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In Part I of Passion and Pain with Jerry Joseph we sat and drank with Jerry at a local bar in San Francisco prior to a Jackmormons gig. We talked and laughed as we got an intimate look at Jerry's past - from being 15 and in a whole of trouble to being 30 and in a whole lot of trouble. Jerry opened up about his band Little Women, addiction and getting clean.
As the night moved on, Jerry and I continued to expose a life that is fit for a novel. He is clearly intelligent and extremely well read. In fact I'd say he's probably the smartest 9th grade drop out I've ever met, but when your dad has been nominated for the Nobel Prize on multiple occasions, expectations run high and compensation deep. Jerry and I rapped so long I filled my whole tape and he was late for the gig. What follows is a second glance at one of the most dedicated musicians and underrated performers out there.
Read Part I of Passion and Pain with Jerry Joseph
Jerry Joseph: IT'S ALL ABOUT BANKS.
By N. Evans |
Kayceman: It is.
Jerry Joseph: "4:20 dude." Just put that on your forehead and get a hula-hoop it's bankable. Singing songs about Jesus and heroin and suicide it gets a little more shaky...(laughing)
Kayceman: Speaking of Jesus and heroin and suicide, you use a lot of religious references in your music...
Jerry Joseph: Sure.
Kayceman: But you don't strike me as particularly religious. So where are you drawing these powerful references from? Because they are very powerful.
Jerry Joseph: I was raised very heavily. I'm Lebanese Irish, both sets of grand parents; one set was direct immigrants, the other one was second generation. Very Catholic, very religious. I was not necessarily raised that way, but I had to go to catechism and I had to go to church on Sundays. As I've gotten older it's the thing that I covet most in another person. It's the thing I wish I had the most and I don't have... is faith. Any faith. And it's one thing to say, ya, I have a lot of faith I go to church on Sundays. It's a whole nother thing to say "I have a lot of faith I'm gonna fly this fuckin' 747 full of people into a wall." You know, and to me that is the most amazing, beautiful, terrible thing in the world. And it just makes everything else pale in comparison. So when I'm writing songs it's for subject matter, I could write about pussy, or I could write about love, or I could write about drugs, or there's a million things to write about, but ultimately faith is the thing that I find the most fascinating.
I agree, I really do. I think that's part of why your music resonates so much with me. All my life I've been fascinated with religion and I'm not very religious. It's kind of an odd thing. That whole notion of being so devoutly, blindly faithful. I mean also...
Or, or even if you, not to cut you off, but even if you couldn't be devoutly, blindly faithful, to be educated in theology. Like to me, man, if I could do my life over again and go back and to have gone to school, and taken theology mixed with some kind of philosophy and like French or something. You know any of the writers that I love, most of the musicians that I really love, it's all spirituality and sexuality, and when those two things mix, to me it's the perfect music. That's what's going on, that's Prince. It's... it's endless. It's Fateh Ali Khan. Whatever you like, the guys who really get it - it's about God and sex.
What's more powerful than God and sex?!
Somehow you might find that they're the same deal. So I aspire to be a spirit, I aspire to spirituality. I've been talking about it a lot, I really regret not having forced my Catholicism on my kids. And then people say, "Oh what a terrible thing, why would you want to do that?" Because it gives you a set of rules to live by and then you can manipulate them as you wish, I mean everybody does. You know Costa Rica, you're hangin' out with a bunch of hippies, and inevitably one of them - especially the Germans - goes, [in a very convincing German accent] "Oh look how very sad that is." The peasant walking from his finca on Sunday morning in his Sunday best which is kinda stained and his wife and his two little girls and there all in their Sunday clothes and they're going to church and that's all he has to look forward to because he makes five bucks a week. And I'd always get so mad. I'm like, "You know what, man? I don't think that there's anything more beautiful in the world than the idea that this guy can gather up his family, put on his most beautiful clothes, and go talk to his God. And thank him for the week and pray for the week to come, and believe it!" You know it's like George Bush talks about "axis of evil" and "good versus evil" and "our faith in God." It's like, "You got faith? You got more faith than the fuckin' Jihad?!" No way, no. Educated 20-year-old Palestinian kids don’t wrap themselves up in C4 explosives and fuckin' hop on a bus in Jerusalem because they're pissed at their parents. They do it because they have an unwavering faith in God. And to me, I'd rather write about that any day than… than, you know… smoking pot. I don't know, that's my diatribe for the day, sorry. (A bit of laughter).
I like your diatribe believe me.
