Lucky Fountain

Monday, April 30, 2007

As many of you now know, this Friday will be longtime bassist, Lucky's last show with Kissinger. I've been thinking of some of my favorite Lucky moments over the past nine years. I thought I'd share a few this week.

Lucky's Last Show
Beauty Bar 6-9PM Happy Hour
FREE! 21+
Austin, TX
($10 Martini and Manicure)



Today's memory: The Music Cafe

The day before we left on a Midwest tour, Lucky put down some money he'd been saving to buy a wireless unit for his bass, freeing him from being tethered by a guitar cable. He questioned out loud whether the money had been worth it, but all his worries evaporated 7 days later, in Columbia, MO at a place called "The Music Cafe."

Columbia is a college town and the Music Cafe is just blocks away from campus. The owner will book any kind of band, and mix them all up on any given night. We've played with gothic techno bands, stand up comedians, indie-trance bands, and the worst band ever (another story). The bar relies on walk-in traffic most nights, and keeps the doors open. In addition to the college kids, some real odd folks will wander in. This particular Tuesday night, one such guy did.

He wore shades, a graying, Motorhead moustache and a black leather vest over a T-Shirt he had ripped the sleeves off. A faded web of tattoos bled from his shoulders down to his wrists. You could tell by the way he walked he'd had about 25 beers that night and probably an armload of amphetamines to boot. He arrived near the end of our set. Maybe 40 other people stood in the bar, but all to one side or other of the stage due to the shallow layout of the bar and how fucking loud we were. This guy grabbed a chair from a table, swung it high in the air and in one motion, slammed it down and slid it between his legs, backward, right in front of me. He rested his arms on the chair and his chin on his arms. His posture and look seemed to say "So you've got guitars? I smoked pot on Deep Purple's tour bus, mother fucker, you don't know what to do with those guitars."

This happened about the time we hit "Possum," a song Lucky once told me made him feel like he could fly. We'd been chugging along pretty good already that night, having sweated through our clothes before the first song was done. When the first note of Possum hit, I saw Lucky out of the corner of my eye, leap from his amp and onto the floor in front of the stage. He went straight for the dude in the chair. Lucky propped his foot on the support bar of the chair and started banging his head just as Steve Garvey kicked on the flood lights.

The image of Lucky's profile will always be etched in my memory. As his head rolled back and forth, the floodlights perfectly highlighted the streams of sweat that sprayed the man on every beat. Even better, Lucky didn't flinch and he didn't leave. Earlier on the tour, he'd climbed onto the bar, fallen on his back and pushed himself like an inch-worm before kicking his feet up, flipping his legs around and hopping off to return to the stage, not missing a note along the way. But not tonight. He stayed planted for at least 3 minutes, in an epic battle of wills, until every last drop of sweat in his hair had from the tips of the semi Mohawk that had just formed. Drenched and cornered, the guy couldn't help but start rocking his head back and forth, because he sure as hell couldn't get up.

When the song finished (Lucky finally did return to the stage for an acrobatic launch over my amp for the last note) the guy walked out, hunched and wiping his face with the soggy hem of his undershirt.