Around Hear

You made your last mistake/You’re going way out on that boot hill … You did me so wrong/You’re going way out on that boot hill — Stevie Ray Vaughan, “Boot Hill”

The members of Boot Hill have been done wrong, but they don’t have the energy to assume Stevie Ray’s vigilante tone. In fact, their words echo the lyrics of “Empty Arms,” another song from the same Vaughan album: You’re gonna miss me, little baby/The day that I’m gone/’Cuz I’m leaving you this morning/Won’t be back at all. When we last heard from this spirited rock trio, it was attempting to recoup its instruments and equipment, which had been stolen after the band’s performance at the Flamingo Casino. Unfortunately, little has changed since then, other than the fact that the members’ will to persist decreases on a daily basis.

“It doesn’t feel the same,” says bassist Allegra Cloud. “This thing has just broken us spiritually. I’m not saying we’re quitting, but we might be taking a hiatus. It’s just too hard to try to keep competing. There’s not going to be anything coming up on the horizon.”

On the not-so-distant horizon is Boot Hill’s benefit show with Spooky Pajamas, Sister Mary Rotten Crotch, and the Snot Rockets on August 3 at the Grand Emporium. Proceeds will go toward replacing the equipment. As an added attraction, two special guests will join Boot Hill.

“We’re bringing our kids with us to show people that it’s hard to be parents with both of us in the band,” Allegra says. “They never see us with our kids, and that is the majority of our life. We feel like we’ve made so many sacrifices to do the band, and when we got our stuff stolen, it was like, ‘God, is this even worth it?’ In a lot of ways, it has been (worth it) for us, but in many ways, it is not. We’re going to honor all of our gigs because we don’t want to cancel anything, but we are definitely slacking off to try to rejuvenate and feel good again. It’s such a financial burden that you begin to fight amongst each other, and with us being a married couple and having kids, it’s just not good. We feel that our family’s a little more important than to let the devastation of what happened have that kind of an impact on our family and on our marriage, and it has.”

“One of the ironic things is that just weeks prior to our stuff being stolen, a production company out of L.A. had chosen us and the Kristie Stremel Band to shoot some dialogue on the lifestyle of musicians,” adds Gary Cloud, “how there’s so much poverty, how there’s no health insurance. Bands like us don’t really make money. People think that just because you’re out there gigging that you’re making a killing, and it doesn’t work that way. Basically, you can just throw a keg party at your house, have all your friends come, and spend a lot less money doing it.”

Should Boot Hill throw such a keg party anytime soon, the revelers would be more closely packed than rooftop gawkers at the Plaza lighting ceremony. As Allegra says, the one good thing to arise from this emotionally draining situation is the band’s new circle of supporters.

“There are so many wonderful people in this city that I never knew, and I probably never would have known unless our stuff got stolen,” she admits. “I didn’t know so many people cared.”

Most of these generous souls come from the music community, and many of them have offered to help out by playing for the benefit (the bands were booked by Grand Emporium’s Jason Hyken, not the members of Boot Hill) or lending the band instruments. But the group is managing to scrape by on a combination of purchased-on-indefinite-layaway instruments from MARS Music and a guitar Cloud’s parents bought. Unfortunately, “Gary can’t play guitar without breaking strings constantly,” Allegra says. “So having just one guitar helps, but it’s not like it was.”

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Boot Hill provides a sobering example of how something has to give when bad things happen to bad-ass people. After being essentially robbed of their life savings, the songwriters responsible for such rough-edged tunes as “Ride ‘Em High” and “Pool of Blood” have lost some of their swagger.

“It really zaps your motivation for everything you’d worked for when all that goes,” Allegra says. “When that got stolen, something died.”

The Miracle Worker
Two nights after the Boot Hill benefit, another show will highlight a cause that puts even the lamentable plight of struggling musicians into perspective. Jan Ebelke and her daughter Jenny, a sophomore at KU, have organized a concert featuring Ruskabank, Stirfry, Sherry Lawson, and In Spirit Flight, with proceeds going to the Littleton Rotary Foundation to help pay the continuing medical expenses of students injured last year at Columbine High School. To some, this might seem like an odd time and place for such an event, but the elder Ebelke says such distinctions just don’t matter.

“The events that happened at Columbine are the ultimate example of what hatred can do, and it’s not an issue of here and there,” Jan says. “A lot of people wanted to talk when I was organizing the event — ‘Why are you doing this for Columbine? That’s way over in Colorado.’ But the repercussions are still going on over there. There’s still a lot of healing that needs to happen.”

Ebelke was inspired to action by an Aspen Times article in which she read about a poster that paired a John Fielder photo of a flower emerging from the center of a stone with lyrics by singer/songwriter Joe Henry (whose Fuse was one Pitch writer’s pick for the top album of 1999). Proceeds from the poster went to the recovering victims of the Columbine violence. Seeing this, Jan says, made her wonder what she might be able to do to help. After contacting a few local musicians, she had her answer — although planning the event was hardly a hassle-free process.

“I have seen so many miracles happen,” she says. “I’ve gone into this with absolutely no experience in doing something like this and slammed up against a wall time after time after time.” Jan says her main difficulties were finding a venue and soliciting donations from businesses, many of which wanted “nonprofit status to stand behind.” After finding herself unable to cover the operating expenses solely with business donations, she started calling friends instead, an approach that eventually let her reach her goal. “When you get a certain idea of exactly how something is supposed to go, and then all of a sudden the door shuts on you, it’s like, ‘Whoa, now what?'” she says. “But I’ve seen so many people just stepping up and helping for no reason, just because you put it out there to them. It’s been a lot of hard work, it’s been a long haul, but I don’t want the miracles to stop. I’m just going to stay open to events and things that come my way.”

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Scott Salvaggio, alto-sax/flute player for the contemporary jazz quintet Stirfry, says that when his band heard about the event, it immediately agreed to perform, although he admits to doing a “double-take” when he heard that it was a benefit for Columbine.

“I was surprised and happy that people from Kansas were really trying to help people all the way in Colorado,” he says. “I figured it was one of those tragedies that everyone feels really sorry about but that people out of the vicinity don’t really take measures to help.”

Jan hopes that this show will serve as a catalyst for more people to take similar measures and that even people who don’t attend will feel inspired to organize their own benefit shows. “Instead of leading your life with blinders on, you’re actually taking off the blinders and looking around you and actually making a difference in someone else’s life along the way.”

The concert takes place at 7 p.m. Saturday night at Rockhurst High School, with tickets ($15 for adults, $10 for students and seniors) available in advance at ColumbineBenefit@ hotmail.com or at Johnny’s Tavern, 6765 W. 119th Street, 913-451-4542.

Reverbs
So, is Reverberations gone? Well, yes and no. The column popularized by the incomparable Jeff Drake and written mostly by myself over the past year no longer exists as an individual entity; however, should the need arise to write about homophobic rappers, sexist concert banter, or pig-spanking funk musicians, Around Hear now provides the forum. J.J. Hensley and Robert Bishop, the Pitch music writers who handled this column so capably in the past, will now write full-length features on area bands. Contrary to persistent rumors that the Pitch plans to pipe in additional stories about corporate bands to replace our regional features, these changes should result in more pages than ever being devoted to the local scene. On a nightly basis, there’s live local music to be sampled, whether it’s a fresh-faced indie-rock outfit at El Torreon, a veteran bluesman at the Grand Emporium, or a crunching hard-rock ensemble at Niener’s. Every genre from hip-hop to death metal currently boasts a satisfyingly deep roster of local bands, and the Pitch aims to provide the city’s most comprehensive coverage of our vital and ever-growing music scene.