BEYOND THE CORAL REEFER: Jimmy Buffett Finds That One Particular Harbor

BEYOND THE CORAL REEFER: Jimmy Buffett Sails Into That One Most Particular Harbor

It was always the ne’er-do-well golf pros. Everything cool, somehow contraband and just beyond the true reach of a 12-, 13-year old girl who was too thin and absolutely curious about what the grown-ups didn’t see because they weren’t paying attention.

Songs about smugglers, washed out drifters, deadbeats and writers would drift from that backroom, occasionally with a waft of steel guitar and some short blasts of harmonica. The voice felt just like one of those naughty golf pros – warm, familiar, welcoming, wry – except it had some flannel to it, some molasses and a bit of cayenne as it flowed over notes that lifted and fell like the curtains on a slow, humid night.

He sang of a Florida I knew from going to Pompano, Delray, Palm Beach to work on my golf game during the six, seven months Cleveland wasn’t hospitable to that sort of thing. When his voice drifted out the bag room on a small gust of gasoline, dope smoke and sweat, my ears pricked up for the stories, always the short stories about pirates looking at 40, men going to Paris to seek something, lives intersecting in Montana...on Monday.

It was all so romantic. Even before I knew about “Margaritaville,” because I lived in a place and time before that Key West loser’s lament became the freak flag, good-time National Anthem. Somewhere in the delta between personal responsibility and screw it, that song plumbed the awareness of a man who knew better, but just didn’t care.

Jimmy Buffett must have been changing labels. I bought all those ABC/Dunhill Records – it seemed – remaindered at Record Theater at the Golden Gate Mall. A1A after the single lane coastal road that ran along the east coast of Florida; the sunk skiff Livin’ & Dyin’ in Three Quarter Time that was too hillbilly on first listen, but “West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown” reminded me of too many babysitters; White Sport Coat & A Pink Crustacean who’s “Grapefruit Juicy Fruit” felt like something I was living, a Gatsby world for a barely teenage Catholic driving to another golf tournament, as well as the slinky “They Don’t Dance Like Carmen No More” that saw my father wax rhapsodic about Carmen Miranda and then wince when “Why Don’t We Get Drunk & Screw” rolled up.

We didn’t think about “labels” then, just “cool” or “lame.” Cool, of course, came in degrees. Buffett was that uncle your parents wouldn’t let babysit, even if he could talk to them about sailing, literature or Gulf Coast resorts. That made his sangfroid that much more delicious to a kid sitting on a worktable in a back room, not getting all the references.

“Margaritaville” wasn’t a hit when people started singing it, just the self-confession of the guy who drank himself out of the deal – and wasn’t 100% sure he cared as the hangover throbbed. He was coping, tequila, ice, lime and blender. For a washout, it was perfect.

All the sun slaves loved it. Work hard, party hard, recover while you you’re onto the next.

I loved that he painted this Florida of black top turned grey by the sun, the old people in plastic shoes, Walgreens and crusty ne’er do wells in bar rooms watching the ceiling fans turn. He got the Key West of Hemingway, who I already adored, Tennesseee Williams, who would beguile me in college, as well as the next wave macho literary and creative brios Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Guy de le Valdene.

Key West was for pirates. Dusty, dirty, chickens roaming the streets, space between buildings that held Lord knows. It felt like electric creativity when my father and I would escape from “practice,” head South over the 7 Mile Bridge and set to walking the streets like the tourists we were: an older Dad and a scrawny little tomboy, both sponges for whatever was in the air.

He’d lie to Mom about where we were, that’s how I knew it was good. And when Buffett’s songs came pouring out of a muscle car’s rolled down window or in that badly-ventilated back room, I was right there at Sloppy Joe’s on a barstool next to my father.
“This is the stuff, pro,” he’d tell me. “THIS is... the stuff.”

