Alright Guy: Todd Snider, Mark Twain of Lightning Strike Troubadours, Dies at 59

He had a cock-eyed smile, aquamarine eyes that could turn gray or amber and silky, dirty blond hair that just kinda hung there. Lanky, the nervous energy almost didn’t register in the limbs, but it made those eyes sparkle in a way even a master jewel-cutter couldn’t make a perfect stone glitter.
If you weren’t paying attention, Todd Snider was definitely the guy you wouldn’t see coming. Even with that Modigliani shaped early face, which would become more chiseled as he grew up, he was the one you’d miss in his baggy t-shirts, oversized button front shirts and pants barely making contact with his hip bones.
That was all the better for Todd, the observationist social commentarian who took on romantic dynamics, political issues and inequities with equally potent rapier-sharp insight and detail. He didn’t care if you saw him, because he was really busy watching… everything.
And it was all fodder, trust me.

When he showed up, he was equal parts Huck Finn, old school folkie troubadour, field hippie, activist, punk ass boy and punk rocker. Think Jeff Buckley with a slicing wit, a ZFG attitude and less heart throb baggage. Snider’d banged around a bit, classic story of the kid who was too smart for the room, talking back, talking smack and saying “F this” when it just wasn’t worth the effort. 
Somehow, living just outside Austin, he absorbed all the great songwriter/singers from an era before his: Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, Guy Clark, the early story song era of Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson. Heck, he stumbled into Jerry Jeff and his guitar, playing all of those songs at the legendary Gruene Hall, and turned into a burning bush of creative desire. With the help of Kent and Diana Finlay in San Marcos, he started learning the tides of holding a crowd, writing to lasso the listener and create a space that was his.
He rolled over to Memphis, got a gig at the Daily Planet, where journeyman writer, guitarist and session man Keith Sykes – a friend to all the legends noted above – stumbled onto Snider doing his weekly residence. Sykes witnessed to those friends, things started to happen.
After being so broke, he was more like one of Fagan’s kids in Oliver Twist, suddenly big things started popping. A label deal with a traditional label fell apart. Then Jimmy Buffett got his own label through MCA Records, the aptly titled Margaritaville, where long tall drawling femme rocker/writer Marshall Chapman recorded It’s About Time: Live from the Tennessee State Women’s Prison, Hunter S Thompson would deliver a record, as well as tasty Gulf roots bands the Iguanas and Evangeline. Perfect home for a kid who had a problem with authority.
Songs from the Daily Planet showed up as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and Green Day were dominating rock alongside regenerated Aerosmith, r.e.m. and yes, Hootie & the Blowfish. Kurt Cobain would die that April, leaving Snider looking a bit like a more robust cousin to the grunge poet.
If Snider wasn’t so sure about the corporate grind – he thought the perks and peccadillos were hilarious – the poohbahs weren’t so sure about a guy who’d tell anyone, anyone he thought was jive where to jump off. Thankfully Bob Mercer, who ran the label, Al Bunetta and Dan Einstein, who had a black belt in managing the quixotic songwriter/artist with John Prine and Steve Goodman, and of course, Buffett understood the temper and temperament of a true creative spirit.
Not only did Snider capture the lightning strike of the moment – the grunge rebellion, the commodification of rebellion in music, the over-styled and -hyped post-MTV world of pop culture – he chopped it up like the voice of the coming into their own generation he represented. The opening salvo – “My Generation (Pt. 2)” – offered the martini dry humor and detail anchor that made Planet a lethal weapon towards the bloat and marketing Boomers were grabbing with gusto.
Did you know there are people who put us down/Just because we get around
My generation, part two, verse three, chapter four, Jackson Five, Nikki Sixx…
and then into a “Subterrean Homesick Blues” list that skewered hair gel, health spas, fax machines, drum machines, credit cards, condom sense, paisley ties and watching “LA Law” or “Arsenio Hall.” But even more, he cites the malls, the living off the parents, 1000 points of light and not being so bright to let you know he knows there’s complicity to his generation’s sodden rebellion.
But it’s not all three chords and a middle finger. He brought industrial strength empathy with the awareness stoking “That Was Me,” an accordion-wheezing set of polaroids of less thans overlooked that invoked the Bible’s least of our brethren lesson without taking Jesus’ name into his work. He recognized believing you know people’s truths in the minor-keyed turn-of-a-moment reality that was the finger-picked revelation “You Think You Know Somebody,” with its unsettling denoument driven by unseen generational legacy and reverberations.
Sure, there was the jocularity of being caught with Madonna’s demi-scandalous SEX coffee table book in “Alright Guy,” the strolling overpowered-by-lust “Trouble” – “a woman like you walks into a place like this, you can almost hear the promises break” – and the pointed, hummmm-driven, electric guitar-lacerated “Turn It Up,” all swagger and coiled pounce of the cuckolded working class male blowing off steam. This was a record for raging, raving and rocking out with your friends, too.
That full-spectrum self-awareness came full circle with the surprise alternative radio hit “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues,” a wheezy harmonica-driven folkie treatise that opens invoking Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps Johnny Rotten homage “Hey Hey (My My),” lamenting his rock band’s  dead end, before turning into the record business frenzy over grunge; not only do they do the full embrace, they actually refuse to play – one upping the shoe-gazing, flannel-wearing oeuvre. A bidding war, millions of dollars, girls, drugs, 5 star reviews and conquering MTV, then the Grammys refusing to play a note, it’s a marketing gold rush that pops when the next new thing explodes.
Hilarious, brutal, the commentary flew by many, who thought it was a major rave. Snider didn’t care. Take what you want and leave the rest. But to truly understand, listen to that final four lines, that culminate with packing up the van, shaving off the goatee and announcing, “We’re going back to Athens,” Georgia, no doubt.
That’s the deal. Listen, really listen and the gems keep erupting. Wanna know what he’s really thinking? It’s all there. All the unspeakable slights, the hand shakes that were really bites, the notion that with a big grin and a little forward lean, you’ll think it’s glory, not invective covered in laughter.
Those are the facts, and they hold up, the scenes of how Todd Snider popped – fully formed – into the universe. 
But that’s the fun and joy that spilled over all kinds of places. Or the “He did what?” consternation that the grown-ups felt. One day, he just walked away from Jimmy Buffett’s tour, clearly over the whole industrial entertainment conveyor belt, and that was that. Or the time he did the MCA corporate event, spoke his mind and got his walking papers the next day.
Were there drugs involved? Probably. Crazy women? Absolutely. Lots of all kinds of late night, break it down conversation about injustice, inequity, lame ass garbage? Count on it. Bob Mercer would always work it out. Buffett and Prine cheered his “can’t be tamed” spirit. Bunetta, the manager, was a larger than life type, too; sometimes he’d be the voice of reason, alongside his partner Einstein, but other times, he’d laugh ‘cause he knew the legend was good for business.

