"Career" Move

You have no idea how frequently I am asked, "You have any idea how big you would be if you died?" Sometimes the enquirer will delicately phrase the question to imply that maybe I should just write a book. That's nice but I know what they're thinking.

Is it really possible that this guy has played his beat down old heart out for nearly fifty years and this is all that he has to show for it? No gold records? No big hits?

Hey, sometimes I wonder what on earth would keep a nose to this particular grindstone. I look at where the careers of folks from Hank Williams to Anna Nicole Smith were at the time of their demise and I understand what my hopeful friends are getting at.

We always end up with faulty memories of where our heroes were in the grand scheme of things, career-wise, at their demise.

My tales about Elvis offering to teach me karate or holding up Jimi's amps or Tiny Tim bringing me a photo booth picture and telling me that he would see me in heaven all get wildly magnified in any imaginary obituary piece. I'll bet the sad songs would sound a lot sadder, too.

Don't misunderstand me here. I don't want to kick the bucket. Ever. For me it's beneath cutting the grass or having a filling replaced. The whole concept seems creepy and boring to me.

Maybe we will have a little pretend poll here, though. Let me know what you think. Ex-wives are ineligible. ronnyelliottusa@gmail.com.

Pink Diamonds, Wet Tears And The Voices In My Head

Why do folks kill one another for diamonds and emeralds when there are big chunks of broken 7 Up bottles and busted windshields all over the streets? Then again, why do fools fall in love? I'm busy trying to reconnect my head with my heart and I suspect that I'm failing at it. Again.

I'm happy about who I am except for when I'm not. I wish I had secrets to keep. Too late. I will tell anybody anything. Don't misunderstand. If you ask me to keep a secret I can. I will. Those are your secrets, though, not mine. I have no mystique. I suppose that makes me something of the Anti-Dylan, huh?

Everyone is good to me. I mean really good. I like that. Sorta' takes all the pressure off of buying lotto tickets.

I should work harder but then it wouldn't really be the work that I'm meant to do, would it? We all have unique roles in the cosmos but I have come to see mine as unique among the unique. I'm holding mirrors up to mirrors here but I'm doing it all in the key of C. No sharps, no flats, all white keys. Of course we're gonna have to go to some minors here if it's headed for sad, but I'd rather not. I don't want any more blues just now.

I hope love becomes the rage again. All hep and all fashionable. Boy!

Me and my cousin, Jimmy. I can't recall our dates' names. Maybe Jimmy remembers.

Unconditional Love, Unrequited Love

My earliest memories are deliriously happy ones, secure, safe and loving. I was raised by a single mom but the towering influence in my life was my grandmother, Lottie. Always spoiled, I got everything that I wanted, including plenty that I didn't need. My working mother sacrificed plenty of basic needs for herself to provide me with frivolous junk. By the time that I was old enough to drive legally I was on my third car, a '32 Ford three window coupe with a 283 Corvette engine. My first "real" electric guitar was a 3 pickup Rickenbacker. This is not the smartest way to build character in your kid and I suspect that my mom knew this at some level.

Now the other side of this coin is that I was loved beyond reason and wrapped up in the soul of the sweetest and wisest woman that you can imagine. Grandma had raised her five children as a single mother after my grandfather had died at an early age from Bright's Disease. She had done the best that she could, working full time managing the school cafeteria in their small town of Jemison, Alabama.

She moved in with my mom to take care of me, freeing my mother to work as an information operator at the telephone company to provide for us. Grandma was not going to miss a moment with her beloved Ronny. I wish that everyone could grow up in similar circumstances. Every important thing that I know I learned from her. She taught me to pray, "Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war."

I suppose that we were praying for an end to the Korean War at the time. By the time that I was old enough to consider war and peace as a concept, I realized that there are no good wars.

Now, as a seasoned failure at romance, I question my humanity and my worth. I recently had a superficial conversation with a friend who explained to me that she is suffering through a terrible bout of the blues based on unrequited love. She's in love with him. He's not in love with her. It broke my heart just to hear her say the words.

Alan Watts once said, "Never to pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command."


I don't know that I have ever really changed my mind about anything. I don't know that I have any understanding of the concept of falling out of love. The friends that I made as a kid are still my friends and I love them dearly.

I pout and feel sorry for myself when I think that I'm wronged or mistreated and I'm quick to lash out when I feel hurt. That has never been anything but a crude defensive device to ward off hurt. I forgive immediately and I'm quick to apologize.

If I am a square hole in this round peg world I think that it comes from being spoiled with love. Unconditional love, the richest gift in the world.

Now What?

Again I find myself searching for truth and some kind of role in the cosmos. Do I fall too fast, love too hard? Yeah, you bet. I've been called stupid and I won't hop to my feet to defend myself. Sometimes my own sense of right and fair doesn't line up with any majority, moral or otherwise. I want to love and share and I want to play naked in the rain. I don't want to pretend that I don't find it sexy, either.

I can see that we have overbuilt housing in this country. Just take a look at the Channel District right in Tampa. Empty condos and townhouses reaching to the clouds. There are plans being floated to go in some areas of the country and begin tearing down some of the housing surplus.

Wait a minute. What about one of our other problems, the homeless? Families living out of automobiles in all of our major cities.

Shouldn't someone be combining all efforts towards these two problems? I'm not all that bright. Check the first paragraph here. I'm the stupid one.