Buffett was snide about the right stuff, tender with the good stuff and savoring of the naughty stuff. Even before he turned into a billionaire industrial conglomerate of frozen drink machines and retirement communities, he understood not just what mattered, but how.

If the Eagles were “The Dirty Dozen,” Buffett was Butch Cassidy’s “Sundance Kid.” He had the escape route planned; he wasn’t backing down and he wasn’t afraid to hit the tricky spot. At a time when Southern California rock included Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, J.D. Souther, America, Neil Young to some, Poco to others, Buffett was the Southern cousin, a bit more leaning to the folkie side of singer/songwriter.

He ran with Jerry Jeff Walker, Jesse Winchester, Steve Goodman. He got those traditions. He exhumed Lord Tom Buckley’s “God’s Own Drunk (& A Holy Man),” which he delivered with a hilarious ramble on You Had To Be There. It was that notion of street musicians, playing for tips and vibes; a secret handshake and a wink to a counterculture that was as romantic as it was pungent.

“People ask me, where in the hell is Margaritaville?” Buffett says on You Had To Be There, after referencing the possibility it’s a little island in your mind or the bottom of a tequila bottle. Then he proclaims, “It’s anywhere you want it to be, baby...”

Postcards from a life I didn’t have agency over. Yet. People I didn’t know. Yet.
But I leaned into the poetry, loving the notion of captains and kids, characters painted with same detail John Prine conjured. But where Prine could be profoundly sad or lonely or conscience-tugging, Buffett was more the brio of the literati he was running with.

Dreaming dreams inside the songs has a strange centrifugal force. Like so many people who drift into the world not quite sure where they’re headed, it can pull things you never intended to you. Alex Bevan, my first folk singing idol who befriended a wet behind the ears kid, knew him from their days playing National Association of Campus Activities showcases, trying to get regional college dates. He’d talk of their intersecting wages of the road: afternoons in laundromats, talking about Goodman, Jerry Jeff and whatever.

Buffett hadn’t blown up yet. Bevan made him seem real-sized in a way. Even sneaking into “FM,” a film about free-form, big business rock radio, with cameos from Buffett and Ronstadt, the notion of pirating someone’s concert for broadcast seemed delightfully on point. In “Urban Cowboy,” he took that out West cowboy nonsense and lacquered dancefloor country with his zesty “Livingston Saturday Night,” no doubt informed by his writer friends who fled Key West for Montana.

And then I fell out of the sky at St. Andrews School in Boca Raton, seeking to be recruited for college as a golfer. It was a co-ed school with very rich kids who were sophisticated in far more fast-track way than Ohio. That was where I met Valerie.

Valerie de la Valdene, heart shaped face, tilted smile and a wash of ebony hair falling across her eye, was the daughter of a count. She was also Buffett’s godchild, and like me, a young’un used to running with older kids; she couldn’t drive, but she was one of us. If Eloise had been raised by adventure hunters, she’d’ve been Valerie, who ran up and down Worth Avenue barefoot, laughing madly and plotting the next adventure.

Valerie, who got us the tickets to Buffett’s annual Christmas show at Sunrise Musical Theater in Ft Lauderdale, who said, “You should review this for the Bagpiper,” our school paper. Being such a big Florida icon – even then –it seemed to be the most perfect idea. Until they used that issue of the paper for the annual fundraising drive, missimg my smirking reference to “Why Don’t We Get Drunk (& Screw)?”
What would Jimmy Buffett do? It became my sextant and compass. Looking at the Dean, who was braced for some kind of antics, I exhaled slowly, smiled innocently, and said, “Obviously these people are not music lovers...”

Jack Bower could barely contain the laughter. His face turned red; the howl was trapped in his throat. A theatrical man, husky but not fat, his eyes danced as he looked at me, suggesting I keep talking without saying a word.

“Dean Bower, that IS the name of the song, and it was a climax to the show. It was bawdy and brazen, but also self-deprecating and self-impaling. To not say it happened would be to not tell the story properly.”