It was also good for his creativity. By not folding the corners down, breaking his spirit or neutralizing the voice, Todd Snider emerged as the folkie-songwriter who could rock. Not quite a new Bob Dylan, he had too much brio for that, but certainly with his vulnerable kindness offered a precursor to Jeff Buckley, another street poet who’d straddle genres and marketing labels.
And that was what made Todd so exciting. If the record sales lagged a little, his touring life was robust. Sometimes with Will Kimbrough in his band. Sometimes Eddy Shaver. But when Todd was electric, it was incendiary – and so alive, it was the best way to get your truth delivered.
Todd, too, wasn’t afraid of the world. He’d show up in all kinds of places, cock-eyed grin grinning, or troubled about something going on; he’d walk up to you at Bongo Java and say, “Wanna talk?” and it would be the most whirlwind, breathtaking conversation you’d have all day. Sure, his concerns were real, but he probably already had the answer and was just checking the math – or he’d tell a story on himself, laughing until it was contagious. 
You couldn’t call him guileless. He was too smart for that. But self-effacing, with a champion in local roots queen Lynsey McDonald and her eventual beau/husband/co-parent/ex and at the time activator at Margaritaville Sam Knight. They were like forward motion with a champagne fountain; new ideas, novel concepts and “how do we lift this artist and label up?”
Hard work and the agony of defeat was rarely so ebullient.

When MCA dried up, Prine’s Oh Boy stepped in. They were big on ferocious writers who loved to lick their finger and put it in the electrical socket. Happy To Be Here saw a sleeker Snider through a glaring yellow filter at a tiger-striped banquette; but the cultural pops, commentary and reality capturing remained strong. “Missing You” was as yearning and lovely as anything releases that year, while “The Ballad of DB Cooper” air punched the spirit of reckless adventure and tall tales with a vengeance. 
Beyond his own social commentary with “Keep Off The Grass,” he dropped the taut miscegenation reckon “Betty Was Black (Willie Was White),” written by Kimbrough, Michael Grimes, Tommy Meyer and Tommy Womack, originally recorded for their album as the Bis*Quits. Sobering without preaching, percussive without numbing the brain, it was the embodiment of Snider’s gift.
Looking over a light board at the images for Happy, Snider emerged as a man who knew his gift was special; not quite settled into embracing his talent, but accepting there was a reason to be here, the slides were compelling in an iconic way. Not vanity, but look: this is the real.
The momentum didn’t come back, but Excitement Plan offered record biz commentary (“Vinyl Records”), jocularity (the much discussed did-they-steal-his-song “Beer Run”), reality ascending for the kids now 15 years into adulthood (“Class of 1985”) and always his romantic yearning. So many songs were tempered with the desire for love, the jagged shores it washes up on or destroys what you thought. 
Even if the “Alright Guy” radio hit was never to return, this was the proof Snider was going to settle into the same kind of record/tour/citizen of creativity realm of his heroes. Lots of kids make a few “songwriter” records, but they can’t maintain the intellectual hoist; Snider was still delivering, still true to what he believed, saw, captured.

Only Snider – being a generational talent – was about to crystalize a massive shift in Music City. While Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett, kd lang and Nanci Griffith represented a progressive turn in country, that would come to sweep up Kelly Willis, Joe Ely, the Mavericks and Iris DeMent, Snider dropped East Nashville Skyline. More than a play on Dylan’s seminal project, it planted a flag for the growing progressive music scene on the other side of the Cumberland River.
East Nashville Skyline was the culmination of all the touchstones that made Snider exceptional. Mike Tyson is celebrated in the almost sweet “Iron Mike’s Main Man’s Last Request,” while garage rock was given its kudos on “The Ballad of the Kingsmen.” Yes, commentary on the life (“Alcohol and Pills,” the poseurtastic call out “Play A Train Song” and the Jerry Lee Lewis-style boogie “Nashville”). Yes, embracing the simple truth in the pitfalls (“Sunshine”). But the Roman candle of the bunch is one of his most on-the-nose social takedowns, everything Nashville was already battling, but very few people saw (the sing-along lope of “Conservative, Christian, Right Wing Republican, Straight, White American Males”).
If a manual for us-and-them was ever written, this dozen songs more than delivered. Beyond a freak flag to fly, here was an album you could turn up. Here was a record that told people right where you stood. It created an unspoken signal, one that most of the “music biz” types didn’t really get, but also never really bothered to explore.
On a slow Thursday or lonely Saturday night, though, you’d find people at the Tower Records Listening Stations nodding their head in time. You could feel it from across the bins that held all the albums – or was it CDs? – that gusto of being alive even in the boredom or loneliness.

Of course, Todd lived these songs in a lot of ways. Rehabs, and more rehabs. Falling in love while falling out of addiction. Figuring out how to beat the system. Falling back into bad habits. Wives, loves, friends, music, music, always music. And collecting peers from the very best music people there were; because Snider was so versed in all the genres, he could hang with the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson as easy as roll around Texas with Robert Earl Keen or Jack Ingram.
Heck, the lovely Pamela Des Barres, known to the world as Miss Pamela from Frank Zappa’s notorious GTOs and author of I’m With The Band, was hired to write a bio for one of the MCA Records. She remained a staunch friend until the end. When Robert Plant flips his wig seeing you, when you were with Jagger in the room weighing the Altamont aftermath, you are a woman who understands the complexity of the rock & roll life, and quest to write truer, realer songs.
That peerage would let him lead a jam/alt supergroup called The Hard-Working Americans with Widespread Panic’s Dave Schools, Great American Taxi’s Chad Staehly, solo artist/songwriter/guitaristNeal Casal, Duane Trucks (Derek’s brother) and secret weapon multi-instrumentalist. If they came together for a Boulder benefit for Colorado Flood Relief, loved the vibe and kept touring, they ultimately landed at Bob Weir’s studio for an album of covers. It’s what musicos do.
Only that spark captured Snider’s – and everyone else’s – imagination. Reconvening, they wrote an album’s worth of material, including the raving anthem “Dope Is Dope” and a sobering cover of Guy Clark’s “The High Price of Inspiration.” This wasn’t a masterplan, a cash grab, a marketing move; it was communion over what happens when they got together – with or without a little peyote, acid or smoke thrown in for the imbibers.
That rock thing – Todd thin as a greyhound, built for speed and the heart to go the distance – was an explosion of wow. Watching audiences churn and roil before them, it was a time dissolve that perhaps harkened back to the Filmore and Filmore East, Joplin, Willie Nelson’s Dripping Springs Reunions. It was a superorganism of groove, feeling the moment.
Sitting on the bus after the show, completely wrung out, that banged up fedora with the artificial flower, Snider nodded. Talked about the insanity of what rock gives you, the freedom to jump off buildings and know you’ll fly on the energy coming back; he spoke of the eternal tug between conventional people and those willing to embrace the untamed piece inside; the joy that can be had when you stop and just feel the moments rushing past you.
When the American’s myriad schedules proved too impossible to converge, the East Side Bulldogs were born. With an even more complicated set of calendars, Elizabeth Cook, Bobby Bare, Jr, Tim Carroll, Jen Gunderman and more found themselves rocking for the sake of just blowing the carbsons out. A ferocious garage band of high school intensity with worldclass musicianship. Their rallying cry of “Chicks and cars and partying hard…,” which made the swerving taunt of “Hey Pretty Boy” so much joyous middle finger and who needs you?, was a siren’s call to anyone every judged by the golden, chosen kids. Suddenly, the ne’er-do-wells were everything – and kids who ruled the school went from hero to zero.
That musical dexterity made whatever Snider played seem somehow right on time.
Whether it was the more acoustic Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 with the “Talking Reality Television Blues,” the old style “Cowboy Jack Clement Waltz,” or the funky, side-of-the-mouth-delivery “A Timeless Response to Current Events,” the loose full band Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables with the working man duped by big business “New York Banker,” a rambling take on Buffett’s “West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown,” the atonal Crazy Horse-suggesting “All Too Soon,” or the power pop of “Brenda” or the Jerry Jeff Walker homage Time As We Know It, featuring “Railroad Lady,” “Pissin’ in the Wind,” “Mr. Bojangles” and guests Amy LaVere, Kix Brooks and Elizabeth Cook, there was a freedom to the music that wrapped around you. Yes, you had to get and dig the street folkie/prophet reality, but all the different flavors Snider could pull out of that spectrum were intoxicating.