How about the fact that the USA has slipped to #49 in infant mortality in the world. Last I heard we were paying for the health care of all of those folks in Washington who decide what will happen to the rest of us regarding our health care.

That's not right. Let me stand up right here, right now for the babies being born who can't stand up for themselves. Let me lend my voice to the folks out there with no roof over their head; the veterans returning from a forgotten, ignored war; the hopeless who have run out of unemployment benefits.

Now, I know that I ramble and I know that somehow I have moved from my own personal struggle with the blues to my take on the state of the union. Somehow, though, for me it's all intertwined. We have to use all of our power of love to work for everybody and everything that needs us.

We need to be led by prophets who can preach like Obama and actually stand up for truth and justice. We need to love more and love harder. Maybe I don't have it all wrong.

                                Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.

The Last Days Of Tampa Red

Once I used my x-ray vision to look through clothing. Nowadays I focus on the galaxies and I burn holes through the stars to make them lighter and quicker. I'd carry moonbeams home in a jar if I had one.

Tampa Red wasn't actually from Tampa. It's a fine name, though, and he surely had a lot of class. I wish I had known him. Seems he never got over losing Frances. Funny how the heart takes charge.

This is a song that I wrote, back and forth via e-mail, with my pal, Terry Clarke. The show was with Til Willis at the Sherbino Theatre in Ridgway, Colorado. There's a very drunk heckler making himself heard in the audience. I don't really mind hecklers. Beats being ignored.

It's In The Ether

If we're all concocted of the dust from stars how can we possibly be anything less than grand. I grew up poor and never had the good sense to recognize that I was different from my friends. Most of them were from prominent families and lots of money. Some of those folks are still my friends. Oh, we had plenty of other kids from homes that scraped by, but for the most part my contemporaries were being raised to be the pillars of our community.

I always loved the girls. Still do. I was raised by a single mother who spoiled me with anything that I asked for and a grandmother who showered me with the most unconditional love that you can imagine. A therapist once explained to me that women are attracted to men who are raised by women. They don't generally display the same swagger, I suppose. I don't hike my leg to see how high up on the tree that I can pee. I guess I began falling in love with little Alison Lewis in the third grade. She wouldn't mind me mentioning her by name. She's my pal and she has had to put up with it for a very long time.

Then by junior high school while most of my pals were lined up to get into the monkey races at the Florida State Fair, I was dragging my little cousin, George, over to gawk at the lovely dancers lined up on the runway while the barker suggested that there would be displays of femininity bordering on the illegal inside the tent once the show started. Ah, Club Lido. Closest I ever came to sex education. There was a young platinum blonde who seemed to be there every year. I'm still not over her. Probably wasn't even the same young lady.

By the time I began to actually date it was fairly obvious, to me and to them, that I was never likely to develop any of the skills required to do this successfully. My friend, Harry, describes it, "You fall fast and you fall hard." I guess that's about right on the money.

My failure at romance has become legendary in my own mind. I try. God, I try. I don't really have any regrets other than inconveniencing people that I care about. I didn't say hurt because I seem to be the one who ends up hurt. None of us like it.

I asked a woman to dinner this past Saturday. We had a fine meal and, I thought, a fine time. When I got her back to the place where she was staying, she went inside and I didn't see her again. Oh well. At least we're not married.

Every one of us is special. Truly special. I wrote a line once, "I'll make this toast to motherhood and the women that I have known." I find that I tear up and can barely get that line out onstage now. I do thank the women who have shared their lives with me and put up with me for whatever amount of time that they could spare.

My favorite male friends are the ones who seem to share my reverence for women. I truly believe that the only hope that we have to move our society and culture ahead is through women taking the reins. It was my grandmother, Lottie, who taught me to pray, "Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war." I wish someone had taught little Barry Obama that prayer.

Meantime, if I ask you out to dinner, be kind to me. Don't marry me but be nice about it.

South By So What

I first worked with Doug Sahm at the Clearwater Auditorium for a Star Spectacular in 1966. I don't really remember much about the show but I always loved the Sir Douglas Quintet. I saw him again onstage at the fairgrounds with the Texas Tornados in the early '90's.

At an Americana Music Association gathering a few years later my pal Walt and I were delighted to discover that Doug was our roommate. Of course we hid when he came looking for us so that"us groovers" could go into town that first night where, he explained, the casinos and clubs never closed.

He burned, though. Lit up the room. We had plenty to talk about. Amos'n'Andy, Hank Penny, and, of course, Huey Meaux. He shared his coffee that he made from his special stash that he took in a little kit with him wherever he traveled.

I saw Doug one more time, at South By Southwest where they were presenting him some kind of lifetime achievement award at the Broken Spoke. "Hey, I know you! The Florida boys," he yelled when we walked up.

That had been my first trip to SXSW and my first visit to Austin. I had a fine time. I was a little put off by some of the posturing and some of the posing but I thought that it was a fine little party. I didn't make up the term, South By So What. I took it right out of the newspaper.

I finished up the song when I got home and finished up the record. We decided that it should be the radio single. I thought of the line,"Somebody tell Sir Doug I said hello," as a joke, a throwaway line. We released the record to radio and Doug died the next day. Turned out to be the saddest line I had ever come up with.

Robbie Fulks told me later that the line,"Those jerks from No Depression are an arrogant bunch," was the most singularly suicidal line that he had ever heard. Said that he laughed until iced tea came out his nose when he heard it. I thought that it was just a friendly little poke, too.

My "career" is fueled on indiscretion. I wouldn't have it any other way.