He couldn’t take the mealymouthed sweetness. I was not that kid. He knew it. Barking as a laugh and his voice escaped, he managed, “Get out of my office. And please, Holly, be smarter please. The donors are important... They’re paying the bills.”

Turning in the doorway, I tried one Hail Mary pass. “Would it help if you knew I went with Valerie?”

I smiled. He laughed harder. It was implicit: while Buffett was the dope smugglers’ personal hero, he was also a saint in South Florida. Though his manatee awareness campaign was a few years off, he quietly did much for the region that was over-run by Haitian refugees, other Spanish speakers, profiteers who’d pave the Everglades and other entities to check.

“Get out, stay out of trouble. You know what to do.”

Yes, whatever Jimmy Buffett might do.

Still, he was quicksilver. Sightings all over the state. “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.” Concerts at Blossom Music Center, Sunrise, Rolling Stone magazine, softball games against publications and radio stations. It was a different time, and place.

One day during college, while clerking at the Miami Herald, a call came through to the general features desk. “HELLohhhhh,” the voice came down the line, “How are you today?”

No one was ever friendly on that extension. The euphoria felt real, the voice familiar.

“I was wondering if you could help me... I am trying to figure out where to get some good Thai food down here in Dade County. Can you help me?”
“Well, sir, uhm, we really don’t provi...” I was trying to avoid making a Herald endorsement.

“Honey, would it help if I introduced myself? This is Jimmy Buffett, and if the restaurant sucks, I promise we won’t get you fired.”

I turned purple. Of course, he won’t. He gets the plight of the late teenager/early twenty-something. I gulped; didn’t want him to think I’m stupid.

Putting him on hold, I asked a couple of the folks on the desk that I trusted. Got back on the phone, trying to “sound” like a pro, I picked up, “Okay, not sure where you are in the county, but the place you want is called Tiger Tiger... It’s down Dixie, south of the Gables, and it’s delicious. I think you’ll like it.”

“Awesome, baby. And if you can get out of there, you’re welcome to join us.”

He laughed and was gone. Dixie Highway is an easy navigation, especially in the ‘80s. Just get to Coral Gables and start looking; that restaurant was dark wood. It’d be easy to spot.

Whether it was a pleasantry or a genuine invitation, I was too intimidated to show up. Besides, real life drive-bys are only magic when you’re not stalking.

A year later, I would get to interview Dan Fogelberg, playing the NAMM Convention in Hollywood, Florida. He had a bluegrass album, High Country Snows, coming, and I stalked my story with a vengeance. It’s hard to say no to a kid with shiny straight hair in a striped t-shirt with hope in their eyes; the tour manager agreed, saying I needed to chase their limo to Ft. Lauderdale – and I could meet him in the restaurant, talking while he had his dinner. Nina Avrimades, his manager, was there; I tried to not be too excited, but I knew her name from Buffett’s record covers.

The Fogelberg interview went impossibly well. Turned out he’d had his dinner sent to his room; he was only going to have soup with me. But he ended up staying for the entire hour. When he left to go change, I set upon the lovely blond-haired woman, asking questions about what she did, how she did it.

“You know, he normally hates these things,” she confided. “Dan genuinely enjoyed that.”

Screwing up my courage, I asked the big ask.
I opened with the obvious, “You know Jimmy’s the Grand Kahuna down here. No one is bigger.”

She laughed. She saw the set-up, and she knew he wasn’t “in record cycle” or “touring.” We left it that she’d think about it, see what she could do. A couple months later, Buffett called my dorm room – and the Herald ran the piece.

So did Country Song Round Up, the world’s oldest country fanzine. My canny editor there told me about Buffett’s connections to Nashville, the reporting for Billboard magazine, the days hanging out at the Exit/In, Closed Quarters and the general creative hauntings. Suddenly, the Jerry Jeff Walker stuff, the steel guitars and the actual country undertow made sense.

