SongO’TheDay

Last fall I learned that Leadbelly used to live across the street from where I live.  I literally live on the Berkeley-Oakland border at the end of a cul-de-sac.  I’ve lived here for almost six years.  A word of advice for all of you- unless you want a bunch of self-righteous, Trader Joe-smelling, bullshit artist pretend liberal jerks poking their noses in your business, don’t ever live at the end of a cul-de-sac in Berkeley.  Anyway, at the annual gathering of these ass clowns for a bbq and really bad folk music, I found out that, indeed, Leadbelly used to live across the street in 1944.

If you don’t know Leadbelly, I think you should read his Wikipedia write-up.  This is going to take enough space, but in short: Leadbelly was a bluesman from way back, who was a bad dude, but pardoned twice by the governor of Louisiana for writing songs for the governor that must have been charming as hell.  Anyway, he’s also known for writing “Midnight Special”, “Pick a Bail O’Cotton”, and this song.  He’s amazing.  I first heard of him from watching a Janis Joplin documentary when I was in 9th grade.  She loved him too.  You might recognize this song from the Nirvana MTV Unplugged album.

Learning that Leadbelly once shared a space with me, it made me happy in a quiet way since it kind of made sense.  Leadbelly has seemed to follow me in my adult life.

…

Before I had even actually heard any of Leadbelly’s music, I dreamed about him.  In the aforementioned Janis Joplin documentary, she talked about how Leadbelly played steel guitar.  Now, many of my dreams, and almost all of my first storytelling instincts, revert back to my Grandpa and Grandma Earley’s farm in Watertown, Minnesota.  In the dream, I wake up at the crack of dawn, that blue hue haze time, and look out the window from the farmhouse and see sparks from welding spouting from behind a half-open door to the barn.  I walk out and just as I approach the barn, out walks Leadbelly with a rectangular steel guitar he just built, and he plays it and it is amazing.  I remember it being such a great sound that I woke up startled.

…

When I was in 7th grade, I made up my mind to move out of the midwest.  My parents had a house with a driveway the length of a football field.  It was a brutal winter that year, and I was in charge of going out and shovelling the driveway so that my Dad, upon return from work, could make it up to the house with his car without getting stuck.  It was a form of hell.  As I’d get to the end of the driveway, I’d keep looking up the road to see him approaching, hoping he’d show in time before the driveway was drifted in again by the wind and snow.  More often than not, he wouldn’t be there, at which point I’d have to go start over.  I remember stopping at the end the second time through this contstant routine, and with tears of frustration, cursing the stupid fucking immigrants who were too lazy to keep moving west.  I remember actually thinking “Who would settle in this tundra wasteland?”  I made up my mind then, that when I got a chance, I was getting the hell out of there.

…

My opportunity to leave came after high school.  A friend of mine wanted to move to SF, and that was it for me.  I quit school and got a bunch of jobs.  I worked as a security guard, a worker at a cardboard box factory, a busboy at a cool jazz club, and as a record clerk.

The record clerk job was kind of a joke.  In order to get money together, I was going around to different record shops to sell my records.  At this one- I think it was called Hot Shot Hit Shop- the guy behind the counter was obviously stoned.  He asked me why I was selling my records, and I told him I was saving up money to move to San Francisco.  He asked me to come back in half-an-hour while he figured what to pay me for my stack of vinyl and when I did, he asked me if I smoked weed.  At the time, I did, and so after he locked up the store (turned out he was the owner and only employee- and had just inherited a bit of money that he was about to blow) I went with him to the basement and while getting high he offered me a job.  I took it.

The shop was a mess.  He didn’t even have a cash register.  He didn’t buy new product.  He was never there.  I always assumed it was a front for another type of business, but whatever.  Anyway, it was cool.  He was friends with Grant Hart from Husker Du, and so I got to meet and get to know Grant from that store.  But the guy hardly ever paid me on time, sometimes not at all, and so in compensation, I’d help myself to product.  One of the things I helped myself to was this Leadbelly CD.  I finally got to hear Leadbelly.

…

There isn’t much more to this story except that I moved to the Bay Area shortly afterwards, and during that first summer I shared a house with a bunch of guys my age, and whenever the partying went late, the Leadbelly disc was a staple. 

So, yeah, anyway, Leadbelly used to live across the street.

-Christopher Earley

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