Chapter 36: Have you ever met a celebrity?
Originally written August 24, 2021
My career as a journalist led me meet more celebrities than I ever would have as a civilian. I’ll never forget how excited in early 1980 I was on my very first assignment as a freelancer for the Santa Fe Reporter.
“There’s a folksinger named Dave Van Ronk who’s playing at the Armory for the Arts,” my editor Anna Dooling asked me over the phone. “You wanna review the show and interview him? He’s staying at La Posada. Call him and set it up. Here’s the number …” (Yes, I mentioned this back in Chapter 29.)
You can’t imagine how I felt when I called and Dave Van Ronk his damn self answered the phone.
Me! Talking to Dave Van Ronk!
And when, after the concert he made good on his promise of an interview by inviting me to join him for “a drink” in the La Posada lounge. It soon became obvious that it wouldn’t be a formal interview, but a rowdy party and lively series of discussions with various friends, fans and locals.
And though I tried, I couldn’t keep up with Van Ronk, who downed countless rounds of Irish whiskey, tequila shots and Dos Equis.
That was back in the day when I smoked a pipe. Dave liked the Danish freehand I was smoking so he convinced me to trade him the pipe for a box of H. Upmann cigars. (A few years later I did a phone interview with Van Ronk for another paper. I asked him if he ever smoked that pipe. He gave me the sad news that just a couple of months after our trade, a burglar broke into his car and stole it. Oh well, by then all of the cigars he gave me were long gone also.)
I felt like royalty — though that feeling didn’t last long after nearly everyone I told about it who wasn’t a huge folk music fanatic would look puzzled and respond, “Who’s Dave Van Ronk?”
Important life lesson: One man’s celebrity is another man’s “Who?” So if you’re unfamiliar with any of the names I’m about to drop, use the damn Google!
(More than 20 years later, when I was freelancing for No Depression magazine I had to write Van Ronk’s obituary. I told how I owed my career to journalism to the singer: “So I thank Dave Van Ronk for his music, and I thank him for my job — even though few if any of the interviews I’ve done since were as fun as that one.” (Here's the link even though my byline is missing.)
The first couple of years that I wrote for the Reporter meeting musicians I loved was worth far more to me than the $15 the paper paid for each of my articles.
I’ve already written here about meeting my boyhood idol Roger Miller backstage at a Michael Martin Murphey show.
Others I interviewed during the 1980s include Taj Mahal, Hank Thompson (Roger Miller introduced me to him in the dressing room of the Line Camp!), John Lee Hooker, Maria Muldaur (I swear I think she was flirting with me), Flaco Jimenez, Etta James (who was so winded after her Line Camp show she could barely talk), Leon Redbone, David Bromberg, Bo Diddley (that was one of the few music pieces I did for the Journal North), and very briefly — I’d estimate less than two minutes — Willie Nelson, backstage after a show as he and his entourage were making their way back to the tour bus.
The nicest musician I ever interviewed: B.B. King.
The biggest jerk: Robert Hunter, chief songwriter for The Grateful Dead. He agreed to an interview (backstage at the Line Camp after his performance) but was condescending and bitchy.
My musician interviews were scaled way back after I became a “serious” news man, covering government, police etc. But in the mid ‘90s, when I started regularly going to South by Southwest in Austin, I got to meet several well-known musicians.
One year I was at a press conference following Lucinda Williams’ morning “keynote address” for the festival and asked her a couple of questions. Not a major moment in the history of journalism.
But later that night while walking down South Congress Avenue with friends, Lucinda and her entourage were walking in the opposite direction. She looked at me in recognition, saying “Oh hi!” She didn’t remember my name, of course, but apparently remembered my pretty face.
At South by Southwest a few years before, on my way to a Roky Erickson book signing at a downtown BBQ joint, I’d just made it to the parking lot when I saw Roky bolting out of the restaurant. “Hey Roky,” I stammered. “My name is Steve …”
“I know,” he responded.
“I’m a big fan …”
“I know,” he said.
He told me he’d left the book signing because he didn’t like the vibes, or something like that. A few minutes later, as we made small talk in the parking lot, Henry Rollins, whose company had published Roky’s book of song lyrics came out and tried to convince the mentally-fragile rocker to go back inside.
Roky refused, though Henry talked him into to getting into his car and sign books through the window.
In the mid ‘90s, I interviewed Gregg Turner. I came back into the office one day after lunch and my editor told me “Some guy from The Angry Samoans called and wants you to call him.”
I burst into a spontaneous a Capela version of The Samoans’ “They Saved Hitler’s Cock,” delighting and entertaining the whole New Mexican news room. After I interviewed Gregg we started hanging out. We’ve done lots of gigs together since then and have remained friends since.
Below: A song that inspired a beautiful friendship:
I’ve met several famous musicians not in the course of doing interviews. For instance, once I ran into Laurie Anderson at Zuni Pueblo during the Shalakko ceremonies. I used the idiotic line “I’m a big fan” on her too, but unlike Roky, she didn’t already know that.
My friend, artist Paul Milosevich introduced me to a bunch of his musical cronies from Lubbock, including Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and Terry and Jo Harvey Allen (even before the Allens moved to Santa Fe.)
And Paul also introduced me to Tom T. Hall, who had come to town for a Milosevich art opening. Paul brought Tom T., Butch and several other friends to my regular Sunday night performance at The Forge.
