Winter 2024

Volume 20, 2024 Winter Issue

Buenos Dias, buckaroos and buckarettes!

I'm Bob - welcome to the bunker! You may know me from the band Big Medicine Head or daytime television. This seaso

nal missive from the land of tumbleweeds and the lonesome six string guitar features news from the frontier, music and prose. Each issue will have a downloadable track and lyrics, along with the backstory of the song. We'll also feature live Songs From The Bunker. Call me crazy, but I'm giving all this away for free.

Tell all your pals to sign up for Tales of the Western Hemisphere at bobgemmell.com. If you'd like to revisit past issues you can find them at https://bobgemmell.com/newsletter-archive. If you're fans of ragged prose, check me out on Medium.

Lost in Florida

Clues

Florida is a weird, beautiful and haunted place. Laws exist there that have nothing in common with conventions of jurisprudence embraced by of the rest of America. In spite of the cultural carnival that pervades its governance, I was able to find terrestrial grandeur and fine camaraderie in the sultry buxom of this strangest of American states. I went deep into Florida swampland on a mission to find the lost guitarist of Big Medicine Head, JD Devros.

No one can pin down the cause or exact circumstance of JD's disappearance. Big Medicine Head guitarist and sax man Bruce Rockwell received a postcard from JD with cryptic scribbling about Portland and evading authorities. JeffyD, the band's drummer and sound engineer, was the recipient of a mysterious UPS delivery: a weathered cigar box sealed with masking tape. Inside were JD's passport, a business card for a Portland bail bondsman, and a crude map that appeared to mark the location of DB Cooper's parachute landing spot. Jailhouse Johnny McGuire - bass player for BMH - came home to a voice recording on his message machine. JD's voice could be heard above the sound of what appeared to be a grinding tool, but the words were un-intelligible.

JD was reared in Belleville, Illinois, but no one there had seen him in awhile. The only concrete information we had was the appearance of JD's name on the Gainesville, Florida police blotter. The crime seemed to center around black market trafficking of champion horse semen. Armed with this clue, I was off to the Sunshine State.

Horchata

My plane landed in Orlando and I pointed my rental car to the Peninsula Racing Center in Ocala. Ocala is known as the Horse Racing Capitol of the World. The center offers stalls, a 5/8 mile track, starting gate, hot walkers, breeding shed, stallion stalls and quarantine services. I found a jockey. I inquired about JD and any information he might have about whatever transgression landed my friend in the Gainesville police blotter. He wouldn't talk to me around the paddock, but he slipped me a note: “Meet me at The Mutiny Bar. There is a story to tell.”

The Mutiny Bar is a pirate-themed whiskey joint on South Magnolia where equestrian junkies knock back hi-balls and handicapped the ponies. I waited in a red tuck and roll Naugahyde booth for the jockey, the only human connection that I had so far in Florida. When he arrived he came from behind.

“Alright, I’ll tell you what I can”, he said sliding into the booth. “I didn’t know your friend well, but he seemed like a good Joe. I can’t tell you where he is, but I can tell you who he fell in with, and where he may be headed.

“Devros rolled into Florida and lit to the ponies like a puppy to a bone. The problem was he didn’t know about the dark side of the equestrian scene. He liked the action, but he got in too deep. He was betting on everything. He was taking side-bets on Dressage injuries, for Chrissakes.”

The jockey ordered a cup of coffee. When it came he emptied more packets of sugar into it than I could count, stirring nervously and looking around the bar.

“Devros was at the track. Long night. A couple muscle guys from New Jersey sensed that he was wagering beyond his means. When you’re a muscle guy from New Jersey you just know these things. They were watching his aggressive losses and figured this cat was going to end up papering the walls of the poor house with torn betting slips. They sidled up to Devros. One of them said, ’You look like a guy that knows the way these ponies run. Any thoughts on how to steer our dough?’ Devros offered a few tips. A few winners, a few losers, but it didn’t matter. These guys had a game plan. After a bad run of bets one of them said to Devros, ‘My friend, we would like to help underwrite the cost of your wagers.’”

According to the jockey JD had been creasing the financial guardrails for some time. He was making a little bread playing in a blues trio in a roadhouse on County Road 225 south of Evinston, but he lost his Gibson ES-175 and Fender Twin Reverb amp in an across the board bet on a roan thoroughbred sprinter. Sprinters are good at short distances. Unfortunately this was a mile track.