Over the years, the funky, jazzman fedora-ed writer would have deals, not have deals, not really care. He didn’t do it for the product, he did it because he lived for the songs, the people who lived in them and the places they’d go. Oh, and the chicks were good. 
Todd loved women, which is why women loved Todd. His friendship with Elizabeth Cook is the stuff of legend; were-they-or-weren’t-they people wondered, so close was their bond, what man and woman could share that kind of kinetic intimacy without the hokey pokey?
Ye of little faith. It was the connection that mattered. Des Barres would stay with him when she was in Nashville doing writing seminars; photographer/film-maker/activist Stacie Huckeba has documented Snider’s career for decades, catching unguarded moments, formal portraits and everything in-between. The late Lynsey McDonald his best friend and ally, no matter what other career role or commitment she was forging – because Lynsey made people matter.
Even me. Between all the early morning back’n’forth emails to TMellyMoo@aol.com about whatever was going on, songs we liked, gossip no one else might care about, it was always a rush and a few smile- or thought-inducing volleys. Just because. Or going out to that low to the ground house on the lake with the incredible view of day’s end, trying to remember to take the time to go visit and watch the day die, not saying much, just taking it in.
Todd got it: taking in the moment, just being there, breathing it in, exhaling what didn’t work. Everything else aside, that was all that mattered. Make the space, take the slow roll to Hendersonville, just be… Just be… just… be.
On my better days, I trusted all that. When he and his good friend Richard Lewis decided to split the bill at LA’s seen-it-all Roxy, it was suggested I go. After all, two brilliant minds, both intent on skewering without bitching, what an incredible merging of comedy and song. 
If on paper, it didn’t make sense, who's to say? The neurotic and the ultimate shake it off guy coming together, one with raps and the other with a guitar? What could go wrong? How could the very different audiences pick up what the other guy was serving up?
Funny thing about funny: it transcends. “Beer Run,” “Play A Train Song,” “Can’t Complain,” “Conservative Christian…” and “Alright Guy” hit the intellectual Lewis’ fans right in the middle of their furrowed brows. And Snider’s fans, well, they get the jokes.
When the room emptied, the lights came on and just a few stragglers remained, the storied Los Angeles venue looked like a desolation pitstop for people chasing dreams. Somewhere on the stairway, Snider’s voice was singing, that slightly nasal tone bouncing around for nothing other than probably entertaining his friends. 
To be so alive, to share so freely. Since COVID, the loss of McDonald and Peter Cooper, the baseball fanatic-music critic/Country Music Hall of Fame writer/editor-erstwhile bandmate and the ravages of tornadoes on his home, he’d endured health issues that he chose to keep quiet. He’d made a commitment to do livestreams from Big Purple in East Nashville’s 5 Points, which in Taylor Swift-fashion became reinventions of his albums, that created a community out of the isolated times. Seeing his songs grown up was, indeed, a revelation.
Then came the weathered voice High, Lonesome and Then Some earlier this year. The recordings had a blues-lean, the occasional piano rumination; very handmade, very porous-sounding, it felt like a late night, lost hours confession. The ruminations on love, how it falls apart, how we want it offer a window to the conflicts we all struggle with.
It appeared if he wasn’t robustly chasing the fame, he was back in the game. Some tour dates were announced, and then… well… Salt Lake City happened. All the allegedly, the scrambling for answers, the no-doubt-rump-covering now falling into place. 
What we do know is once Todd got back to Nashville, he really was sick. Walking pneumonia, which is a pernicious beast that makes you think you’re being lazy, that it’s all in your head. But also sepsis that was pretty far along. 
Whatever else happened – an attack, being turned out of the hospital – this man was clearly ill.
And now, this man is gone. Fifty-nine years old isn’t old at all. Sure, he’d lived all nine lives, most likely; done all the drugs, had the big adventures, howled at the fullest moons, but surely it wasn’t time to die.
I got the text yesterday after from a musician friend at a session. “Can you give me a quick call?”
Texts like that, you respond to. He picked up, asked if I was somewhere safe, then told me the news. Time stops, even if you keep moving. You walk forward, ask for the table, sit down and try to make sense out of how someone so vexingly incandescent could be gone.
Then you cry. Then you think, “Who else might not know?,” knowing the news was being kept close – but also you don’t want someone you love crashing into an online headline or ham-fisted obit written with facts that miss the heart. Then you cry some more.

Funny thing about Todd, he lived his life like it wasn’t some precious thing to keep on a shelf. He was out there, living it, chasing it, wadding it up and shooting it at some unseen basket beyond the horizon. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, it was more he wanted to taste everything there was, and wasn’t afraid to go hammer it.
And now, well, he’s gone. Those last tour dates already cancelled, perhaps a harbinger of a superhuman life lived beyond limits maybe a little too far from the shore. The scuttlebutt is he shouldn’t have passed away. The reality is: he’s gone.
For those of us left behind, it’s a reminder to get out there and live. Just do it, as Nike says. Listening to all the songs, thinking about all the conversations, the music listened to, the stories written for so many publications over the years, the thing that keeps coming back is that cock-eyed grin, so pleased with whatever. 
Sure, he had demons. Don’t we all. But he also knew how to take a big bite out of life.
High, Lonesome and Then Some opens with “The Temptation To Exist,” a pretty straightforward admonition that seems like the perfect parting gift to us all. The chorus alone, so lean, so direct, serves as a directive for those of us who can never quite get the work done or the day finished.
You’ve got to live a little
Might be all we got
You’ve got to live a little
People die a lot
They do, look it up…

www.hollygleason.com

Dan Einstein & the Essence of What Matters: Unfinished Business, Prine & Sweet 16th's Grace

“He doesn’t talk to college papers,” said the voice at the other end of the phone.

“But college students are the future. They’re the next generation of fans,” I protested.

“He doesn’t talk to college papers.” CLICK.

I blinked twice. John Prine had a mail order record label. No one I knew knew who he was. Who was this rude person who wouldn’t even listen. I lamented for this empathetic soul who’d written about an OD’d Viet Nam vet, forgotten old people, a middle aged housewife shipwrecked in her marriage. If only Prine knew...