In line with your song writing and music, moving to Conscious Contact, which I dig quite a bit by the way. Ever since I found out that "Ten Killer Fairies" is about Mexican drug lords I need to ask, where did you draw the inspiration for that?
[Very nonchalant] Oh they were my brother's neighbors. Ya my brother has a house down in Ensenada. And the Felix Brothers kinda control... That's the other thing about drug addiction, it's funny all the things that come back to kick you in the ass. Not only are you a drug addict but all your money is going to a really right wing fascist, you know.
No doubt.
[Laughing] So there's a duality to your slave-ness.
There definitely is...
By B. Hodge |
But that was just something that happened in the neighborhood. Twenty-one to 23 people were killed because there was a turf war and profits were being taken. And I go down there a lot and write. Because it's about 90 miles south of, it's right as you drive to Ensenada like maybe 15 clicks north is El Sauzal. So that's where my brother keeps his house and I like to go down there in the winter. It's not much warmer than San Diego's winter.
I dug the song the first couple of times I heard it, but ever since I read that that was what it's about, every time I fuckin' hear it, it hits me. It's a really powerful song.
I always wonder with that one ("Ten Killer Fairies") if I should have put the story in the record. [Read the lyrics to "Ten Killer Fairies".]
Moving along with your songs, "Fastest Horse In Town," which I dig quite a bit as well, I read how you said you always wanted to do that with Mikey [Houser]. Why was that so right for Mikey?
By P. Rody |
Well just musically, it just had this thing... and [long pause]... and I just always loved his guitar playing and I... I mean, I don't get those kind of visions, I don't really get those kind of artistic visions. [In some dramatic voice] "And in the end, I'm gonna go to Ireland and The Edge is going to play on this." He was just a friend of mine who's guitar playing I liked, and he liked that song... and so he was around. He got to play on it.
And if you don't want to talk about Houser at all that's fine...
I keep it pretty. Ya, I don't like to talk about it. Only because he... he was just my friend, it's too weird.
Say no more. "This Kind Of Place"...
Wait, wait, wait. The one thing is, we were listening to Door Harp today...
I listen to that almost everyday...
And I can't believe it man. I was pissed when I heard he was gonna do an instrumental record. Like, that's what was gonna be his... his "good-bye" record. It's funny because we were listening to that George Harrison one [Brainwashed] today, too. We were like listening to both of them, and ya know sort of similar concepts. [laughing]
Oh definitely...
You know, and I think Mikey's was cooler [still chuckling], and I'm a big George Harrison fan, but there's something about it that... The melodies are so succinct and they're so beautiful that...
I love that album; I listen to it daily...
Yeah, it's really nice.
Um... yeah... I don't know... [Kind of an awkward silence. It was the first and only awkward moment I experienced over two days of seeing and talking to Jerry.]
[Kind of shrugging and looking me in the eye.] Sure.
That whole thing... It must... Whatever, I don't know, it's been hard. It must have been harder on you. It's been hard on me and a lot of my people.
By P. Rody |
You know what...[long pause] You can quote me on this. Unfortunately, I have watched a lot of people die in my life, and usually the reaction is something of gut-wrenchingly sad, or angry or something you know. I usually have some mixture - everything in my life is either a mixture of anger or sadness or hard-on. I'm very limited in my... expression. But I thought that Mikey had more dignity and more of a sense of presence and a sense of how much love was around him than almost anybody that I've ever watched in my life knowing that they were dying. Except maybe my Lebanese grandmother who had 13 children, was a devout Catholic, and died on Easter Sunday. That woman had no doubt whatsoever.
Apparently not.
By M. Weintrob |
She was on the express elevator with Jesus. It was resurrection day and she was 105 with 13 children and 65 grandchildren. But people always say that to me - and I guess that's why I'm saying something - people are always like, "Oh, that must have been so hard" and "that must have been so sad." He was my friend and I love his wife and I obviously love his friends, but I wasn't nearly as hurt or as sad because I just thought he was a guy that composed himself with a lot of dignity before he had to go. And I was very fortunate enough to be able to play a couple of gigs with him. And you know, there are just way too many instances of people that I felt way worse about it. Because I think, to have the idea of having three or four months... You know, I always used to say, "Ah fuck man, I hope I just look up and there's a truck plowing into my fuckin' BMW, or I do too much dope." Nah, nah, nah, I think you know what, I have three or four months, I'm at the top of my game, I'm gonna pick the shows I wanna play, I'm gonna spend the time with my family, I'm gonna make the peace with people I want to make peace with, I'm gonna record my final music, I'm gonna write my final notes. I don't think you could hope for anything more, short of dying of old age.