What these guys had in mind was a transport gig. There was a champion stallion in Kentucky whose semen was worth more than I’ll make in a lifetime, or several. They had an inside guy who was siphoning off this horse’s love juice and smuggling it out in bottles of Horchata. Salted Caramel Horchata, to be exact. They had an arrangement with a Saudi oligarch who wanted to boost his stable. The handoff was to take place in Cuba. They had it smuggled down to Florida in a modified Coleman ice chest. That was easy enough, but they needed someone to get it from Ocala to Havana. Someone to whom they could lay off the risk.

The Jersey boys thought they were playing my man JD like a well lubricated saxophone. What they didn’t understand is that an Illinois ace beats a Jersey duece every time. JD Devros had plans of his own…

The saga continues in the next issue: “You can't quit the Hells Angels…”

Saint Paul and Minneapolis

The Replacements

If you know me at all you know that I'm a fan of The Replacements rock band. In the same way that Frank Sinatra could wear a coat of swagger and coarseness and in the next breath exude aching vulnerability, The Replacements were forever stumbling and inebriated, yet able to rip out your heart with a brilliant and melancholic lyric. On my fall trip to Minneapolis-St. Paul I could not resist the urge to do a little urban archaeology and find the favorite haunt of the band that must be considered - for their working class rebelliousness - the John Garfield of American rock music.

Every city has something iconic that adorns the concrete and steel wrapper it comes in. Minneapolis/St.Paul are marked by "skyways". These are enclosed and elevated walking tubes that connect one building to another. They're meant to keep people warm when the hellish cold of Minnesota winter settles over the Twin Cities. Replacements front man Paul Westerberg wrote a song about them, and there was no way I was leaving this city without traipsing through a few.

Much like Athens, GA before it and Seattle after it, Minneapolis - for a time - was the beating heart of anything that mattered musically. The great outfits were The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and Soul Asylum, and they all used to hang out at the CC Club, a dive on the corner of 26th and Lyndale. The bar has wood paneling, a pool table, and clientele who are not on an upward trajectory. I'm told it hasn't changed much over the years.

I cabbed over to the CC Club from my hotel in St. Paul. I spent some time soaking up the vibe. I ordered a whiskey and a beer for my pal Mike Clark, whose ghost always accompanies me on pilgrimages such as this. “Leave these stood up for awhile - my friend will be along soon”, I told the bartender.

This is the bar that “Here Comes a Regular” was written about. The restroom was precisely what one would want in such an establishment - note the excellent graffiti in the image on the left. As I stood at the urinal I realized that members of the Replacements probably vomited in here, and I got a little misty-eyed. More on urinals later.

I headed back to my barstool. I asked the bartender if I’d get beaten up or arrested if I played Replacements classic Little Mascara on the street. He said, “you’d probably be okay”. So I did.

Urinals

After I left absolutely no one swooning and begging for more on the sidewalk outside the CC Club, I headed back to the other twin city. The driver dropped me at the St. Paul Hotel. I strolled across Rice Park. I took a selfie with a statue of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When I circled back to the hotel there was a giant bus in the curved driveway. Judging from the guitar cases and ragged appearance of those who were disembarking, I deduced that this was a tour bus for a band. I asked one person and then another standing around the bus which band they were with. Each person told me impolitely that they were not allowed to divulge that information. When I noticed that they were all wearing Eagles t-shirts my superior powers of deduction kicked in.

You may not know this, but when I was a kid Danny Schmidt taught me how to play the guitar. He was a sweet old guy, he played a Gibson Hummingbird, and his son was Timothy Schmidt, bass player for The Eagles. Timmy and Danny are both exceptionally nice people. I didn't see Timmy, but I wrote a note to him and slipped it to one of the roadies.

I tell you this story not to burnish my own credentials as one who has brushed up against fame, but to set up the information you may actually need some day. When traveling, it is important to know what sort of urinals are available at your host facility. The urinals at the St. Paul Hotel were of a sort that I would gladly have had my Oysters Rockefeller served to me in the stall. There weren't rolls of paper towels or offensively loud hot air blowers for drying one's hands.

No, this restroom had cubbies with soft, neatly rolled towels for wicking away the warm moisture of scented soap. The urinals themselves were sparkling, and they were regularly replenished with ice cubes. This custom started during the prohibition era, when speakeasy owners had to hide the ice that illegal booze was shipped with. Leaving it out in the alley would have been a giveaway.

