The Stoney End

On September 21st, we played the big room at the Stoney Inn - for the last time. They sold the bar the following Monday. So ends an era for KDOG and Sacramento.
The owners' decision to hold rap and hip hop shows scared away the Stoney Inn's loyal rock and blues fans. When the police pressured the bar to stop the hip hop shows, which attracted too many gang-bangers, there were no more regulars.
This was painfully apparent at our show. Only a handful of people turned up to drink on a Friday night. The rest of the crowd came to see our band. I say crowd, but I doubt the 10 or so people meet the dictionary definition. Thank God our loyal femal fans - all friends of Kenton's first wife - came. They drink and dance and cheer. There's just not enough of them. They left at the start of the third set. We played the last five songs of the night to three or four people: Kenton's fiancee and Drew's wife, Cliff Lynch and his daughter. (Cliff is serving as Kenton's drum tech. It's sort of what working for Jennifer Lopez or Leona Helmsley must be like.) Later, Kenton said that "we shouldn't have even played that third set. I felt just terrible."
Growing older does make the third set a grueling chore. I'd spent the first two sets doing flying leaps from the stage onto the dance floor. The shock of landing my weight plus the weight of my guitar on the concrete pad floor made my knees swell up. By the end of the night, I could hardly move my legs. I also thought I felt my internal organs jarring loose from their moorings.
At the end of the night, Drew's back was killing him from standing for so long. "I'm too old for this," he moaned as he stretched out his throbbing spine.
"What are you, like 35?" I said. "I'm almost fifty."
"Fuck you."
I wasn't worried by this threat. He was in too much pain to fuck anything and besides, his wife was sitting right there.
Kenton and I finished the evening by having one of our huge fights. The pattern is always the same. Nick fucks up things during the show. He plays in the wrong key. Or he forgets the words to songs he himself wrote. Actual rock stars have this problem all the time. Kenton gets pissed at Nick and lets it ruin his mood. Then I get pissed at Kenton because he's fucking up constantly, so what's he doing jumping on Nick? I also fuck up a lot, but I'm not making a big deal out of other people's mistakes. That is, until Kenton decides to scream at Nick.
"Could you believe Nick tonight?" Kenton asked me as he packed up his drums.
"What about you!" I yelled. "You were fucking shit up all night long!"
"Dean, calm down," Kenton said.
"You telling me to calm down? That's a laugh. That's like Al Sharpton calling Jesse Jackson a media whore!"
And so on.
It's the same fight we always have. I blame myself. I have to change my reaction to these situation, but I just can't seem to do it.
Kenton and I had lunch the following Tuesday to talk about lowering the stress level.
"You're right," Kenton said. "I wasn't on it. I just felt terrible. I was an awful mood. I need to concentrate on playin' my drums."
I told Kenton that, for some reason, Nick's mistakes don't bother me at all. He contrives to make it all charming.
"But I hold you to a higher standard. Myself, too. I mean, I'm still clamming way too much. And you're the guy who brags that he's been playing drums since he was four. You're the guy with his name on the banner behind us. You're the guy with the $35,000 drum set."
Harsh, if true.
The main problem is that all this stress takes the fun out of it for everybody. And no one in the audience has ever come up to me and said, "Boy, Kenton really blew the fills on 'All Right Now,' didn't he? And by the way, you really screwed up the guitar solo." The average person at a party or in a bar just doesn't care or know.
Sometimes, I think Nick really likes to stir the turd. He admits to pushing Kenton's button just to he can watch the resulting explosions. Kenton, in turn, falls into the trap every time.
When they were in The Bittermen Blues band together, Kenton tried to rein Nick in by typing up a list of things Nick was forbidden to to.
"Oh, yeah, there was a list," Nick said. "I was no allowed to wear shorts with tennis shoes and white tube socks. I couldn't send out band e-mails without running them through Kentonn first. I was not allowed to stand in front of Kenton during gigs."
I asked Kenton about The List.
"It was the only way to keep Nick under control," he explained.
When Kenton's fiancee overheard us taking about the list, she immediately chastised Kenton.
"You had a list?" she carped. Then she turned to me. "How to you live with this man?"
The question is, how could we ever live without Kenton?
Modesty, patience and politeness may be wonderful virtues at church coffee hour, but they are crippling impediments in a rock and roll situation. Kenton is a rock star. The rest of the world just doesn't know it yet.
I can't imagine having this much fun without Kenton in my life. It's virtually impossible to stay mad at him for more than five minutes. Without Kenton's drive, there would be no rock band. I'd still be limited to playing at church on every Sunday. Kenton's presence in the church band livens up the proceedings in a distcinctly non Lutheran way. Plus, Kenton knows what the word friend means.
Kenton does what he does because it's his nature. I've never seen him do anything about of pure meanness. Me, I'm another story. I'm just plain mean sometimes, even cruel. i working on this, as you'll see soon.
When Kenton forced Tommy and I to work late recording a jingle for one of his advertising clients, he gave Tommy an apple pie from the best bakery in town. (He was already paying me a fortune on a bunch of other project. Besides, I got a piece of the pie!) I'd casually mentioned to Kenton months ago that Tommy loved pie of any kind. Kenton, who delights in giving and receiving presents, filed this information away for later use.
When one of Kenton many friends complains about Kenton's antics, they always finish the the same sentence: "You gotta love K-Dog." It's true. You do. Even Nick says this - and Nick is the person who draws the most fire from K-Dog.
We're rehearsing tonight at 6 p.m.
I can't wait.
A final note: Kenton has an friend from high school who's a full-patch member of the local Hell's Angels chapter. Kenton told me the Angels might show up at the Stoney Inn. I certainly hoped they would, since bikers are the best possible rock and roll audience. When I met with Kenton the next week, he explained why The Angels passed on the gig.
"They don't like to leave their bikes out front because some asshole always vandalizes them," he said. He shrugged. "I guess if even The Hell's Angels don't want to go to a bar, it's doomed."
I don't like leaving my shitty Plymouth Voyager on Del Paso Boulevard. If I had a customzed $30,000 Harley, I wouldn't park it out in front of the Stoney Inn even if I was a member of an infamous motorcyle gang.
Now, we have no gigs lined up. Kenton will not let this situation last long.
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.