A Dobro, A Geo Prism, and $100

Jan 07, 2025

As always, scroll down to see my upcoming dates in Hawaii, the PNW, and Louisiana and Texas in March! Get the info from the links below, check my website, or follow my Bandsintown.

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Two little tour runs coming up (Hawaii and the PNW) with a wonderful gig in Campbell River, BC between them - only 12 seats left for the one in Campbell River!

So just a quick note before I head out for Hawaii…

The solo acoustic album is almost done being mixed, the roots rock album I made in the Netherlands is nearly mixed as well, and I’m headed to Hawaii, a beautiful (becoming a yearly event) in my adopted hometown of Campbell River, BC, then to the Pacific-Northwest for a 3-day run of great venues!

After that, it’s Montreal, QC and the Folk Alliance International conference, and 4 days of folkies and folkin’ around with some of the best. I’ll be playing 6 showcases of my own, a few other surprise spots during the day, hanging out with my booking agency Black Oak Artists, AND I’ll be a late-night wildest-room every year at FAI member of Dan Navarro’s Cantina family! I’ll be brushing off my old backup side-person hat to be in the Cantina’s backing band Folky Sanchez as well as play a showcase of my own. The death of my dear fried Louis Meyers back in 2016, hit me hard. I’ve only attended Folk Alliance once since he passed. Even though I took Scrappy Jud Newcomb along with me and had an amazing time in New Orleans (and got COVID before we knew it was COVID), I haven’t been this excited to go in a long, long time. Folk Alliance is where I met Ray Wylie Hubbard (when it was in Memphis back in 1998!), and I have many fond memories even though I really don’t consider my music folk or americana per se.

In fact, let me tell you a story right quick…

A long time ago, in a music scene far away — I was living in Ann Arbor, MI, playing in a 12-piece funk band called The Bucket, a 5-piece newgrass band called Drivetrain, and a hip-hop collective called The Left Side. At that time I had become friends with a singer-songwriter named Chris Buhalis, and would back him up on Dobro (mostly we performed as a duo). Chris was the first person to ever play me a Townes Van Zandt song. Or a Blaze Foley song. Or a Guy Clark song. Not sure how he ended up so well-versed in Texas singer-songwriters, and that certainly wasn’t I learned SO much about being a solid side-person and that craft of songwriting from Chris that it changed my life. I carry the lessons I learned with Chris as much as I carry the lessons I learned with any of the amazing folks I have backed up in the past, and Chris and I remain great friends and still make music on occasion to this day!

I was having a hard time — one of those bands I was living with, and they were particularly demanding of my time and headspace. As a way to get away from some of the bad vibes going around, Chris suggested I come down to Memphis with him. He wanted me to meet this guy named Ray Wylie Hubbard.

I had never heard of Ray. I had never heard of Jerry Jeff Walker. I knew nothing about Texas and probably had the same level of pre-conceived notions as someone who knows nothing about the vast large incredible country that is Canada! (ten-gallon hats were as real to the pictures in my head to igloos and snowshoes). But Chris started playing me songs, especially on the ride down from Ann Arbor to Memphis. Songs from the albums Dangerous Spirits and Loco Gringo’s Lament were becoming as important to me as the songs from Live at the Old Quarter and Live At The Austin Outhouse.

Not sure why Chris wanted me to meet Ray. But I’m sure glad he did.

Folk Alliance International is basically a petri dish of 1000+ folk musicians and enthusiasts thrown into a hotel for four days to move, shake, and make deals; except no one is wearing a suit. There was a ton of down time. I met (for the very first time) a young Matt The Electrician and spent a lot of my time palling around with him in-between Chris’s showcases. I heard incredible songwriters for the first time. I met a very surly Kelly Joe Phelps (a musical hero of mine for sure) and when someone introduced me to him as “this is Plank; he plays Dobro,” Kelly Joe replied, “I’m sorry.”

I let that one slide.

So, before this story gets away from me, Chris Buhalis was off doing something with someone and at some panel I had no interest in at the time, and his then girlfriend (and now wife of 20+ years and mother to their beautiful child Zoe) Meredith and I went down Beale Street on a trolley to get some ribs. At the restaurant Meredith and I noticed Ray Wylie in the back having dinner with someone I couldn’t see. “Why don’t you go say hi?” she asked me. “Nah, that’s not my style.” Meredith never took any guff from anyone and said, “that’s stupid spanky (and she still to this day calls me spanky).”

I did not go say hello and we exited the restaurant and began walking up toward the trolley to head back to the hotel and the festival. Both of us were still smoking cigarettes back then and as the trolley approached I noticed Ray walking up the street, obviously to catch a trolley himself. I said, “don’t put your cig out Meredith, maybe I can meet Ray when he comes up the street (apparently that was my style)”

As he came closer I realized Ray was walking with Thom Jurek, a fantastic writer for the Detroit News and many a fine publication and Thom was definitely in my corner on many a musical endeavor. My thought being thus: meeting Ray through a common friend was a much less smarmy way of pushing myself on someone “higher up the entertainment ladder leaned against the wall of illusion and broken dreams (Ray’s words I came to love and steal on more than 100 occasions).”

As Thom and Ray approached, Meredith and I waved on the trolley in wait for the next one, which would not be long. I turned to hear Thom say, “Plank!” and the two of them were at our sides, and it was just the four of us, hanging out in Memphis, away from the festival hub-bub, waiting on a trolley.

“Ray this is Plank. He’s a really good Dobro player,” says Thom. Ray Wylie Hubbard looked straight at me with a sly grin and glimmer in his eyes behind his blue-tinted John Lennon style glasses and spoke the words to me I’ll never forget — “you wanna play a gig tonight?”

“Of course I do,” I replied. Believe it or not, by now I had enough playing under my belt to know how to “sit-in” the proper way even with someone as great as Ray. Even though I had only been playing Dobro for a few years, I felt more than ready. Then Ray says, “well, I know that rehearsal is highly over-rated, but I’ll come hear you play with Chris and if I like ya, we can go up to my room and rehearse a couple tunes and then you can play my gig.” “Sounds great to me,” and we got on the trolley and parted ways.

Ray showed up to my showcase with Chris Buhalis, and not only liked me but the fiddle player Matt Combs (who was also in Drivetrain and played almost as often with Chris as I did. Also side-note: Matt Combs went to Nashville and became a successful member of the Grand Ole Opry as well as most recently moving on to do the full string arrangements for a great number of Dan Auerbach records). After the show, which Chris played wonderfully at, Ray stole Matt and I away and up to his room.

We got out our respective axes, sat down on the sides of hotel beds, and played through three songs: “Without Love,” “Ballad Of The Crimson Kings,” and “When She Sang Amazing Grace.” When we finished the latter ray said, “see ya at 8.”

In the more than 25 years of playing with Ray onstage and on many albums (and even co-writing a few with him on records his and mine) that was the first and only time I ever rehearsed with Ray. You show up to the gig and you play, and if you can’t hang, you don’t get a call back.

myself and Ray Wylie Hubbard circa 2000ish

So for now I will end the story there but suffice to say it was life-changing. The gig with Ray was wonderful and fun and afterwords he invited me to come down to Texas, “I’m sure I could find some work for you.” It took a couple years, but I eventually drove to Ray and Judy’s house in early 2000. I arrived with a Dobro, a Geo Prism, and $100.

I’m very excited for this year’s Folk Alliance. I only let myself go once in a great while so I don’t get burned out on it. There are many other such festivals to go to as well in the Blues, Roots, and other genres and such. But this year stands to be a great one.

As always, thank you for allowing me to continue to do the only thing I know how to do. I am grateful.

Plank

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