Without getting too off the track, I'll lay it out for you. Sunset Beach is a little community along a mile long stretch of beach just a mile from my house. It's an unincorporated community here in Orange County that is staving off being annexed by Huntington Beach where I live.
Home to such wonderful places as "The Harbor House Cafe", "Mother's Beer and Wine", "Harpoon Harry's", "The Irish Mist" and others, I used to haunt all these places each and every week. Then...I dunno...I got distracted and didn't for a while. I'll backtrack at a later date and fill you in on the charms of each of these "homes-away-from-home". I'm happy to report they all made it through last weeks tornado unscathed...it would have broken my heart otherwise.
Now here's the real point of this post.
This last week we wandered away from "The Mist" on a "Guinness" break and trodded down to "Mother's". There in the corner with an amp, a microphone and a well-worn classical guitar sat a man named, Dick Deluxe pictured here:
Mr. Deluxe was sitting there lazily picking his was through all my favorites. All those Jeffy-centric songs that you don't expect to hear anywhere except of Jeffy's iPod, or when Jeffy is singing, but never played in a bar.
I was at that perfect level of drunk where it all hit me as home sweet home. Here I was in one of my long-lost forgotten places, and I was being welcomed back by comforting sounds.
I was also at that perfect level of drunk where I sat about 8 feet from where he was sitting and drank my beer and sang along to every song he sang.
He was a generous soul though and didn't seem to mind. At one point he got up to take a break and told me to take over his guitar and have at it. He didn't ask if I knew how to play, but he had faith. He also didn't ask if maybe I wasn't at that perfect level of drunk to be too drunk to play.
Ah well. I still had fun.
The next day I did a search for Dick Deluxe on the Internet and found him all over the place.
I feel I've rambled on long enough here. But I will be crossing paths with Dick someday again, I'm sure.
Here's a quick link to his website. And also to a page on CD baby.com where some of his stuff is for sale.
You see, he truly is a Jeffy-Centric player...he's got the chops for all the great old country and alt.country stuff I love, and also has some mean blues licks. True Americana, just the way I roll.
Here's a clip I found on YouTube with Dick playing at "Mothers"...and a pleasant surprise, to his right is another old friend of mine named Louis who I haven't seen in a few years. Louis has also been generous enough to let me get up and sing and play with him. They're doing a song here called "There Ain't No Blues at the House of Blues":
Great to see Louis. Great to meet Dick.
This post is not just about Mothers or Dick or Louis and certainly not about me.
It's about those "underground" musicians out there. Those guys playing music because "there ain't no other other way to be".
And guys who like to play so much, they let guys like me who just like to play get up and make noise.
I'll see y'all soon guys!
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