And then John Prine booked into the Carefree Theater, which ran smart movies and the occasional concert. Even though it was West Palm Beach, Doug Adrianson, my editor at The Miami Herald, would understand the value of this performance. He immediately assigned the story. 

The concert promoter was thrilled. A million people across the state would read the feature; it would help sell tickets on the other Florida shows they were promoting. Just one thing: I wouldn’t talk to that Dan Einstein. They could set-up the interview, but I wasn’t speaking to the rude man who’d hung up on me.

The day before the appointed time, Jeff Chabon, Fantasma Production’s publicist, begged me to please call the management office. “He’s a great guy,” he insisted. “We went to college board stuff together: him from UCLA, me from Arizona.”
“He’s a jerk. I don’t care.” I responded.
“Holly, they want to make sure you’re not a psycho.”

“You don’t want me to make this call...”

Sometimes you do what you gotta do. I picked up the phone, listened to a half-baked apology, said I didn’t care. I asked tersely, “Is it okay for him to call me now?” 

“Yes, tomorrow at 2.”

“Great.”
”He doesn’t like doing interviews, just know that.”
“Okay. Thank you.”

And at 2 pm on the dot a slightly sand-papered voice called, asking, “Is Holly there?”
We talked for over two hours. About so many things, the Midwest, Aimless Love, old songs, home cooking, country music, Johnny and Rosanne Cash, traveling the country – and not being too famous, just famous enough.

When I took a job at a competing paper, my story was spiked. When I went to review the Carefree show for the Palm Beach Post, because I knew small labels lived by people knowing they’re out there, they put me front row. Prine stepped over the speakers during the opening “Lulu Walls,” said, “Hey, Holly...,” scared me to death and forgot the next verse of his song.

Waiting after his set to apologize for wasting his time, Prine could’ve cared less. He wanted to tell me about Tribute To Steve Goodman, the tribute recording for his best friend who’d died from leukemia. Told me I should call the office and get a copy.

“Your office doesn’t like me,” I said. He laughed.

“Well, you call,” he encouraged. “And they’ll send it to you.”

“The Palm Beach Post isn’t that important,” I explained back in the days when advance cassettes on good tape was a meaningful expense.

“They’ll send it,” Prine assured, eyes twinkling. “Because I’m gonna make’em.”

Calling for the advance music, Dan Einstein asked if we could clear the air. Chagrined by the killed story, apologizing profusely, I agreed. He told me about the late folk singer, who I knew from Alex Bevan, my childhood idol who’d opened several Midwestern runs, about his sense of humor, love of baseball (especially the Chicago Cubs), his amazing family, his years long battle with leukemia. You could tell this voice on the other end of the phone really cared.

Barely out of college, I summoned the courage to tell him the story of visiting my aunt in Chicago as a young teen and seeing Goodman’s “Soundstage” on the local PBS station. So fired up by the broadcast, I made someone drive me down to the tv studio, where I was sure they would be loading out the gear. It was dark and abandoned when we got there.

That made him laugh. He promised to send me the advance cassettes, to Fed Ex them three day “because we’re a small label, and, well, we cut costs where we can.”

In the middle ‘80s, the idea of “running a label” for an artist with actual traction seemed crazy. Sure, Alex Bevan, my idol, had Fiddler’s Wynde, but he had the local record stores and his shows to sell records at. John Prine – or Steve Goodman – were nationally known. Major accounts weren’t going to deal with a handful of titles here, a new release with maybe 100 copies there. And yet, with the customer cards and mail order business, Oh Boy and Red Pajamas were making it work.

Dan Einstein was figuring out how to do the impossible. Over time, he figured out how to not just get the rack jobbers and accounts to do business with them, but to pay upon delivery. In a net 90 day business, Goodman and Prine were strictly COD. It took years, but they got there.

It was fascinating to hear the machinations of building allies, the stories behind pulling off the concert at the Aerie Crown Theater in Chicago with the local folkies, plus Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Arlo Guthrie, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

He would tell me stories, too, about the punk heyday in LA. Going to shows at the Masque, Madame Wongs, the Starwood. Tales of the Germs, X, the Cramps and the Screaming Sirens, booking the Motels at UCLA long before “Take The L” and “Only The Lonely” were hits. Through his eyes and words, I got to glimpse the raw demi-monde of a scene that felt like fire.

Sometimes I think we’d invent reasons to call each other, to just talk. Him, a college drop-out staking his claim with a small artist management company where he could build these crazy labels, me a music critic for an outer ring daily paper and freelancer with a growing national reputation through Tower Records Pulse!, Trouser Press, Performance, Rock & Soul, Billboard, HITS and Mix.

When Billy Vera had a moment with “At This Moment” during Michael J. Fox’s famous breakdown on “Family Ties,” Dan told me about Vera’s band the Beaters, about Peter Bunetta the drummer and emerging producer. The Palm Beach Post was early on that story, breaking two days before the Associated Press.

In the winter of that year, I was going to be in Nashville doing interviews and a little media training for CBS Records. He was going to be there for publishing administrator BUG Music’s new office celebration. “We should meet,” he said. 

I wasn’t so sure. What we had on the phone was great. Why ruin it? Why run the risk of... What? I didn’t know, but that first call, that first hang up nagged at me.

“Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun... and maybe I can get you into the show BUG’s doing with John, and John Hiatt, Dave Alvin, Marshall Chapman, some more people.”
And so, we met. Sat at Tavern on the Row, laughing and making small talk like we’re always known each other. He wasn’t as old as he seemed on the phone, and he really liked to laugh. We could’ve sat there from the end of the day to the show, but he had to go check on Prine. He left me with, “You’re on the list. I’ll see you there.”

Days when you go from interview to interview, a media training session wedged in, maybe a meeting with someone like Tony Brown to hear what he’s excited about can be exhausting. Was I going to even be awake by 10? But it was Prine, Haitt, maybe Peter Case, too.

The venue, long since bulldozed for what is now the massive Warner Nashville Building, was low-ceilinged and poorly ventilated. Just walking in, it was so hot, you felt the humidity. Unzipping my coat, looking around, I couldn’t find him... I just sat down where I could find a table, a little disappointed. Of course he has to work; he had the headliner. He was busy. What part of this did I not know? But before the first act came on, there he was, dragging a chair behind him. He knew that late, there wouldn’t be one; he brought his own.

That was Dan. Ahead of what needed to happen, ready with the solution.

After the show, he took me back to say “hi” to John, who admonished him to make sure I got to my car. Standing on the corner of 16th Avenue, the small talk continued until he finally kissed me. It was not Paris after the war, but it was a dam breaking. Stammering, because I’ve never ever thought in those terms, I kissed him back, then said, “I think we should probably go home.”

Whirling, it was one of those, “he likes me” moments. The knowing someone who you really think is smart actually truly likes you. You drift through the next few hours, sleep some, but a little more electric than before. What did it mean? Did it matter? Who knew...