I agree, I agree. I've probably looked at that situation non-stop for the past few months and as I said it affected me and a lot of people I know deeply. And I agree with you 100% and I think Door Harp is a testament to that. I mean it's not angry, it's not... It's beautiful. It's fuckin' gorgeous, it's angelic.
Well it's like saying, "You know what man? I really love you. I love you a lot. Thanks for being here. See ya the next place." Yeah it's perfect. OK. Next subject.
Thank you. OK, moving onto "Kind of Place."
By Kayceman |
I wrote that at my brother's house right after I wrote "Ten Killer Fairies." I wrote it ten minutes later because I was so freaked out by "Ten Killer Fairies." I needed to write something really simple and easy and sing-along-able and fast, so I wrote it in like two minutes, I went, [makes motions of guitar playing]. Literally that's it, done.
Wow, and I read something where you said that before as well and it really just resonated with me a lot as a writer because I write all kinds of shit not just about music. I'm working on a book and this and that, whatever, but definitely the best writing I do, it just fuckin' happens..
Oh yeah.
I sit down and it just comes out. Do you find that your best work kinda happens that way?
It makes me wonder if I'm any good. That's what makes me think sometimes that I may not be very good. Because so many of the people that I really like, whether it be authors or musicians, and you'll hear - there are exceptions - but a lot of times you'll hear people talk about, "We spent a year writing these songs." There's ten songs on the record man. What do you mean you fuckin' spent a year, you know? Or the author's like, "It took me five years to write this." And I've always been kinda in the Neil Young, sort of Bob Dylan way, you know, spit it out if it's good. You'll remember it in the morning, because I never record them. I'm always like, [again making motions of guitar playing] and if it's good, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow morning and I'm gonna go, "Oh cool song." But every so often there will be somebody like you know... I don't know, like Elvis Costello or somebody that I really admire and they'll be like, "You know we worked on that song for like three or four months." And I'm always like, "I don't even have that type of comprehension." What to see what the tonality of the cello versus the viola was? It's beyond me. I saw this show the other night, the most beautiful concert I've seen in years. Have you heard Sigur Ros?
Oh yeah totally, I can't believe I didn't go when they were at The Warfield.
[Smiling and gasping] Pfoooh. I had that album. I had the first one for three years because it came out in Iceland a long time before it came out here. I was with my girlfriend and it had just started. I look at her a couple minutes into it and she has tears coming down her face and I'm all teared up. This is Portland, Oregon the new epicenter of "what's fuckin' cool," right? And fuckin' everybody in the place was just weeping and they hadn't even finished the first song! It was just soooo good man.
Yeah, I mean if you can do that...
And those guys will say, "It took us two years to make this record." And it's like, ok, I get that. "We layered the keyboards like this, and we did this." But I think about the best music I write, it took me two minutes, I wasn't even thinking about it. "Climb to Safety" I probably wrote in like ten minutes. And I feel that way about art. We went today to that Gerhardt Richter exhibit. I have no idea how to paint, but it seems like one of those things you wouldn't want to spend too long on. I mean maybe the process that you're doing, "Well I'm painting in enamels and then I'm baking them and them I'm..." I mean I understand that taking a long time but the idea of the...
The vision...
Yeah, it's gotta kinda be there. Like The Beatles were making two records a year until '68 or '69. They're like, "Right then, well we finished Rubber Soul. Ok what are we gonna do? Revolver!" Not a year had passed. So when these guys are like, "We took two years on the record." It's like, [shrugging] "What... swimming?" Or maybe doing something cool. Maybe they went to Chile. For me, if I were a rich rock star that's what I'd do. It took a year because we took all our shit to Santiago and then we drove around for six months, and wrote the songs and then we went back and we recorded. And we make our records every year in a different city around the world. That's what I'd do with my money. I really would. If I was just a big rich rock star. R.E.M. does that.
Speaking of recording, how was recording down in the South? You seem to be an honorary southern citizen. How was it down there for you recording with Schools and Barbe? It must have been a pretty good experience for you.
That was cool. Love and Happiness was recorded in Alabama so that was my second. Love and Happiness was all done in Muscle Shoals. That was more kind of a southern experience for me. Because I was the only... Well, take Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Decatur. There are places in the continental United States that are more culturally remote, but not many.
Yeah not many.
Whereas Athens is just like...
Yeah definitely.