At the end of the show, Butch joined me onstage to sing an impromptu version of “America the Beautiful.” About a week later I received a very nice handwritten letter from Tom T., telling me how much he liked the show. (I’ve been telling this story a lot in recent days. Tom T. died last week at the age of 85.)
Through the years, my “career” as a musician has led to opening-act gigs for several celebrated musicians including Taj Mahal, Kinky Friedman, Jonathan Richman and Jimmy Carl Black, Frank Zappa’s old drummer.
Actually my old friend Erik Ness, who lived in Las Cruces when Jimmy was living in nearby Anthony, N.M., introduced me to “the Indian of the Group” back in the early ‘80s. I’d interviewed him a couple of times and when I recorded my album Picnic Time for Potatoheads, Jimmy played drums on my song “The Green Weenie.”
(Erik wrote about his friendship with Jimmy, which I posted on my blog.)
Erik didn’t introduce me to Michael Martin Murphey — I’d interviewed him a couple of times in the early ‘80s — but he was good friends with Murph. One night in the early ‘90s, Erik invited me to go out drinking with him and Murphey and a few others at the old Bullring.
Last time I saw Murphey was at Erik’s memorial service, where he sang an emotional version of “Summer Ranges,” which basically is a cowboy version of the old Irish tearjerker “Carrickfergus.”
I can’t hear this song without thinking of Erik:
And through the years I’ve frequently been in social media contact with some of my favorite musicians like Stan Ridgway, Peter Case and Jon Langford of The Mekons.
Besides musicians, my job as a reporter led me to meet others from the wide world of the arts, including authors like Ishmael Reed, Roger Zelazny and George R.R. Martin, who I interviewed for the Reporter years before he became an actual celeb outside of science-fiction circles. After the interview we actually became friends and frequently hung out through the mid ‘80s.
Once, when my daughter and I went on vacation to California — I think Molly was 7 or 8 — we stayed at George’s house in Laurel Canyon. (He’d moved there for a while when he became a writer for the short-lived Twilight Zone rebooted series and later for Beauty and The Beast.)
One of my favorite writers I interviewed was Donald Hamilton, the author of the Matt Helm spy thriller series. Like Zelazny and Martin, he lived here in Santa Fe. I went to his house on Acequia Madre and interviewed him for the Reporter. He was very nice. I told him I began reading his books while still in junior high.
But didn’t mention that many years before that, before I’d even moved to Santa Fe, during a summer visit here, my brother and I looked him up in the phone book and called him. He answered the phone himself. “Is this Donald Hamilton?” I asked nervously. He said yes and I got so freaked out I hung up even before I could even say “I’m a big fan …”
When I started covering politics for The New Mexican full time, I got to meet several celebs of a different nature. I got to cover national conventions in 2004 and 2008, and got to meet political types like former President Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa and infamous anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly.
When covering the 2008 New Hampshire primary (our governor at the time, Bill Richardson — another celebrity I’ve met! — was running for president that year) I stopped for breakfast at Manchester’s (now closed) Merrimack Restaurant.
Sitting in the booth next to mine was Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican primary contender, being interviewed by a local radio station. A few minutes later, Dennis Kucinich, who was seeking the Democratic nomination, came in to be interviewed by the same station.
Not long after that, back in Santa Fe after Richardson dropped out of the race, former President Bill Clinton came to the Roundhouse during a session of the Legislature to try (unsuccessfully) to get Richardson to endorse Hillary over Barrack Obama.
The Secret Service had blocked off all sorts of stairwells making it difficult to get to Clinton. But my then Capitol Bureau partner Kate Nash and I figured a way to get down to the basement parking lot entrance, where we knew he would be exiting.
Though some Clinton aide tried to keep us from asking questions, we shouted over him and the ex-president answered a few before he was shooed out the door.
I probably met more famous politicians during the 2004 presidential cycle than any other time.
New Mexico was considered a “swing” state back then. Plus we had a Democratic presidential primary caucus last year, so a lot of national candidates came to the state and were eager to spend time with the local press. I got to interview Howard Dean, Kucinich (who liked my “Willie Nelson for President” poster in my office), Gen. Wesley Clark (who was suffering from laryngitis, so it wasn’t much of an interview), John Edwards and John Kerry on campaign stops in Santa Fe.
And several months after I interviewed Kerry in the “Governor’s Room” at the Rio Chama Prime Steakhouse, I was standing in line at the post office. My phone rang. It was John Kerry, who by then had basically wrapped up the Democratic nomination. It was Caesar Chavez Day and Kerry just wanted to say hi and to let everyone in New Mexico know that he thought Caesar Chavez was a heck of a guy.
And just working at the state Capitol all those years I ran into a lot of nationally famous people from Noam Chomsky to Dog the Bounty Hunter. One weekend when working in my office I met and had a nice, if short, conversation with Connie Stevens, who was using the Capitol tv studio for an interview with Larry King. (She was in New Mexico doing a play down in Ruidoso.)
And sometimes there are weird intersections between show biz and politics. I encountered actor Val Kilmer several times in the Roundhouse in early 2009 when he was considering a run for governor the next year. (He ended up not running and later sold his home east of Santa Fe.)
So, yes, I’ve met a few celebrities.
One last song: my little song with celebrity drummer Jimmy Carl Black …
