went to show after show. I came to expect the shower of beer as if it were part of his showmanship, his signature. If I didn't leave a Beat Farmer show smelling like beer, I figured I'd done something wrong. On the final crescendoing note of the song, Country Dick jumped back onto the floor.

It was like the epicenter of an earthquake.

Soon, the Beat Farmers began playing larger clubs. In each show, Country Dick did four or five tunes that were so much of his persona, they were like rock and roll fingerprints. His cover of the Johnny Cash hit "Big River" was legendary, but I also liked "Beat Generation," "Lonely Blue Boy," and of course, the Beat Farmer original "Happy Boy," a cheery little tune about a guy's love for his dead, dead dog:

"My little dog Spot got hit by a car (hubba, hubba, hubba)
Put his guts in a box and put 'em in a drawer" (hubba, hubba, hubba)
'Cause I'm a happy boy. (happy boy). I'm a happy boy (happy boy)
Ain't it good when things are going your way?

And then there was "Big, Ugly Wheels," another Country Dick classic, this one about a truck driving girlfriend which contained the immortal line "She wants me to be true to her/She comes home once a month/Her mustache caked with vomit/and teethmarks on her butt." Those nights with the Beat Farmers allowed me to approach the abyss of my youth and spit over the edge. There was always a sense of freedom, wild abandon, and reckless fun.

The Beat Farmers finally got a record deal in the mid-80s with Curb Records and were slated to hit the big time. They began to tour regularly and played in San Diego less and less. But that was okay with me, because my last set of final exams were staring me in the face. School was almost over; and though I didn't know it at the time, so was the rite of passage that began on the first night Doug and I watched Country Dick step from behind his drums at that dive bar on University Avenue.

The last time I saw The Beat Farmers was about two months before graduating with a Bachelor's Degree and teaching credential. That fall, I landed a gig teaching literature to a group of disinterested juniors. In their eyes, I learned, I was not the swinging, bar-hopping, rock and roll madman I imagined myself to be, but rather the boring old man in Room E-4 who read Hawthorne for fun and spent weekend nights asleep on his desk, drooling into his three-hole punch.

Then one day, years later, as I was walking out of Starbucks, I saw a newspaper sprawled across a table and the headline caught my eye. It said something like LOCAL MUSICIAN DEAD AT 40. In the picture below, a tall man with a goatee was wearing a big, black Stetson, black sunglasses, and a brown leather duster. He was singing into the microphone like he was possessed and you could see waves of sweat sailing into the darkness like sparks. My grande Decaf nearly slipped through my fingers. After a moment, I realized I wasn't breathing. How long had it been, I thought to myself, six years? Seven?

It was November of 1995. That quickly eleven years of my life had passed.

Country Dick Montana was pounding the skins in a little club in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, playing with the rest of The Beat Farmers, when suddenly he slumped over his drum kit and died of a massive heart attack. An ambulance came, but the newspaper said that even before they pulled away, Country Dick Montana--or rather, Dan McLain--was dead.

I read the article six times at work, but picked it up again when I got home. I tossed the paper on the kitchen table, though, just before the ambulance arrived because the baby was crying and I had to get her ready for dinner. My wife and I had been married for two years now and we owned a condo in a master planned community near the beach. For a moment, I wondered where all these responsibilities had come from.

But the next weekend, after I'd changed the kitty litter or taken the dog on a walk, I locked myself in our bedroom, sat back, and listened to the old Beat Farmer music as if I was stepping back into Bodie's for the last time, as if Dick was hovering over my wobbly cocktail table and I'm worried he might lose his balance and crush me like a bug, as if it's one a.m. on a Friday night and not a single day has passed.

I was trying to find some way--some real and worthy way--to say good-bye.