More Memories of Brad

I was at a Grateful Dead show, and there was Brad in the parking lot. It was around 1993, I think. Atlanta. The Omni. One hideous layer of asphalt after another. The city is beautiful in spots, but the lots surrounding this venue were particularly bleak. Like a Soviet-era postcard from eastern Europe.

Brad had a cheap Mexican blanket spread across a parking space. There were "just another lizard for peace" airbrushed t-shirts and his cholla cactus pipes. The red pipestone was carved at odd angles and mounted onto a metal rod with the cholla serving as a sleeve for the stem. I sat down and we shared a beer. I asked whether he was going to the show.

"You know, Debra, I'm just parking lot scum. Don't tell anyone, but I don't even like the Grateful Dead."

This didn't entirely surprise me. I knew that he and I shared obsessive love for his friend Dexter Romweber's band, the Flat Duo Jets. At the time Brad liked Athens bands, harder punkier sounding stuff.

"Besides, I need the money. I'm broke."

I asked if he had a place to stay. Here in Atlanta, he had to know people. But he had other plans.

"You know, I saw a big piece of plastic over there by the railroad track." He pointed to his left, but I didn't see any train track. "I'm planning to pick that up after the show and head over to a warehouse to sleep."

I never could tell whether Brad's hardscrabble ways were motivated by a flair for dramatic detail or because of his disinterest in imposing on friends. If he had simply driven to a buddy's house that night, it wouldn't have been nearly as memorable as my concern for Brad hunkering beneath industrial polyvinyl among the home bums.

I stood up and headed to the show. After the encore I left and saw Brad in his best Shakedown Street form, talking up the college students and Deadheads, offering trades for some good weed. He looked so happy whenever he had an audience and a pipeful of smoke. Money seemed uninteresting, except for the endless need for automotive repairs, gasoline and intoxicants. Brad was a simple man.

Brad eventually came to love the Grateful Dead and many other bands. I reminded him of his remark about the Dead in the early nineties awhile back. He said something like this:

"I started getting into them that last year or two. And after Jerry Garcia died, I missed them so much. Maybe everything seems better after it's gone. So I try to see more music now."

And this was true. Although Brad could still work straight through a festival at times, he did take some time to see some bands. I saw him dancing across from me at the Sun Ray Festival near Athens, at the disastrous Fire Lake Festival in Gaffney, and at Down On The Farm in northern Florida. Berlin, Devo, the Drive-By Truckers, Steve Earle, War - Brad was an awkward white dancer, much like me, but we laughed and danced and drank through it all.

In fact, Brad got a computer and became an ardent fan of music files. He burned wonderful mix CDs for me with names like "Songs About Guns and Death" and "Start Chopping: Another Great CD by Brad". There were tunes by Johnny Cash, the Violent Femmes, Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Thunders, the Avett Brothers, Charlie Louvin. There were surprise tunes from mainstream country artists and seventies Eagles. I came to be quite impressed with Brad's wide musical spectrum.

There are songs I can't separate from thoughts of Brad. Joe Diffie, "Pickup Man". Violent Femmes, "Country Death Song". And these days, Johnny Cash's version of Trent Reznor's "Hurt".

NTD