I was listening to some old John Prine tunes on my streaming service the other day—just letting the music wash over me like it always has. Somewhere between Sam Stone and Souvenirs, my mind drifted back to my late teenage years. I was an aspiring musician at the time, though the emphasis was definitely on “aspiring” and not so much on “musician.” My talent was modest, if we’re being generous. But I had something better: I had a mentor.
We’ll just call him GVS. If you know me, you already know exactly who I’m talking about. In the musical folklore of our hometown, GVS sits somewhere between a local legend and a musical warlord—gruff, gifted, and always ready to pull a young hack into the fray. And that’s what he did for me. He made me a side man. A harmonica-honkin’, chord-strummin’, occasionally on-key sidekick to his acoustic escapades.
I owe him a lot. In fact, I probably owe him everything, since I’m still at it more than fifty years later. So, God bless GVS—and God bless every other grizzled mentor who ever looked past the lack of talent and said, “Sure, you can play.”
Now, the role of side man is often overlooked in musical mythology. Everyone wants to be the star, the frontman, the name on the marquee. But some wise soul—Dave Frishberg, to be exact—wrote a little ditty that sums up the charm of being second fiddle:
I want to be a sideman
Just an ordinary sideman
A go along for the ride man
Responsibility free
Sounds pretty good, right? And it is—as long as your boss doesn’t suck. Being a side man is like any job: if the guy in charge pays you and doesn’t come with strings attached, you’ve got yourself a decent gig. You’re not locked into anything. No contracts. No commitments. You can bail any time the music stops making sense—or the gigs start getting weird.
And that brings us to the Four Point Tavern.
We had ourselves a show there one night—just the two of us, an acoustic duo armed with a tiny PA system tucked between the juke box and the smell of stale beer. We kicked off the evening with the classics: Bob Dylan, Beatles, some moldy oldies from the ’60s. I was on harmonica, playing backup as GVS belted out Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright and One After 909 like a man who’d seen both heaven and hell in the same week.
Then, right in the middle of Hickory Wind, a brawl broke out.
It wasn’t your garden variety barroom scuffle either. This was a cinematic, furniture-shaking, green-toothed-lunatic-vs.-angry-mountain-of-a-man melee. The fight started at the bar and rolled like a drunken hurricane toward our little corner of peace and PA systems.
Just as I started considering whether a harmonica could be used defensively, the local police chief—who, I kid you not, had been enjoying his drink at the bar—launched off his stool like an avenging angel. He tackled the big guy, and the whole scene turned into a tangle of limbs, curses, and jukebox destruction. Eventually, with the help of a few brave patrons, the mountain man was rolled out the front door like an overgrown tumbleweed. The door was slammed shut. Calm, if you could call it that, returned.
Of course, our equipment was now completely unplugged and disheveled. So, what do two slightly rattled, mildly inebriated troubadours do? We retired to the bar and serenaded the remaining drinkers unplugged—just guitar, harmonica, and heartbreak.
I pulled out my six-string and eased into Sam Stone. If you don’t know the song, it’s not exactly your typical bar anthem. But it’s beautiful, and it hits deep:
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes
Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose
Little pitchers have big ears
Don’t stop to count the years
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios
I finished the tune to a smattering of claps and a few knowing nods. Then a handsome older woman got right up in my face—nose to nose—and whispered, “You need to cheer up.”
Now, if that’s not life advice, I don’t know what is.
I’ve thought about that moment often. It’s stuck with me. And as I look back—through bar fights, harmonica solos, and decades of gigs—I’ve decided to revise her advice just a bit, to better fit the times we’re living in:
Why can’t we all just cheer up and get along?
Simple. Timeless. Possibly impossible. But worth trying anyway.