Walking into Warner Brothers the next morning, I was greated by Janice Azrak barking, “You slut! You whore!” and regaling all in earshot about seeing me kissing some boy on the streets of Music Row last night. There were no secrets in that era Nashville, what was I – in a bright pink winter bomber jacket – thinking? Trying to explain, it was a pile-on. Embarrassed, shy, what do you say?

Nothing. I didn’t even know where the boy was staying. I didn’t have time to think.

Rodney Crowell, the great white interview whale, was that afternoon. After three years of asking anyone who might have a notion how, doing his wife Rosanne Cash for the cover of Coconut Grove’s alt-weekly Grapevine, having had multiple publicists from the high cred Network Ink intercede for me with their assistant, it was to be. There wasn’t a record to tie it to, but having been a fan of his writing, it was a chance to unpack bruised romanticism, life as Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band wingman, a producer on the rise and a maverick talent who’d signed a poster from his last Warner Bros. record to me after I sent a copy of my review from Rollins College’s paper to the publicist at his label,
The interview was incredible. Crowell is a good and easy talker. He drank a gallon of water, unraveling stories of growing up in the “white trash” part of Houston, the road with Harris, writing pop and country hits for the Dirt Band, living in California and moving to Nashville. Leaving there, I was levitating.

When I got back to my friend Ben’s house, there was a note with a number. I called, asked and was put through to the room. A suddenly formal voice said, “Uhm, may I take you to dinner?”

“Well, yes,” I said, still afterglowing from a great interview. Suddenly awkward, “But, uhm, one thing...”

“Okay. I mean, I was thinking we could go somewhere kind of nice.”

“I interviewed Rodney Crowell, and I really don’t want to change out of these clothes,” I hedged.

“Okay, that’s fine.”

“Well, I’m in a yellow sort of sweat shirt and sweat pants,” I explained. “I was, uhm, thinking we could go to... Krystal?”

“KRYSTAL?”

“Is that okay?”
“I was thinking I could take you to a nice dinner...”
“I know, but I would really like to just go to Krystal.”

There was silence.

“If you don’t mind. I mean, it’s really nice that you want to do that.”

“I have John’s credit card. He said to go use it.”

“You don’t have to tell him...” I hedged. He laughed.

And Krystal it was. For a handful of teeny double cheeseburgers. Three hours of talking over fountain cokes. What about? Who knew? Where we’d been. What we thought, or figured. We only stopped to pick-up my friend Ben Payne at the airport, whom we dropped off, and rode around for another hour talking.

I left the next day. When I got home, there was a message on the machine to call Dan and let him know I’d made it back safely.. It was a different number. When I called, John Prine answered, said, “Hey, Holly...,” then called out, “Daaaaaaannnnnnn, it’s a girl.”

And so it began. 

Unbeknownst to me, the man who wrote “Donald & Lydia” and “Paradise” was our Cupid, finding ways to throw us together. Telling Dan to take me to the Grammys a few weeks later, “if she’s a reporter, she’ll love that. She can file for that little paper.” Hiring me to write the bio for German Afternoons, so they could fly me to Washington, DC for Prine’s sold-out Wolf Trap show. The second Farm Aid, where it was brutally cold in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the dressing rooms were masking taped sections of the fieldhouse floor. Making Dan come to do settlement when they had Florida shows, then taking me out on the run with them.

Funny thing is: it didn’t take much. Anyone who talked with Dan, fell in love with him. So smart, so many ideas of how to make things work that one couldn’t figure out. From him, I learned the idea of your friend is my friend. Cathy Hendrix in Atlanta, running a small label. Mike Leonard outside Chicago, doing stories for NBC’s “Today.” Marina Chavez, their once receptionist, who would become one of roots music’s pre-eminent photographers. So many names; all they ever had to say was “Dan told me to give you a call...”

And it worked that way the other way, too. The Illinois Entertainer. David Gans at MIX. Cowboy Jack Clement, the legendary producer and Sun Records’ creative spark. Steve Berlin when Los Lobos was on tour for Will The Wolf Survive. Always, “Hello” and “What do you need?”

That was Dan’s heart, and he brought it out in others. Just as the somewhat shy, often unwilling to let you know how really accomplished he was man kept making impossible strides and creating magic and unthinkable things.

By the very next Grammys, Oh Boy and Red Pajamas had two of the five nominations in the inaugural Best Contemporary Grammy category. Tribute to Steve Goodman, with all those loving performances from the Chicago folk community and a few famous friends, and German Afternoons showed that artists who didn’t fit the system could make a mark making music on their terms.

When I saw the nominations, I screamed. Dan, being Dan, said, “Well, I guess this mean it’s working.”

Working? The mail order business, with the comment cards. The occasional catalogues to tempt people into other albums. The one-by-one accounts. Slowly, purposefully, building to something that almost paralleled what the big labels did on a far smaller scale.

“We have to do something special,” I remember on a late night phone call, trying to come up with some way to mark this moment. Whether he knew the significance or not, as a reporter, I recognized what they’d done out of three sunlit rooms in a slightly worndown building built for Marion Davies by William Randolph Hearst.

Having made many trips to see my boyfriend and eventual fiancée, I had found a street fashionable boutique on Melrose where they made clothing out of very old kimonos patched together to give the beautiful fabric new life. Claudia Grau and her staff would visit with Dan and I when we would go to Melrose, talking about local music gossip, people on the scene and life as an indie label.

When I asked if she’d consider making me a dress, the answer was yes. When we were in the store discussing it, they asked Dan to try on a pair of pants they were thinking of making as a unisex option. Laughing about trying them on the “girls dressing room,” he came out – and they looked at each other smiling.

Were they really thinking about genderless clothing in the later ‘80s? Hard to say.

But when Dan picked up my dress and bolero to bring back to Silver Lake, he was aghast. 

“BooBoo, what’s wrong?” I asked, not sure why he was so thrown.

“They... uhm...”

“Yes.”

“They made me... a cumber bund and a bow tie. They...”

“Is there something wrong?”

“They wouldn’t let me pay them for it. They said to wear it for good luck.”

“Is it ugly?”

“No, no... It’s...”

He reached into the bag, where it had been lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. Pieces of kimono in rich, deep tones had been sewn into what a man wears with a tux. Judging from the size, it would fit perfectly. I smiled. Those women wanted to give him so love in exactly they way they knew how.

“It’s beautiful, Dan. I think you should put it on. I think we need to leave soon. It’s pre-telecast and it’s LA... and we have to valet.”

At the Shrine Auditorium, back in the smaller more community music industry days, people were glad-handing, waiting for the doors to open to begin the awards to small for network television. We sat down hear the front; John, me, Dan, Al Bunetta and his wife Dawn watching the winners be elated and thank the people who mattered to them. The Winans, a gospel group with family members in seemingly every category, were so euphoric we decided we had to go hear their music.

And then it was Best Contemporary Folk... and the winner is... Tribute to Steve Goodman. Dan hesitated more than a beat. Prine reached over, with a big smile, and said to his friends, “You better go get it.”

It was a blur. What they said, what happened next. If the year before, Dan had found me a pay phone to file from – because as a date, I wasn’t in the press room – then kept people away from me, while trying to make the connection work with the remote transmitter, this year, he was a big winner.