But Dave Barbe is one of my heroes. Dave Schools is one of my best friends. My band are among my best friends.
How was Schools as a producer? I know he was excited to really give his...
He was excited, he was nervous. I was nervous. He was very good about knowing when not to say something. And that's a big part in production. And he liked my band. The record I made before that was Everything Was Beautiful with Pete Drodge and that's my favorite record. But it just wasn't going to work for my band because Pete said, "We're gonna use Sheryl Crowe's bass player and we're gonna fuckin' dadadada..."
Yeah it's just a whole different mentality.
By N. Evans |
It's a whole different thing. Schools was a fan of the band. He said, [in his Schools voice] "Play like you guys play when you're good!" And my band's just like, "OK." Brad Rosen my drummer is a very unique drummer and he's got his merits and his faults, but what he doesn't need is somebody coming in and saying, "Play like Jim Keltner did on this fuckin' 'Sticky Fingers' track." Brad probably doesn't own the record you know. And Junior definitely isn't gonna know. Junior's the guy who we go to a party and looks up on the wall and goes, "Who is that guy, I see that guy's picture everywhere?" And you're like, "It's Bob Weir." He's like, "He's in The Dead right?" "Yeah Junior." Then he says, "I hate those fuckin' guys." [Laughing – both of us] You know. So it's not gonna do anything to tell him. But Barbe was a bass player, one of my favorite bass players for Sugar...
Oh yeah totally.
By Kayceman |
...Mercy Land and all these. I mean even if you hate Widespread Panic, even if you thought that Mikey Houser was the most wankingest fuckin' note playing fuckin' dip-shit in the world and that JB couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag, you can't look me in the eye and say Dave Schools sucks as a bass player. He's a really good bass player.
Oh I agree. I mean I'm not gonna accept either of the other comments, but I hear ya for sure.
I was on this tour with Curt Kirkwood from the Meat Puppets and Schools came out to do it with me. Finally we got to get up and back him up, and Krist Novoselic from Nirvana was there and they started that band, Eyes Adrift, and he came up to me later at another gig and he was like,
"Man, I just wanted to tell you that if it wasn't for you and that other guy on bass [Schools], we would have never put this band together." He had no idea who Widespread Panic was. Kurt Cobain would have machine gunned Widespread Panic if he met them in an alley. But Schools just got it, and he gets it! He's got a great record collection. We love a lot of the same music. I think the Slang record is a testament to the fact that he has ears. The rest of that band, you ask them what they're listening to? [Laughing with a joking tone] They'll say the same Van Morrison record that they said ten years ago.
But not Schools?
The rest of them [laughing]... "What are you listening to?" "Oh I'm listening to The Meters." "That's great, well what have you bought in the past ten years?" "Well you know they re-issued The Meters record and..." You know, "And there's a new live Van Morrison." Verbatim for those guys, except for maybe Todd. And Schools is just a smart guy. My son really likes him. My son's a 6'2 black kid, basketball player, he hates my music. I took him to see Gov't Mule...
Not down at all?
By B. Hodge |
He's just like, "Dad, it's a bunch of really old guys, playing a really lot of notes, what the fuck is good about this?" And I'm like, "OK let's go."
Yeah what are you gonna say.
Here we go, you're right. But him and Schools got along famously.
Is that right? How old is your son?
He'll be 16 in February. So it was cool, it was a great experience and I hope I get to do it again. And I should be starting to pay attention to the clock.
Yeah I was actually gonna say that, I don't want to...
Yeah man I'm supposed to go in five minutes.
Well maybe you outta get goin'.
Seeing as how Jerry and I were getting on like old friends he suggested I call him sometime in the future and we could tie up any loose ends and hit on anything that was burning in my mind. What follows are brief excerpts from a phone conversation I had with Jerry while he sat in his hotel room prior to a solo gig in Alabama.
Kayceman: So how are things going?
Jerry Joseph: Things are all right. I'm sitting here on a solo tour in Birmingham Alabama.
Kayceman: I've been checking out some of your set lists and what not from the past couple of weeks from New Year's and stuff. It looks like it was really good time. How did you find your New Year's set went?
By Kayceman |
Jerry Joseph: I thought that it was the fourth night of a long year. I thought Boise was the one that was burning. We tried to play a really long time. I think about 50 percent of it was good and 50 percent was kinda tired. I think when we walked out of there, I don't even think we said good-bye to each other. We all got on different planes and cars and left. But I have a couple people who have gotten back to me that said they really liked it. I can never be a very good judge of that stuff.