It opened my mind to how impossible things can merge and converge; made Willie Nelson not the only one who could tap authenticity in seemingly opposing realms of music. But where Nelson was truly making country safe for the alternos, Buffett was slyly interjecting country music into songs people loved and never letting them realize it was “liver.”

It always seemed to be that way with this Buffett character. He existed in our world like twinkle lights in a bar; look up and smile at the twinkle in whatever other clutter was around. He knew poetry, knew how to deliver it – and he knew how to revel like an Endymion Mardi Gras float, tossing ravers out to the fans like so many fistfuls of beads.

Signed by Tony Brown, it wasn’t that Buffett came full circle, so much as music had turned all the way around to where the kid born in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in Alabama started his journey. Sure, there’d been Lear jets, misadventures, crazy stories, mysterious substances, inside jokes, sports teams and “60 Minutes,” but there was more to come. Writing his own books about Joe Merchant and memoirs, launching a chain of cheeseburger restaurants that turned into hotels, Broadway shows, football stadiums, creating a space for the regular guy to get a little tropicrazy and have the license to let your freak flag fly high.

All that was ahead of him. Records were a place to give his creativity a home. He was still everybody’s favorite “oh, yeah” songwriter/singer/supernova, but the Parrothead ubiquity was just starting to quicken. “One Particular Harbor” from that era was beautiful, a lulling melody that spoke of refuge and peace/piece of mind. It wasn’t what country radio was doing, but the video – possibly shot in Polynesia – was close to four minutes of mental escape every time it rolled up on CMT or TNN.
That escape was everything. As MTV blared and pulsated, Buffett was saner, smarter rebellion against 9-to-5 and the status quo. His touring business grew more robust without radio; his legendary Coral Reefers became more formidable. At different times, Timothy B. Schmitt (the ether-high vocalist with the Eagles), Josh Leo, Tim Krekel, Will Kimbrough, especially the tenderest hearted songwriter/guitarist/ Mac MacAnally, all artists in their own right.

Suddenly, it wasn’t about chasing hits, but the longevity of classic tracks, the opportunity to convene with your Parrotheaded brethren, to sing these songs together. Buffett was the grandmaster – and he took his duties seriously.

He used that power to launch Margaritaville Records, where he signed original Nashville compatriot Marshall Chapman for her It’s About Time: Live from the Tennessee State Women’s Prison project and a neophyte trickster/writer acolyte of Jerry Jeff and Keith Sykes named Todd Snider, whose mostly talking blues “Alright Guy” caused an alternative/triple a sensation.

Snider, a free spirit, and Chapman, a lanky rock guitarist with blazing charisma and a drawl for days, embodied that notion of outside the lines is the only place to color. Original voices and perspectives, they brought it with a burning intensity as different as the other – and as contrasting to Buffett’s cool

Chapman, opening for Buffett at the Hollywood Bowl, knew how to bring a Chrissie Hynde panache to a bare bones rock’n’soul grooved attack. She and her Love Slaves left those fans panting for more, and when the main dish is Buffett, that’s saying something.

Saying not just how astute a judge of talent he was, but his willingness to share the stage with a woman known as “the female Mick Jagger” in the ‘70s and the sly Snider, a songwriter who loved to see what would happen, including wandering off from the venue on one tour and not look back. That is all part of the carnival, the glorious feast Auntie Mame promised in the original Broadway show. If it gets twisted, that’s part of it.

So Buffett became an icon, larger than life – and somehow still inviting. A Saturday morning superhero, he was the kind of cartoon who was so frisky his skin almost seemed not enough to hold him. The tales of shots fired at his plane over Jamaica; the tales of adventures that inspired William McKeen’s Mile Marker 0; the charities he anchored and advocated for in New Orleans, the Hamptons, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

But even then, it was the random Buffett, the sightings of the man in the wild. Running into him in a purple label Ralph Lauren tux, where he got up and sang some for the wedding of one of his friend’s sons in Palm Beach; laughing jocularly at a CMA Awards after-party after singing “5 O’Clock Somewhere” with Alan Jackson; on his bicycle on County Road in Palm Beach, dropping by to see friends at PB Boys Club or reports that he was out surfing with friends.