“I can’t believe this,” he whispered when he got back from the press gauntlet. “How did we do this?”

“Well, you booked a theater... you called Stevie’s friends,” I joked. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. 

“You understand this mean’s Stevie’s not forgotten,” he said. “And all those people who loved him, they’re not going to be forgotten either. Those songs now maybe live on...”
“Yes, Dan, I do. Because that’s what you do. You make sure people aren’t lost, or overlooked, or forgotten.”

He squeezed my hand. “Maybe. And when this is over, we’re going to get Chinese food. Or the Pantry. Or Astro. Or something.”

“Hey, can we just be here right now?”

Being here now could mean so many things, because Dan’s ability to love and be curious went so many places just in LA. The San Diego Zoo. The train to San Juan Capistrano. Pacific Coast Highway north until we decided to come home. The tea room at I. Magnin, “because who would ever believe people lived this way? And we can still pretend.” The carousel on the Santa Monica Pier. Shows everywhere where he knew everyone.

When The Palm Beach Post fired me – alleging things that couldn’t be further from reality or the truth – Dan was on a plane the next day. “Don’t worry,” he said when I called him in tears. “We’re going to figure this out.”

Picking him up in Miami, as I’d done so many times, he announced, “I think what you should do is move to LA... and become the world class rock critic you are. Screw small town papers. If The Herald doesn’t have room, then come to LA.”

“But Dan, a freelancer can’t afford those bills...”

“They can if they move in with me. Tell you what: you pay your phone bill, and I’ve got the rent. Can you do that?”

Speechless, I nodded. Then in three days, we packed up on apartment, setting most of it in storage, the things coming in my car in a pile by the door; things that were precious were in a suitcase he took with him.

As we worked to clean up the apartment, I used dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher. He emerged from the back bedroom to a living room engulfed in suds and bubbles; the howling laughter pulled me from deep cleaning the grout.

“Ohhhhhhh, Luuuuuuuceeeeeeeeee...,” he said through giggles, “you’re home.”

I burst into tears. He hugged me. “THIS is funny. We will laugh about this always. Please stop crying. Please, please. Only you, and that’s why this is so perfect. I’ve already scuba’d in, stopped the dishwasher. We’re going to have to get this cleared out, but let’s laugh and jump around in the bubbles.”

Let’s laugh and jump around in the bubbles. And we did. Eventually opening the patio door, taking armfuls and boxes of soap suds out into the bushes. It looked a bit like a snow drift when we were done, but we were laughing and finding an ironic joy in the shattered disappointment of being treated so poorly by people who had no idea what they had.

Before I turned in my key, I’d sold a story on Jackson Browne to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner for a Chrystic Institute Benefit he was doing. I would arrive – after a week at Fan Fair, where he would meet me for the drive to California  – a published Los Angeles-based writer.
When he told Prine what happened, John said, “Well, then you two kids should come to England and Belgium with me. It’ll be just the thing! Have some fun. See the world. Screw that stupid paper.”

We could barely see out the back window of my teeny Nissan Pulsar, but away we went. Telling stories about the towns we drove through, looking up stuff on the map. Sometimes we’d try a truck stop, other times we’d just roll into a grocery store and grab an apple or some yogurt. Somewhere in Oklahoma, a stock boy bagging up water for us saw my advance cassette of Motley Crue’s next album; he came a little unglued.

Dan winked at the teen, and went, “Magic is real. Sometimes these things escape – and if you’re lucky, you catch them.”

“Whoa, man,” the kid replied. “But that’s THE CRUE....”

“And it F’ing rocks!” Dan affirmed, laughing. “You’re gonna love this record. It’s sooooo good.”

Never mind he was wearing enormous glasses, had a tiny pony talk and a well-groomed beard. He looked nothing like an Okie headbanger, and yet. The kid nodded solemnly, and Dan nodded back.

Coming into Tucumcari, New Mexico, Dan had started singing Little Feat’s “Willin’,” the Lowell George truckin’ song Linda Rondstadt had mainstreamed. We both loved Little Feat and the Band, so it seemed like ironic soundtracking at its finest. Nosing the car off Rte. 66, we landed in the parking lot of a low to the ground turquoise building wearing a sombrero. 

“Some of the best Mexican food in the world,” he offered smiling. “I thought a little adventure and a surprise would do you good.” 

It was delicious. Unexpected. Soul-sustaining as well as stomach-filling. We decided to drink some coffee over our plates of cheese enchiladas, to just keep going as far as we possibly could. What had started as a retreat in defeat was truly becoming the beginning of something else. I didn’t know, but this person believed, so I did, too.

Back when the first wave of women rock critics had mostly faded away, I wanted to do something that wasn’t really being done. White men, often with Ivy League degrees, had taken over – and even having been on the road with Neil Young as a college student, having written a Tower Pulse cover story on Johnny Cash/Waylon Jennings/Kris Kristofferson/Wille Nelson’s Highwaymen configuration, as well as the Trio with Linda Ronstadt/Emmylou Harris/Dolly Parton – I was often the only woman in the room. Taken seriously? Yeah. Sorta.

When a record company person would want to take me to lunch, Dan would patiently explain to his wildly dyslexic girlfriend how to get where she was going; occasionally telling me what to order to prevent a dining disaster with the more exotic – to me – cuisines. He would explain why surface streets were better; implore me not to give homeless people money “as the mental hospitals have been cleaned out, dumped into the streets and you never know which paranoid schizophrenic might have a box cutter.”

Musician turned to BAM. The Los Angeles Times started using me, as did Music Sound Output, Home Studio Recording, FRETS, CD Review. YM came calling. Dan was right: I was a national level music critic, only my location suggested anything else.

Rolling Stone fell open when I got a call about talking to Joe Isgro, the independent record promoter who spoke to no one. When I called with the news, squealing and not bothering with spaces between words, he just said, “Get dressed.”

Not too long later, he showed up with that proud smile. “You hungry?”

I was still squealing. Rolling Stone in the ‘80s was a tough nut to crack; two issues a month, the space was finite – and freelancers were rarely used. But I had my CP Shades matching oversized top and skirt, my grey with black wingtip Tony Llamas on. 

“Where are we going?” I asked. 

“Surprise,” he said, as the car nosed down the Duane Street hill, through Silver Lake and onto the surface streets that would eventually put us on Sunset Boulevard. Passing the Comedy Store, I figured we’d either head towards Dan Tana’s – one of Prine’s favorite spots – or go to the fancy Hamburger Heaven just off Sunset. 

But we turned just before Tower Records, nosed up the hill behind the car rental place we used and into a lot outside a low all white building. The valet opened our doors, and I blinked.

“SPAGO?” It was the outpost of stars in movie magazines, glitterati like Cher and Pacino.

“You only get in Rolling Stone the first time once,” he said. We could barely afford it. When we got engaged, we didn’t even bother with the ring, because “we’d rather eat it than have me, a girl who doesn’t care about jewelry, walking around with it on my left hand.”