Dumping the ice in the urinals not only hid it from the cops, but it helped tamp down unpleasant odors. I imagined that much like Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg must have fallen asleep drooling at the hoi-polloi urinals in the CC Club, Jacob Astor and any number of mucky-mucks probably relieved themselves in delicate sprinkles at the regal vessels in the St. Paul Hotel men's room.

I will leave it to you to decide in which urinal you would prefer to express yourself.

Charley Ramsay

Charley Ramsay writes songs that piss me off. Why would that be? Charley’s songs are a seminar in lyrical craftsmanship. They are melodically complex and fresh. Whatever social commentary he might offer is swathed in rich sonic texture. Mostly major chords. No, it isn’t anything in the message or form that makes my blood boil. So what’s my problem? It is simply this: whenever I hear a Charley Ramsay song I think to myself, “Damn - why didn’t I write that? How did he get there first?”

Back in the days of incense, beer and swagger, when Big Medicine Head careened through tie-dyed Santa Cruz hippie culture like a drunk bowling ball, there was a loose knit cadre of very good songwriters running around. Charley was one of them. So was Joe Victor. More on Joe later.

There is something pure and vital about Charley's song craft. I offer Ride from the 2008 album Catalyst as an example of just how good songwriting can be. Or Van Gogh, for that matter. Catalyst and his first album Dear Jane rack up one fetching folk pop gem after another. If you need a primer to ramp up to Charley Ramsay, listen to the first Peter Case album.

Charley Ramsay is from the Texas Hill Country. That is where he started, and that is where he resides. It’s been 16 years since the Catalyst album, but his new eponymous album - due for release on February 16th - is worth the wait. I wrangled access to the tracks: 10 bare-bones folk/rock/pop tunes. The production is pristine. It features masterfully captured transients of the guitar pick, well placed background vocals and violin, and a tight punchy acoustic drum set. The sonics around the acoustic guitar are important, for it is Charley’s strumming that drives each of these songs.

Charlie’s delivery is clever and laconic. If T-Bone Burnett were not still alive I’d say Charley was the rebirth of his spirit. Here are a few snapshots:

Bide Your Time
Gentle rolling country rock. The melody line never stagnates - always progressing. There are several mini melodies before we arrive at the chorus. This song is what Charley does best - the offer of a glimpse of what life could be if we gave away the things that don’t matter.

Dirt Floor Camelot
Love transcends poverty. Charley is working the classic theme of “me and you against the world”, expressed so perfectly on Jerry Jeff Walker’s take on Guy Clark’s LA Freeway. The harmonica is sweet, coloring the track with wistfulness.

Peace, Salam, Shalom
Is the narrator speaking to a stranger, a former lover he hasn’t seen in awhile, or all of us? Or is he in the room of someone dying? From the title we think he may be reflecting on the current strife in the world - “peace” in English, Arabic and Hebrew. Elegant strings and violin plucks.

Helicopters and Horses
A comment on the absurdity of war accompanied by a resonator. A rocking plea for unity and tolerance. “I believe in country” applies to both sides. How far war is from the things we love.

When You Come Home
From a press release: “When You Come Home" is an unwaveringly supportive ode to family, with some Scottish undertones that make it all more distinctive. Charley brings a heavy vibe in ¾ time.

Let The Day Begin
Kudos to Charley for reaching into the catalog of one of the most overlooked bands ever, Santa Cruz’ The Call. He slows down a power ballad and applies a bluesy swamp treatment. The resonator centers it.

Lockhart
This is an homage to his hometown. Charley beats his chest a bit on this one, but not in a creepy Jason Aldean way. Lockhart seems like a nice place, but if I went there and I didn’t like it I would never tell Charley.

Another Perfect Day
Gentle country shuffle. If you liked Gordon Lightfoot’s “Saturday Clothes” you’re going to love this.

Who Wants To Live Forever
Is there a genre called “Psychedelic cowboy”?

The production on Charley Ramsay was split between sessions in Texas and at Joe Victor's Black Range studio in New Mexico. Like Charley, Joe Victor was a fixture in the Santa Cruz alt scene back in the day. He fronted Mojave Green, the band Bruce Rockwell played in before joining Big Medicine Head. In addition to moving faders at Black Range and spinning up finely crafted woodwork at Goodly Woods, Joe is still busting out

righteous tunes of his own. His recently released Man Of The Mind is a tight collection of fetching rock tunes.