Of course, he was. For while his brand was the guy who lived his life on his terms – St. Barths, St Kitts, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Jimmy Buffett actually inhabited a devil-may-care world where he just was. Not rejecting the fanfare, but laughing it off as he went.

Which isn’t to say he ever stopped thinking about what his next creative step might be. A million years ago, reading the Sunday New York Times and Saturday Wall Street Journal at the pool at a fancy Vegas hotel, he spent a little time with an emerging country artist, sharing some wisdom, talking about football and demonstrating how little one needed to change. That lesson served Kenny Chesney well; he remains indifferent to fame, investing his heart in the buzzy byproducts of making people happy with glorious concerts that remind them the joy of being alive.

When he played the annual Everglades Benefit in Palm Beach County, usually with some splashy single name guest, the high dollar tickets flew out. When the Gulf Coast was destroyed by weather, he got a few of his famous friends – and came in to raise millions of dollars. Big shows with an undertow of fun within the wreckage, offering hope as it solved or helped with problems that were critical.

If Springsteen wrote “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive,” Buffett lived it. Top-to-bottom, front-to-back, inside-out and upside-down. It was a tilt-a-whirl, centrifugal force of ebullience – and it never flagged. Whether Las Vegas, peaking out from the wings, or West Palm Beach’s “what name is it this year?” amphitheater in the swelter, it always delivered exuberance and delight. If you came with a squad or a date, we are all one once the singers slithered onstage, the tin drums started their rolls and the churn started turning.

In 2018, fresh from induction into the SOURCE Hall of Fame, which recognizes women in the music industry behind the scenes, I boarded a plane to fly across the sea. All alone, my destination was Paris, France. To mark the triumph of the unseen, it didn’t matter that no one else could join me.

Raised on the poetry within songs, hearing Jimmy Buffett sing “He Went To Paris” at La Cigale seemed the most perfect way to hold that young girl who didn’t quite understand all the grownup emotions, but recognized the power in those songs. Deceptively engaging, Buffett – like the Texas songwriters, the wild authors and filmmakers of Key West – knew that if there wasn’t conflict or a yearning, the song didn’t lance whatever was stuck in the listener’s heart.
It wasn’t that I was numb from the music business, but it extracts a toll on women who don’t fly by their looks or native charms. I needed to remember those moments when a song sounded like something I could – and must – touch, and my heart sped up at the way the images often stacked up to create some truth about living.

Paris, as Audrey Hepburn declared, is always a good idea. The streets alive with passion for life, the different size glasses of wine you can order, the fabulous cafes, the bookstores, walking along the Seine, over the ancient bridges, the Deux Magots and Café des Flores, as well as the D’Orsay, Marmottan. Picasso Museum and yes, the teeny Hemingway Bar at the Ritz.

Stopping at Le Roc, supposedly the oldest Catholic church in Paris, I knelt in a chilly stone cathedral and wept for all that life had given me. So many blessings, adventures, wonders, people and dreams that came true; not just my own dreams, but the dreams I’d midwifed for artists who didn’t always see what I dreamt for them... artists who didn’t always see how their music changed lives.

Sitting so close to the stage later that night, taking notes to always remember, I was overwhelmed by how much joy could be delivered; also, the heroism washed out characters could have being true to their own shattered lives. “He Went To Paris” was, indeed, the miracle I believed it would be.

“Looking to answers... for questions that bothered him so...”
La Cigale, there in the 18th arronddisement, had quite the history. Built in 1894, Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier had played there, later Jean Cocteau would stage avant garde evenings. It would become a movie theater in 1940, ultimately falling into a screening house for Kung Fu, then X rated films, but always it remained. Deemed a historic building in the 1980s, the French recognized its intrinsic essence – and Philippe Stark was drafted to return it to its former glory.