One of the Bangles was two tables over. We were against the far wall, near a window. Dan let me have the seat facing the wall. We had champagne and pizza, and we laughed like this was a dream and we would wake up. Only we didn’t. We had desert.

And then I saw her. Lauren Bacall. Even more beautiful in person. Stunning. 

“What?” Dan asked, unused to my being overcome. 

“I, I can’t... even,” I stammered. The impossibly discreet restaurant didn’t cotton to gaping at the other diners.

Just as I was about to be busted, I rose, walked over to the iconic actress, and went for the compliment to save – I hoped – our bacon. I could see Dan getting nervous, trying to conjure a Plan B and C.

“Miss Bacall,” I said, as the manager stood by, not wanting to make more of a deal. “You are so very beautiful and elegant, and you embody even more completely in person everything I was raised to believe a lady should be. It’s staggering, and I just wanted to tell you how truly incredible you are – and thank you for the example you’ve been my whole life.”
The manager was staring. Bacall looked up at the man, looked at me, smiled, then said, “MY darling, how incredibly charming you are. Thank you so much for coming over... and letting me known. Your mother must be so proud.”

I just smiled and nodded, started backing away. “Yes, ma’am, and thank you. I just thought it was important for you to know...”

“Well, you’re the sweetest.”

Back at the table, Dan let out a low whistle. Without ever chiding, he said, “I was trying to figure out if I had enough money to just leave the cash on the table, so we could just make a run for it... I can’t believe you pulled that off.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“I haven’t decided,” he said, shaking his head. “Somehow you pull this stuff off, and everyone loves you. But God, Holly, sometimes you scare me to death.”

That was Dan. He’d never clip anyone’s wings, or tell them how to live. When things were good, he would throw open the window in case you could fly, and put out a net, in case you couldn’t. It didn’t matter what or how, just that it was something wonderful.

And when it wasn’t so wonderful, he knew what to do, too. Shortly after arriving, at a Roger Waters concert, we landed in the dressing room after the show. Being taken to meet Jackson Browne, who refused to believe I’d interviewed him – and the back and forth escalating with me moving from horror at the misunderstanding to anger at being betrayed by a socially conscious artist who’d opened up how I’d seen the world, Dan quietly walked over, put his fingers into the waist band of my jeans and gently pulled me back and away.
Outside the dressing room, I collapsed into a pile of tears. How could Jackson Browne think I’d made that up? Why would I? He’s only talked to me and a reporter from Newsweek in four or five years? How does one forget that? Why would he not try to understand?
“ShhhhSHHHHHShhhhhhhshhhhhhhhh...” he whispered, petting my back, telling me it didn’t matter. “Shhhhhhhhhh...”

As the sobbing turned to sniffles, he held me at arm’s length, looked into my eyes and said – perhaps – one of the most important things anyone’s ever said to me. It endures.

“Holly, you have to make a very important decision,” he began. “Jackson’s behavior was atrocious, and we don’t know what’s going on... but you have loved those records, those songs, how he chooses to use his fame for good for so long. Are you going to let the fact that he just acted like an ass take that from you? OR are you going to chalk it up to he’s mortal, and that music is a part of your life?”

He paused to let the question sink in. Then he smiled as I looked at him, slightly dazed. “Because as much as I would love to come home and not have to hear Late for the Sky or For Everyman set on 11, I also know what those records mean to you. I wouldn’t hand something so precious over because a human being made them...”

And so, to separate the art from the mortal, the artist from the flawed being. He was right. He was, honestly, always right. 

And he always knew just where to be. When South By Southwest started, we were there. When “Austin City Limits” was more for country singers, they sent John Prine to Terry Lickona and his wonderful weekly show any time they asked. The New Music Seminar – leaning to hip hop and dance, punk and new wave – was his regular stomping grounds. 

Duke’s at the Tropicana, where Rickie Lee Jones and Tom Waits used to hand out. McCabe’s Instruments in Santa Monica, where small shows happened in the back room. The Palomino Club in North Hollywood, a once old school country room co-opted by the punks and Ronnie Mack’s Tuesday night BarnDance with Jim Lauderdale, Lucinda Williams, James Inveldt and so many more; Buddy Miller on the bandstand with Duane Jarvis, Pete Anderson by the cigarette machine and Manuel, the heir to famous rhinestone tailor Nudie Cohen, at the bar.

Characters, colorful people. Chuck E. Weiss. Howie Epstein, who would ultimately produce Prine’s (finally) Grammy-winning Missing Years and Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings. The Heffernan Brothers, who’d produce the Irish series “Sessions” to cross-pollinate Irish and British roots artists with American and the occasional Mexican. Jac Holzman, who founded Elektra Records under the aegis of Warner Brothers, took me to lunch to explain how they did it, to give me even more insight into how herculean what Dan had built with Red Pajamas and Oh Boy.

Formosa Café. The Apple Pan. The Cheesecake Factory in Marina Del Ray to meet his sister. The Mandarette. Border Grille when it was a tiny little nook on Melrose. Dan Tana’s and Pacific Dining Car when Prine was in town. Netty’s takeaway on Silver Lake Boulevard, eating there on the picnic tables. Searching the tables at Lucy’s El Abode, me asking which one Jerry (Brown) met Linda (Ronstadt) so many years ago.

Always Intermetzo, the little house on Melrose where you could sit at the counter front and watch them make California-fresh French or the lovely tented patio out back. Even when they were busy, they’d find a table for Dan – and we’d eat fettucine with goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, fresh herbs and walnuts. 

Those small things thirty years later, you can still close your eyes and see, feel, taste. The way the light cast caramel tinges or the hyperblue of early morning, the Raymond Chandler dingy overhead pulp fiction light of Kate Mantilini on Wilshire where dinner could be had extra late – or the blaring brightness of Ben Frank’s on Sunset Plaza if quicker was more in order after the Comedy Store or the Roxy.

We grew up together, became fully formed people together. He a brilliant young executive who could pave a way that hadn’t existed before. Me, a lady rock critic with a strong roots-bend who was a confidante for Keith Whitley, Sam Kinison, Patty Loveless and Nicolette Larson. We co-existed, sparkled in each other’s universes and made the other more. That’s how it’s supposed to be, and that’s how it was.

But even something perfect, sometimes, it’s not the “what it should be,” or the “happily ever after.” Yes, Dan could laugh off my father’s first real question being, “So, Dan, what do you think about Jews for Jesus?” after surviving Easter mass at the Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida... and certainly, I could explain to his stepmother Lynn if it was so important to the family and Dan would make sure they were raised in faith, “of course we could raise the children Jewish; they just need to have faith in a God who loves us.”

Somewhere along the line, it dawned on me. Dan’s happily ever after was somewhere else, and so, I let go. Moving out was tricky; Dan kept coming to vet my potential new apartments and neighborhoods. Finally, West Hollywood, right near the Mayfair Market, I found a quiet executive studio and signed the lease.

