Happy Birthday, Dave Elliott

I was reminded a little while ago by his brother Dean, that today is Dave Elliott's birthday. I think Dave was around two or three years older than me, so I reckon that today woulda put 'em around fifty-four, fifty-five, somethin' like that. He has been gone for less than a year.

Work brought me to Louisville the Winter of 1980. I knew no one here, but quickly became friends with the folks at work. We were a small group, a few of us teenagers, the oldest ones were still under forty (with possibly one exception.) The telephony interconnect business was still relatively young and evolvin'. Our group worked hard and played hard.

After a couple years, the company needed another tech, and hired Glenn- a perfect addition to the group. Glenn was fresh out of the Army, and was around a year older than me. We were fast friends. He had a spot under the stairs at his dad and step-mother's place and, although I'm sure they loved 'em, I think they were lookin' toward his movin' out.

Glenn had a step-brother, Rick, who was still in high school, and he went to school with the youngest of three brothers that lived next door. Since my circle was small outside of work, I got to know Glenn's step-brother and a number of the people he went to school with, includin' the kid next door- Doug.

The lease was nearly up on the funky little apartment where I was livin', and I was never fond of apartment livin'- shared walls, my music too loud for others, their television or squawlin' kiids too loud for me, etcetera- so Glenn and I decided to find a house to rent. We made pretty good money for people our age, so splittin' the bills and rent should allow us to secure a fairly decent place, which we did- A great split-level walkout on a cul-de-sac.

Glenn's stereo was set up in the livin' room on the main floor, while I had my stuff set up in the family room, a floor below. We ran cable and tied them together in a master/slave kinda thing that allowed the same source to be used for both. Perfect party setup.

And that's somethin' we did with some regularity. On one particular occasion, Doug had showed up and brought his older brother along. I didn't know 'em. I think he had been down in Austin, Texas, or somethin'.

I had a fairly big vinyl collection, (of course, no one called it a vinyl collection- beside tape, records was all there was), a little of a whole lot of stuff and a whole lot of some stuff. So, a couple hours in, this guy comes up and asks "Hey Man, you sure do have bunch of records. Do you mind if I look through 'em?" "Absolutely not, Man. Pick somethin' out."

A little while later, the same guy comes up and says "Hey Man, you listen to Prine!"

"John Prine? Hell yeah, Man! Prine is the shit!"

"Man, you're the first person I've met around here that listens to Prine!"

And so the conversation goes on for about half an hour. This is Doug's big brother, Dave. The three Elliott brothers were all born and raised up North- Michigan, Illonois. Their folks had come down to Kentucky when their Dad's work, I'm thinkin' Anaconda, the wire and cable company, transferred him down. That night, Dave and I decided that the next time Prine came to town, the first one that heard about it would pick up tickets for the both of us. This became what Dave would from then forward refer to as "The Pact." We wouldn't have to wait long. Prine came to town just a few weeks later. I can't recall which of us bought the tickets for that one, but it would be the first of what would end up bein' literally hundreds of live music shows that we would take in together over the next thirty years.

Dave had seen Prine and Steve Goodman play at the Earl of Oldetown in Chicago, a place that was known as bein' a showcase for musicians like this. The Second Folk Wave. Dave was also a big fan of the Grateful Dead, which had brought him around (through projects like Old and In the Way) to Bluegrass musicians like Bill Monroe, J.D. Crowe, New Grass Revival, Tony Rice- folks like that. For me, my approach had been the opposite- my exposure had started at the other end, the Bluegrass end, of the spectrum. My Dad had introduced me to the Bluegrass music as a kid, and I had held on to that. Dave helped me realize that what I had considered to be disparate forms of music actually had a lot in common: a love and reverence for what I suppose you would call Roots Music.

Dave enlightened me to the ties between musicians like Muddy Waters and The Stones, Bill Monroe and Elvis Presley, Leadbelly and Bob Dylan. On occasion, I was able to contribute somethin' to our combined music knowledge and experience. I had always been a lover of a broad range of musical styles, but, hangin' out with Dave, I began to see it as not that extreme or disjointed a view after all. I came to see Music as more of a single entity. A common thread, albeit sometimes a thin one, tied so much of it together. My particular tastes and preferences no longer seemed so scrambled. And with this, came an even broader, more open-minded outlook. My love of that which I was already familiar deepened, and I grew to recognize and appreciate the less familiar- particularly Zydeco and Cajun, Texas Swing, and All Things Psychedelic.

Through the years, Dave and I would make multiple trips to the Telluride Bluegrass Music Festival in Colorado, (the first of which was hatched in his folks basement in the Winter of what I guess woulda been 1986-ish?), a dozen or so Dead shows, (I never made one without Dave there), countless other Bluegrass Festivals across Kentucky and Tennessee, hundreds of live music shows from concert halls to beer joints. Had to have seen Newgrass Revival play dozens and dozens of times in front of thousands at festivals, or hundreds in a farm field, or dozens in a beer joint in Bowling Green. We took in everything from Commander Cody to Ravi Shankar. We got tossed out of the Joe Clark Festival in Renfro Valley by the Kentucky Stare Police, saw Lonnie Mack in a joint on Main Street in Louisville so small that it took a week for my hearin' to recover, sat with our feet against the stage for the likes of Tony Rice, Peter Rowan, Los Lobos, Strength in Numbers, so close that you heard stage sound more than the house sound...

I learned a lot of other things from Dave, too. He contributed to my appreciation for the value of hard work- somethin' that my own family had instilled in me from an early age, not to mention countless things in regard to carpentry. And I ain't talkin' framin'. Or trim. I'm talkin' about all of it. From backin' up surveyor's stakes, diggin' footers, settin' grade stakes with a transit, pourin' concrete, to settin' the rain cap on a chimney. And everything, and I mean everything, in between. Not a week goes by that I don't use somethin' I learned from Dave.

And the most important thing I learned from Dave? This might be kinda hard to explain, but Dave made me realize that there wasn't anything that someone else did that I couldn't do. I may not be as good or as fast as someone who did it every day, but with patience and focus, I had a damn-good chance of doin' every bit as good a job as anyone. And if you got through it successfully once, then it was yours. Add it to the list of things that were no longer a mystery. If a friend or relative, or even a stranger should ask... "Yep. I can do that." Or, "Here's what you do," or "Here's what you're gonna need." And I feel a huge sense of pride and confidence when I can say, "I ain't never done it, but I'll bet we can figure it out."

I could go on forever about all the fun, the good times and the not so good, that I had the privilege of sharin' with Dave, but I wanted to get this posted before his birthday passed. Not sure why I hadn't done this before.

Love ya and miss ya, Daver. Every day.

Fish