The metaphor was not lost on me, or the fact this less than 1000 seat venue was where Buffett chose to play. Like Key West in the ‘70s, it was the fabulous dissolute chic without resources that deliver dignity and delight right where you are.

I had traveled alone, but I sat in that row at La Cigale with every me I’d ever been. The little girl run off with the naughty golf pros, the baby rock critic people didn’t take seriously until they saw my words, the young dreamer working in a world where a journalist’s stories weren’t vanity, but a truth for the tribes, a voice that shaped how people saw the worlds and the artists who mattered, a business reporter, a major label department head who hated the way decisions were never for the artists, a boutique artist development and media relations innovator who’d fight for her clients, a battered survivor of a callous industry, a truth-teller when it mattered – and nobody wanted to listen.

It got crowded in that row. But it also got epic, because Jimmy Buffett had also flown into headwinds over and over again. He never won a Grammy; only had quantifiable hits on country radio with people like Alan Jackson. He didn’t care.

Jimmy Buffett believed in his songs, his friends, the characters who’d inspired him. As long as he had those people, a little imagination, he’d find a way. Oh, and that way made him a billionaire; he had the last laugh on the music business know-it-alls.

Not that that was his motivation. Standing onstage, with the smile slicing his face like wide open like a ripe mango, eyes sparkling at the naughtiness of Parrotheads converging on Paris in some kind of electric mojito acid test, there was revelry to be had – and songs, poetic and ribald to be sung.

That way the joy and the mission: honor what is however it was, remember the beauty, hang onto the high jinks and never, ever doubt the songs.

For someone who tilts at windmills, gets treated more poorly than people would ever imagine, whose best friend once squealed – driving around the streets of LA as two unhinged medium-20-somethings – “You could be HER, Holly Gee!” as Dylan’s “Sweetheart Like You” poured from her tape deck, La Cigale took back that fate which stretches you across a rack until you break and gave me back the effervescent joy of serving the music. That was what it’s about...

Even when the king of the parrot pirates was out flying his planes or chasing the sun, talking about good times or creating more memories, he was always braising those songs. Living like he sang, laughing like he wrote, it was all the same beautiful ecosystem so many people drew their moments of release, of elation, of crazy wild “oh yeah” from.

It was money I probably shouldn’t have spent, but it was the best value I’d seen in a long time. On the plane back, I smiled and exhaled and mindfully let all the good that is my life flow through me. “This is what being present feels like,” I marveled.

Jimmy Buffett, more than anything else, was absolutely, truly, completely present. Like his friends from Key West, adventurers all, he understood: Immersion is everything. Dive deep. Go big. Go crazy. Have fun. Feel it all, revel in it – and let what makes you feel alive be your navigational buoy.

It was a lesson that mattered profoundly.

When the call came at 5:11 a.m. from Kenny Chesney who’d texted me the night before, he didn’t have to speak. Just “he’s gone,” and gravity fell out of the room. It was dark, too early for morning to even think about breaking, and yet...

When we hung up the phone, I pulled the new rescue spaniel to me. Petted his silky head and felt tears fall off my face onto his ears. “Oh, Corliss,” I told the little guy, “you have no idea. To find someone who lived as most artists who pretend to, who embodies all the happiness that comes from being present, who wrote about places that mattered and being ripped down and forgotten...”

So many songs, so many moments, so much life.

And not just Buffett’s, but our own. I found “He Went To Paris” rising in my throat. Not because I called it up, but something in my muscle memory sent it through the transom. Singing softly to a red cocker spaniel who was licking the tears from my face, I couldn’t believe when I got to the end...

There it was: the words the old man, who’d seen World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, great love and horrible loss, had told Buffett more than half a century ago. Suddenly, there was the elegy for us all.

“Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
“But I had a good life all the way.”

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