Screwtop Winebottle

Leo Kottke - Across the Street - Sessions at 54th Street, Dec 20, 1997

Of all the stories I’ve heard Leo Kottke tell, funny, weird, sad, this is the one I always think about. Listen.

Leo Kottke playing a show at Fermilab, May 8, 2010

In my quest to find recordings of musicians I like performing at high energy physics laboratories, here is number two. Apologies for the quality or lack thereof. I respect anyone who talks on stage as much as they play and does it with such command. He calls it “stumbling in elipsis…” which is something I resemble. He also describes his voice as sounding like “geese farts on a muggy day” and devoted one of his albums to Flannery O’Connor. This is all trivia I learned from a childhood holding his CD liner notes in one hand, my guitar in the other and the CD player remote in the other.

Richard Leo Johnson “Glidepath” - Rodeo Bar in NYC 2006 or 2007?

I first heard about this guy when I was about 14 years old and living he was in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Being only a couple hours away and having been 10 years an unofficial disciple of Leo Kottke and his music, particularly his early stuff with that muscular attack and those clangy old 12 strings, you can imagine how interested I was. Richard Leo Johnson, was a bit of a revelation. I think I had to write(real mail) him to get his first album. Nevertheless, I forgot about him until today. His newer music appears to be very interesting. There’s theremin on his album, The Poetry of Appliance. Oh, and in his other life he’s an architectural photographer.

Leo Kottke eventually singing Julie’s House. I could listen to a whole show of Leo’s noodling and stories. But when his stories and noodling end up being some sort of existential introduction to the next song and illustrative of human life you just can hardly figure out what to do other than smile.

“Usually these things go by four times and then the vocalist sings but I’m the vocalist and I’m not ready. I was doing a show with Al Franken and he brought up this tune to me and he said it was the best I’d done and was one of his favorites. I said thanks for listening. And he said would you do it tonight. And I said I can’t. I injured myself on it on a job one night. It’s a dangerous tune for me now and it’s a dangerous tune for me now i can return to it without threat you know to my career and well-being. But i could tell he didn’t care about that. So you know I thought about it there in the interim before the show started and I realized that the danger was in the fancy stuff I was trying to pull off and I had jammed my pinky and then tried to recover and missed. Just really bad application. And you know this thing just fell apart for a couple weeks. It was a finger now it’s a thing. So I simplified it back in the dressing room and I went out and played it and I was really happy to have it back. I felt safe. And I like the tune. And on the last verse Al Franken came out and started to sing along with me and it was one of the worst moments of my life.”

Leo Kottke - Medley: Part Two/June Bug/Train And The Gate

It’s Friday afternoon, things are finally looking up. Leo Kottke has agreed to play me out.

It generally takes a long time for a musician to get his songs up to the stage. And it’s a dear soul who still makes himself belly laugh on stage while playing them.

I think that goes for just about everything.