Kayceman: Yeah it seems tough to remove yourself from that situation. I saw that you guys played "Airplane" [Widespread Panic cover] for the first time right after midnight. Was that something that was planned, have you been working on that, or did it just kinda come out?
By D. Owen |
Jerry Joseph: No we definitely have been working on it. I'm trying to work up a hand full of Mikey songs. I've been playing, "Vacation" the past couple of nights, and I have a couple others I'm trying to figure out. Just because I know that those guys - that Panic - aren't gonna play those songs anymore and I think that they're good songs.
I'm really glad to hear that. Actually that's a conversation that's been going on amongst my friends and I who are Panic Heads, and that's something we've been saying - that we won't ever get to hear those songs again. I was surprised and happy to see you were playing those. I look forward to the chance I get to see them.
I have a list of maybe five and I'm gonna play them until it becomes stupid. I think if next week every other jamband in America starts covering those tunes I probably wouldn't play them.
We went over some songs last time and I wanted to ask you about a couple more. So how about, "Climb to Safety"?
By B. Hodge |
First as I'm getting older, or maybe more popular (I'm very hesitant to say I'm getting more popular), I hate when I explain the song and then I end up ruining it for somebody because they have their own meaning for it. "Climb to Safety" is a great example of that. Someone was like, "We got married to that song." And I'm like, "Really?" I think I was in Fort Bragg when I wrote that. I was really strung out on dope and I was on a tour. My friend Glenn Esparza has a writing credit on it, but I don't remember what he did. Probably just sat there and made sure I didn't fuckin' die. You know it was one of those ones that was written in five minutes, those are usually the best songs. I tend to keep a list of titles, like when I see things I think are cool titles I write them down in my journal or whatever. "Climb to Safety" was a title I had since I was in Colorado and saw one of those "Climb to Safety" flooding signs. This is where I hate disappointing people. I wrote that really fast, like 20 minutes. And when you're doing that it's just kind of off the top of my head, lyrical imagery and stuff. I can't remember what I was reading that had the thing about "reflecting skin" as a matter of fact I think that was another title I had written down was, "Reflective Skin." So for me that was written from being in a pretty lousy dark place, and it's just something that flowed really quickly. I don’t really remember, I was really fucked up.
Well that's how it comes across, that's how I've related it. And that's when it's served its most powerful purpose for me, when things have not been so good. I find it odd that someone said they got married to that song, but I guess whatever works.
Well that's what's good about songs people are supposed to be able to make up their own versions and their own stories.
Without question, and that's why books are better than T.V. and all kinds of things. You can attach them to your own life and make them real. How about "Most Beautiful Day," which I've been listening to over and over lately?
By G. Hacking |
"Most Beautiful Day" was written from a taxi ride I had in Nashville years ago where the guy was telling me this story about how he was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in China, that he didn't get out until a year after the war was over. The thing that got him through it was that he focused on the most beautiful day of his life, which was the day he proposed to his wife. He came back and his wife had left him, thought he was dead. He spent 20 years being a wino, bumming around America drinking "Mad Dog," always trying to get to this place with his drinking where it was the most beautiful day again. And his story, he ended up sobering up and driving a cab in Nashville. It was a 15 minute cab ride, it was a 30 dollar cab fare and he didn't have change for a $100. Nobody could change it at the airport because it was early in the morning, so he kept my 100-dollar bill so I ripped off his story and wrote a song about it. I don't play that song anymore, at least I'm not right now, because that was Mikey's favorite song. I think I played it the night he died and I haven't played it since.
I've been listening to that show pretty much three times a week.
Is it good?
It's phenomenal. I think it's one of the best shows I've heard by anybody all year. It hangs out so far, if I could have been anywhere on that day, that’s definitely where I would have been. Have you heard that show?
No. I never listen to them. They're gonna have a hard enough time getting me into a fuckin' room to listen to the stuff for the live record.
Well I think that’s an exceptional show personally. How about, "Light Is Like Water?"
