Heroes Everywhere I Look

As a kid my heroes were cowboys and race car drivers and rock'n'roll stars. Oh yeah, movie stars and bleach blonde wrestlers, too. I suppose I'm still a sucker for a good pr campaign. Now, though, I find my real heroes all around me. I'm always amazed at what everyday folks will do to help others. I see some of the hard work that friends do on animals' behalf and I'm overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder. When you can tap into your true spirit, there's a fountain of love there. No reason to be dainty about it. Slosh it all over the place.

Open

"He has no filters." I don't know if this hackneyed jewel is making it onto any of those lists of phrases that should be dropped or not but it's got my vote. Of course I have no filters.

It's one of those traits like eccentricity, I suppose. Sorta' comes into fashion for short bursts. I never really thought of myself as eccentric but folks will let you know.

So, here's the deal. I'll tell anybody anything. If you've read much of this drivel you know that by now. I've always been just a little bit shy about the women in my life, however. "Ronny's got a girlfriend. Ronny's got a girlfriend." I'm a foot-shuffler by nature. I'm usually pretty shy and tongue tied around folks that I don't know well. My big fear, looking back, was that the chatter might escalate to "Ronny and Alison, sitting in a tree..."

I would like to think that it's merely a measure of my chivalry and that I have tried to protect the reputation and the honor of the women that I love. You don't buy that one, do you?

So it's time for me to admit to you, and more importantly maybe, to me that I truly love the women in my life. As romances fade and marriages crumble, as crushes dissolve and girlfriends vanish, I have always claimed boldly that there was no basis for the relationship to begin with. My heart lets me in on a secret: I love, I love hard and I love forever.

I've been mean and I've been angry and I've used hurt as my excuse. There is no excuse. I rode my bike by Alison's house several thousand times between the third grade and the sixth grade. If she lived there now I would probably go today. She's still my pal but I never asked her out. No rejection! I was never angry at her and I'm glad. She never loved me. At least she never was in love with me. Lots of folks have never been in love with me. I get it.

Now, though, I take some kind of weird inventory and my heart threatens the seams. I have love, and lots of it, for everyone. I have big love for the women who have taken up space in my heart. The inventory is more extensive than the photos available to me. It's not really important. They're all in my heart. I hope I have some small part in theirs. Now, I guess, I've told you everything.

Eleven Eleven

Eleven eleven. A.M. and P.M. I find myself looking at some clock, somewhere, at least half a dozen times a week at 11:11. I'm not really one of those folks who find hidden meaning in everything. I'm aware that our minds seek out patterns but, if anything, I've tried to ignore this thing to death.

Don't try to reason with me. I'm not a reasonable man. Maybe I'm just getting hungry just before lunch. That's what you're thinking, I know. The fact is I'm always hungry. If I'm at home I try to get to bed before 11:00. Doesn't change a thing. Frequently I'll wake up suddenly and sit up to glance at the clock on the cable box.

Sometimes I try to remember whether or not this happened before most of the clocks around me were digital. Maybe I just never noticed. If anyone out there can explain this to me I will be very grateful.

Bad Asses, Every One

There's no such thing as "The Nationals." When I started my first Ronny Elliott cd, my pals from the Leonard Croon Band were planning to play on the recordings. I was recording it at home. The dining room was the control room and the living room the studio. We were using a borrowed eight track. One track was busted so it really was a borrowed seven track, I suppose.

Steve Connelly was the producer/engineer. He had never done either one. See, I had been hired on to produce a Steve Connelly cd and it was never completed. How we came to work together is another story. Remind me to tell you that one.

Any way, most of the guys from Leonard Croon failed to show up at the house for the sessions. They had decided that they would be "The Nationals" as a joke. We all thought that the name was so bad that we took a shine to it.

I relied on friends like Natty and Harry to play when the tape rolled. On that first record, Ronny Elliott And The Nationals, I remember Mark Warren, Philip Booth, David Lane and a bunch of other friends who happened to be around lending a hand. Of course Steve would add a little guitar on some of the sessions.

The band wasn't really "The Nationals." That was just the name of the cd. It was supposed to be funny.

We were pretty lucky and it immediately began to get some airplay all around the country. Some in Europe, too. Funny thing is, no one worked that record to radio. I didn't even know that there were radio promoters working that stuff. The term americana wasn't being used yet. I was just playing what I've always played. In fact, there are songs on that cd that I had written in the '60's and '70's. There were brand new ones, too.

Randy Wynn, the program director at WMNF in Tampa, called and asked if I would play on a bill at the State Theater in St. Pete for the station. They were bringing in Jimmy LaFave for the first time and Peter Case. He asked if I could put together a "crack band" for the show.

Well, I had played bass on another failed project, this one for Walt Bucklin, in the recent past. I called and asked him if he would play bass for the show. I knew that I wanted to work with him but I really didn't know him. He had to borrow a bass. My friend, Harry Hayward, had tried to play drums in bands for years. Decades. In fact, I had taken him off the drum kit and moved him to singer/magician for Duckbutter. He put together a kit from old scrap drums that he found around town. Steve Connelly agreed to play guitar. I added Natty Moss Bond to the ensemble, hoping that she would be the actual singer in the band. That never panned out because she just couldn't learn all the songs in that short period of time. I seem to remember that we had about two weeks to throw this "crack band" together.

Well, the Nationals are still together. I took the quotes off. I guess it's a band now. There have been others and sometimes there still are. Jim McNealon became a real National and died. We miss him. We really miss him. Rebekah Pulley and Rob Pastore play with us often. Harry loves to have a second drummer. Spencer Hinkle and Wally Watson have been the ones filling that role. We've had other guitarists; Mark Warren, Bob Rippy and Johnny G. Lyonn. Pamela Epps has played sax; Roswald Darby, trumpet; Andy Karpay, mandolin; and Drew Farmer has played piano with us.

It always seems to come back to that original "crack band," though. Heck, I've been through a number of wives over the same period. This is from that first show at the State Theater. Jimmy LaFave and Peter Case have become good friends of mine since then. The Nationals? Bad asses, every one.

Move Along, Nothing To See Here

Maybe I'm just addicted to the drama. Sounds better than just being dumb. Who gets to decide when you move on? Life's not so hard but love sure is.

Never A Contender

With apologies to Marlon Brando and Elia Kazan, I was, I suppose, never a contender. I could never have been somebody. I've always known to zig when it's been time to zag. Don't get me wrong. I'm not whining. My life is blessed and I've seen things that still thrill me.

Take Harry Hayward. Please.

He probably blames me for making him an obscure, has been cult figure. A born clown, well-studied magician, self-taught singer. In the late '60's, early '70's Harry honed his skills as a professional fool as the frontman for Duckbutter, our bad intentioned hillbilly jazz ensemble.

His dance, the Mullet, had always been fun. We had entertained drunks everywhere with it. Later Gary Dobbins and I wrote a song just to use for the dance using Harry's four steps:

Row The Boat

Throw The Net

Bring 'Em In

Put The Mullet in The Bucket

Now, one thing about Harry; he's not prolific. By the time that we threw together Loco Siempre at some point in the '80's or '90's he was still working the Mullet. I've gotta say that an old white man in a sheer harem girl outfit singing and dancing his heart out while instructing a barroom full of delirious yahoos the Mullet is better than seeing any of the seven wonders that I may have missed.

A Solo Act

Yeah, I guess my pal, Walt, summed it up pretty well when he pointed out to me a few weeks ago that I'm a "solo act." He said, "You can play with a band. You can get married. Let's face it, though, you're a solo act."

Sometimes it's lonely when you're a solo act.