In honor of Willie Phoenix Way, I am re-posting the four-part Ballad of Willie Phoenix that first appeared on my blog Growing Old With Rock & Roll in 2013. It’s a deep dive into Willie's history from my dual perspectives as both a fan and as his roadie. Someday I might write another chapter, but just in case I don't, let me say this: If I hadn't met Willie Phoenix (and one other) in 1978, I would have lived out my existence as a middle-manager in some retail operation. Willie gave me back music, gave me back poetry, gave me back style, and made me believe in a future where I could still be living in and writing about rock & roll in 2020.
Thank you Willie.
Sunday, December 29, 2013 / The Ballad of Willie Phoenix, part four: The True Soul Rockers & beyond, 1990-2013
I became a roadie for The True Soul Rockers quite by accident one Sunday afternoon in 1990 when Willie and the band were playing an outdoor show at Mirror Lake on the Ohio State University campus. I was sitting in the audience with a girl I'd dated for much of the 1980's - who shall remain nameless for her various crimes & misdemeanors against the rock & roll - when Willie gestured for me to come up on the stage. I actually looked around to see if he was signaling somebody behind me, but finally realized I was the one being beckoned. I hadn't noticed that Willie had broken a guitar string until I met him at centerstage and he said, "Hey Ricki, can you change this for me?" There were two young kids bustling around with the gear before the show - a girl with wildly curly hair I would later come to know as "Cheese" and work with for months, and a kid named Eric - and I couldn't figure why they didn't handle the string situation. I put that question to Willie and he said dismissively, "Those kids don't know anything about changing strings. Help me out." I remember being totally taken aback and saying to Willie, "You have TWO roadies and neither one of them know how to change a guitar string? You're slippin', Willie."
I broke up a long-term relationship to roadie for that band. One night while driving home from a show at Ruby Tuesdays (where The True Soul Rockers maintained a residency similar to the The Flower Machine's earlier one) the girlfriend from paragraph one said, apropos of not much, "It's really kinda sad that all you guys are almost 40 years old and you're still trying to recapture your teenage glory days." I broke up with her that very night, not because the comment was necessarily inaccurate or hurtful, but because it was clear she would never understand the Elemental Essential Truth of Bruce Springsteen singing, "Some guys, they just give up living and start dying little by little, piece by piece / Some guys come home from work and wash up and go racing in the street." We weren't trying to recapture teenage glory days, we were simply trying to keep SOMETHING for ourselves in a world that seeks daily to take everything away.
Sometimes I think we still are.
(This is just an intro; click the link below for the “rest of the story” if you are so inclined…….)
(Any history of Willie Phoenix is a Living History, an ongoing process. He’s still out here rockin’. Stay in the loop at WilliePhoenix.com.)
left to right: Mike Parks, lead & rhythm guitar / Kozmos, bass / Willie Phoenix / Jim Johnson, drums