By D. Owen |
"Light Is Like Water" is from a handful of songs. Usually I will write songs in clusters, I'll write six or seven songs in a day or two. The last time I kicked heroin I was in Long Island, I had this really wealthy ex-girlfriend. She was on two Cosmo covers; she was the Guess Girl that summer and she was this super huge model. And also from this insanely wealthy family, connected to the Vanderbilt's and stuff. She was the last person left who had any hope whatsoever that I might actually get clean, or was naïve enough to think that I may. I had been through every kind of rehab imaginable; starting with the most expensive ones down to the county detox trying to kick dope with dying alcoholic Indians in the bed next to me. She said she would take care of me and put me in this hospital in New York. So I got on a plane. It was the day after Love and Happiness came out. I went onstage to play my record release show, said that I was quitting music, much to the chagrin of the people who paid for Love and Happiness, and flew out to New York. She came to pick me up and said that the doctors couldn’t see me for a couple of weeks and said to just sit on the couch and drink soup. So I jumped out of the car and I was on the street. Well I was staying with these friends in the Lower East side who were all dying of AIDS. And I'd had this really hard time of not having any money, and I've never been comfortable with being a rip-off. It was pretty much that one point in my life where these guys were basically teaching me how to hustle and be a thief. So I pussed out. I couldn't do it. I wasn't brave enough to die and I couldn't go break some fuckin' old lady's head open for 30 bucks. So I called her up and she sent a car into the city, picked me up and took me out to this beach house that she had in Long Island. And I was really sick. It was the longest and worst kick of dope I ever did. But I did it cold turkey and I had a guitar. And I wrote a bunch of songs right then. And I can't really remember, it was like when Neil Young talked about having a really bad fever and writing "Down By the River" and "Cowgirl In the Sand" and all that shit in one night and doesn't remember it. It was kinda like that, I was really ill. I wrote "Pumpkin Time," "Hallelujah Trail," "These Gray Days" - there were a bunch. And I wrote "Light Is Like Water" and I wrote it really slow and quiet. Again I had titles and that was from a short story by Gabriel García Márquez about these kids who had to move away from their coastal home to central Spain and they were really upset about it. You kinda gotta read the story but they learn how to navigate light. And they learn how to like swim and surf and stuff with light instead of water.
Last Q & A on song titles, "Conscious Contact" as the title of the album and a song. I know I read where you said it has to do with making contact. For a lot of people, maybe sexual contact. For you, maybe contact with the past. Is that the essence of the song?
By A. Smith |
That song I wrote again in a cluster of songs. It just sounds like my whole life I was a junky, but I really wasn't. This time I was going into a rehab where they let me have a guitar, again I was kicking dope. And I wrote a bunch of songs; I remember writing "Get Down" and "Grateful," and "Beautiful Child of God." And they make you go to these AA meetings every morning in rehabs and one of the things is - I can't remember the quote - something about our ability to make conscious contact with God or something like that. I kept the line conscious contact; this is kind of a weird story. My two best friends died within a year of each other in the '80's. One was the guy that I wrote "Your Glass Eye" about on Conscious Contact. The other was this friend of mine Clint Ruppel. I was locked up in an almost maximum-security lock down thing when I was a kid and there were no weapons. They brought Clint in and he had a cast on his arm. So suddenly he's the only guy in the fuckin' place who has a club. So we became really good friends trying to figure out how to utilize his arm. And he was this dyslexic guy who was really smart but had been treated like he was stupid his whole life. We got outta that place and he ended up working for his brother running guns into Mexico and trading for narcotics. Then he'd run narcotics and people back into southern Arizona and into New Mexico. And that was his job. He had these two families; he had a Mormon family in Logan and a couple of kids. And then he was also married in Mexico and had a couple of kids. He was super smart, greatest chess player I've ever known, and a pretty violent guy. And mysteriously one night he drove off the road.
By A. Smith |
There was always some question as to whether he fell asleep or he was actually... The cops had tried to kill him a number of times, most likely they ran him off the road. So there was always this shred of mystery about him dying. And this is the really weird part. Last week my girlfriend, she lives in Durango, Colorado which is close to Aztec, New Mexico. We had driven past Aztec a couple of times and I was like, "I think my friend Clint is buried around here." But I don't know what ever happened to him. His brother he worked for also died that same year and his mother went insane and we never heard anything again. So last week my girlfriend calls me and she goes, "Guess what I did today?" I'm like, "I don't know." She said she went to Aztec and ended up trying to find out information about where my friend Clint was buried. So they sent her to the museum which had all the records and sure enough there's a Clint Wesley Ruppel buried in Aztec. So she went to his grave and brought a copy of the lyrics to "Conscious Contact." Gets to the fuckin' grave and it's 18 years to the day that he died.
Jerry Joseph is currently finishing a solo tour and preparing for a European tour with Widespread Panic bass player Dave Schools. Keep an eye on ebong.org for more information on the Jerry and Dave Europe tour as well as an in depth look at our latest phone conversation.
The Kayceman
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