No tears, only the admonishment. “Wherever she is, I don’t want you to miss the one.”
Friday night buzzer rings, tales of dating disasters. I’d protest, “I’m writing,” he’d counter, “I have Fruzen Gladje.” Always, I would buzz him up.
We stayed friends, good friends. Shared meals at Barney’s Beanery and Hugo’s, both walking distance from my house. When I got sent to Nashville by HITS, he once again helped me pack up and move; drove me to the airport when I’d come back for business.

He took a Chinese cooking class at some point, called me several weeks into it he thought he’d found her. The lump in my throat was joy. BooBoo, the man who once gave me pink bunny slippers we immediately named Chuck and Di, was finally, hopefully getting the love he so truly, deeply deserved.

Loving people isn’t about possession, but wanting what’s best for them, the things that will make them happy. Thissounded like everything I believed when I pulled the chord on the parachute.

When Al Bunetta Management moved operations to Nashville, closer to Prine, but also a creative community fomenting into a place like Austin or Athens, maybe a rootsier Minneapolis or Hoboken. Dan came first, to get settled and figure out what life might look like.

We ate some meals, had some laughs, talked a lot about life. He was so happy. Everything I’d seen was turning out, he maybe didn’t know it, but he knew my Black Irish heart. When it makes up its mind, there’s no drama, but there’s also no going back.

They bought a place. Ellen started high end food styling for tv, film and magazine shoots. Dan continued doing what he ‘d always done – signing acts, helping people realize their dreams. If he’d co-managed the Rave-Ups in LA, now there was Todd Snider, the folkie championed by Keith Sykes, Prine and signed to Jimmy Buffett’s lablel. 

Blue Plate, formed to spread the gospel of West Virginia Public Radio’s Mountain Stage syndicated series, was expanding. Oh Boy Classics mined the (Sony) Tree Publishing vaults for recordings by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Conway Twitty and more. Oh Boy signed the roots/rock Bis*Quits with Tommy Womack, Will Kimbrough and Grimey’s co-owner Michael Grimes, as well as Donnie Fritts, Janis Ian and Kris Kristofferson.

What had begun when they were in California with Epstein making Prine’s sound rockier and more muscular continued. The Missing Years and Lost Dogs ushered in a renaissance. After John’s cancer battle, Dan helped usher in a shinier way of polishing dreams. Beyond the Billy Bob Thornton movie “Daddy and Them,” which featured “In Spite of Ourselves,” Dan helped co-ordinate an album of the same name with duets on country classics with women singers Prine admired from Connie Smith to Delores Keane, Emmylou Harris to Trisha Yearwood, Melba Montgomery to Patty Loveless. Longtime tourmate Iris DeMent was on several; she would later sing it on “Sessions at W. 54th” with Prine. 

Watching his second friend battle cancer moved Dan tremendously. He would look at what was created, the things that mattered and the way life can flow away from you while you weren’t looking. He loved his wife. He loved what they shared. He’d done everything you could do on the indie side, and he wondered, “What else?”

Twenty years ago, he did the unthinkable: he walked away from show business. Started a bakery in East Nashville, when East Nashville was still more scary than hip. He pioneered the concept of creating something for his community, a place that gave back and gave refuge. He knew how small things changed lives, so he figured he and Ellen could create somewhere that offered that to people in a way anyone could partake.

Sweet 16th Bakery was born. A building that was demolished and rebuilt. A bunch of recipes from their families, and a few from friends. A breakfast sandwich – “one to go” – that’s been hailed by Gourmet, Southern Living and been named one of Food + Wine’s Top 10 Breakast Sandwiches in America.

The sweets are legendary, having won the Nashville Scene’s Best Cupcake so many times, they’re not even in competition any more. Elvis Cupcakes. Brookies. Scones. Coffee Crack Cookies. Myriad flavor coffeecakes, hand pies and danish. 
Even more than the food – they do meatless soups, grain-based salads, Dos Papas Burritos, quiches and lasagnas – is the comfort. Everyone who goes there works on the “friend of Dan’s (and Ellen’s)” principle. Conversations are had, friendships cemented.
There are dog treats for the pups, cookies snuck to the children. Dan leaning over the counter, smile and eyes glittering, are a sight countless young Nashvillian’s have grown up on. To them, he is “Dan, Dan the Muffin Man” with good reason.

On horrible days, Dan could feel it. He’d come around the counter, sweep someone up in a hug. When a friend’s husband left her, he went to the guy and told him what a mistake he was making – and made sure, man-to-man, he understood the impact of his capriciousness. 
For me, he was always my rabbi, my compass, my human. No matter was hanging over me, pushing me into a corner or creating a particularly nasty vector around me, he’d have the wisdom to know what to do. Always.
And he was always so generous with his insight and his time. Having been cradle babies together, we understood each other in ways most people can’t. If you didn’t live through it, there’s no prism to explain or make clear. We didn’t need it, we lived through it.

A few months ago, Dan was back from the rehab hospital where he’d been getting his strength back from surgery. We were talking in a corner of the bakery, sharing thoughts on the state of everything, when he paused. “You know, you need to start figuring out an exit plan,” he began. “We were gonna do that this year, before the surgery, now we want to get me well, then figure it out, because there’s a great big world out there – and we’ve all worked long enough and hard enough to deserve to experience it without all the responsibility of what we do.”

“Really, Dan?” I asked, because work was just part of not being independently wealthy.

“Yes, find someone to look at where you are, figure out what you need. Promise me.”

It had been two years of COVID, real financial uncertainty. Scrambling to make my bills, to try to put money up for retirement. What I believed was solid wasn’t necessarily what I believed. And here was Dan speaking truth to me about the reality of life post-pandemic.
Promise me.

Promise me.

As Dan has bounced back and forth with rehab hospitals and infections, he’s been the guide to an anthology for Chicago Review Press called Prine on Prine: Interviews and Encounters. Between us, we unlocked so many missing pieces in those pre-Google, pre-Wikipedia world where AllMusic.com is cited as it’s a real time source. In this pre-digitized morgue world, so many stories have been lost; but thanks to having been there, they’re not found.

The week before he took ill, we talked for two and a half hours from his hospital bed. He was so clear, so sharp – and so ready to get well. Weighing all of it, the ground broken, the music made, the achievements, he got incredibly serious.

“Did any of it matter?” he asked, truly contemplating. 

Twelve minutes of my monologue later, he laughed. 

“I don’t know, Bunny Girl,” he said. “You look at what people value now, you wonder. You look at how all they care about is what they think and not what happened, you realize: the days of paying attention or really feeling stuff may be over.”

“Only if we accept that, Dan,” I countered. “Only if we decide that we aren’t willing to raise our hands, make the points, show people what they can’t see.”

“You might be right,” he laughed. “This book is going to blow people’s minds. There’s always so much more than people see, so many things you can show them. Maybe that’s the deal...”

“Yeah, Dan, that’s the deal. Look at all the things – high and low – you showed me. And you still are. Always will. It’s what you do...”

“Aren’t you going to say ‘and why you matter?’” he teased, knowing I like to complete the circle when I talk. 

“No, because everyone knows why you matter, and I don’t have to say it. Everything about how you live, what you do, the way you treat people: it’s all a lesson in what matters. I know. I’ve been watching you for years.”
16 January 2022. **.**** www.hollygleason.com