Joe played some bass and did tracking, arranging, and vocals on Charlie's coming release. Between Texas and New Mexico, this was essentially the same team that put together the Catalyst album.

So…there you have it. There are now only two choices before you:

Go to Bandcamp and pay for Charley’s albums (preferred)
Go to Apple Music or Spotify or wherever you get music without paying for it and set up a playlist with Charley Ramsay’s Dear Jane and Catalyst albums. Then, on February 16th when the new album drops, add it to the playlist. Then listen. A lot.

N E W S B U L L E T I N S

Sit back and relax as we explore the Bob Gemmell and Big Medicine Head song catalog. The download instructions are at the bottom of this newsletter.

S O N G o f t h e M O N T H

Peaceful as a Sleeping Nun

When I lived i

n Yuba City there were long nights on the levee, and long drives between the glow of one city and another. When you're tired and driving you might see ghosts on the road. I have. What I know is that if I get in my car and drive up Highway 65 tonight they will still be there. I was channeling them when I spun up this song.

Sometimes you can use your pen like a camera. Joni Mitchell taught us that. And Paul Simon. Think of this song as a pile of polaroids scattered on the floorboard of an Oldsmobile.

Peaceful as a Sleeping Nun is on the Big Medicine album Queen of the Western Hemisphere. The thing I like most about it is the happy look on Lee Takasugi's face when me and the boys play it.

To listen, follow the download instructions at the bottom of this message. Or click here.

Peaceful as a Sleeping Nun
Bob Gemmell

Watching through the windshield as they rolled
thinking of a summer long ago
dusty river roads covered in sun
every day folds into one

Something happened to me when we met
what it was I haven’t found out yet
close our eyes to feel each other breath
float into each other’s dreams

Weightless in the dream
and I am not the wayward son
we are weightless in our dreams
close your eyes the day is done
rest beneath the healing sun
peaceful as a sleeping nun

When we kissed we were everything
east and west and everything between
holding hands and never letting go
crying at the movie show

Stretched out then on Highway 65
never more awake or more alive
fields of lavender and cottonwood
when were ever things that good?

Weightless in the dream
and I am not the wayward son
we are weightless in our dreams
close your eyes the day is done
rest beneath the healing sun
peaceful as a sleeping nun

Photographs seen through a dusty lense
An Oldsmobile is rusting by the fence
fast asleep and fading in the sun
peaceful as a sleeping nun

Seasonal Hobo Recipe

This month's recipe comes to us from Bryan Evans: “Here’s a recipe that I like to call The Fiscus as it was only made in the Fiscus family kitchen.” While not currently down on his luck, Bryan and I have had enough adventure and poverty in our travels together to be forever hobo adjacent. We rolled with the legendary Chris Fiscus, and our path of devastation was wide.

Steps:

Fry up a slice of Oscar Mayer bologna in a small skillet, brown both sides
Spread mustard and mayo on Rainbo white bread (toast it if you are feeling fancy)
Add slice of Kraft cheese
Add bologna
Add as much Lays BBQ potato chips as possible
Place top slice of bread on the stack and press until you hear and feel a satisfying crunch
Open the hood of your car and heat on engine manifold, panini style

Enjoy with RC Cola.

Bon appetit!

Each month we spin up a new song from the foxhole we find ourselves in.

S O N G f r o m t h e B U N K E R

Lesson #2

These are strange times. A lot of good people have been saying sayonara and punching their ticket. At night some times I think I can hear the footsteps of the departed. I believe I hear their whispers woven into strands of wind, rustling the chimes on the patio.

When my mom was in bed during her last days she would surrender consciousness. Eventually she would come back, and slip into a narrative about where she'd been. It seemed matter of fact to her. She knew what was on the other side, and she was cool with it. Peter Nelson left, but he keeps turning on the porch lights at night to signal his wife Sally. Everything is okay.

Lesson #2 is informed by all of this. The full production version will drop in a few months. JeffyD - The Sonic Lord - is putting some finishing touches on it. Jeffy and Lee Takasugi and Jailhouse Johnny McGuire played their hearts out on this one. I'm excited for everyone to hear it, but for now all you've got is me in ragged form in front of a fireplace wih an old Martin 00 I got from my dear friend Marshall.

Listen here, or click the photo of Me and Rex, below.

BOB GEMMELL